File:With Speaker Cannon through the tropics - a descriptive story of a voyage to the West Indies, Venezuela and Panama- containing views of the Speaker upon our colonial possessions (1907) (14778514612).jpg

Identifier: withspeakercanno00moor (find matches)
Title: With Speaker Cannon through the tropics : a descriptive story of a voyage to the West Indies, Venezuela and Panama: containing views of the Speaker upon our colonial possessions
Year: 1907 (1900s)
Authors: Moore, J. Hampton (Joseph Hampton), 1864-1950
Subjects: Cannon, Joseph Gurney, 1836-1926
Publisher: Philadelphia, The Book print
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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ata, a sandal protecting only the sole of the foot.Nearly everybody carried the machette; they worked withit and fought with it. I saw it used for peeling oranges,and then again for cutting timber. We looked at the towering mountains that start behindLa Guaira (they are said to reach an altitude of 4,500 feet),and then at the train that was to carry us over them toCaracas. What a pigmy train it was ! The railroad was builtby English capital—a tremendous engineering enterprise.Yes, and as we looked again at the mountains, the perilsand the people, it seemed a mighty courageous one. Thegauge was narrow and the cars were small, but the engineshad been built for mountain climbing, and they provedHerculean. The distance to Caracas as the crow flies isnine miles ; in its twistings and turnings and climbings, thelittle road is obliged to traverse twenty-three. To completethe circuit at this distance, the skill of the l)ritish engineerswas taxed. With what security from naval attack had the
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MOUNTAIN KUAD TO CARACAS. the: rd:public oi? vf^nkzuivi^a. 149 founders of Caracas builded! The capital of a countrytwice the size of Texas only nine miles from the sea, andyet, protected by barriers that hitherto had been well-nighinsurmountable! Bombard, ye foreign debt-collectingnations, the ports of Ta Guaira and Puerto Cabello, if yewill, but think well before ye send your armed hosts acrossthe rugged peaks and depths that fortify Caracas! But, we take the train. The track is six feet above thelevel of the sea at La Guaira. Then it ascends graduallyuntil, at the summit, an altitude of 3,105 feet is attained.Then the train coasts down the other side of the range untilit reaches the terminal, at Caracas, which is 2,984 feet abovethe sea-level. Five hundred mountain peaks reared them-selves as obstacles against this gigantic engineering feat. For wild ruggedness I never saw the like of the Venezue-lan mountains. They were irregular, impressive, majestic.Sherman looked them over, and

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