resembles it in inaccessibility. With a few
batteries judiciously placed, the approach to
Carácas from the coast might be completely closed
against an enemy, excepting, of course, English
sailors, to whom all things are practicable that
imply prize-money and a fight. In the beginning
of June,1595, the renowned Corsair Dracke, as the
Spanish historians call him, or Francis Drake,
stood in with his squadron towards the coast of
Venezuela, till he arrived within about half a
league from La Guaira, when he embarked five
hundred men in boats, and landed. The
inhabitants of La Guaira fled without resistance, and
carried to Carácas the news of the terrible
Englishman's descent on the coast. Then did the
valiant alcaldes, Garci-Gonzalez and Francisco
Rebolledo, assembling all the men who would
and could bear arms, march out to repel and
chastise the invader. They marched with
banners displayed along the royal road leading from
Carácas to La Guaira, leaving ambuscades in
the less frequented passes of the mountains,
where the thick trees and rough ground favoured
such strategy. But Drake had found at
Guaicamaento a Spaniard named Villalpando, who
was willing to sell his country, and who led the
corsair by an unfrequented route, perhaps that
which is now called the Indian's Path, to
Carácas. So, while the valiant alcaldes were
marching down to the sea, and their gallant
men in ambush were lying ensconced in the
dank grass, the Englishman was hanging Villalpando,
for whom he had no further use, on a
tree, and packing up, with great care and very
much at his ease, all the valuables he could find
in Carácas. Now, who can adequately describe
the fury of the alcaldes when they heard that,
while they were guarding the stable-door, the
steed had been already stolen! So they marched
back again to the capital, resolved to make a
pastel of Drake and his merry men, and hoping
to catch them with their pikes and their hangers
and their arquebuses laid aside, and their hands
full of plunder. But Drake was cautious as well
as bold, and had turned the municipal hall and
the church near it into little fortresses, and the
Spaniards had a presentiment that there was no
taking these strong places without bloodshed,
so they surrounded the city at a safe distance,
and prepared to put every Englishman to death,
who, not content with the booty he had already
got, should go out to the villages round about
to look for more. But one old hidalgo named
Alonso Andrea de Ledesma, who was, perhaps,
a native of La Mancha, mounted his steed, and
put his lance in rest and an old target on his
arm, and rode forth alone to drive out the
English. The chivalry of the old don moved Drake's
compassion, and he bade his men not to harm
him; nor would they, had he not charged them
at full speed, and tried to do mischief with his
spear. Thereupon they killed him as gently as
they could, and carried his body to a grave in
the city, and interred it with all honour. So,
when eight days were passed, Drake and his five
hundred moved out of Carácas with their booty;
and, after burning all the houses that they had
not knocked down already, marched merrily
away to their ships, and embarked without the
loss of a single man,

Carácas is, as has been said, very inaccessible
from, the north—that is, from the side towards
La Guaira and the sea; but, in the opposite
direction, the slopes are easier. In order to
form a correct notion of the site on which the
city is built, one must keep in mind the direction
of the mountain ranges of the country.
The Andes alone run north and south, dividing
South America like a backbone, but into two
very unequal parts—the part parallel to the
Pacific being infinitely narrow compared with
the eastern portion that extends to the Atlantic.
A number of cordilleras descend from the Andes,
and run from west to east, and that cordillera
which skirts the Caribean Sea forms quite an
angle at La Guaira and Macuto, approaching
there almost to the sea, and ending in a huge
clump, the highest part of which is La Silla, a
great double-peaked mountain, that towers up
two miles to the east of Carácas. La Silla is,
consequently, nearly opposite to Macuto, while
the ridge which separates Carácas from La
Guaira is called Cerro de Avila. This ridge
appears to swell on without a break until it terminates
in La Silla, but it is in reality separated
from it by the deep ravine of Tocume. On the
south side, then, of Avila and La Silla is a plain,
called the plain of Chacao, with a steep slope
from N. N. W. to S. S. E.—that is, from the
mountains just mentioned to the La Guaira, a
stream which flows with a south-easterly course
into the Tuy. The latter river falls into the
Caribean Sea, sixty miles to the east of the town
of La Guaira. The plain of Chacao, which is a
lateral branch of the far larger valley of the Tuy,
is about ten miles long from west to east, and
seven broad from north and south, and at its
western extremity, where it is narrowest, stands
Carácas.

Some authors have pronounced it to be matter
of regret that Carácas was not built further
to the east, near the village of Chacao, where
the plain is widest. There is no doubt that
Francisco Fajardo, who, in 1560, first built on
the site which the capital of Venezuela now
occupies, was led to choose the spot as being
nearest to the coast, and also to the mines of Los
Teques, which were the attractions that brought
him into a locality then swarming with hostile
Indians. In 1567, Don Diego Losada, who
wished to make a permanent conquest where
Fajardo had been little more than an explorer,
founded a city on the site chosen by the latter,
and called it Santiago de Leon de Carácas—thus
giving it his own name Santiago, or Diego, the
name of the Governor de Leon, and that of the
Indians of the district, Carácas, which last alone
survives. Losada, of course, little imagined
that his new city would ever become the capital
of a great country, and in selecting the site he