No where else in the wide world can one find such another picture as greets one's vision when, rising into cloudland, one gets one's last view of the Caribbean circling the mountain thousands of feet beneath the silent and awe-stricken spectator. It is matchless, unique--like Raphael's Madonna di San Xysto, impossible to duplicate.
As we reached this point, the sea disclosed itself as a vast mirror resplendent under the aureate glow of the quivering beams of the departing lord of day. Fleecy clouds of every form and hue flitting over sea and land, by a peculiar optical illusion, magnified both objects and distances, and unfolded before the astonished beholder a panorama of constantly varying magnitude and of surpassing loveliness. On the foreground Nature shed her brightest green, and imparted to flower and foliage the flush of the rainbow. Of a truth,
"Never did Ariel's plume At golden sunset hover O'er scenes so full of bloom."
Away and beyond was the boundless, glimmering sea, ravishing in its thousand tints, and in its harmonious dance of vanishing light and color.
So occupied were we in observing the beauties of the everchanging landscape, that, before we realized it, we were in Caracas. And so momentary was the twilight-- a characteristic of the tropics--that the transition from daylight to darkness was almost startling. We found an unexpected compensation, however, in the friendly glow of the electric lights which illumine the street and plazas of Venezuela's capital.
We spent a month in and about Caracas, finding every hour enjoyable. It is, in many respects, a beautiful city and located near the base of the mountains La Silla, the saddle--from its fancied resemblance to an army saddle--and El Cerro de Avila, in a charming valley from one to three miles wide and about ten miles long. The valley was at one time, seemingly, the bed of a lake, and its soil is, consequently, exceedingly fertile, and admirably adapted to cultivation of the farm and garden produce of both tropical and temperate climates.
A friend, who had traveled much, once told us that he regarded Taormina, in Sicily, as the best and most beautiful winter resort in the world. We are familiar with both places, and can say, in all candor, that we prefer Caracas. True, Taormina is one of the beauty spots of the world, but one expects to find more than beauty in a winter resort. Some years before our visit to Caracas we were in Taormina, and during the same time of the winter as marked our visit to Caracas, and we found it so cold that, during our entire stay, we were obliged to have our rooms heated by steam. In the latter place we could leave the doors and windows of our room open day and night, and enjoyed, during all the time we tarried there, the name soft, balmy, fragrant air, and the same equable temperature. The mean temperature we found to be about 70° F., the thermometer seldom rising above 75° F. and rarely falling below 65° F. The only place where we over had a like experience was on the slope of a mountain in one of the Hawaiian Islands, where the temperature is so constant that the native language has no word to express the idea of weather--what we call "weather" being always the same.