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1921

CARTAGENA
AND THE BANKS OF THE SINIJ

«¦;*'**-.& 's '^^^

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R. B. CUNNINGHAMt GRAHAM ON 'LUCERO, CARTAGENA DE INDIAS.

CARTAGENA AND THE
BANKS OF THE SINU

BY

R. B. CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM
AUTHOR OF **A BRAZILIAN MYSTIC," ETC.

LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN

A I
'"0- } h^O , A'!

Ehe. 5^0

A LA ILUSTRE SENORITA
CAMILA WALTERS,
DE CARTAGENA DE INDIAS, CON EL HOMENAGE
DE MI ADMIRACION Y AMISTAD SINCERAS.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
MoRNE ville jadis reine des Oc&ns ;
Aujourd'hui le requin poursuit en paix les scombres
Et le nuage errant allonge seul les ombres.
Sur ta rade ou roulaient les gallons grants.
Depuis Drake et I'assaut des Anglais mecrcants
Tes murs desempares croulent en noirs d^combres
Et, comme un glorieux collier de perles sombres
Les boulets de Pointis montrent les trous bdants.
Entre le ciel qui brille et la mer qui moutonne
Au somnolent soleil d'un midi monotone
Tu songes 6 Guerriire aux vieux conquistadors.
Et dans I'^nervement des nuits chaudes et calmes
Bergant ta gloire eteinte, 6 cit6 tu t'endors
Sous les palmiers, un long fremissement des palmes.
JOSE MARIA DE HEREDIA

PREFACE
Nothing could possibly have been a better corrective
to the atmosphere of war, the excited newspapers, the
people ever on the lookout for news, the accounts of
hardships, heroism, and death at the front, and the
oceans of false sentiment at home, than a visit to
Cartagena and the Sinu. Little enough the people
there were stirred by war news, though they regarded it
with a mild curiosity, tempered by lack of faith in most
of what they heard. True it was that several German
steamers lay in the bay, blistered by the sun and
dirty, their plates expanding and their paint dropping
off in scales. The people looked at them at first and
then took them apparently just as they take their city
and their lives, as sent by God, and therefore not to be
questioned by mankind. They heard the news of the
suicide of a German mate, unable to endure the
monotony on board, and remarked, " Pobrecito."
That was his epitaph. Certainly it was fitting for his
death — or, rather, his escape from life. After a week
or two within the walls of the " unconquered city "
one felt that there possibly might be a war, up some
where in the clouds, but that it did not matter much.
In fact, one soon assumed the attitude of a man who
passes by an ant-hill and sees the toiling multitudes
beneath his feet, and then walks on, smoking a
cigarette, and thinking that it is a fine day.
ix

X PREFACE
In the bay lay a little warship built at Pola, that
once had constituted the navy of Morocco under the
name of the Bashir. Now she was still the back
bone of a naval force, that of Colombia. I knew her
at a glance, with her straight bow and air of cranki
ness, and remembered having gone aboard her at
Tangier. The sentry who was squatted at the
gangway invited me to go down to the *' cafe," and
this I found to be the captain's cabin. It was fitted up
with little tables, and at a charcoal stove a " khawarji "
was making coffee. Innumerable cages filled with
canary-birds were hung about, their occupants singing
their loudest all the time. I thought I had seldom
seen a warship so perfectly transformed, but I had
still something to learn upon the point. What the
Bashir was called in Cartagena I forget ; but when I
went on board her a vampire bat was hanging in a
deserted alleyway; her decks were scorching, and an
old negro, fishing from the stern, was all her comple
ment. Somebody bought her (I think a Yankee
speculator of some sort), and she was towed away
eventually, towards some port unknown. She may
have reached it. I hardly think so, but I hope it was
a port in Central America, and that she still floats
and is considered the chief defence at sea of some
republic — for choice a state that has no seaboard —
and that she is commanded from afar by telephone.
The old, white town, looking like a gigantic
wedding-cake, preserved miraculously against the
assaults of time to celebrate its double marriage, that
of Europe with Salvagia in the Middle Ages, and its
approaching union with the modern world, appeared

PREFACE xi
to slumber quite incurious of wars, of tottering
empires, of air-raids, poison gas, and all the benefits
that civilization has entailed on a glad world. The
whispering palm-trees sang the dirge of its departed
glories, made musical like Eolian harps by the
soft breezes from the Caribbean Sea. Still, its
sleep was now and then disturbed by events that
linked it to the bloodthirsty world of Europe,
the land where all men's hands were raised against
their fellows in the name of Christianity and peace.
Well have we played the part of helot to the republics
of the Southern Hemisphere, and taught them that all
our criticism of their poor, futile revolutions, so sparing
of the sacrifice of life, so careful to respect the honour
of the home, have been but child's play, compared to
our own bloody sport.
Even to Cartagena there came echoes of the war.
An old, condemned stern-wheeler, lofty of side, beam-
engined, crank as a coracle, and quite unseaworthy,
had lain for three years in the mud at Maracaibo.
Her seams all gaped, her paint was cracked and
blistered by the sun, her engines rusty, and round her
garboard strakes festoons of seaweed had gathered
into a veritable forest, clinging to the barnacles.
What her name had been when she toiled up against
the muddy waters of the Mississippi I cannot tell.
The company that bought her named her the Santa
Barbara. They set her to run from Cartagena to
Quibdo, the capital of the Choco, up the Atrato River,
and down the coast, touching at Tolu, Cispata, and
other little ports, after a summary repair. Paint hid
the opening seams. The rusty engines had been

xii PREFACE
greased and oiled, and the great beam worked jerkily.
Her top hamper was great, her freeboard low. Boats
she possessed but one, hung near the stern, and used to
keep potatoes, yams, or vegetables, or as a' sleeping-
place for deck hands or a chance negro passenger.
Her engine-room was almost open, after the fashion
of old-time, Yankee river-boats. Nothing could well
have been imagined more unfit to cope with the rough
waters of the Caribbean Sea, or round the Point of
Tigua, fifteen leagues upon her way towards the Choco,
for there a heavy sea gets up at the least breeze.
Passengers always crowded her, sleeping in every
corner, curled up upon the deck, or in the hammocks
that Colombians nearly always carry with them, hung
to the stanchions of the awning-rail. Some few —
mostly rich Syrian storekeepers — going to Quibdo, or
mining engineers for the great platinum mines in
the Choco, secured the boxlike dens called cabins by
antonomasy. She usually was laden to within a foot of
her low freeboard, and all the decks were crowded
with boxes, trunks, bundles, saddles, bales, and
packages of goods.
Her crew were negroes and nondescripts, and her
engineer, of course, a Scotsman, known as Scottie,
stricken in drink and years; but capable and brave
to rashness, as he had proved a hundred times by
venturing his life in such a Babylonia as was the
rechristened Santa Barbara. That nothing should
be wanting, and that the link should be supplied
between this antique vessel worthy to have convoyed
La Pinta and La Santa Maria in their memorable
voyage from Palos, had they not outsailed her, a young

PREFACE xiii
German mate, from one of the Boche steamers,
interned in the bay, acted as captain. He proved
himself a sailor and a man. The Santa Barbara,
after the usual delay of several hours, cleared out of
Cartagena in a calm afternoon. She passed into the
Cano,^ at whose mouth the village of Pasacaballos is
situated ; then out into the great lagoon beyond it.
There, she met the gale that seems to have been
blowing since the days of the Conquistadores, and is
most likely blowing as I write. She rolled like a
galleon, the heavy upper^decks catching the wind like
sails. Seas came aboard of her and set the packages
and bales upon her decks awash. The miserable
passengers were soaked, and as the evening advanced
the seas grew heavier, and still the Point of Tigua
loomed a league or two in front of her as she lay
labouring in the sea.
The German captain dived into the engine-room
and then emerged without his cap, his hair tossed in
the wind, and scanned the horizon anxiously. After a
look about the deck, and a compassionate glance at the
soaked passengers rendering their tribute to Neptune,
he took his resolution. Advancing to an Englishman
who was sheltering behind a deckhouse, he drew his
feet together, clicked his heels, and said, " My name
is Einstein, Second-Lieutenant of the Reserve of
German Navy," and raised his fingers mechanically,
forgetting he had lost his cap. " We are at war," he
said ; "but what of that? — no one cares to die without
a fight. You see that headland ? It is the Point of
Tigua. The sea is breaking heavily upon it, and if
^ Passage between mangrove swamps.

xiv PREFACE
we drift there we are lost. Only a month ago a
steamer failed to weather it, and not a soul was saved.
Those that were not dashed on the rocks, the
sharks soon tore to pieces. Upon the other side of it
we shall be in shelter ; but the swine firemen are
frightened and refuse to work. Come down with me,
and ... ah, that is right, you have a pistol : we will
help Scottie to persuade them to work on."
The Englishman, muttering " All right," went
down below into the engine-room. The firemen,
huddled in a heap, had turned that ashy-grey colour that
comes into a negro's face at the approach of death, or
strongly moved by fear. A foot or two from the
ship's furnaces the water lapped up dangerously.
Holding their pistols in their hands, the enemies, made
comrades by the deadly peril they were in, distributed
a hearty kick or two and forced the negroes to fire up.
When they had passed the Point of Tigua, and
the old Santa Barbara had got under shelter, shaking
the water off her decks, as a Newfoundland dog
shakes himself on emerging from a swim, they left the
engine-room and came up on deck. The two men
looked at one another and said nothing, and then instinc
tively their hands stole out towards each other. The
Englishman, half shyly, muttered, " You are a damned
good Boche. My name is Brown."
R. B. CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM.

CARTAGENA
AND THE BANKS OF THE SINU
CHAPTER I
The great Colombian province, known as El De-
partamento de Bolivar, though it has an extent of
41,000 square miles, is but little known to the outside
world. It is bounded on the north by the Caribbean
Sea and the department of Atlantico, on the south
by the department of Antioquia, on the east by the
departments of Santander and Magdalena, and on the
west by the Caribbean Sea. The chief towns are
Cartagena (the capital), Arjona, Calamar, Santiago
de Tolu, El Carmen, Corozal, Chinii, Magangue,
Monteria, Sincelejo, and Lorica.
The ports are Cartagena, Tolu, Cobeiias, Cispata,
and Magangue, all on the Caribbean Sea, except the
port of Magangue, situated on the Magdalena River,
not far from its junction with the Rivers San Jorge
and Cauca. So little visited is the district that few
Colombians ever go there except called by business.
Lying within the tropics, Cartagena, the capital, is in
latitude 10 degrees north.^
^ Herrera, in his " Historia General de Espaiia," says it is just
1,460 leagues from Toledo. This may be so. As the Arab saying
runs : " My donkey's off forefoot stands right over the centre of the
world. If you do not believe me, go and measure for yourself."
I I

2 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
The soil is rich and the climate healthy. Though
it was the first of the provinces of the kingdom of
New Granada, now the republic of Colombia, to be
colonized by the Spaniards, various circumstances have
contributed to make it neglected by the inhabitants
of the republic and but rarely visited by foreigners
up to the present day.
Rich in all tropical products, with extensive pastures
for countless herds of cattle, full of mineral wealth —
the platinum mines near Quibdo are renowned all the
world over — the department of Bolivar is one of the
richest of the republic of Colombia. However, at
the conquest, the stream of colonization steadily set
towards the cooler lands of the interior. The same
thing happened in the republic of Ecuador, and to
a less degree in Mexico.
In Colombia and in the other two republics there
had been great Indian towns where now the capitals
are situated. The cooler climate and the search for
gold, never to be found close to the coast, had set the
stream to the interior. Thus, in Colombia and
Ecuador, the far interior was sooner civilized than
was the coast. This brought about a sort of atrophy
of civilization in the distant places, where it had been
established first. Old customs were preserved, old
forms of speech, and, in the main, old ways of thought.
The coastal provinces, neglected at the first conquest
of the country, in many instances have now become
far more progressive than the capitals. This does not
apply to the department of Bolivar. Although less
than three hundred miles from Panama, with its most
modern life, its great canal, its position, which must

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 3
make it one day the lock-gate through which will
pass the greatest flood of the commerce of the world,
the province slumbers in an old-world repose. Flat
in the main, with but one considerable range of
hills, that only rise some eight to nine hundred feet,
the whole face of the country, with the exception of
the celebrated plains known as Los Llanos de Corozal,
was at one time covered with virgin forests. A great
part is so still. Two rivers traverse the whole
province, in almost its entire length. One, the Sinu,
rises in the mountains of Antioquia and falls into the
Caribbean Sea at the port of Cispata, its mouth
forming a sheltered bay. The other, the Rio San
Jorge, falls into the Magdalena, near its junction with
the Rio Cauca, not far from the town of Magangue.
The open plains lie between the two rivers, and
nearing the San Jorge are the extensive marshes of
Ayapel, in which feed cattle when the plains are
parched with drought.
The climate, hot but healthy, is that of most parts
ofthe tropics, having but two seasons, the wet and dry.
In Colombia they are referred to as summer and winter ;
but in reality the winter — that is, the season of the
rains — is the hotter of the two. The thermometer
ranges between one hundred and five and seventy-five
degrees. Frost is unknown, and hurricanes seldom
or never are experienced except upon the coast.
The chief town is the capital, Cartagena, called
Cartagena de Indias to distinguish it from the city of
that name in Spain. The ancient capital was Santiago
de Tolu, known for its balsam extracted from a plant
that grew profusely there, at the first conquest of the

4 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
land. Situated about thirty miles from Cartagena
upon a little bay, it is a well-built, old-fashioned
Spanish colonial town. Its sandy streets, deserted in
the middle of the day, when the whole population
sleeps, bake in the sun, reflecting back its rays a
hundredfold. The low and flat-roofed houses seem
uninhabited, and nothing moves, except a vulture now
and then, that stretches out its wings and flutters them,
as if rejoicing in the heat.
In the evening, the houses, so to speak, give up
their dead, and by degrees, men dressed in white, with
jipi-japa hats, open their stores, and sit perspiring in
their shirt-sleeves, at the receipt of custom, that is
not urgent in its claims. The sun sinks lower and
disappears, a ball of fire, into the lagoon, and in the
little plaza, girls stroll about accompanied by mothers
or by aunts, and gossip with the more or less
embattled youths and men. Perhaps a man on horse
back crosses the plaza at the fast shuffling, artificial
pace known in Colombia as " el paso," the rider
sitting easily and upright in his saddle, after the
fashion of all Spanish Americans, who ride almost as
soon as they can walk.
"There goes Don Placido," or "Seiior Valenzuela,"
as the case may be, someone remarks. Don Placido,
seeing he is observed, recollects he has forgotten
something at the corner store. Then, taking his horse
well by the head, he spurs it surreptitiously on the off
side, making it plunge, and then dropping his hat he
pretends to be annoyed, and stooping from the saddle
picks it up gracefully, regains his seat as easily as if
he were a circus-rider, talks for a moment to the

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 5
storekeeper, and once again crosses the square, this
time at the best pace his horse can muster up.
The sea breeze setting in brings with it a little
fleet of tapering canoes, all hollowed out of a tree
trunk, piled up with plantains, mangoes, bananas, pine
apples, and caimitos, with their dull metallic leaves,
green on one side and brown upon the back. Their
leaves, indeed, have given rise to a local saying about
a double-dealing man, " You are like the leaf of the
caimito — fair upon one side, on the other black." ^
The other towns each have their characteristics,
determined chiefly by their situation and their trade.
Lorica, on the Sinu, the chief town of the cattle-
breeding district, was called after an Indian chief of
the same name. Built on the high and muddy bank
of an alluvial river that flows dark yellow like the
Tiber, it is a port for the canoes of all the district on
the river's banks. The market-place, in which sit
countless people of colour dressed in white, overhangs
the river, and on a market-day hundreds of canoes,
piled up with country produce, jostle each other on the
bank. Men step from one to the other, performing
miracles of equilibrium, passing from the outermost
crank, little embarkation, over ten or a dozen others,
till they reach the bank. The smallest loss of balance
would overset the canoe and all its merchandise ; but
long experience enables them to walk as easily over
the swaying bridge of slender dugouts, as they would
walk upon dry land.
The great church forms the centre of the town.
^ The caimito is known in the West Indies as the star apple.
It is the Chrysophyllum caimito of botany.

6 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
Built in a sort of nondescript, but not unpicturesque,
style, common in Colombia, the door stands always
open, giving a glimpse of a great, cool, and empty
floor, very inviting to worshippers who have sweltered
all the morning in the sun. On each side of the
door grows a tall palm-tree, whose leaves rustle an
introit at the faintest breeze that stirs their fronds.
Outside the walls and all along them are planted
other palms, so that the church rises from out a verit
able grove. As all Colombia is a land of priests
and pious laymen, or at the least of outward, visible
conformity, the church's bells are seldom still for
more than a full hour, from Angelus to Angelus.
Although the congregation may not consist of
more than a few devout negro women or half-
Indian cattle peons, the service, ad majorem Dei
gloriam, still takes its course. On Sundays the
whole edifice is thronged at the chief Mass. A
congregation dressed in white, holding its panama
straw hats in its brown hands, packs all the floor.
The women kneel or sit down sideways on the
floor, just as they do in Seville or in Cordoba. The
men stand with their eyes fixed upon the ground, and
at the altar the perspiring priest, choked in his rich
embroidered cope, goes through his genuflections
with as little energy as he can well expend. As a
general rule he is a Spaniard or an Italian, sometimes
a Syrian ; but in all cases the coloured population
pays him more reverence than a cardinal receives in
Rome, hard by the Vatican.
Two or three crumbling Spanish houses give a
character as of the Old World to the narrow plaza at

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 7
whose corner, opposite the church, stands the great
modern house of the chief family, but built entirely
in the ancient style, so fitting to the climate and the
life. Its patios and open galleries, its well at which a
negro seems to pass his life drawing up buckets with a
chain, give a strange flavour of Castile.
Stores in which everything is sold, from bits and
reins to China silks and prints from Manchester, are
the chief features of the streets. In them sit all the
representatives of the chief families, for trade in the
republic of Colombia, as in the East, from which,
filtered through Spain, most of its customs are
derived, does not detract from personal consequence,
and a man who can trace his origin from the first
conquerors, whose flocks and herds graze over leagues
of territory, sells you a pound of tea with as much
grace as he would enter into business that involved a
hundred thousand dollars, in cattle or in grain.
Many of the storekeepers come from Syria, and
nothing is more common than to hear Arabic spoken
and to catch a glimpse of a dark-featured Syrian
woman in the back shop, who, though a Christian
of the Christians, still by the virtue of her Oriental
upbringing draws back when a strange man appears
upon the scene.
Cattle peons, dressed in tight white trousers and
short jackets, with hats of dark brown straw, low-
crowned and broad-brimmed, stroll about the streets,
taciturn and half Indian by blood, a striking contrast to
the voluble and lively negro population of the coast.
The broad and sandy streets, cut into blocks after the
usual fashion of all towns in South America, lead out

8 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
from well-built rows of houses and stores packed to
the roofs with hides, with sugar hogsheads, and with
grain, till by degrees they trickle past low hovels
thatched with banana leaves, finally disappearing into
the network of trails that lead into the town.
Thus, as in most towns in Colombia, it is difficult
to say where the town ends and the true country
starts. Lorica and Tolii may serve as models for almost
any of the towns in the department of Bolivar,
situated on the alluvial plains. Sixty or seventy
miles higher up the river is situated the purely
Indian town of Tucura. Its inhabitants, civilized or
"reduced," as the phrase went, not long after the
first conquest, are a peaceful race, short, strong, and
olive-coloured. Few of them have retained more
than, a smattering of their native speech, but all speak
Spanish. Still, they have maintained relations with
the exceedingly quiet and inoffensive "wild Indians"^
in the adjoining woods. The "wild" men some
times stray into the places, leaving their bows and
arrows with some storekeeper, and walk about the
town speaking to no one, keeping together in a
group, just like wild horses, a pitiful, pathetic, and
dwarfish remnant of the men who once possessed the
land. They still retain their terror of the horse, an
animal so fatal to their ancestors, and fly for shelter if
a mounted man passes them suddenly.
The River Sinii runs for about two hundred miles
through the department, and is a sort of Nile on a
small scale. In the rainy season it overflows its banks
^ " Indies bravos."

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 9
for a considerable distance on both sides, leaving a
thick deposit of alluvial mud. Then the grass grows
luxuriantly and the cattle fatten quickly, even
although the drought has left them thin.
The census of the year 1 9 1 2 puts the population
at 420,730, a small proportion in respect of so much
territory. Upon the coast, and in especial in the
town of Cartagena, the negro element prevails, but is
rarely found in any numbers more than twenty miles
inland. There the Indian, either pure-blooded or
half-bred, prevails. In fact, he lives just where his
ancestors lived at the first conquest of the land. The
upper classes are in general white, with in some
instances a dash of negro or of Indian blood.
Manners are patriarchal, though democratic, as
always is the case in similar societies. Contrary to
what is to be observed in Northern Europe, where
men so often think that rudeness shows equality as
between man and man, in the remote, neglected
district of Boliv&r, rudeness is held the attribute of
brutes. Hence throughout all the length and breadth,
not only of the province, but of the republic as a
whole, good manners are a natural heritage.
Houses in the interior are few and far between,
except upon the banks of the Sinu, where in some
places they form a street on both sides of the stream.
Nothing is more interesting than to ride through one
of these straggling settlements ; for several miles are
cottages all made of canes and pitched with mud,
supporting roofs either of reeds from the river banks
or of banana leaves.
Here and there steep, worn paths lead down into

lo CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
the river, and at the foot of them two or three canoes
are certain to be tied, and round them groups of
brown children paddle, but never shout or scream after
the way of children in the north. Logs that look
nothing but dead logs, may endue themselves with
motion and become alligators, for logs and alligators
are hardly distinguishable as they float downstream.
The children never seem to notice them, but gambol
on, as if no perils, either from them, from ray-fish, or
the little devilish, sharp-toothed "caribes,"^ existed in
the world. Now and then one hears a tale of a child
carried off by a " caiman " ^ just as one hears of children
killed by a motor-bus. In neither case are the sur
vivors rendered more wary by their companion's fate.
Sometimes a man brings down his horse, and stand
ing knee deep pours water from a gourd over his
back, and then perhaps, mounting him, swims a little,
looking like a bronze figure in a fountain ; then leads
him dripping up the banks.
Life seems to pass in the fragile wigwams much
as it passes in an Arab tent, but more industriously,
for every dwelling has its yam and maize patch,
surrounded by a little fence of canes, round which
twine passion flowers and other creepers, whilst tall
bushes of bougainvillea, orange bignonias, or crotons
with their variegated leaves, peep up above the fence.
^ Carib^ = cannibal. These little fish, about the size of a dace,
swarm in the rivers of Colombia, and are very dangerous to swimmers.
Should anyone enter the water with a cut on his arm or leg, or
chance to get wounded whilst swimming, his fate is pretty well
assured. The carib6s come to the scent of blood in shoals, and soon
either tear the swimmer to bits or so disable him that he drowns.
They are more feared than the alligators.
2 Caiman = alligator.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS ii
A patriarchal, in a way idyllic, life goes on in these
long streets of villages that edge the river banks.
No one is rich or poor. Fuel and clothes, the
problems of the north, affect the people little. The
earth yields crops with the minimum of cultivation,
and fruit is plentiful. Outwardly there seems to be
content; but no doubt envy, hatred, malice, and the
rest of the passions with which men plague them
selves the whole world over, are to be found there, as
they were in the garden by the Tigris, when the
world was young.
In many places virgin forests run down close to
the river bank, forming an almost impenetrable
barrier in their native state. All sorts of trees, many
even to-day unplagued by botanists, spring up, rise
to two hundred feet in lieight, and die, standing for
a brief season, bald and sere, signposts upon the road
of time ; but signposts that endure only the space of
two or three rainy seasons, so rapidly does nature
claim them to fertilize another growth.
The Ceiba,^ the Bongo, and the Campano tower
above the rest, their roots, as it were, awash in the
black earth, monstrous and gnarled. Buuches of
lilac flowers hang from the Ceiba, as grapes hang
from a vine, and they and all the other trees are full
of orchids, and bound together with a thick cordage
of lianas, whose flowers burst into bloom above the
topmost branches of the woods.
The ground is deep in the debris of centuries,
^ Bombax ceiba. The Campano and Bongo are, I think, of the
same family. The Bongo is the silk-cotton of the West Indies,
Eriodendrum anfractuosum.

12 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
and streams in places run under a tunnel of thick
vegetation. Where they come to light, tortoises
bask with their heads emerging from the water, and
now and then a water-snake slips across from one
side to another, looking just like a miniature sea-
serpent as it swims by, with head and neck erected in
the air. Along the banks of streams and bayous, as they
would be called in Texas and Louisiana, grow
clumps of guaduas,^ feathery and slight. Silence
reigns eternally, for the parrots and macaws fly
chattering about the edges of the forest and never
penetrate its depths. One feels that nature is an
actual force, not castrated and brought to heel by
man, as in the countries men call civilized.
Silence reigns through the- noonday heat, and as
the evening brings its freshness the howling monkeys,
locally known as araguatos,^ begin their psalmody.
The humming-birds, macaws, and the white ibises
that frequent the marshes, all disappear, and vampire
bats circle about on noiseless wings, hideous and
menacing. The forest, with its howling monkeys, its jaguars,
rarely seen by day, but when they bound across an
open glade, its tapirs and carpinchos,^ shy, semi-
amphibious animals that only venture out at evening
time, its flights of red and blue macaws and bright
green parrots that hover chattering about the edge of
the primeval woods, the wealth of vegetation and the
^ Bamboos. 2 Simia ursina.
3 Hydrochcerus capybara. Carpincho is the Argentine name.
In Colombia the animal is called ponche, at least in Bolivar.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 13
air of mystery and of hostility to man that emanates
from the recesses of its everglades, is but a portion of
the department after all. Its wealth is centred in its
plains, natural, such as Los Llanos de Corozal, or
artificial, as those about the banks of the Sinu that
have been formed by burning off the jungle and
sowing down the land reclaimed with the perennial
grasses of Guinea and Para.^
The jungle cleared by fire is left just as a clearing
in the woods is left in Western America or in Brazil,
with all the stumps of the charred trees standing
in a sea of ashes. The seed is sown and springs up
after the first rains, and soon the stumps rot and
decay away. The result is excellent pasture almost
the whole year round. The fences are of native
wood, and wire, and in the middle of the pastures
clumps of trees are left for shelter.
These trees are the resort of flocks of parrots, and
as you ride beneath them you are pretty sure to get
a shower of broken twigs or nuts thrown by the
howling monkeys or the small grey sajou,^ who
gambol in the boughs. Oviedo, in his " Historia
Natural de las Indias," says : " When the Christians
make an expedition to the interior, and have to pass
by woods, they ought to cover themselves well with
their bucklers . . . for the monkeys throw down
nuts and branches at them." There may have been
such danger when there were more monkeys or when
^ Guinea grass is the well-known perennial grass of most tropical
countries. Pard is a Brazilian perennial grass that grows to three feet
in height ; both are excellent pasture for cattle and resist almost any
drought. ^ Simia sajou.

14 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
their antics were less known to " Christians " than they
are to-day. However, he goes on to say : " I knew
one, Francisco de Villacastin, who was a servant of
Pedrarias Davila, in Panama. This man threw a
stone at a monkey,^ who caught it and returned it
with such force that it knocked out four or five of
Francisco's teeth. I know this to be true," he says,
" for I often saw the said Francisco, always without
his teeth." ^ Waterton, in his "Wanderings of a
Naturalist," says monkeys never throw things at
people. The Bachiller Enciso was quite as good an
observer as Waterton. He declares they do ; the
deficiency in Francisco's teeth surely goes for some
thing as proof.
The cattle stand underneath the trees, or wander
knee deep in the artificial grasses on the plains.
They are all tame and do not run before a mounted
man as do the wilder herds of Venezuela, Texas, and
the River Plate. The herdsmen work them with the
lazo as in the other countries of America, both North
and South, and they are rounded up once or twice
weekly on to a bare space called " el rodeo " for
counting, and to examine them for ticks. Mounted
on their active, little horses, the herders round the
cattle up, just as they do in other cattle countries.
They use the saddle to be seen in Mexico, which
ranges from the far north of Canada down to the
Amazon ; but never crosses it. Upon the other side it
is replaced by the " recado " used in the River Plate.
1 Oviedo writes "el gato" — that is, "the cat." The old
explorers always referred to monkeys as " gatos monillos."
2 « Muchos veces le vi, sin los dientes."

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 15
The bits ofthe Colombian cattlemen are ofthe long-
branched Brazilian pattern. The reins are single, and
the hand is held high, as it is held by all the horsemen
of the world who ride for business and not merely as
an amusement or for exercise.
The apparent future of the province lies in
cattle-farming, although the recently discovered oil
deposits may turn out valuable. There are at
present, it is estimated, almost two million head
of cattle in the department^ of Bolivar and the
adjoining state of Magdalena, across the river of that
name. By burning jungle off and forming what are
called " potreros," room could be made for nearly
double the amount. Whether the present system of
burning down fine timber to make room for cattle
is sound economy, might well be arguable. However,
it has existed since the conquest, and was the plan
the Indians used long before they ever saw white
men when they desired to plant a field of maize.
The proceeding may be foolish and extravagant.
On the other hand, it may be that it is the system
most fitted for the country. Only time can show.
^ The greatest length of the department is about two hundred
and eighty miles ; its greatest width about one hundred and forty.

CHAPTER II
Of all the towns of the department of Bolivar,
Cartagena is the most picturesque. Not only is it
the most old-world town of the department, but of
the whole republic, and perhaps ofthe whole continent
of South America. Mexico and Lima have, of
course, the air of capitals. Their fine positions and
the traditions that hang about them make them
interesting and beautiful. Quito and Bogota, La
Paz and Sucre are strange old-world places that
have got into a backwater, as it were, of time.
Santiago de Chile looks towards the Andes, and in
the middle of the town rises a hill like those of
Edinburgh and Prague. Of Buenos Aires nobody
need speak. It is the Paris of the New World.
Monte Video is a city set upon a hill, sun-warmed
and wind-swept, ever increasing, but still Spanish to
the core, with its wide streets and plazas full of
flowers. Rio, Bahia, Santos, Pernambuco, and the Brazilian
ports in general are marvels of the tropics, yet
Cartagena still holds its own as a thing unique in
the New World. No wonder that its citizens call it
affectionately Cartagenita, or El Corralito de Piedras,
in allusion to its ring of walls. i6

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 17
The blue, pellucid sea, broken but when a huge
iridescent, tropic fish springs up into the air and falls
with a resounding splash, washes the walls, against
whose base there plays a ring of milk-white surf.
Tall, whispering palm-trees cluster on the sands, their
roots in water and their heads in fire. Among them
shallow wells are dug, known as " cacimbas," and
fresh, cool water fills them within but fifty feet away
from the seashore.
Thickets of icaco, called by the people of the
place " uvas de play a," ^ surround the walls, and from
them hang long clusters of a fruit, sufficiently like
grapes to bear the name. All day the old, white
town basks in the sun, and at the Ave Maria, when
the innumerable church bells jangle and clang, a
breeze springs up from off the sea. Nature and man
revive, and as it rustles in the palms a thin, white
cloud of mist or spray seems to envelop all the city
and its green gardens, letting themjust appear beneath
it, with all their colours toned down and softened, just
as you catch the tone of caftan and burnoose under
the fleecy texture of a diaphanous haik from Fez
or Mequinez, as a rich Moor rides past in Africa.
In the dafk, winding streets, where houses, over
whose iron-studded doors are cut the crests of
conquerors, men stand before the grated windows,
as they do in Seville or in Cordoba, whispering the
tale, so wearisome to any but the ear it is intended
for ; old as the world, but which will yet be fresh after
a thousand years have passed away.^
^ Grapes of the shore. It is Chrysobalanus icaco.
2 A Spanish writer says about these bars and gratings : " Las
balconerias y rejas son de madera, materia de mas resistencia en aquel
2

1 8 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
The city once was the place of meeting of the
great Plate fleet, that took the silver gathered
together from all the mines of the New World, across
the seas to Spain, Many a time the British and
French corsairs hung off and on, just out of sight of
land, to attack it with varying success.
Hawkins and Frobisher — known to the Spaniards
of those days as " Aquino " and " Ofrisba " — must
have often seen its walls, the tops of the white houses,
and the palm-trees, as they lay outside La Boca Grande
watching for chance galleons.
From the beginning the city was a prey to corsairs.
In 1544 "certain French rovers attacked it, guided
by a Corsican who had lived long within its walls,"
as says one of its chroniclers.
In 1585 a greater far than he. Sir Francis Drake,
to whom the said old chronicler refers as a " pirata
ingles," plundered and burnt the town, and then
sailed off with his ships laden down with loot, con
scious of having deserved well of his country and his
God. He seems to have been one of our earliest
empire-builders ; but naturally a different opinion is
held about his exploits in England from the opinion
held in Spain.^
temple, que el hierro." In fact, iron soon exfoliates and decays when
exposed to weather in Cartagena, on account of the damp climate
and the salt breezes from the sea. (Jorge Juan, in his " Viage la
America Meridjonal," Madrid, 1748).
^ It is sometimes forgotten that, when Drake and the rest of his
bold compeers, so to speak, " worked " the Spanish Main, Spain and
England were at peace. This in a measure justifies the celebrated
speech of Gondomar to James I. (and VI.) when he burst suddenly
into the presence with a cry of " Pirates ! Pirates !" and refused to
add another word.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 19
After Drake's crowning mercy, the exploits of a
French filibuster, one Pointis, in 1697, seem a little
tame. This bold sea-rover also sacked and burned
the town, but in a trifling Latin way, without
apparently a thought of principle, of idealism, or
indeed any of those stalking-horses dear to the Saxon
mind. The futile Frenchman seems to have been
merely a business man, and all the plunder that he
got can have been little after so skilled and up-to-date
practitioner as Drake had been at work, only ten years
before. Don Pedro de Heredia founded the city in 1533.
It had been visited by the celebrated Alonso de Ojeda,
the companion of Columbus, in 15 10. He en
deavoured to found a town there, but the Indians of
the place defeated him and forced him to flee for his
life with the loss of all the soldiers who had accom
panied him as far as a place called Turbaco, some
twelve miles distant from the coast.
Amongst his men perished the celebrated Juan
de la Cosa, the cartographer, and pilot of Columbus
on his second voyage. Ojeda himself struggled back
to the coast alone, almost in a dying condition and
badly wounded. Left in a miserable position with
the remnant of his men shut up in an Indian village,
where now stands Cartagena (but then known as
Calamar), Ojeda was wellnigh desperate. For two
years he and another conqueror. Captain Diego de
Nicueza, had been at open war with one another.
However, Nicueza, hearing of his rival's wretched
state, sailed for Cartagena and placed his fleet and
soldiers at the disposition of Ojeda.

20 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
Thus reinforced, the two captains drove back the
Indians and determined to found a town. Fresh
troubles with the Indians forced them to abandon the
place, and Ojeda, wounded by a poisoned arrow,
returned to die in the Habana, after incredible ad
ventures, his ship having been driven ashore on the
coast of Cuba, and himself forced to continue his
journey on foot, enduring hardships that would have
overwhelmed an ordinary man. Arrived in the
Habana, though his wound was cured, he fell into
poverty and died in misery.
So perished one of the most brilliant and romantic
figures of the conquest. He it was, before Columbus
sailed, who ran out to the end of a beam fixed at a
dizzy height in the cathedral tower, known as La
Giralda, at Seville, and before Ferdinand and Isabella
and the assembled populace threw a tennis ball over
the weathercock.
From 1 510 until 1533 the Bay of Cartagena
seems to have been only occasionally visited.
Diego de Nicueza, Ojeda's rival and friend,
perished even more miserably than himself. A
revolt of his men forced him to put to sea in a launch
with only sixteen companions. They either drove
ashore and were slaughtered by the Indians or their
launch was swallowed up by the waves, for they were
never seen again.
Herrera, in his history of the Indies, says that
Diego de Nicueza was of a noble family and had
been "Yeoman of the Mouth "^ in the household
of Don Enrique Enriquez, uncle of Ferdinand the
1 « Trinchante."

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 21
Catholic. He was, so says Herrera, a great courtier
and very witty, a fine horseman and an accomplished
performer on the lute. As Colonel Joaquin Acosta,
in his " Compendio Historico del Descubrimiento y
Colonizacion de la Nueva Granada," somewhat un
kindly remarks, " Nicueza had no opportunity of
exercising any of those accomplishments on the coast
of Colombia." A harbour so well sheltered, and a site so fitted for
a town, could not escape for long the observation of
the adventurers who flocked from Spain in shoals
during the early portion of the fifteenth century.
Few ports in the whole world are better sheltered or
less exposed to wind. Built on a sandy, wide-stretching
island which it almost entirely covers, the city's north
west walls stand facing the open sea. The south-east
portion of the wall runs along the harbour.
Another island, known anciently as Xiximani, lies
to the eastward, and is connected with the first by a
long causeway, and another high -raised road connects
both islands with the land. Above the town towers
the hill called La Popa, from its resemblance to the
stern of an old Spanish galleon. Woods clothe its
sides, and on the top is an old convent, visible miles
out at sea.
The port itself is twofold and runs to about six
miles inland, with a width varying from two to four
miles at the broadest point. Two narrow entrances
— called respectively La Boca Grande and La Boca
Chica — defended by old, mouldering Spanish forts,
give access to the bay. The humpbacked island called
Tierra Bomba lies just inside La Boca Chica, and as

22 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
a vessel gradually opens up the town a splendid
panorama is disclosed.
Fear of the " English corsairs " caused the inhabi
tants to block up La Boca Grande, so that all vessels
have to enter by the smaller mouth. As in old times
the Spaniards did all things solidly, and built to defy
the ravages of time, they made a sure job of La Boca
Grande. A solid wall, almost cyclopean in its pro
portions, extends across the entrance, more than a
mile in width. It rises to within a few feet of the
surface, and it is said that in the middle a narrow gap
was left, just wide enough to let a vessel pass. This
gap either never existed, or the action of the waves
has quite destroyed it, for it has never been found in
modern times. Small craft can cross the sunken wall,
and it could easily be blown up with dynamite.
On a less gigantic scale than Rio de Janeiro (that
marvel of the world), without the backing of the
Organ Mountains, or the high peaks of the Tijuca
such as its greater rival prides herself upon, without
the lofty Sugar Loaf towering above the narrow
entrance to the enormous island-dotted bay, yet
Cartagena has charms and traditions of its own that
Rio de Janeiro never could have claimed. It may be
that the vegetation of the more northern harbour is a
shade less luxuriant ; it may be that the hill on which
is built the convent of La Popa is insignificant beside
La Gabia ; still, Cartagena does not found her charm
upon mere natural advantages, though those are great ;
but upon history and tradition and on the incompar
able picturesqueness of the town and of its monu
mental walls. Built of the finest masonry, and thirty

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 23
feet at least in height, they ring the city round, giving
it an air of Avila, San Gemigniano, or of Aigues
Mortes, gone astray into the tropics. In places the
walls go sheer into the sea. In others they take
advantage of the natural position of the ground and
leave only a narrow road between them and a man
grove swamp.
At La Tenaza ^ they are machicolated, and a deep
tunnel connects them with a flanking tower. At the
Cabrero, a small spit of land, on which stands the
white, mosque-like church, raised to the memory of
President Nuiiez, and finishing in a long, sandy street,
over which wave ever-murmuring coco-palms, the
walls tower high above the houses, as the ground
rises towards that point. From them you look down
upon the tops of villas and on a sea of brightly
flowering shrubs and trees. Long lines of Ponciana
Regtas, with their long clusters of bright, scarlet
flowers, two feet in length, shade the avenue on
which the villas stand. A crimson bougainvillea,
known locally as " la flor del Habana," and a bright
blood-red creeper called in Colombia " la bellisima "
(a most appropriate name), bignonias, crotons, and
all kinds of flowering plants, unknown outside the
tropics, bury the suburb of El Cabrero in a sea of
colour and make the white walls of the little monu
mental church appear still whiter than they are.
The top of the encircling medieval ramparts is
so broad, that four carriages could pass quite easily,
and up the inclined planes of masonry a" motor-car
^ La Tenaza is a fortified postern gate. Admiral Vernon's forces
were defeated there in the attack on Cartagena in 1741.

24 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
can — and often does at evening time, when the sea
breeze blows freshly and the whole city withers as
in a furnace — perform the circuit of the walls.
Such walls, such bastions, and such flanking towers,
such massive gates and drawbridges, cost, as they say
in South America, a Potosi, So often was the
exchequer, far away in Spain, called on for grants
to finish them, that tradition says one evening in the
Escorial, Philip the Second, the prudent king, whose
aphorism was, "Time and myself against three
others," dressed we may suppose in the black, velvet
suit, the livery of the House of Austria, was observed
by his courtiers to gaze westward earnestly.
He did not speak, as was his wont — is it not
historical that when he received the news of the
defeat of " La Invincible," as it is called in Spain, he
merely looked up from his desk and said, " There is
still oak enough in Spain to build another " ?
So long he gazed that the Duke of Alba asked
him, " What is it that your majesty is looking for ?"
The answer was, " I am looking for the walls of
Cartagena. They cost so much, they must be visible
from here."

CHAPTER III
Hardly was Cartagena settled when the stream of
adventure and of discovery set inward from the coast.
It turned quite naturally first to the province of Sinii,
as the department of Bolivar was then called. Long
before this — or what was long in such an epoch-
making period as was the conquest of America — the
Sinu had been visited and described.
In 1519 appeared at Seville the rare and curious
book, " La Suma de Geografia del Bachiller Martin
Fernandez de Enciso, Alguacil Mayor de Castilla de
Oro." Amongst the many curious diaries, or logs, of
soldiers and discoverers, few are more curious or more
exact in every detail than that of the aforesaid
Alguacil Mayor.
The general outline of the coast he gives is as
correct as that of any modern map. The notes on
the inhabitants, the fauna, flora, and the configuration
of the soil, are so informing and minute that I know
of no modern work on the Sinu that can compare
with it.
Many of the conquerors of the New World
wielded the pen almost as well as they did lance or
sword. Cortes, in his five letters giving an account
of all that he had done in Mexico, to the Emperor
25

26 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
Charles V., showed himself not only master of a
vigorous style, but of a cultivated mind. His powers
of observation and description were rare in any man ;
but in his case the more extraordinary as he was first
and foremost, at the time, a man of war. Of all the
greater conquerors of the New World he was the
man who had received most education. When he
first appeared in public life in the Habana he was a
lawyer, and Bernal Diaz says : " I heard tell he was a
bachelor of laws,^ and, when he spoke to men of
letters and Latinists, he answered in that tongue." He
may have graduated either at Salamanca or at Alcala ;
but even if he did, that did not make him a good
writer or give him his penetrating view into the
hearts of men, " What Nature does not give,
Salamanca cannot lend,"^ the proverb goes, and in his
case all that the university could do was to give polish
to a brilliant that always must have shone.
His great lieutenant, Pedro de Alvarado — he
whom the Mexicans referred to as " El Sol " in the
two reports sent from his government of New Galicia
— showed himself little inferior to his chief.
These reports by men such as Cortes, to Spain, or
by inferior officers to their chiefs, as in the case of
Alvarado, Diego Godoy,® and others, form a great
feature in the literature of the conquest of the New
World, hardly to be equalled in their kind. Many
of the conquerors wrote actual histories. Amongst
these, two will ever shine above the rest. The
^ " Bachiller en leyes."
2 " Quod Natura non dat, Salamanca non praestat."
^ Another lieutenant of Cortds.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 27
splendid history of the Conquest of Peru, by Pedro
Cieza de Leon, who from the age of fifteen up to
twenty-seven wrote by the light of the camp-fire
each evening all that happened in the day, contains
an account of the Incas and their government which
is unrivalled even by that composed by Garcilasso de
la Vega (Inca), whose mother was a princess of their
line. Nothing in all the literature of all those stirring
times can equal for simplicity and truth, for observa
tion, charity, and sense, the chronicle that the stout
soldier, Bernal Diaz del Castillo, wrote . of Mexico
and of its siege and fall. Prescott gets all his colour
from it. Sometimes he acknowledges the debt in
footnotes, but now and then appears to incorporate
long passages without acknowledgment.
Ercillas' epic poem of the wars in Chile with
the Araucanos, was written upon scraps of paper,
pieces of hide, on bones and bark, as he himself
informs us, and there are several histories of the kind,
written with the sword and arquebuse laid ready to
the hand. The Bachiller Enciso was, as his title
shows, an educated man, holding high office in the
newly conquered territory. For all his accuracy and
observation of the countries, his well- written logs,
and careful estimates of distances from one port to
another, so careful that they would serve to take a
vessel from Santa Marta right to Panama almost
without a chart, he yet shows a simplicity of mind
not to be found in more sophisticated days.
Perhaps it is the turn of phrase that seems to us
more simple than it was. Perhaps the newness of

28 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
the scenes he wrote of caused him to write, as
Spaniards say, with his soul in his hand,^ but the
effect is something differing in essence from that
produced by any traveller to-day.
The sense of mystery is gone out of the world.
Better communications have destroyed it. Even the
conquest of the air, with all its wonder and its
difficulty, cannot and never will produce a man apart,
a sailor of the air, differing in speech, in life, and
point of view, from those who crawl upon the earth,
as was the sailor of the seas. We know the Bachiller
Enciso was in Darien in 1 5 1 5, under the orders of
the celebrated Pedrarias Davila, Thus the work
written in 1 5 1 8 (the date of what is called in Spanish
the " privilege "^ — that is, the licence, showing it had
been examined and approved both by the civil and the
ecclesiastical authorities) evidently was done when
the impressions of the voyages were still fresh in his
mind. As he made, in or about the year 151 5, two
voyages up and down the coast from Panama to the
Cabo de la Vela, perhaps he had his log books to
assist him in his work. This most rare book for long
was only known to exist in a single copy in the
National Library in Paris, though perhaps it may
have been reprinted recently.
Of all the coast, down to the Cabo de la Vela, he
has preserved most curious details. Thus he tells us
that near Santa Marta all the gravel on the beach
looks as if it had been gilded, adding, " though this is
not the case." " The Indians," he says, " have much
1 " El alma en la palma." 2 « Privilegio."

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 29
gold and copper, which they know how to colour just
like gold. This they do with the juices of a certain
herb that grows upon that coast, passing the copper
through a fire,"
Stags and wild boars ^ were plentiful, just as they
are to-day. He gives the first account of the
celebrated manchineel-tree, so often spoken of by the
older navigators. Speaking of the poisoned arrows
which the natives use, he tells how they procure the
poison chiefly from the apple of a tree that grows
close to the water's edge, " If a man," he says, " eats
of the apple of that tree his body soon is filled with
maggots, and if by chance he sleeps beneath its shade
his head begins to ache, his face swells hideously, and
if he does not rise and come away he becomes blind
or dies," What modern science says about the
manchineel I am uncertain ; but there can be no
doubt that travel in the days of the Bachiller Enciso
had attractions that have disappeared to-day.
The Indians between Santa Marta and a port called
Zamba " were all good people, and do harm to
nobody, unless the others first begin." ^ Not an
unnatural state of mind for savages, and one that
might be copied with profit by the most civilized
of men. A little farther on, and, I regret to say near
Cartagena, where I protest I never should have
thought at any time the ladies so behaved, the
women all went naked, and fought as fiercely as the
men, shooting their arrows desperately and far.
^ Probably peccaries.
^ "Es buena gente, que no hace mal ... si a ellos no gelo
hacen primero."

30 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
" I had," he says, " a girl whom I took prisoner, of
twenty years of age. She told me that in the battle,
when she was taken by our men, she had killed eight
Christians."^ To my regret, the Bachiller says
nothing more about this amazon. By all the laws,
both of expediency and war, she should have married
some stout soldier of the Bernal Diaz type of man,
and brought up warlike sons. Perhaps the Bachiller
married her himself; but on this matter he preserves
an absolute discretion, keeping most strictly to such
things as appertain to the mission of a " Christian
governor." His first account of the Sinu — or, as he always
writes it, Cenu — occurs when he mentions that, from
Cartagena to the Port of the Cenu, there are some
twenty or more leagues. This is the actual distance
to the port now called Cispata, which lies, as the
Bachiller Enciso says, in a large bay, formed by the
river's mouth. In the Cenu, he says, much salt is
made, and this continues to be made down to the
present day. In ancient times, amongst the Indians
of South America, salt was a scarce commodity, and
was so highly valued that in some places it was used
as currency. The infidels^ in those parts used to make
mummies of the bodies of their chiefs, painting their
faces, putting crowns of feathers on their heads, and
placing bows and arrows in their hands. This done,
1 " Ocho hombres cristianos."
2 "Los infieles." This word has always seemed to me to be
used with singularly Httle application to men such as the Indians of
America, who had had no chance of being faithful to anything, but
their own gods.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 31
they set the bodies up in some convenient place, and
offered up to them bits of old rag, fruits, broken
arrows, or anything they had. This was not done,
apparently, in worship, but as an act of homage, or for
memory, just as we put a tombstone over graves.
Padre Simon, 1 the best authority on things
Colombian of the early days, informs us that at
Zipaquirii they found offered up to an idol a rosary,
a priest's biretta, and a Guide to the Confessional
(" Un Libro de Casos de Conciencia "). Whether the
Indian devotee had some knotty point upon his
conscience, or whether the book to him was simply
a " great medicine," is, and must always be, buried in
mystery. Possibly the first mention of mandioca,^ or
cazabe, bread is to be found in the pages of the
Bachiller. " There are roots," he says, " of which they make
their bread, as they do in Cuba, Jamaica, and in
Hispaniola ; but they are of another quality, for those
of the islands are all poisonous, and if a man eats of
them he dies infallibly, as if he had taken arsenic, and
to make bread of them they must be boiled and
scraped, before that they are ground.
" In the Cenu, upon the contrary, the people eat
the roots raw or roasted, and they are wholesome and
sweet-tasted " (" de gentil sabor "). He was evidently
unaware that there are several kinds of manioc, and
that the wild variety is poisonous till it has been
treated, as he has explained. The Indians also had
another kind of bread made out of Indian corn.

1 «

Conquistade Tierra Firme" (edition of Bogotd, 1892).
2 yatropha manioc.

32 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
This bread is quite unlike all other kinds of bread
made out of maize or Indian corn." It was the staple
food of the Indians of the coast of Colombia and
Panama, at the conquest, and has remained in use
(upon the coast) amongst all classes down to the
present day. The celebrated navigator, Jorge Juan,^
speaking of this bread, says: " It has no likeness
to wheaten bread either in colour or taste, but is
insipid in extreme." It is rolled up in a maize or
a banana leaf, in pieces about the size of a small
sausage. The local name is " hollo," and Oviedo in his
" Historia Natural de las Indias " gives the following
description of it : " The Indian women grind the
maize ^ between two stones . . . and as they grind
it mix a little water with it, which by degrees
converts the flour into a paste. Then taking a bit of
the leaf of a plant of that country, or of the maize
itself, they roll it up and make a cake of it." This
is the way the people of the Colombian coast make it
to-day, and I can certify that it has, as was said by
Jorge Juan, neither the colour nor the taste of bread ;
also that it is insipid to the last degree when cold,
but tolerable to hungry men when warm — that is to
say, if there is nothing in the world to serve as sub
stitute. How little necessity the Indians had to offer
up books of " Casos de Conciencia " to their idols
is shown by the following passage, which redounds
as much to the credit of their reasoning powers as to
1 Jorge Juan y Ulloa : " Relacion Historica del Viage i la
America Meridional" (Madrid, 1749).
2 He spells it " mahiz." This was the original spelling, for it is
a Carib word, first heard by the Spaniards in Santo Domingo, and
by them carried over the whole world.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 33
the open-minded attitude of the Bachiller, who
quotes all that they say, without a comment on it.
" I notified, from the King of Castile, two caciques
of the Cenu, that we were followers of the said King,
and that we had come to let them know that there
was only but one God, who was in three parts, and
yet one.^ That he was Ruler of the heavens and the
earth. That God had come down upon earth and left
St. Peter to rule for him. That St. Peter had left as
his successor the Holy Father, and that the Holy
Father was Lord of heaven and earth, acting on behalf
of God. That the said Holv Father as Lord of the
universe had made a present of all the Indies, including
the Cenu, to the King of Castile. I further notified
them that in virtue of this gift they were all subjects
of the aforesaid King. That they must pay him full
obedience, and send him something* every year. If
they did this the King would help them against their
enemies, and send them friars and priests to in
doctrinate them in the Christian faith.
" This said, I asked them for their answer, which
they gave, saying, . . . that as to there being but
one God, Ruler of heaven and earth, it seemed quite
reasonable ; but that the Pope was Lord of heaven
and earth on God's behalf, and acting with that
power had given their land to the King of Castile,
they looked upon it as the action of a madman.
" The Pope, they said, must have been drunk when
he did such a foolish thing as to give away some
thing that never had belonged to him, and the King,
^ " Que era trino y uno."
2 " Alguna cosa cada ano."

34 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
who received it, just as mad as the Pope. . . . They
said that they were lords of their own territory, and
wanted nothing either from Pope or King. I again
notified plainly to them that in that case I would
make war upon them and sell them all for slaves.
Their answer was that they would kill me and stick
my head upon a pole. This they tried hard to do,
but we were too strong for them and took their
villages, though they killed two of our men with
poisoned arrows, although their wounds were small."
In fact, civilization, as we know, must enter in
with blood. The curious thing about it all is the
attitude of mind of the Bachiller Enciso, for he was
no rough soldier, as was Pizarro or Valdivia, but an
educated man. The fact that he makes no comment
on the affair, or on the answer that the Indians gave to
what he must have known was arrant nonsense and
the rankest of injustice, is most significant. Most of
the other conquerors who often found themselves in
similar predicaments — notably Cortes in Mexico and
Pizarro in Peru — are loud in condemnation of the
Indians' folly and of their insolence in not accepting
out of hand a king and a religion quite unknown to
them and offered with the alternative of death. The
Bachiller's position was quite different from theirs,
for, before passing from the narration of his mis
sionary efforts, he tells us : " I took a chieftain in
another part of the Cenu . . . and found him to
be a very truthful man,^ who kept his word on all
occasions, one who knew good from evil as well as
any man,"^ He does not add "as well as any Chris-
^ " Hombre de mucha verdad."
2 " Y que le parecia mal, lo malo, y bien, lo bueno."

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 35
tian," though he might have done so. Perhaps deep
in his heart of hearts he was ashamed to do so,
knowing, as he himself must well have done, that
what is right is right, and what is evil evil, as did
the Indian chief.
It is most curious to read the account Enciso
gives of all the animals he saw whilst travelling in
the district of the Sinii, His descriptions certainly
are quaint, but still most accurate, and not a trace of
the marvellous enters into them any more than it
would enter into the head of one of our most modern
hunters after "specimens," who go out with their
comfortable tents, camps, beds, and medicines, and
their quick-firing slaughter rifles. Theology and
natural history he seemed to keep apart in reason-
tight compartments, just as some scientific men of
our own times keep science upon one side of their
heads and superstition on the other, without allowing
the least ray of light to fall on the dark side.
In the high mountains near the Gulf of Uraba,
he says, " there is great store of lions and of tigers,-^
and long-tailed cats like monkeys, only their tails are
longer, " Wild boars are plentiful, and animals almost as
large as cows, of a brown colour, their heads like
mules, with longish ears, and feet exactly like the

cows.

This animal was, of course, the tapir, and, though
the description may sound strange to modern ears, it
is most accurate,
^ It is to be remembered that both the English and Spaniards
referred to the puma as a lion, and the jaguar as a tiger.

36 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
" Ounces, they say, are found, but I have never
seen them ; but what I did see as I crossed a river in
those parts were lizards of huge size. These lizards
lie about the banks, and if an animal or an
incautious Christian passes by, they rush and seize
him, carrying him off below the surface of the stream
to make a meal of him,"
Even to - day the " incautious Christian " is
carried off occasionally by those same lizards that
Enciso writes about. In this respect, I am in the
same position as was the Bachiller in regard to the
ounces, for, though I have seen Christians sufficiently
incautious of their lives and reputations, I never saw
one eaten by an alligator, though I have heard of it
as taking place.
With not unnatural pride the Bachiller relates
that it was he who caught the first of these great
lizards, and tells, quite in the manner of our own
great naturalist Waterton, the struggle that he and
his followers had to despatch the alligator. The
point at which I join issue with him is when he says
that the flesh of these lizards, although it smells of
musk, is of a pleasant flavour, white and nice.^
Either the first conquerors were not particular, or
food was very scarce.
His best description, considered as a literary effort,
and one that does great credit to his powers of
observation, is ofthe armadillo, about which he says:
" There are in this land little animals about as big as
is a sucking-pig. They have got feet and hands just
like a horse, and their head is just like that of a little
^ " Blanca y gentil."

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 37
horse with its corresponding ears. It is all covered
with a shell from its head to its tail. Thus it looks
like a horse when it has armour on. These
animals are very handsome to look upon. They also
graze just like a horse."^
The curious thing about this, possibly the first
description of the armadillo, is that it should also have
struck Oviedo, the writer on natural history of the
Indies, as being like a horse, Oviedo, who was in
Panama about the same time as was the Bachiller
Enciso, although his great work " La Historia
Natural de las Indias," did not appear till some years
afterwards, either had seen the work of his compatriot
or talked with him about the animal.
He says these animals are well worth looking at
by Christians f Christians, indeed, have many things
beneath their noses well worth looking at. They
rarely see them, being, perhaps, absorbed in higher
matters. Luckily for us, Oviedo and the Bachiller
Enciso had their attention turned upon sublunary
affairs. Simple as are the observations of Enciso,
they yet have an impress of truth and of sincerity that
makes them priceless to the student of a district such
as the Sinu, so little written of in modern times.
^ " En esta tierra ay unos animales pequenos como un lechon de
un mes. Estos tienen los pies y las manos como un caballo encubertado,
con sus orejuelas, y esta todo cubierto de una concha desde las orejas
hasta la cola, que parece un caballo encubertado ; son fermosos de
mirar, pacen como un caballo." It is only fair to say that " mano " in
Spanish is used for the forefoot of a horse. In point of fact, the
armadillo has claws and not "manos" like a horse. As to their being
" fermosos de mirar "... well, well. ... " Hay gustos que
merecen palos."
^ " Son animales mucho de ver para los Cristianos."

CHAPTER IV
After the Bachiller Enciso had published his notes
upon the flora, fauna, and the Indians of the Sinu,
preserving for us, as in a slightly distorted but still
achromatic glass, glimpses of all he saw, no mention
of the province is to be found till the year 1533.
In that year Pedro de Heredia was named governor
of all the territory from the mouth of the River
Magdalena up to Darien. Having sailed from Cadiz
towards the end of 1 532, he disembarked in Cartagena
upon January 14th ofthe year 1533.
Heredia had already had considerable experience
of the New World ; as lieutenant to Vadillo, governor
of Santa Marta, he had taken part in all his expeditions,
and had accompanied his lieutenant Palamino upon
the last of all. On this occasion Palamino's horse at
the crossing of a river suddenly got into deep water
and with his rider disappeared. In a short time the
horse came up and swam to shore, but Palamino was
never seen again, either alive or dead.
Thus Heredia was no neophyte in America, but
a man who understood completely, all that was
required for an expedition to the New World, It has
been well observed by a writer on the Conquest of
38

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 39
New Granada^ (Colombia) that all the expeditions
that were fitted out from Haiti or from Santo
Domingo — that is, the island we call Hispaniola, and
the Spaniards knew as la Isla Espariola (the Spanish
Island) — were more successful than those that came
from Spain,
Certain it is that the expedition of Cortes was fitted
out in the Habana; that of Pizarro in Panama, Legaspi
also, the conqueror of the Philippines, started from
Mexico. Nearly all the expeditions that came from
Spain were commanded either by courtiers or at least
by noblemen. These, even, though some of whom
certainly had had experience in the Italian wars, were
quite at sea in the Americas. Generally they arrived
in shining armour, or in embroidered clothes, bringing
with them a long train of pages, followers, secretaries,
and others of the kind. The expeditions that started
either from Cuba or Hispaniola were composed of a
very different class. In them came men accustomed
to the climate, trained to bear arms within the tropics,
good horsemen, for horses soon become plentiful and
wild in the West Indies, and your wild horse makes
your good rider, better than he can possibly be made
in military riding schools.
These men, cruel and bigoted no doubt, were
worth a dozen of those fresh from Spain, and called
"bisoiios,"* or " chapetones," by the Spaniards. In
his youth Heredia had been, as was Cortes, a famous
duellist. Having had his nose almost cut off^ in a
1 " Compendio Historico del Descubrimiento de la Nueva Granada "
(Colonel Joaquin Acosta. Paris, 1 848).
2 Bisono = a raw soldier. Chapeton corresponds to the American
" tenderfoot," or the Australian " new chum."

40 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
street fight in Madrid, after it was repaired (" re-
parado ") by a good surgeon, he never rested till he
had slain three of his assailants. This was the cause
that took him with his good sword (and his repaired
nose) to the New World.
Having landed at Santo Domingo, he had the
luck, in a short time, to inherit a large estate there.
This got him the chance to go as lieutenant to Vadillo,
governor of Santa Marta, to the new colony upon
the coast. There he distinguished himself greatly,
and in a few years went home to Spain, after the
fashion of the conquerors of those days, to get himself
made governor of a portion of the newly conquered
territory. He chose a small, but well-selected expedi
tion, consisting of but one hundred and fifty soldiers,
all seasoned men, many of whom had already been in
the Indies. With him came, as lieutenant, Francisco
Cesar, who gave his name to the great river, still
partially unexplored, upon whose banks he lost his
life. Pedro de Alcazar and Captain Muio de Castro
also were officers of his, and it is said that descendants
of both of them are to be found, either in Cartagena
or in the province, down to the present day. Heredia
did not bring rich furniture, brocades, or pictures, as
other of the captains who had sailed from Spain had
done. Instead of that, he put aboard his ships great
store of ammunition, cannons and muskets, swords,
lances, and defensive armour, fitted for warfare in hot
countries. He took much wine and flour and, with a fore
thought that shows him to have been a born explorer,
he had constructed a large barge, of little draught, to

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 41
sail up rivers and to penetrate their creeks. All the
expense of the expedition he bore himself, settling it
with the gold he had won by force of arms in Santa
Marta and upon the coast. He touched at Puerto Rico
and took on board some of the companions of
Sebastian Cabot, who had accompanied him on his
disastrous voyage up the River Plate.
In Santo Domingo he found remains of the
expeditions that had been in Venezuela with Captains
Sedeiio and Orgaz. These were all men accustomed
to the climate and experienced in Indian warfare, and
proved a tower of strength to him when he began to
fight. They advised him to have made articulated
breastplates of stout leather, as a defence against the
poisoned arrows used by the Indians of the coast.
He then sailed for Cartagena, taking on board
forty-seven horses, but so stormy is the Caribbean Sea,
and the ships of that time were so slow and little sea
worthy, that twenty-seven of the horses perished in
the short crossing from the islands to the coast.
This was a great misfortune, for horses played so
great a part in all the battles of the conquest of the
Americas. It is uncertain whether Cartagena^ was first so
called by Ojeda or by Bastidas ;^ but when Don Pedro
^ The Indian name was Calamar.
2 Rodrigo de Bastidas was a native of Seville, who founded Santa
Marta. He died of the effects of wounds given him in a mutiny,
though he reached Cuba before his death. Padre Simon, in his
" Historia de la Conquista de Tierra Firme," says of him that " he
was a man of good reputation and good family, and esteemed by all."
The great Las Casas writes of him : "I always knew him kind in his
dealings with the Indians, and a severe critic [blasfemaba de los que

42 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
de Heredia arrived there, it already bore that name.
Here, the expedition ran considerable danger, for they
made their land-fall close to Santa Marta, and
coasting on, as was the habit in those days, were
nearly wrecked somewhere about the mouth of the
River Magdalena; probably not far from the point
which juts out near the long pier of Puerto Colombia,
called Sabanilla by the Spaniards of those days.
Colonel Acosta^ says that Heredia's vessels entered
the harbour by the Boca Grande (now closed up),
but that they did not disembark until next day.
No Indians were to be seen, but a horse having
wandered off to feed, the Indians came out of a wood
and tried to seize upon him. Heredia, with fifteen
men, attacked them and drove them all before him
to their village (Calamar), which they deserted upon
his approach. Water was scarce and brackish, so,
guided by an old Indian called Corinche, whom they
had taken prisoner, but who stayed with them volun
tarily (perhaps attracted by the novelty of all he saw
amongst them), they set out for a place called Zamba,
farther down the coast. Heredia had brought with
him from Santo Domingo an Indian girl from Zamba,
who had been taken prisoner several years before.
She had been baptized by the name of Catalina, and
had become a Christian, and, as often happened in
those days with Indian prisoners, proved of great

les hacian agravios] of those who injured them." This was high
praise from such a man, and Las Casas was always sparing of his
praise. 1 "Compendio Historico del Descubrimiento de la Nueva Granada"
(Paris, 1848).

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 43
service to the conquerors. How much Cortes was
helped in Mexico by the Indian princess called
Malinche, is one of the romantic episodes of the
whole great adventure of the conquest of America.
As they marched on, Heredia riding on a fiery
horse — for, as the chronicler remarks, " the things and
animals of men take on a likeness to their masters "
— they came upon a town. The inhabitants attacked
them furiously. The battle raged three hours, and
Heredia lost two horses and a man or two. As he
was " lancing and disembowelling the Indians with
great satisfaction,"^ he nearly perished, suffocated by
his steel cuirass and helmet, designed for use in the
colder climates of the north. He would have fallen
from his horse, and in that case have lost his life, had
not his followers, perceiving the condition he was in,
rushed up and hastened to disarm him speedily.
This saved his life, and he was spared to lance and
disembowel many Indians at a future date, no doubt
with equal satisfaction to himself. These Indians
were the Turbacos, and in their territory, not far
from where their village was, and where now stands
the town of Turbaco, are to be found the celebrated
little mud-volcanoes, described by Humboldt in his
account of Venezuela and Colombia.
They are situated in a glade underneath a hill, are
about eighteen in number, and now and then send up
^ " Iba cebandose en alancear y destripar los Indios" (PadreSimon).
He did not always have things all his own way, for on one occasion
his horse, a hard-mouthed brute ("tenia un caballo tan duro de
boca ") took him into the middle of the enemy. The horse emerged
so full of arrows that he looked like a hedgehog, says Father Simon.
Its life was saved by repeated bathings in salt-water. " Thus, he did
not die, as so many [horses ?] died, by arrow wounds."

44 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
a shower of mud. In fact, the little cones are more
like geysers than volcanoes, for some of them are but
flat, open mouths. From Turbaco comes the water
which to-day supplies the capital. Curiously enough,
the want of water in Turbaco in those days was what
led Heredia to retrace his steps to Cartagena when
he determined to erect a town.
Before he started on his backward journey to the
coast, he conscientiously burned down the Indian
village, leaving it, as Padre Simon tells us, " a heap
of ashes, and having abandoned heaps of the bodies
of dead Indians to the birds of prey." To do him
justice, the good Father does not exult in the exploit
of Heredia, but tells the episode quite feelingly, much
in the spirit that a man, seated in his club, who reads
that an earthquake has overwhelmed ten or twelve
thousand Chinamen in some remote place on the
Yiangsi, exclaims, " Poor things !" and goes on with
his tea. Don Pedro de Heredia solemnly founded the city
of Cartagena, and named magistrates on January 21st,
under the patronage of St. Sebastian, both because it
was his day, and in remembrance of his own escape
from poisoned arrows in the fight. I should be
loath to disagree with any member of the clergy on such
a point as the right day that appertains to any saint.
Padre Simon was a professional, and it is seldom wise
to disagree with men about points of their own
profession, as a mere amateur. For all that. Father
Ribadenyra, in his " Flos Sanctorum,"^ a monumental
^ " Flos Sanctorum." Por el Padre Pedro de Ribadenyra, de la
Compania de. Jesus (Natural de Toledo), Barcelona, en la Imprenta

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 45
work, in which are to be read the lives and miracles
of all the saints of any consequence, says that the
saint of Narbonne passed into Paradise upon the
twentieth of the month.
As the Bay of Cartagena was rich in fishings,
several Indian tribes were found established on its
shores. In Boca Chica there reigned a chief called
Carex, and when Heredia heard of him he sent the
Indian woman Catalina to offer him the friendship of
the King of Spain. The chief, who probably had
heard about the exploits of the Spaniards up and down
the coast, replied that the Christians were only a band
of thieves and murderers, and, for his part, he would
resist them to the death.
Heredia, of course, set out to reduce the village,
and after a stiff fight, in which he killed many of the
Indians, took the chief prisoner. In this adventure
they took an Indian who united in himself the
threefold functions of doctor, sorcerer, and priest —
functions which even now are sometimes to be found
united in one man.
Padre Simon calls him a person of some repute
in the district.^ Therefore Heredia elevated him to
the position of ambassador and sent him on a mission
to a chief. This reputable man, whose name, as it
chanced, was Caron, set out in a canoe. No one at
first was willing to accompany him, for everybody
felt instinctively that, after the fighting at Turbaco
and with Carex, it was perilous to visit other
de Teresa Piferrer, viuda, administrada por Thomas Piferrer, librero,
ano 1 75 1. Vendese en su casa, en la Plaza del Angel.
^ " Persona de respeto en la comarca."

46 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
tribes. At last two youthful Spaniards offered their
services. Caron set out with them to see a chief by
the name of Bahaire at a place now known as
Pasacaballos, where steamers going up the coast call
at to take in wood. It stands just at the mouth of
what is called a " cario" — that is, a narrow channel in a
mangrove swamp upon a sandy flat. It cannot have
been very different in those days, except that it was
peopled by Bahaire's Indians, instead of negroes as at
the present time.
Bahaire, evidently, was a man of a quick temper,
though he intended to accept the peace that Caron
offered him. He called a council, but, as the
chronicler of those events informs us, " only for form's
sake, to satisfy his people," just as occurs, so says the
ancient writer, in the like circumstances, even in
Christian lands.^ This may be so, though it makes
lamentable reading for friends of progress and for
optimists. At the great council of the tribe, Bahaire
declared his views, saying that it was prudent to make
peace with adversaries such as were the Spaniards,
who with their horses and their firearms were
irresistible. All would have passed off quietly with the usual
vote of confidence in the government, had not an
opposition chieftain risen to speak. This patriot,
whose name is not preserved by history for us, taunted
Bahaire with his cowardice. He called him traitor,
said he was afraid to face the enemy ; in fact, he made
the opposition speech usual in parliaments.
1 "Christian lands" seem to have changed but little, in their
political morality, since the conquest of America.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 47
Bahaire, who, as it would appear, but little under
stood the freedom of debate, or was restrained by
parliamentary methods, raising his club, at one fell
blow dashed out the speaker's brains. No one else
rising to continue the debate, the vote was carried and
peace agreed upon between this energetic parlia
mentary hand and the King of Castile.
Heredia himself, in a letter to the King,^ says
that he was anxious as to the fate of the two young
Spaniards who had accompanied his ambassador.
They happened to be Andaluces, and Heredia was
rejoiced to find them safe. The treaty that he made
with the vehement Bahaire brought him in, as he
tells us, seventy thousand dollars, mostly in gold-dust
and in precious stones.
The subsistence of the colony assured, and the
treasury well filled, Heredia naturally set out to look
for gold, after the fashion of the conquerors. He
showed the Indians by ocular demonstration that it
was to their interests to be friends with him, for if
they hesitated, he burned their villages and killed a
goodly number of them, as Castellanos, a contemporary
historian (or chronicler), tells us with quiet satisfac
tion, as if their slaughter was an ordinary thing
during those stirring times.
In Cipagua, Heredia found a temple in which an
idol was adored under the figure of a porcupine.
This idol stirred his pious wrath exceedingly, for it
was made of gold. He cast it down at once, holding
it for another Dagon, as it would appear, and saying
that he could not tolerate such bestiality.^ This
1 Philip II.
2 " Que no podia consentir tan bestiales idolatrias."

48 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
bestial idol weighed five arrobas^ and a half, as
Castellanos tells us, and proved the largest ever found
in New Granada, so that the faith of him who threw
it down, was justified by weight. The priest of Tunja
goes on to remark, " the hawk-bells, axes, and red caps
the conqueror gave the cacique of the place consoled
him for his idol." ^ This may have been so ; but an idol
of such size was poorly paid for by the small products
of the industry of Spain the conqueror disbursed.
Ideas of that sort never troubled conquerors, and so
Heredia set out again, seeking for idols to destroy,
and to implant the faith. After a five months'
journey he returned to his new town, and entered it
in triumph, bringing a million and a quarter ducats
with him, and mostly all in gold. This tried icono
clast, after deducting the fifth part of his loot, which
he sent to the King, being his share according to
capitulations entered into before Heredia set out, at
Seville, reserved a portion for the governor (himself),
and after he had given largely to the hospital and
paid his captains, still had enough to pay the soldiers
in his troop six thousand ducats each.
So great a treasure did not fall to the lot either of
Pizarro or Cortes, or else those conquerors were not
so generous with their gold, as was Heredia. Honour
and profit cannot be carried in one bag, the adage has
it ; but it would seem that faith and profit sometimes
may go together, at least a portion of the way.
1 The arroba was about twenty-five pounds.
^ Juan de Castellanos was the parish priest of Tunja, a town in
the Sabana of Bogotd. His " Elegias de Varones ilustres de Indias "
was printed in Madrid in 1589.

CHAPTER V
In about a year after its first foundation Cartagena
began to take on the appearance of a capital. The
frequent traffic between it and the Islands kept it in
touch with Spain. Everyone who anchored in the
bay was struck with its extent and its security from
storms. Houses began to rise with great rapidity,
built in the style of houses in the mother-country.
In fact, many of the houses that still adorn the streets
were built but little after the first conquest of the
place. Merchants flocked to the new-built town,
which soon became a centre both of commerce and
of wealth. All the time it was growing, Heredia
was being reinforced with men and horses from Santo
Domingo and the other islands of the Caribbean Sea.
Castellanos, who, though a priest, seems to have
been what in old times was called a wag, speaks of
the ladies who came from Spain looking out for
adventures. Some, as he says, followed their own
sweet will, whilst others were a little more restrained
by what he calls " the ties of matrimony."^
It seems these feminine knights-errant always laid
claim to relationship with greater families^ than they
^ " Maritales ligaduras."
^ " Una se puso Dona Berenguela, otra hizo Uamarse Dona
Sancha, de manera que de genealogia esa tomaba mas " (Castellanos,
" Elegias de Varones ilustres de Indias ").
49 4

50 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
had any right to claim. This shows how well
advised the Anglo-Saxons were to invent the peerage ;
it gave them scope, as a wit said, to show their best
imagination in the art of literature, and put a bar
to Doiia Berenguelas and Doiia Sanchas to pose as
peeresses, either in Canada, New Zealand, or in
Australia. Heredia's next expedition was to the Sinii. Not
that he knew he was going there, or even of its
existence, for he tells us that as his expedition
marched along, devoured by thirst, and hardly know
ing what direction to pursue, sheltering themselves
against the overwhelming heat in dry ravines and
under scrubby trees, they chanced to meet two
Indians who came out from a little hamlet that they
passed. These men, a father and his son, talked
with them, and one, perhaps in exchange for hawk-
bells, or some other indication of the power and
wealth of Spain, gave them a plate of gold.
When they asked where it came from they said
from Finzenu.'^ The sight of gold, and the knowledge
that more was to be obtained at no great distance off,
always acted upon the Spaniards of the Middle Ages''
as a magnet does on iron filings. Nature cTianges but
little in the course of centuries. The miserable search
after riches that took place at the first conquest of
1 Fray Francisco de G6mara, in his " Historia General de las
Indias," says : " Zenu es rio lugar y pesca, puerto grande y seguro "
— that is, " Zenu is a river, a district, and a large, safe port." The
port is that now called Cispata. He goes on to say there is much salt
there, and good fishings on the coast. The Indians work silver well,
and gild it with herbs that grow on that coast. The salt remains ;
but the few Indians that are left are sunk too low to work at anything
except to make their bows and arrows and their spears.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 51
America was repeated in South Africa, but twenty
years ago. The only difference was that amongst the
Spaniards many men of lofty character rose superior
to the base race for wealth, and in South Africa all
the scum drawn from the ghettoes and the Stock
Exchanges of Europe appear to have been vile.
The Indians whom they met guided them across the
mountains, which, as Heredia says, though not extra
ordinarily high, are bad and rough for horses.^ In
this I certainly can bear him out, having had to lead my
horse for several miles through virgin forests, over a
mountain path, and with a temperature of a hundred
degrees Fahrenheit, After the mountains had been
passed the expedition came out on an extensive plain,
and a short distance on came to an Indian town
surrounded by a multitude of little tumuli.
This was the Indian cemetery of Finzemi, in which
the Indians buried all their chiefs. Inside these graves,
when they were opened, the Spaniards found an
incredible quantity of gold. The place was ruled
over by a chieftainess, who with her husband received
the Spaniards hospitably. Heredia seems to have
entirely lost his head when he heard of the buried
treasure in the cemetery. Up to this time he certainly
had not been cruel to the Indians, and he had shown
himself most generous to all his followers. He sacked
the town in which he had been hospitably entertained.
That nothing should be wanting, in a temple in the
town the Spaniards found some four and twenty idols,
but not so bestial as the great idol that first excited
^ "La sierra ... no muy alta pero de tierra fragosa para los
caballos."

52 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
Heredia's pious fury, for they were only cased in gold.
A sad deception, which showed such a deceitful
attitude of the infidel that Heredia was almost
justified in what he did. However, as a compensation
to these Christians ambulant, hung on some trees
outside the temple were several bells of gold. These,
one of the chroniclers of the expedition says, they
also tore down and found the worth of them — together
with the shabby idols, we may suppose — to total one
hundred and fifty thousand crowns. Thus did
Heredia pursue his missionary course, upon the one
side laying up merit for himself by the destruction of
false gods, and on the other accumulating wealth.
All might have gone on well with him had he not
turned ungenerous to his soldiers. These men, each
and all of whom were just as ardent in their faith as
was their leader, and just as eager to amass wealth for
themselves as he, held it as flat blasphemy that they
should be defrauded of their gains. This was (he sin
against their Holy Ghost, a thing never to be condoned,
and from that time a party rose that in the future
threw him into prison and forcedihim in the long run
to return to Spain to plead before the King, perishing
miserably in a shipwreck on the way. For the
meantime, however, all went well with him.
By an ingenious stratagem, after having buried
three hundred thousand crowns that he took from
the Indian tumuli, he got the expedition to move on
farther into the undiscovered country, intending to
send his slaves from Cartagena to dig the treasure up.
It always seems amazing where the great quantities of
gold found by the conquerors came from, not only in

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 53
Peru and Mexico, but by Heredia in the district of
Sinu. In fact, so plentifully was gold found in the
Indian cemeteries of the Sinu that it became a
common saying, " It was an ill day for Peru when
they discovered the Sinu." Either the gold had been
accumulated by degrees during past centuries, or else
the Indians knew of mines, whose secret perished with
them. Certainly in no part of the whole continent
has gold been found in quantities comparable to those
found at the conquest by Heredia, Pizarro, or Cortes.
Padre Simon says that the Spaniards called the
tumuli " mogotes," a word generally applied to hills
of sand that run out on a beach.
Heredia's guide (the Indian who gave the little
plate of gold) was the first to inform what wealth lay
buried in the mogotes that were scattered about the
plain for miles. The soldiers were unwilling to leave
the place where for a week they had been opening
tombs, some of them, according to Oviedo,^ so rich as
to produce fifteen to twenty thousand dollars each.
However, partly by threats, and partly by persuading
them that there was much more treasure to be found
the farther they penetrated into the undiscovered
territory, he got them to march on. The expedition
that had left Cartagena, richly equipped and clothed,
two hundred infantry in strength and fifty cavalry,
was now much worn with fevers and with hardships,
and looked just like a tribe of gipsies as they tramped
onwards into the unknown, driving the baggage-
mules and the horses of the cavalry in front of them,
all loaded up with gold. A certain number of the men
^ " Historia Natural de las Indias."

54 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
had died ; others had been killed in the continual
skirmishes with the Indians. This did not damp the
survivors in the least, for they, like all the Spaniards of
the conquest, cared not a whit for dangers, heat, cold,
or hunger, if there was gold in view.
After long days of painful wandering they came
to what was known as the land of Zenufana, which
seems to have been the borders of the province now
called Antioquia, for they arrived at really high
mountains, and there are none such in the district
through which flows the Sinu. It was the season of
the rains, that in Colombia are torrential, and the
whole expedition, once engaged in the defiles of the
high mountains, suffered most terribly from cold.
Most of the Indians that they had impressed to
serve as carriers died of the change of climate, for
they were all men born in one of the hottest districts
of the world,^ most likely were half-naked, and were
sure to have been overworked. Little enough the
conquerors cared about the death of Indians, but,
unluckily, their guides were amongst those who
perished of the cold. The Indians, who saw the
plight the Spaniards were in, attacked them every
minute of the day, and to complete the difficulties
of the position the rivers rose behind them, cutting
them off completely from the fertile lands of the
Sinu. Heredia, who was a born leader, seeing that force
was out of place, entered into negotiations with
the Indians, and prevailed on them to build him
bridges over the river that barred his way upon his
^ El Departamento de Bolivar.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 55
retreat. How far he actually got towards Antioquia
is difficult to say, but as he had been marching for
a month he must have gone some way. Colonel
Acosta^ tells us that Heredia began to scale the
mountains on March 24th. As he left Cartagena on
January Sth, and passed a month opening the mogotes
that he found at Finzenii, he must have employed
the remainder of his time in his march towards
the mountains. He could not have remained
more than a few days in such a temperature or he
would have lost most of his horses and his men.
The more the history of the conquest of America
is studied — no matter whether in the tropic woods of
Panama, amongst the snows of the high mountains of
Peru, in Chile or in Mexico, or in the expedition
that Heredia led to the Sinu — the more extraordinary
always must appear the courage and the tenacity of
the Spaniards of the time. Although their arms were
far superior to the arms the Indians had, and their
horses gave them an immense advantage, yet their
numbers were always small.
The guns they had, carried but little distance, and
were slow to load, so that, unlike the modern
openers -up of Africa, they could not slaughter
their enemies with safety to themselves at long
range, but frequently fought hand to hand with
armies three times as numerous as theirs. The pity
of it was, like other openers-up of darker continents,
they came to invade the lands of other people who
had never done them harm.
As always happens in an expedition that has got
^ " Compendio Historico," etc.

56 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
into trouble, the Spaniards threw the blame upon the
general. Being a general he ought to have produced
rain or fine weather exactly as he pleased, smoothed
out all difficulties, and foreseen everything.
Seeing the temper of his men, Heredia resolved
to return to Cartagena with the best speed possible.
After a painful march they arrived there, but so few
in number, and so much wasted by hardships and
disease, that they were scarcely recognizable. The
death of about a third of the men who had set out was
the gain of the survivors, for it left fewer to share the
booty when it was counted out. After laying on one
side the fifth part due to the King of Spain, Heredia had
left four hundred thousand crowns ; these he shared out
amongst his men. As by the time that he returned
his whole force numbered less than two hundred, the
booty was immense. The poorest soldier had enough
with which to return home to Spain and end his days
in comfort and in ease. Few did so. The majority
spent all their money upon fine clothes and arms, on
horses that they sent for to the Islands,^ in dissipation,
and at the gambling table. Padre Simon relates that
when the deputy whom Heredia had left in Cartagena
heard the news of the riches of the mogotes of the
Sinu, "taking his nose between his fingers he began to
sing. ^
1 Cuba, Santo Domingo, and Jamaica.
2 " Quedo tan alegre que tomendose las narices entre las manos,
commenz6 i cantar." Though I have seen an Arab singer in the
town of Fez put his fingers in his ears before he broke into the high
falsetto voice in which the Arabs of Morocco sing, the action of the
deputy governor of Cartagena, I confess, is new to me. It may have
some occult significance, not yet made plain to us.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 57
Certainly, if wealth without having ventured
anything to acquire it is food for joy, his curious sing
ing was well justified. However, not content with
this transient and Punch-like manifestation of his
interior spiritual grace, he too determined to set out
for the Sinu to open sepulchres.
In Heredia's absence Fray Tomas Toro, the first
Bishop of Cartagena, had arrived. With him came
Don Alonso de Heredia, the brother of Don Pedro,
one of the conquerors of Guatemala. Heredia, with
a disregard of policy that does him little credit,
immediately appointed his brother his lieutenant-
general, depriving Don Francisco Cesar of the post.
As Cesar had served him faithfully since the first day
they landed, was a brave soldier and a man of parts,
to deprive him of his post just after a . campaign
looked like rank favouritism.
In general, Spanish commanders of these days,
even when superseded justly and on the orders ofthe
Kings of Spain, were wont to raise the standard of
revolt. Both in the conquests of Peru and Mexico
revolts of that kind took place that often put the new-
conquered territory in the greatest danger, and were
the cause of much blood being shed.
Luckily for Heredia and for all concerned, and
for the safety of the infant colony, Francisco Cesar
was a man of a very different stamp from the great
part of his contemporaries. Few braver men or finer
captains ever passed to the New World. Courage
was general enough amongst the conquerors, and
military skill not rare, as many of them had served
in the Italian wars. Few showed much abnegation.

58 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
and few such probity and sense of discipline as Cesar
did after his unjust treatment by his general.
His deposition caused much ill feeling amongst
the soldiery, but he himself accepted it without a
murmur, and, when he was appointed by his chief to
head another expedition to the Sinu, busied himself
industriously to get all ready for the road. In
August of the year 1534 he set out with about two
hundred men, and in due course arrived at the Sinu.
The rains which generally begin about that time in
the province of Bolivar, and last two months or more,
caught Cesar and his men just as they arrived at the
great cemetery. They could not work for the bad
weather, and even had there been no rain nothing
remained for them to work at, for the Indians during
their absence had stripped the sepulchres and carried
off the gold. Where they had hidden it no one was
ever able to find out. Its resting-place remains a
mystery, for it disappeared as absolutely as did the
bulk of the treasures of the Incas of Peru. In the
latter country Indians are said still to possess the secret
of the Incas' treasure-houses, but, if it is so, the secret
never was revealed to any member of the dominating
race. In Peru and in the Sinu alone did the
Spaniards ever come on Indian cemeteries that
furnished quantities of gold.
Since the days of the conquest nothing further of
the kind has been found in the Sinu. The very site
of the Indian town of Finzenu has become a matter
of some doubt, although the excavations made by the
Spaniards ought not to be difficult to find. In Peru
the opening up of huacas, as the Indian graves are

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 59
called, is still an industry, though finds of treasure are
infrequent, the violated tombs yielding but little else
than pottery and a few images. So little has been
written^ on the Indian cemetery of Finzenu, except
what is to be found in the pages either of Piedrahita^
or of Padre Simon, that the whole subject has fallen
into oblivion, and hardly a Colombian in a hundred
seems to have heard of them. The description of the
Indian funeral rites and of the cemetery itself, pre
served by Padre Simon, is interesting, and shows he
was a man of keenest observation, and took deep
interest in the antiquities of the newly conquered
land.^ " The cemetery of Zenu," he tells us, " was
composed of an infinity of tumuli, some conical and
some foursquare. When an Indian died they dug
a grave, and in it with the corpse they put his arms
and valuables, laying them on his left side — that
is, the left side, looking to the east. All round the
body were placed jars of chicha,* maize in the cob,
^ Nothing, as far as I have ever found.
^ " Historia General de las Conquistas del Nuevo Reino de
Granada." ^ Most of the contemporary writers on the conquest were equally
observant and interested in everything. Cortes, Bernal Diaz del
Castillo, Pedro Cieza de Leon, and many others, have left minute
descriptions of all they saw. One, whose name is lost and who
figures as the "Unknown Conqueror" in the pages of Ramuzio's
" Voyages," has left a drawing of the great teocalli (temple of
Mexico). Dictionaries might be exhausted and academies toil vainly
to produce a more tremendous name, than the "Unknown Con
queror." His only literary compeer, is Death.
^ Chicha is a fermented beverage made from maize. In ancient
times the maize was chewed by the old women of the tribe to
macerate it. I believe this practice still is followed by the wilder
tribes upon the Amazon and Paraguay. Advancing civilization, or

6o CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
and a stone to grind it with, so that the warrior
should have provisions for the road. If he was a
great chief his wives and slaves were buried with
him, having been first made drunk. The whole was
covered over with a red earth that they brought
from a place far away."
As the mourners remained drinking round the
grave for days, and in the intervals of funereal
drunkenness they piled more and more earth above
the chief, the consequence of the deceased was
estimated by the amount of drink consumed and the
height of the mound.
In one of the chief sepulchres, known to the
Spaniards as "La Tumba del Diablo," they found
"images of every kind of animal, from man down
to the ant,"^ all of the purest gold. These objects
Heredia valued at thirty thousand crowns. This
" Devil's Tomb " must have resembled some of the
museums of Rome and Naples, in which so many
animals (including man) are to be found well imitated,
but, alas ! not in gold.
Piedrahita relates that Finzenu was ruled over by
a chieftainess,^ and that " her majesty was such^ that,
when she lay down in her hamac, she placed her

degeneracy, or perhaps refinement (who shall judge the heart ?), views
this good old custom with disfavour, and the maize is pounded in a
mortar in a mere bourgeois way. Chicha was drunk in Colombia, in
Chile, and in Peru, and is drunk to-day in all these countries. Taken
in excess, it induces semi-paralysis and idiocy.
^ "Encontraron objetos de oro que eran imitaciones de figuras de
toda especie de animales, desde el hombre hasta la hormiga."
2 "Cacica."
3 " La majestad de ella era tal . . ."

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 61
hands upon two female slaves and used a third one as
a footstool." All of the spoilers of these Indian sepulchres are
said by Padre Simon to have come to a bad end.
" Impenetrable judgment of the Lord," he says.
" All who violated these sepulchres that, though they
were graves of idolaters, were yet sacred . . . died poor
in hospitals, and the riches they amassed never passed
to their sons."
It seems too good to be believed, and one is left
hoping the simple, old priest was right in what he
says.

CHAPTER VI
All the time that the various expeditions were
exploring the Sinu and opening Indian graves for
treasure the town of Cartagena steadily was being
built. With great rapidity, the first thatched hovels —
hurriedly run up to protect the earliest settlers from the
tropic rains — were giving place to tile-roofed houses
in the fashion of Old Spain. Solidly built mansions,
with a patio in the middle, rose as by magic,
for conquerors who had grown rich suddenly, wished
to found families. Most of them called to mind
they were of noble race, and if they were not it
was all the same out in the Indies. Above nearly
every door a massive coat of arms proclaims, even
to-day, that the builders of the houses all were
" sons of somebody."^
The usual Spanish plan was followed of grouping
the chief buildings round a square right in the middle
of the town. In the same square, built by the
conquerors, stand the cathedral, the palace of the
governor, the House of the Inquisition, and at one
corner the first house built in Cartagena by a
conqueror. From the chief square the streets radiated
at right angles, for in few cities of the New World
1 " Hijosdalgo " — i.e., " hijos de algo " = sons of somebody.
62

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 63
are the dark, winding lanes of medieval European
towns to be observed. Perhaps the knowledge or the
intuition — ^for who shall say where the one ends and
the other begins, either in individuals or societies ? —
that open spaces were a necessity in towns within the
tropics, influenced them ; but it is certain that the
chessboard was the pattern of nearly all Spanish towns
built by the conquerors. It has remained so down to
the present day in Spanish America. Despite it,
Cartagena, which must have early taken on the aspect
that it still has, is picturesque in the extreme.
Whether the conquerors laid it out exactly as it is, is
quite uncertain, although so many of its buildings
date from the conquerors' time. The great walls, the
finest in America, and the chief ornament, pride, and,
as it were, achievement of the town, could not have
been begun much before Philip II. was on the throne
of Spain. When Heredia returned from the last expedition
to the Sinu, bringing with him two million dollars'
worth of gold, great stores sprang up lik" mushrooms,
and in them were to be seen silks, jewels, brocades,
richly embossed saddles, and arms of every kind. In
fact, as an old writer says, there was as much luxury
to be found in Cartagena as in Madrid itself. So
much, indeed, did Cartagena imitate Madrid that the
duels of the "guapos"^ and " valentones " of the
^ " Guapo " literally = " handsome," and by implicatioa " brave."
The word is common in Spain, and has also survived from the time
of the Spanish domination, in Naples. The guapo there has the same
signification that it had in medieval Spain— ^/.^., a " bravo." In
America it is never used in that sense. In the Argentine, when
applied to a horse, it means " good for a long journey."

64 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
capital were reproduced in the streets of the new
city that was springing up beyond the seas. These
nocturnal duellists or rufflers, so like our Mohawks,
were always known as "men of the sword and
cloak."' The climate of Cartagena, in which a man can
hardly tolerate a shirt, made the cloak impossible, and
thus these rufflers had to fight with their faces
uncovered, and were not able, as they were in
Madrid, to stab and brawl unknown. So great
became their insolence that one night, as Heredia
himself was walking in the front of his own house
and talking to a friend, he was set upon by nine of
these night-hawks. The experiences of his youth
now stood him in good stead, for he made such a
stout defence and was so well assisted by his friend
that, after leaving several of their number stretched
upon the ground, his assailants fled and left him master
of the field.
Nocturnal brawls of a like nature were little to
Heredia's mind, which was set on the exploration
of the country and to amass more gold. His brother,
Don Alonso, to soften down the slight done to
Francisco Cesar, made him his lieutenant, and sent
him to a town, then called Balsillas,2 to see a chief who
ruled there who was friendly to their cause. The
chief's name was Tolu, and when the Spaniards, under
Alonso de Heredia, founded a town there, they
called it Santiago de Tolu, naming it, as they often did
^ " Gente de capa y espada."
2 Balsillas = little rafts. The Indians of the place were great
raft-builders.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 65
in New Granada, after the Indian chief In the same
way Lorica, on the Sinii, was so named after the
cacique whose residence it was.
Tolu proved a true friend to the Spaniards, giving
them provisions in abundance, and also ten thousand
castellanos' in pure gold — a goodly sum, taking into
consideration the much greater value of money in
those days.
Alonso de Heredia, though an experienced
captain, seems from the first to have been jealous of
his lieutenant, Francisco Cesar. When Cesar arrived
in Tolu (then called Balsillas) he set the Indians at
work to build a raft, in order to shorten the journey
from that port to Cartagena, because the road, by
land, lay across hills and marshes and through
trackless everglades. This showed his foresight, for
Tolu is only distant about forty miles from Cartagena,
and is a port of call. Even to-day there is no road
between the two ports : nothing but cattle-tracks serve
to connect them. On the land side the way is
arduous, with grass and water scarce. When Alonso
de Heredia heard of the ten thousand castellanos
that Cesar had received from the chief Tolu, he
called on him to give them up.
Cesar had already shared them with his soldiers
and was unable to comply. For this Alonso de
Heredia tried him by court martial and sentenced
him to death. His life was spared, for not a soldier
in the host would act as headsman, and so Francisco
C^sar, the future conqueror of Antioquia, and far
^ The castellano, according to Clemencin, was worth eleven
dollars ("Compendio Geografico"). 5

66 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
the finest of the conquerors of Tierra Firme, after
Balboa, was forced to march with the expedition as a
prisoner in chains.
Alonso de Heredia, after he left Tolu, must have
marched right through the middle of the famous
Llanos de Corozal, for he was striking at a venture
towards the territory of a chief called Ayapel. This
worthy also has given his name to the whole district.
Castellanos says the Spaniards journeyed " a la
Ventura," for they had lost their guides, who had been
killed in the attack upon a village. As the country
in the Llanos de Corozal is cut by frequent patches
of dense forest, that in those days must have been
denser still if possible, and here and there has stony
hills of not inconsiderable height, but rough and
very bad for unshod horses on account of beds of
gravel, their progress must have been both perilous
and slow.
However, nothing ever daunted the conquistadores,
and in such circumstances the men described by Padre
Simon under the name of " baquianos "^ must have
been the salvation of the expedition in its worst diffi
culties. " The baquianos are those whose counsel is
valuable (on such occasions). They find the way
. . . they watch and never sleep. They suffer heat
and cold and thirst and hunger . . . they go in front
and discover ambuscades. They find and know such
fruits as can be eaten. . . , It is they who make
arms fit for the country, as bucklers, lances, and even
^ The word " baquiano " is still used all over Spanish America
in the sense of guide. In those days it more nearly equalled scout.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 67
alpargates' for the troops. Accustomed as they are
to savage warfare, neither the shouts, the drums, nor
the screaming of the war- whistles affright them in
an Indian attack. They do not feel the climate and
are not subject to the boils and blains and the attacks
of fever that afflict the bisonos and the chapetones,
who, though they are brave fighters, are soon
discouraged." Padre Simon probably meant soon
discouraged by the rigours of a campaign in such a
country and in so severe a climate as tropical
Colombia. The chief Ayapel was prepared for the coming of
the Spaniards, for he knew what to expect of them.
As they marched on, the soldiers in bad humour, for
they expected that they would have found more
Indian graves to open, they entered into a great cane-
brake, extending several miles. Fortunately for them
some of the baquianos who had gone forward on their
horses descried the points of Indian lances appearing
high above the canes. They just had time to gallop
back and give the alarm when the Indians, seeing
their ambush was discovered, charged with the yells
and blowing of their war- whistles that gave the name
*' guazabara " to a similar attack.
Of course their efforts were in vain against the
well-armed Spaniards, whose cavalry gave them a great
advantage in all such Indian fights. They took some
prisoners, who are described as " tall and handsome
men." These prisoners told them that the town ot
Ayapel was quite deserted and that the chief had hidden
^ In Spain the alpargata is a canvas shoe with hemp soles. In
America it was of hide.

68 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
all his gold. However, the expedition found abundance
of provisions. The thirst for gold still spurred them
on, and as the Indians told them that none was to be
found in the territory of Finzenu, and all the golden
ornaments they had taken from the graves had been
obtained from a land of high mountains, tarther to
the west, they set their faces once more towards the
wilderness. In reading of their doings in Sinu, it
seems strange that the Indians never raised a protest
against the violation of the sepulchres. This has
inclined some writers to hazard a conjecture that the
graves were of a race superior in civilization to the
dwellers in Sinu, and that that race had disappeared.
It may have been so, but on the other hand, the
Bachiller Enciso speaks ot the Indians working in
silver and gilding it with herbs. Gomara also talks
of the Indians' silverwork-^ and says "they cast the
metal and also parcel-gild it with certain herbs
they use."
Heredia still pushed on, although his soldiers
got more discontented day by day and difficulties
increased. At last they reached a river, too wide and
deep to cross. This was the River Cauca, that falls
into the Magdalena, just above Magangue. For days
they had been without provisions, except some bales
of dried fish they found in a deserted Indian town.
In no part of the Americas, except upon the prairies
of the north, was game abundant, as it was in Africa,
and so the expedition had to maintain itself with such
wild fruits as they chanced to come across, and tops
of palm-trees, cut down and roasted in the fire.
^ " Gentil plateria de Indios."

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 69
They must have looked a veritable company ot
death as they straggled onwards, fainting from hunger,
thin, and travel-worn. In reading of these expeditions
of the conquerors of America, it is not to be forgotten
that they did not know where they were going to, and
thus their journeys had an element of mystery in
them unattainable to-day. Even in voyages to the
South Pole the explorers know that their goal lies in
such or such a latitude ; and, in the case of Africa, they
are but filling up the waste spaces of a map, whose
outlines are well known. No matter what the motives
were that inspired the Spaniards of those days, whether
the thirst for gold, a desire to spread their faith, or
perhaps a mixture of the two, no one can cavil at
their courage or their persistence in the face of
difficulties. Marching along the unknown river's banks, they
came at last in front of a large island on which they
saw a town. Starving, and without boats or canoes
to cross the stream, the famished men plunged into
the water and swam over to the place. Those who
have seen the River Cauca, with its immense and
turbid flood, its shallows full of alligators, electric eels,
and stinging ray-fish, its waters full of ravenous
caribes,^ always ready to attack the swimmer, can but
be astonished at the feat. What was their horror as
they struggled to the bank to see the town burst into
flames and the inhabitants make off in their canoes !
Nothing remained for those who had crossed the
stream, but to come back again as famished as when
^ The carib6 is a small ravenous fish about the size of a sprat.
It goes in shoals.

70 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
they set out on their swim, for the inhabitants of the
burnt town had carried off all food. Even the iron
will of Don Pedro de Heredia was forced to yield to
circumstances. He gave the order sadly to retrace
their steps to Cartagena. By this time the discontent
of the soldiery had risen to a pitch.
After seven or eight days of hunger and of
continual fighting, Don Alonso de Heredia arrived at
Ayapel, having lost a third of the expedition by the
way. There he met Captain Caceres, sent by his
brother Don Pedro to his assistance. Unfortunately
Caceres arrived without provisions, so that all he
did was to add to the misery of the rest. Don Pedro
de Heredia, seeing neither his brother nor his captain
had returned to Cartagena, came out himself to aid and
rescue them. He arrived in time, for the soldiers, so
he says, looked like a troop of living skeletons. As
he had only just provisions for his men, his brother's
expedition had to return towards Tolu. The Indians,
seeing no other method of defence, had swept the
lands of the Sinii quite bare of everything.
A serious mutiny broke out, but for a curious
reason, the soldiers did not wish to leave the lands ofthe
Sinii with empty hands after their sufferings. Weak
and emaciated as they were, and threatened with
starvation, they yet petitioned to remain and open
graves to see if they could find gold. Heredia
pacified them as best he could, and probably allowed
such of them as were most unreasonable to remain
where they were. A detachment, headed by Captain
Caceres, embarked in rafts, hoping to get to Cartagena
before Heredia could arrive, and overturn his govern-

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 71
ment. Heredia, hearing of their project, immediately
descended the Sinii in a canoe, and arrived two weeks
before them at the town.
In all the histories of revolts in Mexico, in Chile,
in Colombia, or Peru, at the time of the conquests, the
mutineers never seem to have attempted to separate
from Spain. All their endeavours, with the possible
exception of the revolt of Hernandez de Giron in
Peru, were against their governors. If the revolt
succeeded, the triumphant general either went home
to Spain or sent a confidential agent to the King,
asking to be confirmed in the post that he had won.
Spain was so far away, communications were so slow,
and the Kings usually were so ill advised, that the
request of the triumphant rebel was always granted.
Thus did things move in an entirely vicious circle,
and the King in a way was a participator in a plot
against his own authority. Once only, in a matter of
this kind, did a King of Spain behave with energy.
This happened in the wars with the Pizarros, when
the Licenciado de la Gasca was sent out to Peru to
restore order and put the outbreak down. This he
accomplished, though a churchman, and though he
landed in Peru without a soldier at his back. All
that he did he accomplished in the King's name by
proclamation, and certainly he gave evidence of a
strong will and great diplomatic power. As often
happens with a man of peace, invested suddenly with
military power, he stained his victory by his severity
when he obtained the upper hand.
Don Pedro de Heredia found himself in a difficult
position in Cartagena, even though he had got there

72 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
before his enemies and had upset their plans. His
wealth was stored in the island of Codego, in
Cartagena Bay, and, a revolt having occurred, he
sailed there with his immediate followers and his
slaves. Once there in safety, he was not the man to
sit down quietly under such a serious affront. His
prestige with the conquered Indians stood high. It
is a curious fact that the same happened to Cortes
and with the two Pizarros in Peru, Whenever a
revolt broke out against either of them, their staunchest
friends were always to be found amongst those very
Indians who only a year or so before had been
defeated by the leaders, to whom they rallied to
assist, Cartagena was in no position to resist such a force
as Heredia disposed of, and so they sent a deputation,
iust as the Romans sent to Coriolanus, begging
Heredia to spare them and the town. He, of course,
spared them, after the fashion of most men in similar
position, but the fright they had sustained was little
calculated to make him popular. Discontent, deeply
seated, bided its time against him. He was well
aware of it, and understood if he could not go on
leading his soldiers to victory and wealth, that he was
certain to be lost. So he detached his brother, Don
Alonso, to found a settlement in the territory of the
chief Tolii. He himself, always energetic, always
keen, both for adventure and for gold, set out upon an
expedition to the province of Darien to seek for a
supposititious El Dorado, at- a place called Dabaybe,
which was a sort of ignis fatuus to all the conquerors
of Darien and Panama.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 73
During his absence his brother, Don Alonso, with
a well-equipped expedition, retraced his steps to the
Sinii. There he found the soldiers, who despite ot
hunger and disease had remained to open Indian
graves, still hard at work. They had got so skilful
at the work, they found it was only worth their
while to open tumuli on the left side. Upon the
right side no gold or ornaments were ever found.
The quantity of tumuli was so enormous that opening
them remained a profitable industry for many years to
come. Don Alonso, after providing these industrious
ghouls with all the provisions he could spare, went on
till he came to the River Catarrapa, which he followed
to its mouth. On it he founded Santiago de Tolu,
the oldest settlement in the department of Bolivar,
after Cartagena, and at one time the capital. Here
first were found the trees' from which the celebrated
balsam of Tolii is taken, a medicine that still keeps its
virtue in spite of fashion and of time. The Indians,
after one hostile demonstration, soon submitted to his
rule, for they were agriculturists, and had not that
ferocious spirit of independence that characterized
most of the wilder tribes throughout America. This
spirit has survived down to the present day. A priest,
in the wild regions of the new Santa Cruz de la Sierra,
in Bolivia, only a year or two ago, took prisoner five
Indians in a sort of Gospel raid.
Being agog to save their souls; which must inevit
ably have perished had they remained just as the
Creator of the world called them into being, he tied
^ Myrospernum toluiferum.

74 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
his captives up to posts. Then he expounded to
them the dogmas of our faith, wrestling with Lucifer
to snatch the wildings from his claws. All was in
vain, perhaps because he strove in Spanish, a language
which they unfortunately had never learned. For
days he preached and prayed without success. These
infidels were so hard-hearted and so rooted in primeval
villainy that they refused all food. Still he prayed on,
until three of them inconsiderately died upon his
hands. The other two he then let loose, and they
at once returned into the woods, to lose their souls
and live.

CHAPTER VII
Don Alonso de Heredia was one of the few
conquerors who treated the Indians with humanity.
Even his brother Don Pedro was not cruel. His
chief fault was his love of wealth ; but on the whole
the record of the two brothers stands high in the
history of the times.
The Indians all about Tolii were the most
civilized the Spaniards had found in their experience
of the Sinii. They cultivated crops of maize, yams,
and manioc, and from the first building of the town,
peace seems to have reigned between the Spaniards
and themselves. Certainly they have left their traces
in the population of the district, for most of the in
habitants show a strong Indian type.
The town is excellently situated, just at the mouth
of the River Catarrapa, and vessels of a moderate size
can anchor in its considerable bay. Outside, the
stormy Caribbean Sea, usually vexed and tossing,
may rage its worst. Inside the point, a grove of
coco-palms shuts out its waves and noise, A long
ramshackle pier runs out some little way, and when the
crank dugout canoe has put ashore its passengers,
they stumble landwards on the crazy structure that
seems coeval with the foundation of the town.
75

76 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
Padre Simon, generally an accurate observer, says
the water of the place is singularly soft, and in this
statement I can bear him out. Perhaps through lack
of faith, in the same way that Bernal Diaz could not
see Santiago, but in the battle only discerned Francisco
de Morla on his white horse, I failed to find the
wondrous springs that the good father talks about.
" Near the town of Tolii," he says, " spring two
wondrous fountains, close to the roots of a great tree,
whose leaves on falling into their water are straight
way petrified. This spring is clear, and the water
flowing from it pleasant to the taste of those who
drink of it. The water of the second fountain gushes
out, a deep blue colour, although at times it runs as
white as milk. The water, like that of the twin
spring, is very good to drink." These portents, and
the groups of balsam-bearing trees, constitute the
chief wonders of Tolii.
I saw the trees. My want of faith or lack of
observation may have come in between me and the
springs, in the same way as the presence of a mis
believer is often fatal to the materialization of Dante
or of Julius Cssar at aspi ritualistic seance in the
dark. I found the strange old Spanish town, the
white sand, the surf-lashed beach, the whispering
coco-palms, and the deep blue lagoon, sufficiently
mysterious. In the meantime Don Pedro de Heredia, with a
well-equipped expedition of more than two hundred
men on horseback and on foot, had set out towards
Darien to find one of the numerous El Dorados,
that always danced before the imagination of the

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS

77

adventurers of those days, from Raleigh down to the
meanest captain of them all. Don Pedro embarked
his expedition in launches, and after sailing up the
River Darien he disembarked on the right bank and
struck into the woods.
From the first, bad fortune dogged his steps, and
the adventure was the most unlucky he ever under
took. The country on the right bank of the Darien
River has changed but little since those days. Swamp
succeeds swamp, and inundated forests, almost im
penetrable on foot, extend on every side. All round
the Isthmus of Darien to the south, though it was the
first part of America to be occupied, Nature has
proved so powerful that she has maintained herself
almost without a change. Only in the zone of the
Panama Canal has she been bridled and subdued.
Even there, were but the hand of man relaxed a year
or two, all would fall back again.
Heredia committed an initial error in taking
horses with him on the march. As they had been
the greatest arm the Spaniards had against the Indians
on other expeditions, so in this one they proved the
greatest curse. Lost in the trackless, inundated forests,
exposed to ceaseless rains, a prey to every kind of
insect, and to vampire bats that sucked the incautious
sleeper's blood, fanning' him gently with their wings,
so that he did not wake, until the morning found
him weak and nerveless with the loss of blood, the
luckless Spaniards struggled through the woods.
Sometimes they had to halt a week to build a bridge
to let the horses pass a cario,' and in the black and
1 Backwater, running between woods.

78 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
viscid marshes men had to haul them through with
ropes. Since those days, most probably, no horse has ever
entered into those dreadful swamps, and possibly wUl
never do so in the history of the world. The best
means of penetration might have been in canoes, for
the Spaniards could not get through the inundated
bush as did the Indians.
To all the protests of Heredia the Indian guides
rejoined, " It is your fault and of your animals. We
could have done the journey from the coast up to the
hills in a few days." This probably was true, for the
native Indian of Darien glides through the bushes like
a snake. Silently he slips through the woods and
leaves no trail behind.
After three months of fruitless toil and suffering
Heredia gave the order to return. As the road that
he had come by was now clear to some extent of
wood, the journey only took him forty days. When
he got back to San Sebastian de Uraba, from whence
he started, he had lost all his horses and more than
half of all his men. The disastrous expedition
destroyed his popularity, and when he entered
Cartagena the population closed their doors upon him.
Francisco Cesar, who had remained in inactivity,
now asked Heredia's leave to set out with another
expedition to find the El Dorado his chief had failed
to reach. Seven months he wandered in the wilds,
failing to attain the El Dorado of their dreams, but
crossing for the first time the mountains of Abibe,
which for the past twenty years had been impassable

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 79
by any conqueror. Thus he discovered, though
probably without his knowledge, what is now the
province of Antioquia, one of the richest in the
republic of Colombia to-day.
Although Francisco Cesar set out as Heredia had
done, from San Sebastian de Uraba, he followed
quite a different road. Instead of involving himself
amidst the forests and the swamps, he struck directly
for the hills. Though by this choice of road he
certainly avoided all the difficulties that had beset
Heredia, he encountered others almost as formidable.
So great were the obstacles he had to face, and so
hard did the Indians fight against him, that when at
last he emerged into the fertile valley of the Cauca he
had lost a third part of his horses and his men. The
valley of the Cauca is renowned in South America
both for its beauty and fertility. Although at the
time that he first penetrated to it, crossing the
mountains that for twenty years had baffled all
explorers, be probably but little estimated all its
worth ; to him belongs the honour of the discovery.
No record of his name, as far as I know, is preserved
in any place in Antioquia.
The most warlike of any ot the Indian chiefs
encountered since the foundation of Cartagena fought
vigorously with Cesar in the Cauca territory. This
chief, called Nutibara, fell upon the little Spanish
force, now reduced to about sixty men and ten or
eleven horses, with two thousand of his followers.
Never before had Cesar been in such peril of his life
as in the battle that ensued. As usual in the New

8o CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
World, the horses gained them the victory.^ Seeing
that Nutibara's brother was the most active in
rallying the foe, Cesar spurred through the Indians,
and after a keen fight despatched him. With his
death the Indians became disheartened and retired.
The chief Nutibara, like a good general, covered his
followers' retreat, carrying off his brother's body in a
hamac, and marching by its side. The Spaniards
watched the sad, little procession winding through the
woods till it was lost to sight. Not till it disappeared
did they perceive that they had gained the day. As
always happened in all battles when the Spaniards
were hard pressed by the enemy, Santiago, mounted
on his white horse, appeared to cheer them on. All
things are possible to the interior vision, and, from the
days of Constantine down to more recent times when
angels fluttered in the sky over a host of Protestants,
portents and signs have appeared to those who looked
for them — upon the winning side.
After his victory, Cesar collected all the gold he
could and then returned to Cartagena with all speed.
In the seven months that he had been away much
had occurred at Cartagena. The unpopularity of the
Heredias had grown with the ill success of their two
last expeditions, and at the request of the inhabitants
an officer had been sent from Spain to look into
affairs. This man having died upon the journey in
the island of Hispaniola, the Supreme Court of the
^ Piedrahita says : " Son los caballos los nervios de la guerra con
los naturales." The word " natural " would seem to be the original
of our word " native," the use of which endears us so much to our
coloured brethren in the Lord.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 8i
island — known as La Audiencia — commissioned one
of its chief members, Pedro Vadillo, to go to
Cartagena and institute what in the Spanish law of
those days was called a " residencia " against Heredia.
The residencia was a general inquiry into the
administration and affairs of a colonial governor under
the laws of Spain. When in the colony abuses got
too flagrant to be borne, an officer entitled either
an " Oidor "' or a " Visitador " was sent out, with full
powers to sift and to examine, and, if need be, to send
the erring governor home. Naturally such powers
led to great abuses when vested in dishonest officers.
The first act of the taker of the residencia was
always to confiscate the money of the governor under
pretence of sending it back to the Treasury. As
a general rule, tlie money never reached the govern
ment, but enriched the taker of the residencia for
life. There were exceptions, as in the case of the
Licenciado de la Gasca in Peru, but few and far
between. The Oidor Vadillo was an ambitious man,
active and energetic, and not withheld by any scruples ;
so he at once threw Pedro and Alonso de Heredia
into prison, tortured their slaves till they confessed
where the Heredias had concealed their money,
confiscated it, and, not content with that, sent to the
interior, and having seized upon some Indian chiefs,
extracted a large sum from them in gold. This he
sold in Hispaniola, and, after having taken on himself
the power and functions of the governor, began to
oppress and to illtreat the Indians.
The Heredias were confined in a damp prison
^ Oidor = hearer. 6

82 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
underneath the level of the sea. Most probably
the place where they were confined was an old
building called " Las Bovedas," a noisome den, hot,
damp, and situated on the beach. In it many of the
best and finest patriots of Colombia have languished
out their lives. Alonso de Heredia emerged from
it crippled for life with rheumatism, for few resist it
long. Just at this moment Francisco Cesar disembarked
on his return from his long expedition, rich and
acclaimed by all. Although his vessel anchored in
the bay at midnight, he went at once to see his
former chiefs, an action that does credit to the
goodness of his heart, as both had treated him unjustly,
and Don Alonso had loaded him with chains. One
cannot but admire his magnanimity, on reading that
he endeavoured to console Don Pedro with kind
words, insisted that his chains should be knocked- off,
and, more than that, gave him half the gold that
he had brought from the interior, well understanding
that a man who has to plead before the courts in
Spain pleads better if his purse is weighty and well
filled.' Certainly Cesar, who had been deeply wronged
by both Heredias, showed that he was a man of
magnanimity of character, and rose superior to
revenge and jealousy, recognizing that his old
chief, with all his faults, did not deserve the treat
ment meted out to him by the base, money-loving
Oidor. ^ The same, of course, applies to Japan, China, England, the
United States, France, and the republic of Haiti.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 83
The interesting career of Francisco Cesar was
now drawing to a close. Unable to remain in ease at
Cartagena, he commanded another expedition to the
interior, under the Oidor Vadillo, and after number
less adventures died exhausted by his toils in a little
Indian town called Cori, not far from the great river
that still bears his name. Had he but had a wider
theatre he would have equalled either Pizarro or
Cortes. As it is, his character stands high amongst
the ranks of the conquerors of the New World, both
for his military skill, his courage, and above all, for
magnanimity. On no occasion did he treat the
conquered Indians with injustice, still less with
cruelty. Such men were all too rare in those days
amongst the Spaniards, though there were many
honourable exceptions, a thing often forgotten by
English historians, who seem to think all conquerors
but our own, were steeped in villainy. Curiously
enough, the name of Cesar has been remembered in
Colombia, only in a false quantity, repugnant to all
ears attuned to Spanish prosody and sound. The
river on whose banks he died still bears his name,
distorted, and figures as " Cesar." ' The country round
the river is still some of the wildest in Colombia, and
tribes yet roam the woods upon its banks, half-naked,
carrying bows and poisoned arrows. Some say that
they are cannibals.
Francisco Cesar's grave is, I believe, unknown; but
probably his soldiers buried him under some spreading
bongo or ceiba, stamping the earth down hard and
1 Instead of C6sar. This is as if one were to pronounce London,
Lond6n.

84 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
watering it well. Then perhaps they rode their
horses backwards and forwards over it, so that the
Indians should never find the place. This his
followers did in the case of Hernando de Soto ;i but
even then they were in doubt, and took his body up,
and after placing it in a great hollow log they sunk it
in the Mississippi that he was the first to navigate. A
fitting grave for an explorer, either to lie beneath an
unmarked ceiba, with its long bunches of purple
flowers, or in a hollow log sunk in an unnavigated
stream. Soto and Francisco Cesar must, one would
think, sleep better where they lie, than under marble
in the damp-smelling side aisle of a church.
^ The discoverer ofthe Mississippi.

CHAPTER VIII
In 1541, probably with the assistance of the money
so generously given him by Francisco Cesar, Heredia
was restored to favour at the Court of Spain and
declared innocent of the charges brought against him
in his government. So well had he succeeded in re
establishing his reputation that he once more returned
to Cartagena, as the governor, with all his previous
titles and powers confirmed. The inhabitants re
ceived him joyfully, and it must have been a proud
day for him to return absolved and once more the
governor of the city that he had founded and seen
grow. He found plenty to his hand to do, at once, for
the inhabitants of the town of Mompox upon the
Magdalena, founded by his brother, Don Alonso, had
rebelled against their governor. Don Pedro fell upon
them like a thunderbolt, hanged some of the chief
rebels, and restored order in the energetic way that
long campaigns against the Indians had taught him
thoroughly. The leader of the movement, one
Zapata, fled to the woods, and, though they searched
for him for months, eluded their pursuit. Most prob
ably he perished miserably, for in the woods around
Mompox, even to-day, he who gets lost is a dead man.
85

86 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
Had but Heredia remained in Cartagena and attended
to his government, all would have gone well with
him. In spite of bickerings, certain to arise in
a new-founded colony, the inhabitants respected
and were proud of him. They had seen him, from
the first foundation of the town, always alert and
energetic, ever helpful, large-handed, and to no small
degree large-minded, despite the love of gain that
marred his character. Of his tried valour and his
military skill there was no doubt in anybody's mind,
and the fact that he had returned from Spain vic
torious over all his enemies gave him increased
renown. However, as the Spanish adage has it, " a
man's face and character go with him to the
grave."' Heredia was an example of the truth of it. The
supposititious mines of El Dabaibe were, as a
Colombian writer says, the El Dorado of the province
of Cartagena,^ as Manoa^ was the El Dorado of the
interior. Heredia's first action, after the revolt was
quelled, was to prepare another expedition to the
same fatal place. No governor of those who were in
power at the time of the conquest ever would
consent to remain quietly in his government.
Perhaps the exigencies of their position drove them
onward, or popularity was only to be kept at the price
of fresh conquests and of activity. Perhaps the
^ " Genio y figura, hasta la sepultura."
^ Now el departamento de Bolivar.
^ Manoa was the fabled city that led Sir Walter Raleigh to his
ruin and death.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 87
adventures they had already undergone made life
seem valueless without excitement and without diffi
culties to overcome. Certain it is that all of them, to
the last moment of their lives, dreamed of fresh
conquests and new kingdoms to subdue. Cortes, past
middle age,' engaged in the disastrous voyage to Cali
fornia, suffering and undergoing hardships that might
have overwhelmed a younger man, with equanimity.
Pedrarias Davila, the celebrated governor of Panama,
only took up his government in his old age, and
never rested for an instant till he returned to Spain.
Don Pedro de Heredia was of the same breed of
man. When he set out upon his second expedition
to Dabaibe, he must have been sixty years of age,
yet he set out as full of hope as if he had been
young. Hardly had he begun to navigate the River
Atrato in canoes than he fell into difficulties.
Incessant rains had swollen the stream. The Indians
harassed him, pouring in flights of poisoned arrows ;
and, last of all, his men were all attacked by fevers,
and he lost many of them. The journey lasted
several months, and once again, after his son had been
severely wounded, he was forced to return to San
Sebastian de Uraba,
When he arrived there he had to deal with one
Robledo who in his absence had usurped his govern
ment. The rebellion settled and Robledo sent back
to Spain to be dealt with by the courts, instead of
^ Age never counted with the conquerors, and all of them died
young in spirit and most of them active in body to the last. Witness
Francisco de Pizarro, who, long past seventy, killed with his own
hand three of the assassins who came to murder him.

88 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
returning straight to Cartagena, as he should have
done, he set out for Antioquia. His men, after so
long a period in the hottest of the tropics, suffered
severely from the cold in the high mountains that lie
between the provinces. Heredia himself seems to
have been impervious to both heat and cold, to
hunger, fevers, and to most of all the ills the flesh is
heir to in countries such as Colombia, where climates
vary from the greatest heat to the severest cold, after
a few days' march.
When he arrived at length in Antioquia, after a
month's journey, most of his men were ill. Troubles
were always waiting for him, for he found the settlers
hostile to him and partisans of the celebrated
Sebastian de Belalcazar, whose government overlapped
his own. Want of communications, the length of
voyages, and the absence of good maps, contributed
at the time of the conquest, and for long afterwards,
to these overlapping governments. The territories
were immense ; and, when the different conquerors
arrived in Spain to solicit confirmation of their rule
in the region they had won, the Crown of Spain
seems to have granted many of their claims without
inquiring whether they were contested by some other
governor. In this particular instance neither Heredia nor
Belalcazar seems to have acted in bad faith. Heredia
had come up from Darien and Belalcazar from Peru.
Probably neither of them knew the other claimed the
government of Antioquia till their respective forces
met. Heredia had sent out the greater portion of his
men to exploVe the country, remaining himself in the

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 89
camp with all the invalids. A captain, one Don
Juan Cabrera, whom Belalcazar had sent on with a
strong force to occupy what he considered was his
government, hearing of Heredia's position, surprised
his camp and took him prisoner.
Not content with this, he let his soldiers plunder
the camp and appropriate the horses, clothes, and arms
and illtreat everybody. Heredia himself he sent under
a guard to Popayan,^ which was the seat of Belalcazar's
government. As the Court of Appeal (Real
Audiencia) had been established in Panama for the
last three years, Belalcazar sent Heredia there to
justify himself. What happened is not recorded ; but
in a short time Heredia was at liberty again, as full of
fight as ever. As soon as he arrived in Cartagena he
set to work to fit out another expedition for Antioquia,
for he still maintained it fell under his government.
Most probably he had already heard of the great
mineral wealth of Antioquia, and knew the Indian
graves in the Sinii were all worked out and no hopes
of a speedy fortune to be expected from them.
In 1544 "certain French corsairs,"^ under the
command of one Roberto Baal (surely an ominous
name), after sacking Santa Marta, appeared off
Cartagena, where, as Spain and France were not at
^ Popaydn is an old-fashioned town in the Andes, very full of
churches and convents. Many of the best families of Colombia
come from there. It is a remote place, and is only accessible on
mule-back from Bogotd, a journey of ten days — provided there is no
" novelty " (as the Spaniards say) on the journey. Novelty may take
many forms, as floods, deep mud, landslips, or Indian attacks. Popayan
has given rise to the excellent Colombian adage, " Todo el mundo
es Popayin " — i.e., " All the world is Popayin " — that is, the same.
2 " Ciertos corsarios franceses."

90 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
war, nothing was known of what happened to the
other town. The pirates, having landed at midnight,
by daybreak were masters of the place, Don Antonio
de Heredia, the governor's son, was wounded, and the
bishop taken prisoner. After having sacked the town
the corsairs still demanded ransom from the inhabitants
who had not fled into the woods. To avoid more
outrages and violence Don Pedro de Heredia came
forward and sacrificed his entire fortune and all the
treasure taken from the Indian graves. The pirates
then made off, leaving Heredia totally ruined, after so
many years of struggle, but as a recompense — one that
no doubt a man of such tried valour and of so much
public spirit could well appreciate — firmly enshrined,
both as a hero and a benefactor, in the minds of
everyone. By a strange freak of fortune, this maladventure
fell upon him on the day his daughter was to have
married Captain Mosquera, one of the principal
inhabitants. Even these blows of fortune did not
damp his spirit, and he went on with preparations for
a new venture into Antioquia to reassert his govern
ment. When he arrived there he found the
inhabitants divided into two parties of about equal
strength. His own adherents took the name of
Carthagenians, and those of Belalcazar, the Peruvians.
After some months of political intrigue, diversified
by an occasional appeal to arms, Heredia saw that
nothing was to be made of the affair. Yielding for
once to prudence, he returned to Cartagena, only to
find himself confronted with another difficulty. For
some time past 'the Emperor, Charles V., had been

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 91
disturbed by the reports presented to him by the great
Las Casas and many other priests and bishops, as to
the treatment of the Indians in America. At last he
had drawn up by the great Council of the Realm the
celebrated code of laws known as " The Laws of the
Indies," confirming all the wise ordinances of his
grandmother, Isabel the Catholic, calling upon the
colonists to treat the Indians well, not to make slaves
of them, and to convert them to the Catholic faith.
This code of laws would have been the charter of
freedom of the Indians had they been justly carried
out. It is not difficult to divine how they were
welcomed by the colonists, accustomed to treat all
Indians as slaves.^ In most places the laws were
received with derision and treated as a dead letter.
In others a sham obedience was given, and from that
time the celebrated phrase, " I obey, but I do not
comply " ^ became the watchword of colonial
governors. For all that, the Laws of the Indies had
a good effect, and now and then served to repress
flagrant injustices. The code itself was liberal and
far-seeing, and much the most humane of any system
of colonial laws in force for centuries.
Had the provisions of the laws been carried out,
the history of South America would have been far
different. The. Indians of to-day would have been ten
times more numerous and as much civilized as the
rest of the inhabitants.
^ Englishmen will have the right to hurl a moral stone at the
Spaniards of those times on the day when a white man is hanged for
the murder of a " native " in any of their colonies.
2 " Obedezco, pero no cumplo."

92 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
When Heredia arrived at Cartagena he found the
Licenciado Miguel Diaz de Armendariz arrived from
Spain to promulgate the new code of laws and to
institute another residencia against him and his
government. This residencia seems to have been
without result, for Heredia continued in his post of
governor, loved and esteemed by all.
It was not written that he should have a moment's
peace, for a conspiracy broke out, known as the
" Friars' revolt." A friar called Albis, " a turbulent
and lewd" priest, as ran the phrase in those days,
entered into a league with discontented soldiers from
Peru to rise and kill the governor during a function
in the church. The " sacred rogue " himself, who
had to preach upon the day fixed for the revolt,
arranged to give the signal from the pulpit. Heredia
got wind of what was likely to occur, so when the
friar mounted the pulpit he found the church was
packed with soldiers, who at once arrested him.
Several of his coadjutors paid for their villainy upon
the scaffold. The friar himself pleaded the benefit of
clergy. Heredia sent him back to Spain. In the
Habana, Albis tried to escape by climbing down the
cable of the anchor of the ship ; but, falling off, was
drowned. Misfortunes never seem to have given Heredia any
respite, for hardly had the rebellion of the friars been
squashed than a great fire broke out that burned the
city almost to the ground. Heredia, who in such
moments never had a thought of self, flew with his
slaves to try and save the church that from the first
had been his pride.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 93
After incredible exertions he had the flames
extinguished, only on his return triumphant to find
his own house burned to the ground and everything
he had, consumed. Once more he set to work to
rebuild the city he had founded in his youth. This
time he refused to allow a single house of wood to be
run up, but pledged his credit to the uttermost to
the inhabitants, enabling them to borrow money to
construct well-built and solid houses of stone, after
the Spanish style.
A year went past, and all the time he laboured,
sometimes working with his own hands, to reconstruct
the town. His popularity was never greater. The
people saw the aged founder of the town, now grey,
but still erect and vigorous as when full thirty years
ago he had ridden out upon his " valiant horse " for
his first Indian fight, working both day and night
assiduously, with admiration and respect. All might
have yet been well, and Pedro de Heredia might
have gone honoured to his grave in Cartagena, the
city that he founded in his youth and strove for
in old age. One day, however, without a warning a
ship came into the bay bearing one Juan Maldonado,
to take another residencia upon some old com
plaint forgotten long ago by those who made it, but
pigeon-holed in Spain. All the inhabitants were
indignant, and, rallying round their governor, refused
permission to the Oidor to proceed against him.
Heredia himself determined once more to visit
Spain, remembering his kind reception at the Court
so many years ago. At Cartagena he embarked for
the last time, reached the Habana after a stormy

94 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
passage, and re-embarked for Spain. Storms, similar
to those that had pursued him all his life, whether by
land or sea, kept him three months upon the voyage.
At last, when close to Cadiz, a sudden tempest over
whelmed the ship, and sank her only a cable's length
or two from land.
The crew all perished in the waves, and Heredia,
left alive upon the wreck, swam strongly for the
shore. Those standing on the beach thought him in
safety, when a great billow dashed him on the rocks,
washing his body out to sea.
His corpse was never found, and so he perished, as
he lived, struggling with destiny. " It was notable,"
says Padre Simon, " the grief his death caused when
the news reached Cartagena, for the affection that all
held him in was great. They loved him as the
founder of the city, and as the father of it, and for
his character, for he was one who soon forgave
his enemies, an almsgiver, and always strove to settle
quarrels and smooth out troubles when it was possible."
No man can have a better epitaph. For thirty
years he ruled the town that he had founded, in evil
and in good repute, but always honourably. His life
was typical of the best conquerors of America :
always in action, still pushing onward to the unknown.
His bones lie buried in the sea. No marble marks
his resting-place ; but surely his spirit must still
haunt Cartagena, the city of his dreams.

CHAPTER IX
The heroic age of Cartagena may be said to have
terminated with the death of Pedro de Heredia.
The conquest of the coast country was now completed,
and Federman, Quesada, and Belalcazar had pushed
on to their wondrous meeting in the plains of Bogota.
The interior of the country had assumed much the
same appearance that it still keeps, and all the most
important towns were built. The River Magdalena
had become the chief channel of communication with
the interior, and has remained so down to the present
day. The mountain passes through the Andes that
lead to the great plains of Casanare, an extension of
the Llanos of Venezuela, on which were bred the
cattle and the horses that were the arms and support
of the independence wars, had all been pretty well
explored. In the interior life began to be arranged after the
Spanish fashion, but on a larger basis, and without the
fear either of attacks from Barbary by the Moors, or
from the fear of poverty within. As the whole
Spanish race is democratic socially, distinctions
amongst the white population were but slight.
Nobility was in the main based upon purity of
blood. 95

96 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
Twenty miles from the coast the negro popula
tion — then all slaves — ceased to prevail. Their place
was taken by the Indians who, though politically
free, were held in economic slavery by the system
known as " peonage." ^
The aristocracy of race and intellect collected in
Bogota, and in such remote and old-world towns as
Pasto and Popayan. Business and energy were to be
found, as they are to-day, principally on the coast, for
there the people had the benefit of more frequent
intercourse with Spain and with the outer world.
In the remote interior — for it is not to be forgotten
that a journey to the capital, slowly ascending
the River Magdalena in canoes or in the barges
known as bongos, propelled by poles, took three or
four weeks, and the trip might easily last a month
— customs, beliefs, and modes of thought were
crystallized. As the first conquerors had come from
Spain, when the Catholic faith was, in addition
to a creed, a bond of race and national unity against
the Moors, it is but natural that the clergy had
enormous power. The Indians had to conform by
force, and outwardly at least were most devout,
although there are not wanting those who say outward
conformity did not exclude adherence to their older
customs and the faith of their ancestors.
The coastal negroes seem to have been but little
tinged with Voodooism or with Obi worship,
creeds that they brought from Africa and still clung
to in the islands of the Caribbean Sea. In Colombia
^ This was, and still is in Mexico, a sort of aggravation of our
own (now disused) truck system.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 97
they all were Christians — that is to say, temperamental
Christians, a blend of child and savage, so intermingled
that you can never say with certainty which side is
uppermost. In the small towns the merchants'
formed the aristocracy. These may have been
descended from good families in Spain, who left their
native country at a time when trade was a degradation
that no self-respecting person cared to engage in ;
but once settled in Colombia their view was abso
lutely changed. Just as amongst the Arabs, where
" merchant " (tagir) almost equals " gentleman," so
in Colombia the scions of the first families of Spain
were not ashamed of trade.
Most of them, beside their stores, had cattle-farms,
sugar-plantations, or some other industry ; but the best
portion of their lives was passed within their stores.
So it has continued, and nothing is commoner than
to be served with sugar or with tea by a man who
holds high military rank, but does not think he
derogates at all from his position by weighing out
his goods. This state of society has produced the modern
Colombian character, and rendered most Colombians
high-spirited and imbued with national and racial
pride, and at the same time progressive business
men. As everyone considers that he is a gentleman,
and generally is one in manners and in speech,
society is truly democratic, for insolence and rude
ness are most rare to meet in the republic from
any class of man. All South Americans seem to
know by intuition that democracy without good
^ As in Scotland, in Colombia every shopkeeper is a merchant. 7

98 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
manners is impossible, and that rudeness in speech
or insolence is a sure sign of social slavery. Through
out the continent, in all the varying republics, a
South American, even though quite unlettered, is
a gentleman — that is, a man who without servility
can talk to any other human being on an equality.
Votes, citizenship, reading and writing, knowledge
of a profession or a trade, yet leave a man a boor,
unless social equality between man and man makes
men true citizens. Few people of the Anglo-Saxon
or Teutonic, races seem to take this in, and strive
by self-assertion to supply what they do not possess.
In the same way the painter, writer, sculptor, or
composer, who sets out to be original, of set
purpose, consciously, only attains vulgarity, or at
the best that eccentricity that always marks the
inferior mind ; so does the man who wishes to
be the equal of his fellows always remain on
an inferior plane. In every case, by taking thought
upon the matter, he only takes a cubit off his
height. This is an error that no South American
ever falls into. He never thinks about it and is
exactly what he seems. No one need talk down,
even to an ignorant man, in South America.
In fact, it would be instantly resented, for all feel
that every man knows more on some particular
subject than his fellows, but that both still are
men. If he is ignorant of geography, he knows he
is a better horseman than any European can
aspire to be ; but does not therefore think himself
better than the European on that account, and fails

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 99
to see he is inferior in that he does not understand
the mechanism of a motor-car.
In Colombia the national character was formed
through many circumstances. When the fire of
discovery and the search for gold at any price had
died down a little, the settlers naturally turned to
the great plains of the Sinu as fields for cattle-
breeding. From the first the policy of the Spanish
Government was to encourage cattle-breeding when
ever possible. No doubt they felt that the feverish
thirst for gold would soon expire, and that the
population should be securely seated on the land.
In most respects their policy in regard to the
Indies' was liberal and well conceived. Had it
been carried out, the " Indies " of to-day would have
been in a vastly different state. However, it was
uniformly defeated by the colonists, who relied on
the want of communications with the mother-
country to disregard the laws, and did so with
complete impunity. All sorts of privileges were
given to settlers on the banks of the Sinii, in
Cartagena, and throughout the province that to
day is called Bolivar, in which the Sinii acts as the
Nile in Egypt, both as an artery and as a fertilizer.
On December 8, 1535, the Queen, then in Madrid,
received a petition from Alvar Torres, in the name
of himself and several families and inhabitants of
Cartagena, who had farms on the Sinu, praying
for remission of the customs dues on goods from
^ " Las Indias " — i.e., the Indies — always meant America to the
Spaniards, hence the name Cartagena de Indias to distinguish it from
Cartagena in Spain.

loo CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
Spain for the space of seven years. It runs as
follows :
" To the Queen. I, Alvar Torres, in the name of
our families and other of the inhabitants of the
province of Cartagena, wish to make known that
whereas there is a scarcity of cattle, both in the
province and the adjoining islands,' we suffer great
necessity, and if there is not something done to
help us the country will become depopulated.
Therefore we humbly pray that for seven years we
may be excused from paying all import duties of
whatever kind."
The petition was allowed and the permission
signed : " I, the Queen."^ On the same date she
signed a grant of five hundred ducats to the same
petitioners to build a church in "which God shall
be served and praised."^
Also, on the same date, the Queen granted two
hundred dollars of gold* to one Pedro de Lerma,
whose horse had been " killed in battle by the Indians,
in the service of the Crown." This shows a careful
inquiry into detail that does Her Majesty great
honour, and points to a different state of mentality from
that prevailing in our own time, when the Crown
would probably instantly recognize and pay a debt of
a million, but refuse one of two hundred dollars as
being quite outside its province. Still, the larger
sum is made up dollar by dollar, and only the snob
bishness of the contemporary mind makes it refuse
to take due notice of small sums. By this attention
1 Jamaica, Cuba, Hispaniola, etc. ^ « Yo, la Reyna."
^ " . . . Dios sera servido e loado." * " Pesos de oro."

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS loi
to small matters did the Crown of Spain attach its
people to itself and make them feel that they were
part and parcel of a great national whole. The
Spanish character has its defects, in plenty, but
nobbishness was never one of them. A certain
homeliness pervades the fibre of most Spanish things
— art, literature, and manners — and shows the people
nearer to nature than are any northerners. This
trait, of course, passes to their descendants in America.
As Cartagena gradually became important and the
chief depot for the Plate ships, and known over the
whole of South America for its wealth and luxury,
so did the interior lapse into somnolency, until few
provinces of the republic became so little known.
The towns were as a rule mere rows of huts
thatched with palm leaves, irregularly grouped round
the church, which usually was built of brick and
stuccoed over and seemed quite disproportionately
large for its surroundings. The richer cattle-farmers
lived a semipatriarchal life on their haciendas or in
their houses in Cartagena, visiting their farms
occasionally. All dressed in white, and all thought
little of a day of twenty leagues upon a pacing mule.
All carried arms, though usually their guns were out
of order and rust-eaten. Still, all the upper classes
prided themselves upon their culture, and never fell
into the state of ignorance that prevailed in other of
the republics thirty or forty years ago. No country
of the New World had so fierce and desperate a fight
for independence as Venezuela and Colombia, then
joined together into a single State.
In all the battles and the sieges Cartagena had its

I02 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
share ; but the plains of the Sinii lay far off from the
seat of conflict, and the change of government from
Spanish rule to the republic cannot have greatly
influenced the national life. The province slumbered
on, much as a sloth sleeps on a tree, until by slow
degrees the influence of the United States drew it
insensibly into the maelstrom of contemporary life.

CHAPTER X
The district of the Sinii and the old-world city of
Cartagena, once the most important of the Spanish
possessions in New Granada,' of recent years are
coming back into their old estate. Nothing can stop
the port of Cartagena from becoming eventually the
chief emporium of trade upon the coast. Its un
rivalled harbour, sheltered from every wind ; its
healthy climate, compared with those of other cities
in like latitude ; its nearness to the Panama Canal ;
and the traditions it enshrines, will, when the railway
system of the republic is a little more advanced,
render it the glory of the land. Its rival, Barranquilla,
has no harbour ; ships have to unload their goods at
Puerto Colombia,^ thus adding greatly to their
expense. The plains of the Sinii are becoming known as
cattle-breeding areas, and the cattle are steadily being
improved in class. Thus with, say, three or four
million head — a quantity that they could easily sustain
— and one or two packing houses, a supply of meat
would be available that hitherto has been untouched.
* Colombia.
2 This port is not in reality a port at all, but merely a long pier.
It is situated only two or three miles from the once well-known
Sabanilla, now useless and silted up. From Puerto Colombia a rail
way some eighteen miles in length connects it with Barranquilla.
103

I04 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
Therefore the future of Cartagena as the maritime
capital of both the republic and the district bf
Sinii, seems to be well assured. The legends that
have gathered round the city, its frequent sieges, its
struggle in the revolutionary war of independence,
its very name of " Cartagena of the Indies," always
attracted me. Something there was about it that
made it different from any other town in all America.
Fallen from its proud estate I knew it was, and a
mere shadow of its former glory of the days when
the great silver-fleet used to assemble in the bay.
Something there was attaching to it that seemed to
bring it into touch with its unlucky founder, Pedro de
Heredia, as it appeared to me ; I often read the works
of Padre Simon, and pondered on its fate, formerly so
magnificent, and now, as the French poet has it,
"a sad city, once queen of the oceans,"' uncrowned
and sleeping; between the white surf and the green
palm-trees. The war, that brought so many changes and sent
so many people into countries that they had never
thought to see, gave me the opportunity to visit
Cartagena and the Sinii,
Those who had to cross the seas during the war
are never likely to forget their voyages. On a cold
January morning I found myself aboard the s.s. Cavina,
going down channel in a storm of snow. All
lights were out for fear of submarines and other
German wonders of the deep. Few passengers on
board, for none but those obliged to travel travelled
in those days ; an ice-cold ship ; and the prospect of
1 Jose Maria de Heredia. Sonnet, on " Cartagena de Indias."

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 105
the danger-zone in front of us — did not exactly make
for high spirits or for mirth. We crossed the zone
without misadventure, as quietly as if it had been the
Channel in the piping times of peace. In those days
it was supposed to extend about two hundred miles
westward of Ireland — that is, two hundred more or
less, for now and then ships were sunk farther out,
as the ship's officers observed, to cheer us up. Then
the patrol boats left us to our own devices, and we
ploughed westward through the snow. Day followed
day, and freezing nights succeeded one another. All
our diversion, if it can fairly so be called, was to look
out for raiders, for hardly had the danger-zone been
passed than the wireless picked up messages of vessels
sunk right on the course, and sometimes to the east
or west of it.
So piercing was the cold and so monotonous the
days, the snowstorm so continuous, that it seemed
we had embarked upon an Arctic expedition. The
great event was the arrival of the wireless news,
telling about the varying fortunes of the war. As we
drew nearer to America even that failed us, for the
news from the American stations only spoke of base
ball, telling how " Star-Pitcher Wilbur " had been
re-engaged by the Tuxedo Club at a salary of fifteen
thousand dollars. Interesting, of course, to " baseball
fans," but rather of the nature of Dead Sea fruit to
men anxious about the war.
When the weather cleared enough we went to
gun-practice, but thriftily, for the Admiralty that
maintained some twenty thousand " flappers " to
muddle its accounts was mighty sparing of the

io6 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
national treasury as far as merchant seamen were
concerned, and doled out ammunition with as much
parsimony as if the cartridge-cases had been made of
gold. Still, it was interesting to watch, and much more
interesting to watch the demeanour of the crew and
passengers. We cheered each hit, as if it had been a
submarine, whilst a miss produced a feeling of dis
appointment, for everyone, though he said nothing,
saw in the practice the image of a fight.
The captain standing on the bridge — a gallant
figure, with his sunburnt face and keen sea-eyes,
alert and vigorous — shouted his orders to the gunners :
" Three thousand yards, four thousand, five thou
sand — fire!" and the gun whizzed the shot close to
the tub put out as target, or plumped into it. We
knew the skipper must have stood up on his bridge,
strenuous and seamanlike, in the same attitude,
shouting his orders, when the year before, almost in
the same week, he sunk a submarine after a hot fight,
somewhere in the Levant. The gunners, naval
reserve men, were such good marksmen that we
almost wished a submarine would show its periscope,
for none of us had any doubts as to the result.
None showed itself, and though we did not know it at
the time the Cavina' s days were numbered on the sea.
Time passed so slowly and so uneventfully that the
appearance of a tramp on the horizon brought every
one on deck. As we all knew the raiders were
disguised, it was an anxious moment, till the captain,
shutting his glasses with a snap, pronounced : " A
Britisher !"

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 107
Officers and men on board had been torpedoed
two, three, and four times, and we listened to their
yarns just as a conscript listens to a seasoned soldier
telling his experiences under fire, and wondered how
we should behave when it was up to us. The yarns
were far from reassuring, for the average sailor-man
never allows a tale to suffer any deterioration in the
telling if he can manage it. " You see," said one,
"it was this way. Me and Bill and Jack and old
George Southcote was 'angin' to a boat. Torpedoed ?
Why, yes, of course, or else why should we all
have been a-'angin' to the boat ? We wasn't bathing.
Our ship, one of the Wilson Line, just stopped a
torpedo right amidships, off the Fastnets. She sunk
in 'alf an hour. That's why we was a-'angin' to the
boat. And cold ? Yes, as cold as 'ell or the South
Shetlands. Bill says to me : * 'Enery, I can't 'old on ' ;
and I says : ' Can't ye ?' and he drops off ; that left
the four of us. Old Southcote, 'e 'ad sailed all his
life out of the Hartlepools, 'e drops off next. Jack
goes the last. I says to 'im : ' 'Old on ; don't
leave a fellow all alone.' 'E says : ' No use, 'Enery ';
and he drops off, and leaves me 'angin' to the boat,
froze to the gizzard, in a Bull o' Barney of a sea. 'Ow
it all 'appened I don't know, but I finds myself on
board of a destroyer, a-goin' into Plymouth Sound.
They says they found me lashed to the boat with a
bit of sennit and my braces ; but I never knowed.
Anyhow, I turns in and 'as a sleep, and in the
morning, after breakfast, borrows a rig-out from a
sailor-man, a friend of mine, and goes ashore. There
I takes the train right 'ome to Maiden Newton, and

io8 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
next day I gets married. That was a year ago, and
'ere's a bit of baby's 'air I always carries in my pocket-
book." That was the kind of yarn that made one long to
be torpedoed in cold weather, not altogether with a
view to matrimony. The Newfoundland barquantine,
ninety days out from San Francisco, that spoke to us,
asking for the right latitude, for she was out of her
reckoning, was a great incident. I see her now, and
probably shall always see her, backing her fore-topsail
as she hove-to a bit to signal us. Her lines were
beautiful, her sails well cut and fitting as only vessels
of her class ever appear to get their sails to fit, and
she was bound to Heart's Content. How in her
lengthy pilgrimage she had escaped the raiders and
the submarines " only the Lord can say," the second
officer remarked, adding reflectively, " but as He will
not say, it does not matter if He knows." We dipped
our flags, and she filled her fore-topsail and came up to
her course again, and, I hope, reached Heart's Content,
if it can be that such a place exists upon the earth.
We coaled in Hampton Roads, still in a blizzard,
which took us down south of Cape Hatteras, with
out encountering the German raider that was said to
be upon the coast. Spirits began to rise, the berths
gave up their dead, and it appeared to even the most
timid of us that the bitterness of German death had
passed. Next morning the men washing decks were
warming their frozen hands in the tepid Gulf Stream
water, although the temperature was low. A dense
sea-fog hung on the water making the Gulf Stream
look like a landscape in the mountains of the moon.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 109
fantastic, beautiful, and taking shapes like islands,
promontories, and cliffs. Out of it might have
appeared the fata morgana, though I am glad it did
not do so, for so few ships were on the seas that the
apparition must have been that of an enemy, some
where hull down, but dangerously near. Jamaica
in a day or two, the Palisados, Port Royal, and the
Blue Mountains, as in " Tom Cringle's Log."
The passengers all went ashore and disappeared
into the inky crowd that jostles one another on
Kingston quays and streets. In the evening the
Cavina cleared out for Port Limon. I watched
her in the red and purple sunset sink by degrees
into the Caribbean Sea, first her hull disappearing,
and then her funnel and her spars. When she had
vanished into the setting sun my friend and secretary,
turning to me, said : " Well, good luck to her. I
hope she gets home safe." It was not written so, and
in a month or two news came that she was sunk.
Vain was our gun-practice, and vain the fight she
made. The first shot took away her rudder, the
second smashed her gun, and she lay helpless. The
skipper was the last man to leave her. No one who
had ever seen him could have doubted it. No one
was killed except one of the gunners who, so to speak,
poor fellow, was indeed hoist with his own petard, as
the dismantled gun fell on him. The passengers and
the crew watched her sink slowly from the boats,
a sight that must have seemed to them a sacrilege,
though their own lives were in such jeopardy. They
were all saved after four hours' drifting in the boats.
Poor old Cavina !

no CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
On the dread day when the green, cruel sea gives
up its wrecks, if she should still be fated to sail
phantom oceans, I hope the powers that be, if
powers of any kind survive, will see to it that she
has better heating-apparatus in her, for ghosts are
sure to be a chilly crew.

CHAPTER XI
The poor old Cavina seemed to take away a portion
of one's life, so much a ship eats into the vitals of the
soul, even of passengers. The neglected island of
the woods and streams' has always seemed to me
a piece of Africa gone astray in the Caribbean Sea.
The only European things I can discover in it —
I speak but as a passer-by, and know there is a
settled, well-established planter life in the interior —
are the hideous houses of the new Kingston, and the
stunted little thoroughbreds that draw the cabs. It
is said there is no other horse in- all the island, but the
thoroughbred. In-breeding and the climate have
stunted him in stature. He still remains a thorough
bred, with all the qualities and defects inherent to
his caste. The white race rules, of course, in Jamaica, but
does not dominate. Now, man cares little for mere
rule, one would suppose, if he cannot dominate ; not
by the knout, but by his moral force. This certainly
he fails to do in the fair island that seems always
in one fashion or another to have eluded us. Streets,
lanes, and fields, the beach, the valleys, sides of
streams where clusters of negro huts hanglike wasps'
^ " Xaimaica " was the Carib name of the island, and it is said to
have signified " land of woods and streams."
Ill

112 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
nests from a bough of larch — they all are filled with
negroes engaged in their chief function of continuous
babbling. Though the men wear what they, I think,
call " pants " and " vests," and certainly straw hats
and clean white shirts, the women, always more
racial than the sex they rule, revel in their pink
skirts under green blouses, and purple neck-hand
kerchiefs, an atavism of the " Long Ju-ju," that
seems appropriate enough in the surroundings
where they live. The general look of being at
home in their own house is very striking amongst
negroes in Jamaica. They may have once been
slaves, although I doubt it, thinking that the
alleged " masters " were most probably the slaves,
in the same way the owner of a great country
house in England is the servant of his servants and
has to humour them to make them take their pay.
Possession, philosophically viewed, is moral, not
material. Although most of the property in Jamaica
is vested in the whites, who make the laws and
have imported their religion and their code of
morals, the blacks have modified them all, insensibly.
In the same way that the " mere Irish " altered
the substance of all the Normans brought to
Ireland, and carefully preserved the shadow, so
have the black race in Jamaica insensibly fashioned
the social aspect of the land, according to their
taste. Whilst they look quite at home, the whites
look mere exotics and mere foreigners. This in
spite of the fact that Jamaica is one of our
oldest colonies, won for us by that Lord Protector
who revived the glories of our flag, but entailed the

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 113
now happily mitigated " British Sunday " on an ale-
loving, once merry land. He it was who sent the
first thoroughbred horses to the island, for Old Noll,
though he upset his coach with the six Flemish
mares at Hyde Park Corner, loved horses all his
life. The island might become a centre for horse-
breeding, or certainly for that of mules. At the
time of the conquest of Mexico, and generally of
Tierra Firme, it sent out most of the horses that
trampled the Indians underfoot to the satisfaction of
Don Pedro de Heredia,^ and no doubt of Cortes.
Some of the horses and the mares whose colours,
qualities, and fate Bernal Diaz has preserved for us in
his great chronicle, perceiving that they too were
" conquerors," came, no doubt, from the plains
round Spanish Town.^ As the whole island lacks
advancement, and certainly should be able to export
at least two thousand mules a year, if the breeding of
them were attended to, perhaps the Government
might be induced to look into the matter, for the
Jamaican mule is excellent. It lacks the size and
weight of mules bred in Missouri and in Kansas, but
it is a well-made, compact, and lively animal of about
fourteen hands, active and serviceable. Its feet are
good, and high, and very hard — remarkably so, even
amongst a breed of animal renowned for standing
work on stony roads. A little encouragement from
the Home Government would do wonders in the
island, but that encouragement never seems to come.
The result is that the attention of the people is turned
^ See note on p. 43. 2 Then called Santiago de la Vega.
8

114 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
to the United States, where a market always is to be
found for all the island can produce.
Tourists from New York descend in flocks upon
Jamaica every winter, whilst those from England are
few and far between. Little by little, as it appears to
the casual observer, the island is being delivered over
to the negro race. This may not be a bad thing, for
after all they till the soil and do all the hard work,
but when they begin to rise to administrative offices
a serious problem will present itself to British states
manship. The island, a terrestrial paradise of lofty mountains,
clear, crystal rivers, rich alluvial plains, and beaches
fringed with coco-palms, only wants development to
be once more one of the most flourishing of our
Crown Colonies. Glasgow made it, or it made
Glasgow, a hundred or a hundred and fifty years ago,
and there exists no reason, except the absolute neglect
of it by every Government, why Kingston should not
have a Glasgow Street, nearly as full of traffic as is
Jamaica Street in the great city on the Clyde.
Even in Kingston, hideous and Board-of- Works
looking as it is, there yet exist fine, old colonial
houses that have escaped the ravages of earthquakes
and of fires. Throughout the island are dotted
here and there great country mansions, some of them
dating from Cromwellian times, that serve to show
the riches and the state in which the planters lived in
the old days. They seem like pieces of old England
gone astray amongst luxuriant vegetation, clear skies,
and brilliant sun. They yet remain in testimony of a
brighter time. They remind me of old houses in

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 115
South Carolina or in Georgia, states that have
suffered as Jamaica suffered when slavery came to an
end ; but in those states proprietors seem to have
adapted themselves to the new conditions more readily
than in the " Island of the Woods and Streams." The
difficulty is the labour question, complicated by the
undoubted fact that the black race is singularly averse
from work.
All the roads and the lanes of the island are full
of chattering negroes, merry and well-fed looking,
going apparently to nowhere, to do nothing in
particular. No land in all the world is better suited
to the race. The earth laughs crops. The climate
does not require warm fires or winter clothing, and
so they chatter on, having grasped the fact that in
increased production lies the future of finance.
In no part of the world do they appear more
absolutely at home. Their religion, always a chief
preoccupation of their race, they take even more
jovially than their ancestors could have done on the
coast of Africa. There at least there was the chief
who made them work for him occasionally; the
Ju-ju man who terrified them with his gri-gris and his
fetishes ; the fear of spirits that pervades the savage
negro's life, like a black nightmare ; and the once
present terror of the witch doctor with his accusations
of mysterious crimes, and almost certain death by
poison or by torture to everyone accused.
In Jamaica these all are absent. In the various
sects in which the negro race is shammed, as Swift
so jovially expresses it, the congregation pays the
minister, and thus takes away from him the keys of

ii6 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
hell. As the gates of heaven are said to be cast open
by the gift of Peter's pence, so are the gates of hell fast
closed by the withholding of the pence. No one was
ever easier to convert to Christianity than the negro.
Animistic to the core, a god or two was but a welcome
addition to the black Pantheon, in which Aphrodite
was the chief divinity. The churches, Anglican and
Roman, said but little to him ; the chapels claimed him
as their own. In them he felt he was at home ; the
fervent prayers — he likes to " sweat 'um Jesus " — and
the bellowed hymns were far more to his taste. No
man more fervent in belief, no man less actuated by
mere works, than is our coloured brother in the
Lord. It is whispered darkly in the island, that the
Voodoo cock sometimes is still slain at midnight, and
that mysterious rites are held in secret, remote from
observation of the whites. Who shall say whether
this is true ? They certainly exist, both in Haiti
and in Santo Domingo, and perhaps in other islands.
The phallic dance, the mento, the counterpart of
the candomble of the negroes of Brazil, and the
cumbiamba of Colombia, is danced quite openly, for
negroes do not dance exclusively for exercise as people
are alleged to dance here in this frigid isle.
Still, all the hard work of the island is done by
the negro race. They dug the Panama Canal and
made most of the railways of the Central Republics.
Well treated, they work well, and it should never
be forgotten that nothing can be done throughout
Jamaica without their muscle and their brawn. Good
wages and, above all, fair treatment are essential in all

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 117
dealings with them, and it should be remembered that
the natural man is quite averse from work if he can
live without it. This in the Island of Jamaica he can
do quite easily, and thus to work at all is to confer a
favour, a proposition that the negro understands
thoroughly. In such a natural garden of Eden as is Jamaica,
the chief blots are the towns and villages. The
larger towns are commonplace beyond belief, bad
copies of poor originals at home. The villages, long
straggling streets of negro huts, all built of wood
looking like rows of empty match-boxes. Nature
does all she can, embowering the meanest " shack "
in masses of bright-coloured creepers, and shading
miserable wooden living boxes under majestic trees
that spring up, as if by magic, in a year or two.
Man, black and white alike, does little towards
embellishment, though here and there fine villas are
to be seen outside the towns, or old colonial houses in
the country districts, surrounded by great trees. The
negro village is an eyesore, a waste of ragged
chickens, with but the coloured petticoats of the
women hanging out to dry to give relief to it. One
town in all the island stands out alone to show what
towns should be in such surroundings. Right in the
middle of the plain from which it takes its name
stands Santiago de la Vega.^ Its ancient name is that
I like to think of when I recall the place to memory,
although to-day it masquerades as Spanish Town. A
straight, white, dusty road, that breaks off to the left
at Constant Springs, leads out to it. Along it wander
^ Vega = vale, or plain.

ii8 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
groups of negroes, all chattering, all merry-faced, and
looking as if the primeval curse sat lightly on them.
Others drive scraggy mules in carts, unpainted and
uncleaned. After each cart a yellow dog or two
plods on amongst the dust. You pass Tom Cringle's
tree, a bongo or a ceiba, if I remember rightly, and
in the distance the town comes into sight. You rub
your eyes, not only to get the dust out of them, but
because you are amazed. You scarcely note the
groups of negresses that pass you, statues in ebony,
with their inimitable walk, ivory teeth, bright-
coloured clothes, their handkerchiefs about their heads,
and air of Africa, for it appears a cinematograph has
been at work^ and you are looking at a town either in
Mexico or Spain.
Here is no modern horror of cement-built
phalansteries as in Kingston, no negro squalor as at
Port Antonio or Anotto Bay. You pass at once into
a stately Spanish plaza, surrounded by great trees.
Little bricked paths lead to the sacramental garden
in the middle, with its stone benches, flowers, and
fountain, moss-stained and secular. Great clumps of
crimson bougainvilleas fill the angles of the plaza, and
the bright creeper known in Colombia as "la bellisima"
climbs on the mouldering iron railings which
surround the square. The sound of murmuring
waters is always in the ear, as the bricked rills
meander to the fountain, where swim goldfish, not
blotched and unhealthy-looking as they are in colder
climates but really golden, and deserving of the name.
One looks around, expecting that a Spanish girl
in black mantilla will cross the square upon her way

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 119
to Mass, followed by an attendant negro woman. She
does not pass. Nor does a ragged gentleman ask alms
with the air of doing you a favour, nor on the benches
does there sit a group of politicians, railing at the
Government and anxious to avail themselves of any
little post that it may throw to them. No Spanish
soldier, smart, clean, and olive-coloured, in his suit of
snowy drill, saunters across the plaza (for it is really a
plaza, not a square) rolling a cigarette. No priest read
ing his breviary strolls beneath the trees, or friar with
his bare feet and well-lined belly hurries back to his
convent, not to miss Mass or meat.
None of these types are to be seen ; not the lithe
bull-fighter, swaying upon his hips just as a Spanish
dancer sways and undulates, nor yet the stout and
shawl- wrapped women with their unstable busts all
innocent of stays.
Somehow one feels that they still haunt the plaza,
where they walked a thousand times in days forgotten
and long past. Surely their images are photographed
upon the stones and benches, for nature prodigal of
life, of vegetation, and of all she makes and casts away
without a thought, must preserve shadows, for after
all they are the most enduring part of man. Spain,
or its shadow, still lives in the plaza ; but all around is
Georgian England, homely and picturesque, looking
as if a country town in Sussex had been transplanted
and had taken root, flourished, and died, and remained
petrified. The parish church, with due, squat spire on which
St. Peter's cock swings about languidly as if it felt
the heat, brick-built and savouring of the days when

I20 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
churches were a sort of cross between a barrack and
a windmill, fills one angle of the square. A slate-
flagged path leads up to it, and when you enter into
its sacred precincts, the familiar, mouldy smell, pre
served, no doubt, just as miraculously as the orders of
the bishops who rule over it, assaults your nostrils,
bringing back any parish church in Sussex or in Kent.
Worthies in full-bottomed wigs, all wrought in
marble or in alabaster, lie under mighty Georgian
catafalques, avvaiting the last trump that chubby
angels perched on the cornices like swallows perched
upon a rail, seem eager to blare out. Their virtues
and their services to the island are couched in Latin,
rather bovine than canine ; yet they sleep on, as
undisturbed by sermons or by hymns as they would
sleep in a dark corner next to the yew-tree under
the lush grass of a churchyard in the old country,
with an intruding nonconformist pony grazing above
their heads. The groups of Georgian buildings and
Rodney's monument under its cupola give an air
of Kensington or Kew, gone astray in the tropics.
They do not make too jarring a discord with the old
Spanish plaza and its tall rustling trees.
All seems to blend together into an harmonious
whole. Even the negroes seem to walk more warily
in the decaying streets, and the mulata girls put on a
foreign air as they go chattering about the lanes.
Possibly reformers have marked down Spanish Town,
as the cockney " big-game " shooter, with his " shoot
ing licence," marks down a giraffe for destruction
in East Africa.
In the meantime it slumbers peacefully, a relic

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 121
of the days when planters, sitting down to dinner
at three o'clock, sat on till midnight, eating pork
chops and good corned beef, washed down with port
and rum. Long may it slumber, and soon may the
other towns wake up; for they need progress and the
vivifying breath of trade : but Santiago de la Vega,
with Toledo, Granada, Fez, and other relics of the
past, should be preserved intact for us to wander
in and meditate, when our heads ache with the rude
shouting of the votaries of 10 per cent, bowing
before their god.
A delightful island with its high mountains and
its fertile vales, its tropic forests, and its memories of
the past : its Spanish names preserved distorted in
their Anglo-Saxon aspect, Wagwater for " Agua Alta "
and " Boca de Agua " turned into Bogwalk. An
island of great capabilities, a sort of Hamlet of the
West Indies, lacking advancements, poor in the
midst of natural riches, ready to fall into the
hands of the United States, unless we, like the
Devil, " tak' a thocht," and mend our ways.

CHAPTER XII
The fruit-boat steamed past all that now remains
of the once famous harbour of Port Royal, with
all its memories of Nelson and the buccaneers. It
dropped the Palisados, leaving them a long, brown
line that melted in a moment into nothingness, only
the shoals remaining, white and angry, until they too
were lost. Kingston, with its long, new phalansteries,
and wooden houses with their high brick steps before
the doors, was blended with the flowering trees and
shrubs into an harmonious haze of purple and of red.
The plain of Liguanea, its hospitable club-house,
shaded by clumps of star apples and papaws, and
fringe of sturdy lignum-vitae trees with their dark
purple flowers, the racecourse, and the bright green
lanes, vanished into the past that has swallowed up so
many pleasant memories of happy days.
Lastly, the Blue Mountains slowly began to sink.
Newcastle, with its white houses clustering on the
hillside, its tropic forests, and its palms, melted re
luctantly into the atmosphere. Then, the tall peaks,
diaphanous and blue, hung for an instant in the sky,
looking like reversed atolls. They too disappeared,
and then we set our course to Cartagena of the
Indies, across the Caribbean Sea, choppy and wind-
122

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 123
curled as when the first of the old mariners entered
its humours in their logs. Gradually the sea grew
calmer and more tropical, the shoals of flying fish
more frequent, and then a long, low line of coast
appeared, fringed with a growth of coco-palms.
The warm air of the tropics floated out, until at
last even the Caribbean Sea was stilled by it, and
lay out calm and blue, with the reflection of a few
white clouds seeming to float upon the surface, as
water-lilies float upon the surface of a pond. Islands
appeared to rise out of the sea to meet the ship,
and, as she hastened past them, the huts and
hamlets buried in the trees impressed you with an
air of comfort and content, probably quite illusory
in fact. Most harbours and most towns, upon whatever
coast they lie, are visible a long way off ; but when a
vessel coming from Jamaica to Cartagena makes its
landfall, a city seems to rise out of the waves.
Cadiz, the Silver Cup,' and Mogador, called Sueira —
that is the Picture — by the Moors, alone can rival it.
Both of them emerge as if a coral reef had suddenly
been raised out of the depths, and both of them look
sea-born and ethereal, seen from a vessel's deck. They
spring out, as it were, suddenly, as if the coral insects
working upwards, had finished only the night before,
so white the houses and so dazzling the walls. The
tropic haze only allows the unconquered city,^ Carta
gena, and its outworks to become visible, as it were,
through a veil of gauze.
As you stand watching the low coast, fringed
^ " La taza de plata." 2 a l^ ciudad invicta."

124 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
with its palms and ringed about with surf, on the left
hand a block of masonry appears out of the sea. It
takes the shape of an old Spanish fort. The
crenellated walls have mouldered, the battlements
have fallen, in places, on the sand. No more the
blood and orange standard with its castles and its
lions flaps in the light air ; but the flat parapets, the
deep embrasures, through which the noses of the
brass carronades still peep, the massive iron-studded
doors, the counterscarps, the mamelons and ravelins,
the machicoulis and round pepper-boxes in which the
sentinels dressed in their buff coats, their morrions on
their heads, their halberts in their hand, stood sentinel
in vain against El Draque and of Pointis — all speak of
Spain, Gone is her glory, and gone the glory of the
fort — that is, its military glory has departed ; but as a
feature in the landscape it still holds its place. The
lofty water-gate, the central tower, and the long
flanking walls, shelter but a trading schooner, white
and yacht-like, with her tall, tapering masts and
bulwarks with their sheer, recalling slavers of the
past, and a few crank canoes.
The dense, metallic-looking vegetation surges up
behind the ruinous Castillo de San Fernando, just as
the ocean surges up to kiss it on the seaward side.
A grass-thatched lean-to shelters the guardian and his
family, and a small garden overgrown with weeds is
part of the parade ground where the Spanish soldiers
paced about in tirnes gone by, listening to the long-
drawnout cry of " Centinela alerta-a-a," from the
pepper-boxes. Sic transit — that is, if anything ever really changes.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 125
and if a phantom guard does not still listen to a
phantom sentinel, so deep the roots that Spain struck
down into the heart of the New World.
Opposite to the Castillo de San Fernando the
Castillo de San Jose frowns ruinously upon the strip
of calm, blue sea between their walls. Upon it the
same air of neglect has cast a shroud (perhaps a veil),
and great, green patches on the stonework look like
designs drawn by that king of decorators. Time.
Bright flowering creepers twine themselves about the
embrasures, and a canoe or two rock, with the round
bullet head of a negro propped against the gunwale
as he sleeps, balancing himself instinctively, just as a
frigate bird is said to sleep upon the wing.
As the vessel at half-speed makes her way through
the oily waters, where the " shark pursues the
mackerel,"' and schooners lie becalmed, their sails
flapping against the mast, suddenly a city rises from
the waves.
A mass of domes and towers, of houses painted
pink, with brown-tiled roofs, gleam in the sun. A
golden haze softens and blends them into a picture ;
showing no outline, melting into the atmosphere,
intangible and looking like the mirage of a town,
seen in a dream. The floating city is ringed round
with a vast, brown wall, turreted here and there with
towers, broken by bastions and by counterscarps. Great
gates yawn here and there in which portcullises are
ready, or were ready till time devoured them, to drop
upon the foe. All the medieval art of fortification
^ "Le requin poursuit en paix les scombres": Sonnet, on
" Cartagena de Indias," Heredia.

126 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
seems to have been exhausted, as if some Vauban of
those days had wrought his masterpiece and then
retired, knowing his work impregnable if hearts were
stout enough behind its walls. Palms and more
palms fringe all the shores ; castle succeeds to castle.
El Pastelillo, El Manzanillo, and finally San Lazaro
upon its isolated rock, now ruinous, and a mere
playground for lizards and for snakes.
Beyond it rises the hill known as La Popa, from
its resemblance to the stern of a galleon. A convent
crowns it, once tenanted by Discalced Augustinians,
and still under the patronage of Nuestra Senora de la
Popa,' The Augustinians have long departed ; but
the advocation of Our Lady of the Popa still remains,
although the convent with its massive walls and deep,
sunk well is ruinous, tenanted by day by humming
birds and at night by armadillos and by bats. Pointis
and Drake, to show their patriotism or their faith,
both held it to ransom, and to-day a sea of tropic
vegetation flows up, threatening to engulf its walls.
The rocky road that leads to it is a stiff pull in
such a climate, but once beneath the asgis of Our
Lady at the top, the view repays the effort more than
a hundredfold. The harbour with its mouths lies
out beneath one's feet. The castles still keep their
illusory watch at La Boca Chica, and farther off
El Castillo Grande stands on guard over the forgotten
glory of medieval Spain. So clear the air is that
you can see the flying-fish rise, fluttering like a shower
of emeralds, and disappear into the waves, scarcely
as large as minnows, seen thus from afar. Canoes
^ " Con la advocacion de Nuestra Senora de la Popa."

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 127
with their white sails drift along lazily, the trees upon
the surf-kissed beaches rustle in the breeze, looking
like gigantic, ostrich feathers growing from the sand.
From the vessel's deck, as she advances up the bay.
La Popa seems to shut the world out. Only the
faint blue line of the hills above Turbaco to the south,
take away the illusion of a town set on an island, in
its dark blue lagoon.
As you draw near the shore, the cathedral dome
seems to detach itself from the sea of rose-pink
houses, and the towers of La Merced, Santo Tomas,
and La Trinidad stand up like lighthouses above the
massive walls and the compacted houses of the town.
The vessels anchored in the port lie blistering in
the sun; no sound breaks on the ear; the very waters
seem asleep and quite unstirred, except when now
and then a shark's triangular back-fin cuts them like
a black wedge, and then sinks down into the oily
depths. No one would feel surprised if there were
still galleons at anchor, or if the captain of the port
were to come off dressed in trunk-hose and cloak, his
rapier riding on his thigh.
What is surprising is the arrival at the modern
wharf of La Machina, with its corrugated-iron roof,
its derricks, and the appliances of commerce that have
rendered all the world great, prosperous, and most
uncomely to the eye. 'Tis true, the movement of
the wharf is not excessive, and the perspiring negro
labourers often relax their toil to mop their faces and
to light their cigarettes. All dress in white, all wear
straw hats, and all chatter as negroes chatter all the
world over, ceaselessly, though at La Machina their

128 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
voices are less harsh than in Jamaica, and the lisping
dialect that they speak is not unpleasant to the ear.
A blend of Andaluz and of Mandingo, with all the
terminations of the words left out, or " eaten " as the
Spaniards say, the Costeiio ^ dialect is very difficult to
catch, for Castilians, who rattle out their consonants as
sharply as hail falling on a window-pane. A little
railway, running two or three miles through scrub,
leads to the town, passing close to the harbour, with
the walls, the churches, and the town seen just across
the bay. It finishes at a great railway-station, fit for
the terminus of a great line, but built in the middle
of a waste, sun-swept and arid, in which the little
negro boys play baseball, regardless of the heat.
The public gardens, with their usual stucco seats seen
everywhere in South America, and the great modern
market with its iron roof, are on the left hand of the
square. The Martyrs' Monument rises hard by, to
mark the place where patriots were shot down
by other patriots. O Liberty, thou bloodstained
goddess, as I once heard an orator in one of the
republics say, what crimes have been committed in
thy name ! ^ Certain it is that the same goddess
usually eats her children, and perhaps counts as many
victims in her cause as Mumbo-Jumbo or as Jugger
naut, or any other of the causes or the faiths for which
men persecute and slay.
A modern gateway with a clock, the space cut
out of the Cyclopean-looking walls, is the chief
1 "Un costefio" is a man from the coast — black, white, or
Indian.
2 I doubt if he had ever heard of Madame Roland. The phrase
probably sprang from personal experience.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 129
entrance to the unconquered city, as its inhabitants
delight to call it.
Once passed beneath it, and after having crossed
the little square, known as La Plaza de los Coches, in
which stand dozens of open vehicles, each drawn by a
slight, well-bred horse, that looks a little like an Arab,
long, sandy streets lead off on every side. Some, it is
true, are paved for a short distance, but all relapse
into their native sand until they " die," as the Spanish
phrase goes, either at the seashore or passing by other
apertures cut in the walls come out on the great
waste where stands the railway-station.
Surely few cities in the world can equal Cartagena
for its beauty, its quietness, its air of fallen greatness,
and for the silence of the streets. The rose-pink
houses with their deep eaves and overhanging
balconies, the massive doors studded with iron nails,
and grated windows, give a look of Seville ; but a sad
Seville, without the air of joyousness and paganism
that stamps the city, under the patronage of the saints
Justa and Rufina, and whose emblem is the Knot.^
In no place in the New World has Spain
impressed herself more strongly, with the exception
perhaps of Mexico, than in this city on the sand. The
massive crests above the doors show that the first con
querors were hidalgos, and the vast mouldering houses
speak ofthe time when the saying, " I am glad of it, as
said the governor of Cartagena," became proverbial in
the Spanish tongue. The streets were narrow, and it
^ The Knot was given to Seville by Alonso el Fabio, son of
St. Ferdinand, as its emblem. It is supposed to be the Nostus
Herculis of the Phoenicians, who used it as a mark for their bales of
merchandise to signify they were of full weight. 9

I30 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
appears to have been the custom of those days for
gallants to tie their horses to the gratings of the
windows, as they stood courting the ladies penned
behind them in the medieval Spanish style.
This in the narrow streets blocked up the traffic,
for Cartagena was in those days a busy mart crammed
full of soldiers fitting out expeditions to discover gold
mines, to conquer empires, and to extend the power
and might of Spain. Slaves thronged the streets,
negroes but just arrived from Africa, bozales — that is,
muzzled, for they could speak no Christian — or Indians
taken with the blunderbuss and lance.
The governor — unluckily fame, ever careless of its
greatest sons, has not preserved his name — was a
reforming spirit. He straight wrote out an edict, and
had it promulgated. " Horses," he said, " found tied
to balconies, shall all be hamstrung by my body
guard. Read this and mark it well, ye citizens
of Cartagena." The citizens, accustomed to high-
sounding phrases and to ukases that never were
enforced, obeyed but did not think about complying.^
They tied their horses, as they had always done, to
the gratings of the windows, for gentlemen of their
calibre could not go afoot, and an impatient, unneces
sary page would have been an uncomfortable adjunct
to their love-making.
At last upon a day the governor held a reception,
and all the "flower and cream "^ of Cartagena were
^ " Obedezco, pero no cumplo " — i.e., " I obey, but do not
comply " — was the set phrase used by Spanish governors in the Indies
when either an absurd order or one enjoining them to put down
the enslavement of the Indians arrived from Madrid.
2 « Flor y nata."

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 131
bidden to attend. This was the chance the halberdiers
had waited for to prove their vigilance. The governor
was seated at the receipt of fashion and of rank,
exchanging compliments with grave and reverend
though perhaps addle-pated counsellors, and with
an eye, we may suppose, upon the ladies, for even
governors are men.
A page approached him and whispered, " Sir, the
halberdiers have just come on two horses tied to a
window-grating and have hamstrung them both."
The governor, pleased that his foolish edict had been
carried out, exclaimed, " I am glad of it," and the
page withdrew. He had hardly reached the door
than another, rushing in, desired to speak instantly with
the governor. " Sir," he said, as he twisted round his
hat, " the soldiers have indeed hamstrung two fine
horses tied to the window-bars." " What of that,"
said the governor, " the edict has been complied
with and the halberdiers did well." The page replied,
" That is so, sir ; but the two horses were your own."
The governor, making, as one supposes, a rabbit's
laugh,' said, " I'm glad of it," and hence the saying,
"I am glad of it, as said the governor of Cartagena,"
passed into a phrase.
^ " La risa del conejo." The phrase corresponds to " laugh on
the wrong side of the mouth."

CHAPTER XIII
The silent city strikes an air as of monasticism.
Long stretches of brown walls, with the minutest
windows looking out upon the world, speak of the time
when the streets of Cartagena were filled with friars,
for friars in every age seem to have passed their time,
everywhere but at home. The convents are but shells,
for now the friars have gone to other worlds, none
of which can be hotter than the old town itself.
Though they are gone, their influence remains, as it
were, in the air, and certainly in the hearts of the
population, for Cartagena is a stronghold of Catholi
cism. The sandy streets, the population in its snow-
white clothes, the slender traffic, and the soft and
balmy atmosphere, make up a picture almost unique
in South America to-day.
The high Andean cities, Bogota, La Paz, and
Quito, certainly are restful enough in their remoteness
from the world. Still, their harsh climates and the
necessity to wear thick clothes and move about, if
only to keep warm, destroy much of the air that their
old Spanish houses, massive walls, and churches
springing up in unsuspected corners, gives them at
first sight. Up in the Andes the people huddle
wrapped up in blankets, as in the plateaux of Castile,
132

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 133
and " take the sun " at the corners of the squares. In
Cartagena the sun is looked on as an enemy. Every
one seeks the shady corners of the streets. Thus
you may say that the Andean cities represent Castile,
whilst Cartagena stands for Naples or for Seville, with
all the acuteness of the wits of Southern Europe and
a far greater energy of body and of mind. The
churches and the empty convents speak of medieval
Spain, and yet you feel that the population is alive
and businesslike according to its lights.
Once a stronghold of clericalism, the city, although
still strongly Catholic, is slowly getting free from the
bonds of bigotry that still bind Bogota and Popayan,
Pasto, and the towns of the interior. The fine
cathedral built on the site of the first church Heredia
founded, with its high tower that stands up like a
lighthouse, just as a mosque tower stands up in the
East above the sea of flat-roofed houses that the Moors
took to Spain and the Spaniards transplanted to
America, has something bare about it, as if the
familiar air of churches in the Old World could not
survive the transplantation to another hemisphere.
No beggars throng the doors whining for alms that
sanctify the giver, and no old women dressed in rusty
black hold back the screens before the door, as they
extend a hand. No yellow dogs stray in and out, and
in the choir no monks sit singing, spitting occasionally
with fervour, as they sing. Religion has an air of
having been brought over with the conquest. The
air of homeliness, of having grown up with the
country, and of being as well established in the soil
as are the trees, is absent. Just as, in Protestant

134 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
countries, the church is rather, as it were, a temple,
than God's house, where the market-woman sets down
her basket full of vegetables beside her, as she turns
in to pray, and squats upon the floor, her eyes fixed
on her favourite saint in ecstasy, or simply fixed from
habit, so throughout Spanish America the church
is rather a place of worship than a home. In Bogota,
and there only in the churches built at the time of
the conquest by men from Spain with all the feelings
and traditions of their native land still fresh upon
them, is the European look of homeliness and ease
to be observed. There, indeed, in the barnlike
sanctuaries run up hundreds of years ago, without a
definite plan ; in haste, as it were, to have some place
in which to glorify the Deity who had protected the
stern warriors in their cruelty ; dark, with the dust of
ages on the windows making the gorgeous gilding
gleam fitfully in the prevailing gloom — all speaks of
Spain. In them, Jimenez de Quesada, Belalcazar, and
the rest, even the bloodstained Federmann, may have
heard Mass together at their strange meeting on the
plains of Bogota.
To-day the Indians stroll in and out of them just
as they walk through the doors of their own ranchos,
and gaze upon the saints, under whose eyes so much
injustice was perpetrated on their ancestors, with that
inscrutable, veiled look the Indian turns on everything,
so baffling to men of other race. He bows his head
before the God of his oppressors, just as he bows his
shoulders to the burden that the descendants of his
conquerors have placed upon them, and in neither
case says anything. What he is thinking of no one

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 135
has ever fathomed; but outwardly he is a sad and
exemplary Christian, believing everything, enduring
everything, questioning nothing, never repining, and
as unfathomable as the Sphinx. Still, for all their air
of coldness, the churches of the unconquered city are
remarkable for having nothing of the Jesuit style, so
common in the New World, with its central dome
and mouldings like the pastry on an old-fashioned
open tart over the windows and the doors.
The cathedral is a long, low building in the
Grasco-Roman style. The tower is square, and in its
openings the great bells, so seldom silent, hang on
their wooden beams. Sometimes a vulture flaps
lazily and seats himself upon the sacred embrasure,
spreading his wings as if he gloried in the sun, and
then flies down on to a piece of carrion in some
deserted corner of the town.
The church in Cartagena has a look of the
cathedral in Valladolid, the pride of Philip and of
Herrera his favourite architect. Somethirig it has of
the Escorial and something purely its own, sun-baked
and calcined, without the smallest lichen clinging to
its stones. Inside, like other Grasco-Roman edifices,
it is gaunt and empty-looking; but a refreshing
coolness always reigns about its aisles. Its glory is
its pulpit, preserved miraculously from perils of the
deep, from pirates, barratry of mariners, and from the
enemies of our lord the King. The story goes that
the Pope of those days, hearing of the great faith and
piety of the citizens of Carthagena of the Indies,
wished to reward them with a gift, suitable to him
self and them. So he called to him the best artists

136 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
of his time and bade them carve a pulpit in the finest
marble, to be set up in the cathedraL The work
accomplished and duly blessed by God's vicegerent
upon earth, it was despatched to the Americas on
board of a galleon. She sailed from Cadiz, clearing
out with salvos of artillery, left the black shoal
known as Las Puercas on her port bow, and set her
course towards the Indies. All went well with her
till she had nearly reached her goal. The castles and
the lions, in their blood and orange field, floated out
gallantly from the high jackstaff that she carried on
the poop ; the captain paced his quarter-deck, in his
buff jacket, with his long rapier by his side ; the crew
lounged on the lofty forecastle ; the lookout man,
without a doubt, was slumbering in the cross-trees,
when someone cried, " A sail !" All was confusion,
for in those days in southern latitudes all strange
sails were those of enemies, and the accursed French
or English corsairs were always imminent. The
corsairs, for pirates seems an ugly word to write
of our own countrymen, who were no doubt
inspired by the highest motives and actuated chiefly
by the hate of Romish errors, soon fired a gun
and forced the galleon to back her mainsail and lay to.
They came aboard, and, in their proselytizing hatred
of idolatry and zeal for a pure faith, thoroughly
ransacked the ship. They packed up all the gold
and silver that they found, not even sparing sacred
vessels of the Romish faith the chaplain had stored
in his cabin, or others of rich plate the captain kept
beneath his bed for his own private use, tumbling
them all promiscuously into a gunny sack and

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 137
carrying them off. This done they opened con
scientiously the boxes and the bales. What was their
disgust to find in certain, solid cases a marble pulpit,
defiled with images of saints sculptured in high
relief upon its sides. Their fury knew no bounds,
and in a holy orgasm of zeal, comparable alone to
that which armed the hand of Jenny Geddes to launch
the stool at the head of the Erastian preacher long
ago in Edinburgh when faith and morals both were
pure, they cast the cases on the waves. Our Lady of
the Sea stretched out her hand, and all the cases,
though packed with marble, floated like pumice-stone.
Fear fell upon the heretics. Straightway they
manned their boats and went on board their damnable
freebooting craft and sailed away, packed to the
water-line with spoil. But round the Catholic ship
the sacred cases floated buoyantly, like children's
balloons that have escaped their owner's little hands,
upon the Serpentine. Then, for the first time in
their lives, did all the crew work overtime. They
got the precious cargo all aboard again, and then the
captain, after a due thanksgiving, came up upon the
poop. Long did he gaze upon the sun, using his
astrolabe to check the degrees upon the quadrant
(or perhaps cross-staff), and shouting to the Spanish
timoneer, who leaned against the tiller taking
tobacco, " Keep her full and by," he set her course
again towards Cartagena, a spoiled and harried man,
but yet contented that the hand of Providence was
still about him, instant to defend. He sailed a day
or two, and now the breezes turned more balmy and
the winds fell light. His thoughts, no doubt, for even

138 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
captains of galleons were not exempt (as history tells
us) from the ordinary frailties of mankind, began to
dwell upon the ladies of the unconquered city,
especially on one, a mulatilla, whom he referred to
as a " tizon del infierno,"^ adding some details of her
charms that possibly he might as well have kept for
his own private ear. He hummed a seguidilla, and,
looking up occasionally at the after-leach of the fore-
topsail, gave orders to sheet home such sails as were
not drawing properly. A voice from the fore-top
was heard, hailing the deck, " A sail, a sail, on the
port bow !" Soon she drew near, and the black flag
flew from her peak. Confusion! she was a Dutchman,
worse even than the accursed English who had
plundered them before. This time, either our Lady
of the Sea was sleeping or the profane and amorous
musings of the captain had offended her, for the rude
Dutchmen, clattering in their wooden shoes, were
filled with fury when they found nothing remained
worth taking, so thoroughly had the Englishmen gone
through the bill of lading and the charter party.
Cursing their fellow-heretics as skellums, they most
methodically butchered the crew and set the ship on
fire. Then they sailed off towards the doom that
certainly awaits Dutch pirates after their lives are
over and the seas rest from all their exploits. The
giant galleon burned like the funeral pyre of all the
oceans going up to the sky in expiation of the crimes
committed on the sea and in commemoration of
^ For the information of such as know no " Christian," I may
say that the phrase means " brand of hell," but in no wise snatched
from the burning.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 139
the nameless, innumerable acts of heroism, of simple
mariners. Her topmasts were burnt through. Her heavy
yards, squared in the Carraca, Puerto de Santa Maria,
Rota, or in the Trocadero, fell into the sea with a loud
crash, and after sticking up for a brief space, blackened
and burning, sank down into the water and floated
alongside looking like maimed sea-monsters, as they
rose upon the swell. On the high forecastle the
great, carved lantern that so long had flickered fitfully
over the waves, making the darkness even more
impenetrable at night, went up, consumed in a fierce
blast of flame. The masts sagged, swayed, and then
fell overboard to join the yards. The decks burst
open, releasing a hurricane of fire, as if the interior of
the ship had been a solfatara, belching out flames that
licked up soon the standing rigging and the boats.
The seams all opened as the fire gained on the
seasoned teak, and by degrees the vessel slowly settled
by the head. The castellated poop, with its carved
balconies and gilded mouldings, was raised high in
the air. On it still flew the castles and the lions of
the Spains, defiantly, A dense smoke slowly crept
aft, shrouding all that remained of the doomed vessel
in its folds. Through it all appeared a shower of
sparks that played an instant in the tropic air as
fireflies play about a bush of flor de la Habana and
fell into the sea with a long hiss. Then with a
moaning sound the vessel lurched more forward,
the water crept up hungrily, and with a sigh she
dived, the blood and orange flag, tattered and
scorched, disappearing sullenly beneath the waves.

I40 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
Some wreckage floated here and there, a breeze
blew off the smoke, the sharks fed greedily upon the
bodies, when lo ! a miracle. Up from the whirl
pool that the great ship had caused as she went to
the resting-place of countless galleons and galeases,
the sacred cases were wafted slowly to the surface
of the waves. The tumult and confusion of the
water caused by the sinking vessel slowly was
appeased. The black dust floated away and was
absorbed into the sea. The sharks sailed off replete,
to their sea lairs. Nothing was left ' to mark the
tragedy that had been enacted, except a fleet of
nautiluses hoisting their little sails, and the great
packing-cases that rose and fell upon the surge.
Wonder of wonders, some invisible power aligned
them into the semblance of a fleet. It seemed they
understood what was expected of them, or else great
Neptune, superinduced by forces greater than his own,
impelled them on their way. How long they
wandered on the deep is not within our ken ; but
what is certain, is that they were wafted to their
proper destination and went ashore upon the beach,
just underneath the walls of Cartagena, and rested
from the perils they had' undergone.
The sun beat down upon them, whitening the
wood and cracking the dry boards. Barnacles
gathered on their weather side, where the tide lapped
up and kissed them. Seaweed attached itself to the
rough nails and splinters of the cases, and now and
then a flight of seagulls alighted tenderly upon the
sea-tossed packages, resting a little, then floating off
again to hang poised just above the surf.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 141
Years passed, and still no pious hand impelled by
a mysterious dream or vision came to their rescue.
People cantering on the beach cursed at them volubly
when their horses shied, and sailors sat and smoked as
they gazed out to sea in that eternal quest to which
long years have trained their eyes. Then came some
merchants, men without imagination, with an eye to
the main chance. Opening the cases rudely, just as
if they had contained mere merchandise, they were
struck with the beauty of the work. Thinking
to turn an honest penny, they embarked them on a
vessel bound to Spain. " The saints," as a Protestant
but quite impartial writer has it, " still kept their
eyes on the Pope's offering." ^
A gale arose, as might have been expected in the
circumstances, and forced the vessel to put back. By
this time the news had reached the bishop and the
consistory, who, calling for the captain, offered to
buy the goods. He, though a Catholic Christian,
refused to part with them except at such a price
as was prohibitory, for of late years the offertory had
been held in slight esteem in Cartagena, although
the faith was pure. Sadly the bishop and his priests
returned to the cathedral, and the skipper put to sea.
Again a gale sprang up and wrecked his vessel, and
he and all his crew went to the fate appointed for
hard bargainers and for heretics. This time the
cases floated back at once, straight through La Boca
Chica, and came and lay upon the beach. The
bishop now perceived that a third miracle had
^ Albert Milligan, " Adventures of an Orchid- Hunter," p. 211
(London, 1891).

142 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
taken place, so in procession the predestined work of
art was taken up to the cathedral through the glad
population, with incense and with psalms.
The offering of St. Peter's apostolic vicar upon
earth had reached its destination, though cast upon
the waters for an infinity of days. All was concluded
satisfactorily. In the cathedral stands the pulpit,
erect and glorious. Under its canopy tedious but
painfull preachers hold forth on due occasion, as
their congregations drowse. No one, except some
travelling heretic, thinks of the perils that the marble
work of art underwent upon its wanderings on
the seas. The cong^regation, as they perceive the
perspiration trickling down the preacher's face, know
he is drawing to a close. Gradually, by ones and
twos, they all disperse, and when the monaguillo
comes round with the collecting-box only a few
beatas still remain, gazing in ecstasy or pinned down
by rheumatism.
^ Painful, in the Elizabethan sense.

CHAPTER XIV
The celebrated pulpit still remains as the chief object
of Italian art in Cartagena, and, with its coloured
marbles and figures raised in high relief, looks
curiously cold and lonely in the vast church where
at last it rests from all its perils on the deep.
The town is rich in churches, and perhaps that of
San Pedro Claver is the most interesting.' Although
the architecture is that the Jesuits employed all over
the New World, from the modest mission chapels in
San Antonio Texas, in Arizona, and in Paraguay,
right down to Chile, yet the Church of San Pedro
Claver has something different about it from any
church in the Americas. The eastern front is made
of massive stone, brought from the mountains near
Turbaco, and as the church stands in a square
hemmed in by houses, it has an air as of a church in
the Castiles, more homely and yet more dignified
than often is the case in South America. Two
square, squat towers flank the east front, and over the
chief entrance is a rose window, a detail of architec-
1 The church was founded in 1603 by a R^al Cedula of Philip III.
It was first dedicated to St. Ignatius of Loyola. The body of San
Pedro Claver is preserved and venerated in the church.
143

144 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
ture unusual in the Southern Hemisphere. In each
of the side towers are set two little marigold windows,
and the effect is quite original. The building is bare
and simple ; but the colour of the stone — a rich, dark
brown — gives it a look of warmth, in the same way
that the red rocks give warmth occasionally to the
drear landscapes to be seen in Iceland.
The church originally belonged to the Company
of Jesus, an Order much maligned ; but one that, after
all, did the best missionary work amongst the Indians
in America. Along the bay stretches what is now known as
the Parsonage, most probably the Jesuit establishment
of other days. The city walls, running up from
the water's edge, retain it on one side. In front,
the Martyrs' Monument stands up, modern and stark,
with an air of challenge, and a tall fan-palm with its
hanging leaves serves as an solian harp to sing the
dirge of the departed Jesuits, when the soft breezes
blow from the Caribbean Sea.
Cartagena was no exception to the general
rule that the patriot is the greatest enemy of the
patriot, as man is the wolf of man. No greater
Spanish patriot could well have lived than General
Morillo, who in 1815 commanded the armies of
the King of Spain — in what is now Colombia.
Staunch to his king, and faithful, bloodstained and
cruel, he swept across the land, like a destroying
angel. Even Bolivar was not more sanguinary, or careless
of his life.
Thus they were both true types of patriotism.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 145
convinced and steadfast in their ideas and inaccessible
either to fear or argument.
The Cartagena martyrs were shot in 1 8 1 6, by the
order of the Viceroy Montalvo, after General Morillo
captured the town. Their leader was one Colonel
Anguiano. This officer had served in the Spanish army, and
having embraced the popular cause became deputy
for the town of Tolii. In the Popular Convention
he was noted for his fervid advocacy of the cause
of liberty. Such a man, of course, had nothing to
hope for at the hands of his enemies, and was
accordingly shot at once as a traitor, and has since
been venerated as a martyr.
The church and parsonage and their surround
ings are old-world and picturesque ; but the chief
glory of the shrine is in the man whose name they
bear to-day. The Bollandists, in their "Acta Sanc
torum," place him "inter prstermissos " — why, is
best known to themselves. They chronicle his arrival
in the Indies in 1610 ; his death in 1654. Pope
Benedict XIV., by a decree, declared him " possessor
both of the theological and cardinal virtues in an
heroic degree." This probably was the first stage
upon his iier aa astra, for it established his beatific
state. When he was canonized is not made manifest in
the " Acta Sanctorum " of the Bollandists. America,
so far, has not been too prolific in the glorious com
pany of saints — at least, of those who have been so
declared by Holy Mother Church.
With the exception of Saint Rose of Lima,

10

146 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
few saints whose pilgrimage on earth was in the
Indies have, so to speak, got across the footlights
of the Old World and been accepted upon equal
terms with those who, by their antiquity or the
strange, cruel manner of their death, become authentic
in our minds. Saintship, like a knowledge of the
classics, is usually paid for in blood.' If not in
blood, most certainly by suffering and a self-denying
life. Although the Bollandists, for reasons best known
to themselves, pretermitted from their history the
life and miracles of San Pedro Claver, it was not
destined that they should be lost to fame. In 1653
a Life of Father Pedro Claver appeared in Madrid, by
the Licenciado Don Geronimo Suarez de Somo^a.
He confesses in his prologue that he copied most
of it from a Jesuit of Cartagena de Indias, one Father
Alonso de Andrade, who makes " honourable mention
ot the heroic works done by that servant of the
Lord, Father Claver, upon the earth, and of the
miracles that ensued after his translation to the skies."
This confession, so unusual amongst authors as to
be almost unique in all our annals, does Father Suarez
de Somo9a the highest credit and reflects lustre on
our confraternity. We take our goods where we
can find them, as a general rule, and then, after
the fashion of the adulterer in Holy Writ, we
wipe our mouths and hope our deeds may never
see the light. As Suarez de Somo9a gives the lead,
pointing the path to literary honesty, it would ill
befit a more modern plodder, by the way, to leave
^ "El Latin con sangre en tra," is a saying in Spanish.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 147
the trail so boldly blazed by the honest Jesuit upon
the via crucis of San Pedro Claver. El Reverendo
Padre Alonso de Andrade, of the Company of Jesus,
** natural de Toledo," published his Life of San
Pedro Claver in Madrid in the year 1667 (con
privilegio). It is dedicated to the " Most Excellent
Seiior Padre Juan Everardo Nidhardo, Inquisidor
General of the Spains." In it Father Andrade
enters most fully into the miracles and the ministries
of the life of San Pedro Claver, completely " wiping
the eye " of the Bollandists, if one may apply the
phrase to such a company of reverend men, and thus
fills up a gap in their great chronicle of the acts
of all the saints.
They left him, as we have seen, amongst the
" praetermissos," preferring, with European prejudice
and that disdain of the Americas that the Americas
to-day are paying back with interest, to chronicle
the miracles of the most trifling European saint
in preference to his.
We who, like Father Alonso de Andrade, know
*' those Indies " are grateful to him, and Cartagena
might well place a tablet in the church where the
saint ministered so long to his historian's memory.
Pedro Claver was born in Cataluiia at the town
of Verdii in 1585. That town is situated in the
bishopric of Solsona, a see probably as well known
to the majority of English readers as that of Sodor
and Man is known in Spain. His family was
noble, and related to the Counts of Benavente. He
went to school in Barcelona, studying Latinity and
Rhetoric. Greek was not compulsory, as far as we

148 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
know, but what is known as " la ciencia media " '
in common Spanish parlance, probably prevailed. He
speedily distinguished himself in both branches of his
studies, and was sent to a superior college in the
old town of Tarragona. Here he became a deacon,
and at the age of twenty-five, his superiors having
perceived his worth, he was sent out to Cartagena as
a missionary. On his arrival he went to Bogota for a
short interval, but soon returned to Cartagena, where
he received priest's orders and said his first Mass in the
Jesuit College about the year 1 6 1 6.
When he had finished it he took a vow always to
say the last Mass at the same altar where he first
celebrated. Until his death, during the thirty-seven
years that intervened, from that day forth he always
kept his vow.
The missionary field was vast. Infidels were wild
and savage and lived apart in the thick woods. They
issued forth when they perceived occasion to give the
crown of martyrdom to the incautious missionary who
travelled without arms. The Spanish settlers were,
as we learn, "lax and adulterous." Perhaps the
softness of the climate impelled them to the latter
failing of the flesh.
In addition to all this, negroes from Africa were
constantly arriving in the slave ships, ignorant of
the true faith, polygamous, and sometimes canni
bals. When they arrived they naturally spoke no
1 The saying goeS, "Pasteles en le pasteleria y ciencia media
en la Compania " (de Jesus) — i.e., " Cakes in the pastrycook's and
ciencia media in the Company of Jesus." I leave to theologians the
exact translation of the term "ciencia media," holding that the
world will suffer little if they fail to render it.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 149
Christian,' and so the Spaniards referred to them as
muzzled.^ It consequently became the duty and the pride of
San Pedro Claver to unloose their muzzles, both of the
body and the mind. We are told that in his life he
baptized more than two hundred thousand of them,
besides a great quantity of Moors, English, and other
heretics.^ How he performed this miracle, for I hold
it ^he chiefest that he wrought, is difficult to say.
After all is said, common sense and faith are but
synonymous. Faith usually finds out a way to justify
itself. It may be that San Pedro Claver, who was a
Catalan, and the Catalans are the Scotch of Spain,
resorted to the methods that used to be observed in
Rome, when in St. Peter's the peasants thronged that
shrine at festivals. A priest, with the hyssop fastened
to a cane, used to dispense the holy water, as with a
fishing-rod. In the same way, San Vicente Ferrer, in
Palma de Mallorca, when called upon to convert a
community of Jews that still persisted in outraging
our faith by clinging to their own, resorted to the use
of the long cane. Upon a certain day he placed
himself, armed with his sacred cane, beside an
enormous cauldron full of holy water. The un
believers were mustered in the square. On one side
stood the cauldron with the blessed water, on the
other burned a bonfire. Those who refused the
holy rite had the alternative of passing through the
flames. None were so unbusinesslike as to refuse the

1 Christian = Spanish.
2 " Bozales." " Bozal " is a muzzle in Spanish.
^ " Ademas de gran suma de Moros, Ingleses, y otros hereges."

I50 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
sanctifying water on their brow. They lost their
faith to the last man, but kept their noses, as any
traveller can see who takes a stroll in the dark,
tortuous streets of " El Barrio de los Chuetas " down
to the present day. San Pedro Claver, however, did
not stop at baptism, after the fashion of so many
missionaries. As far as in him lay he tried to render
the poor wretches' lives more tolerable, treating them
as fellow human beings and ministering to their
wants in sickness and in adversity.
One of the superstitions that the poor creatures
had was that they were all to be killed and their bones
ground down to manufacture gunpowder. Through
all the horrors of the " middle passage," this terror
used to work upon their minds, and the good Father
(now a saint, and most deservedly) used to go down
and speak to them upon arrival, to comfort and dispel
their fears. Had he done nothing else he had
deserved his saintship, for the poor savages, torn
from their native wilds, confined below decks in the
ships, were like wild animals in a corral, trembling
in every limb. When he had calmed their fears he
used to lead them all ashore, for they walked after. him,
" just as a flock of sheep follows its shepherd," dumb
and pathetically, towards the slaughter-house.
Work was their portion until death released them
in most cases, but in so far as he was able the saint
alleviated their lot. Still, all of his labours were not
confined to materialistic and soul-numbing good
works. One day a fellow-labourer in the vineyard of
the Lord came to him in distress and asked him his
advice. It seems that he (a priest) had laboured

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 151
strenuously with a sick negro, urging him to accept
the rite of baptism and save his perishable soul. The
negro, who perhaps was a stout votary of Mumbo-
Jumbo, or a man convinced of the efficiency of
prayer at the Long Ju-ju, had steadily declined.
Nothing could move him from the faith in which
he had been reared. His fathers, so he said, had
all died pagans, and he looked forward to meeting
them again in the same faith in which they all had
died. " San Pedro Claver," so says his biographer,
"rushed quickly on his prey."^ Long did the good
Father wrestle in prayer by the bedside of the game
fetish worshipper, pouring in his gospel broadsides
with accuracy and effect. As the faint streaks of the
false dawn appeared, and the mosquitoes, sated with
blood, flew buzzing off to rest, the unbeliever gave up
his false and animistic gods. With joy the good
priest poured the soul-saving water on his head, and
in an hour or two his " soul gained heaven."^ In fact,
the operation was successful, but the patient died,
after the saying current in Harley Street. One is
glad to learn that the new Christian was buried with
considerable pomp and circumstance. His funeral
cortege was headed by Father Claver in person, no
doubt contented with the victory he had won over
the powers of evil. With psalms they bore the
erstwhile votary of Gri-gri and of Feiti90 to the
cemetery. Music and lights accompanied the proces
sion, and flowers were strewed upon his grave.
^ " Corrio ligero 4 la presa."
2 " Su alma gan6 el cielo."

152 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
Few negroes in Cartagena have had so fine a
funeral, and yet one almost wishes that the old pagan
had been steadfast to the last. It is possible in that
case that his soul might not have gained the
(Christian) heaven, but it would have gone to
some place or another and joined his ancestors.
I pass by, as of little moment, as a mere skirmish
in the gospel-field, the saint's conversion both of a
criminal and of the executioner upon the scaffold, for
executioners are almost always sentimentalists. If it
were otherwise the criminals would have to execute
themselves. Viewed rightly, the executioner is a
scapegoat, taking the sins both of the criminal and of
the judges on his own head.
Perhaps his greatest exploit was the conversion
of an archdeacon from London,^ a foeman worthy of
his steel. How two such well-matched protagonists
met each other is difficult to say, or what was the
business that brought the archdeacon to such a
distant place, so far beyond the faintest twinkle of
Bow Bells,
A concentration camp had just been formed for
several cargoes of " black ivory," newly arrived from
Guinea, and all attacked with plague. At the same
time a numerous squadron of English had arrived,
and it may well have been that the archdeacon
came as chaplain to the fleet. This Churchman
ambulant was, we are told, a man of middle-age,
grey, and of great authority amongst his fellows.^
Moreover, he was " a great preacher and a master
1 " Un Arcediano de Londres."
2 " De gran autoridad entre los suyos."

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 153
of the heresy."' The battle raged most furiously, and
texts flew fast between the two ; citations were
adduced, the Fathers of the Church were quoted and
duly twisted as either combatant lost or secured the
trick. At last, overcome either by the climate or by
the reasoning and the faith of Father Claver, the
heretical archdeacon laid down his arms and turned a
Christian. Great was the joy in Cartagena of the
Indies over the one archdeacon that repented.
Solemnly the now repentant heretic was received into
the fold.
Whether he stayed in Cartagena a true son of the
Church, or once again returned to London to his
heresy and beer, we are not told, for Father Andrade has
a knack, just like a storyteller in the Soco of Tangier,
of breaking off his narrative at the most interesting
point. True, he does not come round for a collection,
as do the Moors, before he recommences. Would
that he did, for the fate of our good countryman, in
this world and the next, leaves one perplexed and
even hesitating.
After long years of patient work amongst the
negroes, of daily visitation of the prisons and the
Jiospitals, Father Claver's pilgrimage here on earth
drew to a close. His health had suffered much
by his unceasing labours in the severe and burning
climate of Cartagena. His sufferings were grievous,
but he bore them as uncomplainingly as he had
borne the attacks of the mosquitoes all his life, for
it is said he never brushed one off either from
his face or hands.
^ " Gran predicante y maestro de la heregia."

154 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
On September 8, 1654, being the day of the
Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, he died like a true
soldier of the Company of Jesus.
His chiefest miracle was his self-denying life.
Well is he called the Apostle of the Negroes, for all
his life was given to their cause. The habits of
his life were simple, for though he loved it he would
listen to no music, and never once would walk upon
the walls to see the vessels in the bay. He never
went to theatres or to hear " dialogues," no matter
how well acted or how good they were,^ nor would
he walk in gardens or see interesting things. He
did not think it right even to listen to the news from
Spain, a thing, his chronicler observes, " so pleasurable
to all who live out in the Indies." To this I too can
add my testimony, and can imagine what he must
have felt when a great fleet sailed in and anchored off
the town. It is not probable that Cartagena will
produce another saint of his calibre, so humble and so
self-denying or so devoid of pride. As we have seen,
he had a short way with a sceptic, and yet I trust
that it will not be quite unpleasing to him, this brief
memorial of his miracles and work penned by a
heretic. It pleases me to think that his self-sacrifice and
life of toil amongst the negroes was not unrecog
nized, although the recognition came, as recognition
generally comes, a little late.
In 1 85 1 Pius IX. beatified the saint of Cartagena,
and, as with such a man the arguments of the
* " Jamds oy6 comedias 6 dialogos, por buenos que fuesen."

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 155
Advocatus Diaboli could not have been convincing,
his canonization followed in 1888 under Pope
Leo XIII.
Long before that the inhabitants of the " noble
and loyal town "' had enshrined him in their hearts.
^ " Noble y 16al ciudad." Most Spanish towns have their titles.
Madrid is known as " La muy leal, noble y coronada villa."

CHAPTER XV
If the greatest ecclesiastical interest is concentrated
round the beautiful old church of San Pedro Claver,
there are not wanting other old-world buildings in the
town.' Now turned to a more pacific use (I think
a hard-goods store is situated in its lower storey), the
House of the Inquisition is a fine monument of the
late Renaissance style. It stands in a beautifully
shaded square planted with palm-trees, watered by
little rills in their cemented channels. In the middle
of the square, upright and graceful on a " Uanero "^
horse, his long reins dangling almost to the ground,
his right hand pointing to the inaccessible abode
of Liberty upon the highest summits of the Andes, a
perpetual menace to Inquisitions of all sorts, Bolivar
rides. The fine, old house, with its heavy, carved
stone mouldings above the door, looks just like many
a house of the same period in Spain, especially like
1 At the time of the desamortization of the convents many
churches and convents were secularized, including La Merced, San
Francisco, La Vera Cruz, Santa Teresa, San Diego, and San Agustin.
The Palace of Justice stands on the site of the convent of La Merced.
A friend in Cartagena used to say, quoting a Mexican poet, that by a
stroke of irony, the new edifice, stolen from the Church, has " Palacio
de Justicia" written on it in letters of gold. " Con refinada malicia
dice en letrero dorado, el Palacio de Justicia, y el edificio es robado."
2 Llanero — that is, from los llanos, the plains.
156

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 157
one in the corner of a little plaza in Valencia which
might have been its prototype.
Gone is the Green Cross, the ancient symbol
of the Holy Inquisition. No more the inquisitor sits
with his secret conclave, the forerunner of the
diplomatist of modern days and of the trade-union
leader, who, both, like the inquisitor, work secretly,
their wonders to perform. Many a relapsed heretic
must have secured his eventual entry into paradise by
the medium of the rack, in the dark dungeons where
now a heap of rusty chains, of iron collars, and
the rest of the paraphernalia of the " faith " lie rotting
in the dark. One only wonders how the Archdeacon
of London escaped being translated to a heavenly
archdeaconry through the dark vaults of the old house.
All things considered, he was prudent to confess
himself a convert, for if, as Henry of Navarre said,
" Paris is worth a Mass," life certainly is worth
so small a sacrifice as a mere change of Mass.
Now, with its massive door, its heavy balconies,
and red-tiled roof, the Casa de la Inquisicion serves
at the same time as a memorial of old times
and a good hardware store, and certainly is one
of the finest medieval houses yet remaining in the
Americas. Plaza succeeds to plaza in the curious old town,
and but a step divides the Plaza de la Independencia
from that of Fernandez de Madrid. In all America
there is no square more absolutely Spanish than this.
The stuccoed seats would look at home either in
Caseriche or Andujar, or any other of the decaying
towns, either of Andalucia or Castile. On them

158 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
sit chattering, mulata nurses, whilst their charges play
underneath the trees. A swarthy half-Indian soldier
saunters up and down smoking a cigarette. The
milkman or the water-seller drives his donkey, laden
with wooden barrels or with cans, in the deep,
sandy streets outside the iron railing. Only the
barquillero' and the water-seller, with his harsh cry
of " Agua-a-a," are absent to complete the picture.
The railings of the square appear coeval with the
conquest, but then the climate soon exfoliates all iron
and makes it look centuries older than in reality it is.
Six Cuban palms, their trunks shiny and looking
like gigantic bottles, rustle melodiously over the little,
square corral, if I may use the word, where is
raised the statue of Fernandez de Madrid, one of the
Liberators. Of all the titles that mankind has in its
power to bestow, I prefer that of Liberator. Defender
of the Faith is mouth-filling, but then the doubt
creeps in : Which faith is worth defending ? Knight
hood and the O.B.E. are glorious enough distinctions ;
the Garter brings no damning merit in its train ; and
all the rest, from Duke down to Lord Mayor and
Labour Leader, have something comic in their train ;
but yet mankind craves for them thirstily. Liberator
alone has something in the sound of it that places it
^ A barquillero is a man who sells barquillas, a kind of crisp
wafer. He carries them in a tin vessel like a churn, slung over his
shoulder. On the top of the churn is a miniature roulette table.
The barquillero is the delight of the children in Spanish towns.
Bonafoux, the late Spanish journalist, a man of genius, depicts his
meeting with a barquillero at Etretat, who naturally spoke no French.
Asked how he had got there, he answered, "Sometimes embarked
and sometimes on foot." Where he " embarked " heaven knows.
He may have applied the phrase to a train journey.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 159
above the realm of comedy. For one thing, the few
Liberators that the world has known have generally
died poor and despised. Either mankind cannot
support the gift of liberty, or else the Liberators
have not been fitted to survive in the struggle of the
unfit. That fact alone confers on them a patent
of nobility. Bolivar, perhaps the greatest man that
all America, Spanish or English or Portuguese, has
yet produced, died poor and disillusioned in the
curious old Spanish country house of San Pedro de
Alejandria, a few miles from Santa Marta, just at the
foot of the Andes that he had crossed so many times
during his struggles to emancipate his countrymen.
General San Martin was laid to rest in Boulogne, far
from his exploits ; and so of all the rest, with the
exception of Washington, who doubtless would have
shared the fate of his compeers had not he voluntarily
gone into the seclusion of his Virginian home. Thus
it is pleasing to reflect that the man whose marble
effigy stands in the middle of the little square that
bears his name, lived to a hundred years of age, loved
and respected to the end. It may be that as Fernandez
de Madrid was not a soldier, he was immune from
that ferocious jealousy that arms mankind against
its heroes in the field. Still, from the first he bore
an important part in the long struggle against
Spain, that raged more furiously both in Colombia
and Venezuela than anywhere throughout the
continent. Half-naked negro children play round the little
railing that surrounds the statue, and probably of all
the lounging population that in the evening, when

i6o CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
the sea breeze sets in, saunters about the plaza, only
a moiety have heard the Liberator's name.
The various plazas, green and shady, form as it
were a series of oases among the piles of low-browed
houses, with their overhanging eaves, iron-studded
doors and balconies, with windows at whose bars
stand lovers whispering just as they do in Spain.
Most of the streets run out on one side to the sea
through deep cuts in the walls, and on the other to a
cano — that is, a backwater — buried in mangrove-trees.
Only two hundred miles or so away Colon and
Panama, now modern towns and " sanitated," enjoy
good drainage, heavy taxation, a fine supply of water,
with modern lighting, prostitution at the corners of
the streets at night, freedom from mosquitoes, police
men, and all the benefits of what is pleasantly called
modern civilization, and have become health resorts
for the wealthy of New York during the winter
months. In Cartagena nothing of all this exists. Mos
quitoes, after nightfall, render night hideous. The
mangrove swamps that stretch about the town on
every side have not been treated with petroleum, as
in Colon and Panama. Water, though good, is not
abundant, drainage so primitive as to be practically
of no avail. Yet, such is the way of Nature, and so
great her absolute disdain of man and all his fumbling,
that Cartagena is at least as healthy as the two
Isthmian towns. Wandering about the streets of
Cartagena one comes at unexpected corners upon
long, sloping paths that lead out on the walls,
constructed, I suppose, in bygone days for the move-

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS i6i
ment of artillery and troops. To-day a motor-car
glides up them easily, and you emerge from the heat
of the town, after the struggle of the day is over, when
the sea breeze sets in, into a different world. The
palm-trees bend under the wind, the sea is ruffled, and
a pinkish haze envelops everything. The avenues
that lead on one side up to the suburb of Manga,
and on the other to El Cabrero, are planted with the
Ponciana Regia, whose bunches of bright scarlet
flowers, two feet in length, are full of fireflies, and
the white villas, buried in the thickets of bananas,
gleam out behind their leaves. Everyone breathes
afresh, and motors steal about noiselessly upon the
sandy roads. The little church at El Cabrero, built
to commemorate President Nuriez, a son of Cartagena,
looks so like a mosque in the fast falling light, one
waits involuntarily for the Call to Prayer when walk
ing on the walls.
A mile or two away the hill crowned by the
Convent of La Popa takes on a look as of Vesuvius,
conelike and isolated. Then is the time to drive out
to La Boca Grande and take whatever air is to be
found. Passing through the negro quarter, not much
unlike a village near Accra or Jella-Coffee, with its
long streets of shanties where naked negro children
play with mangy dogs, their parents sitting at their
doors with chairs well tilted back, you come out on
a little plain. Palm-trees surround it, and lagoons
bisect it here and there. In a depression in the
ground all the tin pots and cans of Cartagena are
thrown out, and in them lizards innumerable have
made their lairs. Vessels for domestic use are there
II

1 62 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
by hundreds, so that the place may well be styled the
valley of the jordans, to use a Georgian phrase.
After this interlude, that brings back civilization so
vividly before one's eyes, the road towards La Boca
Grande runs between palm woods, till it comes out
upon the shore. Before emerging from the woods
the palm-trees disappear, and on the sandhills clumps
of icaco bushes, called in Colombia "uvas de playa,"
form a thick underwood. Among them negresses sit
patiently waiting for holes dug in the sand, known as
"cacimbas," to fill with drinking water. Though
dug often but fifty feet away from the salt water, they
are always fresh. Good water in the tropics has an
irresistible charm about it, and thirst is permanent,
so that when a negro girl advances with a gourd and
offers it, fanning herself with a piece of palm leaf, you
drink, and if you do not necessarily admire — " Drink
and admire," so runs the legend on the fountain in
Marrakesh^ — you yet are grateful and reflect how many
times the conquerors must have drunk thankfully
at the same water-holes. The land that forms a
natural breakwater to the bay runs out in a long spit.
On one side is a ruined castle with its walls and
counterscarps. Upon the other an inimitable view of
Cartagena ; but a Cartagena sublimated and softened
in the sea haze. The walls and churches, castles, and
low, flat houses, rising tier by tier, are blended into an
harmonious whole ; the fringe of palm-trees looks
mysterious in the failing light ; the city, as by degrees
the darkness thickens and the moon rises, lies out
enchanted and enchanting, as if cut out of cardboard,
1 "Shrab-u-shuf."

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 163
in the blue, tropic night. No sound is heard but the
caressing swishing of the waves falling on the beach,
and, as the soft breeze brings new life and freshness to
the world, you feel inclined to stay for ever listening
to the sea and probably would do so were it not for
the mosquitos' warning, shrill and menacing.

CHAPTER XVI
Nothing could well be more unlike the steamers of
the Great White Fleet, as the Americans delight to
call the fruit boats that ply between New York and
Santa Marta, taking bananas from Puerto Limon,
Jamaica, and the other ports of the Caribbean Sea,
than the old Lancha Bufalo.
On the one side all modern luxury : fans, ice, and
negro servants, Maimey and Belle and Sadey in their
smart clothes from Little Old Noo York, and
millionaires passing the winter in the West Indies,
contemptuous of everyone who is not rich. Humanity
with them commences at the million (dollars), just as
in Austria in the old days it started with the baron :
the rest are pawns. Perhaps when all is said the
" baron " was nearer to a human being, in manner
and sympathy, than is the dollar-gatherer. Morals, of
course, are as mankind chooses to see them, and in
this respect I fancy that the difference between the
types is small. On board the fruit boats all was
republican and democratic, after the fashion of the
copybook headings rife in North America. In
reality nothing was farther from democracy, just as is
the case in New York, Chicago, or any other city of
the States. 164

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 165
The Lancha Bufalo, though in design she looked
like an old barge, was driven by a wheezy motor-
engine. So progress and the past seemed to have
kissed each other on the crank vessel, after the
fashion of mercy and of truth, though with as scant
results. Her passengers were certainly aeons apart from
those of the fruit boats in aspect and in their point
of view. Neither more merciful nor just than were
their brethren in the Lord of the more ambitious
craft, they yet were much more human, kindly, and
far less hypocritical. Good manners kept them men,
whilst not removing them too far from the other
animals that tread the earth and breathe the air with
us, and without whose co-operation in the Creator's
scheme of things we should soon cease to be.
Through a hole roughly cut in the old city walls
you passed on to a wharf, ragged and dirty and
sweltering in the sun.
On it was crowded a heterogeneous mass of people
sufficient to have filled the Lancha Bufalo a hundred
times or more if they had all been passengers.
However, in Colombia, as in Spain, a railway-station
or a station platform or a steamer wharf is a sort of
agora on which as many of the population as can find
room upon it delight to loiter and to criticize, to pass
the time of day, or bid farewell to friends in tearful
accents, however short the voyage. It is too hot in
Cartagena for girls of the lower middle classes to
stand about as they do at a southern Spanish railway-
station, their faces white with powder, and carnations
in their hair. Moreover, in old-fashioned towns such as

1 66 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
Cartagena, girls do not go about alone. No water-seller,
as in the East and Spain, slips in and out amongst the
crowd. Such customs are for hot, but not for torrid
countries, at least in the Americas. It is too hot for
fruit-sellers at the time the Lancha Bufalo used to put
out to sea. Faith in the stability of institutions in the
" loyal and noble " town of Cartagena tells me she
still casts off^ at three o'clock precisely, at the hottest
hour of the whole torrid day.
The Lancha Bufalo boasted two cabins, mere
wooden boxes with a framework for a bed, and a
rusty, tin-enamelled washing-basin stuck in a shaky
stand. Such as they were, they represented luxury
and were usually engaged " with anticipation," as runs
the Spanish phrase. Once inside them you could lay
the bedding, without which no one leaves his house
throughout Colombia, upon the wooden frame.
The bedding was a simple matter that everyone could
easily take up and walk with, consisting of a piece of
matting,' a pillow, blanket, and a mosquito curtain.
This with your saddle gear and " gripsack " made a
tolerable bed. From this coign of luxury and comfort
you could survey the deck of the little vessel piled
high with luggage, and with a moving mass of
people, a complete microcosm of the republic. The
crew were negroes from Jamaica, the engineer a
Dutchman from Cura9ao, the captain a Colombian
who I think had been a storekeeper and an apothecary,
1 The piece of matting, six feet by three, was Japanese, and after
paying freight and customs from Japan, was sold, I presume at a
profit, for two dollars (gold) in Cartagena. The same matting made
in the country, though more durable and of better design, cost five or
six dollars.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 167
before he went down to the sea in ships. Just as in
the accounts of the early Spanish navigators, the pilot
was the chief man on the vessel, for it is doubtful if
anyone but he had but the most elementary ideas of
seamanship. Little by little, as the Bufalo moved out
and met the invigorating breeze that about four
o'clock generally springs up from the sea on the
Colombian coast, the heterogeneous mass of passengers
evolved from a kaleidoscopic mass of white-clothed
men, of draggled women, all mixed up with bales
and packages upon the little deck, into its component
parts. Then individuals, such as the portly Syrian
merchant going to Quibdo, the cattleman from the
Sinii, with his tight linen trousers and his flat hat made
of dark-coloured straw, his right hand carried with the
palm turned out and thumb held upwards from
constant lassoing, contrasted strangely with the smart
Colombian officer in his spotless, white duck uniform.
All these wore the large round spectacles made of cellu
loid to look like tortoise-shell, with yellowish glasses,
that every American, and hence most of the Colom
bians, who chiefly have been educated in the States,
affect upon a voyage. In the sixteenth century, in
Spain, those kind of spectacles were called " quevedos,"
after the poet of that name, whose effigy (spectacles
and all) Velazquez has preserved for us in his realistic
paint. The effect when many of these spectacled
citizens is seen lat the same time resembles that of an
assemblage of owls, all blinking in the sun.
We passed into a narrow passage between
mangrove swamps, called in Colombia a " caiio," and
took on board some sort of cargo at a little place

1 68 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
called Pasacaballos, a negro village, as African in its
appearance as if it had been on the Niger or the oil
rivers. Why the conquistadores, for it was they
who named the place, so called it, it is difficult to
understand. A long experience in passing horses
across rivers has always made me look for a place where
the animals can enter and can leave the water upon
solid ground. Certainly in the little open space
before the huts — perhaps the natives dignify it under
the title of a " plaza " — the sand is hard enough.
Upon the other side there is nothing but a swamp.
In countries like Colombia there is a tendency to date
all history from the year of independence, and thus
most interesting place-names become quite meaning
less, sometimes impossible to explain.' Luckily the
contemporary historians of the conquest were minute
in all they chronicled, and a search in their pages
often clears up points long forgotten and fallen into
neglect. Spanish Americans have retained much of
their far-away Arabian ancestors, who, of all men,
soonest forget what happened yesterday.
We took in a few bales and packages wrapped in
banana leaves, and watched a negro bathing his horse,
a job that he performed standing stark-naked like a
statue cast in bronze, and pouring water with a calabash
over the horse's back. The horse appeared to like it,
for he stood quietly enough, and for the negro the
fact that all the passengers were looking at him not
^ Thus names such as " los ballesteros " (the crossbowmen), " frayle
muerto " (the dead friar), " Fray Bentos " (the name of an anchorite),
and many others, have lost their original significance ; most of them
sprang out of some incident of the conquest.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 169
twenty yards away, apparently was just as little in
convenience to him as it would have been centuries
ago to his wild ancestors upon the Guinea Coast or
in the Cameroons.
Dinner was served upon the deck, the captain, so
to speak, in the chair, perspiring, but polite, eager to
talk what he called " American," having " learned him
in the college to Philadelphia, where I pass a year."
As he essayed this idiom, which in his mouth
became a sort of pidgin-English, raucous and shotted
plentifully with^ slang, he became an ordinary, not to
say vulgar specimen, of a commonplace American, but
changed at once into a courteous, well-bred Colombian,
in his own native speech. After a meal of rice and
beef; of plantains stewed and roasted, boiled and raw ; of
Indian corn bread called " hollo," ' baked in banana
leaves, viscous and white ; of excellent black coffee, and
fruits preserved in syrups, and after a contemplative
smoke, watching the Southern stars, each one retired
to find a sleeping-place.
Some lay down on their blankets behind the deck
house, others in the boat,^ whilst we retired to what I
think were called " los camarotes de preferencia,"
thinking that we should rest. By this time the
Bufalo had passed the great, land-locked lagoon that
stretches out after the caiio, and got into the open sea.
It was a night such as exists but in those latitudes,
serene and beautiful, with every star mirrored in the
1 See Chapter III.
2 There was only one, and it was half full of vegetables. For
about seventy passengers there were three or four lifebelts, so that in
case of accidents, even if the sharks were left out of the reckoning,
the calling, if not the election, of most of us would have been assured.

170 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
water and reflected back as in a looking-glass. The
vessel left a golden trail behind her in the soft
moonlight, and from the land there came a breeze
laden with the scent of tropic vegetation. Such nights
the early navigators must have known, and probably
upon the fateful second watch, when from La Pinta' s
shrouds the sailor ^ saw the light on Guanahani, it was
iust as entrancing and as beautiful.
Nothing is permanent in life, and weather still
less permanent upon the Caribbean Sea. Expecting
to pass several hours at rest, I closed the door of my
" preference cabin," and after having placed my
pillow in the hollow between the cantle and the horn
of the high-peaked saddle, soon fell asleep. It was
not destined I should sleep for long, for as we neared
the Point of Tigua, where the old Santa Barbara ^
so nearly left her rotten timbers and her rusty engines,
a sea sprang up so fierce and short, that except once,
upon a trip down the Gulf of Mexico from the
mouth of the Achafalaya to Matamoros, I never saw
the like. The first buck (so to speak) got my head
clear of the saddle, and then for two long hours the
Bufalo knocked about furiously. How the men
in the engine-room stuck to their duty is a marvel to
me, and how the wretched passengers upon the deck
were not all washed away, a greater marvel. As for
myself, when after getting round the point the sea
as suddenly went down, the moon shone out, the
' Some of the early historians, and I think Pedro Martir de
Angleria amongst them, say that Columbus himself first descried the
coast. I hope it was so, for the remembrance of it must have made
his chains easier to bear in after years.
2 See Preface.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 171
stars again beamed down, sending long shafts of light
into the tranquil sea, I was as bruised and sore as I
have ever been on getting off a " bronco,"' or emerging
from a football scrimmage in my youth. The vessel
doubled a little headland, and in a few minutes
dropped her anchor in a harbour that in the moon
light looked as if it was a port in some enchanted
archipelago in the South Seas, Only the outline
of a scarce visible and sleeping town was to be seen,
set in a grove of palms. Long did the Bufalo
scream on her whistle fruitlessly. Nothing was
stirring. Suddenly, just as the moon began to set, an
hour or two before the dawn, two long, dug-out
canoes appeared as it were from nowhere, and paddled
alongside. A gentle but sufficient swell was rolling
shoreward, and in it the long, crank canoes rose and
fell gently, looking like gigantic fish. Carefully, in
the increasing darkness, we piled our saddles in one of
them, and, holding gingerly to each side of the canoe,
set off toward the shore. It seemed a desperately long
way off, and the huge, black, triangular fins that rose
occasionally close to the gunwale were not exactly
reassuring to people not accustomed to canoes.
The paddlers now and then would point to one of
the great fish as it turned up a little, its belly shining
silvery in the pale starlight, and remark cheerfully,
" That is a tiger ; he always hangs about us as we go
to and fro." After ten minutes or a quarter of an
hour that felt three times as long, a broken pier
1 Bronco = wild horse. The word in Spanish means "rough."
It is usually spelled by Englishmen and Americans " broncho," for
reasons known (perhaps) to themselves.

172 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
seemed to rise suddenly out of the sea. The steps
that led down to the water were all broken, covered
with seaweed, and slippery as glass. To negotiate
a landing was a feat of equilibrium, rendered exciting
by the thought that, though unseen, the " tiger " was
probably upon the watch. Once on the surface of
the pier, the air felt like a furnace, and the short
distance, two hundred yards or so, carrying one's
saddle in the dark, stepping over broken planks — for
the pier had certainly never been repaired since it was
built — bathed one in perspiration, so that our entry to
the historic city of Tolu, the erstwhile capital of the
old Spanish settlement, was an experience I like
to think of, but should not care to have to undergo
again. Except the paddlers and a half Indian, dressed
in white, but with a cap bound with gold lace
to show he was the captain of the port, all the world
was asleep. We beat upon the door of the locked-up
customs-house, eager to pay to the Colombian Cassar,
whatever might be due. Then, finding all our efforts
vain, we crossed the wide, sandy street to a wooden
edifice labelled " Hotel," and finding no response from
anyone, no matter how we knocked, untied our beds
and saddles, hitched our mosquito curtains to the
veranda posts, and stretched ourselves upon the floor.
I remember looking for a little at the fireflies flitting
about the bushes, and listening to a monkey roaring
in the woods that lie all around the town, and then
waking as it seemed directly, to find the sun shining
upon my face, and a grave Indian leaning against the
railing of the veranda watching me silently. As

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 173
I awoke he took his hat off, and after long and
courteous salutations, in which he asked me how
I had passed the night, and how I liked Tolu, he
said Don Julian Patron (to whom I had a letter) was
expecting us, and that he hoped we should honour
his poor dwelling that was quite at our service,
during our sojourn in the town.

CHAPTER XVII
The ancient and hereditary house of Don Julian
Patron was seated commodiously, just at the corner
of the plaza of the town. One of those solid, Spanish
houses, so frequent in Colombian towns, it had a sort
of old-world dignity. Not that it displayed any
special architectural features, but it had that air of
being built for somebody, and not run up for anyone
to live in, that characterizes all Spanish houses in
America. It followed the almost universal plan of
such kind of houses, being low and long, with lengths
of wall that gave it somehow a conventual air. The
patio led into a garden, and under a sort of loggia,
sitting in his hammock drinking the strong black
coffee sweetened with "panela,"^ that all the world
drinks in Colombia, we found Don Julian waiting to
welcome us. He rose and offered us his house, just
glancing at the letter we had brought to see the
signature. " Anyone that my good friend Don
Eustaquio commends to me, is welcome." He clapped
his hands and a little negro girl appeared with coffee
^ Panela is unrefined sugar, and is used in most of the re
publics under varying names. The Brazilians call it " rapadura "
and the Mexicans "pilon." It is usually done up in maize or
banana leaves in a sort of cake. In summer, melted in water, it
makes an excellent " refresco." 174

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 175
and sweet cakes, exactly like the cake the Moors offer
you on similar occasions in Morocco, upon a silver
tray. My host was not a common-looking man. His
manners, though off-hand, were courteous and befitting
to a man who evidently passed his life on horseback,
for, like the patriarchs of old, his flocks and herds
were his chief source of revenue and pride. Sturdy
and strongly built, his olive-coloured face tanned a
rich brown by sun and weather, his legs a little bowed
with riding, his thick, grey hair a perfect fell, but
shortly cropped upon his neck, he wanted but a
helmet on his head to look a veritable conquistador.
His hands were muscular and brown, his feet small
and well shaped, but rather square, as is so often seen
in men of Spanish blood. His manner, though
courteous in the extreme, was that of one who
thought himself the equal of any man on earth (not
his superior), and you felt his courtesy sprang from
the right motive of all courtesy — his innate self-
respect. Long did we talk on things and others, as
the saying goes, the war and all that it had brought
into the world and taken out of it, as we sat in our
hammocks, keeping them swinging with one toe, and
drinking coffee, as we whiled the time away till break
fast should be brought. When it was announced it
appeared that several notables had been asked to do
us honour, and to satisfy their curiosity no doubt, for
in the city of Tolii foreigners are not an everyday
occurrence, and more especially when they appear
with even such a slight, official stamp as I then
happened to possess. In South America, just as in

176 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
the East, talents, even wealth itself, to which in
Europe we all bow the knee, are held but slightly in
comparison with governmental rank. That opens
every door to the possessor of it, and smooths all
difficulties, or a good many of them.
Our talk ran not on governmental matters, but
luckily upon more serious things — the price of cattle,
the best breeds with which to cross the native stock,
and the best ports from which to ship the produce of
the packing-house, that all the guests had heard the
British Government was going to erect. As all the
other guests were cattle-owners, except an educated
young Italian, who had drifted to the town and set
up as a land-surveyor, and knew as little about cattle-
raising as the others knew about his mystery, he
naturally felt at sea, and after trying vainly to
comprehend our jargon about Herefords and Angus,
Shorthorns and Zebus, sat silent smoking, now and
then muttering " barbari " in an undertone.
Tolii does not afford much scope for sightseeing,
so after breakfast all retired to pass the siesta in their
hammocks till it was cool enough to start upon our
ride, twelve miles or so along the beach, to see a little
port from which in former days cattle had been shipped
to the West Indies and the United States. Our ride
lay along the seacoast bordered by palm-trees, and
now and then by jungle, so thick it seemed a wall of
vegetation. Numberless little streams ran from the
woods down to the beach, all forming quicksands in
which the horses sank up to their hocks, and every
rivulet had its bar in miniature, causing a little surf,
with tiny rollers, setting in regularly towards the

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 177
shore. Above the jungle rose high trees, covered
with purple, yellow, or red flowers, whilst the
lianas, clasping them like ivy in their folds,
struggled towards the light and crowned the trees
with bunches of great blossoms, so that it was not
easy to make out whether the flowers sprang from
the tree or from the parasite. We followed a deep
bay, so that although in an hour's riding we saw the
point towards which we travelled, sunset was near
before we passed the Punta de Piedras and found
ourselves inside a smaller bay, sheltered by headlands
that made it almost land-locked and calm as a lagoon.
Don Julian, who had been riding upright and grave as
a statue, suddenly put his horse into a fast pace, and
pointing with his whip to a low house buried in
coco-palms, said, "That is 'La Hacienda de la Punta
de la Madre de Dios,' my house and yours. Spur on
and let us drink some cool milk from the green
coco-nuts before the sun has set."
His lively little grey struck into such a furious
" sobre-paso " ' that we had to gallop to keep beside
him, and with the heat and the spray from the surf,
beside which we rode so closely that sometimes it
washed up nearly to the horses' knees, we might as
well have plunged into the sea. A last stream had to
be negotiated before we reached the house. Don
^ The sobre-paso is an artificial gait that used to be known to
the horsemen of the Middle Ages as the over-pace. In it the horse
trots with the hind legs and gallops with the fore. It is extremely
easy, and Don Juan's grey could easily make nine miles an hour at it
and keep it up all day. All the horses of Colombia, Costa Rica, and
generally throughout Central America and the north of South
America, are trained either to it or one of the other various artificial
gaits. 12

178 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
Julian went first, his heavy mule spurs playing
ceaselessly upon his horse's flanks, for pacers always
must be kept up to their pace, to show the
ford. Luckily it was not very deep, and with a
struggle through the quicksand on the far side we
emerged upon hard ground. A quarter of a mile
away stood the hacienda house. Riding up to the
door, we found the occupant stretched in his
hammock, from which he got up lazily, and, stretch
ing out his hand, bid his employer welcome, and
called up several peons to take our horses. Then
with the air of a man ordering a cocktaU, he said,
" You will drink a coco-nut or two after your
ride." An Indian boy, at a signal from him, walked
quickly up a tall palm-tree, with as little effort as if
he had been going up a stair, and threw some nuts
down on the sand. One of the peons cut them open
on his hand, a conjuring trick that he performed with
a machete nearly three feet in length. They were
as cool as if they had been grown under a jungle, and
not been baking all the day under a tropic sun. We
had passed no other house upon the ride of twelve or
thirteen miles, and the hacienda, just at the point of
the deep bay, buried in palm woods, and not fifty
yards from the seashore, had an air of being the only
human habitation in the world, it was so silent and
remote. Nothing but sand and palm-trees were to be
seen upon the landward side, with the exception of
a little mangrove swamp just at the river's mouth.
To seaward nothing but a calm, deep-purple sea, with
the stars mirrored in it, and not a sail in sight, A

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 179
tiger^ snarled in the jungle, half a mile away. His
snarling sounded just like the noises that cats make
in London squares. The peons said they heard him
sharpening his claws upon a tree. This may have
been so, for their ears are quicker far than those of
men attuned to motor horns and factory buzzers. I
could not hear him, perhaps for lack of faith. What
I did hear was the caressing rhythm of the surf as it
washed gently on the sand. There were too many
sharks to bathe ; but luckily the nearness to the sea
kept off mosquitos, and as the light waned rapidly,
the lonely house, shrouded in darkness, seemed to lie
guarded by the palm-trees against the perils of the
night. For hours we sat and talked, "taking the cool" ;^
but what we talked about I do not quite forget, but
disremember. I fancy, as is usual in such conversa
tions in such countries, that the talk ran, not on the
war, or about Paris, London, or New York. Rather
it turned upon Colombia, Bogota, the Magdalena
River, the rolling plains beyond the Andes that
stretch along the Rio Meta down to the Orinoco ; on
snakes and boa-constrictors, feats with the lazo, and
most of all on horses and the enormous distance that
they had covered in a day. When men from cities
talk with those who dwell nearer to nature round the
camp fire, the less sophisticated always seem to have
much more to say, for they speak unreservedly of the
daily incidents of their lives, whereas the city dwellers
often have no incidents worth mentioning to talk
about. That which enthrals us in the realms of the
^ Jaguar. 2 « Tomando el fresco."

i8o CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
electric light ; in streets that reek of petrol and of
horse-dung ; our nice dissections of our motives ; the
why and wherefore and the details of the last divorce
case ; the literary style of so-and-so ; whether a painter
should set down that which he sees, or merely cubes
of what he sees ; the sordid strife of politics ; and all
the infinite and intricate coil of life in cities — become
as vapid as a fashionable revue, out on the prairies,
in the virgin forests, or on the mountain trail.
Not only could the men who listen not comprehend
it, but the strayed man of culture could not for very
shame talk of futilities to men whose lives are passed
in action and in the face of facts.
So it chanced at the lone hacienda by the
Caribbean Sea. We wandered with the conquerors
up the Magdalena River, toiled with them in the
swamps, and froze upon the passes of the Andes upon
the road to Bogota. It seemed as natural to talk of
these things as it does in Rome to talk about the
Caesars. Bolivar, the most interesting man the
Americas have yet produced, and his fantastic life and
strange career appeared quite natural told by Don
Julian Patron. The various revolutions, so bewilder
ing to Europeans, became as clear as noonday, and
when related by the men who had taken part in them,
ranged one involuntarily on one side or the other, and
made one hang upon adventures of some unknown
general or another as if his victims had been told in
thousands instead of but a miserable poor score or two.
As we talked on, great vampire bats occasionally sailed
by as noiselessly as barn-owls, and howling monkeys
serenaded us, or perhaps held a meeting on their

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS i8i
political affairs. No matter how late Colombians
sit talking overnight, at sunrise everybody is astir.
The little port of Cobenas — destined, no doubt,
one day to be important, for p6rts are few between
Cartagena and the Isthmus — is just the place where in
old days a slaver might have come into, discharged
her cargo and got to sea again with not a soul to say a
word. Situated as it is, between the two points that
stretch out into the sea, and deeply indented, it
makes a sort of horseshoe, and is sheltered against all
winds except the north. This wind blows for six
weeks during the year, and for the remaining time
Cobeiias is perfectly secure. The tide goes out only
about six feet, so that deep water comes almost to
the shore. A little pier of wood runs out a hundred
yards into the sea. Two hundred yards still farther
out the water deepens to about thirty feet.
Nothing more primitive in the way of loading
up a vessel can be seen, except, perhaps, in some of the
Pacific Islands or the Arabian coast. At the pier
head there is a crush for cattle constructed of bamboos.
The vessel loading lays out a warp, which is made
fast around a palm-tree to keep her steady. The
cattle that have come straight from the pastures, not
a mile away, are driven down the pier aboard the
ship. If one falls overboard he swims ashore and
joins the herd again. The steers stand on the
beach, " held back," as the phrase goes, by mounted
herdsmen, and the whole scene is wild and curious,
calling up memories of the buccaneers, who prob
ably often shipped cattle at this very port to take
to Cuba or farther up the Main to some of their safe

1 82 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
hiding-places,' to salt them down or dry their meat on
the boucan, from whence they took their name.
Everything conjoins to make Cobenas an ideal
cattle port. The shores of the bay are sandy, and,
except the mangrove swamp in miniature at the
little river's mouth, no mangroves grow to block the
pathway to the beach. Except when the north wind
blows right on the shore there is no surf, and there
appears to be no coral reef to set up rollers. Even if
it exists, the water deepens so rapidly that it would
have little effect at such a depth upon the surface of
the waves. Its only rival in the Gulf of Morrosquillo
is Cispata; 2 this port, only nine miles farther to the
north, is larger, and is sheltered from most winds,
but vessels have to lie much farther out, and the
savannahs are several miles away, and round the
port there is a mangrove swamp. At both the little
ports the roads to the interior are good — that is,
for Colombia — in the dry season of the year. In
winter — that is, the rainy season — nearly all roads in
the republic become mere quagmires, into which
horses and mules struggle along, up to the knees in
mud. Water is plentiful close to Coberias, and the old
well in the hacienda house, sunk probably by the
Spaniards before the independence, is at least ten feet
deep. As day broke at the hospitable hacienda of Don
Julian Patron, the sun slowly dispersed the mist that
^ I was not present when cattle were being shipped at Cobenas,
but have often seen them shipped under similar conditions at ports on
the Uruguay and the Parana.
2 See Introduction.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 183
wrapped the palm-wood as in a seething cauldron,
blotting out the trunks and setting all the feathery
tops afloat in a great, silent sea. Then by degrees it
won its perennial victory over the mist that rises from
the sea and from the sun-scorched ground. Slowly the
veil that overhung the woods was lifted and revealed
Tolii twelve miles away, with all the houses shining
in the sun, and the wet roofs reflecting back its rays
like sheets of looking-glass. The Gulf of Morros
quillo, sailless and dark as purple, unruffled by the
slightest breeze, unbroken, but where here and there
a shoal of flying fish sent up a shower of diamonds as
they flashed into the sun for the brief moment of
their baulked existence in the air. Humming-birds
hung poised above the flowers, macaws sailed past
uttering their raucous cry, white ibises stood fishing
by the little river's bank, and the whole world braced
itself for its daily battle with the sun.

CHAPTER XVIII
At sunrise we left the hacienda, the heavy dew
dropping off the eaves of the house like rain, and
the world feeling fresh and young. We struck into
the palm-wood, passed a complicated system of corrals,
rode about a quarter of a mile, and came to a high
gate. Passing through it, it then appeared the
palm-wood that had seemed a forest was but a
fringe, for in a hundred yards or so we found
ourselves in quite a different world. On every
side a rolling plain stretched out, but a plain set
with bushy thickets here and there, and here and
there with clumps of noble forest trees, most of
them at that season of the year great pyramids of
flowers. When you looked closer at the country
you saw it was an artificial plain, and that originally
it had been a virgin forest, cleared by fire and sown
with artificial grasses.
Here and there blackened and decaying stumps
stood up amongst the grass, looking like strange
animals in that sea of green. Though it had not
rained for months, and all the ground was baked and
parched, with gaping cracks wide enough to take
a horse's foot in them, yawning on every side, and all
the places that had been swamps in winter, as it were
184

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 185
frozen by the sun into a series of little pits that
had been footmarks poached by cattle in the mud,
the planted grasses. Para and Guinea, were still
quite green and fresh. Hundreds of cattle stood
about the parklike scenery, some grazing and some
sheltering from the sun under the forest trees.
These trees, bongos and ceibas for the most part,
were tenanted by colonies of red, howling monkeys,
locally called araguatos,' and by whole flocks of
parrots and macaws. The trees themselves had
once formed part of the primeval forests, and had
been left to serve as shelters and as the rallying-points
for cattle, whilst wells in many instances had been dug
beneath their shade.
The whole scene gave the impression of great
antiquity, and it required but little imagination to
fancy that the groups of cattle were antediluvian
animals, especially as many of the beasts were of the
curious, humped breed known as zebus, and grew to
a great size. To make the illusion more complete,
one or two armadillos scuttled to their holes, and
great iguanas, three or four feet long, ran swiftly
through the grass.
As we rode through the plain, every now and
then a " vaquero " would come out from behind
a clump of bush, so that at last we had a bodyguard
behind us who watched our every movement without
apparently looking at us in the least. Somehow one
felt just as one feels on entering a Moorish house in
Morocco or Algeria, where, though no one is seen,
the presence of scrutinizing eyes peering through
* Simia ursina.

i86 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
crevices and under lifted blinds, makes itself felt
magnetically between your shoulders and sends a
shiver down the back. The difference was that now
and then in Africa a stifled laugh makes you in
voluntarily turn your head. I will not say the
Colombian vaqueros could not laugh ; but their
brown faces, looking as if cut out of wood, suggested
anything but laughter. In fact, most people who
pass long days upon the plains, whether in Colombia
or elsewhere, alone, exposed to sun and wind, to rain
and cold and heat, laugh little, and when they do,
there is something almost sinister that seems to mingle
with their mirth. Upon the other hand, their
manners were most courteous, and all of them saluted
Don Julian Patron with natural assurance and with
ease. Nothing escaped their observation, for if a
horse happened to start, and I was riding *' a jade
that would start at a feather," in the words of the old
Georgian song, a murmured "Vaya" or "Jesus"
showed they were on the watch. After confabulation
with Don Julian, they separated into a fan-shaped
formation and drove together slowly two or three
hundred head of cattle on to a bare space close to a
clump of trees.
Though there were monkeys in the trees they
did not throw anything down at us, after the fashion
of the " gato monillo " in the Bachiller Enciso's narra
tive.' The cattle were quieter than any prairie cattle I
have ever seen, and came up in long lines, the vaqueros
never being obliged to gallop or to shout, as is the case
both in the Argentine Republic and in Mexico.
1 See Chapter III.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 187
Considering the long time that had passed without
a shower of rain, they were in excellent condition.
Nearly all of them were either a light, fawn colour, or
fawn and white, a uniformity caused by a far-off
strain of Norman blood. A few were parti-coloured,
brown or black and white. This in Colombia is
known as " mapurito," a word also applied to skunks,
which are all black and white. It may be Indian in
its origin, for it does not sound like a Spanish word.^
Nothing could well be more unlike a wild " rodeo "^
in the Argentine, Brazil, or Mexico. Here were
no tossing manes, and horses pulled up on their
haunches with a jerk, no fluttering ponchos, no lazos
swinging round the herdsmen's heads, no dust, no
panting dogs stretched out after their gallop with the
herd. The cattle did not move round restlessly, with
fiery eyes and lashing tails, seeking an opportunity to
break away. In all the herd on the Colombian
rodeo only two or three long-horned, angular,
old-fashioned-looking prairie steers from Venezuela
showed the least uneasiness. These animals, bred
on the great savannahs on the Orinoco, were what is
called "criollo"^ cattle — that is, native — and hence
descended from the cattle brought by the Spanish
^ However, it is not safe to make too sure of words in Spanish
America, as so many words, now obsolete in Spain, have been
preserved in the various republics by the descendants of the conquerors,
crystallized in the current of their colloquial speech.
2 A rodeo is a bare plot of ground on which cattle are assembled
for inspection or counting. Sometimes, as in Brazil, salt is placed for
them to lick in great blocks.
^ " Criollo " — i.e., " Creole " — means " native." Hence, a black
man or a white man, a mulato or a zambo, can be a Creole of
America. Cattle, horses, and animals in general are always spoken
of as Creole, if they are of native breeds.

1 88 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
at the conquest. Raw-boned and fierce-eyed, though
rather low in condition, they yet were heavy animals,
weighing at least twelve hundred pounds. Of all the
cattle on the rodeo they probably would have been
by far the most dangerous when shut in a corral.
Their hides were heavy and their horns immense, and
in their native wilds they probably were fleet of foot
as antelopes. They had been brought by ship from Venezuela
a year before, but had not fattened well after the
voyage. In the rodeo there were several other very
heavy animals, and as distinct from all the rest as
were the Venezuelan steers. Dark red, and very high
upon the leg, Don Julian pointed them out with
pride as we rode slowly through the docile herd that
parted mechanically as we advanced. He said that
they were crosses from a zebu bull that he had
brought from the Island of Jamaica. Certainly they
were splendid specimens for size and bulk, if not
for quality. One young bull, only three years old,
weighed twenty hundredweight, and it appeared his
sire was heavier. Don Julian explained with pride
that the race is immune from ticks, runs to great size,
and, as it took its origin in the tropics, is little subject
to the diseases that attack breeds coming from the
north. The native cattle were the best native cattle
I had ever seen, tamer, and heavier, and better shaped
than are the cattle of the native breeds either of the
Argentine Republic or Brazil. Many were fully nine
hundred pounds in weight, and some few nearly
twelve. The vaqueros were as quiet-looking as
their cattle. Though all had lazos, none carried

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 189
arms or had that air of wildness that you see in the
cowboys of the Western States, the Mexicans, or
Argentines. Still, they were quite efficient at their
work, though without much apparent pride in their
horse-gear or in their own appearance, a thing unusual
amongst cattlemen, no matter where they live.
The heat was stifling, and their little horses hung
their heads and let their ears flap backwards and
forwards, a sign that they were suffering from the sun.
When the rodeo had dispersed, we rode in a sun fit
to roast an ostrich egg, for several hours, through the
"potrero," looking at the cattle and especially searching
for the great zebu bull that Don Julian referred to "as a
portent."^ As often happens in a search for something,
that you find another thing of equal or superior
value, in riding up and down the vast potrero,^ I
had great opportunities for observing both the cattle
and the land. The cattle still continued to be all of
the same fawn, fawn and white, or cream colour, with
an occasional " mapurito " animal. There had not
been sufficient time for the recently introduced cross of
zebu blood to take effect, except in a few instances.
When it had done so, the tendency had been to darken
the colour, to give weight and strength, and to add
fierceness to the breed.
With all the advantages of a race originated in the
tropics, and therefore more or less immune from ticks,
its suitability for draught purposes, and its hardy
constitution, I should consider it a misfortune if the
1 " Un portento."
2 "Potrero," literally a place for colts ("potros"). This ony
was many miles in extent, and the idea of its being bounded be
fences was never present, as the fences chiefly ran through woods.

190 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
breed were to spread itself over Colombia. The
country is not one in which draught oxen are much
used. The beef of the zebu is coarse. The animal
itself is much less reproductive than is the Angus or
the Hereford. Lastly, if the zebu were to spread
itself over the vast savannahs on the Meta and the
Casanare, known as Los Llanos de Casanare, a breed
would spring up likely to become extraordinarily
wild and coarse. This probably would not matter so
much, for during the late war it was almost proved to
demonstration that wild prairie cattle are just as suitable
for the packing-house as were the better breeds.
Beside the zebu cross, scattered about the potrero
were a few Herefords, chiefly of one and two years
old. They seemed to thrive, as do their race in almost
every climate of the world. In such a climate as that
of El Departamento de Bolivar, where the thermometer
probably seldom falls much below eighty degrees (of
Fahrenheit) I am convinced no breed would give such
good results as would the Hereford. They are the ideal
cattle for a ranch, easily fed, enduring rapid changes
of temperature, and not too heavy in the hide or
bones. Certainly they soon become extremely wild
and run at the approach of man, but on the other
hand are rarely savage when enclosed, and every
cattleman knows the advantage of having gentle
animals to deal with when shut up in a corral.
Crossed with the native breed they would produce a
splendid animal, and one that easily might run to
a considerable weight. In the true tropics the
Shorthorn soon degenerates, and needs infusion of
new blood. Strange as it may appear, the Angus

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 191
seems suited to the climate, but suffers much from
ticks, and its savage temper renders it dangerous in
ranch work. After much riding up and down, and
just as we were giving up the search, we came on
" El Portento," the old zebu bull of which Don
Julian had spoken with such admiration and respect.
As he glowered at the horsemen from a thicket,
beneath whose shade he stood to shelter from the
sun, he really looked portentous and like an inhabitant
of a primeval world.
Dark brown, so dark that in the shade he
seemed quite black, his enormous shoulders and com
paratively light legs made him exactly like a buffalo.
Apparently about six years old, he had acquired
that look about the neck and shoulders, as if in
armour, so thickly did his hide fall into folds around
his dewlap, that bulls often take on when they
advance in age. His owner estimated that he weighed
at least twenty-two hundredweight, a considerable
bulk even for a Shorthorn, and I should think his
estimate was right. Few cattlemen in the possession
of their senses, unless mounted on an exceptionally
heavy horse, would have dared to lazo him, and even
then would have had a formidable task. Though I
have known Mexican vaqueros^ catch and subdue
a grizzly bear, the risk of lazoing " El Portento "
would not have been much less. We did not put the
venture to the test, but prudently rode round him at a
little distance, keeping our eyes well open for a sudden
rush, a thing that he was said to be quite prone to
^ To accomplish this feat at least four horsemen are required, and
they run great danger.

192 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
execute. As he stood underneath his thicket, with
the band of mounted men watching him from a
respectful distance, amidst the wild surroundings and
with the hoarse cries of the flocks of parrots that flew
occasionally over our heads, the scene was striking
and not easy to forget.
Though the surroundings were so different, I
thought that in the Caledonian forest in the days of
Hector Boece and Fordun, one of the fierce white
bulls of which they speak, when brought to bay
under an old, gnarled oak, must have looked much as
the portentous zebu looked, on that hot morning
in the Colombian wilds.
Although, like nearly all ranchmen, I was con
vinced the Hereford is the only ranch steer, it may be
that Don Julian Patron was right in his opinion that
a cross of the zebu with the native breed was the
best animal for Colombia, or at least for the low,
tropic lands. In cases of the kind, expert opinion
usually proves valueless against good level knowledge
of existing circumstances.
By this time we had been riding six or seven
hours, and even Don Julian confessed that it was hot.
Two stricken hours lay between us and the little
ranche town of Palmito, for in the great potrero
where we were, there was neither shade or anything
to eat. We struck into the " paso " ^ and faced the
heat that came down from the sky and met the
heat that rose from the parched ground. It was
so hot, the sweat dried on the horses' coats like the
salt water dries upon a sailor's beard. We passed
* See note on p. 177 ; also p. 4.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 193
innumerable low hills, went through several high
gates of similar potreros,''^ and watched the cattle
bunched, just as sheep bunch on a hot day, their
heads together, pushed as far as possible under the
slightest shade afforded by a thicket or a clump of
trees. We rode through dried-up swamps, all poached
and pitted with old cattle-tracks, remarking as we
rode along, with our hats pulled down as far as
possible over our eyes (the stirrups hot enough to
blister the bare hand), that the cattle, though they had
suffered from the drought, were still in marvellous
condition. Disease of any kind was rare, and ticks,
in spite of heavy bush, infrequent. At last, when we
had almost thought Palmito must be a city ambulant,
after riding down a sandy hill, the exhausted horses
stumbling and tripping, and the vaquero spurs
keeping up a constant jingle on their sides, we sud
denly came upon a little river running between high
rocks. For about half a mile we followed it, riding
along its sandy course, splashing delightfully in the
tepid water that in the heat seemed almost cool,
until Palmito burst upon our sight.
Set on a little hill, with a great, unfinished church
standing up high above the houses, the town appeared.
All were asleep, for it was just the hottest time of the
whole day, between the hours of three and four.
We rode past sleeping cottages buried in hedges
of bright crotons and of bignonias, shaded by coco-
palms. Even the dogs were sleeping, an unusual
thing in towns, such as Palmito, in South America.
The occasional horses, standing saddled under reed-
^ Potrero = fenced pasture-land. 13

194 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
thatched shelters, rested on a hind-foot and were too
listless even to switch their tails against the myriads
of flies that buzzed about them.
As we advanced into the little town, we passed by
stores with the doors left wide open. Such goods as
were on the shelves were left undefended, but by the
general genius of sleep. Sometimes in passing by a
house, through open windows we could see the
inhabitants stretched in their hammocks, slumbering
underneath mosquito curtains. Remembering that
once, in youth, I had ridden into a store in the
Argentine Republic, rapped with my whip upon the
counter, and no one answering, turned and ridden out
again, as we passed by an open store at the outskirts
of Palmito, just at the angle of a street, I rode into
one door and through the other, and no one stirred
within the house.
When we arrived in the middle of the enormous
plaza, round which straggle the low, one-storey
houses, thatched with palm leaves, to be seen in every
country town throughout the tropics in Colombia,
we pulled up at the veranda of a house where lived
a friend of Don Julian Patron. No one was stirring,
so we unsaddled, threw our horse-gear into the
middle of a darkened room, and after seeing that the
horses were tied in the shade, sat down upon the
saddle-cloths till someone should wake up.
Though we were all men broken to the tropics
and the saddle from our youth upwards, our clothes
were saturated, and perspiration dripped from our
faces on the ground. At last a sleepy voice was
heard saying : " Is that you, Julian .?" and from an

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 195
inner room appeared a man who bade us welcome
and not unnaturally asked, " Why in God's name
have you been riding all these hours in the sun ?"
Then, to our great astonishment, for certainly I
should as soon have looked for " artichokes at sea," ^
as goes the Spanish saying, he said, " I will send
out for ice." I never ascertained whether the offer
was merely an instance of " dandose charol " ^ or not,
although I fancied I detected a faint smile run over
the grim features of Don Julian Patron. At any rate,
no ice made its appearance, and we proceeded to drink
" panela-water " ^ to our hearts' content.
It was not a long task to inspect the natural
beauties and the architectural features of Palmito.
The church, a huge, unfinished building, was rather
interesting. Before it stood several large wooden
crosses, part of a Calvary. Inside it was the beau-
ideal of a church for a hot country, scrupulously
clean and empty, and not disfigured by cheap prints
from Germany of the Stations of the Cross, abomina
tions set up in so many Catholic churches in all
parts of the world.
When we had seen our horses fed, a ceremony
always pleasing to a horseman, and necessary in
countries where they must carry you next day, we
strolled into one or two of the stores, which in towns
like Palmito take the place of clubs. As usual
in Colombia, their owners were all Syrians, called by
the natives of the country " Turcos," a cruel name
^ " Pedir cotufas en el golfo " — i.e., " ask for artichokes at sea."
2 Literally, " putting on patent leather " — i.e., giving oneself airs.
' " Panela," unrefined sugar.

196 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
enough to give to Syrians had those who gave it
comprehended its full irony. Both in Colombia and
Venezuela, Syrians seem to have monopolized the
stores. In the smallest hamlet in the interior they
are to be found. Industrious and intelligent, they
easily outdo the native-bred Colombians as shop
keepers, and fill the same place that is held in East
Africa by the Banyans, and are as cordially disliked.
All of them were well posted on the varying fortunes
of the war, and all were pro-Allies. As we walked
back across the sandy plaza, under the stars, and with
the bats in dozens shrieking above our heads, the
fireflies flitting in the orange-trees, all was so still
and so remote, that the world seemed to have stood
still a century or two, or we ourselves to have been
marooned, in a kind of fourth dimension, outside
of ordinary life.

CHAPTER XIX
When we arrived at the house in the plaza that we
had taken possession of so unceremoniously, it was
evident that something had gone wrong. < There
were no lights and no sign of a dinner, only a
messenger, who said Don Julian was waiting for us
at another house a little distance off, close to the out
skirts of the town. Through sandy lanes we ploughed
our way for about half a mile, passing by ranchos
where the dogs, having recovered energy after their
noonday sleep, greeted us like a pack of jackals. The
house where Don Julian was waiting for us proved
to be near the river in an imposing clump of forest
trees. Dinner was ready, and we all sat down to it
most heartily, except Don Julian's major-domo from
Cobeiias, who had a touch of fever from riding in the
sun. He lay upon the floor groaning occasionally
and taking aspirin with avidity from the tubes
proffered him from every side. No self-respecting
Colombian ever seems to stir from home without his
tube of aspirin and bottle of specific of some kind or
another against the bites of snakes.
Don Julian presided at the board with all the
dignity of a conquistador.
As usual, several " notables " had been invited to
197

198 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
attend. As they all knew the object of my visit to
Colombia was to set up a packing-house, should it prove
feasible, and most of them were cattle-owners, the talk
quite naturally ran on the proper place to build in and
on the quantity of cattle that were obtainable ; from
that it wandered off, so to speak, into fairyland. As
I sat perspiring in a linen jacket, and more or less
" molido y quebrantado," like Don Quixote,' after
my ten or eleven hours on a fractious horse in a
terrific sun, I heard myself referred to as the " Saviour
of the Country." Knowing my public, I sat quietly,
now and then killing a mosquito, or brushing some
long-legged wonder of the insect world from off my
neck ; now and then extracting some flying pest or
other from my coffee, and ever and anon murmur
ing " Gracias caballero " at the end of a fervent
period. It appeared the generous heart of the Colombian
nation had always yearned towards England.
" You, sir," said a young orator, " embody for us
the fufilment of our hopes. England in days gone by
sent out her legions to shed their blood for liberty,
under the glorious banner of the Liberator. There
is a subtle sympathy between our countries that
extends itself across the sea, leaps over mountains,
overcomes all difficulties, making the hearts of our
far-divided fatherlands, beat in one great pulsation
and in unison. This packing-house which England
is to found will pave the way for even greater
^ Don Quixote, after his various adventures, especially after his
encounter with the Yangueses, is always described as "molido y
quebrantado" — literally, "passed through a mill and broken up."

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 199
mutual esteem between our peoples. Our fertile and
prolific, tropic soil needs but the fructifying touch
of capital ... of English capital. I see the Old
World, with its secular experience, stepping in to
help its younger sister that the illustrious Genoese
brought into the family of nations. England, the lamp
of liberty, that little island set like a brilliant in the
stormy northern seas, that rose to eminence by the
valour of her sons and through the fostering care of
a long line of wise and liberal statesmen,' will aid us
with her advice and . . . and capital.
" Our hearts are virgin, and from our virgin soil
shall come a fervent and a generous response. Long
live the packing-house ; long live England, victory to
the Allies ; from the topmost summit of the Andes
the spirit of the Liberator looks down upon us in
Palmito here to-day ! . . . I Jiave spoken ; now I
extend the right hand of a Colombian in sympathy
and welcome. Long live Liberty !"
It was a glorious effort, and as the perspiration
rolled down the speaker's brow, I tried to recollect all
that I knew of the history of Colombia and of the
independence wars, for I have always held that
oratory has but one useful function ... to excite
enthusiasm and tell the audience that which they
know a thousand times better than the orator himself.
So I sat waiting, waging a guerrilla warfare with the
insect world, mopping my forehead, and sipping my
panela-water. Several more guests, so to speak, took
the floor, although in most cases they did not rise,
but spoke, like Roman senators, seated in their chairs.
^ Mr. Asquith was, I think, Prime Minister at the time.

200 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
One gentleman thought I might mention to the
spiritual descendant of the illustrious Pitt who now
directs the destinies of Britain,' that the institution of
a land bank, to be styled " El Banco Hipotecario del
Departamento de Bolivar," would be, not only a great
boon to cattle-owners, but would do much to cement
the friendship between our peoples, to which his
friend, Don Emilio Vazquez, had alluded in terms of
eloquence. I hope I rose to the occasion.
Of one thing I am certain, in my discourse
Bolivar, Boyaca, and Carabobo, the brave Uaneros
under General Paez, the infamies of General Morillo,
and the Cartagena martyrs, jostled one another. In
my mind's eye I saw the Liberator, passing the
Andes like a second Napoleon or a Hannibal, heading
his troops alone — superb, young, enthusiastic, the
darling of the " daughters of the republic," the
lodestar of the men. I watched him entering Lima,
with flowers showered down upon his head, and saw
him at the zenith of his fame. Then came the rift
within the patriotic lute and disillusions thickened, till
at last, betrayed, sick, poor, and heartbroken, he paced
the garden in the little Quinta de San Pedro near
Santa Marta, under the secular trees, beneath the
shadow of the mountains, and heard him ask to be
buried in Caracas ..." ungrateful country that I
have tried to save." My scanty audience took it, I
think, for a sound business statement, quite in the
English style. No, seiior, not eloquent perhaps —
^ It may be after all that it was Mr. Lloyd George, not Mr.
Asquith, who was Prime Minister at the time that I was at Palmito.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 201
the English waste no words, they have a saying :
"Times is money" — but pertinent and illuminating
such as only a son of Albion could have possibly
evolved. Now and then Don Julian, I thought, smiled
grimly during my remarks, but when I had concluded
said quietly, " Yes, I think what we want is capital,
but we have got first to provide the raw material."
The others, though some of them had been in the
United States and all were quick-witted, as are most
Colombians, were pleased with what I said, though
any one of them could have said it far better for
himself, for oratory in South America grows upon
every hedge, and as the hedges usually are formed of
crotons, or some other variegated plant, it takes the
hue they lend.
When this unofficial meeting, which perhaps may
best be described as a " coenaculum," came to a close,
we were left — that is, my secretary and myself and
Don Julian, his major domo and a nephew, who had
attached himself to us, partly as guide, partly as
philosopher and friend — to sit and smoke, for as it
was but ten o'clock, and no one in Colombia, at least
in the hot regions of the coast, dreams of going to
sleep before midnight at the earliest, we had an hour
or two to waste. In almost every language, men
talk of killing time. In Spanish the expression is
" to make time," ^ which more or less corresponds to
our own " passing time," and thus avoids the murder
ous inference, for after all, time is our greatest friend.
" Time and myself against three others," was a
^ " Hacer tiempo."

202 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
reported saying of Philip II. , known to his country
men as the Prudent, and this shows he had under
stood how valuable is time . . . when it is on our
side. By degrees the company dispersed, leaving us with
our host and Don Julian. Both were educated men,
had travelled, and had seen the world — that is, the
world of the West Indies and the United States.
One, an absolutely white Colombian of pure Spanish
blood, assured me that a land bank would be a
capital investment. He thought it might well
advance capital to landowners on the security of
their cattle and their estates. Local capitalists
exacted two per cent, per month for all advances,
and capital was scarce. The idea seemed good
enough, and without doubt some day the United
States, or perhaps a syndicate, will take it up, and in
a little the Colombian landowners will find they
have become its slaves, and have to sell their
hypothecated lands for anything that they can get.
Such is the general effect of institutions of the kind
in countries such as Colombia, where, though the
" gombeen-man " is perfectly well known, he is a
native of the place, and local use and wont keep his
nefarious practices to some measure in restraint. A
foreign syndicate is not amenable to any restraint
of that kind, and if by chance any " desgracia,"'
as it is called euphoniously, befalls a citizen of the
United States, a howl goes up about the " massacre
^ A " desgracia " — literally, " an accident " — is of many natures.
If it should take the form of assassination it is still referred to as a
" desgracia " in Colombia and Spain.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 203
of our citizens," and the big stick is brought to
bear. By this time Don Julian's major-domo, by dint of
aspirin and frequent applications to a bottle of old
rum, had got his fever under. Old rum (ron viejo)
is a standing joke throughout Colombia, where it is
said to be distilled on Saturday and become old by
Monday. Such as it was, it had a marvellous effect
on Anacleto Ramos, who sat up and volunteered a
fund of information upon botany, on international
law,' and upon snake-bites. On the latter theme he
soon waxed eloquent, as most Colombians who live
in the coast regions are not unnaturally rather apt to
prove, as snakes of many and varying breeds are rife
in all the woods.
Don Anacleto had much to say about the waco-
plant, which under different names is known in nearly
all the republics in Central America, in Mexico and
Texas, and right up to the States.* The waco was,
as he averred, " good medicine," but mere guUery
compared to a plant growing not far from Cartagena,
which by his description seemed to be an aristolochia
of some sort or other. The juice of the root chewed
and introduced into a serpent's mouth, " of the most
venomous that lives," straightway stupefies it, and
you can handle it with impunity. " Yes, sir, with
1 " Derecho de gentes " — international law — is a favourite study
in South America, and is possibly as useful to the students of it as the
higher mathematics, spiritualism, or mysticism would be ; but decidedly
less useful than a tincture of veterinary surgery might be to men who
are constrained to travel "on horse or mule back.
2 Your real Texan, in his familiar talk, never seems to think, or
at least allow, that Texas is one of the United States, as he always
speaks of a " man from the States " or a " horse from the States."

204 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
complete, complete impunity ; but more than that, if
the malevolent creature that first deceived our Mother
Eve is forced to swallow a few drops, it dies incon
tinently, in fierce convulsions, so sovereign is the
juice." Don Anacleto never had tried the experiment
himself, but knew that it was as he had narrated it, for
he had had it from a priest, a friend of his, a man
who could not lie.
As snakes abounded in Palmito, and probably
were crawling in the jungle not fifty yards from
where we sat, we were all much impressed. It may
be that there are several methods just as efficacious
with a snake as to introduce poison in its mouth,
which seems a sort of carrying coals to Newcastle,
but we said nothing, though I reflected that after all
it might be as Don Anacleto said it was, for I
remembered the old Spanish rhyme of the tarantula '
which says it " is a wicked beast that neither sticks
nor stones avail against."
At last even Don Anacleto became silent and
stretched himself to rest in the hammock that he had
been using as a chair, remarking that if a vampire-bat
were to fix upon his toe he knew a plant that would
soon staunch the blood. However, he did not
communicate its name or its appearance to the rest of
us. Don Julian sard he was an original, but " good as
bread"; moreover, he knew bookkeeping, and though
he had heard he belonged to a Freemasons' Lodge,
^ " La tarantula es un bicho mu' malo, no se mata con piera ni
palo." Beasts being given to mankind to kill in any way they please,
the tarantula seems, as it were, a sort of lusus natura, and it is a pity
that there is no death-compelling aristolochia placed by Providence
in Spain.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 205
was a true Christian at the heart, and, though a little
dark in colour, perfectly white. This enigmatic
phrase I took to mean that Don Anacleto was an
educated man, wore a good suit of clothes, and did
not labour with his hands. He also carried a re
volver with a mother-of-pearl stock, although, as fate
would have it, he was out of cartridges. This useful
piece of furniture proclaimed his racial status, for in
Colombia only " los blancos " carry weapons of the
sort. The others gradually, after hoping that we should
rest and pass a good night, wrapped themselves in
their light cotton " ruanas " ^ and lay down, some in
their hammocks, others on the floor, with their heads
resting on their saddles, the fittest pillow after the
kind of day that we had passed.
I stood a little under a great tree, listening to the
noises that in such kind of places as Palmito rise from
the woods at night. It seemed that the whole forest,
so silent, but for the parrots here and there in daylight,
had come to life in the dark hours, and that strange
beasts were on the prowl. One heard the parting of
the bushes as they passed along, and the soft swishing
of the twigs as the leaves came back to their position
when the animal had passed. Bats and owls floated
by. A heavy scent of flowers, that seemed to relax
and shed their fragrance in the cool air after the long,
hot day had kept it back constrained and sunbound,
filled all the atmosphere.
^ A " ruana " and a " poncho " are the same thing — i.e., a
square piece of cloth or other material with a hole to pass the head
through.

2o6 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
The sky was deepest purple, the stars brilliant and
steady, without the fitful twinkling that they show in
northern latitudes, and in a patch of moonlight,
standing near a well, a gourd-tree with its great
bloated fruit and air as of a primeval vegetation looked
strange and terrible.

CHAPTER XX
Next morning, according to the immemorial
Colombian use and wont, the horses had strayed far
into the recesses of the pasture where they had been
turned out to graze. Quite contrary to the usual
custom in the Argentine Republic and Mexico, none
of them had been hobbled or tied to a stake rope.
So we waited, drinking strong coffee, till the sun was
high in the horizon, losing the precious hours just
after dawn, when every horseman likes to kill a league
or two before the heat begins.
At last the horses were all found and driven in,
and luckily none of them had been bitten by a
vampire-bat and rendered weak through loss of blood.
We saddled hastily, bidding good-bye to our host
and to Don Anacleto, to whom we gave a tube of
aspirin, a gift he qualified as " precious in the extreme
and grateful as the manna to the Israelites." Don
Julian, in spite of our entreaties, rode with us half
a league upon the way, sitting erect and looking
like the Commendatore's statue in the opera. I
thanked him, making him promise to visit us in
England, in which place I assured him he had a
servant and a house. Similarly, he placed his mansion
in Tolii once more entirely at my service, and we
207

2o8 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
clasped hands. No sooner was this ceremony
accomplished than he touched his horse with the spur,
checked him and made him rear, and, turning in the
air, struck into a fast sobre-paso' on the homeward
road. In fifty yards or so he stopped, shouted
" Adios Don Roberto !" to which I answered " Adios
Don Julian, and go with God !" He vanished into
the cloud of dust that has shut off so many hospitable,
good friends in South America — friends of a day or
two sometimes, but unforgettable.
For the ensuing fortnight or three weeks we rode
all day, or at least until the siesta-time, in the hot
sun, endeavouring to reach a house to pass the hottest
hours. Houses are few and far between in El
Departamento de Bolivar, and now and then we had
to pass the siesta under the trees, by river banks,
lighting a fire to keep off the mosquitos, and sitting
on our horse-gear in the smoke.
Haciendas, large and small, we stopped at to
inspect the cattle, always receiving the hearty
welcome that distinguishes the Colombian. I used
to think that, in addition to their natural kindness and
their hospitality, they liked us in our character of
newspapers ambulant. Travellers are infrequent in
that country, and news a rare commodity, and as it
had not rained for full five months the tracks, though
good to travel on, were pretty nearly waterless, and
pasturage was scarce.
Though not unduly curious about the war that
^ Sobre-paso is the over-pace that was common in Europe in the
Middle Ages. In it the horse gallops with front and shuffles with
the hind legs.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 209
at the time had left Colombia untouched economically,
the people naturally were pleased to hear about it
from one, who, so to speak, came from the centre of
affairs. Though in reality, as it was several months
since I had left home, I knew but little more of what
was going on than they did, I found myself looked on
as an authority. So on arriving at one of the groups
of buildings that constitute a hacienda in Colombia,
with the store, overseer's house, corrals for cattle, and
the dwelling-house — long, low, with overhanging
eaves and thick thatch roof — after the compliments
that are necessary had been interchanged, the drought
discussed, and the condition of the cattle ; inquiries
made as to whether there was water in such and such a
place, or if the tigers had been killing many calves, and
how Don Marcos Fidel Suarez'' chances were looking
for the approaching presidential election, I sat down
on a solid, old Spanish chair, seated with raw hide,
to talk of strategy. I found it was surprising how
much I knew about the matter, giving my views
on military affairs with, I hope, accuracy. The
diplomatic situation was far easier. As every South
American has his own idea upon diplomacy, I used to
wait until my host delivered his opinions on the
Balkan question, upon the attitude of Greece and of
Roumania — on the necessity of a free Albania, and
whether Enver Pasha and Talaat were German agents
or international rogues. Then I agreed with him
upon his major premises, and now and then put in a
query or hazarded a doubt on minor matters, saving
my face and his as far as possible.
^ This gentleman eventually became president. 14

2IO CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
Our business took us to many a strange corner, for
we travelled without a plan, going from one hacienda
to another, where the greatest quantity of cattle were
to be found. In none of them were there the vast
herds of Brazil or of the Argentine, or those of Mexico.
Perhaps the finest hacienda in El Departamento de
Bolivar is that called Berastegui. It has been in the
possession of the same family since the days of
Charles III.-^ This really fine, semi-feudal place
extends to about thirty thousand acres, and contains
some of the richest cattle pasture in South America.
From the old-fashioned hacienda house, with its
dependencies, stores, corrals, and peons' huts, a vast and
open plain stretches out, dotted with palm-trees here
and there. On the horizon, about four miles away,
is a low range of hills, which are included in the
property. As the plain is as level as the sea, the hills
appear immense though in reality not more than three
to four hundred feet in height. Feeding in the tall
Para grass, in a sea of green, on every side were cattle,
and all in good condition in spite of the fierce drought.
Amongst them ran three or four Angus bulls that
seemed to stand the rigorous climate to perfection,
looking quite sleek and fat.
Some wild and angry-looking Venezuelan bullocks
with enormous horns moved away with their heads
high in the air, and broke into a trot, a hundred yards
or so away from where we rode. The rest were of
quiet Colombian stock, and went on feeding as we
passed through them, though there were six or seven
^ Charles III. of Spain succeeded to the throne in 1759. He
had previously been King of the Two Sicilies.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 211
of us spread out in a long line. In no ranch country
in the world have I seen cattle so extraordinarily tame,
and certainly few cattle ranches within the tropics
finer than Berastegui.
Water is permanent on the hacienda, and the cattle
never are moved to marshes in long droughts as is
the case in almost every other place in the hot coast
lands of Colombia.
Life on the hacienda was entirely different from
that of Palmito, for we sat down to dinner in a dining-
room, and conversation was less local in its character,
for the owners of the place had travelled widely, had
been in Paris, and spoke French and English fluently.
Still there was something patriarchal in their relation
ship to their dependents, such as I had not seen
before in the department.' The talk in the veranda
after dinner turned upon Venezuela. It appeared
that by the overland route it took the cattle at least
two months to reach the Magdalena River at El Banco,
a little port from where they were ferried over and
driven down to the coast lands. It must be a most
interesting trip across the Andes through the great
forests on the foothills, and down the trails that come
out in many places on the River Magdalena's banks.
The country that lies between El Banco and the
Andes is some of the wildest in the republic. Along
the banks both of the Rio Cesar and the Lebrija are
tribes still unsubdued. Some of them are reported to
be cannibals, and all use poisoned arrows of an
extremely deadly kind. One of the guests had made
the journey and had much lore of Venezuela and the
^ Departamento de Bolivar.

212 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
Uaneros ' that interested me greatly, as all he said
reminded me so much of the gauchos that I
remember in my youth.
Their melancholy songs, mostly of horses, of love,
and of revenge, struck me as almost identical with
those that I had heard long years ago in Entre
Rios, the Banda Oriental, and round Bahia Blanca,"
when it was exposed to Indian raids. These songs
were as interminable as were " forebitters " in the
days of sailing ships, and were invariably sung in a
high falsetto voice to the accompaniment of a guitar,
whose strings were often mended with raw hide.
The guitar used to be passed round all the company,
and those who could not sing declined the com
pliment saying, "I am not a musician"^ and usually
called for a quart of wine to help the more able
throated in their task.
The gaucho and the llanero of the Orinoco
were singularly alike. They both were centaurs ;
both were taciturn, hospitable, kind, bloodthirsty, and
vindictive ; and both held life (their own and that of
others) the cheapest thing in the whole world.
Curiously enough for inland peoples, both races were
great swimmers and took to water like a duck. The
^ " Llaneros " — i.e., inhabitants of the llano, the plain. The
great plains that stretch to the north of the Orinoco have always
been the cradle of a race of hardy and patriotic men. They were
the backbone of the armies of Paez and Bolivar in the independence
wars. 2 It is now a great and flourishing port, with several lines of rail
way running to it. I remember it a little town remote from civiliza
tion and defended by one or two little forts of sun-dried bricks on
which several little brass guns were mounted.
8 " No soy musico."

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 213
llaneros lived in a far hotter climate, and this perhaps
made them more indolent than were their cousins of
the south ; but speech and customs were very similar,
and widely different from those to be observed
throughout America.
The following stanza of a song I heard that
evening, might have been sung at any estancia in
Uruguay or in Bahia Blanca in days gone by :
Por los anos de seisenta
Pa' cuidar el ganao
Me dieron pa' mi silla
Un cabayito melao.^
All the adventures of the llanero and his
" honey "-coloured horse were set forth in great
detail, just as they would have been in the Argentine
Republic, in the same syncopated dialect and to a
similar accompaniment.
Fights, cattle robberies, adventures with tigers
and with crocodiles carried me back for forty years,
with but the difference that in the Argentina they
are things of the past, and on the Orinoco are in full
vigour and are incidents of daily life.
Not more than a few months before the evening
that I passed at Berastegui, a troop of bandits had
attacked the little frontier village of Arauca (in
Colombian territory), put it to sack and pillage, killed
the chief magistrate, cut off his head and then played
football with it in the square.
The deliberate opinion of all the cattle-owners at
Berastegui was that in the three departments of
1 " Melao " — literally, " honey-coloured " — is applied to a white
horse with yellow skin.

214 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
Bolivar, Magdalena, and Atlantico, there was room for
six million head of cattle, three million in Bolivar,
and at least three in the two adjoining states. Beyond
the Andes, the great plains between the Meta and the
Orinoco might carry several million head. There
are still cattle districts left in Colombia, the state of
Antioquia, with its breed of beautiful white cattle
with black ears, unique throughout America and not
unlike the native, wild, white cattle at Lyme and
Chillingham. The Cauca valley at present may
contain two hundred thousand head, and so on of
the other districts, as Boyaca, Tolima, and the plains
on the Patia close to the frontier of Ecuador.
Everyone at Berastegui considered that the
immediate future of the country was bound up in
cattle-raising. Though, of course, it can never support
such immense herds as the Argentine, Brazil, or
Venezuela, it is the nearest great stock-raising
country by several days to Europe, and, of course,
nearer to the United States.
In the old mansion of Berastegui, with its wide-
spreading eaves, its groups of trees on every side, and
the great plain stretching out to the low hills, there
was an air as of an older world. The proprietors, all
descended from the early settlers, were educated men
and yet born horsemen and accustomed to wild life.
Most of them had been through several revolutions ;
but all of them saw clearly that their country wanted
peace, and none seemed to love fighting for its own
sake, after the fashion of the Mexicans.
The small hours found us talking over things
and others, of monstrous boa-constrictors, and how

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 215
a foolish peon had lassoed a jaguar and been nearly
mauled to death, with many other feats by flood and
field, told with due emphasis.
It seemed to me that we had only just settled
down in our hammocks when a peon came round
with the black coffee to say that in another half-
hour it would be daylight, and it was time to rise
and ride again.

CHAPTER XXI
The sun was just rising over the forest behind the
house, and its reflected light lit up the plain in front,
leaving the distant hills floating in a sea of mist, as we
mounted our horses to leave Berastegui. Great dew-
drops fell off the steeply thatched roof, upon the ground.
The horses played with their bits, put their backs up,
and danced about in the freshness of the morning air.
Flights of macaws were on the wing towards their
feeding-grounds. The cattle were all stringing out,
like pictures of big game in Africa, in books by
Livingstone and Galton, towards the water-holes.
Upon a sandy place beside a stream one of the
peons pointed out a tiger's trail looking exactly like
the footprints of a cat enormously enlarged.
Beside the river a capybara ' scuttled through the
reeds and took the water, with his back awash
exactly like a hippopotamus in miniature.
As we passed through the high potrero gate into
the woods beyond, the hacienda of Berastegui, seen
for a moment from the forest path, looked like a
woodcut in an old book of travels, then vanished into
the book of memories, that the mind keeps, ever half-
shut, half-open, according to one's moods.
^ The carpincho of the Argentine Republic. He is the largest
of the rodents, and amphibious. Naturalists call the poor beast
Hydrochcerus capybara. In Colombia the local name is " ponche."
2l6

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 217
Almost immediately the freshness of the morning
disappeared, and on the forest trail the sand heated up
as it were by magic, and yet the smell of the wet leaves
and flowers just dried, hung in the air and scented
everything. As we struck into the forest path we
bade good-bye to the open plains of the Sinii.
These plains, fertilized by the deposit left by the
River Sinii in its annual flood, resemble Egypt in their
productiveness, though quite unlike it in the richness of
their vegetation. In this respect no country ofthe Old
World, except Ceylon, Java, and Singapore, can hold
a candle to it. There is something hungry-looking
about the richest bush in Africa that differentiates it
from the same kind of country in the Americas, It
may be something in the soil itself that also causes the
extreme difference to be observed in the action of
the sun upon the human organism.
Even in Morocco sunstroke is frequent and ten
times more so in the Soudan, in India, and throughout
the tropics of the Old World, In them, no sane man
ventures in the sun without a solar topee ; in the
Americas a man may wear an ordinary, soft, felt hat in
perfect safety. The solar topee is unknown, and the
Panama straw hat, which is perhaps the worst defence
against the sun imaginable, is used throughout the
central and northern parts of South America.
The district towards which the deeply shaded
forest path was leading us was quite distinct in
character from those of the Sinii.
The path itself ran through a wall of forest and
reminded me of the paths I had ridden through
long years ago in Paraguay, although the vegetation of

2i8 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
Colombia is even more luxuriant and overwhelming
and more menacing in its invading air of strength.
Bird life was scarce, as it is usually in tropic woods ;
but in the clearing humming-birds hovered over
flowering shrubs and yellow toucans occasionally
flew past. Sometimes I think I heard the harsh notes
of the tropial, but never once the bell-bird as in
Paraguay, where sometimes it sounds its note so like a
chapel bell, I have thought that I was near a settle
ment, when many miles away.
Now and again where trees had fallen a shaft of
light lit up the gloom of the dark path, just as an air
shaft lets in the light in a long tunnel in a railway.
Occasionally scurrying along at a fast " pace," we
met a traveller, who always stopped to hear the news
and light a cigarette, as we sat underneath the shade
of some thick, spreading tree.
This function of exchanging and transmitting
news is an art that everybody understands in countries
where the distances between the towns are long,
communications difficult, and posts are rare and
unreliable. To the native of such lands the art is inborn and
he knows, as it were by instinct, what tinge to give it
so as to make it palatable to the receiver's ear. Just
as two painters draw a face, intelligent and in
teresting, or dull and plain, according to the vision of
their minds, so does your perfect transmitter of the
news tinge it with what he thinks will please you ; and
yet the news and painter's model are unchanged.
All's in the art that makes them interesting or leaves
them duller than they are.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 219
Often these meetings in the forest path took place
just at a clearing so that the riders were illumined as
by a halo, whilst we remained in shade. We used to
pass the time of day, exchange a cigarette, unpack our
news, and separate upon our several ways, like ships
at sea that speak each other and sail on.
On the wide, open prairie, and the steep mountain
trail, in the dark forest paths, such as that from
Berastegui, and countless others in Mexico, Brazil, and
Paraguay, I have crossed travellers and hope that I
live in their memories, as they still live in mine, with
all their turns of gesture and of speech, their horses'
colours and their brands as deeply burned into my
brain as they were burned upon their hips, and the last
flutter of their ponchos as they turned to go still in
the corner of my eye.
Let them all go with God, wherever they were
going to.
They cannot take themselves out of my memory,
and in some limbo or another, some place where
horses never tire, nor riders stiffen, where camping-
grounds are always well supplied with water and with
grass, perhaps we all may meet again and ride.
Even dark forest paths must have an ending, and
this one came out at a little settlement called La
Cienaga de Oro — that is, the Golden Marsh.
Lost in the woods and quite unchanged, I should
suppose, since its foundation by some unknown
conqueror, the little hamlet lay with its little church
standing out like a lighthouse over the sea of green.
A nephew of the owners of Berastegui, a student
of something or another in Cartagena, upon his long

220 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
vacation, accompanied us, riding a pacing mule. He
was supposed to know the road ; but had we followed
his advice we might have found ourselves lost in the
forest at least a dozen times, for he branched off on
any little trail that crossed the path, announcing that
by following it we should save several miles. As
upon leaving the hacienda the sun was on the near
side of the horses, and we knew that the road ran
east and west, once was enough, and we refused to
follow him after his first essay had landed us in front
of a great pool carpeted over with the Victoria Regia
and quite unfordable.
When after several plunges up to our girths we
had got back to the highroad, we quite dispensed
with him as guide, although we kept him as a
philosopher and friend.
He also had a pistol without cartridges, just as in
days gone by in England, when all wore swords, men
of his stamp had their swords rusted in the sheath and
quite undrawable from disuse. Still, in each case the
unlethal weapon proclaimed their status as a gentle
man. Though quite unarmed, he yet was furnished
against the usual ills that may beset Colombian
humanity. His tube of aspirin was ever ready ; his
vial of "Curarina," sovereign for snake-bites, peeped
from the habit of his coat.
Few go abroad in the coast lands of the republic
without this much approved specific, sold at one dollar
in all pharmacies. Its fame has not been dimmed
by the disconcerting circumstance that its inventor,
after having realized a handsome competence by its
sale, chanced to be bitten by a snake. The poor man

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 221
swallowed a whole bottle of his stuff immediately,
and died within the hour. Some were so cruel as to
say the snake that bit him was of a harmless species
and that he died of his own medicine.
Colombia is a land of snakes, and yet one thinks
but little of them, in the same way that death occupies
little of one's thoughts, though ever imminent. To
be bitten in the wilds is generally to die, though now
and then the actual cautery and whisky in large
quantities may chance to make a cure. When in
spite of our blind guide we reached La Cienega de
Oro, it turned out that he had a harmless and perhaps
unnecessary wife domiciled in the place. She and
her family received us hospitably. On the veranda of
the house the children were playing with a tiger cub
about the size of a large cat. It appeared desperately
savage and snarled at anyone it did not know, though
with the children it was tame enough. The people
of the place had taken it alive and killed its mother.
They said when it was six months old it would be far
too dangerous to keep. Unlike the puma, that often
makes a perfectly safe pet and is known in some of the
republics as " the friend of man," — the jaguar is quite
untamable. Whilst the horses fed, we went down
to what the people called an oil spring, and skimmed
off about a pint of raw petroleum from the surface of
the spring with a large kitchen spoon. It must have
risen from some source or other farther up the stream,
which no doubt some day will be found and the oil
bored for scientifically.
The country round the Cienega de Oro is open,
with occasional low hills, and much more like the

222 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
pampas of the Argentine Republic in its character,
than are the banks of the Sinii. Towns dot it here
and there, and all of them are curiously different from
each other. This is due partly to their extremely
different positions, and partly to the lack of com
munications and of roads. This has imprinted special
features upon all of them. Thus Sincelejo is a city
set upon a hill, and stands nearly six hundred feet
above the sea. Its population may be about ten
thousand, more or less, for naturally there are no
figures to rely upon. The streets are hilly, with now
and then a boulder cropping up in them, and appear
at one time to have been cattle tracks, upon whose
edges houses have been built irregularly. Still, there
are one or two short arcaded streets after the pattern
of a town in the Castiles. An enormous and barn
like church dominates the place. The bells ring
constantly, and, as throughout Colombia the people
are religious, or at the least observant, on Sundays and
upon saints' days it is crowded to the door.
Syrians as usual keep the stores, and chaffer in
their guttural Spanish even more determinedly than
the Colombians themselves. The stores contain all
the unconsidered trifles necessary in little towns in
South America — things that few people could
possibly require and even so on credit. But, besides
these, they are marvellously well supplied with
electric torches, celluloid spectacles that look like
tortoiseshell, kodaks, and in general all those products
of modern life that naturally appeal so much to
people who, living in a world that has stood still for
centuries, grasp at all newness with avidity. There

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 223
are no drinking-bars, such as are to be found in nearly
every town in Argentina ; no cinemas ; no hooligans ;
rto poor ; few rich; and, in general, life rolls along
pleasantly enough.
The hotel was a sort of cross between a Spanish
venta and a Mexican meson, both of which institu
tions owe their genesis to the Oriental caravanserai.
Perhaps the Colombian establishment was superior in
comfort to either of them. In the meson there is a
vault-like, spotlessly clean room with a plaster step in
it, on which you lay your saddle-gear to form a bed.
The key is solemnly delivered to you, as in the East,
and may be six or more inches long. No food is to
be procured. You have to go out on the plaza, and,
seated at a table, eat stews cooked with red pepper,
and the tortillas that take the place of bread. Your
horses drink at a trough, and someone almost certainly
is there to sell you corn and the chopped straw
they eat. In the Spanish venta the only differ
ence to be found is that the room is dirty and
the key a foot in length. In the Spanish hostelry
you ride in through the kitchen and leave your horse
tied in a dark and filthy stable and take your meals in
a room above it, so that in the frequent pauses in your
meal you hear the animals stamping at flies and
munching at their corn.
In Sincelejo you have to take your horses out to
grass and swelter in the sun, watching them graze
tormented by the flies, water and bathe them, and
then buy corn for them, and stand by whilst they
feed to stop the grain from being stolen.
Meals in the hotel were served under a trellis-

224 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
work, shaded with creepers, and were both plentiful
and good.
The company was varied and pleasant in the
main. An Antioquian shopkeeper on his way to
the coast was an active, pushing, and a business man
down to his finger-tips, like all his countrymen.
Tall, clean, intelligent, and absolutely white, these
people form a sort of caste apart, and differ totally
from all their countrymen. Some say they are
descendants of the Jews of Spain, and others say they
are Moriscos who escaped and coming to the Indies
changed their faith, but not their nature, for the
Moriscos were born traders and good business men.
This may be so, but it would seem more probable
that they came from the Biscay provinces, for they
resemble the Biscayans in character and type.
All over the republic you are sure to meet them,
and in their province no Syrian is to be found,
just as no Jews are said to thrive in Aberdeen, the
natives of both countries being as keen in money
matters as the best Israelite. The Antioquians no
doubt are the backbone of the republic of Colombia,
and, as is frequently the case with peoples of the kind,
are quite well satisfied both with themselves and the
position that they occupy. This is the case with the
Catalonians in Spain. Some people have observed it
of the Scottish race, although I have good reasons to
suppose, this is a calumny.
Two of the wandering Chinese pedlars who are
to be found in most of the coast towns throughout
Colombia appeared during the ^ dinner and talked
in pidgin-Spa,nish, entering into the conversation.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 225
although not sitting down to table ; but, in Colombia,
as in old-fashioned towns in Spain, the servants
all talk during the meals upon an equal footing
with the guests. We did not purchase any of their
goods, but that did not impair their imperturbable
good humour, and they continued talking pleasantly,
occasionally bringing out silks and little boxes that
they put back again, when no one bought them, with
an air of being pleased.
The Antioquian, a man of observation and ar
humorist, told us that once, in a small ranche town in
the plains of Venezuela, called San Fernando de Apure,
he had been present during the feast of Corpus
Christi and watched the usual procession of the saints
that in such places are carried through the streets.
This ceremony, known familiarly as " taking out the
blocks," ^ always creates enthusiasm and collects a
crowd. By his side a Chinaman was standing, and
the Antioquian said to him, " What kind of gods
have you in China ? Do they look like these ?" The
Chinaman took a long look at the procession, thought
for a little, and rejoined, " Ours are far better ; they
are made of bronze."
A philosophical answer, if you look at it in an
impartial spirit, for certainly a brazen god is far more
durable than one hewn out of wood.
An officer or two, a wandering student, and an
Italian santero — that is, a saint-seller — comprised our
company, and though the story of the Chinese gods
was rather persona! to one who dealt in plaster figures
of the saints, he laughed as heartUy as any of us, and
1 " Sacar los bultos." 15

226 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
did not seem annoyed, remarking with a smile, "Bronze
gods would last too long to be good business ; mine
break easily, and that is good for trade."
Quite a philosopher was the saint-seller, although
perhaps his table manners lacked subtlety, and his
economies, although sound enough, were brutally
expressed. The two Colombian officers, slight, elegant, and
looking rather like flies in a milk-pot, with their dark
faces and their white uniforms, regarded the Italian as
curiously as if he had been some sort of strange
marsupial animal, for they were educated men and
liberals, opposed to priestcraft and its works, and yet
perhaps, after the fashion of some anticlerical Spanish
Americans, may have gone out and bought a little
plaster image from the wandering saint-seller, as it
were, on the sly.
A curious little town is Sincelejo, a sort of
rallying-place and centre for the trade of the surround
ing country, with an individuality of its own, for in it
the Old World still lingers, and yet much trade is done
and business carried on with the United States.
Nothing could well be more unlike Sincelejo than
is Corozal,' the town from which the celebrated cattle
plains, known as Los Llanos de Corozal, are named.
The road between Sincelejo and Corozal is infamous
for unshod horses in the dry season, for here and
there great tracks of gravel, extending to a mile, cover
its surface and soon make horses' feet too tender for
the road. Sometimes the track winds into the
^ The corozo is a species of palm-tree. Corozdl is a grove of
corozos. This palm bears an oily nut.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 227
primeval woods, following a watercourse that when
we travelled it was dry. How in the season of the
rains people can use it as a road is a mystery, for the
dry stream is bounded by high banks. Sheets of flat
rock surround the town, reminding one of the
approaches to towns that I have seen in the Atlas
Mountains, or in Lower Aragon. It was just getting
dark as we stumbled and slithered on the rocks, and
the town was desolate and dark.
It boasted an hotel of quite a different kind from
that in Sincelejo, and may have been the house of some
old-fashioned family of local magnates and had seen
better days.
It reminded me of a posada in the outlying
districts of Castile, for there was no one to receive
us, not even dogs to bay, as we rode up to the front
door. So desolate it seemed, I thought it was deserted,
and fear(2d we should have to call upon the priest
and ask for a night's lodging or try if any Syrian store
keeper would take compassion on our plight. But
before doing so we rode through the front door into
an inner courtyard, where in the increasing darkness
I discerned a man sitting in an old Spanish chair,
tilted against the wall.
He welcomed us, if the word applies to such a
perfunctory act, into the gaunt, dark house. It soon
appeared that there was plenty of everything, that we
had brought ourselves. Except a venta in Castile, or,
to be more accurate, in some old Spanish book of
travels, perhaps no such hotel exists as the drear
hostelry of Corozal.

228 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
Civility was the one sauce to every dish, and, to be
candid, with it, even hunger is more bearable. We
sallied out and bought provisions and some candles,
whilst supper was in preparation, and we were wise in
doing so. Sardines and cheese with Spanish raisins
are a fit feast for hungry kings; moreover, they are
standard eatables in every one of the republics in South
America. It may be that in monarchies they would
seem exiguous ; but in a democratic state, and after a
hard ride, they are as filling as was the black broth
and the cheese of Sparta to its citizens.
As we were in the position of the devil — that is,
our time in Corozal was short ; for few would choose
to make a long stay in the curious, old, rocky-streeted
town, unless he were a Daniel Vierge looking for
landscapes and for settings for a life of Don Quixote —
we lighted the whole packet of old-fashioned candles
and surveyed the room that fate had brought us into.
The light revealed an enormous, vaulted chamber that
seemed to have been part of some ancient Spanish
mansion, built in the early years of the first conquest.
A ruined chandelier covered with yellow gauze and
fly-blown, till it looked like a lady's spotted veil, hung
in the middle of the room.
Two chairs ; two beds, with their accompanying
mosquito curtains hung from a bar capped with a
tarnished crown in ormolu ; a little table ; and a tin
washing-stand with an earthen pitcher in it, comprised
the furniture. Upon the walls was hung a coloured
print of Gower Street Station, in the unreformed,
underground railway, showing a train disappearing
into an Avernus in wreaths of volleying smoke. In

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 229
the chief place of honour, but all askew, was a print
of Simon Bolivar, El Libertador himself, directing the
entire Colombian forces at the crowning victory of
Boyaca. A cheap and German picture of a saint — St.
Anthony of Padua, if my memory serves me — hung
facing the Liberator. These were the decorations of
the apartment, unless about a dozen bats, that circled
round about our heads, might count as ornaments.
Supper was rather a fragmentary meal, for the
boiled rice and leathery beef-stew, that after a long
wait made its appearance, was not inviting. The
bats swooped down at intervals like harpies, and the
mosquitos sounded their shrill horn. Centipedes
crawled on the walls, threatening to fall on to the
plates. We ate some of the stew unwillingly, not to
offend the host, and luckily two or three dogs came in
and helped us in our task.
The night was interesting, for a fierce storm arose.
The lightning now and then lit up the gaunt apart
ment, making effects upon the walls and on the roof
as in a theatre. These sort of nights are worth a
whole long day of riding in the sun — that is, to recollect
them with all the little irritations softened by time
and distance, and the effect left clear upon the mind.
Throughout the province there are several little
towns upon the central plateau much like Corozal :
one called Oveja almost as curious. The road to
it from Corozal is five-and-twenty miles, hilly and
broken and quite uninhabited.
When we arrived there it was raining, and the
thermometer may have stood about ninety-six, or.

230 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
perhaps, a hundred degrees. Our host, an ancient, revo
lutionary colonel, now turned a storekeeper, regretted
bitterly that he had not a bottle of old rum to offer us,
for he knew well (he said) that Englishmen looked on
it as a first necessity of life — at least, some mining
engineers who had passed by the town a month ago
had drunk two bottles of it.
Twenty-five miles or so of hill and dale, and now
and then of stretches of thick forest, lie between
Oveja and El Carmen, a town that lies on a flat plain,
surrounded by plantations of tobacco, that at the time
I visited the place were quite neglected, for all their
produce used to go to Hamburg, there to be dressed
and worked into cigars that were exported to
America with a Habana label on the box. El Carmen
and the town of Monteria are the two hottest places
in the department. The sun pours down on both of
them like boiling metal from a blast furnace, yet they
are healthy, and Monteria especially so, in spite of the
great heat.
These inland towns and others — such as San Juan
Nepomuceno, stuck upon a hill, San Cayetano, on the
edge of a primeval forest, and Sahagun, right in the
midst of a wide plain, the last well built and with
wide streets and a fine church dating from Spanish
times — are amongst the most remote and curious little
places that I have seen in South America, except in
Paraguay. Till yesterday but little breath from the outside
world has penetrated to them, and they have slumbered
on. Perhaps to say that they have slumbered is
unfair, for what is progress, after all, except as it

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 231
afflscts the mind and the intelligence? Although
material progress has been scant enough for the last
fifty years, culture and education seem to me upon a
higher level in this group of little towns than in the
country towns of Mexico and of the Argentine
Republic. Naturally everyone makes verses, for that is quite
endemic in Colombia; but in addition those who can
afford them buy books and newspapers, and many
followed all the phases of the war in Europe quite as
intelligently as in most European towns.
I left them with regret, and after wandering about
from one town to another, now riding through dense
forests, and again leading our horses up and down
the hills, then passing open plains, sun-swept and
quite deserted, as the cattle had been driven to the
swamps, we set our faces towards the Magdalena
River upon the homeward trail.

CHAPTER XXII
The westward trail left Sahagun, a curious little place
in which the trees impinge upon the houses, and the
houses run into the woods irregularly.
Still, a place that insists and stamps itself upon the
memory, on account of its gigantic plaza, resembling
that of Cerete on the Sinii, and its two or three wide
streets that appear uninhabited but yet give you the
impression that eyes are watching you as you ride
past, and make you straighten yourself up and feel
your horse's mouth, so that he makes the best
appearance to the invisible, but subtly felt critic,
possibly peeping through the blinds. Just outside
Sahagun, before the road enters upon an open plain,
in a little clearing in the wood, there is a cemetery,
one of those desolate Colombian cemeteries that are
amongst the most forlorn of any of their kind.
Sometimes a wall of sun-dried bricks surrounds them,
sometimes a rusty, barbed-wire fence.
In any case there is a gateway built of adobe,
painted originally white or a pale lemon colour, but
bleached by sun and rain into an indistinguishable
smear. The gate is almost off the hinges and is
blistered by the sun. The crosses usually are of iron
and almost always stand askew. Wild animals make
232

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 233
little paths amongst the graves, and now and then an
armadillo has his lair in one of them. All is so sun-
dried and so neglected-looking, that as you pass the
gate, you involuntarily compassionate those who lie
in the sandy sepulchres, exposed in death, as they
have been in life, to a continual battle with the sun.
No flowers are ever placed upon the graves, or,
if they are, they are so soon burned up it is the same
as if they never had been put there, and the dead seem
more forgotten and alone than they could be in any
other cemetery in the world. Better by far than this
is an unfenced Moorish graveyard with its rough
stones buried in lentiscus-bushes cut by a hundred
paths, for everyone rides through them. There at
the least the dead may hear the footfalls of the passing
horses or the mules — sounds that have been familiar in
their lives.
As you pass by a graveyard such as that of
Sahagun, it would be vain to drop a tear, for it would
evaporate before it reached the ground. You can but
look at it and hope that those who lie beneath the
sand are not disturbed by the harsh cry of the
macaws. The trail runs out into the open plains, but plains
dotted with islands and cut by peninsulas of wood.
At last these disappear and leave a steppe, all full of
anthills, and, at the season of the year we crossed it, as
brown and bare as is the Sahara below Morocco at the
Sahiat-el-Hamara. In the great droughts the people burn the woods
to open up new pasture-lands, and as we rode, on the
horizon we saw the virgin forest all aflame, a miserable

234 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
sight, and comparable to the action of a man who lies
in wait for someone, kills him, and throws his money
down a well.
In a cattle-breeding country it may be necessary to
clear fresh pastures, but to burn trees hundreds of
years of age is a sin against nature and should be
dealt with by the law. A light breeze blew the
ashes of the burning forest towards us. They fell
upon our hair and clung upon the horses' coats. It
made one wish to rend one's clothes, to think of the
destruction of'so much beauty in such a wanton way.
Labour is scarce and nature more exuberant than can
be imagined in the north, and it may be the ashes
fertilize the soil, but I was glad at least we had the
ashes on our heads ; it seemed that someone mourned.
In the fierce noonday sun, before we halted under a
ceiba-tree,^ the trail ran through a strip of virgin forest
that was all on fire. The path was narrow and at
times led close beside great trees aflame, burning
their funeral pyre.
The dry lianas all were flaming, the heat intense,
the ashes suffocating. Now and then in the forest
a great tree toppled down with a crash, and a
thick cloud of smoke went up into the sky. The
horses snorted, now jumping over a charred log, and
now edging away from one of the tall, fiery trees in
terror. Over our heads the sun shone down like
brass and met the heat that rose up from the burning
wood. All was as silent as the grave, except for the
quiet murmuring of the fire, for all the birds and the
animals had fled, and so we rode along, stifling and
^ Bombax ceiba.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 235
coughing, winding about a veritable purgatory of
nature, made by man, who in his folly, has made for
nature and himself so many purgatories.
All the wide, open country between Sahagun and
the River Magdalena, and as far as the Cienega de
Ayapel upon the banks of the San Jorge River, is
where the Spaniards at the conquest found the
richest of the Indian graves. No trace of them
exists to-day, for the first conquerors did their work
so thoroughly that there is no tradition of any Indian
burial-place having been found again.
The plains were desolate, for all the cattle had
been moved into the swamps along the banks of the
San Jorge and the Magdalena. Houses are few and
far between, as is the case in every pastoral country,
and as the tracks left by the cattle on their way down
to the water-holes intersect the road, itself a trail made
by the feet of passing horses and of mules, nothing
is easier than to go astray and follow a wrong path.
Just as night fell we called at a small ranche under
some sandhills near a little stream. The owner,
getting barebacked on his horse, showed us the way
across the stream. Then, after taking half a dollar,
he gave directions that he said were quite infallible.
" Follow the trail, which as you see is clear." It was
scarcely visible in the bright moonlight that destroys all
perspective, and all sense of values. " Be sure to keep
the wind on the left side of you, and keep on westerly
by south. When you get through the medanos^ —
they run about a quarter of a league — you pass a dead
tree on the right. Leave it upon the right and still
^ Medanos = sandhills.

236 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
ride westerly by south. Do not forget the wind,
always on the left side. Your horses seem a little
tired, don't kick them over much or they may tire
entirely. That would be awkward, for San Benito is
about four hours on. There are no houses on the
way except a ranche. It is deserted. Look out for
the tigers. Adios, go with God."
He turned his horse and vanished down a sand
hill, leaving us amazed. No wayfarer, even although
a fool, could err with such directions, and so we
stumbled on. Long did we wander in the sandhills,
that in the moonlight looked like the Umbrian Hills
in miniature, riding down slopes and scrambling up
others, that in the false light of the moon appeared
most terrible, though perhaps in the light of day they
would have been nothing but mere molehills.
When we emerged again upon the plains our
guide confessed that he was lost.
Though a bad guide, he was a man accustomed
to the wilds, and lying down upon the ground he
listened carefully for the sound of a passing traveller
or for the barking of a dog. Then he remembered
that a road ran from Corozal to Magangue, and,
looking at the stars, said he believed we were not far
from it.
Riding in ever-widening circles, round a man
with a box of matches who now and then struck one
of them to show us where he was, we hit the road at
a point nearly half a mile away.
Then, fixing on a star, we rode towards it, keep
ing the wind on our left side and going to the west.
No house appeared or the least trace of any town.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 237
The moonlight cast long shadows on the ground,
making the horses look like camels and every stone a
boulder, turning the bushes into the shapes of strange,
fantastic animals. The horses, that had been fourteen
or fifteen hours upon the road, had sweated and had
dried so often that all their coats were white as if they
had been sprinkled with salt brine. They stumbled
on the stones, and when at last we came to a deserted
hut under a clump of sheltering bongo-trees we put
up for the night. There was no water and no food,
and all the grass was dry and wiry; but a hungry horse
will attack any kind of pasture, and they set at it with
a will. Throwing our saddles down beneath a tree,
and spreading a mosquito net above us, we slept the
sleep of the just — or of the unjust, for both are equal
before sleep.
Next morning, parched with thirst and hungry,
we started out upon the road, the horses stiff and leg-
weary. In two hours and a half we reached the town
of San Benito, and, riding up to the house of the
Alcalde, asked for hospitality.
As it fell out, that morning he had sallied forth to
catch a thief, who had ensconced himself, armed with
a large knife, in a deserted house. We were not in
the best condition for what in the wild portions of
Colombia is known as a " molestia " — that is, a
" trouble " — but thought it best to assist our prospec
tive host, with a view of benefits to come. Slowly
and most unwillingly we rode up to the house
where the thief had taken refuge and listened to the
magistrate summon the miscreant to yield, telling him
that the two Americans outside were both armed to

238 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
the teeth and would assist him to the death. Either
his resolution failed him, or the terrors of our name
unnerved his arm, for when the Alcalde boldly went
inside the house, which he did at the peril of his life,
after a scuffle he emerged holding the man by an
arm bent behind his back.
Thus was law vindicated. Peace reigned once
• more in the town of San Benito, and we sat down to
a good breakfast, whilst our horses munched their
corn. The town of San Benito was as much buried in
luxuriant vegetation as one of the Jesuit "capillas"'^
in Paraguay. The reed-thatched houses were abso
lutely covered to the eaves with every kind of red
and yellow creeper. Ropes of lianas, all in flower,
festooned the trees, and in the open spaces a white
and purple striped convolvulus carpeted the sand.
The prisoner by this time had come to reason and
sat sullenly with his hands tied behind his back in
what the Alcalde termed the " house of malefactors."
It was a little hut, from which a child might easily
have escaped by pulling down the wall.
However, as we know, fear guards the vineyard
more than does the fence. 2
After due compliments and thanks, we took our
way upon a path that led through swamps on which
grazed herds of cattle, fat and sleek, in spite of the
great drought.
These swamps are never dry, and in them are
1 Capillas= chapel; but in Paraguay it is often used to designate
whole villages.
2 " Miedo guarda vinas, no vallado."

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 239
countless alligators and great flocks of wading and
aquatic birds.
Sometimes the road ran on a narrow causeway
between deep swamps where alligators basked in the
sun. As we rode by they swam off sluggishly. At
other times the trail passed shallower swamps on
which fed cattle, standing up to their hocks in water
and in mud.
White ibises sat on the cattle's backs, swaying to
keep their balance, as a sailor sways upon a deck.
Others stood at the water's edge so motionless and
sacramental-looking, that one saw at a glance why the
Egyptians worshipped them.
Again, the track twisted out into small, open
spaces, three or four hundred yards in breadth.
A mile or two away the woods upon the banks of
the San Jorge River stood up like a wall, blocking the
view towards the south. To the west the swamps of
Ayapel, at that season of the year packed with the
cattle moved from the drought-swept plains, stretched
up towards the boundaries of Antioquia.
Now and then herds of horses were intermingled
with the cattle, giving a look of what the plains of
Africa must have been, with herds of quaggas and of
gnus, before the advent of the cockney and his battery
of guns. All of a sudden we came out on the San Jorge,
a broad and yellow stream, three or four hundred yards
in breadth. The bank on which we stood was high
and sun-swept. On it were perched some miserable
huts, and underneath them ten or twelve canoes, all
tied to poles driven into the stream, rose and fell, lazily.

240 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
Upon the other side was a small town buried in woods,
that seemed to block it ofF from all the world.
Piling our saddles into a long, crank dugout,
and standing up performing miracles of equilibrium,
as it appeared to us, though any child upon the river's
banks can walk in a canoe as well as on dry land, we
crossed the river, and, struggling up a staircase cut
in the hard mud, entered the town of Jegua, once a
thriving place, but fallen into decay. We passed the
siesta in the public hall, used also as the school-house,
a dusky edifice, whose walls were decorated with
German kindergarten plates, but with the text in
Spanish, explaining all the parts and particles ofthe
rhinoceros, the camelopard, and the elephant, " for
the Colombian youth." '
Long did we slumber, quite undisturbed by the
mosquitos that buzzed in myriads in the deserted
room. Then, sallying out to buy provisions and to
find some means of transport down to Magangue, the
port upon the Magdalena where the river steamers
call, we found ourselves in difficulties.
The one steam-launch that Jegua boasted was
away upon a trip to Ayapel and not available. Upon
the bank that we had quitted in the morning there
was no trail, unless we had returned to strike the road
from Corozal, forty or fifty miles away.
Canoes were plentiful and paddlers easy to be
found, as all the population was, as it were, amphibious
and born to the canoe.
One Anastasio Giron, described as a " good,
faithful Indian, one who will not get drunk until he
^ " Para la juventud Colombiana."

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 241
reaches Magangue,'^ was recommended to us by a
man in uniform, who may have been some sort of an
official in a not improbable customs-house.
The good and faithful Anastasio was asleep be
neath the palm-thatched roof of his canoe, his head in
shade, his naked feet stuck well out in the sun. Since
my youth in Argentina I have always been a little shy
of breaking the slumbers of a male' white Christian.
However, Anastasio, though a Christian, as a scapulary
showed hung round his walnut-coloured neck, was
certainly not white.
This fact removed all hesitation on my part.
When he was well awake, and after swallowing some
rum from a small calabash that he produced, and after
salutations which were not short, we fell a-chaffering.
It seemed that the canoe, in Anastasio's phrase,
" gained two dollars gold a day." This seemed
excessive, and for "gold" I substituted "silver," exactly
half the price. This must have been far above the
usual tariff, for the owner jumped at it, only requiring
half to be paid at once. I feared the calabash would
be refilled, but turning round he gave the money to
an Indian woman who he said was his wife. How
she appeared upon the scene I never knew or ever
shall know, but perhaps, whilst we were bargaining,
she had glided up, her shoeless feet making no sound
upon the sand.
Our saddles and our bags filled at least half of the
thatched awning in the middle of the canoe, leaving
us barely room to shelter from the sun. A Syrian
who kept a little store sold us some sardines, some
^ Un Cristiano Macho. i6

242 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
biscuits, and half a dozen bottles of light beer and
half a dozen more of kola, with a bundle of cigars.
Thus being furnished for the voyage, we waited till
the sun was low, and Anastasio and his mate, a
lathy, Indian youth, who he professed was " born to
paddle, just as a mule is born to carry packs," we
pushed into the stream. No single soul stood on the
bank to witness our departure, yet I am certain that
every mortal in the little town was watching it, and in
years to come will talk about myself and of my
secretary, describe our clothes and saddles, and will say,
I hope, that for Americanos we were almost Christians.
A few strokes of the paddle took us round the bend
and out of sight of Jegua, which disappeared into the
overwhelming woods, as if it had never existed, or had
been blotted out.
The evening breeze blew pleasantly as we sat on
the top of the straw shelter in the middle of the canoe,
eating the provisions that we had laid in at Jegua,
and the voyage promised well. The paddlers seemed
untirable, just as a fresh horse seems untirable when
he begins his course.
Soon the breeze fell, the moon shone out and lit
the river, turning it from the turbid yellow that it
was in sunlight into a sheet of silver, that mirrored
the tall trees whose shadows seemed to penetrate into
vast depths of water and of shade. The fireflies
played about the bushes, and now and then a night
bird flew above our heads, uttering a hoarse cry.
For several miles we floated gently down the stream,
the paddlers by degrees becoming listless, even the
youth who " was born to paddle " taking a perfunctory

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 243
stroke at intervals. At last sleep overtook them, and
they lay their paddles in-board and fell asleep, sitting
upon the floor of the canoe. We must have also slept,
for we were roused in an hour or two by the canoe
sticking its nose into the bank. This roused the
paddlers, who feared the current would upset the
dugout. Their voices roused us to find that we had
come out in a clearing in the woods of several miles
in length. We landed to stretch our legs and
reconnoitre, and found ten or a dozen horses feeding
peacefully. One of them was so tame that I walked up to
pat him, but he became uneasy, snorted, and moved
away. I see him now, and always shall, a roan with
three white feet and a white nose, and could, if
necessary, draw his brand from memory. Cattle fed
farther off^, but to approach them for a man on foot
would have been dangerous, especially at night.
The canoe had grounded not far from where the forest
bounded the clearing, and in the moonlight the trees
formed a continuous wall so black and solid-looking
that it seemed made of masonry. We re-embarked,
refreshed, drank the last bottles of the kola, and for an
hour sat smoking, lulled by the current lapping up
against the side of the canoe and by the plashing of
the paddles as they dipped regularly.
We slipped down once again between dark woods
without a trace of human habitation. Once a large
animal crossed swimming, not far in front of us. It
may have been a tapir or a capybara, but when it saw
us it swam instinctively into the shadow of the trees,
leaving a gentle ripple as it passed. The Southern

244 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
Cross hung in the sky above our heads, Sirius gleamed
redly, and all the stars seemed to shoot beams of
softest light into the water in the still tropic night.
Occasionally, but rarely, sounds of wild animals
came from the recesses of the everglades. It seemed
that we, afloat in our canoe, were the sole inhabitants
of an unpeopled world, alone with destiny. Once more
sleep overcame us, but stiU we drifted on. Two or three
times I woke and looked out on the interminable
woods. The boatmen both were sleeping bowed over
their paddles, and once when I looked up, my secretary
was paddling, seated beside the slumbering Indian.
The night wore on, and so we passed it, sleeping,
and waking fitfully, now paddling for a space, now
drifting noiselessly. At last I woke, dripping with
dew and stiff, to find the world all buried in white
mist. We were afloat upon a ghostly river. The
trees appeared gigantic, seen through the steaming
cauldron. The Southern Cross had set, and the chill
in the air showed that the day was just about to break.
Little by little a faint glow of red appeared, and
the mist slowly disappeared. As the sun rose, in the
fresh air of the new day, we found ourselves drifting
between two sandbanks, with shallows stretching out
between them, peopled by myriads of cormorants.
They seemed asleep, for as we noiselessly were wafted
past, none of them stirred from where it stood. Almost
immediately the sun's rays shone upon the stream,
and then a miracle occurred — one of those miracles
that Nature sometimes exhibits for the benefit of those
who seek her out, or chance to stray, as we had done,
to her remotest haunts.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 245
Myriads and myriads of fish leaped up into the
air. The water boiled with them, and the sun shone
upon their silvery sides. Fish, three or four feet long,
shot up into the air and fell into the water with
a resounding crash. Fish, of the size of herrings,
shot up gracefully, their bodies bent in a half
circle, and disappeared again so quickly that we
rubbed our eyes, to make sure that they had really
leaped and disappeared.
Millions of fish, the size of minnows, put their
heads up into the air, and made a tiny caper as if they
too wished to salute the sun. The water boiled ;
showers of spray darted up and fell upon the floor of
the canoe. It seemed a universal act of adoration of
the sun by all the fish, past, present, and to come, that
ever swam in the San Jorge River, since the first
conquest of the land or the beginning of the world.
The miracle, for I maintain it surely was one — that
is, if miracles in their real essence are but the triumph
of the forces that Nature holds deep buried in her
womb — lasted but a few minutes, and then the fish,
as if tired of the upper air, or as if their duty was
discharged, all disappeared into their natural element.
It left us wondering. Even the stolid Indian
boatmen were astonished, and one said, " Jesus, what
a world of fish !"
Then they bent to their paddles sturdily, whilst
we sat underneath the "toldo"' sheltering from the
sun. In a few hours we passed the mouth of the great
1 Awning or tent.

246 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
Cauca River, then ran into the Magdalena, more than
a mile in breadth.
Great barges, known as bongos, crept along the
banks, propelled by crews of Indian punters, and rafts a
hundred feet in length swept down the current, with
whole families camped upon the logs.
Long, arrow-like canoes shot out occasionally
with a man standing in the stern, like a Venetian
gondolier. Great herds of cattle fed upon the banks, and now
and then a swart vaquero, swinging his lazo, rounded
them up, galloping furiously. On every sandbank
there were basking alligators, log-like but watchful,
whose little eyes, sunk in their scaly foreheads, seemed
immovable. The forest upon both banks of the river
towered high above us, making us feel as small in our
canoe as ants afloat upon a water-lily leaf, feeble and
impotent to cope with the gigantic vegetation that
seemed antagonistic to mankind.
The fierce sun blazed upon the water, which
reflected it upon our faces as through a magnifying
glass, and still we paddled on.
Then, passing round an elbow of the stream meet
ing the influx of a creek, that raised a little seaway, in
which we tossed about in the canoe like a log tosses
in the surf upon a beach, we came upon the town as
if by accident. Built upon piles and looking like a
Dyak village in the Straits of Singapore, the town of
Magangue lay sweltering, half buried in the haze.
We had come into our port. Canoes and horses;
old-world towns; the infinite, wide plains; the forests
all bedecked with orchids and lianas ; the heat, the

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 247
morning chill, and the discomforts of the road, with
all that these things mean to a traveller, when at home
he muses by the fire, had become memories.
Next day saw us aboard a high-decked, stern-
wheel steamer, on our passage to the coast.

PRINTED IN GREAT BRIT^AIN BY BftLlNG AND SONS, LTD., GUILDFORD AND ESHER

YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

3 9002 08837 4138

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