winds the danger is sometimes great, and then a
cannon is fired from the fort as a signal that the
rollers are setting in. Forthwith, all anchors
are weighed, and the ships run out to sea
till the swell moderates. Indeed, it is one of
the inscrutable things that no one can understand,
why La Guaira should be made the port
for Carácas at all, when a mile or two to the
west, on the other side of the next promontory,
Cabo Blanco, there is the snug harbour of Catia,
whence an easier road to Carácas might be made
than that from La Guaira. But no; in spite of
the swell which has caused the loss of so many
vessels, which makes communication with the
shore so troublesome, and which stirs up the
sand in a fashion that renders it necessary to
weigh anchors every eight days, lest the ships
should become sand-locked; in spite of the ravages
of the barnacles, the teredo navalis, la broma, as
the Spaniards call them, more destructive at La
Guaira than anywhere else in the world,
commerce, which seems to be the only conservative
thing in America, still keeps to its old
route.

"So this is Venezuela, Little Venice," thought
I to myself, as we lay tossing; " can't say I see
much resemblance to Venice in these great
mountains, that look as if they had been piled
up by Titans to scale a city in the clouds!"
Nor is there, through all the vast region now
called Venezuela, much to remind one of the
city of the doges. But it is at La Guaira
that the unlikeness comes out most forcibly.
It happens, though no one seems to have
remarked it, that La Guaira is the very ???????
of the Venezuelan coast; for it lies half way
between Cape Paria, on the extreme east, and
Chichibocoa, on the extreme west, and just
at La Guaira towers up La Silla, the tallest
mountain between the Andes and the Atlantic;
so that, instead of thinking of Venice, one cries
out with Humboldt, " The Pyrenees or the
Alps stripped of their snows, have risen from
the bosom of the waters." Venezuela is a
misnomer. The first Spaniards who came to the
American coast, the Conquistadores, found the
Indians of Maraycabo living in huts on piles
in the lake, and so called that locality
Venezuela; and the misnomer spread and spread
till a region four times the size of Prussia
came to be styled "Little Venice,"—a name
which now comprehends a forest larger than
France, steppes like those of Gobi, and
mountain tracts which it would take many
Switzerlands to match.

But for the abominable saltatory movements
of the Yñez, I could have passed hours very
contentedly with a fragrant cigar in my mouth,
gazing from the sea at La Guaira, which is
one of the most picturesque places in the
world. Humboldt says there is nothing like it,
save Santa Cruz, at the island of Teneriffe,
where, as at La Guaira, the town, perched on a
little rim of shore, at the foot of a tremendous
peak, seems like a world's finger-post pointing to
the littleness of man and the greatness of nature.
Once landed, much of the effect is lost. There
is then no more such startling contrast
between the strip of white building at the sea's
level, and the huge blue black and green masses
of rock and earth heaped up into the very clouds;
and it is no longer so easy to trace the long line
of fortification mounting from height to height.
Moreover, a mountain that starts up all at once,
eight thousand feet from the sea, into the clouds,
is a wondrous sight, and I looked and mused
long. But my reverie was interrupted by those
common-place, matter-of-fact fellows, the custom-house
officers, who came on board punctually at
six A.M., and showed at once that they had more
of the Paul Pry than the poet in their natures.
As nearly the whole revenues of the country, and
the whole of their salaries (report says, something
more than the whole), are drawn from the
custom-house, there was some excuse for their
energetic proceedings, which would, no doubt,
have terminated in a rigid scrutiny of my numerous
boxes, had I not been armed with the name
of commissioner and a diplomatic passport. At
sight of that document, the official tartness of
their aspect sweetened to a smile, and they
invited me to go ashore in their large comfortable
boat: no slight favour at such a place as La
Guaira.

Watching the auspicious moment when the
frolicsome surge pitched the bow of the boat up
within a foot of the landing-place on the pier, I
made a spring, and was effectually prevented
from falling back by half a dozen arms and hands,
which snatched at every accessible part of me;
one fellow, whose civility outran his discretion,
giving me a sharp pinch as he clutched hold of
my trousers. I was safe, however; I had landed;
I stood for the first time on American ground,
and I felt myself in a glow—but less, perhaps,
from enthusiasm than from the intense heat
consequent on the exertion of jumping from that
tossing boat. There was, in reality, no great room
for enthusiasm. Some dingy buildings now shut
out the view of the mountains, and the
atmosphere was so close, and so impregnated with the
odour of decaying fish and other things still
worse, that no enthusiasm could have withstood
it. It would be well if the Venezuelans, so
proud as they are of their country, so sensitive
to the remarks of strangers, would prepare
a cleanlier landing-place for their visitors. In
other countries, foreigners who are to be
propitiated are presented with bouquets of flowers.
Columbia welcomes the traveller with a bouquet
of a different kind. They were working away at
the wharf and breakwater, which had already,
they said, cost one hundred thousand pounds,
though I suppose a tenth of that sum would
have more than covered the outlay in England.
Earth was coming down in buckets, which
travelled on long ropes fastened at a considerable
incline to posts at an eminence across the road,
where the men were at work. These buckets
came along with an impetus sufficient, had they