President was attacked in the street and
wounded. But the attackers were seized, and some of them shot on the
following day. When the news reached me I was at a distance from the
capital, staying with a friend on an estate he owned on the River
Quebrada Honda, in the State of Guarico, some fifteen to twenty miles
from the town of Zaraza. My friend, an officer in the army, was a leader
in the conspiracy; and as I was the only son of a man who had been
greatly hated by the Minister of War, it became necessary for us both
to fly for our lives. In the circumstances we could not look to be
pardoned, even on the score of youth.

Our first decision was to escape to the sea-coast; but as the risk of a
journey to La Guayra, or any other port of embarkation on the north
side of the country, seemed too great, we made our way in a contrary
direction to the Orinoco, and downstream to Angostura. Now, when we had
reached this comparatively safe breathing-place--safe, at all events,
for the moment--I changed my mind about leaving or attempting to leave
the country. Since boyhood I had taken a very peculiar interest in that
vast and almost unexplored territory we possess south of the Orinoco,
with its countless unmapped rivers and trackless forests; and in
its savage inhabitants, with their ancient customs and character,
unadulterated by contact with Europeans. To visit this primitive
wilderness had been a cherished dream; and I had to some extent even
prepared myself for such an adventure by mastering more than one of the
Indian dialects of the northern states of Venezuela. And now, finding
myself on the south side of our great river, with unlimited time at
my disposal, I determined to gratify this wish. My companion took his
departure towards the coast, while I set about making preparations and
hunting up information from those who had travelled in the interior to
trade with the savages. I decided eventually to go back upstream and
penetrate to the interior in the western part of Guayana, and the
Amazonian territory bordering on Colombia and Brazil, and to return to
Angostura in about six months' time. I had no fear of being arrested
in the semi-independent and in most part savage region, as the Guayana
authorities concerned themselves little enough about the political
upheavals at Caracas.

The first five or six months I spent in Guayana, after leaving the city
of refuge, were eventful enough to satisfy a moderately adventurous
spi