VENEZUELA

   (2,323), a federal republic in South America, founded in 1830, over three times as large as Spain, consisting of nine States and several territories; composed of mountain and valley, and in great part of llanos, within the basin of the Orinoco; between the Caribbean Sea, Colombo, Brazil, and British Guiana, and containing a population of Indian, Spanish, and Negro descent; on the llanos large herds of horses and cattle are reared; the agricultural products are sugar, coffee, cotton, tobacco, &c.; the forests yield mahogany, ebony, and dye-wood, while the mines yield iron, copper, &c., and there are extensive gold-fields, considered the richest in the world; the boundary line between the British colony and Venezuela was for long matter of keen dispute, but by the intervention of the United States at the request of the latter a treaty between the contending parties was concluded, referring the matter to a court of arbitration, which met at Paris in 1895, and settled it in 1899, in vindication, happily, of the British claim, the Schomburgk line being now declared to be the true line, and the gold-fields ours.