January 8th. We have finally purchased five saddle mules, at 1
prices varying from sixty-five dollars to one hundred dollars. '

The leading commercial house here is a branch of the Bloehmj
Company, a German concern that controls more business than any^
other house in Venezuela. From them we have obtained a letter^
of credit to one of their correspondents in Guanare, so that we shall:
not be obliged to carry all our money with us.
In Caracas, and to a certain extent in Valencia, Venezuelan bank
notes are accepted without question, but we are told that paper cur-
rency does not pass at all in the interior and that we must have gold
and silver. The current gold coins are called onzas, ounces, and
are valued at $16.40. Most of them are handsome old Spanish
doubloons bearing eighteenth-century dates, but there are a few
Mexican, Peruvian, and Colombian coins. All the silver is Venezue-
lan but we have not seen a single Venezuelan gold piece so far.
Although the unit coin is the silver bolivar (twenty cents), one rarely
hears that term. Small sums are given in reals (ten cents). Larger
amounts are given in pesos (eighty cents). In Caracas one commonly
hears the word fuerte, which is the term applied to the largest silver
coin, worth about a dollar. In buying mules we have heard another
term, marocote, a $20 gold piece.
