The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-10-31
Troubles Of Venezuela
X1-- The SpofIess ToDh of Willemstad
By Frederic !. Haslin.


 | This entrance, shaped like the neck of a bottle, is but 500 feet wide. The houses are close down to the waters | edge on both sides. and neatly built | sean walls make the roadstead seem like an arfificially constructed canal. This
 neck suddenly opens into the lagoon,
 a deep body of water three miles long \ and nearly as wide. Tn 1t the whole I of Admiral Sperry's fleet might lie at 1 anchor. and not one of the ships could be seen from the open sea- only half mile distant Admiral Cervera's fleet
 hid there during the early days of the spanish American war. Just now there are three Dutch men of war in the | lagoon. but they are entirely out of
 sight of the town.
 The marrow neck of the bottle is I crossed bysa pontoon bridge. the inspir- l ation of an American consul who ob- 1 jected to chartering a fiat bottomed | Dutch gondola every time he wanted to
 cross the street. The bridge Is built I on number of floats, and at one end 1 the float has Q gasoline engine in 1t. When . ship knocks at the door of Wiliemstad for admission to the port.
 the gasoline engine Is started and the 1 whole bridge Is swung around until it | lies Hush against the ,sea-wail at one side of the entrance The ship passes into the lagoon. the gasoline bridge pier chug-ohugs back into position and ], the pedestrains stroll over. dry-shod. On each side of the narrow entrance. and at the "corner of the seq. is fort. High above the city on hill l is another fort which overiooks both | the entrance to the harbor and the deep | lagoon. These forts are ancient and 1 obsolete. although they have . few | modern guns. Fort Amsterdam and l Fort William are over two centuries | old. Fort Nassau boasts of the anti I quitity of over three hundred years. The new wireless telegraph sta
 ton and the semaphore signaling apparatus are the only things to con | vince one that he has not walked up in the days of the pirates of the Spanish Main. These forts were built to pros tect Willemstad against the depreda-. | tions of pirates and of the pirates al-
 lies--the Kingdom of Spain and Eng- land.
 It is hard to realize that New York
 was once an outlying appanage of Curacao and that Manhattan Island was once governed by a Dutch gover- nor who lived in this old Fort Nassau. 1 It Is interesting to know that 1t was
 In defending this city against the Brit 1 ish tht Peter Stuyvesant, most famous | of the Dutch governors of New Ann l sterdam. lost his leg. One is convinced | that none of the proud Knickerboclker
 families of modern Gotham need be
 ashamed of this ancient seat of their l ancestors.
 The walls of Fort Amsterdam once 1 included al there was of the city. It was not healthy to live outside of fort walls in the West Indies when Sir Henry Morgan was flying the Jolly Roger. But the town grew so rapidly that there wasn't room inside the walls
 so the streets were made narrower and narrower. Some of them are only three feet wide and the upper stories | of the houses often touch.
 Inside the fort. as 1t has been re- constructed and made smaller, ie the 1 old Protestant church. The present i edifce was erected in 1739 and Is still as good as new. To this church belong all the old Dutch families of pure blood. The negroes and the Carlos and the mixed bloods are all Catholics. The distinction Is so sharp that the 1 oldest inhabitants of the pure Dutch colony was pointed out as "the oldest Protestant in Curacao" There are about a thousand Jews, most of them | descendants of the Jews who were | driven from Spain to find refuge in Holland during the days of the Stadt-' holders. The Jews have an orthodox synagogue and a reformed temple. The
  1 churches.
 oldest and qualntest of all the old and quaint things of this old town is the language. Everybody speaks 'papis- mento", which Is a language peculiar to Curacao. It is built upon a founda- tion of good Holland Dutch, and the superstructure Is of concrete made by mixing Spanish, English. French. Por- tugeese. Danish, Carib and the dialects of the valley of the Congo. No mortal man but one born in Curacao can speak it. Almost everybody can understand a little of 1t, and everyone who speaks 1t can carry on a fairly good conver- sation in any one of the dozen lam guages of which ''papiamento" is made up. It is a great convenience for the visitor, because he may speak to any one in his own tongue and he will be understood. The people of Willem- stad are polyglots. They have no need for Esperanto.
 Curacaos chief claim to fame has been the delicious liqueur which bears the name of the island. Curacao was not always barren. Formerly there were a great many orange trees of 1 peculiar variety. and from the skin of these oranges was manufactured the | "liquer Curacao. But there was some 1 unexplained change in the meteorolog- ical conditions in this part of the world l and the rain ceased to fall upon this l Island The orange trees died and the | business of making the liquer was | transferred to other islands. The agri- l culture was practically killed, and now | there are only a few small irrigated | gardens at the edge of the sea. There | is no fresh water on the island and | every drop that is drunk must be | brought in schooners from some other | West Indian island or from Venezuela.
 Forced to win his living from the sea. every man in Curacao is a sailor. Everybody on the street talks ships. | Everybody at the club talks ships. In the lagoon and along tho sides of the neck of water which divides the town lie scores of Idle sehooners. They are idle because. President Castro of Venezuela has refused to permit them to trade with his country. Most of them were formerly engaged in legitimate trade. and some were smugglers. But just or unjust, all are Idle now.
 On the streets the men who used to l