Читать книгу Travels and adventures in South and Central America. First series - Ramón Páez - Страница 5

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“Caracas is the capital of a country nearly twice as large as Peru, and now little inferior in extent to the kingdom of New Granada. This country, which the Spanish government designates by the name of Capitania-General de Caracas, or the United Provinces of Venezuela, has nearly a million of inhabitants, among whom are sixty thousand slaves. It comprises, along the coasts, New Andalusia, or the province of Cumana (with the island of Margarita), Barcelona, Venezuela, or Caracas, Coro, and Maracaibo: in the interior the Provinces of Barinas and Guiana; the former situated on the rivers of Santo Domingo and the Apure, the latter stretching along the Orinoco, the Casiquiare, the Atabapo, and the Rio Negro. In a general view of the seven United Provinces of Tierra Firme, we perceive that they form three distinct zones, extending from East to West.

“We find, first, cultivated land along the sea-shore, and near the chain of the mountains on the coast; next, savannas or pasturages; and finally, beyond the Orinoco, a third zone, that of the forests, into which we can penetrate only by the rivers which traverse them. If the native inhabitants of the forest lived entirely on the produce of the chase, like those of the Missouri, we might say that the three zones, into which we have divided the territory of Venezuela, picture the three states of human society; the life of the wild hunter, in the woods of the Orinoco; pastoral life in the savannas or llanos, and the agricultural state, in the high valleys, and at the foot of the mountains on the coast.”[7]

And yet this favored region can be reached in from twelve to fifteen days by sailing packets between Philadelphia and La Guaira; or, should your fast habits require it, we can avail ourselves of the Brazilian line of steamships which will leave us at St. Thomas, where we shall meet the little steamer plying regularly between both points, the whole voyage being thus accomplished in eight days. As we are not in a hurry, however, to get through our journey, we will, for the sake of convenience and diversified amusement, follow the example of the above-mentioned traveller, Sullivan, who, in company of a friend, made the trip before us in a commodious yacht by the way of the West India Islands; but having no craft of our own, we may be permitted to borrow from the New York yacht squadron one of their idle cutters, which can thus be better employed than in cruising round well-known fashionable retreats during a few months of summer, and exposed for the rest of the year to the hard knocks of a wintry climate. This is the best season to visit the tropics, as well as the West Indies, when there is no fear of the dreaded vomito or sweeping hurricanes.

Hardly a day passes without coming in sight of some lovely isle of the Caribbean sea, which, like the “Queen of the Antilles,”—Cuba—rises from amidst the placid waves, crowned with perpetual wreaths of fragrant orange-blossoms and stately palms. Cuba, Hayti, Porto Rico, St. Thomas, Sta. Cruz, Antigua, Granada, Barbadoes, Martinique, Guadaloupe, Tobago, and Trinidad, rise one after another in quick succession. When we reach the last named and most lovely of all, on the eastern extremity of Venezuela, we have the choice of either penetrating at once into the field of our adventures by entering one of the numerous outlets of the Orinoco, which here pours out its tribute to the mighty Atlantic through a hundred mouths; or, following the line of coast to the westward, we may reach a point near the fertile valleys of Aragua, where well-trained horses for the sport and hardy llaneros to guide us, await our arrival. We shall thus have an opportunity of contemplating and admiring that stupendous chain of mountains (fit offspring of the mighty Andes further west), which seems as if thrown up by Titanic force as a barrier against the encroachments of the fierce Atlantic.

Endless are the beauties and points of interest presented by this splendid chain of mountains; its varied climes, from the scorching heats of the tierra caliente on the sea level to the frigid blasts of winter at higher elevations; its silvery springs and roaring cataracts; its unrivalled vegetation and glittering veins of precious metals. The trade winds and currents are in our favor, which will enable us to reach La Guaira in a couple of days, passing in quick succession some minor ports, such as Rio Caribe, Carupano, with its silver-bearing mountains in the distance, the island of Margarita, famous for its pearls, as the name implies; its fisheries, and the gallant defence made by the inhabitants against the combined attacks of the Spanish hordes; Cumana, for its delicious grapes and pine-apples, its salubrious climate, and the purity of the sky, which enabled the immortal Humboldt to watch in wonderment the great meteoric shower in 1799, which he compared to a brilliant display of fire-works; Barcelona, noted only for its hides, and the Monagas brotherhood, who were for many years the terror of the country.

The coast, as we approach La Guaira, is lined with plantations of sugar-cane, cacao and cocoa-nuts, two articles often confounded in English spelling, but widely different in themselves. The former grows on a moderately-sized tree, with large, glossy leaves, while the latter is the product of a palm, remarkable for the height it attains, and the prodigious size of its fruit, in bunches that few men can lift from the ground. The cacao nuts, on the contrary, grow in pods, resembling large cucumbers, of a rich chocolate color outside, filled with oblong nuts enveloped in a white, sub-acid pulp, very agreeable to the taste especially of parrots, monkeys, and squirrels, who destroy great quantities of the pods for the sake of the pulp, so that they require constant watching to protect them from these pests.

A cacao plantation is one of the handsomest orchards that can be seen, shaded as they are by another tree of large proportions, the erythrina, a leguminous plant with crimson flowers, which you may have noticed in greenhouses at home, though much reduced in size, as it never attains there more than a few feet above the boxes on which they are raised as an ornament to the garden in summer. The rapidity with which these trees grow in the tropics is astonishing, for in eight or ten years, the time required to reach its maximum growth, they attain the size of the largest denizens of the forest. Observe how their tops glow with the fiery hue of their blossoms, for this is the season when they exchange their leaves for flowers, the only instance of a plant shedding its leaves in these latitudes, with the exception of the ceiba or silk cotton tree, which the author of Amyas Leigh has so admirably described as growing close to where we are journeying just now.

Here the cordillera rises considerably above the connecting mountains, attaining a height of thirteen thousand feet in the peak of Naiguata, which you may perceive peeping through the clouds yonder, and the next one eleven thousand in the Cerro de Avila, both forming what is called the Silla, or Saddle of Caracas, at the foot of which stands La Guaira, the principal port of the republic, but the vilest anchorage in the world. Here ends our yacht excursion; trusting in future to the nimble-footed mule or to the thumping stage coaches for the rest of the journey.

Despite its wretched shipping facilities, La Guaira carries on a very active trade with foreign marts, as is attested by the number of English, French, German, and Italian merchants, with a few Americans, residing here, forming, as it were a truly foreign colony. The heat, as you perceive, is intense, owing to the proximity of the barren mountain-base, which leaves room scarcely for a loaded mule to turn round in the narrow and crowded-up streets. On this account, I presume, La Guaira is very healthy, for not even the Asiatic cholera could obtain a footing here—excuse the pun—when it decimated the capital in 1853. Cases of vomito occur from time to time; but these are more the exception than the rule; so it does not follow that all hot places in the tropics are unhealthy, for Carupano, Margarita, Cumana, La Guaira, and Coro, which are within the isothermal line of greatest heat—owing, doubtless, to the dry, stony, or sandy soil on which they stand—are among the healthiest spots in Venezuela. However, we shall soon be out of this sultry place, and amidst the glories of a temperate climate. For this purpose we will hire mules at one of the posadas or hotels, to ascend the mountains on our way to Caracas, the capital of the republic, giving the preference to the old road, which is much shorter and more picturesque than the new one for carriage travel. Let us hear first the enthusiastic English tourist describe this route, as I may be accused by some of partiality towards my own country.

“The ascent is very precipitous, and the road rough and narrow, but the view of the boundless ocean on one hand, and the magnificent range of mountains on the other, was very grand. The road rather reminded me of the Great St. Bernard, though the resemblance would not bear analyzing. The sensation of rising gradually into the cooler strata of air was most delicious; and at length, being suddenly enveloped in a cloud, I felt actually cold (a novel sensation I had not experienced for several months), and was not at all sorry to put on my jacket. There is no mountain in the tropics where you rise as immediately and suddenly from the stifling heat of the Tierra Caliente to the delicious temperature of an European sunrise in spring, as the Silla of Caracas.

“On the road from Vera Cruz to Mexico, when the traveller arrives at the height of four thousand feet, beyond which the fever never spreads, he is upwards of thirty miles from the sea, whereas, on the road up the Silla at that height the ocean lies immediately at his feet, and he looks down upon it as from a tower. So perpendicular is the face of the Silla towards the sea, that any large boulder or mass of rock becoming detached high up the mountain and bounding down its face, would fall clean into the ocean. About half way up the mountain, we crossed a deep cleft in the mountain called the Salto—a jump—on rather a rickety old draw-bridge. The bridge is commanded by a ruinous old town, called Torre Quemada, or the Burnt Tower, a name it derives from its being placed just at the height where the traveller, descending to La Guaira, first encounters the stifling exhalations from the Tierra Caliente. About nine o’clock we stopped to breakfast at La Venta, an inn some five thousand feet above La Guaira. Here, in a perfectly European atmosphere, we lay out in the grass, and gazed down upon the ocean and the town of La Guaira; we could just distinguish the Ariel, looking the size of a walnut-shell, hoisting her white sail, and standing away for Porto Cabello, where we were to meet her, unless we returned to Trinidad via the Rio Apure and the Orinoco.”

Both sides of the road are lined with Maguey plants, or varieties of the Agave genus, improperly called aloes and century-plants, from a mistaken notion that they only blossom once in a hundred years. The most beautiful of these is the cocuy, with thick glossy leaves of a clear emerald color, from six to eight feet, and a flower-stock from twenty-five to thirty feet in length. I believe it is the same species that yields the famous beverage of the Mexicans, called pulque, which some compare to fermented animal juices. A much more agreeable drink is obtained here by distillation from this plant, and its leaves turned to better account by scraping out the fine fibres they contain, from which most beautiful hammocks are made in various parts of the country, besides ropes, coffee-bags, twine, etc., etc. A fortune is in store for some Yankee genius who will invent the proper machine for dressing these leaves and getting the fibres. The other varieties are the cocuiza brava, or common century-plant (Agave Americana), with serrated leaves, on which account it is very useful for making hedges, and the cocuiza dulce, with perfectly smooth leaves, containing the strongest fibres and usually cultivated for that purpose. The pith of the flower-stock is also turned to account in various ways, especially for making the best kind of razor-strops.

Were you as much a lover of plants as I am, I would invite you to descend with me to one of those lovely glens formed by these mountains. There, amid moss-covered rocks and sparkling rivulets, I would point out to you those singular orchidacœous plants usually called air-plants, because they obtain their nourishment from the moist air that surrounds them,—not a bad idea,—those lovely daughters of Flora and Favonius, so rich in perfume as well as color, but whose principal charm consists in their caricaturing most living objects in nature, from the “human form divine,” as in man-orchis (O. mascula) to the bumble-bee, often deceived by a perfect representation of his species (Ophris apifera). Thus we count among our floral treasures “angels,” “swans,” “doves,” “eagles,” “pelicans,” “spiders,” “butterflies,” “bumble-bees,” and even a perfect infant in its cradle, was found by Linden in the mountains of Merida. The celebrated Flor del Espiritu Santo (Peristeria elata) is another of this class. It is there only that are found those two most beautiful species of cattleya (C. Mossiæ and C. Labiata), so highly prized by plant collectors, from all nations, and here called Flor de Mayo, or Mayflower, because it blossoms principally in the month of May. Great favorites are they with us also, and no court-yard is deemed sufficiently ornamented at Caracas without one or more baskets of these lovely plants, the stump of a tree, or any rustic basket filled with bark or moss, being sufficient support for them. In the same manner the curious Butterfly-flower (Oncidium papillio) is raised along with the others, often deceiving persons unacquainted with it, with a perfect representation of the insect whose name it bears; and if you should visit with me some of the cacao plantations in the tierra caliente, I would point out to you two equally exquisite plants of the same family attached to the rough stems and branches of the Erythrina, namely, the Swan-flower (Cycnoches ventricosum) and the Vanilla, both filling the air with the same perfume, but in different form, the former through its swan-like flowers, in clusters of three, five, and even seven, and the latter through its ripened pods—so well known to perfumers and confectioners—as the blossoms of this last, though quite large and handsome, are destitute of perfume.

But to return to our mountain ride, for it is time that we should be prepared to behold a still more glorious view from the summit, than the one just described by Sullivan: “After a regular Spanish breakfast of chocolate and fried eggs, for which, in as regular Spanish custom, we were charged about ten times the proper amount, we continued our ascent, and gained the seat of the Saddle, a hollow between the two peaks, called the Pummel and Croup,[8] about ten o’clock. The summit of the pass called Las Vueltas, is a smooth undulating grass-land, somewhat like the sheep-downs of Sussex. The bold rocky peaks on either hand, stretching in a serrated ridge as far as the eye could reach, were very fine. I could scarcely fancy myself to be only ten degrees north of the equator, and actually on or rather only eight thousand feet above the isothermal line of greatest heat, which passes through Cartagena, La Guaira, and Cumana.

“We had left far below us all the tropical flora, and were amongst English ferns and English blackberries; and I actually discovered one familiar friend, a dandelion. From the summit of Las Vueltas, you first get a magnificent view of the valley of Chacao, lying some four thousand feet below you, with the city of Caracas in the centre of it. I don’t think the view from that height is so fine as some thousand feet lower down, where it certainly beats any view I have ever seen. It is finer in my opinion than the first coup d’œil of the Vega and city of Granada from the Ultimo Suspiro del Moro, where the degenerate Boabdil el Chico, both in mind and body, turned to take one last fond look at the luxurious abode of his chivalric ancestors and wept bitterly, though too late, at his own cowardice and duplicity, which had almost without a blow surrendered to the “curs of Nazareth” the splendid heritage of nearly seven centuries, and which was never but in imagination to return to the true sons of the Prophet. It is also finer than the Valley of Chamouni or Martigny, from the Tête Noire, but I think it bears more resemblance to the Vega of Granada.”

Observe how regularly laid out, at right angles to each other, the streets are; the area of the city is great for the number of inhabitants (sixty thousand), most of the houses being built one story high, and occupying in consequence a large space, on account of the earthquakes, which are of frequent occurrence all along the Andean range. As we approach the suburbs, you may notice some of the ruins still remaining of that dreadful catastrophe, which, in 1812, levelled this beautiful city to the ground, burying beneath the débris twelve thousand of the inhabitants, just as they had assembled in the magnificent churches of that time to render homage to the day, Holy Thursday. Since then the city has been rebuilt, it is to be hoped on more solid basis.

Caracas claims the honor of having given birth to several distinguished individuals, among others to Bolívar and Miranda, two of the greatest champions of South American independence; to Rosio, the Jefferson of Venezuela;