The advanced civilisations of early Peru and Mexico have left us, despite the vicious destruction of everything “heathen” by the “Christian” conquistadores, in possession of sufficient documents of one kind or another to glean a fairly complete and consecutive story of those countries in pre-Columbian times, as we may term that period before the discovery of the New World by Columbus. It is otherwise in Venezuela; here there seems to have been no advanced civilisation; and the conquistadores were as incapable of noticing or recording details of the social organisation and international relations of the savage aborigines as of appreciating the knowledge and skill of Incas or Aztecs; hence we have to depend mainly, if not entirely, on the information gathered with difficulty from buried ruins, tombs, and sepulchre-caves. Dr. G. Marcano has been one of the chief workers in this direction, and his systematic and painstaking work may one day give us a fairly complete picture of Venezuela before the Spaniards.

In the remote past, long (though we do not know how long) before the arrival of the white men from the east, the land appears to have been sparsely peopled by semi-nomadic, primitive tribes of a long-headed race, whose social organisation was limited to a grouping in temporary villages, while in the arts they had advanced as far as the making of rude earthenware, and perhaps the use of curiously shaped stones for personal adornment. They buried their dead in caves, either natural or artificial, placing them in a sitting posture in palm-leaf frails or earthenware urns, accompanied by small pieces of pottery and other household matters. The names of “tribes” in Guayana appear to be far too numerous to be really distinct races, and it is probable that they represent merely the more permanent associations of villages or groups of villages with slight differences of dialect. In Humboldt’s time there were traditions of the internecine warfare of these “tribes,” and it is possible that in times of strife they were guilty of cannibalism, though in later days authentic occurrences of the eating of human flesh were very rare, if existent at all.

Throughout Guayana there are crude rock inscriptions of comparatively ancient date, apparently representing an early attempt at picture-writing, and it is said that some of the shy and reticent Indian tribes appear to know the meaning of these. As yet no one has obtained any satisfactory clue to the purpose of these rocas pintadas.

We have said that these long-headed peoples occupied the land in the remote past, though their descendants were to be found in parts of Venezuela in comparatively recent times, and tribes of mixed race still bear witness to their existence. Many years before the Spanish conquest, however, there was a great influx of the more normal short-headed peoples, divided into more or less civilised communities, and possessed of some proficiency in the arts, with beliefs which were, in some respects, an advance upon the Nature-worship of the earlier inhabitants.

These last were soon compelled to withdraw into the mountain fastnesses, or the equally inaccessible forests of the south, while their conquerors settled in the Caribbean Hills and the lower valleys of the Andes, where at some points excavations have revealed something of their customs. Though greatly inferior to the ruling nations of Peru and Mexico, these races must still be looked upon as intermediate between them and the savages already referred to.

The Guatavitas of the plateau of Bogotá, whose great religious festival probably gave rise to the legend of El Dorado and his golden city of Manoa, may be taken as representing their higher development. The Guatavita chief, according to Acosta, used on the occasion of this annual festival to smear his body with turpentine preparatory to rolling in gold-dust; then, proceeding on a barge to the centre of their sacred lake, he would cast into it gold ornaments, emeralds, and other valuables, finally plunging into the waters himself, an action which was the signal for shouts of applause from the worshippers on the banks.[1]

Whether the Incas ever really held any communication with these lowland peoples it is impossible at present to say, but perhaps the legend of Amalivaca, who, the Indians say, visited them and began to teach them to write, finally sailing away to the east with a promise to return, may be based upon an actual visit of a Peruvian leader, who left on an exploratory voyage to the east, from which he never returned, at least to these shores. It is strange that there was in Humboldt’s time on the Llanos between Barinas and the River Apure some twenty miles of well-made road, elevated about fifteen feet above the frequently flooded plains, the remains of a causeway from the mountains made long before Spanish times, and apparently the work of some nation far more advanced in the arts than any living close at hand.

We emerge from these regions of conjecture into the definite historical period rather more than five years after the first discovery of the islands of the New Continent by Columbus, when the great explorer, on his third westward journey, coasted along the south side of the Peninsula of Paria on July 31, 1498. He did not land there, but his son tells us that from the ships they could see men on the shore dressed in vari-coloured turbans and loincloths. When he entered the Gulf of Paria, he had expected to be able to pass out on the west side, believing the peninsula to be an island; realising his error, he turned back and entered the Caribbean through the Boca del Draco, “giving thanks to God who delivered him from so many troubles and dangers, still showing him new countries full of peaceful people, and great wealth.” On his way across to Hispaniola (Santo Domingo), he passed by an island which he named Margarita, knowing nothing, as it seems, of the rich pearl fisheries which later rendered the name so appropriate.

Great enthusiasm was naturally kindled in Spain by the news of the discovery of a mainland (Tierra Firme) west of the islands, and it was decided to send a special exploratory expedition. Hence we have Alonso de Ojeda setting sail in 1499, and landing several times on what is now the Peninsula of Paria, though he knew it by the native name of Maracapana. The region generally he designated Nueva Andalusia. Encouraged by what he had seen, he sailed on westwards as far as Cabo de la Vela (now in Colombia), and entered the Lake of Maracaibo or Coquibacoa. Here there were at that time, as now, Indian pile-dwellings on the shores of the lake, which so far reminded Ojeda of Venice or Venezia, that he gave to the region the name of Little Venice, or Venezuela.

Thus we have the mainland of the New World or the Indies first sighted by Columbus and partly examined and named by Ojeda, but we may here turn aside from the story of Venezuela for a moment to see how, by a great and successful geographical fraud, the whole of the continent came to be called America.

There was on Ojeda’s ship a Florentine merchant by name Amerigo Vespucci, who appeared to have contented himself on this voyage with gazing from the deck at the shores of the new countries. After returning to Europe, he developed sufficient zeal to make a voyage on his own account to Brazil, and wrote a clever joint account of both voyages, in which he represented himself as a leader in the first expedition which effected a landing on the mainland of the New World. This suggestio falsi, if it deserves no harsher term, led Martin Hylacomylus in his “Cosmographia,” published in 1509, to say of the discovery of the different parts of the globe: “Alia quarta pars per Americū Vesputium ... inuenta est: qua non video cur quis iure vetet ab Americo inventatore ... Amerigen quasi Americi terram, siue Americam dicendam.”[2] Thus it comes that a third of the land of the globe bears the name of a man who had no claim to be considered as of any particular importance on the ship which bore the first Spanish explorers who set foot in Venezuela.

Meanwhile, close behind Ojeda there was travelling an expedition including Pedro Alonso Niño, Luis Guerra, and Christobal Guerra, who visited Margarita and the adjacent islands of Cubagua, where they had some intercourse with the natives and obtained from them by barter a number of pearls. Next they touched the Cumanagoto coast, not far from where Barcelona now stands, and sailed from there to the Coro district. Here again they were well received by the natives, and exchanged European trinkets with them for gold and pearls. They continued their voyage as far as the Goajira Peninsula, but found the people there of a fierce and menacing aspect, so they returned to Spain, bearing news of the wealth of the West.

Had those natives only kept their pearls and golden trinkets from the sight of these first genuine explorers, the history of Venezuela might have been very different. The white men who next visited Venezuela were little, if anything, more than rapacious brigands, consumed with a lust for gain, before which any shreds of morality or good feeling they may once have possessed went for nothing.

In the year 1500 some fifty adventurers, sailing from Hispaniola, established a settlement on Cubagua for the pearl fisheries, and soon a horde of nondescripts from all the countries of Europe flocked to this source of easily won treasure, which under their uncontrolled and extravagant exploitation began to fail rapidly. With appetites whetted, these spoilt children of fortune turned to look for other means of acquiring wealth, always provided these did not entail any honest toil, and from this time begins the long black record of Spanish cruelties in the Indies, with the fabricated excuses of cannibalism and ferocity among the Indians.

To appreciate the position we must recall the infamous decree of Charles V. of Spain, which permitted the Europeans in the Indies to capture and enslave the natives who in any way opposed the “colonisation” of the new countries, or who practised cannibalism. The Indians being found most reprehensibly innocent of either of these crimes, the Cubaguans pronounced their very presence an evidence of opposition, and further assumed that they must all be cannibals. Carefully avoiding the possibility of arousing the wrath of the fine and stalwart Guaiquerias of Margarita, who lived in uncomfortable proximity to their town, they took steps to enslave some of the more remote Indians of the mainland.

While the world, the flesh, and the devil had been having things to themselves on Cubagua, the Church had been entering upon the new field of missionary work on the mainland, and three Franciscan monks settled on the Cumaná coast in 1513, while some Dominicans established a little community at Manjar, near Píritu. At both places the monks were on the most friendly terms with the natives, on whom, at that date, their influence was wholly for good.

The Franciscans of Cumaná received one day a visit from a few of the adventurers of Cubagua, who had previously, for obvious reasons, ignored the existence of the missionaries. Notwithstanding, they were hospitably treated, and entertained as well as might be by the monks and their Indian friends for several days; then the most catholic and Christian conquistadores revealed themselves in their true colours. The cacique of the district (christened Don Alonso by the friars) was invited with his family to dine on board; he accepted, unsuspecting, and found himself, his wife and children, captives on a ship making sail for Santo Domingo. At sight of this treachery, the Indians naturally seized the monks as partly responsible, but acceded to their request that before taking summary vengeance they should allow time for a messenger to go to Hispaniola and return with the cacique in safety; for this purpose four months was granted. But justice in Santo Domingo was non-existent, and legal decisions bought and sold. The pleas of the friars and their superiors in the island were of no avail, and at the termination of the stipulated period the monks of Cumaná were put to death by the mourning Indians. The region remained abandoned by Spaniards till 1518, when a new Franciscan community was established.

In 1520 the Dominicans of Chichirivichi, near Barcelona, also fell victims to Spanish treachery; the Indians had previously recognised their innocence of any possible complicity in the Cumaná affair, but their turn came on this wise. One of the Cubagua colonists, Alonso de Ojeda, said to have been the unworthy father of the author of the name Venezuela, crossed to Chichirivichi, and was well received by friars and Indians alike. Being, like most of his confrères, neither a gentleman himself nor able to recognise one when he met him, he insulted one of his hosts, the cacique of Maraguey, by asking whether any of his people ate human flesh; the chief replied with some feeling that they did not, and withdrew, recognising the motive of the question, as seeking the sanction under the codicia to enslave all cannibals. Ojeda departed, we may believe unregretted, and sailed along the coast to Maracapana, where he was well received by the cacique (christened Gil Gonzalez). Ojeda was, or pretended to be, short of corn, and accordingly Gonzalez gave him guides for ten or twelve miles inland to enable him to buy maize from the Tageres Indians, while these lent him fifty men to carry the grain to Maracapana. By way of return for the various favours received, Ojeda’s men fell on the porters as they rested in the market-place and carried them off to the caravel. On this occasion retribution fell, in part at least, on the heads of those who deserved it, for Ojeda landed again farther down the coast, where Gil Gonzalez met and killed him with six of his fellow-scoundrels. Unfortunately, the reception accorded to their countrymen by the friars of Chichirivichi made them appear privy to the plot against the Indians, and they, too, fell victims to the vengeance of Maraguey.

The Audiencia Real of Hispaniola, by way of brazening out the crimes of the Cubaguans, now dispatched Gonzalez de Ocampo with an armed force to settle the country. The leader of the expedition appears to have been temperate and wise in his dealings, and succeeded in establishing peace, founding a city where Cumaná now stands under the name of Nueva Toledo (1520). Shortly afterwards, Bartolomé de las Casas, a noble figure in the history of the period, reached these shores, and discovering for himself the true history of what had been described as unprovoked attacks by the Indians, suggested that a fortress should be built opposite New Toledo, with a garrison under such control that it should protect the Indians from the lawless gangs of Cubagua, and keep in check any unprovoked manifestation of hostility on the part of the natives towards well-intentioned Spaniards. As might be expected, the Cubaguans were extremely hostile to such a project, and so hampered Las Casas that he resolved to return to Hispaniola and thence to Spain, to lay before the authorities a true account of the condition of affairs in the west.

Francisco de Soto was left in charge of affairs in New Toledo, and no sooner was the good influence of Las Casas withdrawn than he recommenced the slave traffic, which had been the cause of all the previous trouble, and now resulted in the destruction of the new city after the massacre of inhabitants and missionaries and an invasion of Cubagua by the Indians of the mainland. A second semi-military expedition from Hispaniola in 1521, under the leadership of Jacome Castellon, built the castle of Araya in spite of the Cubaguans, and founded the city of la gloriosa Santa Ines de Nueva Córdoba, the modern Cumaná. The fortress was reduced to ruins by an earthquake in 1530.

In the meantime, orders had been received from Spain to name the already existing city on Cubagua, Nueva Cadiz, and three years later, in 1524, La Asunción was founded on the island of Margarita, while in 1527 the inhabitants of New Cadiz received the right to elect annually an alcalde, the Emperor giving 500 pesos for rebuilding the church there. Thus we have three cities founded in Venezuela territory within the first twenty-five years of the sixteenth century.

With the year 1527 the history of Venezuela as a colony, or rather a group of colonies, under Spanish dominion, may be said to commence. We have already seen a form of government established in Cubagua, which for a time appears to have existed more or less irregularly apart from the other provinces into which Venezuela, with Trinidad, was shortly divided, namely, Nueva Andalusia in the east, Venezuela or Coro in the west, and Trinidad and the Orinoco in the south.

Attracted by the reports of the first expedition, various merchants and adventurers had settled in the Coro country, and lived on good terms with the Caiquetia nation of Indians. Now, however, some of these colonists, losing taste for a civilised life, made attempts to commence the nefarious trade which was at that time disgracing all the countries of the Old World in Africa and America. Having learned wisdom from the disasters in Nueva Andalusia, the audience of Santo Domingo dispatched a splendid man in Juan de Ampies to nip the evil in the bud; as a first step he founded the city of Santa Ana de Coro on that Saint’s day in 1527, and in his administration sought steadily to foster the spirit of amity between the Caiquetias (under their cacique Manaure) and the Europeans. His good work was soon, however, destined to be ignored and frustrated by the selfish policy of the King of Spain.

Charles V. had at various times raised heavy loans from the Welser, the bankers of Augsburg, and now in part payment he handed over to them the administration and exploitation of the newly-acquired province of Venezuela. Ambrosius Alfinger was appointed first Governor of Coro, with jurisdiction over all the country between the Gulf of Coquibacoa and the western end of the Peninsula of Paria. He arrived at the seat of his government with three hundred Spaniards, many of them of noble blood, and fifty German miners, and found Juan de Ampies too patriotic to raise difficulties on account of the ingratitude of a worthless king. The man who had founded Coro and started administration on sound lines spent the remainder of his days in retirement in Santo Domingo, though at a later date the barren island of Curaçao was given to him as some return for his services.

The following year saw Nueva Andalusia constituted a definite province, under Don Diego de Ordaz as first Governor, who was given authority to explore and conquer all the territory to the south. Sedeño was appointed Governor of Trinidad, but as yet the Orinoco region was ignored or by implication included in New Andalusia, and it was therefore Ordaz who, upon his arrival, journeyed up the Orinoco as far as the rapids of Carichana, near the mouth of the Meta, where he heard stories of the gold and emeralds to be found in the country whence that river flowed. The success of the voyage proved his death, however, for Sedeño was jealous of his fame and in league with Matienza, then commander-in-chief in Cubagua, managed to poison Ordaz in Nueva Cadiz on his return.

In the west Alfinger undertook a long journey of discovery towards what is now Colombia, and in his greed for gold and precious stones committed all manner of atrocities on the Indians who had none, or who refused to be robbed. Making a permanent camp in the country to the west of the Lake of Maracaibo, after founding the city of that name in 1529, he sent a party of Spaniards and Germans to Coro for fresh supplies and reinforcements. The party lost themselves in the forest-clad mountains at the south end of the lake, and in their privations some of the members turned cannibals, killing and eating their Indian servants. Apparently the taste for human flesh, once acquired, was not easily overcome, for the survivors, when given food by some Indians on the banks of the Chama, fell upon their benefactors and devoured them! The few that reached Coro found that Alfinger had been killed in his camp in 1531, and his expedition had accomplished nothing beyond outraging the Indians.

Georg von Speyer (Jorge de Spira) was the next Governor, appointed in 1533, and with him came Alonso de Pacheco, and ancestors of many of the modern Venezuelan families. Before his death, in 1540, von Speyer and his equally energetic lieutenant, Nicolaus Federmann, carried out extensive journeys in western and southern Venezuela, and the former reached the banks of the Guaviare, which were never again visited by Europeans until the middle of the nineteenth century. In the meantime Coro was made the seat of a bishopric, and Don Rodrigo de Bastidas arrived as first occupant of the see in 1536. The Bishop acted as interim Governor after Speyer’s death until the new Governor, Philip von Huten (Felipe de Urre), arrived in 1541. The latter also made extensive journeys into the Llanos in search of El Dorado, but was killed in 1545 by Juan de Carvajal, the founder of Nuestra Señora de la Concepción de el Tocuyo. With his death the rule of the Welsers practically came to an end, though the King of Spain only finally removed all claim to power on their part in 1558. Their energy in exploration is indisputable, but their dominion was marked throughout by cruelty and extravagance.

In Nueva Andalusia the new Governor after Ordaz, Gerónimo Ortal, and after him Sedeño, Governor of Trinidad, were also exploring the Llanos and endeavouring to settle that region, but the previous evil deeds of the Cubaguans had made the task very difficult, if not impossible. Before long these received a just reward for their crimes, in a succession of natural catastrophes, which ultimately drove the remnant from the island. In 1530 an earthquake shook the town and destroyed many buildings, not without loss of life, and in 1543 earthquake and hurricane together wrought so much havoc to life and property that only a few lingered on, persisting in the slave trade, for which New Cadiz was notorious, until at last the population decreased to nil in 1550; even the exact site of the city is now unknown. One important man appears on the scene from Margarita, about 1555, in Francisco Faxardo, the son of a Spaniard of noble birth who had wedded a princess of the Guaiquerias. Crossing to the coasts of the Carácas, he established friendly relations with the Teques and other Indians, and in 1560 built the Villa de San Francisco, approximately where the capital of Venezuela now stands, together with the Villa de El Collado (Pablo Collado being the Governor in Coro), afterwards Caraballeda, about eight miles east of La Guaira.

Under the Spanish Governors who succeeded the Welsers, the already evident tendency to leave the barren plains of Coro for the more fruitful territory to the east and south became more marked. Mérida had been founded in 1542, Borburata (Puerto Cabello) in 1549, Nueva Segovia (Barquisimeto) in 1552, and Nueva Valencia, on the shores of Lake Tacarigua, in 1555, with Trujillo in 1556, while the mines of San Felipe and Nirgua had been known and worked for some years.

In 1561 occurred the rebellion of the mad “traitor” Lope de Aguirre. After journeying down the Amazon from Peru, he sailed up to Margarita, and there robbed the treasury. With his booty he crossed to Borburata, sacked the port, and climbed the mountain road to Valencia, from which town he wrote his famous letter to Philip II. In this he upbraided the monarch for his lack of practical interest in the colonists’ welfare, in lands won by Spaniards for his father, while the latter lived at his ease in Castile; the officials and priests sent out to guide them sought, he said, only their own ends. The monkish historian Oviedo y Baños, incensed by the reference to the laziness of the Churchmen, calls him aquel bruto (“that brute”), but it is probable that most of his complaints were fully justified, though he was hardly fitted to found a new and better order of things. He marched on Barquisimeto and took it, and, hearing that the Governor was approaching with troops from the direction of Tocuyo, wrote him a letter, the humour of which can best be appreciated after reading the early writers’ accounts of the poltroonery of Pablo Collado, for which he was subsequently deposed by the Audience of Santo Domingo.

The letter opens: “Muy magnífico Señor,—Entre otros papeles que de V. md. en este Pueblo se han hallado, estaba una carta suya a mi dirigida, con mas ofrecimientos, y preambulos, que Estrellas ay en el Cielo.”[3]

These offers he rejects because, he says, he has thrown off his allegiance to Spain and therefore needs no pardon for rebellion; then he closes with the sarcastic farewell:—

The Governor wept with vexation on reading this epistle, and, after the manner of men of his stamp, said what he would do to Aguirre, were they able to fight the matter out in single combat. Meanwhile the troops surprised and took the town from the rebel, who fled towards San Felipe. He met his daughter there, and killed her to save her from the disgrace she might expect as the child of “the traitor.” Oviedo y Baños declaims at length against the murder as the crowning act of cruelty of his life, but while he was undoubtedly guilty during his career of many acts of wild savagery, this final deed seems to an unbiased mind to be creditable rather than otherwise. Be that as it may, he was captured and killed, and his body was quartered and thrown to the dogs on the various roads leading away from Barquisimeto.

Whether as a result of Aguirre’s protest or no, it is impossible to say, but in 1564 Philip II. took steps to adequately reward one man who had worked to develop his Caribbean colonies, in conferring upon Faxardo the title of Don, and offering him the governorship of the lands he had been so instrumental in opening to commerce. Unfortunately, before the messenger arrived, Faxardo had been treacherously killed by Cobos, alcalde of Cumaná, who was jealous of his exploits in the west.

The work of this first traveller in the Carácas was not entirely lost, however, for three years later, during the governorship of Don Diego Ponce de Leon, Diego de Losada, a native of Tocuyo, travelled across through Villa Rica (Nirgua) to the Llanos, where his efforts, in spite of many battles with the Indians, were directed rather towards settlement than conquest. Returned to the Villa de San Francisco (of Faxardo), he founded there—presumably in the latter part of 1567, though, strangely enough, the exact date is not recorded—the city of Santiago de Leon de Carácas. As he had on his travels adopted San Sebastian as his patron and protector against the poisoned arrows of the Indians, that saint’s day has been celebrated in a special manner in Carácas since its foundation.

Ten years later Don Juan Pimentel, the newly appointed Governor, moved his seat from Coro to Carácas, and that city has remained since, with one short break, the capital of Venezuela. For some years at this time there seems to have been no Governor of Nueva Andalusia, and a captain of considerable energy and tact, named Garcia-Gonzalez, was dispatched by Pimentel to settle the countries near the boundaries of the two provinces.

Carácas is splendidly situated for defence, the steep range of the coast making a natural 5,000-foot rampart against invaders from the sea. It was taken once, however, and the story of its capture has, for some reason, been wrongly described by nearly every writer on Venezuela, though Kingsley’s reference in “Westward Ho!” avoids the current inaccuracies. Generally it is briefly stated that Drake, or El Draque, took the city at the beginning of June, 1595; but Sir Francis was then in England preparing for what proved to be his last voyage, during which he died at sea off Porto Bello in Panama, a place confused by an American writer on Venezuela with Puerto Cabello. The true account may be read in Hakluyt’s “Voyages” as it was given by one of the members of the party.

Briefly, Captain (afterwards Sir Amyas) Preston and Captain Sommers, after putting Cumaná to ransom, landed on the Carácas coast and captured a small fort, presumably near Naiguatá. Finding the Governor of the fort asleep in the forest, they learned that the inhabitants of Carácas had heard of the arrival of the corsairs, and were preparing to meet them on the main road over the mountains from La Guaira. The fugitive, whose name is given as Villalpando, was induced to act as guide along the “Indian Way” to the city, which Preston entered on May 29th, after a difficult journey through forests and over mountains. The only Spaniard found in the place was an old gentleman, Don Alonso Andrea de Ledesma, who gallantly tried to repel the invaders single-handed. The Englishmen had orders to spare him for his chivalry, but his refusal to accept defeat led to his death, and he was interred with honour by his foes. Meanwhile messengers were carrying the news to the troops in the pass on the La Guaira road, who returned to find such valuables as they had left in the city gone with the invaders by the supposedly unknown Indian way. Preston continued his way to Coro, found nothing there and burned the town, and finally returned to England on September 10, 1595.

Here we must go back for a year or two to follow the course of events in the east and south. In 1591 Don Antonio de Berrio y Oruña was appointed Governor of Trinidad and the Orinoco, and very shortly after his arrival he gave evidence of his energetic spirit by crossing to the mainland and founding there the city of San Thomé de la Guayana, east of the mouth of the Caroni, where the castle of Guayana Vieja stands to this day.[5] In 1595 Sir Walter Raleigh first visited these regions of Guayana or Guiana, described so fully in his famous book. On his way he took Berrio prisoner in Trinidad, but afterwards released him.

Both men, clever and energetic as they were, rapidly became fascinated by the stories of Manoa, the city of El Dorado, which were being handed on from one narrator to another, and losing nothing, by repetition; the fabled wealth of the Golden Inca was eventually the cause of the death of both. In 1615 Berrio led an expedition southward from San Thomé, but he at length returned unsuccessful, with only thirty of his three hundred men, and himself died of fever shortly afterwards. His son, Don Fernando de Berrio, took charge temporarily, but was soon removed to Santa Fé de Bogotá, as Viceroy of the New Kingdom of Granada, into which Venezuela was now incorporated.

Raleigh’s final expedition in 1618 captured the fortress of San Thomé, but this and other encounters with the Spanish colonists, who, owing to a misunderstanding, appear to have commenced the attacks, led to his execution by the poltroon James I. to appease the wrath of Spain. Thus the fable of Manoa remained alive for two centuries more till finally exposed by Humboldt.

The province of Venezuela by this time was completely conquered, but New Andalusia, or Cumaná, which again had a Governor of its own, still continued to be the scene of strife; and Vides, as Governor, did not improve matters by his encouragement of the slave trade. At length, in 1652, the suggestion of one Francisco Rodriguez Liete to the bishops of Puerto Rico, made four years previously, was adopted, and, all military operations against the Indians were forbidden, with a view to carrying out organised attempts to civilise them through the missions, and in 1656 a station was again founded at Barcelona by Franciscan monks. As an indication of the success of these new methods it may be observed that within 150 years (before 1799) the Franciscans founded 38 towns with 25,000 Indian inhabitants, while the previous equal period of aggression and oppression had effected no settlement of a lasting nature. In 1686 missions were established round Cumaná and south of the Delta by the Capuchins, while the Jesuits undertook to civilise the Orinoco. The latter were obliged on account of ill-health to abandon their first stations within a very short time, but returned again in 1725 to meet with increased success. The inhuman cruelty which their creed allowed some of them to practise towards the pagan Indians undid much of the good they may have at first accomplished, and in the nineteenth century their missions became deserted, with one or two exceptions, while the last of the missionaries after the revolution seem to have been as licentious and lazy as their predecessors had been cruel and energetic.

The founding of the University of Carácas by Philip V. in 1721 seemed to promise development of the colony on sound lines, but three years later a monopoly of trade was granted to the Compañía Guipuzcoana, a step which probably did more than any other single act to bring about disaffection towards Spain. The province was separated from New Granada in 1731, when the whole of what is now Venezuela (with the exception of the Maracaibo region, incorporated in 1777) was included in a new Capitania-General of that name. The first Captain-General was Colonel Don Sebastian Garcia de la Torre.

As a result of the evident discontent among the colonists the privileges of the Guipuzcoana Company were taken away from them in 1778, but the disregard by the mother country of Venezuela’s best interests could not be atoned for by a negative act only, and nineteen years later, in 1797, occurred the first definite attempt at revolt. Under the influence of the French Revolution, some of the colonists banded themselves together with the purpose of forming an independent Republic of Venezuela; the leading spirits appear to have been Don Manuel Gual and Don José Maria España, but one of the other leaders in his zeal to multiply adherents disclosed the schemes to his barber, who straightway communicated the fact to the authorities, Carbonell being Captain-General. Six of the leaders were hanged, drawn, and quartered, many having voluntarily given themselves up as their best hope of safety. Gual and España fled, but the latter, returning from Trinidad in 1799 to visit his wife in La Guaira, was captured, executed, and his body mutilated by order of the new Captain-General, Manuel Guevara Vasconcelos.

The revolution of Gual and España thus being ended, nothing of special note occurred in Venezuela for six years, but in the meantime a Venezuelan, Don Francisco Miranda, who had relations in Europe and had travelled in many lands, fighting in the American War of Independence, and for France in the wars with Prussia in 1792-5, was conferring with Pitt in England. From the British statesman he obtained promises of help, but finally got practical assistance in America, and at last invaded the colony at Ocumare oh March 25, 1806. Vasconcelos had been warned of his arrival, and repulsed him without difficulty; Miranda retired to Trinidad, but continued to work for his purpose there, and made an unsuccessful landing in Coro some five months later. His resources were exhausted, however, and he finally returned to Trinidad and thence to Europe.

In the following year Vasconcelos died, and the interim Captain, Juan de las Casas, recognised Prince Murat as regent in place of Charles IV., the Prince’s commissioners reaching La Guaira in July, 1808. The colonists, however, compelled him to swear allegiance to Prince Ferdinand as Ferdinand VII., then captive in Bayonne. In May of the following year Vicente Emparan arrived as new Captain-General, appointed by the Supreme Junta of Spain, but finding the people unwilling to acknowledge that authority, he was easily led by Madariaga, a Chilian, then canon of the cathedral of Carácas, to appeal to them as to whether they wished him to carry out his duties as Governor. It is said that Emparan came out on a balcony to put the question to the crowd, and Madariaga, behind him, signed to them to reply to him in the negative, “No lo queremos” (“We do not wish it”), in answer to which Emparan said, “Yo tampoco quiero mandar” (“Nor do I wish to command”), and so retired from the captaincy, which he was the last to fill. He was finally deposed by a local Junta formed to act in the name of Ferdinand VII. on April 19, 1810.

While this new Government had sworn allegiance to the rightful occupant of the throne of Spain, it was inevitable, in view of the disturbed state of that country and the insecurity of the reigning dynasty, that sooner or later the colonies would break away completely. The Junta sent Simon Bolivar to England to appeal for protection and to ask the Government to urge Spain to avoid war with the colonists. Our statesmen, however, were not then able to resist the temptation to secure the utmost from Venezuela in return for such passive assistance as they might render, even to the point of asking for a monopoly of trade, and negotiations fell through. Spain declared Venezuela under blockade conditionally, and appointed Miyares, Governor of Maracaibo, to be Captain-General, an office which he never filled.

Later Miranda returned from Europe, being sent by Bolivar, and was refused a landing by the Junta, in view of his avowed republican principles. The people of La Guaira, however, insisted on his landing and brought him ashore.

In 1811 forty-four deputies were elected by the seven provinces which recognised the Junta (Carácas, Barinas, Barcelona, Cumaná, Margarita, Mérida, and Trujillo), and they met on March 2nd. The names of the first Congress of Venezuela (as it subsequently became) included, besides Miranda, the Marquis del Toro, Martin Tovar, Fernando de Peñalver, and many gentlemen of rank and standing in the colony. Miranda was elected President of the Junta, and the combined effect of the inaction of Miyares, a man of more vanity than talent, and such incidents as the massacre of persons of republican inclinations by royalists in Cabruta on April 2nd, led finally to the Declaration of Independence by the deputies on July 5, 1811.

The seven provinces were declared to be a confederation of free, sovereign, and independent States, governed in accordance with the will of the inhabitants, and thus ended, in name at least, the long period of Spain’s misrule. From this time onward, whatever has been the internal policy of the country, the inhabitants, in theory if not in fact, have had the government they chose for themselves.