Those who know something of Venezuela away from the few ports and towns generally visited by Europeans will doubtless consider the title of this chapter a misnomer. Indeed, it is the lack of adequate means of communication between the different parts of the republic which hinders more than any single cause its progress and development. Revolutions and internal dissensions have been the immediate trouble, but these, if not caused, are at least fostered, by the absence of better roads than bridle-paths and of more permanent lines of communication than single telegraph wires; though in justice it must be said that in times of peace the last-named service is far ahead of the other branches.

Venezuela is included in the Postal Union, though owing partly to the custom of “farming” the stamps, the cost of transmission of letters in the interior is twopence-halfpenny and from Venezuela to foreign countries fivepence.

The Post Office is considered as a branch of the Ministry of National Development, and employed 358 officials in 1909. The G.P.O. in Carácas is well administered, and from this the quality of the service ranges through the principal offices of each State to the two hundred rural offices scattered up and down the more frequented parts of the republic. More and more money is being spent annually in an endeavour to make the service thoroughly efficient, and in 1908-9 the expenditure under this head was B 848,444, or £33,602. In 1908 the number of interior postal packets carried was about 4,500,000, 2,750,000 letters were received from, or dispatched to, foreign countries, with 18,500 parcels; the number of letters dispatched abroad was rather smaller. The comparison between 4,500,000 and 4,500,000,000, the number of letters handled by our own Post Office some years back, makes the Venezuelan service seem insignificant, but at least it exists and is capable of expansion to an efficient system of communication throughout the country.

In the Centro the mails are, of course, carried by train between the big towns, and the deliveries are fairly punctual, while the service to the seaports is sufficiently good; elsewhere, however, the mail-trains of mules wander casually along the “roads,” the postbags often forming only an insignificant part of the loads; in more outlying parts still the mails are carried on foot. On one occasion the author with a friend was guided along about thirty miles of obscure track by the “postman” (aged sixteen), who had one U.S.A. mailbag, which during part of the journey was occupied jointly by the letters and tins of sardines and other provisions for the long tramp; the letters did not appear to suffer greatly, but this familiar use of a mailbag of a foreign Government seemed somewhat unorthodox, even though it be less so than the application of the striped remains to sail-patching, many of the small sloops and goletas being wafted on their way by means of fragments of mailbags, generally Uncle Sam’s.

But though the postal service outside the principal towns and most populous districts is very primitive, the telegraph service, with its cheap rates, is well managed and efficient.

The first telegraph line in the country was that between La Guaira and Carácas, opened in 1856; in 1909 there were 7,839 kilometres of wires in the country and 179 offices, with a staff of 800 men. In the financial year 1908-9 the cost of the service was B 2,041,385, or £80,847, and 394,792 messages were sent in 1908, at a total charge of B 936,657 (£36,429); more than half of these were official.

In addition to the Government lines there are a few private wires along the railways, and telegraphic communication with the outside world is carried on by means of the French cable, which runs from La Guaira to Curaçao.

Such telephone lines as exist are mainly in the hands of private companies or individuals, and only 10 of the 120 lines existing are owned by the State. The British Telephone Company in Carácas has a very efficient exchange there and trunk lines to the chief towns of the Centro, and also a telephone service in Ciudad Bolivar.

Means of transport are in much the same condition as lines of communication—that is to say, there is in existence the nucleus of a complete system; but “the end is not yet,” and to-day one must be prepared for anything in travelling over wide areas in Venezuela.

In and around Carácas, and between most of the large towns of the Centro, one may travel with as much ease and comfort as in parts of Europe, and better than on a certain line running out of London, but beyond, though there may be in some directions roads on which carts can be used, one is more often reduced to the means of locomotion of sixteenth-century England. Outside the Centro there are a few comparatively short lines, which can hardly be regarded as forming part of the railway system of Venezuela, though they may one day become part of it.

There are in all eleven railways in the country, but one has practically ceased to exist, and it is a long time since any train ran on it. The total number of passengers carried in 1908 was 413,000, and nearly 184,000 tons of freight.

Of the eleven lines the oldest, strangely enough, is not in the Centro, though, being connected with the main system by steamer, it may be considered as part of it. This is the Bolivar Railway, which commenced in 1873 as a line from Tucacas to the copper-mines of Aroa, and was subsequently extended to Barquisimeto. It has a 24-inch gauge, and its present length is 176·5 kilometres. The La Ceiba line was authorised in 1880, and has a ·91-metre gauge, with a present length of 81·5 kilometres; the same year saw the commencement of the La Guaira-Carácas Line, already described in an earlier chapter. Two years later a 1·07-metre line was commenced from the port of Guanta to Barcelona and the Naricual coalmines. In 1884 the Maiquetia-Macuto street railway was built to afford easy communication with the chief watering-place of Venezuela; it has the same gauge (·91-metre) as the Carácas line and is 8 kilometres in length. The railway from Carenero to Rio Chico was commenced in 1884, and is now 50 kilometres long, but, like the La Ceiba line, this is not part of the central system. The Central Railway, originally planned in 1885 to connect Carácas and Valencia by a circuitous route, never accomplished that end, and merely affords a means of communication between Carácas and the towns of Miranda, and is now 42 kilometres in length, with a gauge of 1·07 metre. The Puerto Cabello and Valencia line was commenced in the same year and is 54 kilometres long, while the Gran Ferrocarril de Venezuela, the German line, was contracted for in 1888, and at one and the same time obviated the extension of the Central, as originally planned, and completed the nucleus railway system of Central Venezuela as it exists to-day. It has a total length of 179 kilometres. The short line connecting Coro and La Vela was built in 1893, and is, like the Táchira line, commenced at the same time, owned in the country; the latter has a length to-day of 114·5 kilometres and is of the standard Venezuelan gauge, 1·07 metre. The Santa Barbara-El Vigia line was the last to be commenced (1896), but it has already fallen into disrepair, and of the 60 kilometres little, if any, remains in usable condition.

In Carácas a system of electric tramways not only provides rapid transit from one part of the city to the other but also runs out southwards to the suburb of El Valle. There are also lines of varying motive power and efficiency in Valencia, Puerto Cabello, Maracaibo, Ciudad Bolivar, Barquisimeto, Carúpano, and Cumaná. In view of the quantity of available water-power in the mountain districts of Venezuela, one imagines that electric traction will one day be very widely used, but, like many of the possibilities of Venezuela, this lies almost entirely in the future.

Descending to the less rapid methods of travelling by road, we find the whole country is in much the same condition as England or Western Europe four hundred years ago, for, with the exception of some ten carreteras of very indifferent quality, the roads of Venezuela are bridle-paths, and occasionally hardly worthy even of that title.

Such cart-roads as there are have to some extent been engineered, but none are macadamised. The best is that from La Guaira to Carácas, 35·4 kilometres long, but even this is little used by wheel traffic. One of the longest is the high-road from Carácas to Valencia, 168 kilometres, but this is exceeded by that connecting San Felix, on the Orinoco, with Guasipati, which has a length of 219 kilometres, with a 25-kilometre extension to Callao; the whole road is in a fearfully bad state in the rains, however, as to which matter enough has been said in Chapter XIV. From Carácas another main road goes eastward 70 kilometres down the Guaire valley to Santa Lucia, and yet another south-east to Charallave, 47 kilometres away. From Valencia, also, cart-roads radiate to Puerto Cabello (70 kilometres), to Nirgua (90 kilometres), to Güigüe for Villa de Cura (34 kilometres), and to San Carlos (99 kilometres).

There are also cart-roads under construction from Puerto Cabello to San Felipe, between Uracá and San Cristobal, and one or two in other parts of the Andes.

Among the bridle-paths there are a few with cobble-paved surfaces, dating back to early colonial times, but these have fallen into disrepair, and in Guayana they have been disused for so long that their whereabouts is often unknown, save where the Indian trails cross or follow a bit of the old paving here and there. For the rest the way is generally passable, but sometimes up to the animal’s belly in mud; here there are bridges over the mountain torrents, there none; the deeper streams may have ferries, but to be held up by an extra heavy fall of rain is no uncommon event. The Government spent nearly £80,000 on the Public Works Department in 1908-9, but since not all even of this small sum is devoted to actual road-making or other improvements, it will be seen that things are being only gradually improved; and it may be long yet before the asphalt and rock of the country are applied to the betterment of the uninspiring yet all-important roadways, at once one of the simplest and one of the most efficient methods of developing the nation’s natural resources.

The waterways of Venezuela, numerous and general as they appear on the map, are singularly disappointing on closer investigation. The great Orinoco is a fine natural highway, it is true, as far as Pericos, some 600 miles from the mouth, but here the river is broken by the rapids of Atures and beyond by those of Maipures, and it is impossible for large boats to pass through to the upper river. The Apure, Arauca, and Meta are, of course, useful means of communication with the Colombian border regions and the south-western Llanos, but the numerous tributaries on the north side are generally too variable in depth for permanent traffic, and those on the south, as we have seen, are broken up by rapids for practically their whole length.

On the other hand, if we take the positive value of the river highways, rather than their actual extent as compared with the number of streams indicated on a map, we can see that they are of considerable importance; the rivers of Guayana and of the eastern Llanos may be of little use for large boats, but the Orinoco forms a great central artery, from which roads, and perhaps eventually railways, can diverge to the limits of the basin. Some of the Llano tributaries, too, are navigable for steamers, and thus the State of Apure is now kept in communication with the outside world—all this without speaking of the great advantage accruing to the State of Zulia from its central lake, with its many tributary navigable rivers, along which large boats can travel throughout the greater part of the State, and on to the boundaries of those of the Andes, as well as into the neighbouring republic of Colombia. Along most of these natural and easily utilised lines of communication there are already services of steamers—nothing very advanced, but still a beginning.

There are twelve ports with custom-houses for trade and communication with the outside world, but that number includes the new one of Imataca, on the Caño Corosimo, in the Delta territory, established August 14, 1911. Puerto Cabello ranks first for number of vessels, La Guaira second, and Carúpano third; all, except Caño Colorado, have regular wharves, adequate custom-houses, &c. The total number of vessels received in the year 1909 was 645, with an aggregate tonnage of 937,689, of which two-thirds were steam-propelled. It is interesting to compare the standing of the various countries in tonnage of steamships, as given in the following table:—

Thus Holland is far ahead in point of numbers, though by no means first in trade, while France comes above Germany, even though the imports from the latter are much greater. The small number of Spanish vessels speaks eloquently as to the fitness of Spain to retain her South American colonies by force after her decline.

Finally, for communication with the outside world, these are the following chief lines and the ports they run to:—

The most usual route from England is of course via Trinidad, travelling to Port-of-Spain by the R.M.S.P. and on by Dutch, French, or other line to La Guaira; the Red “D” route, via New York, may be quicker, if other services do not suit, but it is less pleasant, owing to the longer time spent in northern (and stormy) latitudes.