Adventure, June 1911 — page 148: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

334 . POOR VENEZUELA’S GOLDEN FUTURE - I HAVE been in every country in South America, and have studied all of them, and there is no possibility of doubt that Venezuela is beyond comparison the richest in its natural resources. With the setting up of a firm and civilized government, which must come in the end, under an American protectorate if by no other means, all of the fairy-stories that were told of it centuries ago will come true, and its development will eclipse all of the dreams that have been real- ized in our own country It is a strange fact that Cumana, in Ven- ezuela (their respective names then being New Toledo and New Grenada), which was the first European settlement in South America of which there is authentic record, was founded one hundred years, less one, before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. In each case there was a fervent prayer for divine aid in establishing a Chris- tian colony and building up a great country. Why one prayer was answered and the other was not is a question I will not attempt to answer. Like her West Indian neighbors—of which beautiful isles Americans now know so little, but of which they will know much more when their flag flies over all of them, as it must within the life of the present genera- tion—Venezuela has been treated most bountifully by nature and most brutally by man. Cursed they all may have been by the seas of innocent blood in which they were barbarously bathed during their ex- tended infancy and their prolonged chiid- hood, from which they have not yet merged. It seems that all the powers of darkness have conspired to retard their growth and hold them slaves to savagery. Accustomed from the.days of the Spanish conquistadores, and the pirates who followed them, to being plundered and persecuted in every way that the mercenary mind of man could devise, the Venezuelans have grown so hardened to turmoil and torture that it has become second nature to them to live in an atmosphere which generates riot and robbery. Their blood is an unholy mixture of Adventure Indian, Carib and Spanish, with other and more recent strains of all sorts. They are the most inconsequential, emotional, un- grateful and treacherous people on the face of the earth—and yet I love them. The ambition of their leaders runs only to graft, while the underlings yearn for war as a child cries fora plaything. At the behest of some self-constituted chieftain, who has strutted in front of a mirror until he imagines him- self a second Simon Bolivar, they rise in rebellion because it gives them a chance to prey on the country, and, if their revolt is successful, to continue and extend their prey- ing. But some day areal man will rise up among them and lead them out of their blackness and butchery into peace and pros- perity, and Venezuela, with her wild waste - of wealth, will become great beyond the imaginings of her discoverers. >» THIS is not the full story of my life, Me but it tells some of the incidents oO that I have enjoyed the most. My best fight was with old Moy Sen, the pirate king, in the China Sea, and my closest call was when I was sentenced to be shot at sunrise in Santo Domingo. These events supplied the most delightful feasts of the excitement which my. nature has ever craved, yet I have lived well, in that respect, all along. I have fought under nineteen flags and I am proud of the fact that I gave .to each of them, and to every one of my undertakings in a life-long search for adven- ture, the best that was in me. I have no disappointments and no regrets, except that this existence is too short. If] had my life to live over again it would be lived in the sane way, though, I would hope, with a still greater share of excite- ment, because.it was for just such a life that I was created. * What the purpose of it was I neither know nor care, nor am [I in the least concerned as to what my destiny next holds in store for me. I hope, however, that in some land with opportunity for wide activity I -will be reincarnated as a filibuster anda. buccaneer and that I will so continue until my identity is merged into a compa ite mass of kindred souls. COnmicloool< (©