In my hotel was the war correspondent of the _New York Herald_, just convalescing from an attack of yellow fever and still incapable of active work.

He was good enough to ask me to fill his place should hostilities ensue.

No other correspondent was in the country and he himself had to put up a 10,000 dollar bond.

I willingly agreed, and so stayed nearly two weeks in Caracas awaiting eventualities.

During this time, owing to the Carnival, the town was "wide open"; every night some twenty thousand people danced in the Plaza Bolivar, a huge square beautifully paved with tiling.