All along the line are evidences of the agriculture and sylvan wealth of the land, in coffee and sugar-plantations, and patches of forest of valuable timber. La Victoria is a well-built, handsome town. It was founded in 1593 and had a population of over 14,000 at the last census. The barracks form an imposing block of buildings, and there are factories on a small scale for cigarettes, paper, sandals, boots and shoes, and candles. The tobacco and wood for the two first come from plantations and forests close at hand, and the considerable traffic from the Llanos, as well as the pasture-lands of the Aragua Valley farther west, supply the raw materials for the other articles. There is a mill here also which uses the cotton of the drier parts of the valley, near the Lake of Valencia. The railway, both before and after La Victoria, passes many cane plantations with small refineries and distilleries, turning out the raw sugar and spirit which constitute an important part of the trade of the town. A good deal of wheat used to be grown here, the fields producing as much as 3,000 pounds to the acre, a sixteen-fold return, which would surely pay well to-day, when the heavy duty on imported flour (about 1d. per lb.) is considered. Maracay, also on the railway, near the east end of the Lake of Valencia, is in a splendid farming and stock-breeding country. There are rich grazing lands planted with pará grass, forest for timber, and coffee, sugar, indigo of excellent quality, and tobacco, as well as cotton, can be grown in the vicinity. The dairies of Maracay produce a famous cream-cheese, known by the name of the town throughout Venezuela, and the hogs of Maracay are very different from the skinny animals generally seen in the tropics. President Gomez has a ranch here, to which he retires whenever allowed a respite from cares of State. South of Maracay at a distance of about fifteen miles is the main pass across the Serrania Interior to the Llanos, and in this pass stands the important town of Villa de Cura, founded in 1730. It is a well-built town, standing between two rivers flowing in opposite directions; the valley itself is dry compared to that of Aragua, but has many big cattle-ranches, so that here, as at Maracay, cheese and hides form the principal articles of commerce. Since it derives a certain amount of profit from the cacao and coffee of the mills near by, it forms in itself an epitome of the wealth of the State of Aragua, which, with its fertile valleys, combines the products of the hills and forests with those of the neighbouring Llanos.