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 Personal Reminiscences of 
 
 The Caribbean Sea and 
 
 The Spanish Main 
 
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Personal Reminiscences of 
 
 The Caribbean Sea and 
 
 The Spanish Main 
 
 Written by 
 Francis Russell Hart 
 
 /; 
 Boston : Nineteen Hundred and Fourteen 
 
 One hundred and twenty-five copies have been printed 
 
 for Francis Russell Hart by The De Vinne Press, 
 
 in June, Nineteen Hundred and Fourteen 
 
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To the Members of the 
 
 Club of Odd Volumes: 
 
 These scattered notes of the happenings 
 of for the most part, some twenty-odd 
 years ago, were first written down for one 
 of the monthly meetings of the Club. 
 
 The insistent and perhaps ill-advised 
 suggestion of one of the members that the 
 notes be continued and finally printed is 
 the reason for putting into permanent 
 form reminiscences which have, it is 
 feared, too little of interest to merit pres- 
 ervation. 
 
 This little volume is presented to you in 
 a spirit of humility. Tou need not read it. 
 If it meets with your simple acceptance 
 it will have fulfilled its destiny and the 
 hopes of 
 
 The Author 
 
 Boston, June, 1914. 
 
Personal Reminiscences of 
 
 the Caribbean Sea and 
 
 the Spanish Main 
 
 >OR us of the New World 
 there is no place which 
 so fires our spirit of ad- 
 venture and romance as 
 the Caribbean Sea. The 
 very names "West In- 
 dies" and "the Spanish Main" give to us 
 a grateful sense of sea-fights, treasure- 
 laden ships and atrocities, the thoughts of 
 which give a pleasant tingle to our blood. 
 In picturing to ourselves palm-covered 
 shores, fever-infested jungles, and hidden 
 harbors sheltering the black flags of 
 swarthy buccaneers we can give our imag- 
 inations free scope, with assurance that 
 some part of the romantic picture is true. 
 The brave deeds, even the frightful 
 horrors, have a delightful quality of be- 
 ing part of our own family history, even 
 if a trifle vicarious and remote. The geo- 
 graphical nearness of these waters and 
 lands, the important influence of the 
 
 struggles 
 
1J 
 
 struggles for their mastery on our own 
 early development as a nation, and our 
 blood kinship with the Elizabethan sea- 
 men give to the stirring events of the 
 Caribbean a definite place in the environ- 
 ment which has controlled our own 
 growth. 
 
 Then the sense of nearness in point of 
 time is a strong fillip to our fancy. The 
 happenings which set aglow the swash- 
 buckler spirit dormant in all men are 
 events of no remote time. It is not of the 
 red and white bulls of Ireland nor of the 
 heroes of old sagas and epics that we read, 
 but records of stout-hearted men who 
 lived their adventurous and mayhap reck- 
 less lives so near our own day that it may 
 well be that the known forebears of many 
 of us here were made fearful or glad- 
 dened by the stories of their doings— 
 if, indeed, some of us do not number a 
 few sturdy sea- rovers in our own family 
 trees. 
 
 The conquering march of trade has fol- 
 lowed the path of the conquistadores, but 
 the romance has not gone. Much of the 
 past remains, not only in the white-walled 
 
 fortresses 
 
"J 
 
 fortresses of the old Spanish towns but in 
 the spirit of the peoples. It is something 
 akin to the old buccaneer spirit that 
 causes the unrest in the Latin-American 
 countries. The waters are no longer the 
 battle-ground of Europe. The sight of a 
 vessel hull down on the horizon need give 
 the tourist no fear of boarding-pikes and 
 plank-walking. Many of the links with 
 the past are intimate, however— the ques- 
 tion of a disputed title to certain lands 
 held to-day by an American corporation 
 hangs on the location of boundaries of a 
 grant of land to the Columbus family 
 four centuries ago. It matters not how 
 often one goes, the charm, the half-mys- 
 tery of the past is enthralling. It is, I be- 
 lieve, some forty-two times that I have 
 sailed by the little island believed to be 
 the first landfall of Columbus, and never 
 without a feeling of exhilaration, a pleas- 
 ant stirring of imagination and stimula- 
 tion of the adventurous within me. 
 
 For three hundred years after the com- 
 ing of Columbus, Europe poured its 
 treasure-hunters into this new land. For 
 all that period, and without cessation up 
 
 to 
 
111J 
 
 to this very day, the ships from the Span- 
 ish Main have carried to the Old World 
 a constant stream of gold. Of later years 
 this gold has been more honestly won 
 from the earth than in the earlier days of 
 plunder, and the never-ceasing stream 
 has been broadened by the products of the 
 fertile lands— sugar, coffee, fruits, rub- 
 ber, tobacco. To tell even an outline of 
 the story of the sea fathers of the Carib- 
 bean and the struggles of three centuries 
 for the mastery of that sea would take too 
 long. Often the question of peace or war 
 in Europe was determined by the sea- 
 fights in the Caribbean. 
 
 Cortez, Pizarro, Balboa, Drake, Fro- 
 bisher, Dampier, Hawkins, Oxenham, 
 Morgan, du Poinds, Vernon, de Grasse, 
 Rodney— it was men like these whose 
 deeds have given us the stories of daring 
 and romance which have made these seas 
 and shores memorable, and bred in us a 
 fervent spirit of adventure. Touching 
 lightly, if we can, for the better satisfac- 
 tion of our self-esteem, on the part which 
 our Colonial forebears bore in the slave- 
 trade with the West Indies, we find a 
 
 closer 
 
V 
 
 closer and less ignoble link in the great 
 happenings of the Spanish Main in the 
 siege of Cartagena by the British in 1741. 
 A body of some thirty-six hundred Colo- 
 nial troops, including five companies 
 from Massachusetts, were joined to the 
 expedition under Admiral Vernon at Ja- 
 maica in January, 1741, and took an ac- 
 tive part in the disastrous attempt to 
 capture that Spanish stronghold. 
 
 Your Committee has seen fit to suggest 
 that instead of telling you about the ro- 
 mantic past, and the bold sailormen and 
 adventurous soldiers and priests who 
 lived in that past, I should tell you some- 
 what of my own experiences in and about 
 the Caribbean. Perhaps the Committee 
 realized that my own knowledge of the 
 vastly entertaining historical side of the 
 Caribbean Sea is superficial, or at best, 
 where it goes deeper than the surface, 
 limited to certain short, disconnected 
 periods and places. 
 
 In giving you a few personal reminis- 
 cences gained from some years of resi- 
 dence and about twenty-two visits, I at 
 least have the advantage that even the 
 
 most 
 
VI 
 
 most learned among you cannot effec- 
 tively take issue with my statements. 
 
 The natural gateway from the north to 
 the Spanish mainland bordering on the 
 Caribbean Sea is through the Crooked 
 Island Passage in the Bahamas. The one 
 fact known as to the first landfall and 
 landing-place of Columbus is that it was 
 one of the islands in the vicinity of the 
 northern entrance to this passage. The 
 journal of Columbus and other evidence 
 relative to the precise island are suffi- 
 ciently contradictory to leave doubts in 
 the mind of any unprejudiced investiga- 
 tor as to which of these islands Columbus 
 first placed foot upon. The weight of the 
 testimony, however, is in favor of Wat- 
 lings Island, the location of which, and 
 its physical characteristics, are in accord 
 with more of the reliable recorded data 
 than any of its neighbors. 
 
 It was almost within sight of this island 
 that, some twenty years ago, I experienced 
 my first West Indian hurricane, and I 
 wish that the gift were mine to describe 
 a hurricane at sea with the power and sub- 
 limity with which Alexander Hamilton, 
 
 while 
 
Vlj 
 
 while yet a lad, described a hurricane 
 which devastated the island of Nevis. It 
 was a scfap of a boat I was on, the steam- 
 ship "Bowden"— many of you may have 
 known her later, as she became the "Bay 
 State," the hospital ship of this Common- 
 wealth during the Spanish War— a vessel, 
 if I remember rightly, of not over six 
 hundred tons gross burthen. No ships of 
 a size and build like those of Columbus 
 could have lived through that night, and 
 even the "Alvo" of the Atlas line, a vessel 
 nearly four times the size of the "Bow- 
 den," was lost with all on board within a 
 comparatively few miles of us. During 
 the early afternoon the wind had com- 
 pletely died out, this in itself a forebod- 
 ing symptom in the region of steady 
 northeast trades, and a long, heavy swell 
 from the southeast had, long before the 
 sun set, begun to make the empty ship roll 
 about like a drunken seaman. To those 
 experienced in West Indian waters the un- 
 natural calm and the rising seas were clear 
 indications of an approaching hurricane, 
 with evidence at the very beginning of 
 the first sharp onslaught of the wind that 
 
 we 
 
V11J 
 
 we were in the dangerous semicircle of 
 the storm. As you all know, a hurricane 
 is a wind-storm whirling rapidly in a not 
 very large circle— the circle itself moving 
 at a slower rate along a somewhat pre- 
 scribed path. If, as the paths of the hur- 
 ricane and ship intersect, the ship finds 
 itself so located in the circle of the hurri- 
 cane that by turning tail to the blasts it 
 can follow the circle and by so doing pass 
 around and out of the path behind the 
 centre, the ship is said to be in the safe 
 semicircle. If, on the other hand, the ship 
 is in the other half of the disturbance and 
 runs before the storm, its course will sim- 
 ply lead it further and further into the 
 thick of the hurricane. Under these con- 
 ditions there is nothing to do but keep the 
 vessel's nose to the storm and trust to God, 
 your engines,— maybe supplemented by a 
 sea-anchor,— and the staunchness of the 
 craft. That a vessel and engines built by 
 man could have stood the turmoil of that 
 night I would not have believed had I 
 not experienced it. I was the only pas- 
 senger. The strongest man could not 
 have held himself in his berth. Either 
 
 standing 
 
Vlllj 
 
 standing or half crouching, holding 
 tightly on to something or lying flat on 
 the cabin floor or deck with arms and legs 
 braced, was all that prevented broken 
 bones. 
 
 No part of the decks was free from 
 breaking seas and swashing water, — the 
 noise was one vast, unearthly shriek. So 
 awful was that night that it had a gran- 
 deur all its own. I believe at such a time 
 fear would be abnormal. Fear is more 
 often the child of thought than of experi- 
 ence. If your whole mind is occupied 
 with the needs of the moment to keep 
 your bones whole, you have no time for 
 thoughts of graver dangers. The awful 
 sense of impending calamity was with us 
 every moment,— in fact, I believe no man 
 on board had the slightest belief, hardly 
 hope, that we would ever see another day, 
 — and yet that little group of men, born 
 in some half-dozen parts of the earth, 
 stuck grimly at their posts and waited for 
 —they knew not (and who knows?) what. 
 Three times that night two of the officers 
 and the one passenger, clinging to ropes 
 in the lee of the forward deck-house, were 
 
 confident 
 
X 
 
 confident, so far as it was possible to be 
 confident of anything when the blackness 
 made one another invisible, that the stern- 
 post and after part of the ship had given 
 up the struggle against the seas and rac- 
 ing screw and that the ship was founder- 
 ing. 
 
 Yet the vessel hung together, and we 
 told each other in hushed tones the next 
 day, when with damaged engines and 
 boilers we were huddled in the lee of the 
 first landfall of Columbus, that we did n't 
 know— and I do not know now— how our 
 ship survived that night. 
 
 Passing on through this course marked 
 out for us by the great Admiral himself, 
 we can discern with strong glasses the 
 curve of the coast at Nipe, where Colum- 
 bus first landed in Cuba and now the lo- 
 cation of a great Boston sugar company, 
 the Nipe Bay Company. 
 
 Further to the west on a clear day, the 
 island of Hayti and Cape Tiburon, the 
 past rendezvous of many a formidable 
 fleet and scene of great sea-fights, can be 
 made out faintly on the horizon. 
 
 Rounding Cape Mayzi on the eastern- 
 most 
 
XI 
 
 most end of Cuba, most ships head for 
 Jamaica, but, in passing, one little inci- 
 dent during the Spanish War, relative to 
 the lighthouse on Cape Mayzi, is worth 
 recording. 
 
 One of the smaller chartered boats of 
 the then Boston (now United) Fruit 
 Company was on the way from Jamaica 
 to Boston, and through one of those un- 
 accountable actions which no after-inves- 
 tigation explains ran ashore in bright 
 moonlight some miles to the westward of 
 Mayzi, on the south side of the island. 
 The water is hundreds of fathoms deep 
 right up to the shore, which is rocky and 
 undercut by the seas. The boat was im- 
 movably wedged on a piece of ledge, 
 swinging around broadside to the over- 
 hanging shore as to a quay, and the pas- 
 sengers and crew in due course landed 
 comfortably by an ordinary gangplank to 
 the shore. 
 
 Although the ship was British, the pas- 
 sengers were chiefly Americans, and the 
 war with Spain was then several months 
 old. It was with some trepidation that 
 refuge was sought at the lighthouse, and 
 
 a 
 
Xlj 
 
 a request made that one of the company's 
 ships be signalled. Picture to yourself 
 the surprise and relief when it was found 
 that the lighthouse-keeper and his assis- 
 tants had no knowledge that Spain and 
 the United States were at war! This was 
 indicative of that lack of preparedness 
 which afterwards became so evident. 
 
 If there were time, I would like to tell 
 you something of the old J amaica— not the 
 new Jamaica of bananas, hotels, railroads, 
 and tourists, but the Jamaica of those days 
 when Sugar was king— a king so power- 
 ful and rich that the royal privy purse 
 was generously depleted to help fight the 
 great Napoleon. The Jamaica planters, 
 as a fact, contributed a fund of some two 
 hundred thousand pounds as a voluntary 
 offering to the King of England to use in 
 the wars against Napoleon when invasion 
 of England was threatened and feared. I 
 am to-day guardian of some young Eng- 
 lish children whose scanty income is ill- 
 sufficing for their education, and yet 
 whose great-grandfather used to ride into 
 Kingston from his plantations with a 
 coach and four with outriders, and who 
 
 contributed 
 
Xllj 
 
 contributed personally twenty thousand 
 pounds of that gift to the Crown. In this 
 little hint of the experience of one family 
 can be found an epitome of the island's 
 history for the last hundred years. King 
 Sugar is dead, and the Banana is king. 
 It was not, of course, my fortune to know 
 the island in those rich and certainly often 
 riotous old days, but it was my happiness 
 to know it before the panoply of the past, 
 somewhat bedraggled perhaps, had given 
 full place to the new regime. I knew it 
 when family life on the big plantations 
 still existed, when the prestige of old fam- 
 ily names was greater than that of the 
 great banana company,— for which at the 
 time I was stringing telephone wires,— 
 and when tourists were practically un- 
 known and one moved about, as I did, on 
 horseback with saddle-bags, in three- 
 mule mail-coaches, or in more preten- 
 tious private traps. Frayed at the edges 
 as were the trappings of former great- 
 ness, the hospitality and good cheer were 
 sincere and warm, and I wish it were 
 possible to take you to that dear, open- 
 hearted, lovable old Jamaica. 
 
 That 
 
X111J 
 
 That part of the mainland settled and 
 occupied by the Spanish was called, in 
 distinction from the islands of the Carib- 
 bean, the Spanish Main. Roughly it can 
 be said to have included all that part of 
 the South American and Central Ameri- 
 can coasts bordering on the Caribbean 
 Sea, but more particularly the lands ad- 
 jacent to the shore line from Lake Mara- 
 caibo to Yucatan in Central America. 
 
 The important strongholds of the early 
 Spaniards on this mainland were Carta- 
 gena, Nombre-de-Dios, Porto Bello(near 
 Nombre-de-Dios and which supplanted 
 that place), and, of lesser importance, 
 Chagres and Santa Marta. Of these Car- 
 tagena was far the most formidable and 
 interesting. Both for that reason, and 
 because I lived there for several years, 
 the few scattered reminiscences of which I 
 have made notes to tell you have as their 
 birthplace the Republic of Colombia. 
 
 Cartagena itself is too interesting a 
 place to pass by without a word as to its 
 past— a past the records of which are 
 singularly present in the almost imperish- 
 able masonry of its buildings and fortifi- 
 cations 
 
XV 
 
 cations, as well as in the traditions and 
 habits of its citizens. 
 
 The history of the European settle- 
 ments in Colombia may be said to have 
 begun about a century before the Pil- 
 grims landed at Plymouth. Columbus 
 touched at points on the Colombian coast 
 in the autumn of 1502. 
 
 The conquistadores, seeking a safe 
 storehouse for their treasure and a ren- 
 dezvous for their ships, found in the land- 
 locked bay of Cartagena a place with 
 every natural condition for their purpose. 
 By confining the only navigable entrance 
 to the bay— a body of water about two- 
 thirds the size of Buzzards Bay— to the 
 narrow opening at Boca Chica and pro- 
 tecting that entrance by two massive stone 
 forts, they secured one of the finest and 
 best protected harbors in the world. The 
 city of Cartagena was founded in 1533, 
 and the construction of its fortifications, 
 many of which are standing in practically 
 perfect condition to-day, began immedi- 
 ately. The walls were begun near the 
 close of the sixteenth century and finished 
 just before the end of the seventeenth. 
 
 Notwithstanding 
 
XVI 
 
 Notwithstanding that there was no lack 
 of slave labor, the walls are reputed to 
 have cost so many millions that I hesitate 
 to quote the Spanish records, which give 
 an equivalent of over $50,000,000 of our 
 money. The system of walls, moats, and 
 bridges was designed to make the place 
 impregnable from land or sea. It is note- 
 worthy, however, that those early Span- 
 iards did not put all of their efforts and 
 labor into the fortifications; their other 
 works were designed to stand for cen- 
 turies; the cathedral, begun in 1538 and 
 finished a half-century before the first 
 shelter was built at Plymouth, stands to- 
 day, a dignified if somewhat sombre me- 
 morial of that close association of the 
 sword and the cross which must have 
 been confusing to the minds of the toiling 
 slaves who worked on its building. The 
 old Inquisition Building, now the private 
 residence of Colombian friends of mine, 
 is a grim reminder of how near to our 
 own time these old days were. 
 
 The convent of Santo Domingo, built 
 in 1559 and interesting in design, is in a 
 perfect state of preservation, and that of 
 
 the 
 
XVlj 
 
 the Franciscan fathers, built in 1575, while 
 in a less perfect condition, is picturesque 
 as seen from my old office windows across 
 the Plaza de la Independencia. 
 
 In 1586 the walls and fortifications 
 were not wholly completed, and Sir Fran- 
 cis Drake captured the place, accepting 
 for its release a large ransom. A little less 
 than a century later, Admiral du Pointis, 
 with a French fleet supplemented by a 
 fleet of buccaneers from Hayti, again 
 forced the payment of a ransom, and in 
 1 74 1 the British fleet under Admiral Ver- 
 non, with many troops on board, took the 
 place after a long siege. 
 
 This is the expedition to which I al- 
 luded and in which American Colonial 
 troops were employed. The victory was, 
 however, only partial, and accompanied 
 by such heavy losses that it was almost 
 more serious than a defeat. 
 
 During the first year of my residence 
 at Cartagena I lived just under the 
 shadow of the fortress of San Lazaro, 
 which never surrendered and where one 
 of the bravest and bloodiest battles of this 
 continent was fought. 
 
 Colombia 
 
XVllj 
 
 Colombia freed herself, under the lead- 
 ership of Bolivar, from Spain in 1819, 
 and twice during the war of indepen- 
 dence Cartagena was besieged,— in fact, 
 in the too frequent political troubles of 
 Colombia since the day of her indepen- 
 dence the extraordinary strength of Car- 
 tagena to withstand ordinary infantry 
 attacks has made it a city to be besieged 
 rather than taken by storm. 
 
 Traces of the old road to the Magda- 
 lena River and the interior still remain— 
 the old road down which came whip- 
 driven bands of Indians carrying the 
 looted treasure from the mountains and 
 river valleys of the mysterious back land 
 whence came always the alluring tales of 
 El Dorado. A few notes relative to that 
 wonderful golden country— that ignis 
 fatuus of the conquistadores — and some 
 researches in a small way that in associa- 
 tion with others I have made, may be of 
 some interest. 
 
 In proportion to the needs of the peo- 
 ple for a ductile metal, gold appears 
 to have been abundant and. in common 
 use among the native tribes in nearly 
 
 all 
 
XVlllj 
 
 all of the early settled places on the main- 
 land. 
 
 For the practical uses of a primitive 
 people and for their decoration the easily 
 worked metal, found without excessive 
 labor in a pure state in the river beds, was 
 adapted by crude tools to their needs. It 
 was not strange that the prodigal use of 
 the metal awakened in the early discover- 
 ers and settlers a lust for conquest and a 
 belief in the New World as an inexhaus- 
 tible source of treasure. Herrera tells of 
 the gift, in 1518, to Juan de Grijalva by 
 the cacique of Tabasco, of a complete 
 suit of gold armor, made and fitted as if 
 it had been made of steel. 
 
 Stories reached the coast of a wonder- 
 ful country back in the mountains with a 
 great and marvellous city fairly ablaze 
 with glittering gold and priceless gems. 
 The search for El Dorado and the great 
 city of Manoa, on the banks of a mythical 
 inland sea, began. The imagination per- 
 mitted no limit to the extravagant won- 
 ders of this place : its houses were covered 
 with golden tiles and filled with statues 
 of pure gold, while its king sat on a 
 
 throne 
 
XX 
 
 throne of solid gold. So definite were 
 these beliefs that on nearly all sixteenth 
 century maps the lake called Parima is 
 shown. The imaginative and falsifying 
 explorer is not a phenomenon of our day 
 only. In 1534 one Juan Martinez re- 
 ported that he had spent seven months in 
 Manoa. How colossal a lie his own story 
 was, it is now impossible to tell, but by 
 the time it had been repeated by the ex- 
 cited and credulous tongues of the monks 
 who heard his dying tale, the story was 
 one to inflame the cupidity of the adven- 
 turous of all nations. The expedition of 
 Sir Walter Raleigh in 1595, by way of 
 the Orinoco, although a complete failure, 
 as of course it had to be, was reported by 
 him to have confirmed the tales. The 
 location of El Dorado, although some- 
 what uncertain in the descriptions gener- 
 ally given, fixed its position at the head 
 waters of one or the other of the great 
 rivers. It was generally believed that up 
 in the mountains, dimly seen by those 
 who ventured inland, there existed a great 
 body of auriferous earth from which the 
 mysterious inland lake, extracting the 
 
 gold, 
 
XXI 
 
 gold, fed its waters to the Orinoco and 
 other rivers entering the Caribbean. 
 Humboldt made a careful study of the 
 geography, facts, and traditions respect- 
 ing El Dorado, and it was not until his 
 time that the belief in its actual existence 
 was ended. 
 
 In 1536 Nicolas Federmann searched 
 the upper waters of the Magdalena, and 
 Geronimo de Ortal tried to discover on 
 the banks of the Meta the reputed Casa 
 del Sol, or Temple of the Sun. 
 
 In the light of certain explorations of 
 Lake Guatavita in Colombia, it is inter- 
 esting to note that Humboldt, in an en- 
 deavor to give due weight to the possible 
 facts that may have given basis for the 
 stories of El Dorado, tells of an inland 
 lake, which he believes to have been Gua- 
 tavita, where the native great men, their 
 bodies covered with powdered gold, 
 bathed in the waters, and where the In- 
 dians reported that gold dust and golden 
 vessels were thrown into the lake as a 
 sacrifice to the Adoratorio de Guatavita. 
 
 The Padre Fray Pedro Simon went to 
 teach in the Franciscan convent at Bo- 
 gota 
 
XXlj 
 
 gota in 1604, and for nearly twenty years 
 devoted himself to compiling historical 
 records. He describes the lake, and the 
 offerings, with prescribed ceremonies, of 
 gold, jewelry, emeralds, and other things. 
 In addition to the usual offerings in the 
 way of worship he relates that there were 
 men still alive who had witnessed the 
 burial of some caciques who had ordered 
 their bodies and wealth thrown into the 
 lake, and that when it was rumored that 
 strange bearded men had entered the 
 country searching for gold, many Indians 
 brought their hoarded treasures and of- 
 fered them as a sacrifice in the lake. Some 
 of these offerings were in such quantities 
 that the cacique of the village of Simijaca 
 is said to have alone thrown into the lake 
 forty loads of gold of one quintal each, 
 requiring to be carried by forty Indians 
 from his village. 
 
 The cacique of Guatavita is supposed 
 to have been, before the conquest by the 
 Spaniards, a powerful ruler controlling a 
 large and populous territory, and keep- 
 ing up an army of many thousand war- 
 riors. The lake of Guatavita is some nine 
 
 to 
 
Treasure from El Dorado 
 [Theo. de Bry, Pars vi., 1596] 
 
XXllj 
 
 to ten thousand feet above the sea, and 
 formed on the top of one of the moun- 
 tains of the Colombian Andes. 
 
 The cacique appears to have been also 
 a sort of head priest of the Chibchas. 
 Nearly all of the old chroniclers give de- 
 scriptions of the periodical offerings and 
 other rites observed to placate the pro- 
 tecting deity who was supposed to live in 
 the lake. Grand processions of the ca- 
 cique's subjects, carrying gold offerings, 
 went up the mountain, and when gathered 
 on the banks of the lake the cacique and 
 his head man, embarking in canoes, went 
 to the exact centre of the lake. There the 
 cacique, fully anointed in a paste of pow- 
 dered gold, plunged into the lake, while 
 from about its banks the people shouted 
 and threw far out into the waters their 
 offerings of gold, emeralds, and other 
 valuable gifts. It well may be that the 
 tales of the Golden Man bathing in the 
 lake are the foundation for the name El 
 Dorado, afterwards applied to the whole 
 vicinity. Prisoners taken by the Span- 
 iards from time to time, to secure good 
 treatment or release told of the sacred 
 
 lake 
 
XXlllj 
 
 lake in the bottom of which could be 
 found immeasurable wealth. The Span- 
 iards, in fact, made various attempts to 
 drain the lake. Recent photographs 
 show the deep cut in the further side of 
 the surrounding hills left by the last 
 Spanish attempt to reach the treasures by 
 drainage. From time to time, by the use 
 of sounding leads or by the washing of 
 mud scraped from the banks, small gold 
 images and emeralds have been found. In 
 1897 a company of Colombians started 
 anew the work of drainage— an inconve- 
 nient matter on account of the surround- 
 ing hills. In 1899 a friend of mine, an 
 Englishman, acquired, through a con- 
 tract, the right on profit-sharing terms to 
 complete the drainage of the lake. 
 
 A number of his friends, some attracted 
 by the historical and archaeological inter- 
 est of the quest, and others by the hope of 
 extraordinary profits, joined in furnish- 
 ing the requisite funds for the engineer- 
 ing work necessary. This work, unfortu- 
 nately delayed several years by civil war 
 in Colombia and by other causes, was in 
 effect completed a few years ago by a 
 
 somewhat 
 
XXV 
 
 somewhat ingenious plan. A horizontal 
 tunnel was bored through one of the side 
 hills to a point below, but a little to one 
 side of, the edge of the lake. A vertical 
 shaft was then sunk, and, when com- 
 pleted, so connected with the lake that the 
 latter was drained in much the same way 
 as the water is emptied from a bath-tub. 
 Great difficulty has been found, however, 
 in handling the mud and sand at the bot- 
 tom. Unfortunately, the place appears 
 to be afflicted with prolonged droughts, 
 and during the last few years there has 
 been practically no rainfall at all. So 
 soon as the water had been drained off, 
 and before the completion of any proper 
 system of working the mud, the surface 
 of the bottom was baked by the sun into a 
 hard and solid mass below which the 
 mud is in a semi-liquid state. Being han- 
 dicapped by lack of funds, the work has 
 made little progress latterly, but many 
 beautiful gold ornaments have been 
 found, many emeralds, quantities of 
 beads, and much old pottery. The indi- 
 cations are that these were all from the 
 mud near the shore, and that no part of 
 
 the 
 
XXVI 
 
 the articles found have come from the 
 centre, where the bulk of such things 
 would presumably have drifted. 
 
 Within the last year additional funds 
 have been subscribed to permit the 
 proper working of the mud in the centre, 
 which can only be done with adequate 
 washing machinery and a supply of 
 water. 
 
 Enough has already been found, how- 
 ever, to establish the truth of some portion 
 of the traditions regarding the lake. We 
 may, in fact, have found the very birthplace 
 of that alluring story of El Dorado which 
 drew to their death many brave souls, and 
 was largely responsible for the vigor of 
 the struggles for the mastery of the New 
 World. 
 
 I will not weary you with an account of 
 the construction and operation of the Car- 
 tagena Railroad and its allied undertak- 
 ings. It is enough to say that the purpose 
 of the railroad was to connect the harbor 
 of Cartagena with the Magdalena River, 
 the great commercial highway of Colom- 
 bia, and incidentally to develop the coun- 
 try along its route. Misconceptions of 
 
 various 
 
XXVlj 
 
 various kinds had encouraged the pro- 
 moters to expect more traffic and a more 
 rapid development of contributory enter- 
 prises than the facts justified. Those who 
 took over the direction of the company's 
 affairs even before the completion of the 
 first section of the railroad were not con- 
 cerned in the conception of the under- 
 taking. It was at that time that I became 
 connected with the company as its general 
 manager in Colombia. In addition to 
 the railroad, the company operated a line 
 of steamboats on the Magdalena River, 
 which is navigable by boats of the Missis- 
 sippi River type to the rapids at Honda, 
 nearly six hundred miles from the coast; 
 above the rapids, around which a line of 
 railroad carries the cargo and passengers, 
 smaller boats are worked on the river for 
 a distance of some one hundred and fifty 
 miles, connecting now— but not then— 
 with the Girardot Railway to Bogota. 
 
 The voyages up and down the river 
 were always a delight to me, and to those 
 of you who are not too fussy about your 
 food and some of the minor comforts of 
 travelling I can suggest no more interest- 
 ing 
 
XXVI 1 J 
 
 ing and comfortable way of getting into 
 the heart of a South American country. 
 One of the chief delights to me, however, 
 was always the rapids at Honda, and the 
 excitement connected with getting our 
 upper-river boats either up or down the 
 rapids. The procedure was not unlike 
 that of which you have seen pictures 
 taken on the Nile. The boat is kept off 
 from the rocky shore by long poles or 
 spars held somewhat uncertainly by ten 
 or more men each and driven forward by 
 its own stern paddle-wheel supplemented 
 by ropes fastened to trees on the shore and 
 pulled by strong donkey-engines in the 
 fore part of the boat. The passage up the 
 rapids takes about five hours; the return 
 passage, when required for repairs or 
 other exigencies, from three to five min- 
 utes. The fact that the insurance did not 
 attach from a certain point below to an- 
 other point above the rapids used to give 
 an added zest to the operation. 
 
 You must forgive me if my recollec- 
 tions are somewhat scattering and discon- 
 nected. I am jotting down incidents as 
 they occur to me. 
 
 The 
 
XXVlllj 
 
 The railroad from Cartagena leads into 
 the Turbaco Hills, as they are called, fol- 
 lowing the old Spanish path to the river, 
 and reaches at an elevation of about six 
 hundred feet, some fifteen miles from the 
 shore, the town of Turbaco,— a little vil- 
 lage, by the way, which had some distinc- 
 tion at one time, as it was here that Gen- 
 eral Santa Anna took refuge when forced 
 to flee from Mexico. He built a large, 
 comfortable house, and appears to have 
 enjoyed, for some time at any rate, the 
 comforts which could be purchased with 
 the price paid by America. On the slope 
 of the Turbaco Hills towards the sea I 
 had for my amusement a small portrero, 
 or cattle ranch, of about seven hundred 
 and fifty acres, and the primitive little 
 village of Turbaco and its people became 
 well known to me. I remember very well 
 one little incident from which Judge Par- 
 menter, our secretary, should draw in- 
 spiration. I had come up from Carta- 
 gena on the afternoon train to spend the 
 night at my bungalow on the portrero, 
 and on arrival had been met by old Mary, 
 my black Jamaica washerwoman, her 
 
 shiny 
 
XXX 
 
 shiny ebony face streaked with tears. Old 
 as she herself was, she had just returned 
 from a trip to Jamaica, where she had 
 gone to make a shroud in which her 
 mother was in due course to be buried,— 
 not that her mother was dead, but that the 
 long trip to prepare her for her last voy- 
 age was an act of daughterly devotion 
 which gave great comfort to the aged 
 black mammy in Jamaica. On her return 
 from this cheerful errand, and the family 
 fetes connected therewith, she had 
 brought with her a goose and gander, 
 birds so rare in the fowl yards of Carta- 
 gena that she had incurred the envy of 
 our previously friendly neighbors. The 
 cause of the tears was soon related: The 
 goose had been stolen, and Mary and the 
 overseer, a tall Jamaica negro who had 
 seen army service on the Gold Coast, 
 more than suspected a half-breed woman 
 of Turbaco called Manuela. The story 
 told, and the magnitude of the tragedy 
 realized, I started at once on horseback 
 with Fraser, the overseer, for Turbaco, 
 and called on my friend the alcalde. 
 Unhappily, Manuela was of the family 
 
 of 
 
XXXI 
 
 of some member of the household of the 
 alcalde, and for a brief moment I thought 
 the wheels of justice had small chance of 
 turning in a direction favorable to our 
 quest. But our arguments prevailed, and 
 a search-warrant, accompanied by two 
 peons dignified by policemen's badges, 
 issued from the Alcaldia. 
 
 The search of Manuela's wattled and 
 thatched cottage and outbuildings not 
 only brought to light the goose, but vari- 
 ous small articles branded with the name 
 of the railway company. As the alcalde 
 pointed out, however, the warrant gave 
 the right to search for the goose only, and 
 nothing else could in honor be seen or 
 noted. 
 
 Back in the dark and smoky Alcaldia 
 the investigation ended with the return of 
 the goose to Fraser. My overseer, how- 
 ever, had not the rewards which a sense 
 of humor had given me in this tame goose 
 chase, and protested with some anger 
 when the alcalde was dismissing Manuela 
 without even a reprimand. He insistently 
 demanded that the woman be punished. 
 
 "What!" said the alcalde. "Is it not 
 
 enough 
 
XXX1J 
 
 enough that the poor woman has to give 
 back the goose, after all her trouble?" 
 
 It was in this same interesting little vil- 
 lage that on one quiet Sunday, just as the 
 people were leaving the picturesque old 
 Spanish church on one side of the plaza, 
 a shower of small aerolites, accompanied 
 by a slight detonation, fell on the very 
 heads and at the feet of the congregation. 
 It was undeniably a miracle, and those 
 little pieces of heaven-born stones are still 
 being worn as amulets by children in 
 Turbaco, not only as the sole article of 
 apparel, but also, in accordance with cus- 
 tom, as the sole precaution against all 
 dangers of accident or disease. The fact 
 that at the same moment the miracle oc- 
 curred an unusually large blasting explo- 
 sion, postponed for safety until Sunday 
 had kept people from the neighborhood, 
 had taken place in one of the railway rock 
 cuts some miles away, would probably, 
 even if known, not have lessened the effi- 
 cacy of the amulets. 
 
 It must have been before the town was 
 protected by this wholesale distribution 
 of evil-defeating charms that a great fire 
 
 took 
 
XXXI lj 
 
 took place there, wiping out about a quar- 
 ter of its area and destroying some sev- 
 enty-five or one hundred of the quick- 
 burning thatched houses. One impression 
 of that fire is vividly in my mind : I had 
 been working with all the railway em- 
 ployees I could muster, helping tear 
 down and drag away a group of houses, 
 outbuildings, ' and fences to stop the 
 spread of the fire in one direction, and 
 started down a small side street to the rail- 
 way storehouse for a new supply of ma- 
 chetes, and found in the middle of the road 
 a whole family of peons grouped about 
 all of their household goods, on the top of 
 which was a chromo print of their patron 
 saint. The man was first prayerfully en- 
 treating the saint to preserve his house 
 from the flames, and then threatening him 
 if he failed to do so. No other steps were 
 being taken to keep the fire away. It was 
 too interesting a group to leave, but with 
 a few words of suggestion as to ways in 
 which he and his family might aid the 
 saint in protecting the house, I passed on. 
 Returning shortly afterwards, just as 
 the flames caught the house and it burnt 
 
 rapidly 
 
XXXlllj 
 
 rapidly with the sudden rush and roar 
 with which these empty wattle and thatch 
 huts always burn, I was just in time to see 
 the owner hurl the portrait of his hitherto 
 respected patron saint into the midst of 
 the flames, with imprecations which only 
 my failure to understand his rapid and 
 angry Spanish prevents my repeating to 
 you. As the prefect of the province after- 
 wards told me in confidence, saints are all 
 very well in their way, but they are 
 entitled to the reasonable aid of the ordi- 
 nary human agencies. Owing to its mas- 
 sive masonry construction and the exclu- 
 sive use of tiled roofs, the city of 
 Cartagena has had no serious fires, nor is 
 it likely to have. 
 
 Perhaps one of the strangest things 
 about all of these countries of northern 
 South America and of Central America is 
 the fact that the almost aboriginal life of 
 the country knocks so closely at the gates 
 of cities that have been civilized for cen- 
 turies. Cartagena, for example, settled 
 nearly four centuries ago, with its fine 
 buildings, good streets, electric lights, 
 ice-plant, clubs, and cafes, is hardly more 
 
 than 
 
XXXV 
 
 than a rifle-shot from regions which must 
 look to-day not far different from the time 
 when Drake landed there. Except in one 
 direction, no road on which a wheeled 
 vehicle can travel extends for more than 
 three miles from the centre of the city, the 
 one exception being a privately owned 
 narrow roadway along the harbor's edge 
 to the country house of one of the pros- 
 perous merchants. 
 
 For amusement I once drove, during 
 the dry season, a light two-wheeled cart 
 up to my portrero of Santa Ysabel, of 
 which I have spoken, a distance of ten 
 miles. This was along the Camina Real, 
 the main path to the interior, and even so 
 it required lifting the cart over many 
 places, and overcoming such difficulties 
 that even my man preferred to send the 
 cart back on a railway flat-car. 
 
 What is true of the outward evidences 
 of civilization is to a large extent true of 
 the habits and intellectual life of the 
 people. 
 
 In the large cities the better class of 
 people are intelligent and cultured. The 
 standards of education are high. Their 
 
 literary 
 
XXXVI 
 
 literary taste, their knowledge of the 
 world's history and the current events of 
 politics, books and music are above the 
 average of similar communities in coun- 
 tries which, on the whole, are far more 
 developed. Yet within less than fifty 
 miles are villages of five to ten thousand 
 people who live exactly as they have lived 
 for hundreds of years. Men of promi- 
 nence in these villages, landowners, had 
 vocabularies so limited that no words 
 were known to them to explain the sim- 
 plest thing regarding a locomotive until 
 its actual presence made it possible. The 
 citizens of the town of Soplaviento ad- 
 dressed a petition to the government ask- 
 ing that the railway be not permitted to 
 have a station at their town, because, it 
 being on the further side of a river over 
 which we had constructed a steel bridge, 
 they knew that no bridge could be built 
 over which it would be safe for trains 
 with the added weight of passengers and 
 freight to pass. They naively remarked 
 in the petition that their less well in- 
 formed fellow-citizens might be tempted, 
 in their ignorance, to board the train on 
 
 their 
 
XXXV1J 
 
 their side of the river if the train stopped 
 there! 
 
 The railways have changed many 
 things, but those pioneer days of their 
 construction were in many ways interest- 
 ing, as were the people, not only those in- 
 digenous to the country, but those who 
 came there— often, it must be confessed, 
 for the good of the countries they had left. 
 One of my dearest friends (and I learned 
 to love him sincerely) was the dear old 
 Bishop of Cartagena, Monsignor Biffi, a 
 venerable Italian, with a long white 
 beard, finely educated, but with a heart as 
 simple and loving as the cure in the open- 
 ing chapters of "Les Miserables." In his 
 flowing, purple robes, with the long chain 
 and cross hanging below his white beard, 
 and his gentle, stately walk, he often came 
 to dine with me. With his capacity to 
 talk perfectly in Italian, Spanish, Eng- 
 lish, French, German, Persian, and I 
 know not how many more tongues, he was 
 an invaluable guest at the sort of polyglot 
 dinners I used to give. Of one rare fac- 
 ulty he had the secret, which I never dis- 
 covered: he always instinctively knew 
 
 whether 
 
XXXV11J 
 
 whether the person presented to him was 
 of his church or not. If of the Catholic 
 faith, his hand always went forward, 
 palm down, and it was kissed; if not of 
 that church, Jhis hand always went out 
 ready for kindly and welcoming grasp in 
 the ordinary fashion. 
 
 Althqugh combining in himself the at- 
 tributes for the priesthood with those of a 
 cultivated gentleman and man of the 
 world, Monsignor Biffi had all the charm 
 which came from an unaffectedly simple 
 nature. It was this quality of simplicity 
 that made it possible for him to adapt his 
 teachings to the wholly illiterate peas- 
 antry. 
 
 If church customs almost medieval in 
 character helped hold the ignorant to a 
 faith in something, let these customs be 
 left undisturbed, he said, rather than that 
 their faith should be weakened. 
 
 I remember an incident illustrating 
 both the antiquity of the customs at Car- 
 tagena, and Monsignor Biffi's anxiety to 
 do nothing to shock the reverence of the 
 people for any of the forms which con- 
 nected the church with their daily lives. 
 
 During 
 
XXXVlllj 
 
 During Holy Week, from Thursday 
 morning until the firing of a gun from one 
 of the wall bastions on Easter forenoon, 
 any labor not absolutely necessary is 
 strictly prohibited in Cartagena. No car- 
 riages can be used. A man on horseback 
 is stopped at the gates and ordered to dis- 
 mount and lead his animal. All the ordi- 
 nary functions of city life, including 
 marketing and other almost necessary 
 occupations, are prohibited. 
 
 Exceptions to these rules are made only 
 when, on request, the bishop grants a writ- 
 ten "permit," a privilege accorded but 
 sparingly in cases of illness or other seri- 
 ous condition. 
 
 Our problem was how to operate the 
 railway during the period. The trains 
 had taken the place of the older forms of 
 reaching the city by horse and mule, and 
 yet, unlike the latter, the trains could not 
 stop outside the city limits. The engine- 
 houses, shops, water-tanks, and all the nec- 
 essary terminal equipment, were within 
 the city. 
 
 Somewhere I have preserved the orig- 
 inal permit given to work the trains dur- 
 ing 
 
xl 
 
 ing the proscribed period. Translated, it 
 reads something as follows: "Permission 
 is hereby given the Railway Company to 
 operate its trains, as is the custom in 
 European countries, provided they are 
 moved as nearly as possible without noise 
 and at the speed of a man walking, and 
 that the whistles be not blown nor the 
 bells permitted to ring except to avoid 
 accident." 
 
 The italicized words served as an ex- 
 pedient explanation— almost apology— 
 to those who might see the permit and be 
 shocked at its liberality. 
 
 The failure of the French Canal Com- 
 pany had left stranded in that part of the 
 world many adventurers and some few 
 honest men. Some of both drifted into 
 our service. One distinguished but some- 
 what worn and wan-looking Italian came 
 one day looking for any sort of a job. I 
 sent him as camp master in charge of a 
 gang of laborers at work on the embank- 
 ments near that river the crossing of 
 which so distressed the people of Sopla- 
 viento. He did his work well, but I did 
 not see him again for some time. Mr. T. 
 
 Jefferson 
 
xli 
 
 Jefferson Coolidge, just then returned 
 from his mission to France, made me a 
 visit, and at the same time Mr. Gordon 
 Abbott, who had come to Cartagena to 
 see, among other things, if I were a fit 
 person to manage the property, was also 
 with me. These two, with an appropriate 
 party equipment, went over the line on 
 horseback, a journey of several days, and 
 were astonished to find in this camp mas- 
 ter, at the most forsaken-looking native 
 kraal on the whole line, an Italian gentle- 
 man of courtly manners, high breeding, 
 and fine intelligence ; a man who, in fact, 
 gave to his little tent in the mosquito 
 swamp the atmosphere of one of the capi- 
 tals of Europe. Fortunately, they all 
 spoke French, as Gondolfi, the camp mas- 
 ter, spoke no English. 
 
 Another interesting member of the flot- 
 sam and jetsam of our life there was Al- 
 phonse Laurent, a Frenchman of good 
 family who had been concerned too inti- 
 mately in some Royalist plot and had 
 left France from necessity. He had 
 served on the staff of a Russian general in 
 the Russo-Turkish War, had been con- 
 cerned 
 
xlij 
 cerned in a revolution in Hayti, and had 
 lost all he had of worldly goods at Pan- 
 ama—for be it known that Laurent was 
 honest and generous, and Panama in those 
 days was no place for a man with these 
 qualities. He was our chief accountant 
 until his besetting sin, over-drinking, so 
 mixed his head on figures that we had to 
 put him at other work. It was while he 
 was chief accountant, however, that the 
 incident always afterwards referred to as 
 H 's suicide happened. 
 
 H was clerk in the office ; he was a 
 
 Colombian of nearly pure Spanish ances- 
 try, well connected locally, and had mar- 
 ried the daughter of a distinguished Co- 
 lombian. It was not for these reasons 
 solely, however, that Laurent gently for- 
 gave many of the lapses which occurred 
 
 owing to H 's overfondness for the 
 
 sparkling wines of France when his 
 pockets were full, and the more cheaply 
 effective white rum from the local stills 
 when his purse was slim. Laurent's heart 
 was big, and his own slender purse was 
 always open to help those of his staff in 
 trouble. Maybe, too, the knowledge of 
 
 his 
 
xliij 
 his own growing weakness made him re- 
 main H 's friend when his own peo- 
 ple had refused him further aid and only 
 Laurent's friendly excuses kept him in his 
 
 job. H was being given one last 
 
 trial— positively the last, I had told Lau- 
 rent. One night late, as I sat idly watch- 
 ing the sea breaking on the shore at the 
 foot of the little cocoanut palm grove be- 
 hind my house just outside of the city 
 walls, I heard the clatter of the unshod 
 hoofs of a pony coming down the road,— 
 the little South American ponies, with 
 their quick, short, single-foot gait, make 
 a curious snappy sound that we never hear 
 in the North,— and shortly came Laurent, 
 a picturesque sight with his big white hel- 
 met and boots and spurs (all of which 
 seemed many sizes too big for him), has- 
 tily put on over grandly striped pajamas. 
 It would not be right to disguise the truth. 
 Laurent was certainly drunk— but drunk, 
 as he would have said, as a gentleman of 
 France should be— that is, he was still 
 able to talk and to show that gentle po- 
 liteness that never left him. 
 
 Laurent, when sober, could talk equally 
 
 well 
 
xliiij 
 well in either French, Spanish, or Eng- 
 lish. When drunk he showed a gentle- 
 manly impartiality and used them in a 
 confusing fashion. He did not get off his 
 horse, but sat somewhat unsteadily; the 
 horse, owing to the discomfort of a ner- 
 vously swinging pair of legs equipped 
 with Spanish spurs, partook of the rider's 
 nervousness. 
 
 His story was more or less as follows: 
 u Oh, Mr. Hart, it is the dreadful that has 
 happened! You know me, Senor, It is 
 I, Laurent, after my little dinner, I sit by 
 
 heart and done for that H (Ach! 
 
 that canaille!) more than a brother 
 could, and now what is that he has done? 
 I, Laurent, after my little dinner, I sit by 
 my table and take my cafe and perhaps 
 one petit verre— peut-etre more, not 
 much, monsieur, but then, this country, 
 Senor, and what can one do? And then 
 
 comes that H , his eyes like coals of 
 
 fire and his voice like the dead calling, 
 and he say to me, 'Laurent, all is over— I 
 can live no more ; I have my wife's ring 
 taken and have used it for drink. I must 
 die. Laurent, I come to you — you have 
 
 been 
 
xlv 
 been my friend— you will shoot me. It 
 is best!' So, Senor, I look at him— I say 
 to myself, 'You coward ! you will not shoot 
 yourself, and if you do the better for your 
 
 family'— and I say, 'H , you pig, I 
 
 will not shoot you. I have done much— 
 too much for you, but this I will not do. 
 But you can shoot yourself,' and I handed 
 him my pistol. And that pig, Senor, he 
 turned the pistol towards himself, and I 
 
 cry out, 'No, H , not here ! You shall 
 
 not a mess make of my house !' and I show 
 him the door, and I say, 'Now shoot!' and 
 I go back for another little glass— for 
 that man he have shook my nerves. And 
 I wait for the shot, but none comes. Then, 
 ah! what do I hear, Senor?— it is that dog 
 
 of an H running, running fast as his 
 
 legs can carry him, and with my pistol, 
 Monsieur! I saddle the pony, but not so 
 quickly enough, for I follow too late, he 
 gets to that saloon, el Polo Norte, and he 
 has sold my pistol and they have given 
 him the— oh, so many bottles for it— and, 
 Monsieur, it is not right— I am always 
 his one friend!" And poor Laurent wept 
 real tears. 
 
 But 
 
xlvi 
 
 But I am taking too much time with 
 things that in their local setting had more 
 of interest than they have in my clumsy 
 telling. 
 
 A tale of the Spanish Main without a 
 flavor of a revolution would be looked at 
 with suspicion as to its genuineness. For 
 commercial reasons I wish I could tell 
 you that my experiences did not include 
 any connection with armed political dis- 
 turbances. Unhappily, however, it was 
 the misfortune of the companies I repre- 
 sented to be interested one way or another 
 in the fighting zone during three years of 
 revolution in Colombia. Many of our 
 native employees lost their lives even 
 while in our service, and the property 
 loss went into the hundreds of thousands 
 of dollars. 
 
 There is often much of the opera bouffe 
 about these South American revolutions, 
 but it is not always so; and when one sees 
 the suffering, starvation, and sickness at 
 close range, the grim wickedness and cru- 
 elty of it all sicken and madden one to an 
 extent that cannot be explained. 
 
 In general, the bulk of the soldiers on 
 
 each 
 
xlvij 
 each side are harmless, peaceful Indians 
 and half-breeds, with no real interest in, 
 or knowledge of, what they are fighting 
 about. Rarely is any great moral prin- 
 ciple or question of right involved, ex- 
 cept upon paper. More often it is the 
 greed for money and power by a few rival 
 leaders or factions. 
 
 To tell you of the rows of peasants I 
 have seen brought in, tied in columns by 
 ropes, and enlisted the next day as vol- 
 unteers; to tell you of the boys in their 
 early teens made to shoulder a musket 
 and march off to almost certain death in 
 marshy jungles, would take too much 
 time and serve no purpose. We trans- 
 ported over our road one regiment, many 
 boys too young to bear the weights they 
 had to carry, and in eight weeks brought 
 back the same regiment with not one 
 quarter still living— and even then we 
 had to stop the train to remove those who 
 had died in transit before taking the troop 
 cars into the city. It will be enough to 
 tell you of one naval engagement on the 
 Magdalena River in which our own boats 
 were part of both engaging fleets. 
 
 ~ The 
 
xlviij 
 
 The natural aim of any band of insur- 
 rectionists in Colombia is either to con- 
 trol or to interrupt the lines of communi- 
 cation between the coast and the interior, 
 by seizing the railways connecting the 
 river with the coast harbors, or, more 
 effectually, by controlling the river Mag- 
 dalena itself. The rebellion of which I 
 am speaking was intended to be inaugu- 
 rated by the sudden and complete capture 
 of all river craft. At nightfall on a cer- 
 tain day bands of rebels by concerted 
 action seized several of our boats which 
 had been taking in cargo at our river ter- 
 minus, Calamar, and at the same time 
 another band attempted to take quite a 
 fleet of boats at Barranquilla, near the 
 mouth of the river. At the latter place, 
 however, the government at the time had 
 the only river war-vessel it owned, a 
 staunchly built steel boat with bows spe- 
 cially fitted for ramming, and with a 
 machine-gun mounted in a protected 
 tower on the upper deck. This boat the 
 rebels were unable to seize, and, their 
 attempt being known, they got away with 
 a few of the Barranquilla boats only. 
 
 Those 
 
xlviiij 
 Those they did seize started up the river 
 to join the Calamar flotilla. The process 
 of seizure was to go on board, order off 
 at the point of the revolver such men as 
 they did not want or need, and force those 
 they did need to perform their duties with 
 a man by their sides with a revolver con- 
 veniently aimed at their heads. As a 
 method of retaining officers and crews 
 this was generally effective. The night 
 was pitch dark; the first boat arriving 
 from Barranquilla brought the news of 
 the half failure at that port, and the com- 
 bined fleet made ready for action, being 
 sure that the government, with the "Her- 
 cules," the boat with the machine-gun, 
 and other boats with the Barranquilla 
 garrison on board, would be not far be- 
 hind their own boats. 
 
 It happened that the rebels had taken 
 at Barranquilla one of the few remaining 
 wooden boats on the river, the old "Co- 
 lon," a boat not unlike the "Hercules" in 
 appearance, but much slower and exceed- 
 ing rotten. The result was that the gov- 
 ernment fleet of perhaps four boats, in 
 spite of its later start, caught up with the 
 
 "Colon" 
 
1 
 
 "Colon" just as she joined the other rebel 
 craft 
 
 Among our boats taken was one of 
 our fastest and best, the "Helena," of 
 some four hundred tons, on which we had 
 one of the best pilots on the river, a pure- 
 blooded Indian and a fine man, liked and 
 respected by every one of us. With him 
 was his young son, a lad of about sixteen. 
 With the rebel commander standing by 
 his side, poor Vargas was forced to steer 
 the "Helena," the pride of his heart, into 
 the thick of the engagement. Picture to 
 yourselves a dark tropical night, a deep 
 muddy river rapidly flowing and about a 
 mile wide, seven or eight steamboats un- 
 lighted except for the glow from their 
 furnaces, the sparks from their double 
 funnels, and the continuous flashes from 
 rifles fired by hundreds of men crouched 
 behind piles of firewood, hastily con- 
 structed walls of tobacco bales or bags of 
 coffee, and from the cabin windows. It is 
 to be feared that in the darkness friends 
 and foes lost their identity, and God alone 
 knows whence came the bullets that sent 
 many a man to his death that night. Sud- 
 denly 
 
li 
 
 denly on the "Helena" the commander 
 called to Vargas, "There is the 'Hercules,' 
 you must ram her and sink her." In vain 
 Vargas protested that the boat pointed out 
 was not the "Hercules," but was the 
 rebels' own boat, the "Colon." With an 
 oath, the rebel commander put the muz- 
 zle of his pistol against poor Juan's head, 
 and, calling him a liar and a vile name, 
 ordered him to steer for what he believed 
 to be the armed "Hercules," but what was 
 in reality the "Colon." As the steel bow 
 of the "Helena" crashed into the rotten 
 old wooden hull of the "Colon," and the 
 rebel commander realized his mistake, he 
 pulled the trigger of his pistol and our 
 good, faithful old pilot died with his 
 hands on the wheel. 
 
 The "Colon" sank like a shot, and down 
 the river whirled its wreckage and the 
 bodies of some two or three hundred men 
 to be washed out to sea. Altogether, that 
 night, some four hundred men lost their 
 lives. The "Helena" was badly damaged 
 below the water-line, and riddled with 
 bullet-holes in all her wooden upper 
 works. 
 
 After 
 
After the impact with the "Colon," 
 when his father was shot, young Vargas, 
 who by his father's orders had been lying 
 on his stomach back of the wheel in the 
 pilot-house, got up, took the wheel, and 
 safely beached the boat in shallow water. 
 From there he stole ashore, and days 
 afterwards, a gaunt and half-starved lad, 
 he found his way to our office at Carta- 
 gena and told his tale. 
 
 Even the periods of domestic peace in 
 Colombia were not without occasional 
 days or weeks of anxiety. Colombia, 
 small as is its importance among the na- 
 tions, has had its full share of troubles 
 with not only its near neighbors but with 
 the European powers. 
 
 Threatened invasions on the Venezue- 
 lan or Ecuadorian frontiers were matters 
 of some interest but of no distress to us at 
 Cartagena; but the threatened approach 
 of five Italian war-ships to enforce the set- 
 tlement of the so-called Cerruti claims 
 against Colombia gave both the govern- 
 ment and the railway officials much anx- 
 iety. I was out of Colombia at the time, 
 and telegraphic communication with 
 
 Cartagena 
 
liij 
 
 Cartagena, as often happened, was sus- 
 pended through temporary trouble on the 
 land lines. I had learned by a cablegram 
 from Caracas that the Italian fleet, then at 
 La Guayra, was under orders to proceed 
 to Cartagena and there to seize the cus- 
 tom-house and collect the duties until the 
 adjudicated claim of Cerruti was paid. 
 By a happy chance it was possible to send 
 a cablegram to Jamaica to catch a steam- 
 ship sailing that day for Cartagena, and 
 due there a full twenty-four hours before 
 the arrival of the Italian fleet. This mes- 
 sage not only warned the railway people, 
 but conveyed to the Colombian Govern- 
 ment the suggestion that the Italian 
 admiral be promptly advised that the 
 custom-house, located on the railway pier, 
 was the property of an American com- 
 pany, and that a five per cent, lien on the 
 duties collected was pledged as security 
 for certain bonds held by citizens of the 
 United States. 
 
 Advices reaching the State Department 
 in Washington and the Italian Embassy 
 to the same effect, an entertaining inter- 
 national complication was created. Our 
 
 efforts 
 
liiij 
 efforts to preserve both our own interests 
 and the dignity of Colombia were further 
 helped when the flag-ship of the Italian 
 fleet ran aground at Boca Chica, the en- 
 trance to Cartagena harbor, delaying the 
 actual entry of the fleet for three days. 
 This accident not only took away from the 
 effectiveness and dignity of the naval 
 demonstration, but delayed the delivery 
 of the belligerent ultimatum brought by 
 the Italian admiral until the joint efforts 
 of all interested had paved the way for a 
 less drastic settlement of the difficulty. 
 
 It was during this period, if I remem- 
 ber rightly, that the "Incident of Her 
 Majesty's Dispatch Bag," as we after- 
 wards called it, occurred. Mr. M 
 
 V was then either secretary or min- 
 ister at Bogota, and, having dispatches of 
 unusual importance for the Foreign Of- 
 fice, he used the good offices of our river 
 steamboats and railway service as a pri- 
 vate conveyance for the Legation dis- 
 patches. 
 
 Simultaneously with the arrival of the 
 bag supposed to contain the advices of 
 particular importance came a telegram 
 
 from 
 
lv 
 
 from V , marked "urgent" and beg- 
 ging us to use all means in our power to 
 catch that bag and detain it, as through 
 some mistake it contained not the dis- 
 patches, but his soiled shirts and collars I 
 
 Downing Street narrowly escaped a 
 surprise, but I venture to believe that it 
 would not have been the only soiled linen 
 in the archives of the Foreign Office. 
 
 From the veranda at the back of my 
 house on the shore, outside the walls of 
 Cartagena, a path led through a small 
 grove of cocoanut palms down to the sea. 
 
 Early one morning, as I was taking cof- 
 fee on the veranda, a motley group of 
 bearded men, some with fur-banded hats 
 and all wearing the heavy clothing of a 
 cold climate, came up the path towards 
 me. Even in a country where the unex- 
 pected is the likely thing to happen, one is 
 hardly prepared to find in one's back 
 yard, so to speak, a body of some ten or 
 twelve wool-and-fur-wrapped, bearded 
 Russians washed up apparently by the 
 breaking surf. 
 
 The facts were no less startling than the 
 surprise. 
 
 The 
 
lvi 
 
 The Russian barque "Rota," with a 
 cargo of fuel from Cardiff for the railway 
 and actually consigned to me, had, in 
 thick weather, run upon a reef and been 
 abandoned some forty miles to the east- 
 ward of Cartagena. The master and 
 crew, in two boats, had rowed themselves 
 westward until, cheered by the sight of 
 the morning light on the domes and tow- 
 ers of Cartagena, they had pulled up their 
 boats at the first good landing place near 
 the city, and by an extraordinary coinci- 
 dence which sometimes occurs they had 
 beached their boats near enough to my 
 house to make it their first place of call 
 for help. 
 
 With the exception of the master, they 
 spoke Russian only, and he a little Ger- 
 man. 
 
 With cotton suits and straw hats from 
 the railway commissary, they made a less 
 bizarre appearance, but I was heartily 
 glad when, in the absence of any Russian 
 consul, I persuaded the French consul to 
 arrange their passage to Europe. 
 
 Among the people one came to know 
 well, both natives and foreigners, were 
 
 many 
 
lvij 
 many fine men— men of education, cour- 
 age, and ability, who were filling well 
 places of usefulness in the world. 
 
 There were, however, many men (and 
 these chiefly among the foreigners) of the 
 adventurer type, either seeking temporary 
 refuge along the coast or looking unceas- 
 ingly for that opportunity which neither 
 continuous disappointment nor years of 
 wandering had made them give up the 
 certainty of ultimately finding. 
 
 There was the tall, lanky Confederate 
 soldier from Mississippi who, drifting 
 southward, had held a commission with 
 one side or the other in almost every in- 
 surrection south of the Rio Grande dur- 
 ing the last twenty-five years. 
 
 Well over six feet, erect in bearing, but 
 over-angular, his profession of soldier 
 was guaranteed by a large white military 
 helmet, which was made of tin plate 
 glaringly whitened with enamel paint. 
 This helmet was a constant wonder and 
 delight to us. When taken off with the 
 easy grace of a courtier and placed on a 
 veranda table, it gave forth to us a sound 
 of falling kitchen-plates, while to him I 
 
 have 
 
lviij 
 have no doubt it was as the clashing of 
 armor. He was a picturesque, if only oc- 
 casional, addition to our little coast colony 
 —this Knight of La Mancha. 
 
 Then there was the more courageous 
 but less honorable gentleman from New 
 York who came to Cartagena and char- 
 tered, from its agents, a little ocean-going 
 steamship, ostensibly for trading in cocoa- 
 nuts with the San Bias Indians. 
 
 After one voyage in its legitimate trade, 
 having departed with no bills paid, the 
 vessel never returned. 
 
 For years its rusty plates would not 
 have held together but for the barnacles 
 on its bottom ; but, even so, it was not the 
 graves of the more doughty galleons 
 which had called the vessel, as months 
 afterwards we learned that with new 
 paint, a new name, and apocryphal papers 
 she had been sold for cash by the charterer 
 at a port so distant that we wondered by 
 grace of what dispensation she had trav- 
 elled so far. 
 
 We counted as neighbors those on the 
 coast or on the islands, if one or two days' 
 sail on the regular liners or tramp ships 
 
 would 
 
lviiij 
 would permit an occasional exchange of 
 visits. 
 
 In this way I knew many in the foreign 
 colonies at Santa Marta, Barranquilla, 
 Colon, and Limon, as well as my numer- 
 ous friends in Jamaica and at the more 
 distant ports of La Guayra, Curasao, and 
 other places. 
 
 It was at one of these ports— I will not 
 give its name— that I had the interesting 
 experience of nearly witnessing a duel. I 
 had arrived before breakfast, and was to 
 leave about midnight on the same ship. 
 Going up at once to breakfast with my 
 friend, the manager of the railroad, I 
 found with him another friend, a Ger- 
 man, the agent of one of the steamship 
 lines. My host was an Englishman, and 
 not only manager of the railroad but 
 owner of several fruit plantations up the 
 line, and a man I had always liked, and 
 after this day liked the more. 
 
 The German had seen military service, 
 and was a vigorous defender of the Ger- 
 man military idea— in particular, its code 
 of honor. 
 
 The Englishman had been having a 
 
 dispute 
 
lx 
 dispute with a native landowner called 
 (we will say) Salcedo, over certain boun- 
 dary rights which affected them both as 
 neighboring landowners, and the dispute 
 had reached a point where ugly words 
 had passed between them. While we 
 were at breakfast a General V was an- 
 nounced, who in terms of the most perfect 
 politeness gracefully explained that his 
 friend Senor Salcedo had been insulted, 
 and that unless my friend showed that 
 gentlemanly and fair spirit which he, the 
 general, felt sure would animate him, and 
 apologize to Senor Salcedo for the unfor- 
 tunate accusations made, it would be the 
 
 unhappy duty of General V (a duty 
 
 which he would perform with a thousand 
 regrets) to ask that a friend be named to 
 settle the details of the meeting which, for 
 two such brave but misguided men, would 
 be inevitable. 
 
 The German, getting the scent of an 
 affair so after his own heart, could hardly 
 be restrained from announcing himself as 
 the needed friend and taking charge of 
 the matter at once. The Englishman, 
 however, without more interruption to his 
 
 breakfast 
 
lxi 
 breakfast than the barest courtesy to Gen- 
 eral V required, told the German to 
 
 keep quiet, and then turned to the general 
 with the information that Salcedo was an 
 ass, that the days of duelling were over, 
 and that if he heard any more such silly 
 talk he would give himself the pleasure, 
 and do Salcedo the honor, of attending 
 him at his house with a horsewhip. After 
 
 the indignant exit of General V the 
 
 real row began. The German exploded ; 
 practically told the Englishman he was no 
 gentleman; included me in his excom- 
 munication because I disagreed with him ; 
 and for a few minutes it looked as though 
 some of us would have to fight a duel to 
 keep the peace. 
 
 As our dispute was reaching the more 
 gentle ground of an academic discussion, 
 
 the portly figure of General V again 
 
 crossed the patio, and with the dignity of 
 an ambassador, but with some flashing of 
 the eyes and much suppressed emotion, 
 he stated that unless Senor Salcedo re- 
 ceived within the hour an apology 
 or the acceptance of his challenge, he, 
 Senor Salcedo, would reserve to him- 
 self 
 
lxij 
 self the right to shoot the Englishman at 
 sight. 
 
 Our host looked at his watch, politely 
 dismissed the general, and we continued 
 our own quarrel, to which both fuel and 
 zest had been added. At the end of the 
 hour, together we walked down the road 
 towards the steamship pier. About half- 
 way there we passed Salcedo's house and 
 saw him through the chinks in the 
 veranda jalousies. The Englishman 
 abruptly left us, lighted a cigarette di- 
 rectly below Salcedo's balcony, put his 
 hands in his pockets, and walked non- 
 chalantly up and down. 
 
 Nothing happened! No shots were 
 fired. The German was furious. 
 
 "The Englishman is brave, but an ass," 
 he said. "They all are. The other chap 
 is a coward, but he might have been 
 enough of a sneak to have really shot." 
 Then abruptly leaving us, as the English- 
 man and I started down the road, he 
 walked up on to the veranda, spat on the 
 floor in front of Salcedo, pulled his nose, 
 and said in Spanish, "Now send your 
 friend to see me." 
 
 When 
 
lxiij 
 When our blood-thirsty German met us 
 for dinner that night the details of the 
 "affair of honor" had been arranged. It 
 was to take place at daybreak the next 
 morning, on the beach beyond the light- 
 house point. Unless the German showed 
 pity, it would be murder, as he could 
 shoot like a frontiersman; but both in- 
 clination and business expediency would 
 be likely, on his part, to make the affair 
 more humorous than fatal. 
 
 A little before midnight the two men 
 saw me aboard my ship, and with their 
 promises of early advices of the duelling 
 I had reluctantly to leave the port. 
 Early the next morning, as I came from 
 my bath and stopped outside my state- 
 room to drink a cup of coffee in the fresh 
 breeze of the open side-port, I saw a 
 figure hastily disappearing in the opposite 
 passage. It was Salcedo, who, the stew- 
 ard told me, had quietly come on board an 
 hour before me, and had been "sud- 
 denly called away" (as he said) "on im- 
 portant business." 
 
 This reminded me at the time of a 
 quarrel over night at the Club Cartagena, 
 
 between 
 
lxiiij 
 between two high government officials, 
 both friends of the then President of 
 Colombia, Dr. Nunez. Unforgivable 
 words passed in the presence of a number 
 of us, and an "affair" was arranged, this, 
 too, to be at daybreak. 
 
 Friends of both, anxious to avoid not 
 only bloodshed but also a political scan- 
 dal, hastily sought and awakened Dr. 
 Nunez to ask if he would not do some- 
 thing to prevent the duel, which would 
 certainly prove to be "a la mort." 
 
 "Certainly," said the president. "I will 
 eat the dead!" And the old gentleman 
 went back to bed. 
 
 The remark, repeated at the club, 
 brought so much ridicule on the princi- 
 pals that nothing more was heard of either 
 quarrel or duel. 
 
 Rafael Nunez, for many years the pres- 
 ident of the Republic of Colombia and 
 effectually its dictator, was an interesting 
 character. During the several years I 
 lived at Cartagena he was both my near 
 neighbor and my landlord in the little 
 residential settlement on the beach outside 
 the city walls. By the exercise of that sort 
 
 of 
 
lxv 
 of genius which is controlled less by ethics 
 than by the laws of expediency, he found 
 himself, at the end of a long civil war in 
 1886, the practical dictator of his country 
 and of the Constitutional Convention 
 which had been called. 
 
 The political party of which he had 
 become leader was an adroitly formed 
 coalition, held together by force of his 
 personality, which left the irreconcilable 
 ultraclericals and radicals in two such far 
 detached groups that for nearly ten years, 
 until his death, Dr. Nunez was the abso- 
 lute ruler of Colombia. 
 
 His power was both impressive and 
 mysterious. During the latter years of his 
 administration (which was when I knew 
 him) he lived in retirement at Cartagena, 
 a ten days' journey from Bogota, the seat 
 of his government 
 
 Of scholarly habits and tastes, modest 
 in his bearing, simple in his life, and in no 
 sense a soldier, even in his isolation he was 
 able to exercise a more complete mastery 
 over the Government and Congress at 
 Bogota than any president of Colombia 
 before or since his time. 
 
 It 
 
lxvi 
 
 It was his misfortune and that of his 
 country that, remarkable as was his intel- 
 lectual capacity, he never had a real grasp 
 of the fundamentals of economics. He 
 had a knowledge of all that was finest in 
 the literature of most countries; he was 
 proficient in practically all the Continen- 
 tal languages, and his knowledge of both 
 past and contemporaneous political his- 
 tory all over the world was so complete 
 that his brilliancy in conversation was 
 often startling. His knowledge of human 
 nature and his rare political sagacity, by 
 which he kept opposing forces so evenly 
 balanced that his own weight was always 
 necessary, retained for him a power which 
 would have been lost to a more forceful 
 but less adroit man. 
 
 Unhappily, the genius of Dr. Nunez 
 never included an understanding of even 
 the elements of money and exchange. 
 With the exception of some small silver 
 coinage for use on the Isthmus of Panama 
 and by the coffee-traders on the Venezue- 
 lan frontier, the money of the country 
 was an irredeemable paper currency 
 which bore the hopeful promise that the 
 
 Republic 
 
lxvij 
 Republic of Colombia would pay the 
 bearer the stated number of pesos in 
 "moneda corriente del pais"— that is to 
 say, in current money of the country, 
 which, by reference to the code, one found 
 to be precisely the piece of paper on 
 which the promise was written,— a vicious 
 circle which ought to please the most 
 radical advocate of fiat money fallacies. 
 The history of this currency during the 
 years in which my relations with it were 
 very close is interesting. 
 
 In 1 891 the exchange rate in Colombia 
 was 180. That is to say, 1.80 Colombian 
 pesos (or dollars) would purchase $1.00 
 United States gold. 
 
 Owing to reasonable prosperity in the 
 country and the absence of any important 
 further inflation of the amount of paper 
 issued by the government or in circula- 
 tion, the exchange rate for the next two or 
 three years did not exceed, say, 220. The 
 average was approximately 200 for the 
 two years, which meant that in our rail- 
 way accounts, which by law had to be 
 kept in Colombian currency, all gold ex- 
 penditures,— for example, rails, cars, 
 
 locomotives, 
 
lxviij 
 locomotives, salaries payable in United 
 States money, and so on,— when converted 
 into currency and entered in the books, 
 appeared at double the gold values. 
 
 With a fairly constant exchange ratio, 
 this, of course, made no more trouble than 
 any ordinary conversion of one country's 
 money into that of another. From 1895 
 to 1905, however, vast amounts of cur- 
 rency were issued to enable the govern- 
 ment to pay not only for its extravagances 
 but also for the expenses of quelling the 
 prolonged insurrections which were in 
 some parts of the country continuous dur- 
 ing the ten years after the death of Dr. 
 Nunez. Exchange actually reached, at 
 first by a gradual annual increment and 
 then by leaps and bounds, the enormous 
 rate of 10,000. At times, even during the 
 progress of the rebellion, 15,000 and 
 20,000 exchange rates were not uncom- 
 mon. Fancy, if you please, however, the 
 heart-breaking grotesqueness of a railway 
 accountant's books when he enters on the 
 capital account a purchase of a locomo- 
 tive at $10,000 gold in 1903 as costing one 
 million pesos, when next above it in the 
 
 account 
 
lxviiij 
 account is one which cost the same 
 amount in gold in 1894 and is entered as 
 twenty thousand pesos ! Accounts became 
 a mass of confused, meaningless figures. 
 The president's modest salary, when en- 
 tered on the books, was nearly a million 
 dollars a year. Prices, I remember, 
 created amusement among visiting for- 
 eigners. A passenger on one of the 
 Royal Mail boats stopping at Cartagena 
 changed a twenty-dollar gold piece into 
 Colombian currency. At the Hotel Ame- 
 ricano he paid $20 each for Havana 
 cigars, and $240 a bottle for champagne. 
 In spite of his extravagance, he had a 
 pocketful of soiled paper money when he 
 returned to his ship. 
 
 It was the poor man, however— the 
 peasant— who had the most acute suffer- 
 ing from the fall in value of the local 
 money, and this fact should be noted by 
 those who are deceived by the sophistries 
 of cheap money advocates. 
 
 The prices of all imported commodities 
 —for example, all clothing, textiles, agri- 
 cultural implements, iron roofing, fence 
 wires, kerosene, and flour— necessarily in- 
 creased 
 
lxx 
 creased in direct proportion to the rise in 
 exchange, but the wages of the laborer 
 responded slowly to the rapidly growing 
 change in values, and for years remained 
 far below the normal parity with the new 
 conditions,— in fact, I think the agricul- 
 tural laborer of the interior is still se- 
 verely handicapped. While the causes of 
 the inflation obviously worked injury 
 to the wealthy planters, the inflation 
 itself worked greatly to their profit. 
 The product of the sale of their coffee, 
 when converted into the depreciated cur- 
 rency, gave the planter a dispropor- 
 tionately large amount of this sort of 
 money in which the laborer was paid. 
 
 The situation became so impossible for 
 the railway at Cartagena that with the 
 co-operation of the local merchants the 
 railway company on one pay day paid all 
 its employees and outstanding accounts in 
 Colombian silver coin, imported pri- 
 vately from the Isthmus, at the same time 
 issuing new tariff schedules putting all 
 payments to the railway on a silver basis. 
 The over-night transition from one basis 
 of values to another was effected not only 
 
 completely, 
 
lxxi 
 completely, but with surprisingly little 
 difficulty. 
 
 Perhaps the tragic and the humorous 
 are not infrequently close to each other in 
 all parts of the world, but it seemed to me, 
 before I had learned how wickedly se- 
 rious the political uprisings often were, 
 that the Latin-American countries had 
 more than a normal amount of the comic 
 opera in their daily doings. 
 
 It was during the minor insurrection 
 late in '94, or early in '95, that over our 
 own railway telegraph line from Calamar 
 came the news late one afternoon that a 
 large body of rebel troops were marching 
 down the west bank of the river. They 
 were said to be well armed, and in num- 
 bers sufficient to subdue easily the small 
 garrison there, and the governor at Car- 
 tagena was urged to dispatch a special 
 train with troops to the immediate relief 
 of Calamar. 
 
 The news caused the greatest excite- 
 ment not only at Cartagena but along the 
 whole line of the railway between that 
 place and Calamar. Our special trains 
 were rapidly put together and a regiment 
 
 of 
 
lxxij 
 of government troops entrained and 
 started on their four hours' journey to 
 Calamar. Meanwhile occasional dis- 
 patches from Calamar recorded the 
 movements of the approaching enemy. 
 The troops arrived at Calamar in time to 
 give the necessary relief to the suffering 
 town, which had been threatened by no 
 more serious an invasion than a herd of 
 cattle being driven from Portreros, near 
 Mangangue, to the coast for ultimate 
 shipment to Cuba. 
 
 One evening during the period when 
 guerrilla bands of rebels were infesting 
 the territory along the line of the railway, 
 I remember discussing with General 
 Velez, then Secretary of War of the De- 
 partment of Bolivar, the adequacy of the 
 protection which the government pur- 
 ported to be giving the railway line be- 
 tween Cartagena and the village of 
 Turbaco. We finally decided to make a 
 personal inspection of the line, which we 
 did on horseback during the night. 
 
 At one of the outposts we were saluted 
 by the officer in command with an im- 
 mense, rudely constructed wooden sword, 
 
 not 
 
lxxiij 
 not unlike those we have all made as boys. 
 That and some enormous home-made 
 epaulets were his insignia of rank, and 
 apparently created no amusement in the 
 minds of his variously armed volunteer 
 subordinates. It did not seem possible 
 that we were within the area of an actual 
 war,— and yet a few nights afterwards, 
 almost within calling distance of that very 
 outpost, one of my own farm boys, bring- 
 ing into town the morning milk, was 
 attacked by guerrillas, and because he de- 
 fended his cargo was badly wounded, his 
 ears were cut off, and he was otherwise 
 mutilated from sheer wantonness. 
 
 The burning of our railway bridges 
 and trestles, the withdrawing of spikes 
 and fish-plates from the rails, and other 
 attempts to wreck the trains, particularly 
 those carrying troops, were continuous. 
 
 Our superintendent devised a rather in- 
 genious way of preventing serious acci- 
 dents: In front of each locomotive he 
 would place from three to six empty flat 
 cars, which would pick up, so to speak, 
 and absorb whatever particular form of 
 disaster had been planned for the train 
 
 itself 
 
lxxiiij 
 itself. By running always at moderate 
 speed, this method proved so effective that 
 we had no actual disaster except the ditch- 
 ing of a considerable number of flat cars. 
 

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