and even in the lowlands and on the coast, where the heat is most intense, sunstroke, or heat apoplexy, is almost unknown.

Here, then, is a country in which, as in Colombia, nature seems to have been peculiarly lavish in her bounties; while its favored geographical position places it in easy communication with the outside world, thus giving the little Republic many commercial advantages which Colombia does not possess. Both countries are great in future possibilities, but Venezuela is perhaps the greater. As yet both are but sparsely populated; both have been delayed in progress by unstable government; both are more than half a century behind the age. These conditions cannot long continue. In the present age of the world, when the struggle for subsistence has become one of serious moment in many parts of Europe and Asia, such countries as Colombia and Venezuela cannot remain unnoticed many decades longer. Civilization will demand their development. And it is to be hoped that, profiting by the lessons of history, the people of both will realize the necessity of stable government as the one condition precedent to anything like national prosperity, if not to national existence itself.

CHAPTER XIX

T

STAPLE PRODUCTS OF VENEZUELA

HE agricultural districts of Venezuela comprise an area of something over 30,000 square

miles, and lie as I have said, within the three parallel valleys between the coast and the great Parima ranges of mountains. These valleys are at altitudes of from 1,200 to 3,500 feet above sea-level, and therefore have for the most part an equable and temperate climate. The soil is generally a dark loam, easily cultivated, and seldom suffers from protracted droughts. They are rarely visited by fevers, and are generally considered healthful. A large portion of each of them is connected with the outside world by water navigation. Their present products are sugar, tobacco, maize, rice, wheat, barley, potatoes, and a little cotton of very inferior quality. Among the possible products would be a high grade of cotton, and all the cereals and vegetables of the north temperate

zone.

During the civil war in the United States, cotton culture in this region received quite an impetus, especially in the immediate vicinity of Lake Valencia, where both climate and soil are peculiarly well adapted to the plant; and even after the close of that war, a number of experienced planters from our Gulf States, who had become disgusted with the new order of things at home, leased large tracts of land in Venezuela

and entered quite extensively into the business of cotton growing. They did very well for a time, but a "revolution" broke out in 1869–70, which caused them to lose two crops in succession. Many of them lost everything. Very soon they became discouraged; and those who were able, returned to the United States wiser but poorer men. Since then, the industry has fallen into complete decadence, and not a bale of cotton is now raised for export. With a stable government, Venezuela would probably become one of the cotton-producing countries of the world, for the climate and soil are, as I have said, peculiarly well adapted to this class of industry. The cotton plant here grows to the dimensions of a large bush, and annual replanting is seldom necessary. One good stand will last for several years, and with proper attention the fibre can be made equal to that of our average Georgia or Texas

cotton.

In many parts of Venezuela the sugar-cane is indigenous, and gives an enormous yield with very little cultivation. There are some very fine sugar plantations, especially in the small valleys near the coast; but little or no sugar is raised for export, and the article is consumed in a crude state. It is usually moulded into cylindrical blocks, called papalon, weighing from three to five pounds each, and is very similar in appearance and taste to the best maple sugar of the United States. The tax on the importation of all foreign refined sugars amounts to practical prohibition; and yet there is not a sugar refinery worthy of the name in all the Republic.

It has been asserted by those who are generally accepted as authority on the subject, that the tobacco plant (Nicotiana rustica) is a native of tropical America. It has been likewise asserted, with equal confidence,

that the plant is indigenous to southern Asia. It is now well known that the use of tobacco in all its forms was common in China many centuries before America was discovered by Europeans. The probabilities are that some varieties of the plant (for there are several) are indigenous to the tropical and subtropical latitudes of both continents, and that whilst it may be successfully cultivated in high latitudes, even as far north as Canada, its natural home is in the tropics. This is demonstrated by the fact that the plant soon deteriorates in high latitudes, and requires frequent reseeding from the tropical and subtropical regions.

Tobacco, as is well known, was a native product not only of the West India islands, but of North America as far as Canada, at the time of the discovery of the continent. The same is true of aboriginal South America, from the isthmus to Cape Horn. Indeed, no tribe of American Indians has ever yet been found, in either hemisphere, who did not use tobacco in some form or other, or whose traditions did not ascribe its use to the remotest antiquity. With many of the Central and South American tribes, the use of tobacco had a religious significance, and was intimately connected with their forms of worship. According to their religious belief, the "Great Spirit" smelled a sweet savor as the smoke of the sacred plant (for they held it sacred) ascended to the heavens; and thus they sought to propitiate the favor of the Deity by a habit now regarded by us as a mere selfish luxury. It has been asserted and so oft repeated as to become generally accepted that the domestic tobacco plant and its use originated with the natives of Yucatan; that it was thence disseminated by the Spaniards through the West Indies, and from there introduced into Venezuela and Colombia. But this cannot be made to accord

with the known fact that Columbus found the natives of the West Indies cultivating and using tobacco some two years before Yucatan was discovered; or with the further fact, testified to by Ojeda and others, that in 1499 the tobacco culture and habit were already very general among the Indians of the Venezuelan coast. Another very significant fact is that the district of Capadare, in Venezuela, and those of Jirado and Ambalema, in Colombia, where the finest quality of tobacco is now grown, are precisely the localities where the plant was most assiduously cultivated by the aborigines at the time of the Spanish discovery and conquest.

The plant thrives best in a humid and moderately fertilized soil, like that in the vicinity of the Venezuelan coast or in the upper valley of the Magdalena in Colombia. If the soil is too light and sandy, the plant "fires" quickly under a tropical sun, and the yield and quality are both bad. the yield may be good, but the quality is inferior, the fibre being loaded with acid matter, which produces excessive fermentation and what is called "mould" in the process of curing.

If the soil is too rich,

In some of the mountainous districts of the interior, both in Venezuela and Colombia, the Indians use tobacco in a peculiar form. They boil the leaves and stems of the plant into the consistency of thick paste, which they chew as common chewing gum is used in the United States. But aside from this, I believe I never saw or heard of a Venezuelan or Colombian, white or colored, who used tobacco other than for smoking or snuffing.

Tobacco is exported in considerable quantities from both Venezuela and Colombia, and, in some instances, the quality is perhaps nearly as good as the best in