Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/557

Rh to Venezuela, is the seat of a pearl industry that was once important but has seriously declined. Its fisheries are flourishing, but these, together with the scant agricultural resources of the island, do not suffice to support the native population, which increases rapidly. Consequently, large numbers of the men emigrate to the mainland. The climate of the island is salubrious and attracts consumptive patients from great distances. An excellent quality of salt is produced on all these islands and along the coast of the mainland. From a lichen growing on the rocks of Orchilla is extracted the violet dye of that name.

While in the United States the Indians are an almost unregarded remnant, the aborigines of Venezuela form a large element of the less than two and a half million population. The pure whites, mainly of Spanish origin, but including immigrants from the chief trading countries, are less than two per cent of the whole. The pure aborigines are estimated at about one seventh, and there are some negroes, as African slavery existed here up to 1854. Parts of these races have intermingled in various ways, producing mestizoes, mulattoes, zambos, and mixtures of other degrees. Four fifths of the full-blooded Indians are classed as civilized, and are engaged in agriculture, or as laborers in the other occupations carried on by the whites.

The climate of different parts of Venezuela varies greatly with elevation, aspect, and soil. The highlands are in the main temperate and salubrious, while the low parts of the coast, the lands about Lake Maracaibo, the delta of the Orinoco, and parts of the plains are among the hottest regions in South America. During the rainy season, from April to October, many of these low lands are flooded, giving rise to swamp fevers and dysentery. The country does not suffer so much from yellow fever as might be expected.

The downpour of the rainy season is drained away by over a thousand rivers, many of which become dry or dwindle to chains of lagoons in the dry months. The Orinoco is the great artery of the country and is destined to become of vast importance as a channel of traffic when the region through which it flows is more thickly settled. Steamers enter it from the sea by seven of its fifty mouths, and run to Bolivar, three hundred and sixty miles up the river. Smaller steamboats can ascend as far as the Atures rapids, nearly a thousand miles. Its chief branch, the Apure, gives access to a region far west of the main stream, and, as some four hundred of its other affluents are said to be navigable, it will be seen that a vast extent of country is reached by the Orinoco system. In this respect, which is the true measure of a river's importance, the Orinoco ranks fifth on the American continent, or fourth, if we disregard the artificial helps with which the St. Lawrence has been provided. Just below the great bend of the