From Maracaibo steamers and sailing craft of all kinds travel to points of the lake shore, and in some cases far up the larger rivers to the ports of the Andine States and Colombia. The steamers plying on the lake include some venerable hulks, whose passage through the water is accompanied by painful groans and sobs from the ancient engines; one of those which still makes the trip to Encontrados, on the Catatumbo, is mentioned by Dr. Sievers as working when he visited the region in 1884. The charges for freight and passengers are in inverse proportion to the efficiency of the boats. There are two main lines of steamers from the capital, one travelling along the western side of the lake and then up the Catatumbo to Encontrados, the port of Táchira; the other crossing diagonally to La Ceiba, where the railway from Motatán in Trujillo reaches the shore. A smaller boat travels round the southern end of the lake, connecting the mouth of the Catatumbo and La Ceiba with Santa Barbara on the Escalante, where a railway was once built part of the way to Mérida. There is a bar at the mouth of the Catatumbo, and in consequence of this the smaller steamer is always there awaiting the arrival of the large boat from Maracaibo. If there is much cargo, some of it is transhipped outside the bar and reloaded when the lightened vessel has successfully navigated the shallow water. Often a whole day is wasted over this performance, and one cannot help thinking that if the dredging of a channel would be more expensive it would at least be less ludicrous. Of the railways mentioned in connection with the lines of steamers, that from La Ceiba is wholly in the State of Trujillo, but the others traverse a considerable extent of the forests of Zulia before entering the Andine States. The metre-gauge line from Santa Barbara was originally intended to reach Mérida by way of the Chama Valley, but it only reached El Vigia, on that river, and has now fallen into disrepair. The Encontrados line or Gran Ferrocarril del Táchira, also a Venezuelan concern, has a 1·07-metre track, and is intended ultimately to reach San Cristobal; passing as it does through great stretches of virgin forest on the banks of the Zulia, it has already done much to open up this country to cultivation, and ends at present in the coffee-bearing foothills of the Andes. From Encontrados a line of small steamers carries merchandise on up the Zulia River to the Colombian port of Villamizar.