The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-10-29
Troubles Of Venezuela
 X--Caracas, Ancient and Beautiful
By Frederic J. Haskin.


Caracas. Venezuela, Oct. 2S.-There is poetic justice ip the fact that Ven ezuela's ruler Is always "a man on horseback" for Caracas Is always In
 the saddle. La Slla" (the Saddle) Is the name of the great mountain
 which gives to Caracas a perfect cli- mate. to Venezuela It's surest defense against invaders, and to the traveller one of the grandest of natural spec tacies.
 It Is the highest mountain In the
 world which rises directly from the edge of the sea. Its gray and green heights may be seen by the mariner
 who Is more than a hundred mics from the land although the Saddle
 which crowns the peak, over 5000 feet high. is nearly always yelled In cloud. Overfio wing the narrow strip of level ground of the base, and ambitiousiy
 clambering up the first few hundred feet of its precipitous side, Is the an- cient town of La Guayra. It Is Ven
 ezuela's most important seaport-the entrance to the capital. Otherwise 1t has nothing to recommend 1t.
 Hot, fiea-infested and dirty, La Guayra has no charms, and the first
 glimpse of Venezuela which 1t affords Is most unprepossessing. Bronze statues and careful gardening make the piazas attractive to the eye. but
 the mind can take in but one thing that the thermometer reaches 100
 in the shade every day In tne year.
 But. one Is told, almost halfway up
 to the peak of The Saddle there used
 to be. when the world was young. deep lake. It was four or i've miles
 wide. eight or ten miles long, and cut into the side of the mountain peak like q pocket. One day there was great earthquake and one whole sioe of the pocket was broken on ana sent crashing and rolling down the noun tain side. The waters of the lake tumbled down to the sea. And now, million years later, the bed Of the
 lake is the valley of the Rio ouaire' In this valley lies beautiful Caracas. Caracas is just six miles from the ocean as the crow flies. and only eight miles away by the ancient donkey road that the Spaniards paved with
 cut stone long before Captain John Smith came to Jamestown. But 1t is twenty-four miles by the railway. Known as "the crookedest railroad In the crookedest country in the world, " 1 the La Guayra and Caracas Railway IS a most remarkable piece of engineer. ing. Count de Lesseps, the great French engineer, said: T would not have believed 1t if had not seen 1t with my own eyes.
 Crooked, over SO per cent. of the rails used are curved; steep. there isn't a quarter mile of level track narrow, only three feet between the
 rails. this railroad has the enviable distinction of being able to boast that in twenty-five years of operation it
 has never had an accident. and that 1t has not been responsible for the loss of q single human life.
 From the windows of the little cars In the miniature train one looks out
 upon an ever r-ehanBing scene of in-
 describable grandeur. Here dashlng through grove of mahogany trees. and there whiriing along avenues of the wonderful fruits and flowers of the tropics. Now looking across a valley to a banana plantation, and then gazing tremblingiy down q sheer precipice of 1.s00 feet Sometimes there is a narrow defile with only a
 ribbon of Gods sky as q promise that the earth Is not all gray rocks, then an unexpected unfolding of the broad and llmpId waters of the Caribbean Sea which seemed to have been left
 miles and miles behind. At first there Is the luxuriant and impenetrable jungles of tropical vegetation. then
 rising to the temperate zone, the wiI. lows and the naples.
 And all of the time winding and