However, these unfortunate incidents are of the past. Venezuela has shown a desire for more cordial relations with the outside world. Lately she sent a representative to London with the purpose of inaugurating closer commercial relations with Britain.[5] We have now to explore the great river of Venezuela, the famous Orinoco. The Orinoco, which pours its huge volume of water into the Atlantic on the northern shore of the continent, through a vast delta of over thirty mouths, a volume derived from over four hundred tributaries which descend from the spurs of the Andes or from the wild and mysterious forests of Guiana, flows through what might be one of the richest valleys of the earth's surface, and doubtless in the future may so become. But, like the valley of the Amazon, its resources are comparatively little utilized at present. Devastating floods, malarious forests, ferocious crocodiles are some of the elements the traveller encounters on the higher waters of this great stream, notwithstanding that Columbus wrote to his Spanish sovereign that he had "found one of the rivers flowing from the Earthly Paradise." Unfortunately it may be said that the Spaniard and his descendants have wrought destruction rather than benefit here, and the population of the valley is less now than it was four centuries ago. We may ascend the Orinoco, in the stern-wheel steamers which ply thereon, for about four hundred miles to Ciudad Bolivar, which town forms the chief and indeed almost the only trade centre, and in the rainy season, when the river is high, which is generally from June to November, by smaller craft up the lengthy affluents. Such are the Apure, the Meta, the Arauca and the Guaviare, many hundreds of miles in length, rising far away to the west amid the Cordillera, the cold eastern slopes of whose lofty summits condense and pour down torrents of water into an extraordinary network of rivers which flow across the plains of Colombia and Venezuela, flooding enormous areas of land in their passage to the main stream. Boats and barges may reach the Andes, whose beautiful landscape forms the water-parting of this remarkable fluvial system. [Illustration: THE MAINLAND FROM TRINIDAD, AND VIEW IN THE DELTA OF THE ORINOCO. Vol. II. To face p. 34.] In the dry season snags and sandbanks render navigation almost impossible on many of these tributaries, and in some cases in the remote districts the hordes of savages who dwell on the banks add to the dangers of the voyager. There are miles of rapids on certain of the waterways, and great cataracts, whilst the forest comes down to the water's edge, forming an impenetrable screen of tropical vegetation, in which the traveller who strays from his way is lost. This jungle is flooded in the rainy season, the waters driving back all animal life to the higher ground. From the east comes the great Ventuari affluent, with its unexplored head-waters in Guiana.