Harper's Round Table, January 28, 1896

A BOX OF GOLD IN VENEZUELA.

BY WILLIAM DRYSDALE.

"I'm going to have a shy at that gold when we get up to Potosi, Jack. I tell you forty thousand dollars in gold is worth looking for these days."

Ned Peterson leaned back in one of the great rocking-chairs on the upper gallery of the Hôtel de France, in Port of Spain, on the island of Trinidad, and puffed his cigar as complacently as though the gold were already in his trunk. He was fresh out of the School of Mines of Columbia College, and so felt at liberty to lay down the law to his fourteen-year-old brother Jack. They were both on their way into the heart of Venezuela, to the gold-mines of Naparima, of which their father was superintendent and part owner.

"Oh, that's just one of your romantic notions," Jack replied, standing by his brother and looking through the jalousie-blinds at the coolies squatting in the park across the street. "You want a chance to write to your chums in New York that you're searching for lost gold in the bottom of the Orinoco River. It sounds well, but it won't amount to anything."

"You don't know what you're talking about," the young man retorted, with great dignity. "We know the gold is there, and it will be an easy matter to find out just about where the canoe was when it capsized and dumped it into the river. Of course there has been a great deal of searching for it, but never under as favorable circumstances as we shall find. Last November, when the gold was lost, the water in the Orinoco was sixty feet higher than it is now. At this time of year, midwinter, it is so low that the steamers cannot go further up the river than the City of Bolivar. At Potosi the water is not more than three or four feet deep just now, and by sounding in the mud we will have an excellent chance of finding the box. Anyhow, it's worth trying for. Forty-one thousand three hundred and forty dollars is the exact value of it."

"You have it down fine!" Jack laughed. "Couldn't you take off a dollar or two?"

"Not a cent," Ned answered. "They send the gold down from the mines in bars, two bars in a box, and each bar weighing exactly 1000 ounces. I suppose you know that gold is worth $20.67 an ounce, always and in all countries. That price never varies. So it is easy to calculate the value of the two bars. It was a great setback to father's management, the loss of those two bars right at the beginning."

"I've heard an awful lot about those two bars of gold," Jack said, "but I never quite understood the thing. How did they come to be lost?"

Ned was quite willing to show his superior knowledge by telling the story of the lost gold. "You see, father took charge of the mines at a very bad time," he began. "It had been a gilt-edged investment for a long time, and the two-hundred-dollar shares paid ten dollars a month in dividends. But the veins of ore contracted, and dividends went down to a dollar a month, and as father stepped in just at that time he got all the blame for the reduction. Then came the loss of the two bars, and that made matters worse.

"The mines, you know," he continued, "are on the Urubu River, a branch of the Orinoco, forty miles above Potosi. Potosi is a little native settlement at the junction of the two rivers, a hundred miles above Bolivar, and Bolivar, as you know, is two hundred and fifty miles up the Orinoco from here. They run the gold into bars at the mines, pack it two bars in a box, and send the box in a big canoe down to Potosi, with a guard of three or four armed men. From Potosi it goes in the steamer to Bolivar, and from Bolivar it is carried, along with other things, by great teams of forty and sixty bullocks over the mountains to Caracas, the capital, where it is coined in the mint.

"There was where father met his great misfortune," Ned went on, "in the shipping. The gold was all right, and the guard was all right, but father didn't know that it was customary to lash the box to two big timbers, so that if anything happened to the canoe the gold would float. The men didn't care, and they came down the Urubu all right into the Orinoco, and in five minutes more they'd have had the box aboard the steamer. But the swift current or something else struck the canoe; over she went, and down went the box like a flash, and it's never been seen since. The question is how far the current would carry it in that swift water, sixty feet deep, and how far it would sink in the muddy bottom. They have spent a good many hundred dollars in searching for it, but not a trace has ever been found, though that was several months ago, and the water is low enough now.

"So you see," he concluded, "what a grand thing it would be if we could find it on our way to join the folks. I wanted to try it sooner, but they would not let us start till I had finished my course at the School of Mines."

"It wouldn't belong to us if we did find it," Jack objected.

"No, nor to father either," Ned answered. "But they've offered two thousand dollars reward for its recovery, and if we could find it, it would smooth everything out. We've got to go past Potosi in a canoe anyhow. The steamer that starts to-morrow evening goes only to Bolivar, and there we are to buy a canoe and do the rest of the journey on our own hook. Then you'll have a chance to show what you're made of, young fellow, with a hundred and forty miles to paddle in a canoe."

"Don't brag, Mr. School of Mines," Jack laughed. "I guess when it comes to paddling you'll find I'm with you."

The young Americans were surprised to find that it was a good American steamboat that was to carry them up the Orinoco on Saturday evening--a boat called the Bolivar, of about 600 tons. They knew that it was only one section of the river they would see, for the Orinoco empties into the sea through a hundred mouths, some flowing into the Gulf of Paria, others emptying into the ocean as far down the coast as Point Barrima, 230 miles away. There was not much to be seen on Saturday evening, for the boat had a long sail across the Gulf of Paria before entering the river, down past San Fernando and the pitchy shores of La Brea, near the great pitch lake. When Sunday morning dawned they were in one of the many channels of the mighty Orinoco, and then there was even less to see than before. The river was nearly a mile wide, but the shores were low and covered with mangrove bushes, and there was no sign of life or habitation.

"Say, Ned," Jack exclaimed, after they had gone through scores of miles of this low wet country, "what do you think of Venezuela? It would be a funny racket if two great nations should go to war over the boundaries of a country like this."

"It's a matter of honor with us," Ned replied, still in his dignified way.

"A matter of chills, I should say, here along the coast," Jack retorted, "though it's hot enough to cook eggs in the sand. I don't think the thermometer went below 90° all last night."

All the way up to the City of Bolivar the river was much the same, except that occasionally they passed a bluff; and wherever there was a bluff there was a little settlement, the houses having no walls but the posts that supported the thatched roofs. Nowhere was there a sign of cultivation or any land that looked as if it could be cultivated, and the only human beings were the Guaranno Indians, who lived in the huts on shore. The river water was thick with yellow mud, and well spiced with alligators and giant lizards five or six feet long.

"It will be different when we reach Bolivar," Ned said, half apologetically. "You know Bolivar is the fourth city of Venezuela, and quite a large place."

At daylight on Monday morning the steamboat lay in front of Bolivar, or, rather, at the feet of Bolivar, for the city is built on a bluff a hundred feet high, and half-way up the hill is a strong stone wharf. But the water was so low that the boat lay fifty feet beneath the wharf, and it was hard to realize that in flood-time the water is almost up to the top of the hill.

"So this is the great City of Bolivar, is it?" Jack exclaimed, after they had climbed the steep hill and passed the city wall, and stood among the yellow-walled, flat-roofed houses. "There's too much grass growing in the streets to suit a New-Yorker."

There were few wheeled vehicles in the streets, but plenty of donkeys carrying burdens. The principal buildings were the cathedral, standing on the summit of a little hill, and the jail, about which some red-capped soldiers were on guard.

"I did want to see one of those great teams of sixty bullocks starting out," Jack said; "but now that we've seen the town, the quicker you can get a canoe and let us be off, the better."

Ned was disappointed too in the appearance of Bolivar, about which he had heard so much, and before the sun was high he had bought a small dug-out canoe for eight dollars, about double its value, and the boys were off for their hundred-mile paddle against the current to Potosi, with canned provisions enough to last them all the way to the mines.

In the forty-eight hours that this journey consumed they saw just three men, all half-breed Indians, out in canoes fishing; but they tired of counting the alligators sunning themselves on mud banks. When at last a turn of the river brought Potosi into view, they shouted with laughter at the appearance of the place, though both were tired and disgusted. The settlement stood on a high bluff, like Bolivar, but it consisted of four houses or huts, all without walls, and roofed with thatch.

"No matter," Ned laughed. "If there was nothing here but a cave I should stop, all the same, and find out where that gold was lost. You see there is hardly any water in the river. We will go up to the settlement and make inquiries, and it's a mighty good thing we have both studied Spanish. Even these half-breeds speak Spanish after a fashion."

"I guess they'll speak it better than we do," Jack replied. "I can read it all right, and I could understand them if they wouldn't talk so fast; they seem to rattle off about two or three hundred words a minute."

When they climbed the hill they found that, poor as the settlement was, it commanded a beautiful view of miles of the Orinoco and a long sweep of the Urubu, a much smaller stream, but more picturesque.

The occupant of the hut nearest the edge of the bluff professed to know all about the losing of the gold, and he agreed for a small consideration to give what information he could. He was willing, too, to take the young Americanos into his house to live during the two or three days that they thought they might stay in Potosi. There was plenty of room, for the cooking-place was a fire under the nearest tree, and the beds were only hammocks swung from the wattles that answered for rafters. The custom was to turn into the hammocks "all standing," as Jack called it, without any change in the toilet, so that a large family could sleep conveniently under the one small roof.

The boy's new landlord, who called himself Felipe, lived alone in the hut with his daughter, a swarthy but handsome girl of about fifteen. Maria, the daughter, did all the work of the house, even to cutting the firewood; but the visitors soon had reason to believe that her father did not treat her very kindly. She was much interested in the newcomers, and did some little kindnesses for them. Of course Ned considered her entirely beneath his notice; but Jack saw that she had the soft brown eyes of her race, with the smooth copper-colored skin of our own Indians, though with more red in her cheeks, and a profusion of straight raven-black hair. He thought her a very pretty and intelligent-looking girl.