HER GOVERNMEXT, PEOPLE, AND BOUNDARY 55 
Andes it l>econies sublime; but there steam navigation ceases, 
and canoes j>addled by Indians are the onh" means of transporta- 
tion. The heat along the lower river is intense, but the boats 
are built so as to protect the traveler from the sun and afford tlie 
greatest degree of coolness possible. The water is turbid and 
muddy; the banks are low, and the Orinoco, like the Missouri, 
often tires of its old course and cuts a new one through fields or 
forest; on either side the coarse grass and reeds grow tall, and 
toward the end of the season are topped with tassels that nod 
and droop in the sun. 
At daybreak long lines of pelicans and other water birds 
awakened 1 >y the breathing of the steamer go clanging out to sea, 
and as morning wakens, the thin blue mist that nature nightly 
hangs upon the river rises and leaves the slender rushes that line 
the banks to quiver in the burning glare. Toward noonday a 
breeze springs up, which is as regular and faithful as the stars ; 
it cools the atmosphere, covers the surface of the river with pretty 
ripples, and makes life possible under a tropic sun. There is no 
twilight ; the sun jumps up from below the horizon in the morn- 
ing and jumps down again at night, and then tor a few moments 
the sky, the river, and the savannahs are one vast rainbow, livid 
with colors so spread and blended that the most unpoetic eyes 
cannot behold it without admiration and awe. 
The smaller streams are sheltered by flower-bespangled walls 
of forest, gay with innumerable insects and birds, while from tlie 
branches which overhang them long trailers droop and admire 
their own gorgeousness in nature’s mirror. Majestic trees whose 
solitude was undisturl^ed for centuries are covered with decora- 
tions that sur))ass the skill of art; their trunks and limbs con- 
cealed by garlands finer tlian were ever woven for a bride — masses 
of scarlet and jnirple orchids, orange and crimson, l)lue and 
gold — all the fantastic forms and lines with which nature liedecks 
her robes under the fierce suns and the faltering rains of the 
tropics. 
The onl}’’ jilace of real importance, the entreiiot of all com- 
merce, the headquarters of all trade, the source of all supplies, 
and the political as well as the commercial capital of lU'arly half of 
the re])ublic of Venezuela, is (dudad Bolivar. It has about 12,000 
inhabitants, representing almost every nation on earth ; it is built 
upon a clay bluff about seventy feet aliove high-water mark, so 
that it is in no danger of being swept away. During the six 
months of dry season, when the water is low, most of the ship- 
