A LAND OF FAIR WOMEN.

Timaru Herald, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 12021, 21 March 1903, Page 3 (Supplement)

A LAND OF FAIR WOMEN.

Th.o Charming Girls of "Venezuela.

Nothing impresses the visitor to this old capital so much as the air of medieval romance that clings to everything. In reality, there is very little difference between being in Venezuela and being in Spain, the mother country. The people look, talk, act like. Spaniards, and their manners and customs are all of Spain. The better class dwellings of Venezuela, like those of Spanish cities on the other side of the Atlantic, are big, rambling structures, entered through an imposing arched gateway of stone, often with a coat-of-arms carved upon it. This gateway is furnished with high doorways of wrought iron, always carefully barred, inside, which lead through a short passage, paved with small sharp stones, like tlte street outside. into the great central patio, or .courtyard, around which the house is built in a hollow square. Though the exterior, has an exceedingly gloomy and prison-like appearance—owing principally to the fact that the windows facing the street bave heavy iron bars in front of them (a fashion borrowed by the Spaniards from their ancestors the Moors, and founded on the Oriental idea of strict seclusion for women) —the inner courtyards, where the women's lives are mostly spent, are beautiful enough, with their flowers and fountains, shaded corridors, and singing birds, to atone for the deficiencies outside. Often, in passing along the street, you see bright, dark eyes looking out at you from behind those bars. They stare at you with wondering curiosity, not unmixed with longing for the greater, though, to their minds, questionable, freedom of la Americana. These charming damsels are practically prisoners in their own homes, being under the watchful care of fathers and mothers, who will tolerate no nonsense, until, at the earliest possible age, they are given over to husbands, before whose jealousy that of Othello must pale into ineffectual fire. Many of them have duennas besides —women of middle age and severe aspect—to whose watchful care wealthy Spaniards confide the morals of their too-beautiful young wives and daughters. Juliet had a duenna, you know —a very model of her kind—and yet her Borneo climbed the balcony. Venezuelan women are, indeed, beautiful Their large, dark, soulful eyes light up the clear olive of their complexion; their full red fips, parted in smiles reveal faultless teeth, while the dark rich blood of their mixed Spanish and Indian ancestors mantles their rounded cheeks with crimson. Added to these facial charms, they have forms of perfect symmetry, small hands and feet, and indescribable suppleness and grace of movement, which make tip a type of feminine loveliness impossible to surpass.

You should see this Posado de la Embojadores—'"lnn of the Ambassadors," as Caracas's principal hotel is called, because or.ce several of the foreign ministers to Venezuela, resided within Tt—where we temporarily " put up." It is a stately twostorey affair, evidently built with an eye to earthquakes rather than to architectural effects. The usual paved portal leads from the street to the patio, in the centre of which is a beautiful little garden, protected by an iron railing. Awning-shaded balcouies, into which all the rooms open, surround this patio, and are decorated with baskets of orchids and native creepers, training over trellises. The huge bare din-ing-hal! is on the ground floor, opposite the main entrance ; and male quests, when they have finished the solid viands of midday breakfast and afternoon dinner, go upstairs to that portion of the balcony immediately übov the- dining-room, where an open space bulges out over the patio, to take their cafe con co.'iiae y cigarritos, ana to guardedly di>uiss ihe political situation amid clouds of s>moke. Here, as elsewhere in SpanishAmerica, it is the rule for ladies who happen to be stopping in the hotel, even though accompanied by their male protectors, to lake all their meals in the seclusion of their private apartments. For ladies, unaccompanied by husband, futlier or brother, it is imperative. The proprietor of a respectable hotel would hardly give them a seat in a. public dining-room, and if he did their situation would be" rendered extremely unpleasant. Indeed, the position of an unattached woman is not an enviable .one anywhere in Venezuela. It she is under the protecting wing of a male creature, her own husband or brother, or anybody else's husband or brother, it is all ritrht, and ;- no questions asked." Just why Spanish eti-

quette should compel females to eat cold food, carelessly served in stuffy bedrooms, while their lords and admirers luxuriate in the airy and well-appointed dining-room, nobody can say to a certainty, except that the custom has come down- from the days of the Moors, when women were slaves and never permitted to eat with their masters. In these Spanish-American countries "al custombre" (the custom) rules with iron hand, and must not be departed from by so much as a hair's breadth, if one desires to retain a shred of respectability. Yet no men on the face of the earth are more uniformly courteous and respectful toward all women, who do not run afoul of their prejudices, than these of Venezuela. The new woman of the twentieth century could not show her face here, much less her mannish ways and costumes, without creating a sensation, and perhaps getting into serious trouble. .