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- 7. Developing Backbone.js Applications by Addy Osmani Revision History for the : 2012-04-19 Early release revision 1 See http://oreilly.com/catalog/errata.csp?isbn=9781449328252 for release details. ISBN: 978-1-449-32825-2 1335306849
- 8. Table of Contents Prelude . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Fundamentals 2 MVC, MVP & Backbone.js 2 MVC 2 Smalltalk-80 MVC 2 MVC As We Know It 3 Models 4 Views 5 Controllers 8 Controllers in Spine.js vs Backbone.js 8 What does MVC give us? 10 Delving deeper 10 Summary 11 MVP 11 Models, Views & Presenters 11 MVP or MVC? 12 MVC, MVP and Backbone.js 13 Fast facts 15 Backbone.js 15 2. The Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 What is Backbone? 17 Why should you consider using it? 17 The Basics 17 Models 18 Views 21 Creating new views 21 What is el? 22 Collections 23 iii
- 9. Underscore utility functions 25 Routers 25 Backbone.history 27 Namespacing 27 What is namespacing? 28 Additional Tips 31 Automated Backbone Scaffolding 31 Is there a limit to the number of routers I should be using? 32 Is Backbone too small for my application’s needs? 32 3. RESTful Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Building RESTful applications with Backbone 33 Stack 1: Building A Backbone App With Node.js, Express, Mongoose and MongoDB 33 Reviewing the stack 33 Practical 34 Practical Setup 40 Building Backbone.js Apps With Ruby, Sinatra, MongoDB and Haml 42 Introduction 42 What Is Sinatra? 42 Getting Started With Sinatra 43 Templating And HAML 45 MongoDB Ruby Driver 47 Getting started 47 Practical 48 Installing The Prerequisites 48 Tutorial 50 Conclusions 57 4. Advanced . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Modular JavaScript 59 Organizing modules with RequireJS and AMD 59 Writing AMD modules with RequireJS 60 Keeping Your Templates External Using RequireJS And The Text Plugin 63 Optimizing Backbone apps for production with the RequireJS Optimizer 65 Practical: Building a modular Backbone app with AMD & RequireJS 67 Overview 67 Markup 68 Configuration options 69 Modularizing our models, views and collections 70 Decoupling Backbone with the Mediator and Facade patterns 75 Summary 75 Practical 76 iv | Table of Contents
- 10. Paginating Backbone.js Requests & Collections 82 Paginator’s pieces 83 Downloads And Source Code 83 Live Examples 84 Paginator.requestPager 86 1. Create a new Paginated collection 86 2: Set the model and base URL for the collection as normal 86 3. Map the attributes supported by your API (URL) 87 4. Configure the default pagination, query and sort details for the pag- inator 87 5. Finally, configure Collection.parse() and we’re done 88 Convenience methods: 89 Paginator.clientPager 89 1. Create a new paginated collection with a model and URL 89 2. Map the attributes supported by your API (URL) 90 3. Configure how to paginate data at a UI-level 90 4. Configure the rest of the request parameter default values 90 5. Finally, configure Collection.parse() and we’re done 91 Convenience methods: 91 Views/Templates 91 Backbone & jQuery Mobile 94 Resolving the routing conflicts 94 Practical: A Backbone, RequireJS/AMD app with jQuery Mobile 95 Getting started 95 jQuery Mobile: Going beyond mobile application development 96 5. Unit Testing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 Unit Testing Backbone Applications With Jasmine 99 Introduction 99 Jasmine 99 Suites, Specs & Spies 101 beforeEach and afterEach() 104 Shared scope 104 Getting setup 105 TDD With Backbone 105 Models 105 Collections 108 Views 110 Initial setup 111 View rendering 113 Rendering with a templating system 116 Conclusions 118 Exercise 118 Table of Contents | v
- 11. Further reading 118 Unit Testing Backbone Applications With QUnit And SinonJS 119 Introduction 119 QUnit 119 Getting Setup 119 Assertions 120 Adding structure to assertions 124 Assertion examples 125 Fixtures 127 Asynchronous code 129 SinonJS 130 What is SinonJS? 130 Stubs and mocks 133 Practical 135 Models 135 Collections 137 Views 138 Events 139 App 141 Further Reading & Resources 142 6. Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 7. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 vi | Table of Contents
- 12. Prelude Welcome to my (in-progress) book about the Backbone.js framework for structuring JavaScript applications. It’s released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non- Commercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license meaning you can both grab a copy of the book for free or help to further improve it. I’m very pleased to announce that this book will be out in physical form in a few months time via O’Reilly Media. Readers will have the option of purchasing the latest version in either print or a number of digital formats then or can grab a recent version from this repository. Corrections to existing material are always welcome and I hope that together we can provide the community with an up-to-date resource that is of help. My extended thanks go out to Jeremy Ashkenas for creating Backbone.js and these members of the com- munity for their assistance tweaking this project. I hope you find this book helpful! vii
- 14. CHAPTER 1 Introduction As JavaScript developers, we are at an interesting point in time where not only do we have mature solutions to help organize the JavaScript powering our applications based on a separation of concerns, but developers looking to build non-trivial projects are almost spoiled for choice for frameworks that can help structure their applications. Maturity in software (framework) development isn’t simply about how long a frame- work has been around. It’s about how solid the framework is and more importantly how well it’s evolved to fill its role. Has it become more effective at solving common problems? Does it continue to improve as developers build larger and more complex applications with it? In this book, I will be covering the popular Backbone.js, which I consider the best of the current family of JavaScript architectural frameworks. Topics will include MVC theory and how to build applications using Backbone’s mod- els, views, collections and routers. I’ll also be taking you through advanced topics like modular development with Backbone.js and AMD (via RequireJS), how to build ap- plications using modern software stacks (like Node and Express), how to solve the routing problems with Backbone and jQuery Mobile, tips about scaffolding tools, and a lot more. If this is your first time looking at Backbone.js and you’re still unsure whether or not to give it a try, why not take a look at how a Todo application can be implemented in Backbone and several other popular Javascript frameworks before reading further? The goal of this book is to create an authoritative and centralized repository of infor- mation that can help those developing real-world apps with Backbone. If you come across a section or topic which you think could be improved or expanded on, please feel free to submit a pull-request. It won’t take long and you’ll be helping other devel- opers avoid problems you’ve run into before. 1
- 15. Fundamentals In this section we are going to cover the context into which a framework like Back- bone.js fits. Let’s begin our journey into understanding Backbone better with a look at code architecture. MVC, MVP & Backbone.js Before exploring any JavaScript frameworks that assist in structuring applications, it can be useful to gain a basic understanding of architectural design patterns. Design patterns are proven solutions to common development problems and can suggest structural approaches to help guide developers in adding some organization to their applications. Patterns are useful because they’re a set of practices that build upon the collective experience of skilled developers who have repeatedly solved similar problems. Al- though developers 10 or 20 years ago may not have been using the same programming languages when implementing patterns in their projects, there are many lessons we can learn from their efforts. In this section, we’re going to review two popular patterns - MVC and MVP. We’ll be exploring in greater detail how Backbone.js implements these patterns shortly to better appreciate where it fits in. MVC MVC (Model-View-Controller) is an architectural design pattern that encourages im- proved application organization through a separation of concerns. It enforces the iso- lation of business data (Models) from user interfaces (Views), with a third component (Controllers) traditionally present to manage logic, user-input and the coordination of models and views. The pattern was originally designed by Trygve Reenskaug while working on Smalltalk-80 (1979), where it was initially called Model-View-Controller- Editor. MVC was described in depth in “Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object- Oriented Software” (The “GoF” or “Gang of Four” book) in 1994, which played a role in popularizing its use. Smalltalk-80 MVC It’s important to understand what the original MVC pattern was aiming to solve as it has changed quite heavily since the days of its origin. Back in the 70’s, graphical user- interfaces were far and few between. An approach known as Separated Presentation began to be used as a means to make a clear division between domain objects which modeled concepts in the real world (e.g a photo, a person) and the presentation objects which were rendered to the user’s screen. 2 | Chapter 1: Introduction
- 16. The Smalltalk-80 implementation of MVC took this concept further and had an ob- jective of separating out the application logic from the user interface. The idea was that decoupling these parts of the application would also allow the reuse of models for other interfaces in the application. There are some interesting points worth noting about Smalltalk-80’s MVC architecture: • A Domain element was known as a Model and were ignorant of the user-interface (Views and Controllers) • Presentation was taken care of by the View and the Controller, but there wasn’t just a single view and controller. A View-Controller pair was required for each element being displayed on the screen and so there was no true separation between them • The Controller’s role in this pair was handling user input (such as key-presses and click events), doing something sensible with them. • The Observer pattern was relied upon for updating the View whenever the Model changed Developers are sometimes surprised when they learn that the Observer pattern (nowa- days commonly implemented as a Publish/Subscribe system) was included as a part of MVC’s architecture decades ago. In Smalltalk-80’s MVC, the View and Controller both observe the Model: anytime the Model changes, the Views react. A simple example of this is an application backed by stock market data - for the application to show real- time information, any change to the data in its Models should result in the View being refreshed instantly. Martin Fowler has done an excellent job of writing about the origins of MVC over the years and if you are interested in further historical information about Smalltalk-80’s MVC, I recommend reading his work. MVC As We Know It We’ve reviewed the 70’s, but let us now return to the here and now. The MVC pattern has been applied to a diverse range of programming languages. For example, the pop- ular Ruby on Rails is an implementation of a web application framework based on MVC for the Ruby language. JavaScript now has a number of MVC frameworks, in- cluding Ember.js, JavaScriptMVC, and of course Backbone.js. Given the importance of avoiding “spaghetti” code, a term which describes code that is very difficult to read or maintain due to its lack of structure, let’s look at what the MVC pattern enables the Javascript developer to do. MVC is composed of three core components: MVC As We Know It | 3
- 17. Models Models manage the data for an application. They are concerned with neither the user- interface nor presentation layers, but instead represent structured data that an appli- cation may require. When a model changes (e.g when it is updated), it will typically notify its observers (e.g views, a concept we will cover shortly) that a change has oc- curred so that they may react accordingly. To understand models better, let us imagine we have a JavaScript photo gallery appli- cation. In a photo gallery, a photo would merit its own model, as it represents a unique kind of domain-specific data. The Photo model may represent attributes such as a caption, image source and additional meta-data. A specific photo would be stored in an instance of a model. Here’s an example of a simple Photo model implemented with Backbone.js: var Photo = Backbone.Model.extend({ // Default attributes for the photo defaults: { // Ensure that each photo created has an `src`. src: "placeholder.jpg", caption: "A default image", viewed: false }, initialize: function() { } }); The built-in capabilities of models vary across frameworks, however it’s common for them to support validation of attributes, where attributes represent the properties of the model, such as a model identifier. When using models in real-world applications we generally also need a way of persisting models. Persistence allows us to edit and update models with the knowledge that their most recent states will be saved some- where, for example in a web browser’s localStorage data-store or synchronized with a database. A model may also have multiple views observing it. Imagine our Photo model contained meta-data such as the longitude and latitude where the photo was taken, a list of people present in the photo, and a list of tags. A developer could create a single view that displayed all these attributes, or might create three separate views to display each at- tribute. The important detail is that the Photo model doesn’t care how these views are organized, it simply announces updates to its data as necessary. We’ll come back to Views in more detail later. It is not uncommon for modern MVC/MV* frameworks to provide a means to group models together. In Backbone, these groups are called “Collections”. Managing models in groups allows us to write application logic based on notifications from the group, 4 | Chapter 1: Introduction
- 18. should any model it contains change. This avoids the need to manually observe indi- vidual model instances. Here’s how we might group Photo models into a simplified Backbone Collection: var PhotoGallery = Backbone.Collection.extend({ // Reference to this collection's model. model: Photo, // Filter down the list of all photos that have been viewed viewed: function() { return this.filter(function(photo){ return photo.get('viewed'); }); }, // Filter down the list to only photos that have not yet been viewed unviewed: function() { return this.without.apply(this, this.viewed()); } }); If you read older texts on MVC, you may come across a description of models as also managing application “state”. In JavaScript applications “state” has a specific meaning, typically referring to the current “state” of a view or sub-view on a user’s screen at a fixed time. State is a topic which is regularly discussed when looking at Single-page applications, where the concept of state needs to be simulated. Views Views are a visual representation of models that present a filtered view of their current state. A view typically observes a model and is notified when the model changes, al- lowing the view to update itself accordingly. Design pattern literature commonly refers to views as “dumb”, given that their knowledge of models and controllers in an appli- cation is limited. Users interact with views, which usually means reading and editing model data. For example, in our photo gallery application example, model viewing might happen in a user interface with a big image, a caption, and a list of tags. Model editing could be done through an “edit” view where a user who has selected a specific photo could edit its caption, tags, or other metadata in a form. In MVC, the actual task of updating the Model falls to Controllers, which we’ll be covering shortly. Let’s explore Views a little further using a simple JavaScript example. Below we can see a function that creates a single Photo view, consuming both a model instance and a controller instance. MVC As We Know It | 5
- 19. We define a render() utility within our view which is responsible for rendering the contents of the photoModel using a JavaScript templating engine (Underscore templat- ing) and updating the contents of our view, referenced by photoEl. The photoModel then adds our render() callback as one of its subscribers, so that through the Observer pattern it can trigger the view to update when the model changes. You may wonder where user interaction comes into play here. When users click on any elements within the view, it’s not the view’s responsibility to know what to do next. A Controller makes this decision. In our sample implementation, this is achieved by adding an event listener to photoEl which will delegate handling the click behavior back to the controller, passing the model information along with it in case it’s needed. The benefit of this architecture is that each component plays its own separate role in making the application function as needed. var buildPhotoView = function( photoModel, photoController ){ var base = document.createElement('div'), photoEl = document.createElement('div'); base.appendChild(photoEl); var render= function(){ // We use a templating library such as Underscore // templating which generates the HTML for our // photo entry photoEl.innerHTML = _.template('photoTemplate', {src: photoModel.getSrc()}); } photoModel.addSubscriber( render ); photoEl.addEventListener('click', function(){ photoController.handleEvent('click', photoModel ); }); var show = function(){ photoEl.style.display = ''; } var hide = function(){ photoEl.style.display = 'none'; } return{ showView: show, hideView: hide } } Templating 6 | Chapter 1: Introduction
- 20. In the context of JavaScript frameworks that support MVC/MV*, it is worth looking more closely at JavaScript templating and its relationship to Views. It has long been considered bad practice (and computationally expensive) to manually create large blocks of HTML markup in-memory through string concatenation. De- velopers using this technique often find themselves iterating through their data, wrap- ping it in nested divs and using outdated techniques such as document.write to inject the “template” into the DOM. This approach often means keeping scripted markup inline with standard markup, which can quickly become difficult to read and maintain, especially when building large applications. JavaScript templating libraries (such as Handlebars.js or Mustache) are often used to define templates for views as HTML markup containing template variables. These template blocks can be either stored externally or within script tags with a custom type (e.g “text/template”). Variables are delimited using a variable syntax (e.g {{name}}). Javascript template libraries typically accept data in JSON, and the grunt work of pop- ulating templates with data is taken care of by the framework itself. This has a several benefits, particularly when opting to store templates externally as this can let applica- tions load templates dynamically on an as-needed basis. Let’s compare two examples of HTML templates. One is implemented using the pop- ular Handlebars.js library, and the other uses Underscore’s “microtemplates”. Handlebars.js: <li class="photo"> <h2>{{caption}}</h2> <img class="source" src="{{src}}"/> <div class="meta-data"> {{metadata}} </div> </li> Underscore.js Microtemplates: <li class="photo"> <h2><%= caption %></h2> <img class="source" src="<%= src %>"/> <div class="meta-data"> <%= metadata %> </div> </li> You may also use double curly brackets (i.e {{}}) (or any other tag you feel comfortable with) in Microtemplates. In the case of curly brackets, this can be done by setting the Underscore templateSettings attribute as follows: _.templateSettings = { interpolate : /{{(.+?)}}/g }; A note on navigation and state It is also worth noting that in classical web development, navigating between inde- pendent views required the use of a page refresh. In single-page JavaScript applications, MVC As We Know It | 7
- 21. Other documents randomly have different content
- 22. The Beach of la Brea Trinidad This ship at the pier was the first full-rigged merchant ship we had seen during the cruise—most merchantmen seeming now to be rigged as barks or barkentines—and was, even in spite of its black cargo, a beautiful sight. There is something in the look of a ship—its mass of rigging, its straight yard-arms, well set up, its black, drooping sails, half-furled, its inexplicable riddle of shrouds and stays and braces and halliards and sheets—that always stirs my soul mysteriously. Black as this vessel was, prosaic as was her cargo, unsightly the hands that loaded her, she was a picture. By right, she should have carried teas, and spices, and silks, and jewels; but she was worthy of admiration despite her humble calling. Once on land, we realised, looking up the long, black hill ahead of us, and feeling the heat from a blazing sun directly overhead, that the walk would be a hard one, and that we must go slowly, in order to make it with any degree of comfort; but walk we must, or stay on the beach. The pitch was in evidence immediately. Reefs of hard asphalt ran through the sandy beach into the sea. The hill was covered with asphalt, and down near the shore it lay in great wrinkles, where, when the road was being made, it had overflowed and taken to the hedgeway. It was apparent under the grass and weeds, around the roots of trees, and in the banana groves; in fact, there was pitch everywhere, black, oozing, and dull. II.
- 23. Up the hill laboured the little procession of red-faced adventurers, in all conditions of negligée. The large lady from Kansas puffed and sweated and mopped her face; the doctor vowed we would die of sunstroke; the mother and her daughter, from Boston, made the ascent as their ancestors had stormed Bunker Hill, with features rigid and teeth set; our neighbour at table, who had been thrice around the world, wondered what on earth we would think of Manila in the summer-time if we called this hot; our jolly, delightful friend from New Haven laughed us all the way up the hill, and said he was suffering with the cold; the German baron, under his green umbrella, passed us with the superb stride acquired from his sturdy ancestors and his military training; down the hill back of us straggled on the rest of the company: the little women, the tall women, the lean ones, the fat ones, urged and supported by long-suffering husbands and brothers and friends who mopped and fanned furiously. There were hats of all descriptions: white East Indian helmets built of pith and lined with green, deliciously light, cool things; and all conceivable shapes of Puerto Rican hats, of a pretty, fine white palm “straw,” very much like the Panama; and hats from Haïti; and French hats from Martinique; and then there were Puerto Rican sailor hats, one of which I wore with great pride. Our shoes were the heaviest we had, and our clothing the oldest and lightest available. Thus all marched on in broken file, with very hot faces, and shaded by all manner of outlandish umbrellas, over the hot asphalt to the Pitch Lake. As our little party plodded along, going so slowly it hardly seemed as if we were making any progress at all, my courage began to wane somewhat, for I remembered most vividly a similar day on the island of Capri, when I had been overcome by the sun, and in consequence of which had suffered many months after. With this in my mind, we stopped at a shanty half-way up the hill, where we saw some bananas growing, tore off part of a leaf, and asked for some water of a negress, who was one of many watching the procession with great amusement. In fairly good English she told me not to wet the head; in fact, by her vociferous rejection of our plan, we were led to believe that it would be dangerous to carry it out at all, so we threw away the leaf, and worked on up the blistering highway to the top of the hill. There was not a bit of shade in sight. To right and left, rank weeds and cacti grew in wild confusion, and with the exception of a few banana
- 24. groves, and the huts of negro labourers farther down, there was nothing of a shade-producing nature along the road. The asphalt was so hot to the feet that we broke company, and took to single file in among the weeds on the edge of the road. As we approached the summit of the hill, a fine breeze gave us new courage, and the sight of the Pitch Works, not far distant, dissolved our fears of the heat into most absorbing interest of the great phenomenon coming into view. An endless train of buckets, which led the way up the long ascent, on a wire rope supported at short intervals by large sheaves on iron pillars, went squeaking along, one row down to the dock, full of great chunks of pitch, and the other back, empty, to be filled and started on its round again. III. I looked ahead as far as I could, and located our fellow voyagers, now here, now there,—white dots on the strangest landscape I had ever seen. I sat down on a barrel of pitch under the welcome shade of a rough shed in the power-house, and had my first glimpse of the great lake. Why it has been called a “lake,” I fail to discover; it was probably named thus by the English. In that case, the matter is explained; it is called a lake because it is not a lake at all. The Englishman never seems to understand that the object to be named ought to bear some slight relation to its appellative. He decides upon a name, and the unfortunate victim has to fit himself, herself, itself, into its new form as best he can. If this curious deposit had been called the “Pitch Bed,” there might have been some reason in the naming; some, possibly not all, but some of the existing physical conditions would have been suggested to the mind, and the traveller might thus have been able to form an approximate idea of the phenomenon before seeing it. Instead of a lake, you see a vast, flat, fairly smooth, black surface of pitch, with only here and there small pools of water,—in places, yellowish; in places, clear,—intersecting the black surface in all directions. Sometimes they enlarge, and, uniting, cover the surface quite a distance, and in the centre several feet deep; and again the intersecting, stream-like pools shrink to mere threads, but, as I said, the general aspect of the Pitch Lake is a flat, solid, black surface, covered occasionally with water, the water being only
- 25. in the crevices between great masses of pitch that have pushed up from beneath. Asphalt for Northern Pavements Pitch Lake, Trinidad We were as yet unconvinced of its carrying qualities, and, not wishing to run the risk of getting stuck in the pitch, we waited the approach of one of the trains of little cable-cars, running from the works out on to the lake, which we could see coming toward us. The brakeman is good enough to stop, and we pile into the ridiculous little steel cars and hang on as best we can, while we are sent flying down over a narrow-gauge track, laid on top of the pitch, to the place where most of the digging is going on. Here a great crew of black men—black as the pitch in which they stand —with bare feet, all with picks, dig out the wonderful formation, which breaks off in great brittle pieces. Seeing these men so fearlessly defying the forces of nature, we gained confidence, and stepped out of the buckets on to the surface of the so-called “lake;” and although our feet would sink in a half-inch or so when we stood still, we found that we could walk everywhere with perfect safety, with the exception of a few places where the surface seemed to be in big bubbles and disposed to crack and break away under us. It was remarkable to me that the pitch is both viscous and brittle at the same time. When standing still, the water—thick and yellow, with a sulphurous odour—would ooze up about the feet and form new rivulets,
- 26. which, uniting, would trickle into some near-by pool. There were innumerable small, crater-like openings, some like air-bubbles in the sea beach, others, deep, black holes, two and three feet in diameter, but no appearance of heat or fire. All over the lake, small springs of yellowish fluid were constantly bubbling up into the pools. The supply of pitch is apparently inexhaustible, for, after a great trench has been dug out along these temporary tracks, some four feet deep, and many rods wide, by the next day the hole will again be so far filled that the mining goes on as before. The manager told us that it had not been found necessary to change the tram tracks for two years, that the level of the pitch fell only seven inches last year, after immense amounts had been removed for shipment. The depth of this deposit is not known. It has been sounded a number of times, but it seems to be impossible to find the bottom. I do not know the exact dimensions of the lake, but, making a rough estimate, should say that it is half a mile wide, and about a mile long; its extent is said to be about one hundred and ten acres. The great asphalt deposit in Venezuela, which has been the cause of so much recent trouble,—through, I am sorry to say, the quarrels of two American companies,—is thought by some to be shallower than the one of La Brea, although it is apparently much larger, being in the neighbourhood of ten miles in circumference. This Trinidad pitch is also worked by an American company, under concession from the British Colonial Government. IV. It seemed to me that I had never before seen such black pitch or blacker “niggers.” They were a good-humoured lot of men, making no complaint of the heat, although they worked untiringly, bare-footed, in the hot, oozing pitch. We stopped one fellow, about as black and tattered a figurehead as we could find, and told him we wanted his picture. He was perfectly delighted, and struck a very fetching attitude. After the button had been pressed, we gave him a bit of silver, and then came a howl from a dozen others for a similar opportunity, all posing for us as fancy struck them. Seeing that we were obdurate, the fortunate holder of the silver doubled up with a tremendous laugh, and I can yet see before me his two rows of glistening
- 27. white teeth and his wreck of a hat and his rag of a shirt, and his bepatched breeches. His laugh so exasperated the others, that one, an elderly gentleman who wore grand side whiskers, shouted out in tones of deepest sarcasm: “Guess I’d git my picture took, too, Sam, if I was such a orangoutang as you is!” It seemed as though they would come to blows, but, had I known the good-humoured blacks better, I should have had no fear, for their battles, fierce as they seem, are only words, and usually end in a laugh. There are two kinds of pitch: one, pure pitch, dead black, was loaded in the small cars, and the other, of a light brown colour, was carried off in dump-carts, drawn by mules. This black pitch forms the basis of all our asphalt pavements, and such a deposit must be worth millions to the concessionaires. Now, when did this mighty process begin, and what internal force is at work producing this continual outpouring upon the earth’s surface? Loading Cars Pitch Lake, Trinidad At the farther end of the lake, women and young girls were busy gathering pieces of wood which were thrown up out of the pitch. I do not claim to understand this marvellous phenomenon. I would rather put the question to those of you who have access to the wisdom of libraries, and give you the privilege of bringing some light upon these strange manifestations of God’s unknowable. As I understand it, pitch is obtained
- 28. from tar, boiled down, and tar is a black, viscous liquid obtained by the distillation of wood and coal, so this residuum which we see is the third step in one of Nature’s great caldrons; a process millions of years in forming, a process still in operation. Is this wood which is continually coming to the surface of the lake an unused part of that vast primeval forest which was when time did not exist; when chaos was revolving into form? How long has it been wandering, and what force is it which sends it thus unharmed, save for the loss of bark, out again into the light? Some very strange implements and tools, recognised as South American workmanship of a remote day, have come to the surface of this lake, and one theory for their appearance is, that they have been drawn under the Gulf of Paria, and up through the lake of La Brea by some unseen, but mighty power from the lake of pitch in Venezuela, of which this is supposed by some to be the outlet. The wood, gathered by the women, is not petrified, but merely impregnated with the pitch, and has all its original qualities as when it first left the parent stem, with, however, the additional affinity for fire which its pitchy bath would naturally give. We were much entertained by the women and children, who stood knee- deep in the fresh pools at the further end of the lake, doing the washing. The clothes were laid out on the pitch to dry, and the naked babies rolled around on the black stuff quite as much at home as our babies are on the clean nursery floor. The women had on but very little clothing, or none,—and some of the girls and boys, fourteen and fifteen years of age, were entirely nude. One young girl, as we approached, modestly hung a little fluttering rag about her loins, and, thus clothed, was not ashamed.
- 29. A Native Washerwoman on the Pitch Lake Trinidad I have seen more immodesty on the floor of a modern ballroom than ever from the bare bodies of these black women. But terrible as the stories are which one hears of the immorality of the West Indies, I feel that here the evil is less heinous in the coloured races on account of the primitive nature and conditions of a half-savage people. Unfortunately this great and degenerating danger to the white inhabitants is ever present. The pitch lake foreshadows the terrible conditions of the people in Trinidad and Jamaica; the continual welling up of this black mass suggests the doom which awaits these beautiful islands, unless a giant hand is put forth to save them. The difficulties of this excursion have been much exaggerated. To be sure, we had a long walk, but we also had a good breeze most of the way, and our fellow traveller who, in spite of all warnings, had worn his immaculate white suit, came off without spot or blemish, notwithstanding the old proverb about “keeping away from the pitch.” V. Hot and tired, I left the party, who wished to make the entire circuit, and took my way over the yielding pitch, over the sulphurous yellow puddles, until I finally came to the grateful shade of the power-house. A rickety old carryall looked very inviting, and in no time I had ensconced myself therein, and leaned back in full anticipatory enjoyment of a restful quarter of an hour.
- 30. As I sat there, looking out over the distant sea,—for I was on the brow of a hill,—gradually the unsightly power-house, the pitch cars, the little huts where bananas were sold, the native shanties, the long, narrow bridge, even the rim of the canopy above my head, seemed to fade away into nothing. The ships at anchor had slipped their cables and were gone; the iron pier, with its busy life, had disappeared; all had changed, vanished. It was silent, ghostly. Then, out of nothing, out of dimness, there came a moving, a forming, a changing, and I became conscious that I was no longer alone, but that a company, great and illustrious, was assembling by ship-loads upon the beach of La Brea; and that, without word or confusion, five ancient, lofty- sterned, lumbering craft, and a quaint little caravel, lay bow-on to the strand, while one was already being careened on her side in the shoal water of the beach by cumbersome tackle fast to her thick mastheads. Their huge, clumsy hulks were gray with time; their gaping seams told of hot, blistering suns, and upon their decks there lay an array of guns and armament, crudely ancient and unwieldy. Silent men were noiselessly moving about at the command of one most beautiful to behold, in scarlet cloak, and silken hose and doublet of rare elegance, with hat beplumed, and glittering sword, who walked amongst the company as a king. To and from the ship there moved a ghostly procession of grimy sailors, carrying pitch to the beach, where fires were burning, and the venerable three-deckers were being daubed with the smoking fluid, and made ready for the high seas. It was a merry company, in truth, of lords and gentlemen, and scholars, too, who came upon my vision, and wonderingly my eyes followed the gallant leader. It seemed to me that I could all but catch his words. He spoke with a poet’s grace, so full of charm and so deliberate, so courtly was his address. His face once turned, I knew him to be English. His fair skin was burned by deep-sea voyaging; his pointed beard just touched the lace of a deep, white ruff, and over his shoulder hung a plume, white and curling. In all my life, I had never seen so gay a gentleman, and I could not get my fill of looking and of wondering. Could it be that this great company were the revivified followers of the dauntless Sir Walter Raleigh, searching, centuries ago, for El Dorado? And it came to me, in that curious mixing of past and present, of which dreams
- 31. are made, “Does Sir Walter, with all his wisdom, suspect that here, where he pitches his ships, is to be the great gold mine—some later man’s El Dorado—while he eagerly sails away in futile quest of golden sands that are always just beyond his reach?” I lifted myself to strain my farthest sight, when lo! all was gone; galleons, gentlemen, scholars, sailors, even the little caravel—all! The sun was beating down upon the black road, the air was blistering; negroes were weighing the buckets of pitch, and the machinery clanked, with deafening indifference, through the quivering air; and up from behind a clump of bushes a red bow, atop of a well-known white hat, chased away the phantoms of long ago. I took off my dark glasses, rubbed my eyes, and, half-dazed, stepped from my enchanted carryall.
- 32. S CHAPTER III. THE SPANISH MAIN I. TEAMING out of the Gulf of Paria the day before, away from the muddy water of the Orinoco, we had come again through the Dragon’s Mouth, close to that long, eastward-pointing finger of South America that forms one side of this famous gateway, back into the welcome Caribbean Sea. Thence through the night we skirted the South American coast, passing the celebrated pearl-fishing island of Margarita—“The Pearl”—where it was said that a German gunboat with covetous eye had these many months been making careful surveys and taking elaborate soundings—so forehanded, you know! And now we were at anchor in the roadstead of La Guayra, the seaport of Caracas. Where the Mountains Meet the Sea La Guayra, Venezuela Leaning over the rail of the white ship, early in the dawning of that day, it came to me over and over again that we were at last in the presence of the great West Indian Mother, and that her face was in truth an exact realisation of our imaginings.
- 33. A strong breeze blew the waves fast and loose, one upon another, to the near-lying shore, where a white line of surf circled about a rounding promontory, and lost itself on the other side of the cliff. Up and beyond, rose the mountains, and some one said: “The Andes!” and we looked again, and longer, and said to ourselves—“The Andes,—South America, we are looking upon them with actual eyes!” Up, and still up, rose the mountains; great, tender lines of undulating softness, all green and blue and gentle and grand, one sweep upon another of matchless warm tints; one sweep upon another of voluptuous curves in billowy green, and dropping in and about the contour of the great continent’s majestic form, far disappearing valleys swept into the dimness of soft, shadowy depths. Like a great mother, asleep, spread with a coverlet of the changing tints of malachite and beryl, South America lay before us. Clambering up her skirts were the little white roofs of La Guayra, spots on her verdant garment,—irregular spots here, there, and everywhere; now in patches, comfortably huddling together at her feet; now stray offshoots away beyond. All very square and very Spanish were these houses, very quaint to look upon; and if this is La Guayra, where is Caracas? Must we, too, clamber and climb away into those mountain heights, and, perchance, awaken the Great Mother, who sleeps so gently under the drowsy lullings of the deep sea? II. Things are moving on the shore, and in the distance dots like men and women stir about the tiny houses, and a toy train toots, and toy engines rattle, and toy cars seem filling with toy people; and we think it time to go ashore and see if we can find a seat in one of those cars; so we run up forward, where our impatient fellow voyagers have been hurrying into the launch this long time. It has just puffed away, and we are really glad. There is something very like the “stray sheep” in our make-up. It is Americanism boiled down,—this love of going alone, and being self- reliant. A beamy shore-boat is engaged at one bolivar apiece (negotiations having been started on a basis of five bolivars apiece, charged by the
- 34. boatmen), and we have plenty of room for all, even the Doctor, who is going with us (for he was just too late for the launch—perhaps, with malice aforethought); and so we row to the stone steps of the quay of La Guayra, the port of Caracas, our first landing on the “Spanish Main.” We have left the land of what we supposed to be our mother tongue, and are come to a country where we can really be understood, or misunderstood, according to our abilities to express ourselves, in a language more constant than English. I take a mental stock, and find four Spanish phrases which did not fail me in Santo Domingo, and shall not fail me here. Besides I have been practising them since then! With these I can fare sumptuously: ¿Cuanto cuesta? (How much does it cost?) ¿Qué hora es? (What o’clock is it?) ¡Mucho bonito! (Very beautiful!) Yo no entiendo. (I do not understand.) This, with a few nouns sprinkled in, was my vocabulary; but I had no fears,—had we not our own interpreter? And the big, strong oars brought us to the landing. Then we girls, in charge of the Doctor, were stood up in the shade of a warehouse, where we watched the white uniformed South Americans, struggling with our obdurate men for their landing charges—for here they charge for the right to land. Then the men disappeared with the bags, and we waited what seemed to us a very long time, until, with one consent, we just thought we wouldn’t stay put another minute; so the Doctor takes the lead with his big white Indian helmet jammed over his eyes, and Little Blue Ribbons and Sister raise a fine cloud of dust, running on ahead. But we older ones know what it means to be in La Guayra, so we follow on very leisurely. On the way, we meet an excited messenger already sent to hurry us to the train. La Guayra is said to be the hottest place about the West Indies, and I could well imagine how the Great Mother would have to fan her little white children, when they once really felt the breath of the unconscionable sun; but, as we walked along, even though the sun had climbed a few steady hours, we found it far from uncomfortable, even carrying our heavy satchels, and the white umbrella, besides. Along a dusty and sun-stricken water-front, disfigured with railroad tracks, and low warehouses, we came to the station, where the men,
- 35. triumphant, were impatiently waiting, after sending out their belated relief expedition. Tickets had been bought, gold pieces divided up into fascinating silver pieces, called bolivars (in honour of the great South American liberator—accent on the second syllable, if you please), and all in our lord and master’s own Spanish, of which we were justly proud; and then we find places in the train, and in a few moments after our arrival we jerk out among the white houses. It was a clever bit of forethought—that move of ours to hunt up the men. Had we not done so, we could never have caught the early morning train, for the messenger was slow, and we would have become merely a part of the hot and dependent crowd on the later “special.” It’s better sometimes not to stay where you’re put. We move along at a good pace among the gardens of La Guayra,—rather sparse gardens they are,—and then we climb to the balconies, and then a turn and we are hiding about the Great Mother’s green petticoats; and anon we pass up to the roofs of La Guayra,—which reach out like a white sombrero over the little people below. Then the pull begins. Two powerful, stocky, low-built, narrow-gauge mountain engines haul us along with apparently no effort, up into the mountains, up a grade which seems to grow steeper every minute. Our men say that the average grade is over four per cent. I can’t see how it is that men know all these things about grades and percentages. It seems like such a lot of plunder to lie around in the brain. But—about such trifles—men must know and women must ask, and that’s all there is to it. It is a continuous twisting and turning and winding, seldom on a level stretch; it’s up, up away from the sea from the very start. Now, we are far above the tree-tops of the town, and our white ship out in the harbour lies motionless, and seems far away. We wonder at the courage of the people who would dare so great a feat of road-building, and grow doubly curious to see the city, hidden beyond in the clouds of the mountain. III. La Guayra lies just above sea-level. In two hours, we must climb over the Great Mother’s back, going thirty odd miles to reach Caracas, which lies
- 36. at an elevation over three thousand feet in a valley, only six miles in an air line from La Guayra. Up, up into the thin vapours, into regions of other trees still higher, whose tops again we pass amongst. The sun is hazy through a translucent veil of mist, and far away, the white horses of the sea dance up against the shore and out of sight, and the white sombrero drops beneath an emerald cloak, and everything but the sky is shut out. We jump first to one side of the car and then to the other, for the sea- view and for the mountains. We are whirled around quick curves, and all but lose our feet; and some of us—even men—get dizzy looking at the drop below us; and then we cut through the mountain and hurry on up the steep climb until the plucky little engine decides to stop, and we are told that we have reached the summit; and we hurry from the cars and feel the sweet coolness of the mountains, and the actual presence of the Great Mother. We stand close together on the brink of a chasm and look tremulously into the depths of her great heart; down, down, a thousand feet and more of living, breathing green, into every hue of purple and blue, deepening into black near the far-off valley, and disappearing into azure among the clouds, —silence, shadow, tenderness, sublimity, overspread by the ineffable loveliness of morning. We are moving again, and now it is down, gradually, for Caracas lies a thousand feet below the summit. We follow along a white highroad, the mountain trail from Caracas to the sea. Now we are on its level; now we leave it. Long trains of pack-mules make a cloud of gray dust against the green, and here and there a red blanket thrown across a burro’s back brings a delicious bit of life and colour into the passing scene.
- 37. Caracas and the Mountains Venezuela Now we seem to be on the level, and scurry along at a great rate; and soon there spring up out of the brown earth adobe houses (the first we have seen since we were in Mexico), and here are more and yet more, and there, ah! that must be Caracas, the great Venezuelan capital, the habitation of over one hundred and fifty thousand people! But, shall we say it? Must we be honest at the expense of all else? The approach to Caracas is a disappointment. There is scarcely any kind of a habitation which gives a landscape quite such a distressful look as the adobe hut. Built of sun-dried mud blocks, it gives off an atmosphere of dust with every whiff of wind. It comes to our mind always with the thought of dry barrenness, heat, sun, dust, shadeless fields of maguey, prickly nopals, broad sombreros, and leather-clothed rancheros. And to see the suburbs of a great city, the outlying habitations, in gray, crumbling adobe, makes an unpleasant impression, in spite of the fact that, from the distance, we catch a quick glimpse of a peaceful campanile and high, imposing roofs a bit beyond. There’s only time for a suggestion, but that suggestion biassed all our later impressions. We steam into the station and begin to pick up our traps and make for the carriages. IV. As we said before, the spirit of independence gained supremacy, when we were once fairly upon the Spanish Main. Out of many, a few of us escaped the tourist agent. A courier had been sent from New York, and at
- 38. every port we had the privilege of availing ourselves of his guides, carriages, meal tickets, et cetera, if we wished to do so; and for some it was certainly a great advantage, for, unless one knows some French and Spanish, one is at the mercy of every shark that swims, and these waters are full of them, as are all others for that matter. We found the prices very high everywhere, with few exceptions; equally high for poor accommodations as for the better, the reasons whereof, for the present, must be left unexplained. Suffice it to say, that the American is his own worst enemy. Nine-tenths of our party thought it would be unwise to go through South America from La Guayra to Puerto Cabello on their own responsibility; so our little group were the only ones to experience the joy and excitement of an independent tour through a strange country, where English—good, honest, live English—is a rare commodity. The Doctor, and Mr. and Mrs. M—— from Boston, and Daddy were keen for the experience. I was afraid we might be left away down in South America, with no train to carry us on from Caracas, for “the personally conducted” were to have a “special,” but my fears were finally allayed by constant assurances of safety; so independence carried the day. Once inside the Caracas station, Daddy disappears, and, after a bit, we see him beckoning to us from in among a crowd of vehicles, all very comfortable and well-appointed, and we sidle along among the noisy South American cabbies, and jump into the selected carriage. Now, what was said to the cabby, I’ll never know; but we were no sooner in that carriage than the horses started on a dead run, rattlety-bang, whackety-whack, jigglety-jagglety, over stones and ruts, through the city of Caracas. Up the hill we tore, and all I could see from under the low, buggy- like canopy was the bottom of things sailing by in a cloud of dust. Every now and then we struck a street-car track on the wrong angle, and off we would slew, still on the run, with one wheel in the track and the other anywhere but in the right place, for half a block or so, and then no sooner well under way again, than we would all but smash to pieces some peaceful cab, jogging toward us from the opposite direction. A train of donkeys, coming from the market, on the way home to the mountains with empty baskets, narrowly escapes sudden death at our furious onslaught; and I can yet hear their little feet pattering off and the tinkle of the leader’s bell, as his picturesque little nose just misses our big clumsy wheel. In a jumble we see
- 39. the small feet of the passers-by, and so we jerk along until all at once we stop with a bump at the Gran Hotel de Caracas. There we wait in the garden while our recklessly independent men seek lodgings. None to be had! Off we gallop toward another inn, catch glimpses of a square, stop again, wait in the carriage, and find the standing still very delightful. In a few minutes, our bold leaders return with the look we know so well,—jubilant and hopeful. Beautiful rooms, fine air, clean beds, sumptuous parlours, and all that,—you know how it reads. We enter the Gran Hotel de Venezuela. V. May I be forgiven if I leave the path of calm discretion for once, or how would it do to leave out the Gran Hotel de Venezuela altogether, and turn the page to where the mountains begin? But, you see, if we leave out the Gran Hotel de Venezuela, we should have to leave out Caracas, and that would never do at all. There was one member of our party who never sat down to a meal that he did not declare it was the finest he had ever eaten in his life. This faculty of taking things as they come, conforming gracefully to the customs of a country, is, perhaps,—next to unselfishness,—the most enviable trait in the traveller. Well might it be applied, as we begin the search for our rooms in the Gran Hotel de Venezuela. We climb a wide, winding, dirty stairway, pass through the sumptuously dusty parlour, up another flight of the same kind, only narrower and dustier and darker. An English housekeeper leads the way, and some one exclaims (Oh, the blessed charity of that soul!): “How pleasant to find a neat English woman in charge of the Gran Hotel de Venezuela!” It has never been clear to me just what state of mind could have inspired that remark; whether it was a momentary blindness, occasioned by the mad drive, or a kind of temporary delirium, from the sudden consciousness of power over perplexing foreign relations; or whether it was merely the natural outburst of an angelic disposition, I could never quite make out. But those are the identical words he used: “How pleasant to find a neat English woman at the head of affairs in the Gran Hotel de Venezuela.”
- 40. The “neat English woman” had dull, reddish, grayish hair, stringing in thin, stray locks from a lopsided, dusty knot on the top of her head. She had freckles, and teeth that clicked when she smiled. A time-bedraggled calico gown swung around her lean bones, and at her side she carried a bunch of keys, one of which she slipped up to the top into a wobblety door, and ushered us into our “apartments.” The “neat English housekeeper” fitted into that room to a dot. It was gray, and red, and wobblety, and she was gray, and red, and wobblety. If it hadn’t been for the everything outside, away beyond the balcony (for, thank Heaven, no Spanish house is complete without one!), no amount of philosophy could have atoned for that room. It was simply white with the accumulated dust of no one knew how long. Our shoes made tracks on the floor, and our satchels made clean spots on the bureau. Two slab-sided, lumpy beds suggested troubled dreams. Two thin, threadbare little towels lay on the rickety, dusty wash-stand, and an old cracked pitcher held the stuff we must call water. A thin partition of matched boards dividing ours from the next “apartments,” rattled as we deposited our things in various places which looked a little cleaner than the places which were not so clean. Had it not been for the balcony, we could never have endured it; though we had put up in queer places before. We had not even the satisfaction of leaning on the balcony rail; it was too dusty. But we could stand, and we did stand, looking out over and beyond the picturesque buildings, to the everlasting hills, to the Andes, their lofty summits encircling us like an emerald girdle, with calm La Silla thousands of feet above all. Below us lay the city and the Square of Bolivar, with the bronze statue of the great Liberator in the centre, in the midst of a phalanx of palms, rising above the dust and the glaring white walk. VI. To the left, the Cathedral, one compensation at least for all the rest. What combination of characteristics is it that makes the Spaniard such a marvellous builder, and, at the same time, such a wretched maintainer? He builds a Cathedral to be a joy for all time; its lines fall into beauty as naturally as the bird’s flight toward its nest. Whatever he builds, he builds for posterity; simply, beautifully, gracefully. Even his straight rows of
- 41. hemmed-in city houses have a touch of beauty about them somewhere; and in the Cathedral, his true artistic sense finds full expression. Close at hand the noble Campanile, swung with ancient bells, watches in serene dignity and beauty the moving, streaming life below. Sweet lines, harmonious to the eye, lift the Cathedral from the hideous dirt and unkempt streets; from the whirling dust and circling buzzards, to a sphere of forgetfulness, where beauty struggles for the supremacy she holds with royal hand so long as we continue to gaze upward. Equestrian Statue of Bolivar, the Liberator Caracas, Venezuela But once let our eyes leave the mountains and the Tower, and it all changes into that other picture, the other side of the life of that curious compound of traits, the Spaniard. For here, South American as he calls himself, down deep in his heart he is ever the Spaniard, and although he has claimed his independence of the mother country these many years, through the heroic victories of Bolivar and his brave associates, his characteristics are Spanish, his arts are Spanish, his life is Spanish; his glorious Cathedral is Spanish, and his horrible streets are Spanish; his magnificent statue of
- 42. Bolivar is Spanish, and the dowdy, dusty garden about it is Spanish. Was he ever intended to be a householder? Should not his portion be to beautify the earth by his artistic intuition, and let the rest of us, who do not comprehend the A B C of his art, be the cleaners and the menders? Is not this a people left like children to build up the semblance of a government from the wrong stuff? Will not the world in time come to see that one race cannot be all things; that some must be artists, and some mechanics; that some must be leaders, and others followers; that some will be the builders of beauty, to last for all time, and others must be the guardians of health, the makers of strong, clean men? VII. Why is it that the President’s house,—the great yellow house across the square, shown us by the Minister of War himself to-day,—one of the homes of Cipriano Castro, the present Dictator, is nothing more or less than an arsenal, packed to the full with cartridges, muskets, and rapid-firing guns, and alive with armed troops? How is it that Castro is said to have laid by a million dollars out of a twelve thousand dollars a year salary? Why is it that our going into Venezuela was considered by some unsafe? Why did we shake every bone in our bodies over the upturned streets and boulders of Caracas? Because the Venezuelan is trying to do that for which he is not fitted; in which, during all these long years of constant revolution, he has failed. He, past-master in certain of his arts, has taught the world his colours and his lights and shades; he has given to earth notable tokens of his skill in building; but in house-cleaning—municipal or national—he is out of his element, and should no more be expected to excel in that line than a babe in arms should be expected to know the Greek grammar. Like all Spaniards he is mediæval in his instincts; he cannot really govern himself as part of a republic. The city of Caracas exemplifies this statement. It is in a horrible state of dirt and disproportion. Its people are kind and courteous, but its streets are a nightmare; and over all hovers the strong hand of military despotism. VIII.
- 43. After dinner our first expedition was to call upon the United States Minister L—— and his wife, who were occupying the former residence of Count De Toro, some miles out of the city. And what a drive! To move comfortably in Caracas, you must either take the donkey tramway—which never goes where you want to go—or you must walk. But to walk a half-dozen miles in the hot sun, on a dusty, stony road, is not particularly inviting, so, with our respects to the sun, we decide to drive, and all the way out we wonder why we ever did. And yet, had we walked, I suppose we would have wondered why we hadn’t taken a cab. As it was, the dust blew about us from the rolling, bumping wheels in great clouds, and the big stones in the road sent us careening about from one side of the carriage to the other. Again we think of Mexico—of the dust, the parched earth, the arroyos, and the saving mountains beyond. We pass a dried-up river-bed, where women are washing in a faint trickle of water, and then we wind about the hill and climb up the rocky way, enter a sort of wood, and come suddenly to the minister’s house. An Interior Court Caracas, Venezuela Our nation’s arms on the gateway make us feel at home, and we jingle the bell and send in our cards and wait in the shady court. In a few moments, Minister L—— appears, and with him Mrs. L——, who bids us enter her cool, delicious drawing-room, very clean and sweet and old- fashioned and quiet, though the house is truly Spanish, with wide, airy
- 44. rooms and curious pictured walls. The men went off up a flight of stone steps through the garden to the office, to talk politics and the “Venezuelan situation,” I suppose; while we sat there with the minister’s wife, who told us much of her life and the customs of the country, and, among other things, how difficult it is for a foreigner—even a diplomat—to gain access to the real home-life of the Spaniard; how the women live shut in, and see but little of the world, only glimpses now and then, never knowing anything of our Northern freedom. IX. The drive back to the city was one continuous round of jolt and bump and dust. We rattled down and up the streets which, despite their narrowness and general dilapidation, could not be utterly devoid of interest, if viewed from the eyes of the lover of wrought-iron handiwork and graceful handlings of simple and strong elements in building. We were told that it was our duty to view the Municipal Palace, and dear Sister, although I knew she was tired, did not want anything seeable omitted; so we most willingly left the cabs at the palace door, with the hope of never having the agony of that ride repeated. As the Spaniard builds his cathedral, so does he impart to each important structure a fitting grace and dignity of style commensurate with its office. The Municipal Palace is built about a great hollow square or plaza, which is filled with palms and other similarly beautiful vegetation. But, oh, dear! oh, dear! the dust! The great reception-hall, or audience-chamber,—or whatever one might call it,—was lined with stately gilt chairs and sofas, done up in linen dusters. The effort of driving and seeing and jolting and being agreeable had been such a strain that I just thumped down on one of the wide sofas and spent my time looking about me, while the others conscientiously made the grande tour from one end of the great room to the other. It is a large oval hall ornamented with some very fine historical paintings. The Spanish Student had found an obliging officer—for soldiers are everywhere—and I quietly left the two alone. I thought it too cruel, after our long drive, to expect him to retranslate for my benefit, but then there came a faint suspicion in my mind, from a troubled expression on his face, when the guide launched into the deep waters of Venezuelan history, with
- 45. Bolivar rampant and the Spaniards fleeing, that, possibly, it was not all clear sailing; that, possibly, this was just the occasion for the last of my phrases. No, I watch the face; it resumes once more its usual expression of serenity, and I sit there and think how beautiful it might all be if it were only clean; if Bolivar could only come back again and teach his children their unlearned lesson of disinterested self-love of country and home. Bolivar appears to have been the only liberator (and each new “President” who throws out the defeated party and instates himself is called “liberator”) who ever died poor, having spent not only public funds for the betterment of arts and science and education, but nine-tenths of his own personal patrimony as well. The guide closes the blinds, and our party comes together at the door, leaving nice little clean spots where they have stood in groups on the dusty, once highly polished floor, and we turn down the long, wide balcony to an open door at the end. A brilliantly uniformed, handsome lad bars admission, for Castro the Great is holding a cabinet meeting there, and we can see the collar of a black alpaca coat and the back of a very solemn-looking chair, and hear a low voice speaking,—and that was all we saw of Castro. Some one proposes a drive; some one else suggests the shops, but we decide to go home. That dear old word sounds lonesome away down here in South America. Does it mean the Gran Hotel de Venezuela? Was this the home; or was it the wide, out-reaching mountains, fading into the deeps of night; or the Cathedral, rising from the dread below in her sweet chastity? X. Tired bells jangle out the slowly passing time. An ancient carillon sounds the quarter, an added clang the half, one note more for three quarters. The long black arms reach to the hour, then another and another passes, and night brings rest to the Great Mother. But the soft gentle eyes are no sooner closed than all the children, the white children at her feet, begin to stir and move, just as yours and mine do when mother sleeps. The old church towers, with sweet grace, wrap about her stately form a mantle of whitest silver, bordered with great lines of black, and away above her head, up in God’s garden, forget-me-nots and heartsease blossom out into twinkling spots of starlit beauty.
- 46. The moon rolls languidly on in the gentlest heaven that earth e’er looked upon. Below, beneath God’s garden, the white children brighten and awaken from the drowsy languor of the long day. Lights flare out, doors open, and streets fill with happy voices, and a white-frocked humanity empties itself into the Plaza to hear yet again the great Military Band of Caracas. There comes a hush, and then—it must be from the garden away off so far—there drops a veil,—the veil of forgetfulness, in sounds of music so inexpressibly tender and alluring as to catch the soul from earth away up to where white angels gather the forget-me-nots and heartsease. The crumbling city and its disordered sights, the dust and all unpleasantness pass away beyond the veil, and all that remains is covered with the witchery of music. To make it real, we, too, join the children and press in close, just as our little ones do who fear not the expression of their emotions. We, too, press in where the makers of this wonderful music, sixty of them, stand in a great semicircle at the head of a flight of stone steps, and then we listen to the old, eternally old stories of life and love and joy and tragedy; listen, until our souls are filled to the utmost with the deeps of life! An intermission comes; we take a deep breath; meanwhile he of the Spanish vocabulary, made bold by enthusiasm, threaded his way to where the leader of the band was nonchalantly smoking a cigarette, wishing to congratulate him on the masterful work done by his musicians, and also to thank him for having just played “The Star Spangled Banner,” in honour of the Americans present. Shrugging his shoulders, the bandmaster remarked that his men had almost forgotten that American thing, as it was twelve years since last they played it! Thus does the Venezuelan show his love for these United States. But we forget that in the charm of the reawakened melody, for it is the kind of music that speaks real things; that brings the great forgetting of things visible; that brings the great remembering of things eternal. Mellow notes, as from the throat of a blackbird, slip through the liquid night as softly as the splash of feathered warblers in the cool water brooks, and when the strong word is uttered, it comes forth like the voice of a seer, unjarring, made strong through great tenderness.
- 47. Closer and closer we press to lose not the slightest note, and we realise that it is the music which comes to our cold Northern senses but once in a lifetime, and our ears plead for more and yet more. No strings could ever have so mellowed themselves into the loveliness of that night as did those liquid oboes, whose sylvan tones filtered through our senses with ineffable sweetness. The wood and brass seemed to have been tempered by long nights of tears and days of smiles, so ripened were they into an expression of the soul of humanity. At last the Great Mother sleeps, her children are tired and go to rest, and God’s garden blossoms away, away off beyond in the far country.
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