Pre-Columbian times—No great empire—Primitive Venezuelans—Picture rocks—Invasions—The Guatavitas and the legend of El Dorado—Amalivaca—An Inca prince?—Ancient roads—The discovery of _Tierra Firme_, 1498—Alonso de Ojeda—The name Venezuela—A great geographical fraud—Discovery of the treasures of the west—Arrival of the _conquistadores_—The slave trade—Treacheries of the Cubagua colonists—Gonzalez de Ocampo—Las Casas—First cities of the New World—Settlement of Coro—The Welsers—Alfinger—Ingratitude of Charles V.—New Andalusia—Exploration of the Orinoco—Cruelties of Alfinger—Exploration of the Llanos—First Bishop of Venezuela—Destruction of New Cadiz—Faxardo and the Carácas—Cities of Western Venezuela—The rebellion of Aguirre—Foundation of Carácas—Pimentel moves his capital to the new city—Capture of Carácas by English buccaneers—Inaccuracies of Spanish historians—Explorations of Berrio in Guayana—Raleigh and El Dorado—Attempts to civilise the Indians—Missions—University of Carácas—Guipuzcoana Company—Revolution of Gual and España—Miranda—The last Captain-General—The Junta—Appeals to England—The Declaration of Independence. The advanced civilisations of early Peru and Mexico have left us, despite the vicious destruction of everything “heathen” by the “Christian” _conquistadores_, in possession of sufficient documents of one kind or another to glean a fairly complete and consecutive story of those countries in pre-Columbian times, as we may term that period before the discovery of the New World by Columbus. It is otherwise in Venezuela; here there seems to have been no advanced civilisation; and the _conquistadores_ were as incapable of noticing or recording details of the social organisation and international relations of the savage aborigines as of appreciating the knowledge and skill of Incas or Aztecs; hence we have to depend mainly, if not entirely, on the information gathered with difficulty from buried ruins, tombs, and sepulchre-caves. Dr. G. Marcano has been one of the chief workers in this direction, and his systematic and painstaking work may one day give us a fairly complete picture of Venezuela before the Spaniards.