Cumaná, in the middle east, is the oldest European settlement in South America; it was in its old church that Las Casas preached—the saintly priest who was the Indian’s ablest champion in the early days of Spanish devastation, but who, with regret be it said, is reputed also to have been the father of African slavery in the new world, for it was he, so the chroniclers say, who suggested that negroes be imported to labor in the fields and mines and relieve the Indians of a burden they were both temperamentally and physically unfitted to bear. Venezuela was the birthplace of the resistance to Spain’s oppression of her colonies, and of Miranda, Bolívar, Sucré, and the fiery young patriot, Yáñez—the men who led the van of that resistance. Through her land flows one of the world’s greatest rivers, the Orinoco, with its four thousand miles of navigable waters. The vast productiveness of the country and its stores of mineral wealth are sufficient to sustain twenty times its present population of two millions and a half. And, finally, Venezuela is nearer to us than any other country in South America. A most agreeable route for the traveler leaving Colombian ports for Venezuela is by the steamers which zigzag around the Caribbean Sea for ten days or more on the way to Europe, and touch at many of the once famous old ports before reaching La Guayra, the sea gateway to Caracas. Immediately after leaving Colombian waters and rounding the Guajira peninsula, the ship enters the great Gulf of Maracaibo, one hundred and fifty miles in extent from east to west, and sixty miles from north to south. Passing along in through a narrow strait, the almost equally large Lake of Maracaibo swells out before the traveler. This great body of water drains an extensive basin lying between two terminal spurs of the Andes—the Sierra de Parija and the Sierra Mérida—and into it flow many rivers having their source in the surrounding mountains. Inside, on the east bank of the strait, lies the city of Maracaibo, now one of the most important centers on the north coast, for here is shipped the produce of the vast fertile region of western Venezuela—coffee, cacao, tobacco, castor beans, hardwood timber, and dyewoods. Much of the produce of the eastern slope of Colombia also finds its way to Europe and the States through this port; fully half of what is known in our markets as “Maracaibo coffee” is really a Colombian product. [Illustration: VIEW OF MARACAIBO LOOKING WEST FROM THE CATHEDRAL.]