The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-10-29


 l great mountain. From one point one may see i've levels of the railroad | below him. man at a point six ana | a half miles from La Guayra can con verse In ordinary voice with another | man ten miles from La Guayra' so | closely folded are some of the great | loops of this serpent of railways II l is the steepast railway which does not use cog wheels. 1t Is the crooked edest I-railway anywhere and 1t is one Of the 1 best managed railways on earth. It | Is a pity that 1t Is doing less business now than evcr before. that It's in- | come has been steadily declining for l ten years. and that there Is little nope | for a better day to come.
 | A policeman takes ones name upon | leaving La Guayra, another policeman | takes the same name just before ar- irving at Caracas. Fairly we'll dress | ed fellows, these policemen. who wear | shoes and q blue uniform and have a great sword swung over the shoulder | from the end of a bath towel in some | mysterious way so that It never slips | of, as it Is always threatening to do. l The law having been satisfied, and the l police being In position to report to President Castro the names of all per | sons travelling on the railroad, the pas senger Is permitted to alight In Cara cas-.
 | put ! lb Ouu 10 LH0 way | of thinking. to know that the name | of every passenger who arrives at a Venezuelan port from a foreign land Is at once telegraphed to President l Castro for hls information. Wouldn't 1 President Roosevelt be busy If he did anything like. that2 The names of all passengers arriving in Caracas on all railways are published each morn | ing In the newspapers. Wouldn't the New York or Chicago newspapers be whoppers if they did anything like that?
 But this is Caracasi Beautiful Car acas. built of pink and yellow and white, lying at ease in It's gray gray valley with its green. green mountain walls. On one side, toward La Quay ra, the old lake bank rising four hun dred feet, and to the south the peak of La sllla, rising another four thou sand feet. There Is the long straight street lined with It's one-story houses. each with the barred windows where the senoritas sit In the afternoon to watch the panorama of street life and indulge themselves in sentimental day dreams.
 Straight ahead, high on a hill where once stood the noble bronze statue of Guzman Blanco, the "Regenerator" of Venezuela. now towers the magnificent Military College erected by the Re storer" of Venezuela. Ciprlano Castro. It is a mere detail that the building Is over two years old and that the college has never been opened. Castro needed the money for something else.
 To the right crowning another hill, is hideous yellow church of nonde- script architecture. It is a monument to another Venezuelan Dictator. Gen eral Crespo. who died in battle oppos- ing Castro's march to Caracas. Cres- pos wife had vowed that if her hus- band ever came to the presidency she would build a church. His ambitions were realized and he built the church to please. her. using. of course. the government funds. A friend of Cres- pos was given the contract and the church actually cost about one-hfth of the contract price. When the church was all finished the remarkable dis- covery was made that it had been placed on hill which was absolutely inaccessible from the residential part of the city. So another contractor, all so a friend of Crespo's. was given the job of building a steel wiaduct over the ravine. so that the church might be reached. The government also paid for the bridge. The church has no congregation and services are not held in 1t. but then. didn't Mrs. Crespo keep her pious vow2 And didn't her husbands friends get the contracts?
 Taking one of the many coaches and quieting the yells from the hundred cabmen. one Is driven straight to the Hotel Klindt. on the Plaza Bolivar which Is the heart of the city. From the Plaza Bolivar the city is laid out in four sections just as Washington City Is divided from the Capitol. About this little park. not half as large as La Fayette Square in Washington. or Washington Square, in New York, are grouped the principal buildings of the capital.
 There is the Casa Amarillo Spanish for "Yellow House"l which Is the the Republic. It takes its name from the color of It's paint, as does the l White House in Washington. Then there is the Capitol Building, the City Hall, the National University, tho Postoffice, the Ministry of Foreign Al. fairs. the Cathedral and the Archepis- copal Palace. There Is also the stock exchange. That institution hasn't a | building. as yet but the brokers gath CT under the branches of a great tree and there the bulls and the bears pre- tend to battle with each other while | they sheer the lambs. It is just like Wall Street a century and e quarter ago when the New York brokers met under the old buttonwood tree at the punt WHCEo S' ElOFpout MoESdu now has his office.
 In the center of the Plaza Bolivar is the heroic equestrian statue of Sl- mon Bolivar. the great Iiberator. The statue is frank copy of that of An drew Jackson. which stands In front of the White House in Washington. the horse miraculously balancing himself on his hind legs without Frightening the bold rider in the least. On one side of the pedestal some words have been chisseled away. It Is the blank which proclaims even louder than did the inscription that the statue was erected by the Illustrious American. Guzman Blanco." The same blank Is to be found on nearly every statue in the city. One of the bronze tablets on the pedestal of the George Washington statue is entirely missing. It was the That the government. or the mobs. de- stroyed every one of these inscriptions merely fastens them in the minds of the people. just as the erasure of the name Jefferson Davis from Cabin John Bridge in Washington serves to remind every visitor to the American capital of tho half-forgotten fact that Jeffer- son Davis was once Secretary of War of the United States.
 Interesting as are the public build ings. the statues. the churches and the parks the very best thing of ali is the climate. For in Caracas one wears linen clothes all the year round and then sleeps under two blankets at night If rains In the rainy season