Margarita is so largely occupied by rocks, sand
dunes, salt marshes, and the reefs that adorn its edges,
that its people live chiefly by fishing and the handiwork
of the women, who make for the Venezuela market
cheap earthenware, cotton stuff's, and hats of straw
and vegetable fibre. The population is less than
40,000, and little more than that if we include Ca-
bagua, Tortuga, and all the neighbouring isles. The
capital is Asuncion, with a population of about 3000,
and is the happy possessor of a “ miraculous virgin
adorned with a robe of pearls. ” The ports of Pam-
patar, Pueblo de la Mar, and Pueblo del Norte are
in the eastern section. T he island was bestowed
upon Marceto Villalobos in 1524, ravaged by the
freebooter Lopez de Aguirre in 1561, attacked by
the Dutch in 1662, and otherwise buffeted in troublous
times, but Spain held on to it until the revolution
of Bolivar, when its fortitude and suffering in
the rebel cause earned for it, with the neighbouring
islands of Hermanos and Blanquilla, the title of
Nueva Esparta, or “ New Sparta,” as a separate
state in the new republic.
T he group of islets to the north-east, called the
Testigos, or ” Witnesses,” was one of the resorts of
Captain Teach, o r ” Blackbeard,” the pirate, where
he was long believed to have buried rich treasures,
though nobody could find them. Blanquilla was
once occupied b y a French refugee from Guadeloupe,
who set up a cotton industry th e re ; but he
was driven out by the Spanish, who left the island
to the wild progeny of the cattle and dogs which
had been introduced. Tortuga, to the west of Margarita,
is encircled by reefs called Tortuguillos, and
has within its small area a little fishing village.
Farther west, and part of what the Spaniards designated
as the gj Leeward Islands,” are the three clusters
of Orchilla, Los Roques, and Aves, belonging
to Venezuela. T h e y are composed of rocks and
reefs inhabited by lighthouse-keepers, and visited
only by a few fishermen. There is another Aves,
or Bird Island, in the eastern part of the Caribbean
Sea, which is the culminating point of a ridge or
bank, elsewhere submerged, running parallel with
the main range of the Lesser Antilles. It is a lonely
spot, occupied by sea-birds, and valuable only for
guano deposits, and it lay practically unclaimed
until 1856, since which time its possession has been
conceded to Venezuela.
Curasao is the headquarters of the Dutch colony
in the West Indies. Not only the neighbouring
islands of Buen Aire and Aruba, but Saba, St.
Eustatius, and the Dutch part of St. Martin in the
northern Caribbees, are dependencies, administered
by deputies of the governor of Curagao. This island
is nearly forty miles long, and has an area of two
hundred and twenty square miles. Though it has
nearly 30,000 inhabitants, about one third of them
freed negroes and the rest a mixture of European
nationalities with a preponderance of Dutch, its surface
consists mostly of arid plains, with a few fertile
glens and narrow spaces made productive by patient
toil. There is a deficiency of water, and the people
are dependent upon storing a supply from the rainfall.
T h e y raise some maize, cotton, sugar-cane,