After getting the development work well started I left it in charge of the superintendent and returned to Caracas. I was not yet ready to bury myself on the concession, for that, I thought, was what it would mean to become a fixture there, and, besides, I was curious to know how things were going at the capital. I stopped at Trinidad on the way to attend to some business for the company and enjoy a taste of real civilization, so it was early in 1897 before I resumed my old confidential position with President Crespo. The restoration was to be only temporary, he declared, for he insisted that a fortune awaited me in the Orinoco delta and wished me to become established there. His term expired the following February and I found that he had already decided on General Ignacio Andrade as his successor. He had planned to continue as Dictator of the country, _à la_ Guzman, and spend much of his idle time, and money, abroad, and he wanted a man who could be relied on to keep his organization intact and turn the office back to him at the end of his term, for the Venezuelan constitution prohibits a President from succeeding himself. Donna Crespo, who besides being the greatest smuggler in the country was a shrewd judge of men, had taken a pronounced dislike to Andrade and advised strongly against his selection. Without knowing how truly she spoke she predicted that if Andrade were made President, Crespo would be dead within six months. I added my advice to the Donna’s, for I knew Andrade was a weak man and one who could not be trusted to hold the country with the tight rein which his agreement required. Powerful friends of Crespo in Trinidad also urged him to select a stronger man, but he could not be moved. He credited Andrade with having saved his life, on the occasion when I sent a galloping warning of the plot to murder him, and, as a monument to him and an evidence of his friendship, he planned that he should be made President by the first “popular election” in the history of Venezuela. The peons idolized Crespo because they felt that he was more nearly one of their own class, as compared with aristocrats of the Guzman Blanco type. He was so well liked by the common people and had such a strong grip on the country that he was able to carry out the idea which his loyal friendship inspired, but with disastrous results in the end, to himself, to Andrade, and to Venezuela.