By this time the people of Venezuela, ripe for a change of administration and believing that no one could be worse than Andrade, had begun to find out, as had Castro himself, what a powerful person he really was, and they accepted him as their master. He entered Caracas without opposition on October 21, 1900, and, rejecting the modest title of Provisional President, which his predecessors had used, proclaimed himself “Jefe Supremo” or “Supreme Military Leader.” He filled all important posts with men from the mountains, on whose loyalty he could rely, and as they were able to secure plenty of graft, not one penny of which was overlooked, he very soon had a tight hold on the country. One of his first acts was to release Gen. Hernandez. He soon found that the old warrior was too patriotic and too dangerous to be at large, so he slapped him back into San Carlos, on the pretence that he was planning an insurrection, and kept him there for years. On March 30, 1901, Castro was elected by Congress to fill out the unexpired part of Andrade’s term and in the following February he was elected Constitutional President. Then began in earnest his reign of robbery, through the establishment of monopolies whose profits went to his private purse, and his vicious anti-foreign policy which, through the murders and injustices that were committed in its name, made the Boxer uprising in China look like a soft-spoken protest. I was not in Caracas to witness the advent of Castro, as I had returned to Catalina more than two years before, immediately after Crespo’s funeral. During my stay at the capital I had come into possession of a block of stock in the Orinoco Company which made it better worth my while to stay with it, and I had become infected with the idea that if we were let alone the concession could be developed into a very valuable property. It was soon apparent, however, that we were not to remain undisturbed. So long as Crespo was alive I was all-powerful at Catalina, but with his death my influence began to wane and the rights of the company to be trespassed upon. The natives could not see how our concession, an integral part of Venezuela, could ever be anything but their own property; they could not, or would not, understand that the government had given away territory from which they could be debarred. It was only the influence of the Jefe Civile that had kept them in bounds before and with the death of my friend Crespo, that official suddenly became at least lukewarm in his loyalty to the law and to me. It naturally followed that the natives overran the concession and did more and more as they pleased. They refused to pay royalty on the _balata_ gum, which they carried off in enormous quantities, and stole everything except the headquarters building and the iron ore, which was too heavy and not worth while. The Jefe Civile himself violated the terms of our concession and extortions of all sorts were winked at or openly approved.