movements among the population and so forestall the chronic revolutions which harass the country. However, the presence of Strawbridge prevented any suspicion on the part of these rural police. Americans travel far and wide over Venezuela as oil-prospectors, rubber-buyers, and commercial salesmen. The police never interfere with their activities.
The villages through which the travelers passed were all just alike—a main street, composed of adobe huts, which widened into a central plaza where a few flamboyants and palms grew through holes in a hard pavement. Always at the end of the plaza stood a charming old Spanish church, looking centuries old, with its stuccoed front, its solid brick campanile pierced by three apertures in which, silhouetted against the sky, hung the bells. In each village the church was the focus of life. And the only sign of animation here was the ringing of the carillon for the different offices. The bell-ringings occurred endlessly, and were quite different from the tolling which Strawbridge was accustomed to hear in North America. The priests rang their bells with the clangor of a fire-alarm. They began softly but swiftly, increased in intensity until the bells roared like the wrath of God over roof and calle, and then came to a close with a few slow, solemn strokes.
As is the custom of traveling Americans, Strawbridge compared, for the benefit of his companions, these dirty Latin villages with clean American towns. He pointed out how American towns had an underground sewage system instead of allowing their slops to trickle among the cobblestones down the middle of the street; how American towns had waterworks and electric lights and wide streets; and how if they had a church at all it was certainly not in the public square, raising an uproar on week-days. American churches were kept out of the way, up back streets, and the business part of town was devoted to business.
