from the enjoyment of the fruits of their own industry. A gigantic
system of taxation had been brushed, like a spider's web, away.
Two-thirds of the Captain-Generalcy, in a word, were free.

There was little fear among any of the inhabitants of Caracas, in March,
1812, that they would again fall under the dominion of Spain. The
Carnival had been celebrated with greater joyousness than in any year
before; the proverbial gayety of the town was doubled during the
concluding festival of Shrove Tuesday; and Lent had scarcely thrown as
deep a shade as usual over the devoutest inhabitants of the city. Lent
drew to a close, and there was every prospect that Passion Week would
be succeeded by a season of rejoicing over impending defeats of the
Royalist _Goths_ in Coro and Guiana; and Passion Week came. Holy
Thursday fell on the 26th of March.

The solemn festival was ushered in with the most imposing rites of the
Church. In the great cathedral, which dwarfed all other buildings in the
Plaza, there was high mass that day. The famous bell clanged out to all
Caracas remembrance of the agony of our Lord. A silent multitude was
prostrated all day long before the gorgeous altar. Prelates and priests
and acolytes stood, splendid in vestments of purple and white and
gold, solemnly celebrating upon the steps of the sanctuary the holiest
mysteries of the Roman Catholic communion. Above and around, gigantic
tapers flared from candlesticks of beaten gold; and every little while,
the glorious anthems floated forth in majestic cadence, eddying in waves
of harmony about the colonnade that stretched in dusky perspective from
the great door to the altar, soaring above the distant arches, and
swelling upwards in floods of melody, until the vast concavity of the
vaulted nave was filled with a sea of sound. But a sultry heaviness
weighed with the incense upon the air. Elder citizens glanced uneasily