VENEZUELA 2009

VENEZUELA

2009

VENICE

and over 20 dye and tan woods. Pearl, sponge and tortoise-shell fisheries have increasing value. Forty-seven minerals occur, comprising asphalt, coal, copper, granite, guano, iron, lead, marble, mercury, petroleum, platinum, precious stones and salt.

Agriculture. Coffee is the principal crop and the basis of Venezuela's wealth. Cacao and cocoanuts are largely grown. Cotton and sugar are grown, but not so extensively as formerly. Manioc and maize form the chief food-crops. The herds rival those of Argentina.

Commerce and Manufactures. Exports exceed $16,000,000, agricultural productions equaling 87% of the exports and coffee being nine tenths of the contribution by agriculture. Imports, about $9,000,000, include bagging, bags, cottons, flour, machinery, provisions, rice and woolens. Manufactures are limited mainly to cheap clothing, coarse cotton, farm-tools, organs, paper, pianos, spirits and sugar. The railways cover 540 miles, 382 being on the seaboard and connecting the larger cities with their ports.

Education. Legislative enactments (1870) provided well for primary instruction, which was made free and compulsory, but primary schools number only 1,330. Eleven national girls' colleges exist. There are professional and technical schools and two universities. Roman Catholicism is the religion of the people, but tolerance for other religions is professed.

History. Columbus discovered the Orinoco (1498), Ojeda the Maracaibo district (1499), naming it Venezuela or Little Venice from an Indian lake-village. Settlement occurred It 1520. Venezuela, through Bolivar, initiated Spanish America's revolt (1811), rising that year, uniting with New Granada and Quito (1819) as one republic, but in 1829 becoming a separate state. Comparative quiet obtained till 1846, but 50 revolutions have since occurred, ten succeeding. Emancipation (1854), encouragement of immigration, opening the Orinoco to navigation by all comers (1886), the influx of $50,000,000 of foreign capital and the settlement of the Guiana dispute with Britain by arbitration (1899)- have been the significant events of the half century ending with 1902. Cipriano Castro is the president now. His administration has been marked by ceaseless difficulties with European powers and the United States.

Venice (ven'ïs) or Venezia, a city of north ern Italy, is built upon a crowded cluster of islets in the lagoon of Venice, which is separated from a gulf of the Adriatic by a long and narrow sandbank, divided into a number of small islands by six narrow sea-passages. Inside of this sandbank and between it and the mainland, about four miles distant, is the lagoon, in some parts of which islets have formed, firm enough to

be built upon and fertile enough to be cultivated. Here the city of Venice is built. As the islands in many places afford no suitable foundations for buildings, the city is largely built upon piles or stone. In the vicinity of Venice the ebbing tide lays bare a great plain of mud, laced by a network of narrow channels from which the sea

never retires, while at high water the whole surface is covered by the sea to the depth of one or two feet. The city of marble palaces seems to rise like a vision out of the sea. This alone suffices to make it at all times an object of fascination, but in summer and autumn, the season of the highest tides, when the grand place of St. Mark's is partially flooded, the city is marvelously beautiful, and must continue to be a place of interest so long as it stands. The present popula ion is 151,840. Although the many marshy islands extending along' the northwestern shores of the Adriatic are known to have been used by the inhabitants of Venetia, one of the provinces into which Italy was divided by Constantine, as places of retreat from barbarian invasions as early as the 5th century, the first permanent settlement on the site of the present city cannot be traced farther back th^n the beginning of the oth century. The physical conditions with which the early inhabitants had to contend could hardly have been more unfavorable to the development of a great and prosperous city. The soil possessed no kind of mineral wealth, the thickets which diversified the surface of the barren marshes produced no valuable timber, good drinking-water was hardly to be obtained; yet it was here that the Venetians by their energy, their industry and their genius for commerce succeeded in establishing and maintaining their independence, in making other nations their tributaries, in sending their fleets to distant shores, in controlling the destmy of empires and in building up a naval power