Among the most valuable assets of the State are its abundant waterways. Not only is the central part occupied by a brackish-water lake on which small _goletas_ or schooners and steamers can ply, but through the level plains around flow innumerable rivers, most of which are navigable for the greater part of their length. The forests which cover much of the area are at once a benefit and a hindrance to progress, the valuable timber and natural products to be found there being only in part a compensation for the obstacle they present to the increase of the much more valuable cultivated fruits. It would be a matter for regret were the forests to be indiscriminately cut down, but the absence of clearings is not due to any prudential reasons of this sort. While the other resources of Zulia have received more or less attention, its mines, for one reason or another, have never been developed. Yet indications of petroleum or asphalt and outcrops of coal are to be met with all round the lake. The _salinas_ near Maracaibo are not mines in the normal sense of the word, but in so far as their product is a mineral, it may be said that this is an exception to the rule, the salt of Zulia being well known in the Andes and Colombia. The savannahs which here and there break the forest on both sides of the lake, and especially on the lower slopes of the Serrania del Empalado to the east, provide pasturage for many head of cattle, and in the north goat-farming is extensively carried on. The port through which all these products are, or might be, transmitted to the outside world was first founded by Alfinger in 1529, but the original town fell into decay, and the present city dates back to 1571, when Don Alonso Pacheco founded it as Nueva Zamora; as usual, the Indian name soon ousted the Spanish title. To-day it is the second port of the republic, and has a larger export trade than La Guaira. The beautiful bay, with its wharves and smooth roadstead, makes a splendid harbour, but the difficult navigation of the mouth of the lake presents a hindrance ever increasing in magnitude with the silting up of the bar. Schemes have been advanced for dredging one of the four channels and so providing a permanent entrance for the kind of steamer which at present reaches Maracaibo. The alternative idea of utilising the fine natural harbour of Cojoro on the Gulf of Venezuela and connecting this with the capital by means of a railway, appears much more satisfactory, since in this way the increasing volume of exports from Zulia and the Andes could be brought to a port capable of accommodating the largest of ocean-going steamers. The length of this line would be some 100 miles.