>!■ 2<>. )S 0t tfw Wteohgtoj PRINCETON, N. J. Purchased by the Hamill Missionary Fund. Division ! /n/. .FoZ Section VAGABONDING DOWN THE ANDES Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 \ https://archive.org/details/vagabondingdowna00fran_0 In the Monte Grande , the “Great Wilderness’' of Bolivia, the commander of the first garrison insisted on sending a boy soldier, with an ancient and rusted Winchester, to “protect” me from the savages • VAGABONDIN DOWN THE AND BEING THE NARRATIVE OF A JOURNEY, CHIEFLY AFOOT, FROM PANAMA TO BUENOS AIRES HARRY A. FRANCK Author of “A Vagabond Journey Around the World,” “Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras,” “Four Months Afoot in Spain,” “Zone Policeman 88,” etc. ILLUSTRATED WITH 176 UNUSUAL PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR, WITH A MAP SHOWING THE ROUTE NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1917 Copyright, 1917, by The Century Co. Published September, 1917 A FOREWORD OF WARNING A few years ago, when I began looking over the map of the world again, I chanced to have just been reading Prescott’s “ Conquest of Peru,” and it was natural that my thoughts should turn to South America. My only plan, at the outset, was to follow, if possible, the old military highway of the Incas from Quito to Cuzco. Every trav- eler, however, knows the tendency of a journey to grow under one’s feet. This one grew with such tropical luxuriance that before it ended I had spent, not eight months, but four full years, and had covered not merely the ancient Inca Empire, but all the ten republics and three colonies of South America. A considerable portion of this journey was made on foot. The reader may be moved to ask why. First of all, I formed the habit of walking early in life, developing an inability to depend on others in my movements. Then, too, the route lay through many regions in which no other animal than man can make his way for extended periods. Moreover, there was the question of caste. It is one of the drawbacks of South America that a white man cannot efface himself and be an unobserved observer, as on the highways of Europe. Social lines are so sharply drawn that he who would be received in frank equality by the peon, by the great mass of the population, must live and travel much as they do. Merely to ride a horse lifts him above the communality and sets a certain barrier, akin to race prejudice, between him and the foot-going hordes among whom my chief interest lay. At best these lines of caste are a drag on observant travel in South America. The “ gringo ” can never get completely out of his social stratum. His very color betrays him. It is always “ Goot mawning, Meestear,” too often with a silly, patronizing smile, from the “ gente decente ” class ; among the rest his mere appearance makes him as conspicuous as a white man among West Indians. Never can he be an inconspicuous part of the crowd, as in Europe. To get in touch with the “ common people ” requires actually living in their huts and tramping their roads. The dilettante method of approaching them, “ slumming,” will not do. The disadvantages of the primitive means of locomotion in wild regions, such as the Andes, are obvious. But v A FOREWORD OF WARNING the advantages of walking over more ordinary methods of travel are no less decided. Though the means be more laborious, the mind is far sharper for facts and impressions while on foot than when loll- ing half asleep on a horse or in a train. The mere pleasure of look- ing forward to his arrival, subconsciously building up before his mind’s eye a picture of his goal complete in every detail, not to men- tion that of looking back upon the journey from the comfort of his own armchair, is ample reward to any true victim of wanderlust. Thou- sands of men, supplied with all the comforts money can buy, roam the earth from top to bottom — and are supremely bored in the process. It is the struggle, the satisfaction of physical action, the accomplish- ment of something greatly desired and for a long time seemingly im- possible, that brings real pleasure, that makes every step forward a satisfaction, every little success in the advance an enjoyment. For after all, real travel is real labor. He who journeys only so far as he can without exertion, who shirks the difficulties, will know no more of the real joy of travel than he who lives without toil, seeking pleasure only and finding but the cold, dead body thereof, without ever realizing the joy of life itself. As in ancient times, so it is in the Andes to-day ; distance cannot be covered without fatigue. On the other hand there is the com- pensation of knowing completely the country through which one passes, storing away in the mind a picture of each long-anticipated spot, indelible as long as life lasts. The Andean traveler will know the pleasures as well as the drawbacks of the journeys of earlier, more primitive days, the joy of evening hours, when suddenly, from the summit of the last toilsome ascent, he discovers, spread out in its smiling valley below, the peaceful village in which he is to take his night’s repose, or when he perceives from afar, gilded by the rays of the setting sun, the towers of the famous city so long sought,— i hours of a vivid joy that few experiences can equal. Thanks again to the barriers of caste, he who would really know the masses of Latin America should not only live with them, but should dress as plainly as they do. It is hard at best to get into more than superficial contact with the South American Indian, and to some ex- tent his traits, like his blood, run through all classes. The upper- caste Latin American is by nature a masquerader ; he treats a “ dis- tinguished stranger ” as a real estate agent pilots a prospective buyer about the streets of some “ New Berlin,” cleverly sidestepping the drawbacks ; he shows his real self only when he is not on parade, be- vi A FOREWORD OF WARNING fore he learns that he is under observation, and claps on the mask he always has instantly at hand when he wishes to show “himself”; and he rates every man’s importance by the height of his collar and the color of his spats, cloaking himself in pretense accordingly. He who does not wish to know the truth about a Latin-American country should attire himself in a frock-coat, a silk hat, and appear with let- ters of introduction to the “ people of importance.” His hosts will take him in regal style along two or three of the best streets and into the show-places, will gild every garbage-can that is likely to fall under his august eye, and will shield him from all the unpleasantnesses of life as carefully as the guardians of the princess in the fairy-tale. Hence the mere lack of ostentation, the mere appearance of being one of the negligible masses, goes far toward giving the unassigned wan- derer a vast advantage in getting at the unmasked truth, in avoid- ing false impressions, over men of more brilliant mind and better pow- ers of observation. My purpose in journeying through South America was primarily to study the ways of the common people. I am no more fond of the unsavory, either in physical contact or on the printed page, than are the rest of my fellow-countrymen. But every occupation has its draw- backs. No traveler through interior South America with whom I have yet spoken has found conditions better than herein indicated ; though for some strange reason it appears to be the custom to shield readers from this, to tell intimate facts only privately and to falsify public utterances by glossing over all the crudities. The fact is that the man who has spent four years afield south of the Rio Grande, and has come back to tell the tale, can only shake with laughter when an exponent of the “ germ theory ” speaks. Explorers with millionaire fathers-in-law tell us that the out-of-the-way traveler to such a country should take with him numberless supplies, from sheets to after-dinner coffee. It is the best plan, for those whose aim is to live in comfort — or a still better plan is to remain at home. Far be it from me to censure the man who journeys southward for other purposes for taking with him all the comforts he can carry ; but he who seeks to know the people intimately must not merely tramp their trails ; he must become, in so far as is possible, physically one of them. We should care little about the impressions of a European studying life in the United States who lived in his own tent and subsisted on canned goods he brought with him, however much we might admire his foresight. It may be argued that by following the plan I have outlined I saw vii A FOREWORD OF WARNING only the lower class and do not report conditions among the more fortunate inhabitants. Yet after all, the peon, the Indian, the masses, comprise nine tenths of the population of South America. There are fewer persons of pure European blood between our southern boundary and Cape Horn than in the state of New York ; and by no means all of these live in even comparative comfort. The well-dressed minority of Latin America has often had its spokesman; numerically, and on the whole, the condition of these is of as little importance in the general scheme of things as are the doings of our “ Four Hundred ” in the life of our hundred million. I have, therefore, summed up briefly the ways of this small, if conspicuous, class, and its ways are so monotonously alike throughout the length and breadth of Latin Amer- ica that this lumping together is not difficult. The chief problem in any country is the status of the great mass of population, the condi- tion of the common people, and it is to this that I have almost en- tirely confined myself in the ensuing pages. “Have you read ’s book on Brazintine?” a noted French traveler once asked me. “ He says all the brazintinos are immoral and dishonest. You and I, who have been there, know this is true. But those are things one tells to a circle of friends, that one shares over a pipe at the club, mais, enfin, ga ne s’ecrit pas” ! It is due, I suppose, to a lack of Gallic finesse that I have never been able to grasp this point of view. Why the plain truth should be reserved for the fireside and personal friends, and should be kept from one’s friends of the printed page, is beyond my fathoming. At any rate, I have made no attempt to follow that plan. I tried not to ex- pect everything in South America to be exactly as it is in the United States — I should, indeed, have considered that a misfortune. After all, I went south to see the Latin American as he is, not with the hope of finding him another American merely speaking another language. I have tried to judge him by his own ideals and history, fully aware that in the latter he did not have a “ fair shake,” rather than by our own. Yet the traveler cannot entirely lay aside his native point of view ; that would imply that he was not convinced of the wisdom of his own way of life, and the question would arise, Why not change? Neither the Latin-American nor the American point of view is all right or all wrong; they are simply different. Because we criticize does not necessarily mean that we claim superiority, though I am reminded of the American resident in South America who asserted that were he not convinced of his superiority to his neighbors, he would viii A FOREWORD OF WARNING forthwith tie a mill-stone about his neck and jump in where it was deep. But the traveler who does not express his own honest opinions, “ loses,” as the Brazilians say, “ a splendid chance to keep silent.” I have, therefore, set down my real, heartfelt impressions. These may be false, even worthless; the reader has full right to reject them in toto. But at least they have the virtue of frankness. Moreover, South America has had its fair share of apologists. Virtually every country publishes at intervals a luxurious volume of self-praise that resembles in its point of view the year-book of a high school or college class. Trade journals are constantly painting things South American in the rosiest of colors. It has been the tra- ditional policy of certain branches of our government to cultivate Latin- American friendship by a myopic disregard of all the shadows in the picture. In our own capital there exists a criminally optimistic so- ciety for the propagation of emasculated information concerning our neighbors to the south. Among “ distinguished strangers ” from our own land who have visited Latin America there seems to have been a conspiracy to whitewash everything, an agreement to have all they see or experience bathed, barbered, and manicured before permitting it to make its bow to our public. The enormous majority of descriptions of South America resemble the original about as much as a portrait resembles the sitter after a professional photographer has finished with it. I do not know what the Latin American may have been in other years — perhaps he was the splendid fellow many make him out. I am merely telling, as charitably as possible, how I found him. I am not interested in winning or losing his friendship, in selling him goods, or in gaining his “ moral support ” to our governmental activi- ties. I am interested only in giving as faithful a picture as possible of my experiences with him. There are good things, praiseworthy things in South America ; if, in the telling, these have been over- shadowed by the less laudable, it is because the latter do so overshadow in point of fact. Obviously, the experiences of four years, even in Latin America, cannot be crowded within the covers of a volume or two. I have, therefore, confined myself within certain limits. History, for instance, has been almost completely eliminated. I have taken for granted in the reader a certain basic knowledge of South America, though in the case of many even well-educated Americans this seems to be taking much for granted. I have passed as briefly as possible over those IX A FOREWORD OF WARNING things which are already to be found within the walls of our libraries, confining myself so far as possible to that which I have personally seen or experienced. I have, however, dipped as freely into the litera- ture of each country as into the life itself, and in the few cases where I have made use of facts so acquired, I have not taken of my cramped space to acknowledge the debt in words. For similar reasons, though it may seem ingratitude, I have not taken the reader’s time to thank individuals by name for personal kindnesses. They were many ; but the doers know that their deeds were appreciated, without thanks being detailed here ; or if they do not, it is the fate of those who lend passing assistance to world-roamers to take their reward in inner satis- faction. / The modern reader is prone to tire quickly of mere description; but nature is so important a factor in the Andes that it cannot be briefly passed over. Personally I like an occasional sunset, like it so much that I sometimes go to the unrequited toil of attempting to paint one. The reader who prefers his stage bare, as in Shakespeare’s day, can easily glide over those pages. If he does without stage-setting, however, and relies only on his imagination, his picture is apt to be false, for the imagination has very faulty materials from our school- books and the tales of wandering Miinchausens to work upon. Yet after all, even with all one’s effort, it is sad how little of the splendid scenery, the atmosphere, the charm of it all — for in spite of its draw- backs, South America has charm — one can get down on paper. This was not a voyage of discovery ; or rather, if there was discov- ery, it was only of a different stratum of life, and not of new lands. My plan was not so much to find unexplored country in the ordinary sense, as to go by hitherto unmentioned paths through inhabited and known regions, the out-of-the-way corners of familiar cities and the undescribed gathering-places of mankind. In that sense South America is still chiefly “ unexplored.” Lastly, let me give fair warning that this is no tale of adventures. I would gladly have had it otherwise. I sought eagerly for experi- ences that would make the story more worth the telling; I tried my sincerest to get into trouble ; all in vain. In Mexico I marched peace- fully about between two falling empires. In Guatemala I strolled non- chalantly among Estrada Cabrara’s band of hired assassins. In Hon- duras I chatted with the leaders of the latest revolution. In Colombia I met many cripples of the civil war but recently ended. In Ecuador I found only peace and apathy in the very streets through which an ex- x A FOREWORD OF WARNING president and his henchman had been dragged to death a few months before. In Peru all was love and brotherhood — until after I left. In the Bolivian Chaco wild Indians wiped out a company of soldiers not a hundred miles from where I was passing in placid unconcern. In the Paraguayan capital I sat with the man who not a year before had captained a particularly bloody coup d’etat. In Brazil I passed through two sections virtually in anarchy, and in one of its state capi- tals watched a riot that came perilously near being a revolution. In Venezuela I strolled serenely through the very ranks of revolters mere days before the leader and many of his band were killed. Yet hardly once did I knowingly come near personal violence. The fact is that South America is atrociously safe. Dangers are mostly those of popu- lar novelists, from the pages of travelers who succumb to the natural temptation to “ draw the long bow,” after the fashion of Marco Polo. It may be that there was a better way to have told this story than as a day-to-day narrative. But even at that, it could not honestly have escaped a certain monotony ; for monotony is ingrained in the fiber of South America. Not to have reported the journey chronologically would have made for succinctness, but at the expense, perhaps, of truth. It may be wearisome to hear of virtually every night’s stop- ping-place; yet as the traveler through the interior must stop at al- most every hut along the way, the sum total of these is a description of the whole country. If the story appears sketchy and piecemeal, it is because I have denied myself, erroneously perhaps, even the Bar- rovian privilege of transposing or inventing enough to make a smoother and more interesting story. A book of travel cannot have something always happening; that is the privilege of fiction. The novelist can forge his materials to his liking ; the travel-writer is very limited, even in opportunity to amalgamate, his material being very hard and non- plastic. Even to transpose and combine incidents is often to falsify, for what is true in one spot may never have been so a hundred miles further on. The necessity of suddenly abandoning this task for other and more important duties has made it impossible to give it final polish, to eliminate much that should have been eliminated, and to improve much of what remains. Harry A. Franck. Plattsburg, New York, August I, 1917. xi CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I Up to Bogota . r. . . . 3 II The Cloistered City 22 III From Bogota Over the Quindio .......... 39 IV Along the Cauca Valley 63 V Down the Andes to Quito 85 VI The City of the Equator 127 VII Down Volcano Avenue 167 VIII Through Southern Ecuador 190 IX The Wilds of Northern Peru 209 X Approaching Inca Land 244 XI Drawbacks of the Trail 270 XII The Roof of Peru 300 XIII Round About the Peruvian Capital 324 XIV Overland Toward Cuzco 342 XV The Route of the Conquistadores 392 XVI The City of the Sun 405 XVII A Forgotten City of the Andes 454 XVIII The Collasuyu, or “Upper” Peru 480 XIX On Foot Across Tropical Bolivia 517 XX Life in the Bolivian Wilderness 543 XXI Skirting the Gran Chaco 573 XXII Southward Through Guarani Land 600 ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE In the Monte Grande, the “Great Wilderness” of Bolivia, the commander of the garrison insisted on sending a boy soldier, with an ancient and rusted Winchester, to “protect” me from the savages Frontispiece One of the wood-burning steamers of the lower Magdalena, on the route to Bogotd ............ 4 Along the Magdalena we halted several times each day for fuel ... 4 Hays catches his first glimpse of the jungles of Colombia .... 13 The stewards of the “ Alicia ” in full uniform . . . . . . .13 A village on the banks of the Magdalena . . . . . . .17 Jiradot ; end of the steamer line and beginning of the railroad to Bogotd . . 17 A typical Indian hut on the outskirts of Bogotd ...... 20 Indian girls and women are the chief dray-horses of the Colombian capital . 20 Bogotd and its sabana from the summit of Guadalupe .... 28 The central plaza of Bogotd from the window of our room .... 28 A chola, or half-Indian girl, of Bogotd backed by an outcast of the “gente decente ” class ........... 32 A street of Bogotd. The line of flaggings in the center is for the use of Indians and four-footed burden bearers ...... 32 Celebrating Colombia’s Independence Day (July 20th) .... 37 Meanwhile in another square the populace marvels at the feats of "maroma nacional” of an amateur circus ........ 37 A section of the ancient highway, built by the Spaniards more than three centuries ago ........... 44 Fellow- travelers at the edge of the sabana of Bogotd ..... 44 Approaching the Central Cordillera of the Andes ..... 49 Hays, seated before the “Hotel Mi Casa” and behind one of his $5 cigars . 53 A bit of the road by which we mounted to the Quindio pass over the central range, with forests of the slender palms peculiar to the region . . . 53 The first days on the road ; showing how I would have traveled by choice . . 60 On the western side of the Central Cordillera the trail drops quickly down into the tropics again .......... 60 XV ILLUSTRATIONS Like those of the days of Shakespeare, the theater of Cartago consists of a stage — of split bamboo, with a tile roof — inside the patio of the “hotel” . Cartago watching our departure ........ Along the Cauca Valley .......... In places the Cauca Valley swarmed with locusts ..... Worse than the locusts .......... The market-place of Tulua, with the cross that protects it against all sorts of calamities. ........... A view of the “sacred city” of Buga, with the new church erected in honor of the miraculous Virgin ......... A horseman of the Cauca in full regalia ....... The scene of “Maria, ” most famous of South American novels, and once the residence of its author ......... The home of “Maria”; and a typical hacendado family of the Cauca The market-place of Cajibio, in the highlands of Popaydn .... Crossing the Cauca River with a pack train by one of the typical “ferries” of the Andes ........... A village of the mountainous region south of Popaydn .... Hays, less considerable weight, and a fellow-roadster ..... An Indian woman weaving teque-teque or native cloth, by the same method used before the Conquest .......... Quito lies in a pocket of the Andes, at the foot of Pichincha, more than 10,000 feet above sea-level .......... A view of Quito, backed by the Panecillo that bottles it up on the south A patio of the Monastery of San Francisco, one of the eighteen monasteries and convents of Quito, said to be the most extensive in the Western Hemisphere ........... The family of “Don Panchi to” with whom I lived in Quito .... Girls of the “gente decente” class of Quito, in a school run by European nuns Quito does not put its faith in small locks and keys ..... Ecuadorian soldiers before the national “palace” . . . . . A corner of Quito — looking through a garbage-hole into one of the many ravines by which the city is broken up ....... After the bullfight a yearling is often turned into the ring for the amusement of the youthful male population of Quito ...... A group of the Indians that form so large a percentage of Quito’s population The undertaker’s delivery wagon ........ iCING PAGE 64 64 69 69 72 72 76 76 80 80 96 IOI IOI 108 108 120 129 129 133 133 I40 I40 144 I49 149 156 XVI ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE Probably not his own in spite of the circumstantial evidence against him . Almost everything that moves in Quito rides on the backs of Indians . An Indian family driving away dull care — and watching me take the picture of a dog down the street ......... The street by which one leaves Quito on the tramp to the south . Long before Edison thought of his poured-cement houses, the Indians of the Andes were building their fences in a similar manner .... Typical huts of the p&ramo of Tiopullo ....... Beyond the paramo of Azuay the trail clambers over broken rock ledges into the town of Canar ........... Indians carrying a grand piano across the plaza of Canar on a journey to the interior ............ The Indians of Ecuador draw their droves of cattle on after them by playing a weird, mournful ‘ ‘ music ’ ’ on the bocina, made of a section of bamboo Ruins of the fortress of Ingapirca, near Canar ...... A mild example of the “ road ” through southern Ecuador . . . . Cuenca, third city of Ecuador, lies in one of the most fertile and beautiful valleys of the Andes .......... A detail of the “ Panama ” hat market of the Azogues . . Arrived at the wholesale establishments of Cuenca, the hats are finished . My home in Cuenca, with the Montesinos family ..... Students of the Colegio of Cuenca ........ The “ English Language Club ” of Cuenca in full session .... An hacienda-house of southern Ecuador, backed by its grove of eucalyptus- trees. .......... Plowing for wheat or corn on the hacienda of Cumbe ..... The church, and the dwelling of my host, the priest of Ona .... Loja, southernmost city of Ecuador, backed by her endless labyrinth of moun- tains ............ The guinea-pigs on which I feasted upon breaking out of the wilderness on the Peruvian frontier — and the cook ........ The Indians of Zaraguro are different, both in type and costume, from the meeker types of Quito and vicinity ....... In the semi-tropical Province of Jaen, in north Peru, sugarcane grows luxuriantly The sugar that is not turned into aguardiente, or native whiskey, is boiled down in the trapiche into crude brown blocks, variously known as panela, chancaca, rapadura, empanisado, papelon, etc., weighed and wrapped in banana-leaves, selling at about 5 cents for 3 pounds .... xvii 156 161 161 165 165 168 168 172 172 176 176 181 184 184 188 188 193 193 200 208 208 213 213 220 220 ILLUSTRATIONS FACING • PAGE The tenienle-gobernador, or “lieutenant-governor, ” of Jaen .... 229 The two of us ........... 229 The main street of the great provincial capital of Jaen .... 236 The government “ ferry ” across the Huancabamba ..... 236 A woman of the jungles of Jaen preparing me the first meal in days at the typical Ecuadorian cook-stove ........ 248 Peruvian prisoners earn their own livelihood by weaving hats, spinning yam, and the like ........... 248 The ancient city of Cajamarca lies in one of the most magnificent highland valleys of the Andes .......... 257 The only wheeled vehicle I saw in Peru during my first three months in that country ............ 264 One of the many unfinished churches of Cajamarca ..... 264 One of the few remaining simpichacas, or suspension bridges, of the Andes . .272 A typical shop of the Andes . . . . . . . . .272 Detail of the ruins of “ Marca-Huamachuco, ” high upon the mountain above the modern town of that name ........ 289 Pallasca, to which I climbed from one of the mightiest quebradas in the Andes . 289 Catalino Aguilar and his wife, Fermin Alva, my nurses in the hospital of Cardz . 296 An Indian of Cerro de Pasco region carrying a slaughtered sheep . . . 296 Though within a few degrees of the equator, Huaraz, capital of the most populous department of Peru, has a veritable Swiss setting of snow-clad peaks and glaciers .......... 304 Threshing wheat with the aid of the wind ....... 304 Crossing the Central Cordillera of the Andes south of Huardz, barely nine degrees below the equator ......... 308 The fortress of the former Inca city of Hudnaco el Viejo . . . .317 A typical residence of the Indians of the high pdramos . . . . .317 The arrieros with whom I left Huallanga, and the family inhabiting the hut shown in the preceding picture . . . . . . .321 The immaculate staff of the Cerro de Pasco hospital . . . . .321 The semi- weekly lottery drawing in the main plaza of Lima . . .328 All aboard ! A Sunday excursion that was not posed ..... 328 The bleak mining town of Morococha, more than 16,000 feet above sea-level 336 The American miners of Morococha live in comfort for all the altitude and bleakness of their surroundings ........ 336 A typical miner of the high Peruvian Andes ...... 340 xviii ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE Miners of Morococha, — a Welch foreman and two of his gang . . . 340 A hint of what the second-class traveler on Peruvian railways must put up with ............ 349 The wide main street and a part of the immense market of Huancayo, said to be the largest in Peru .......... 349 A detail of the market of Huancayo, with a bit of pottery like that of the days of the Incas ........... 356 “Chusquito” descending one of the few remnants of the old Inca highway I found from Quito to Cuzco ........ 356 Huancavelica, one of the most picturesque and least- visited provincial capitals of Peru ............ 365 On the “road” to Ayacucho I overtook a lawyer who was importing a piano 376 Carrying the piano across one of the typical bridges of the Peruvian Andes . 376 The striking headdress of the women of Ayacucho ..... 385 The friendly and ingratiating waiters of our hotel in Ayacucho . . . 385 A religious procession in the main square of Ayacucho .... 392 A gala Sunday in the improvised “ bullring ” of Ayacucho .... 392 A familiar sight in the Andes — a recently butchered beef hung in sheets along the clothes-line to sun-dry into charqui ...... 400 A typical “bed” in the guest-room provided for travelers by many Peruvian hacendados ........... 400 The fatherless urchin who fell in with me beyond Andahuaylas . . . 405 My body-servant in Andahuaylas, and the sickle with which he was supposed to cut all the alfalfa “ Chusquito ” could eat ...... 405 A view of Quito, capital of Ecuador, from the summit of the Panecillo . . 408 View of Cuzco, the ancient Inca capital, from the summit of Sacsahuaman . 408 Building a house in Peru .......... 412 The patio of the “ Hotel Progreso ” of Abancay . . . . . .412 A religious procession in Abancay . . . . . . . .417 A chola of Abancay, wearing the dicalla which all put on at the age of puberty . 432 A chiefly-Indian woman of Abancay ........ 432 The first view of Cuzco .......... 437 An Indian of Cuzco, speaking only Quichua ...... 444 Indian women of the market-place, wearing the “ pancake ” hat of Cuzco . 444 An Indian required to pay for the day’s mass proudly clings to his staff of office . 449 Youth from a village near Cuzco, each with a coca cud in his cheek . . 449 XIX ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE Our party setting out for Machu Picchu across the high plains about Cuzco . 453 Ollantaybambo, the end of the first day’s journey, in the valley of the Uru- bamba ............ 453 Spring plowing in the Urubamba valley ....... 460 As we rode eastward into the sunrise down the gorge of the Urubamba, glacier-clad Piri above threw off its night wraps of clouds . . . 464 The semicircular tower and some of the finest stone-cutting and fitting of Machu Picchu ........... 464 We came out on the edge of things and Machu Picchu lay before us . . 469 The resounding gorge of the Urubamba, with terraces of the ancient inhabitants on the inaccessible left bank ........ 472 One of the many stairways of Machu Picchu ...... 472 The temple of the three windows, an unusual feature of Inca architecture . . 476 " Ruminaui ” seated on the intihuatana, or sun-dial, at the top of the town . 476 The babies of Bolivia sit in a whole nest of finery on nurse’s back. . . 485 Arequipa is built of stones light as wood, cut from a neighboring quarry . . 485 Indians plowing on the shores of Titicaca ....... 492 Sunrise at Copacabana, the sacred city of Bolivia on the shores of Titicaca . 492 One of the two huge figures facing the grass-grown plaza of modern Tiahuanaco at the entrance to the church . . . . . . . .501 The ancient god of Tiahuanaco before which the Indian woman, herding her pigs, bowed down in worship ........ 501 Arequipa, second city of Peru, in its desert oasis, backed by misty volcano . 504 “ Suddenly the bleak pampa falls away at one’s feet” ..... 504 Llamas of La Paz patiently awaiting the return of their driver . . . 508 Down the valley below La Paz the pink and yellow soil stands in fantastic, rain-gashed cliffs .......... 508 Cholas of La Paz, in their native garb ....... 513 “Sandy” leading his train of carts loaded with construction material for the railroad to Cochabamba ......... 528 The “gringo bench” of Cochabamba, — left to right, “Old Man Simpson”; Tommy Cox; Sampson, the Cockney; Owen; and Scribmer . . . 528 The home and family of the alcalde who could not read .... 536 Our impromptu celebration of Christmas Eve in Pampa Grande . . . 536 A street of Santa Cruz de la Sierra after a shower ..... 545 Conscripts of the Bolivian army practicing their first maneuvers in the central plaza of Santa Cruz .......... 545 XX ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE Manuel Abasto, a native of Santa Cruz de la Sierra ..... 552 Through the open doors of Santa Cruz one often catches a glimpse of the patio, ' a garden gay with flowers ......... 552 Konanz seated on our baggage in the pelota de cuero ..... 560 The force of one of the four fortines, or “fortresses,” with which the Bolivian government garrisons the Monte Grande against the savages . . . 560 Jim and “Hughtie” Powell, Americans from Texas who have turned Bolivian peons ............ 564 A jungle hair-cut ........... 564' The old stone and brick church and monastery of San Josd . . . -573 The fatherly old cura of San Jose standing before the Jesuit sun-dial . . 573 Henry Halsey, the American rancher, of tropical Bolivia, and his family . 577 Saddle-steers take the place of horses and mules in the muddy parts of tropical Bolivia ............ 577 A German of tropical Bolivia and his “ housekeeper” . . . . .581 Santiago de Chiquitos, above the gnat-line, backed by its reddish cliffs . .581 “Don Cupertino,” chief adornment of eastern Bolivia, with his family and dependents ........... 588 The tipoy, a single loose gown, constitutes the entire garb of most of the native women of tropical Bolivia ......... 592 A girl of Santiago de Chiquitos selling a chicken to the cook of “ los americanos” 592 The shoemaker who lived next door to “los americanos” in Santiago de Chiqui- tos, and his latest “ wife ” ......... 597 A birthday dance in Santiago de Chiquitos, in honor of the German in the center background ........... 597 A view from the promenade-deck of the steamer ..... 604 A Paraguayan landscape, with native cart ....... 604 The mixture of types in the Argentine ....... 608 MAP ’ The author’s itinerary .......... 40 xxi VAGABONDING DOWN THE ANDES VAGABONDING DOWN THE ANDES CHAPTER I UP TO BOGOTA WHEN we had “ made a stake ” as Canal Zone policemen, Leo Hays and I sailed from Panama to South America. On board the Royal Mail steamer the waist of the ship, to which our tickets confined us, was a screaming pandemonium of West Indian negroes, homeward bound from canal digging, and a veritable chaos of their baggage and household goods — and gods — ranging from tin trunks to pet monkeys, from battered phonographs to plush- bound Bibles. We preempted deck space for our suitcases and sat down upon them. It chanced to be the same day on which, eight years before, I had set out on a “ vagabond journey ” around the world. Twenty-four hours after our last Zone handshake we marched down the gangplank among the little brown policemen of Cartagena, Co- lombia, and fought our way through a mob of dock loafers to the toy railroad train that eventually creaked away into the city. Our re- volvers and cartridge belts we wore out of sight ; uniforms and night- sticks no longer figured in our equipment. But the campaign costume we had chosen, — broad felt hats, Norfolk jackets and breeches of olive drab, and the leather leggings common to the Zone — were evidently more conspicuous here than we had suspected. For about us wher- ever we moved sounded awe-struck stage whispers : “ Psst ! Policia de la Zona ! ” The ancient city and fortress of Cartagena — and for America it is old indeed — squats on a sandy point jutting far out into the blue Caribbean, with a beach curving inland on either hand. A sea-wall be- side which that of Panama seems a plaything, of massive weather- tarnished, ocean-lashed stones, brown-gray with age, with stern, dig- 3 VAGABONDING DOWN THE ANDES nified old gateways, encloses the city in irregular form. On its top is a promenade varying in width from a carriage drive to a manoeuver field. Outside, down on the languidly garrulous beach, little thatched huts have drifted together under the cocoanut groves. Inside, the dust-deep streets have long since lost most of the cobbled paving of their Spanish birthright ; the narrow, inadequate tile sidewalks are far from continuous, and the rules of life are so lax that only the con- stant sweep of the sea air accounts for old age amid conditions that should bring death early and often. Long before we reached our hotel we regretted our penuriousness in scorning cabs and carriers. Not only did the weight of our suitcases double every few yards in the leaden tropical air, and the labyrinthian way through the city elude us. at every turn, but at least a score of ragged boys trailed respectfully but hopefully in our rear with the anticipatory manner of an opera understudy waiting in the edge of the wings for the principal to break down at the next note. A generous percentage of the population crowded the doorways and children raced ahead to summon forth their families to behold what was apparently the most exciting thing that had taken place in Cartagena in months. Evidently a Caballero bearing his own material burdens was a strange sight in South America. The populace stared fixedly, in as impersonal a way as ruminating oxen, and every few yards half-naked children, evidently abetted by their elders, swarmed out upon us with shrill cries of “ Wan sheeling ! ” We were soon reminded that we had left behind our power as well as our emoluments. The proprietress whose oily Hebrew smile greeted us at the hotel door was none other than one long “ wanted ” on the Zone on the charge of running a disorderly house. The room she as- signed us was enormous, but the furnishings were scant and thin, the beds mere strips of canvas, as befits a country of perennial midsummer. While we unpacked and shaved, a ragged brown urchin slipped in with the Barranquilla newspaper. In a characteristic burst of generosity Hays tossed him double the price demanded — only to discover just after the vendor was out of reach that the pauperous little sheet was twenty days old. It was a “ bunco game ” so aged it had grown new again. Maria, the chambermaid, already in the sear and yellow leaf, shuffled in frequently, supremely indifferent to our scantiness of attire. Now and then several younger females of decidedly African ancestry strolled by as nonchalantly, one by one, to inquire whether we had any soiled clothes to wash, and loitered about in a manner to suggest that 4 Along the Magdalena we halted several times each day for fuel, the villagers looking idly on while the crew carried many a woodpile on board across a precarious gang-plank UP TO BOGOTA the question was meant to be taken figuratively. This friendliness was the general attitude of all the town. Outwardly at least we were shown no discourtesy, and there was little confirmation of the reputed hatred of Americans. Yet almost from the moment of our landing we noted that Colombians seemed to avoid speaking to us beyond the require- ments of business or the cut and dried forms of their habitual polite- ness. Still, with only an anemic candle to flicker its pale shadows on the enclosing wall of the droning tropical night, we settled down to the conclusion that Colombia, alleged the deadly enemy of all things American and “ heretical,” was less black than she 'had been painted. We had reached the land of easy money. Merely to step into a bank with a $5 bill was to emerge with a bulging roll of $500. We could not repress a millionaire swagger when we tossed a hundred-dollar note on the counter to pay for a pair of socks, though it quickly wilted when a few nickel pieces were tendered in change. Hays dropped into a dingy little hole-in-the-wall to buy a cigar, but though it was cer- tainly the only $5 cigar he had ever strutted behind, he soon tossed it away in disgust*. The newcomer is apt to be startled when he hears a Colombian casually mention paying $10,000 for a mule — until he realizes that the speaker is really talking in cents. The Colombian notes, even those of the intrinsic value of our copper coin, are elabo- rately engraved, and the wonder grew how the Government could afford to print them. For those who will exert themselves, even in the tropics, there is a splendid view of all Cartagena from La Popa, a hill standing forth Gibraltar-like above the inner harbor, on its nose a massive old church and fortress combined. From it the cruder details of the town, the startling pink and sky-blue of newer walls and balconies, fade to the general inconspicuousness of the more age-mellowed houses. The ancient red-tile roofs blend artistically into the patches of greensward and the light pink of royal ponciana trees ; the whole city, edged by the landward-leaning cocoanut palms, is framed by a sea stretching away on either hand to the world’s end. The half-grown Colombian of forty in charge of La Popa and the telescope and telephone by which incoming ships are reported, changed gradually from canny distrust to garrulous curiosity and invited us to inspect his entire domain. The purely academic dislike of Americans we soon found was overcome with little effort by those who addressed men of his class in their own tongue. Conversation at length drifted to sanitation in Panama, Colombia’s “ rebel province,” as he called it. 5 VAGABONDING DOWN THE ANDES The fort-keeper listened to our tales in loose-jawed wonder and summed up his opinions of such gringo superstitions with : “ But here we do none of those things, senores ! The mosquitos prick us every day, yet we are well.” Our strange notion that disease could be carried by a mere insect was as absurd to him as was to us his own habit of relying for health on the plaster saint in the vaulted fortress church. Even in Panama information on travel in Colombia had been al- most as lacking as trust-worthy reports on the interior conditions of Mars. Only once in my five months on the Canal Zone had I run across even an ostensible source of knowledge. He was a native of Cali, and his answers had been distinctly Latin-American. “ Does it rain much in your country?” I had asked him. “ Si, senor, when it rains it is wet. When it does n’t it is dry.” “ Is it cold?” “ Si, senor, in the cold places it is cold, and in the hot places it is hot. No hay reglas fixas — there are no fixed rules.” “ How far is it from Cali to Popayan?” “ Ah, it is not near, senor.” “ About a hundred miles, perhaps ? ” “ Si, senor, just about that.” “ Isn’t it rather about three hundred?” “ Pues, si, senor, perhaps just about that.” There the matter had stood when we sailed. Once arrived in Cartagena, however, we found that a toy train left next day for Calamar on the Magdalena and that a second-class ticket to Honda, wherever that was, cost $2000! We had barely crammed ourselves into two seats of the little piano-box car next day when Hays started up with a snort and thrust the morning newspaper across at me. Done into English the item that had drawn his attention ran : “ SOME ONE “ who merits our entire confidence, informs us that yesterday there were in the “ city, taking photographic views of our forts and most important edifices, two “ foreign individuals who wore clothing of military cut of the cloth called “ khaki, and felt hats with wide brim. This costume, as it has been described “ to us, is that of the army of the United States ! Can these really be Amer- “ ican soldiers, or has a great outward similarity caused the suspicious imagina- tion to see that which in reality did not exist? We cannot assure it! ” We had hardly aspired to be taken for a hostile invasion from the dreaded “ Colossus of the North.” It was characteristic of Latin- 6 UP TO BOGOTA American thinking processes for the paragrapher to fancy that spies — for such the item covertly dubbed us — would appear in uniform. We had yet to learn, however, that the makers of newspaper, and of public opinion, in so far as it exists, in South America would often rank in our own land as irresponsible and poorly trained schoolboys. The miniature train, ambling away in a morning unoppressive in spite of the tropical sunshine, wound through a thin jungle, sometimes climbing, more often stopping at languorous, staring, thatched villages, in a region suffering from drought but of fertile appearance. By and by the jungle gave way to what might almost have been called prairie, slightly rolling and used only for grazing. Toward noon, beyond some swampy land, we clattered into the carelessly whitewashed town of Calamar, drowsing on the sandy bank of the Magdalena, here a half mile wide. Even before we jolted to a halt, the car filled with a strug- gling mob of beggars, shrill-voiced boys, and tattered men, eager, in their indolent tropical way, for some easy errand. Such unwonted energy soon evaporated. The population was of as mongrel a mixture as the yellow dogs that slunk about in the shade of trees and house walls, and appeared to hold identically the same attitude toward life. At length, in the cool of the following evening, the “Alicia ” began to plow her way slowly upstream. She was a three-story craft with a huge paddle-wheel at the stern, her lower deck crowded with unas- sorted freight, domestic animals, engines and wood-piles, with deck hands, native passengers, pots and pans and unattractive habits. Among the most conspicuous of the latter were those of an open-air den that served as general kitchen. Twice a day a small tub of rice, boiled plantains and some meat mystery, all cooked in a single kettle, was carried out on one of the barges alongside, where it was fallen up- on not only by the lower-deck passengers but by the even darker-skinned deck hands, dressed in what had once been trousers and the wear- forever shirts so popular in this region. A few owned spoons and others a piece of cocoanut shell, but these were no handicap to the ma- jority, armed only with the utensils of nature. Little had we suspected the meaning of “ second-class ” on the Magdalena ! Luckily the English agent of the line had been so shocked at sight of our tickets, particularly, perhaps, in the hands of Hays, who was in appearance the hero of any of our modern romantic novels stepping bodily forth from the cardboard of any of our popular illustrators, that he had ordered the steward to overlook the color thereof and treat 7 VAGABONDING DOWN THE ANDES us as cabin passengers. On the upper deck the steamer was open from stem to stern, a dining table stretching along her center and the sides lined by frail, box-like “ staterooms.” The little canvas cots, narrow as the charpoys of India, used alike by passengers and the unlaundered youths that passed for stewards, were dragged to any part of the craft that suited the whims of the sleeper. Our drinking water was the native Magdalena, sometimes carelessly filtered through a porous stone. There was even a shower-bath — when the paddle-wheel was elevating enough of the chocolate-colored river water to permit it to “ function ” — but it generally took most of the morning and all the stewards to find the misplaced key. Frequently for days at a time there were only the two of us to occupy the cane rocking-chairs that embellished the upper foredeck. Here day after day we watched the monotonous yellow bank unroll with infinite slowness, like a film clogged in the machine. The country, flat, con- siderably wooded, and characterless, stood only a few feet above the river, its soil sandy, though not without fertility, with occasional clear- ings and many immense spreading trees. Here and there on the ex- treme edge of the stream hung a few scattered thatched villages, all apparently engaged in the favorite occupation of doing nothing, living on the few fruits and vegetables that grew themselves and drinking the yellow Magdalena pure. At such times there was nothing left but to while away the languid hours in perfecting our plans for the journey ahead. For once I had chanced upon a traveling companion who had actually started when the hour of departure came, and who bade fair to pursue the expedition to the bitter end. Leo Hays had first seen the light — such as it is in Missouri — six months later than I, but had overcome that initial handicap by deflecting the sun’s rays in many a varying clime. The schools had early scowled upon him — or he upon them — and he had retaliated by gathering in his own way much that schools have never hoarded away in their impregnable warehouses. The gleaning had car- ried him far afield, in social strata as well as physical distance, but it had left him unburdened with the bric-a-brac of life so dear to the bourgeois soul. Wasteful of money and the petty things of life, he was never wasteful of life itself. He was of those who look at the world through a wide-angle lens. There is a breadth of vision gained in an existence varying from “ hobo ” printer and editor in our pulsating Southwest to sugar estate overseer in the Guianas, from the forecastle to the Moro villages of the Philippines, that makes a formal educa- 8 UP TO BOGOTA tion seem cramped and restricted by comparison. To those who did not know the Canal Zone in its halcyon days a mere corporal of police demanding of himself the ability to converse intelligently a half hour on any subject from astronomy to Norse literature, from heraldry to Urdu philosophy, may seem a fantastic figure. To the experienced “ Zoner ” it is commonplace. On Sunday morning the entire village of Zambrano, headed by its curate and dressed in every imaginable misfit of sun-bleached gaiety, swarmed on board and subjected us to a leisurely detailed examina- tion that gave us the sensation of being museum exhibits. The “ Alicia ” was soon off again and we came to the conclusion that the town was migrating en masse. A few hundred yards beyond, how- ever, we tied up to the bank once more and waited a long hour while all Zambrano took leave of the priest. Every inhabitant under fifteen kissed his hand, which each of the women pressed fervently, some several times over, after which the men approached him in procession, padre and layman throwing an arm about each other’s neck and slapping each other some seven times each between the shoulder-blades. It was only the customary Colombian abrazo and the formality of see- ing the curate a little way on his journey. Meanwhile our half-Indian boy captain stood smilingly by, twisting the two tiny sprigs of mus- tache that gave him so striking a resemblance to a Chinese mandarin turned river pirate. He was far too good a Catholic to cut short the leave-taking even had he guessed that anyone on board chaffed at the delay. The day was much older before we crawled out into the middle of the stream again. But no man journeys up to Bogota hastily. The Land of Hurry was behind us. When we addressed him, the priest answered us courteously enough, then dropped the conversation in a manner to suggest that he did not care to pursue it further. Like his fellow-countrymen in general he seemed to have no hunger for knowledge, no notion that he might learn from others. The attitude of all the upper-deck passengers was as if an edict had gone forth to dislike Americans. Individually none had any grievance against us, collectively they seemed banded to- gether in a species of intellectual boycott, which none of them vented to the extent of losing his reputation for politeness. Their manner suggested pouting children, unwilling to declare their fancied griev- ances and fight them out like men. There were a half dozen of us at table that evening, with the priest in the place of honor at the head. The meal passed without a 9 VAGABONDING DOWN THE ANDES spoken word, at racehorse speed. It recalled a placard I had seen in a Texas restaurant on my journey southward: “Eat first, THEN talk,” and amid the opening chorus Hays’ memory harked back to a sign that once embellished a Bowery institution : “ Soup should be seen and not heard.” That we paused for speech between mouthfuls seemed to fill our companions with a mixture of disgust and amaze- ment. It was perilous, too, for ragged, barefooted waiters more numerous than the diners, hovered over us, quick to snatch away the plate of anyone who dared raise his head. How unlike the sociable meals of Spain was this silent wolfing! Their own parents could not have distinguished one meal from an- other. The soup was always of the general collection variety, the two vegetables incessantly the same ; the beef varied from the hope- lessly tough to the suspiciously tender ; for the system on the river steamers of the Magdalena is to slaughter a steer on the lower deck the first morning of the voyage and serve it twice daily until passengers are unanimous in leaving their plates untouched, then regretfully to lead another gloomy, raw-boned animal forth to slaughter Yet no one could have complained on the score of quantity. We no longer wondered at the sallow flabbiness of those about us in spite of their life in the open air. The voracious engines of the “ Alicia ” required more halting than movement. Barely had we left the faint lights of Calamar astern when we tied up for hours before a woodpile in the edge of the jungle, and never did a half day pass without a long halt to replenish the fuel. The sight of a bamboo hut or a cluster of thatched shacks crouched in a little semicircular space gouged out of the immense forest was sure to bring a shrill scream from the whistle and in the soft air of evening we crawled up to a tiny clearing where perhaps thirty cords of wood lay awaiting a purchaser. They were heavy slabs some three feet long, the piles separated by upright poles into divisions called burros, the conventional load, perhaps, of one ass. On the utter edge of the bank hung a miserable little hut swarming with dogs and equally unwashed human beings. There were the usual endless manoeuvers to a mooring, then the entire crew went ashore on the heels of the captain, armed with his measuring stick. He and the woodsman, a sturdy, bashful fellow, gave each other the cus- tomary greeting pat on the shoulder, then stood a long time, each with a hand on the woodpile, discussing the details of the imminent financial transaction. io UP TO BOGOTA But they could not come to terms, and at length the steamer popula- tion returned on board and for ten minutes with much ringing of bells and screeching of whistles the “ Alicia ’’ went through the pretence of getting under way. The woodsman held his ground, though his wood looked as if he had already held it several years. At length we returned to the same mooring and a wash-basin of boiled beef and plantains was carried ashore as a peace offering. This time we struck a bargain, and the two populations exchanged places. The country- men, of all ages and both sexes, many with evidences of loathsome diseases, one limping on a foot white with leprosy, swarmed into every corner of the craft, gazing open-mouthed at her unbelievable magnifi- cence, sitting cautiously down in the deck chairs, thrusting their fingers into the saucers of dessert that had been set out an hour or two before meal time to give the flies fair play, passing from hand to hand anything that caught their fancy. Their protruding bellies suggested that the hookworm was prevalent. The men wore over one shoulder a satchel-like pouch called a garniel, for their clothing was not such as might safely have been entrusted with their minor possessions. Meanwhile we had taken advantage of the opportunity to stretch our legs ashore, for whatever their faults these jungle people are not addicted to thievery. Under the edge of the forest, into the dense green depths of which we could wander a little way amid a wealth of woodland aromas and the fitful songs of birds, was planted a little field of corn, the stalks a full ten feet high, even the ears in many cases well above our heads, though the jungle was thick between the rows and there was no sign of other labor than the planting. A bit of sugarcane grew as luxuriantly, and behind the hut stood a crude trapiche, or cane crusher, a mere stump and lever above a dug-out trough. Palm, gourd, mango, and papaya trees, the females of the latter heavy with fruit and the males gay with yellow blossoms, sug- gested that the spot might have been one of the most flourishing gardens on earth had the inhabitants any other industry or desire than to roll about on their earth floors. From a corner of the patch the stewards cut long reeds and made trumpets of exactly the sound of army bugles. The houses of the region are very simply built. Four posts, some six inches in diameter and rising as many feet above the ground, are set at the corners of the house to be. Halfway between these are set four smaller upright poles, giving each wall three supports. Along the tops of these, saplings about four inches in diameter are II VAGABONDING DOWN THE ANDES tied with green vines, after which pole rafters are raised. Across these, six to eight inches apart, are laid strips of split bamboo, also tied with vines. The roof is then thatched with dried banana leaves, laid lengthwise with the slope of the roof, those underneath secured by being bent over the bamboo strips, and layer after layer of them piled on until the thatch is a foot or more thick. Two poles, tied some distance apart with green vines, are then thrown over the peak of the roof to keep a sudden gust of wind from lifting the shelter off the dwellers’ heads, and the residence is ready for occupancy. The deck hands, each wearing on his head a grain sack split up one side, stood in file beside the diminishing woodpile. When his turn came, each grasped the end of his sack in the right hand and held the arm at full length while others heaped it high with cordwood. As soon as he had what he considered a reasonable amount, the carrier threw a rope held in his left hand over the load, caught it deftly in the already burdened right and, pulling it taut, marched down some twenty feet of perpendicular sandy bank and across a wobbly eight-inch plank without a quiver. We envied them the exercise at every land- ing, but even to have carried a stick on board would have been not only to lose our own caste but to jeopardize that of all our fellow-country- men. Nothing would be more futile than to attempt to describe the tropical sunset, exceeded in beauty, if at all, only by sunrise, as it spread across this flat jungle and forest country, the curving river and wood- lands. On into the night the languid wood loading continued, lighted up in irregular patches by the lamps of the steamer and flickering oil torches ashore. Long after dark, as the last of the burros was disap- pearing, the jungle dweller came on board in person and fixed upon me to figure up how much he had coming, openly putting his faith in a foreigner in preference to a native. There were 119 burros, for which he was to receive fourteen cents each. It totalled $16.66, or, as it sounded to him, $1666, and by and by the purser, who would no doubt have beaten him a few hundred dollars in the multiplication but for my pencil, came out of his cabin with an Australian gold sov- ereign and an immense handful of Colombian bills. I asked the re- cipient how long he had worked to get the pile together and received the expected South American answer: “ Ay ! Muchos soles, senor, — many suns,” which of course was as exact as he could be about it. Strangely enough he resisted the wheed- ling of the ragged stewards to exchange his fortune for the cheap The stewards of the "Alicia" in full uniform Hays catches his first glimpse of the jungles of Colombi; UP TO BOGOTA straw hats and brass rings they carried for sale and got safely ashore with the entire handful of what, in these wilds, could not have been of any great practical value. As we pushed off, the captain announced that we had wood enough to last until the following noon. One would have fancied we had enough to last to the seventh circle and back. Here we could still “ march ” all night, for the river was deep in spite of its great width. As we sat in solitary glory on the upper deck watching the blood-red moon come up out of the jungle, Hays suddenly broke off a disserta- tion on the philosophy of life of Marcus Aurelius to exclaim: “ We ought to swear off on this. If we ’re going to walk along the top of the Andes we ’ll need all the chest expansion we ’ve got,” and suiting the action to the word, he chucked his half-smoked $5 cigar overboard. It was not until late next morning that I saw him light the next one. “ But I thought you ’d sworn off?” I reminded him. “ That ’s the great value of resolutions,” he answered, “ you make them to break them and feel the genuine freedom of life. But to- morrow I ’ll swear off in earnest ” — which he did, almost daily as long as the journey lasted. Meanwhile, my birthday making a good date for it, I gave up the habit definitely myself, none too sure of its effect in the lofty altitudes before us. We moved at about the speed of a log-raft towed by a sunfish. Whenever there was danger of our making a reasonable Colombian distance the whistle was sure to sound and we drifted inshore to tie up for hours before another woodpile. Sometimes the flat, disappoint- ing banks of the river were sheer for miles, with unbroken stretches of swamp grass six feet high so dense it did not seem that a snake could have wormed its way through it. The cerulean blue skies were equal to any of Italy, the light clouds wandering lazily across them sometimes forming in battle array on the rim of the horizon. Here and there were considerable fields of sugarcane about a thatched vil- lage ; but the vast fertile territory was almost entirely virgin and uncleared. One morning a cry of “ Caiman ! ” called attention to a point of sand on which lay a score of alligators, most of which slid sluggishly off into the stream as we approached. Thereafter we had only to glance along the banks to be almost sure of seeing several. For some days Hays and I had made up the deck passenger list unassisted, sitting through our meals in dignified silence with some half-dozen waiters tc miswait on 11s — when we could get their at- 13 VAGABONDING DOWN THE ANDES tention — headed by the chief steward, who never tired of boasting that he had once made cigars in the shadow of Ancon police station. His underlings received six dollars a month, such food as they could forage, and the right to wear what the passage of years had left of misfit cotton uniforms, to be turned in at the end of the trip. They were obliged to pay for all breakages, and life was indeed slender with only two economical gringos as passengers. The arrival of a new pasajero was in consequence always an exciting event. Five days up, in the region known as the Opon country, there appeared on board a native trapper of wild animals, who had been shot through the face by an arrow of the savage Opones, but had performed the rare feat of making his escape. Colombia includes within her confines several tribes of Indians not only uninfluenced by the government, but without an inkling of its existence. The Opones live far back along the tribu- taries of the Magdalena, descending them only in certain seasons, and attacking any human beings they come upon. Armed with a species of archbow, they shoot an enormous arrow with a point of iron-hard black palm barbed both ways, that can neither be pushed through nor pulled out of the body of the victim. The arrow the trapper brought with him could barely be forced into his long trunk after being broken in two, and five cruel barbs still remained after several others had been cut off and left in the body of his former companion. A few weeks before, he reported, a harmless fellow fishing somewhat back from the main river had been made the veritable pincushion of thirty-two such arrows. The trapper had it that the Opones were cannibals, asserting that a recent expedition into the Opon country had found a Colombian woman of good family who was being fattened in a cage of bamboo, but whom the savages had not yet eaten because of a sus- picious sore on her leg. , Gradually low shadowy mountains began to appear in the far blue distance, with suggestions of higher ones in the clouds behind them. On the seventh day a long rugged chain, the Sierra de Peraja in the Province of Santander, had grown so near that separate peaks and suggestions of villages could be picked out of the sunlit distance. Next morning we were half surrounded by deep blue ranges, and the banks were broad natural meadows with hundreds of cattle knee-deep in rich green grass. Magnificent spreading trees now stood out against the sky and ranges. The nights had grown so cool that we took to sleeping in our “ stateroom ” — with barely room enough left to sneeze when our cots had been dragged in. Here we began to go aground 14 UP TO BOGOTA frequently, for the tendency of the Magdalena is to spread out more and more as her sandy banks keep falling into the river. At our speed the experience was hardly hair-raising, and generally in the course of a few hours the “ Alicia ” worked herself loose again. There were almost no other water craft, except an occasional canoa, a dug-out log crawling along the extreme lower edge of the forest wall. Now and then we passed large balsas, rafts of hundreds of immense cedar logs, with the Colombian flag at the prow and the crew camped aft with mat beds, primitive kitchens, and sometimes their women and a numer- ous progeny. Great trees, which the captain called ceibas, rose slim and clear more than a hundred feet, to end in a parasol tuft of branches. Frequently a flock of parrakeets screamed noisily by over- head. In places we crawled along between sheer sand banks, gigantic trees of the dense forest hanging on the brink of miniature Culebra slides as the river washed under them. Higher still the stream grew so shallow that we could “ march ” only by day, anchoring at dark. One night we tied up to the bank on an inner curve of the river, where the forest cut off the breeze com- pletely and left us to toss in our cots until dawn. Its first glimmer of light showed that we had reached Pureto Berrio, where a little narrow- gage starts — I use the word advisedly, for it never gets there — for Medellin, second city of Colombia. The “ port ” itself suspended whatever it was in the habit of doing to stare at us in long silent rows from the doorways. Its male population not only wore no shirt but did not even trouble to conceal that fact by buttoning its tattered sun- bleached jacket. All the natives seemed obsessed with the notion that, as gringos, we could not speak Spanish. As often as we addressed one, though our Castilian vocabulary was as ample and our pronuncia- tion far less slovenly than his own, he refused to believe his senses until the sensation had been several times repeated. We were off again by noon. It had been raining in the highlands beyond and the visibly rising river was half covered with patches of thick scum. Now and then it bore by on its swift silent surface a fragment of forest snatched from somewhere above. We were now some hundreds of feet above sea-level, and the forest air was fragrant and unfevered. All day long nothing but forest trailed by. We passed timber enough in a week to supply the world for a century and rich soil enough to feed a large section of it permanently. But only very rarely did a little bamboo hut, roofed with leaves, dot the monotony of virgin nature. The river had narrowed down to a placid 15 VAGABONDING DOWN THE ANDES powerful stream; the weather was peerless, though an almost invisible gnat began to make life less motionless. In the purple gloaming a forest-built village of some size stood out more picturesquely than usual on the nose of a land billow jutting forth and falling sheer into the river, only to have the interminable forest swallow it up again. Yet there were signs that we were ap- proaching somewhere or other. Hays sat with his feet on the rail, discoursing on the relative merits of Turgeniev and Galdos, the point of his “ last ” cigar glowing in the darkness, when the captain passed with a package wrapped in the customary inofficiency of Latin- America. “ Here, I used to be one,” said Hays, reaching for the bundle and rearranging it. “Used to be what?” I asked, as he handed it back. “ I was walking along the street of — of — well I don’t remember the stage setting, but it must have been in the States and a long time ago,” he began, lighting a second cigar from the butt of the first, “ for I know I had n’t been to sea or in the army yet, when I saw a sign in a window, ‘ Bundle Wrapper Wanted.’ I had to pass up a hundred per as outside man for a medicine faker to take it, but it was some- thing new and . . .” and he rambled off into one of those experience sketches which, jumping erratically over the face of the globe, fre- quently enlivened the voyage. In the last hours of June we bumped against the wharf of La Dorada, several hundred yards of tinware building along a sloping river front with a childish attempt at paving, its main street a forlorn pathway near the water’s edge, dying away in the forest- jungle on either hand. Here we took our leave of the “ Alicia,” for cataracts make this the end of the run for steamers plying the lower Magda- lena. Next afternoon a train even more diminutive than that to Cala- mar wound away in a half circle into the forest, with now and then glimpses of hazy, far-off Andean ranges, and three hours later set us down in Honda. To our surprise we found it a city, the first since Cartagena, as aged and intricate, as full of its own local color, includ- ing many blind and leprous beggars, as any town of old Spain. Piled close along the Magdalena, here a series of rocky rapids, it is divided by a gurgling tributary across which three picturesque bridges fling themselves. Scores of aged stone buildings, quaint walls, and steep streets of century-old pavements give it an air reminiscent of Bruges or Niirnberg, or of some of the ancient towns of Mexico. Its narrow streets are crowded with laden mules and sunbrowned arrieros of both 16 A village on the banks of the Magdalena Jirardot; end of the steamer line and beginning of the railroad to Bogota UP TO BOGOTA sexes ; its patios seem primeval forests, and mountain ranges cut its horizon close off in every direction. A muleteer pointed out to us the ancient trail to Bogota where it crossed a high red bridge and climbed steeply away up one of the natural walls of the town on the way to Facatativa on the lofty plateau above. But for our baggage we should have struck out for the capital on this route of centuries. We went on by rail in the morning. Every woman and girl in the car — not to mention Hays — was smoking the jet-black cigars of the region. The little engine with its top-heavy smokestack consumed wood as gluttonously as the “ Alicia,” and halted even more often to replenish its supply. Colombians fancy railroads will work the com- plete regeneration of their torpid country, but such as we had seen were only miniature samples of the real thing, of slight practical value even were they extended all over the republic. The natives had no notion, however, that the word train did not stand for the same tiny contraptions the world over as that to which they applied it. On all sides were enormous stadiums of mountains, not yet high but already bulking and rock-strewn. Drought had left the country desert-dry and fine sand drifted in and deposited itself upon us in shrouds, as in crossing Nevada. The landscape suggested a cross be- tween the tropics and a western prairie choking for rain, as did even the towns with their frontiersman disarray, their burros, mules and broken-down horses drooping in any patch of shade. Tattered boys and diseased loafers swarmed into the cars at every stop, drinking from the water jars, washing in the bowls of the first-class coach, making themselves completely at home without a suggestion of pro- test from the trainmen. Even were there laws against such actions, the languid officials would have lacked the moral courage to enforce them. The railway ended at Beltran, where we boarded the steamer “ Caribe.” A dreary, sun-baked collection of sheds and a few choking huts made up the town, completely surrounded by desert, with plenty of bushy trees, but a desert for all that. The wind that swept across the steamer at her mooring was not the cool one of the lower Magda- lena, but one laden with red-hot sands that stung the cheeks like tiny insects. When the passengers had gulped their almaerzo, the dishes were piled in the alleyway, where beggars and gaunt boys from the shore came to claw around in them, after which they were roughly half-washed. There is a fetching democracy about the road to Bogota. He who travels it, be he vagrant or man of wealth, must go through 1 7 VAGABONDING DOWN THE ANDES the same uninviting experiences. It speaks poorly of Colombians that they still endure this medieval method of travel from the outside world to their capital. Wealthy bogotanos journey to Europe in luxurious style — once they are on the ocean. It would seem wiser for them to return steerage and gradually accustom themselves to what they must endure from the landing in their own country to the arrival in Bogota. All day long we sat in the sand-burning winds of Beltran while barefoot and half-naked stevedores dribbled down the steep bank with all manner of cargo. There was barbed wire from Massachusetts, corrugated iron from Pittsburg, boxed street-car lines that clattered and crashed as they fell, and finally, though by no means last, four pianos from Germany that were rolled heels over head down the long stony bank. Although we had real cabin tickets this time, neither of us had influence enough to get a cabin. We dragged our cots out on the open deck and, indifferent to social rules, marched through the multitude in our pajamas. This turned out to be entirely comme il faut, for even the son of a recent president of Colombia soon appeared similarly clad and strolled about the deck chattering with his fellow- passengers of both sexes, as nonchalantly as if in full dress. We were not off until dawn, into which the volcano Ruiz, first of the long row of snow-clad fire-vents of the Andes which we hoped in time to see disappear over our shoulders, thrust its aged head. Rock cliffs along the banks recalled the Lorelei. Fields of corn undulated like wind-snatched hair on the summits of rounded hills, at the base of which sweltered the banana groves of the tropics. As the sun was setting we passed a chorro at the foot of a low range around which the river had swept in a half-circle so many centuries that its bank -was a sheer rock wall surely sixty feet high. The “ Caribe,” with the nose of a washtub, panted for life against the current, spitting showers of live coals from her wood fires, seeming several times about to give up the attempt in despair. But she gained the calmer water above at last and soon after dark landed us in Jirardot. We spent the Fourth of July in Jirardot. Not by choice, but because the train to the capital leaves only three times a week. The town swelters by day on the edge of the curving river, here hardly fifty yards wide, where for more than a mile stretches a vista of donkeys laden with kegs of water, bands of women, all more or less African in ancestry, bathing, washing, and incessantly smoking immense mis- shapen cigars, as do even the children of both sexes that paddle stark 18 UP TO BOGOTA naked about the bank in complete immunity to the blazing sun. The place seemed the headquarters of contented poverty. At least half the inhabitants either had not enough sun-bleached garments to com- pletely conceal their dusky skins, or had laid them away for more gala occasions. Beggars, halt, blind, misformed and idiotic, were almost as numerous as in similar towns of India. Even the less miserable inhabitants were dull, neurasthenic, utterly devoid of energy, anemics with incessant smoking, bad food, and worse habits, given to living entirely according to their appetites and never according to will power and reason. It was not without misgiving that we turned our faces toward Bogota next morning. The crowd which the train from the plateau had landed the night before had been half hidden under the rugs, blankets, and overcoats they carried, and not a native of Jirardot could speak of the capital without visibly shivering, some even crossing themselves as often as they heard it mentioned. The train left at sun- rise. By the rules of the line — the “ Ferrocarril de Jirardot ’’ — we were obliged to check our baggage containing all extra clothing. For the first few hours we were surrounded by mountains, though still on a slightly rising plain between them. The land appeared fertile and there was considerable Indian corn, yet it was surprising to find here in the capacious New World such swarms of beggars as in Egypt or India. The population along the way, increasingly Indian in blood, was extraordinarily slow-witted. In a window near us sat a com- mercial traveler who tossed at every one he caught sight of along the way a pictorial advertisement of an American panacea. The tail of the train was always well past them before a single one gathered his wits sufficiently to pick up the treasure. Near noon we were ourselves picked out by a mountain-climbing engine, made in Schenectady, its boiler well forward and flanked by the water tanks, a small upright coalbin behind. As we began a series of switchbacks, I caught a breath of virile white man’s air for the first time in a half year, and the taste of it was so delicious that the sensa- tion reached to my tingling toes. Regularly the vista of gouged-out valleys surrounded by rough-hewn, cool, blue ranges spread to greater distances. Passengers began to turn red-nosed, to put on overcoats, blankets, rugs, ponchos, gloves, to wrap towels about their necks. To me the temperature was delightful, but Flays, who had been long years in the tropics, took to applying other adjectives. Now the landscape of meadows and grazing cattle backed by tower- 19 VAGABONDING DOWN THE ANDES ing mountains suggested Switzerland. Beyond the one tunnel of the line we entered an immense valley walled by row upon row of blue ranges. Higher still, the bleak, stony highlands resembled a more rugged Scotland in late October, though cultivation was almost general and roads numerous. It struck us as strange that human beings should shiver and toil for a scant livelihood in such surroundings when a day’s walk would bring them to perpetual summer and nature’s well filled larder. A plant must remain where it chances to be born, but why should man also? By four, the train had finished its task of lifting its breathless passengers into the thin air of Facatativa, and scores of half-frozen barefoot children and ragged adults dismally wandered the stony streets. A policeman muffled to the ears assured us with what seemed a suggestion of pride that Facatativa was even colder than Bogota, for which Hays gave fervent thanks. Evidently the heat of the tropics was yet in my blood, for I still felt comfortable. An hour later we were speeding across a broad plateau by the “ Ferrocarril de la Sabana,” a government railroad equipped with real trains of American cars. All the languor and ragged indifference of the tropics seemed to have been left forever behind. The conductor was as business-like — and as light in color — as any in our own land. We stopped briefly at towns boasting all the adjuncts of civilized life, somehow dragged up to these lofty realms. Here was a country built from the center outwardly; the nearer we came to its capital, the further we left the world behind, the more modern and well furnished did it become. It recalled fanciful tales of men who, toiling for weeks through unknown wildernesses, suddenly burst forth upon an un- known valley filled with all the splendors of an ancient kingdom. Yet we could not but wonder why, once they had reached this lofty plateau, the discoverers had not halted and built their city, instead of marching far back across it to the foot of the enclosing range. A full thirty-five miles the train fled across the sabana, an immense plain in appearance like one of our north in early April, intersected here and there by barbed-wire fences. Broad yellow fields of mustard appeared, spread, and disappeared behind us. Great droves of cattle frisked about in the autumn air as if to keep warm. Well-built coun- try dwellings flashed by, stony and bare in setting, but embellished with huge paintings of landscapes on the walls under the veranda roofs. The sun had barely smiled upon us since noon. Now as the day declined I began to grow cold, bitter cold, colder than I had been 20 Indian girls and women are the chief dray-horses of the Colombian capital UP TO BOGOTA since descending from the Mexican plateau seven months before, while Hays’ hat brim shook with his shivering. Our fellow-passen- gers looked like summer excursionists unexpectedly caught in straw hats by grim, relentless winter. Then as evening descended the plain came abruptly to an end, and at the very foot of a forbidding black mountain range spread a cold, smokeless city of bulking domes and towers. We had reached at last, after eighteen days of travel, the most isolated of South American capitals. 21 CHAPTER II THE CLOISTERED CITY OUR entrance into Bogota was not exactly what we had planned or anticipated. The crowd that filled the station and its adjacent streets in honor of the thrice-weekly linking with the outside world was dressed like an American city in February, except that here black was more general and choking high collars and foppish canes far more in evidence. Wherefore, seeing two men of foreign aspect, visibly shivering in their strange feather-weight uni- forms, descending upon them, the pulsating throng could be dispersed only with difficulty, and excited urchins raced beside the horse car that set us down at last before a recommended hotel. Hays, who was nothing if not self-conscious, as well as tropical blooded, lost no time in putting on every wool garment his baggage contained and dived under four blankets vowing never to be seen again in public. We seemed to have reached the very center of this incongruous civilization of the isolated fastnesses of the Andes. Our suite took up an entire second-story corner of the hotel. There were carpets in which our feet sank half out of sight, capacious upholstered chairs, divans in every corner, tables that might have graced a French chateau, pier glass mirrors, gleaming chandeliers, lamps with double burners, in addition to electric lights. Our parlor, its huge windows resplendent with lace curtains, opened on a balcony overhanging the street, as did also the adjoining bedroom, as richly furnished and with two old-fashioned colonial bedsteads heaped high with mattresses, their many blankets covered with glossy vicuna hides. We were far indeed from the frontiersman steamers of the' Magdalena. When the hunger of the highlands asserted itself, we sneaked down to a luxurious diningroom to find the menu and service equal to that of some travelers’ palace on the Champs Elysees. The sumptuous breakfast that a maid placed beside our beds next morning was a humorous con- trast to those we had endured on the “ Alicia.” Yet all these luxuries, borne to this lofty isolation by methods the most primitive known to modern days, were ours at the paltry rate of $1.50 a day. Truly, the cost of high living had not yet reached the altitude of Bogota. 22 THE CLOISTERED CITY It was evident, however, that if we were to live here as anything but public curiosities we must patronize a clothing store. The Zone cos- tume, so splendidly adapted to our future plans, was, unfortunately, original for bogotanos; and nowhere does originality of garb cause greater furore than in the mountain-cloistered capital of Colombia. When we summoned up courage to venture forth, Hays dodged into the first tailor shop that crossed his path, and instantly agreed to take whatever happened to be offered him, at any price the tailor chose to inflict — and returned to remain in hiding for the ensuing twenty-four hours until the articles were altered. Meanwhile I sallied forth from a ready-made establishment, inconspicuous in a native shirt that came perilously near being born a pajama and a heavy, temporarily black, suit of “ cashmere ” with a misgiving tightness across the trousers. On second thought it was not surprising that this far away city of the Andes should be so exacting in dress. Virtually cut off from the world, it was supremely eager to appear cosmopolitan. The result is a tailor’s paradise. No one who aspires to be ranked among the gente decente ever dreams of permitting himself to be seen in public lacking any detail of the equipment, from derby to patent leathers, that makes up the bogotano’s mental picture of a Parisian boulevardier. At first we took this multitude of faultlessly dressed men to mean that the city rolled in wealth. As time wrent on many a dandy of fashion we had fancied a bank president, or the son of some prince of finance, turned out to be a side-street barber, or the keeper of a four-by-six book-stall, if not indeed without even so legitimate a source of income. It is due, no doubt, to some misinterpretation of the European fashion sheets that the main street corners were habitually blocked long before noon by men and youths in Prince Alberts, who spent the greater part of the day leaning with Parisian nonchalance on silver-headed canes. The women of the better class, on the other hand, are never seen disguised as Parisians except on rare gala occasions. At morning mass, or in their circumspect tours of shopping, they appear swathed from head to foot in the black manto, a shawl-like thing of thin texture wound about head and body to the hips and leaving only a bit of the face and a bare glimpse of their blue-black hair visible. To us the costume was pleasing in its simplicity. Bogotanos, however, com- plain that it is triste — sad, and in time we too came to have that im- pression, as if the sex had gone perpetually into mourning for the ways of its male relatives. The great underlying mass of the population has no requirements in 23 VAGABONDING DOWN THE ANDES the matter of dress. In general the gente del pueblo — the “men of the people ” — wear shoddy trousers of indeterminate hue, alpargatas, — hemp soles held in place by strips of canvas — without socks, a soiled “ panama ” always very much out of place in this climate, and, covering all else, a ruana, or native-woven blanket with a hole in the center through which to thrust the head. Their women rarely wear black, but simple gowns of some light color, at least on Sundays, after which its whiteness decreases. They go commonly bareheaded, often barefooted, and always stockingless. Every scene from street to Cathedral shrine is enlivened by the bare legs of women and girls often decidedly attractive in appearance — to those who have no great prejudice for the bath. To be nearer the center of activities we had taken a room in the third story of the municipal building, on the site of the palace of the viceroys. Down below lay the main plaza of Colombia, Tenerani’s celebrated statue of Bolivar in its center, the still unfinished capitol building cutting it off on the right. Across the square we could look in at the door of the ancient Cathedral — and shake our fists at its constantly clanging bells. Beyond, much of the city spread out be- fore us, the thatched huts of misery spilling a little way up the foot of the dismal black range that filled in the rest of the picture. The altitude of Bogota — it stands 8630 feet above the level of the sea — seldom fails to impress itself upon the newcomer. Many travelers do not risk the sudden ascent from Jirardot to the capital in a single day, but stop over between trains at a halfway town. During the first days I was content to march slowly a few blocks up and down her slightly inclined streets, and even then found myself with the faint third cousin of a headache, several mild attacks of nose bleed, and a soreness of all the body as if from undue pressure of the blood. Until the first effects wear away, energy is at its lowest ebb and time passes on leaden wings. The change in mood is as marked as in the character of the permanent inhabitants. From the moment of his arrival the traveler feels again that foresighted, looking-to-the-future attitude toward life common to the temperate zone. All the light, airy, gay and wasteful ways of Panama and the tropics fade away like the memory of some former existence, and it is easy to understand why the bogotano is quite different in temperament from the languid inhabitants along the Magdalena. Unlike many regions of high altitude, however, Bogota is not a “ nervous ” city. There are lower places in Mexico, for instance, 24 THE CLOISTERED CITY where the nerves seem always at a tension. Here we felt serene and unexcited all day long as in the first hours of waking from long refreshing sleep. Except in the actual sunshine, the air was raw even at noon. The wind from off the backing range or across the sabana cut through our garments as if they were of cheesecloth. The thermometer falls much lower in other climes, but here artificial heat is unknown, and a more penetrating cold is inconceivable. By night the bogotano wears an overcoat of tbe greatest obtainable thickness, he dines and goes to the theater in a temperature that would make outdoor New York in early November seem cozy and hospitable. Well dressed men in gloves and overcoats and women in furs walking briskly across the square below our window on their way from the electric street cars to the theater or the “ Circo Keller,” gave the scene quite the appearance of a similar one in an American town in the first days of winter. Yet this was July and we were barely five degrees from the equator. Beside us lay the latest newspapers from New York, half way to the north pole, bristling with such items as: “Wanted — Cool rooms for the summer months.” “ Four Dead of Heat Pros- tration.” It is a peculiar climate. Flowers — of some Arctic species — bloom perennially, and the poorer people, inured to it from birth, seem to thrive in bare legs and summer garb. Frost is virtually un- known, not because the temperature does not warrant it, but because what would be frost elsewhere evaporates in the thin air. Once the sun has set, nothing seems quite so attractive, whatever the plans made by day, as to read for an hour huddled in all spare clothing, then to throw open the windows and dive under as many blankets as a Minnesota farmer in January. The bogotano does not, of course, believe in open windows. Though he scorns a fire — or has never thought to build one — he has a quaking fear of the night air, against which he charges a score of diseases headed by the dreaded pneu- monia of high altitudes. Those who venture out at night habitually hold a handkerchief over mouth and nostrils. Yet at least this can be said, that nowhere is sleep, if properly tucked in, more sound and refreshing. Within a week we found ourselves acclimated — or should I say altitudinated — and took to exploring the city more thoroughly. The air was still noticeably thin, but there was enough of it to furnish the lung-fuel even for the five mile stroll up to the natural stone gate- way where the highway to the east clambers away through a notch 25 VAGABONDING DOWN THE ANDES and begins the descent to Venezuela. Looking down upon it from here, the misinformed traveler might easily fancy the broad sabana the sea-level plains of some northern clime, never guessing that forty miles to the west the world falls abruptly away into the torrid zone. For Bogota is chiefly remarkable for its location. Taken somewhere else it would be like many another city of Spanish ancestry. Its streets are singularly alike, wide, straight, a few paved in macadam, more in rough cobbles, many grass-grown and all with a central line of flagstones worn smooth by the feet of generations of carriers. The chiefly two-story houses toe sidewalks so narrow that two can seldom pass abreast, and for those who know Spain or her former colonies there is nothing unusual in the architecture. The streets cross each other at solemn right angles, and those which do not fade away on the plain fetch sharply up against the rusty black range that backs the city. The system of street numbering is excellent, that of the houses clumsy, and the former is marred by the habit of the volatile government in changing familiar names as often as some new or for- gotten patriot is called to its attention. Thus the Plaza San Augustin had been the Plaza Ayacucho up to a short time before our arrival, yet before we left it had become the Plaza Sucre in honor of a new statue of that general unveiled on Colombia’s Independence Day, July twentieth. In like manner the Plaza de Egipto was transformed before our very eyes into the Plaza de Maza. This weakness for honoring new heroes is characteristic of the whole country. Not only are its provinces frequently renamed, but in the short century since its independence, the nation itself has basked under a half dozen titles, — to wit: “La Gran Colombia”; “ Nueva Granada”; “ Con- federacion Granadina ”; “ Estados Unidos de Nueva Granada ”; “ Es- tados Unidos de Colombia ” ; and, since 1885, “ Republica de Colom- bia ” — and there are evidences that it is not yet entirely satisfied. It is less in its material aspects than in the ways of its population that the traveler finds Bogota interesting. About every inhabitant hovers a glamour of romance. Either he has always lived in this miniature world, or he has at least once made the laborious journey up to it. The vast majority are born, live, and die here in their lofty isolation. Shut away by weeks of wilderness from the outside world, alone with its own little trials and triumphs, it seems something long ago left behind up here under the chilly stars by a receding wave of civilization. Small wonder its people consider their city the center of the universe. Those who travel a little way out into the world 26 THE CLOISTERED CITY see nothing to compare with it; the scant minority that reach Paris are credited with fervid imaginations, if indeed the picture of what they have seen is not effaced during the long toilsome journey back to their own beloved capital. Perhaps no other city of to-day is more nearly what a newly discovered one must have been to the happy explorers of earlier times. Now and then there comes upon the traveler the regret that it is not entirely cut off instead of nine-tenths so. A region fitted for the development of its own customs, had it been left to its aboriginal Chibchas it might have evolved a civiliza- tion entirely its own, altogether different, and not this rather crumpled copy of familiar world capitals. Bogota is decidedly a white man’s city. Indeed there is hardly another of its size south of the Canadian border in which the per- centage of pure white complexions is higher. On rare occasions a negro who had drifted up from the hot lands below sat huddled in the main plaza in all the blankets and ruanas he could borrow, but his face was sure soon to be numbered among the missing. Brunettes predominate, of course, but blonds are by no means rare. The boot- black who served us now and then was a decided towhead. Red cheeks are almost the rule. Slight atmospheric pressure, bringing the blood nearer the surface, no doubt largely accounts for this, but there are many other evidences of general good health. At this altitude the violation of most of the rules of sanitation are lightly punished. The temperature, cold enough to be invigorating yet not so cold as to require our health-menacing artificial heat, combined with its simple, placid life, makes Bogota a town of plump, robust figures, particularly among the women, unmarked by the dissipation common to the males. Many of the former may frankly be termed beautiful, in spite of a wide-spread tendency of the sex to wear distinctly noticeable black mustaches. Unfortunately the men of the well-to-do class are not believers in exercise, or the systematic caring for the body. Scorn- ing every unnecessary physical exertion, letting themselves grow up haphazard, they are noticeably round-shouldered and hollow-chested. An American long resident in the city seriously advised us to “ get a hump into your shoulders so you won’t attract so much attention.” Even the descendants of the Chibchas, that make up much of the population of the outskirts and the surrounding country, have a tinge of russet in their cheeks, and are by no means so dark as our copper- skinned aborigines. Daily they swarm into the city that was once theirs. Short, yet sturdy, muscular carriers and arrieros, as often 27 VAGABONDING DOWN THE ANDES female as male, pass noiselessly through the streets with the produce of their country patches. Girls barely ten, to old women, many of comely features in spite of the encrusted dirt of years, more often so brutalized by toil as to seem hardly human, dressed in matted rags, their feet and legs bare almost to the knees, plod past under burdens an American workman could not carry a hundred yards. Early in the wintry plateau mornings they set out from their chozas, cobblestone or mud hovels thatched with the tough yellow-brown grass of the uplands, that are huddled in the mountain passes or strewn out along the windswept sabana, driving a bull — rarely a steer, since the former animal loses much of his belligerency at this altitude — on its back a load little larger than that which the female driver, with a strap about her brow, carries herself. They are all but indistinguishable from the men who tramp beside them. A patch- work skirt instead of tattered trousers is almost the only difference in dress, and their manner is utterly devoid of any feminine touch. Brawny as the men, they march through all the hardships of life as sturdily and uncomplainingly as our early pioneers, asking sympathy neither by word nor look. It is a commonplace sight in Bogota to see a mere girl in years grasp the nosering rope of a bull and throw him to his knees, or lay hold of a cinch-strap in her calloused hands and, with one foot against the animal’s ribs, tighten the girth with the skill of an experienced arriero. Girls and boys alike are trained from their earliest years to this life of bovine toil, never looking forward to any other. Of the existence of schools they have hardly an inkling. To them life is bounded by their cheerless hovels and the chicher'ias of the city, numerous as the pulquerias of Mexico. In every corner of the capital these low drinking shops abound, mas- querading under such misnomers as “ El Nido de Amor ” — “ The Love Nest,” — and overrun by their besotted votaries of both sexes. Yet the bogotano Indian drunk is quiet and peaceful compared with the Mexican, for chicha seems chiefly to bring drowsiness and con- tentment with life as it is. Ever since our arrival Hays and I had been threatening to patronize one of the two public bath houses with a first-class bogotano repu- tation rumor had it existed in the capital. But in a land where the temperature rarely reaches fifty, and the floors are tiled, it takes courage, and we had been satisfying ourselves and our duty to humanity by bravely splashing a basin of icy water over our manly forms each morning on arising. By dint of strong resolutions often 28 Bogota and its sabana from the summit of Guadalupe room. In the center is the famous statue of Bolivar by Tenarani; on the right, the new capilolio; in the middle foreground the Cathedral, backed by the peaks of Guadalupe and Monserrate The central plaza of Bogotd from the window of THE CLOISTERED CITY repeated to be up at six and visit one of the casas de banos, we did finally manage one morning to find ourselves wandering the streets by eight, with towel and soap under our arms, and stared at by all we met. We discovered “ La Violeta ” at last, next door to a black- smith shop. The keeper we woke up told us we might have a cold bath, but that the sign on the front wall: “ Hot Baths at all Hours,” was to be taken with a bogotano meaning. A few mornings later we did actually find the other establishment open. We entered a large patio, the most striking of several build- ings within which was a round, or, more exactly, an eight-sided house, and in time succeeded in arousing the place to the extent of bringing down upon us a youth hugely excited at the appearance of a crowd of two whole bathers all at one time. It turned out that each of the eight sides of the strange building was — theoretically — a bathroom of the shape of a slice of cake, with a frigid tile floor and an aged porcelain tub in which a bath cost only $10. At the back was a larger, though none the less dreary, chamber with a regadera, or showerbath. The youth assured us there was plenty of hot water. I won the toss and was soon stripped. But the shower was colder than the ice-fields bounding the pole. When I had caught my breath I bawled my repertory of profane Spanish at the youth, who could be seen through a hole above pottering with some sort of upright boiler and firebox and now and then peering down upon me. Suddenly the water grew warm, hot, boiling, then, just when I had soaped myself from crown to toe in the steam, it turned as suddenly cold again, and an instant later stopped entirely. My eyes tight closed, I shouted at the youth above. “ Es que el agua caliente se acabo,” he droned. “ It is that the hot water has finished itself.” There being no deadly weapon at hand, I turned on a tap of ice- cold water and raced to the dressing-room still half soaped. Hays, scantily clad, was gazing fiercely at the youth through a hole in the door. “ Then there is n’t any more hot water ? ” he demanded. “ Not now, senor, but there will be soon.” “ Good. How soon ? ” “ Early to-morrow morning, senor.” “ But I want to bathe now ! ” “Ah, you want to bathe?” repeated the youth, with wide-open eyes. 29 VAGABONDING DOWN THE ANDES “ No, you cross-eyed Son of Spigdom,” exploded the ordinarily even-tempered ex-corporal, “ I came here and stripped to an under- shirt that I might dance in my bare feet on this tile door in honor of Jose Maria de la Santa Trindidad Simon Bolivar! Get up on that roof and fire up or . . The youth was already feverishly stoking armsful of wood under the upright boiler, and by the time I left for home Hays was shadow boxing to keep warm, with a fair chance of getting a bath before the day was done. As is to be expected from its isolation, the Colombian capital is a deeply religious, not to say a fanatical, city. An infernal din of church bells of the tone of suspended pans or broken boilers makes the early morning hours hideous and continues at frequent intervals throughout the day. Here, contrary to the custom in most centers of the Latin race, the men as well as the women go to church. College professors and literary lights of no mean ability seriously contend that the shinbone of some saint in this shrine or that “ temple ” has miraculous power; but the superstition of isolation hangs particularly heavy over the uneducated masses. Of late years the Liberals and the Masons have grown nearly as powerful as the Conservatives, and do not hesitate to express themselves freely in public, knowing that in case of attack any representative body of the population includes fellow-Liberals who will come to their rescue. Every public gather- ing is pregnant with possibilities of an outburst between the two divisions of society. The very schoolboys talk politics — here in- extricably entangled with religion — and the foreigner who wishes to hold the attention of a Colombian for a conversation of any length must have some knowledge, or at least a plausible pretense of knowl- edge, of interior political questions. It was a bare three years since a Protestant missionary had been stoned by the populace of Bogota, though he now held his services in peace in what, despite the lack of outward signs, was really a church. Policemen armed with rifles liberally besprinkle every meeting in theater, cathedral, or public square. Shortly before our arrival a dozen officers and citizens had been killed in a religious riot in the bullring. Were they less hump-shouldered, these policemen of Bogota might easily be taken for Irishmen, and an absent-minded American fancy bimself back in the New York of a decade ago. The uniform of the day force is a copy of that of our own metropolis before the helmets were abolished. At night the scene changes. In every street spring 30 THE CLOISTERED CITY up officers in high caps and long capes who might have stepped directly from the arrondissements of Paris, with even the short sword in place of the daytime “ night-stick.” They are a well disciplined body of men, quite unlike the childish, inefficient guardians of law and dis- order so familiar from the Rio Grande southward. The bogotano officer would no sooner be seen sitting, lounging, or smoking on duty than would one in our own large cities. As in all Latin-American countries, however, the chief drawback to a really efficient service is the caste system. The policemen are of necessity recruited from the gente del pueblo, and though they have no hesitancy in arresting one of their own class, the sight of a white collar paralyzes them with their ingrown deference to the more powerful rank of society. The result is that a well-dressed person can commit anything short of serious crime under the very eyes of the police. The officer may keep the culprit under surveillance, but rarely summons up courage actually to arrest him until he has definite orders from a white-collared superior. There are curious local customs in Bogota. Her small shops, for example, have a system of signs intelligible only to the initiated. A red flag announces meat for sale ; a red flag with a yellow star, meat and bones ; a white flag, milk ; a green one, vegetables and grains. A cabbage or a lettuce-head thrust forth on the end of a stick marks the entrance to a cheap restaurant ; a tuft of faded flowers, a chicheria. The bogotano sees nothing incongruous in a building that announces itself a “ Primary School ” above and an “ American Bar ” below. On week days the pedestrian slinks through many of the chief resi- dential streets apparently unseen ; on a gala Sunday afternoon the same stroll is to run an unbroken gauntlet of feminine eyes. For then the senoritas who are seen, if at all, during the week, hurrying to mass all but concealed in their mantos, don their most resplendent garb and, with cushions under their plump elbows, lean in their window embrazures oggling and being oggled through the iron rejas. A native of Medellin, where envy of the capital and her self-seeking politicians is rife, had assured us as far away as Panama: “ All they do in Bogota is study and steal.” We had only to glance out our windows to find basis for the first part of the assertion. The plaza below was always alive with students from the local institutions of higher learning for males marching slowly back and forth conning the day’s lessons. The fireless houses are cold and dungeon-like, particularly in the morning, and the city 3i VAGABONDING DOWN THE ANDES long ago formed the habit of studying afoot. The racial dislike of solitude and the eagerness to be seen and recognized by their fellows as devotees of learning may also have some part in a practice that many a bogotano continues through life. It is commonplace to pass in almost any street men even past middle age strolling along with an open book in one hand and the inevitable silver-headed cane in the other. In colonial times Bogota won the reputation, if not the actual posi- tion, of “ literary capital of South America.” Her speech is still the best Castilian of America, with little of that slovenliness of pro- nunciation so general from the Rio Grande southward. To this day the city has a considerable intellectual life, wider perhaps than it is deep. “ Everyone ” writes. He is a rare public man who has not published at least a handful of “ versos ” in his youth. Poets, writers, painters, and musical composers are more numerous than in many a far larger center of civilization. The placid isolation of life in Bogota, almost completely severed from the feverish distractions of the modern world, makes this natural. There is nothing else to do. Then, too, lack of opportunity to compare their work with that of a wider world no doubt gives the “ literatos ” of Bogota a self-com- placency that might otherwise be slighter. The cheap local printing- presses pour out a constant flood of five-cent volumes of the local “ poets,” those same “ cachacos ” and “ filipichines ” in frock-tailed coats who lean with such Parisian grace on their canes at the prin- cipal street corners. The youth who sees his smudged likeness appear on the tissue-paper cover of the weekly pamphlet seethes with ill- suppressed joy at his entrance into the glorious, if crowded, ranks of the “ intelectuales.” It is chiefly a dilettante literature, rarely of material reward and of no visible connection with life. But a con- siderable stream of flowery verse, languidly melancholy in its tem- perament and not overburdened with deep thought, flows constantly, and the boiling down by time has left Bogota credited with a few works of genuine worth. A lecture was given one evening at the Jurisprudence Club on the momentuous subject of “ The Necessity of a Legal Revolution in Colombia.” Hays renigged at the last moment, but I accepted the invitation issued to the “ general public.” I was the only foreigner among the hundred present, yet no American audience could have been more universally white of complexion. Indeed, the gathering was strikingly like a similar one in our own country — on a March 32 THE CLOISTERED CITY evening when the furnace had broken down or the janitor gone on strike. All wore overcoats and kept constantly bundled up. The solemn whispering of the audience as it gathered, the unattractiveness of the women, all of whom had long since left youth behind, the staid mien of the men in their frock coats, gave the scene the atmosphere of a meeting of “ highbrows ” in a corner of far-away New England. But there was superimposed a pompous solemnity and a funereal tone peculiar to the Latin-American, to a race that lays more stress on the correctness of its manner than the weight of its matter. A mis- statement or a palpably erroneous fact or conclusion, one felt, might pass muster, but not a slip in the “ urbanities ” of society or the in- correct knotting of a cravat. It was a “lecture” in the French sense. When the president had taken his place and all was arranged in faultless Parisian order, the speaker removed his neck-scarf and began solemnly to read from type- written manuscript. He was a man of forty, wearing glasses, with the perpendicular wrinkles of close study on his brow. A score of countries could have reproduced him ad libitum. He read drearily, monotonously, with constant care never to spill over into the merely human. The discourse based itself on the narrow national patriotism common to Latin-America. Yet at times the speaker talked plainly, admitting that Colombia is 88% illiterate and that half the remainder can barely read and write. The Church he assailed bitterly for its shortcomings, yet never mentioned it directly. In time, as is bound to happen sooner or later in any public meeting in Colombia, he drifted into the great national grievance and whined through several pages on “ the wickedness of taking the rebel province of Panama away from us, a weak and helpless people ” — here I caught several of the audience gazing fixedly at me, as if they fancied I had taken some active part in that debateable action. Through all the latter part of the lecture the church bells across the way kept up a constant jangling that completely swallowed up whatever conclusions he had gained from his laborious dissertation. It was strangely as if the voice of religion and superstition were trying by din and hubbub to drown out that of reason and reflection, as it has since the first medicine-man danced howling into the circle of elders in conference in the Stone Age. On the “ Panama question ” the attitude of the Colombian man in the street is not exactly that of the Government. A well-educated native holding a small post, though clinging to the same convictions 33 VAGABONDING DOWN THE ANDES on the “ taking ” of the “ rebel province ” as the bulk of his country- men, expressed himself to me as follows : “ We ordinary citizens feel that our country should be paid for the loss of Panama, and the slight to our national hofior. But we hope very much that your United States will not pay our government a large sum of money in cash, as contemplated by the proposed treaty. For almost all of it would go into the pockets of the dozen poli- ticians who hold the reins of government. Give us obras hechas, — finished works, — a railway from the coast to Bogota, or a perfected harbor with docks and modern facilities.” One day soon after our arrival we strolled over to the Biblioteca National to begin the Colombian reading we had planned. It was wasted effort. We brought up against a heavy colonial door bearing the announcement: “Suspended until further notice, by order of the Ministry of Public Instruction.” An American resident interpreted it to mean, “ Oh, some of the readers have been stealing books again ” — and we recalled the cynical native of Medellin. Days later, however, when we gained unofficial admission for a few moments, we found that the 5000 volumes be- queathed by a Colombian “ literato ” not unknown to a wider world — Rafael Pombo, who had recently died in Paris — were being catalogued. Several frock-coated pedants were smoking innumerable cigarettes and deceiving themselves into the notion that they were at work arranging the books. But the National Library remained her- metically sealed to the public as long as we remained in the capital. It was by no means the first nor the last time we met a similar disap- pointment in South America. We had put it off a long while before we gathered courage and all our woolen garments and hurried through the wintry night to Bogota’s main theater. As in other restricted societies, entertainments are frequently “got up” here, chiefly with local talent. It is a long way to any other talent in Bogota. This one was a velada in honor of that same Rafael Pombo. Fortunately the audience was large enough to keep the place moderately warm. Every detail, every movement, the very toilettes of the distinctly good looking, if mus- tached, ladies in boxes and stalls were as exact a copy as was humanly possible of similar scenes at the opera in Paris, a copy in miniature bearing the earmarks of having been taken from some novel of the boulevards. Senora la bogotana used her lorgnette exactly as she had read of her Parisian counterpart doing; the men, in faultless 34 THE CLOISTERED CITY evening dress down to the last white eyeglass ribbon about the neck, strove to act precisely as they conceived men did on like occasions in the wider world. Again all was burdened by the solemn artifici- ality of the race. One after another six men burst genteelly upon the stage and declaimed something or other in that painful, flamboyant ranting so beloved of the Latin. All the cut and dried forms of “ cultured ” society were solemnly carried out. Flowers, some one had read, were always presented to the performers, and even the podgy, pompous old fellow who forgot his “ piece ’’ several times had solemnly thrust upon him by a stage lackey in gorgeous livery two immense wreaths of blossoms. In one matter at least these bogotanos were at an advantage over amateurs of other lands. Natural declaimers and reciters from baby- hood, their tongues always eager for utterance, almost devoid of that bashfulness that works the undoing of the less fluent but perhaps deeper thinking races, they seemed seasoned actors in those points which called for strictly histrionic ability. In another theater a few nights later we saw several Spanish comedies presented by a company of local amateurs, and were astonished at the excellence of the work. That of a few of the principals would have won praise on any stage. Three railways leave Bogota, though none of them gets very far away. First in importance, of course, is that to Facatativa, connect- ing with Jirardot. Another runs through the flower-decked suburb of Chapinero, past Caro, with its cream-colored castle on a hill above a cluster of thatched mud huts, to Nemecon, a sooty adobe town of surface coal mines where the sabana is cut off on the north. Back along it to Zapiquira the excursionist tramps ten miles in autumn coolness, hardly realizing he is near the equator, between fields of half- grown maize, broad grassy pastures dotted with white clover, with dandelions, daisies, cowslips, and brilliant yellow “ smart-weed.’’ Blackberry bushes here and there edge a field in which scamper plump cattle and horses ; others are confined by fence posts of stone with four holes carefully drilled in each through which to pass the alambrc. dc piias, — barbed wire from our own land. Zapiquira is remarkable only for the bulking hill beside it, almost solid rock salt. The mouths of a score of small tunnels lie in plain sight somewhat up the slope. The salt rocks are beaten fine, dissolved in water, evaporated, pressed, and packed into two-bushel bags that are carried away by toil-stupefied women and girls with a band across their foreheads. But the excursion par excellence is that to the falls of Tequendama, 35 VAGABONDING DOWN THE ANDES the theme of at least one poem by every bogotano writer. The unholy clatter of church-bells helped me arouse Hays one morning in time to catch the early train on the “ Ferrocarril del Sur.” Some twenty miles out we descended at the isolated little station of Tequendama and struck off through a region wholly unwooded and almost desert dry. As the road mounted a bit from the bare sabana a hardy vege- tation appeared, here and there a small grove of eucalypti, and a bushy natural growth thinly covering the sides of the low mountains among which we were soon winding. Before long we fell in with the narrow Bogota river, idling placidly along, little guessing what a tremendous tumble it was due to get a bit later. Tradition has it that a god or an Inca, desiring to drain the lake that once covered the sabana, opened the gap through which the stream drops. By and by there appeared ahead a whirling mist cloud which grew until we found ourselves completely enveloped in a great fog out of which rose a dull, never-ending roar of indistinct location. Directed by a peasant, we descended through a rustic gate and for some yards down a field of heather and deep-green grass speckled with white clover blossoms and scattered with massive protruding rocks. The face of the one of these a Bogota merchant had disfigured in impertinent American fashion with an advertisement of his “ superior coffee.” We had reached the “ Niagara of Colombia.” Yet so far as seeing went we might as well have been in our cozy beds back in the capital. An ordinary brown stream some forty feet wide flowed down through bulging rocks, pitched over in a short fall on to a stony ledge at our feet, then off into the mist-blinded unknown. A mere country brook in which we could dip our fingers here, a foot beyond it was forever gone. It was as if a whole world of mystery lay below and about us, yet the curtain of swirling gray mist into which the river plunged to be seen no more hid all from view. We had shivered through our lunch, finding it difficult to believe that we were five degrees from the equator in the month of July, .when suddenly the wind rose, and for a moment the mist thinned until we caught a hint of an immense chasm untold depths below ; then closed in again. The excursion seemed to have been a failure. We strolled on down the highway in the fog and loafed awhile on a bushy hillside. But as we turned homeward, the mist was vviped away as suddenly as a curtain drawn aside and all Tequendama lay before us. I slid down a steep bank to the edge of the bottomless chasm and sat down where I could remain, as long as I kept my feet braced 36 Celebrating Colombia’s Independence Day (July 20th) by unveiling a new statue of Sucre and renaming a plaza in his honor Meanwhile in another square the populace marvels at the feats of “maroma nacional” of an amateur circus. Note the line of policemen in holiday attire THE CLOISTERED CITY in the sod, before one of the finest sights in the world — or let them slip and drop to sudden death. From the upper ledge the stream fell a sheer unbroken thousand feet in which the entire river seemed to turn to spray and whatever was left when it struck was beaten into mist which, rising like steam from the yawning gorge as from some immense caldron, hid all the face of the adjacent country. Im- measurely below, a much smaller stream could be seen picking itself together again and winding its way dizzily off through a vast rock- faced canon on the perpendicular walls of which clung a few hardy plants ; and while we remained in the cold autumn world above, the river flowed away into the tropics, into the coffee country, the land of bananas, and the perpetual summer of the Magdalena, to help float Colombia down to the outer world. Of the many views of Bogota the best is that we had at the end of our stay, from the summit of Guadalupe. A bit of the backing range juts forth in two peaks, each with a little white church on its top, that seem almost sheer above the city. We climbed to the higher in something more than an hour, massed clouds breaking away now and then to flood with sunshine the ever widening sabana and the hazy, far-away mountains that seemed to cut off the world completely, and came out at last on a grassy platform where we 'could look down, like the astonished Conquistadores, on all the vast plain, and, unlike them, on the city they founded. North and south, as far as we could see, stretched the bleak, treeless range on which we stood. At our feet this fell abruptly away to the suburban huts of the city and her encircling Paseo de Bolivar. Every plaza and patio, many green with a clump of eucalypti, every window and rooftile, was plainly visible. The people were so tiny we had to look for them carefully, as for insects on a carpet, before we could make them out by hundreds crawling along the light-brown streets and specking the squares. Near the brick-walled cemetery the disk of the bullring, filled now with the tents of the “ Circo Keller,” seemed a canvas cover on a small squat pail. Factories, as we understand the word, being unknown, not a fleck of smoke smudged the dull-red expanse of the stoveless city. Its noises came up to us very faintly, at times borne wholly away on the wind, and from this height even the diabolic din of church-bells sounded soft and almost musical. A recent census sets the population at 122,000. Looking down upon the fcity from Guadalupe, this seems at first an underestimation. But gradually one realizes that not only are its houses low, often of 37 VAGABONDING DOWN THE ANDES a single story, but largely taken up by interior patios. Then there are more than a score of churches, innumerable chapels, eight large monasteries, several seminaries, and many residences of the Church authorities. Add to this the many government buildings, and bit by bit the traveler grown skeptical from experience with Latin-American figures, begins to wonder if these are not inflated. There is not a wooden building in town. Treelessness governs the architecture, for the surrounding country is above the timber line, though the imported eucalyptus rises in groves here and there and flanks roads and rail- ways. A distinct line divides the city from the sabana, spread out like a rich brown carpet, cut up into irregular fields by adobe wall-fences often roofed, like the houses, with aged red tiles. In many places the sheen of- shallow lakes recalled that the Zipa of the Chibchas built his Teusacjuilla here on the lower skirts of the range to escape the winter floods of the plain. Off across it were dimly seen several flat towns, and here and there a farm-house or a cluster of them in a grove of the slender Australian gum-trees which merely accen- tuated the treelessness of the vast expanse of w'orld. Six highways sally forth from the city, to march waveringly across the plain, mere threads lost at las't in the enclosing range, broken, gnarled, pitched and tumbled into every manner of shape, bright peaks and valleys standing sharply forth where the sun strikes, great purple-black patches marking the shadows of the clouds. Beyond all else, at times lost in clouds, at others plainly visible, lay the central range of the Cordillera over which we must pass on our journey southward. Though more than a hundred miles away, it bulked into the sky like some vast supernatural wall, the broad snow-capped cone of Tolima piercing the heavens in the center of the picture. 38 CHAPTER III FROM BOGOTA OVER THE QUINDIO ~ THE people of Bogota refused to take seriously our plan of walking to Quito. It was not merely that the Ecuadorian capital was far away; to the inhabitants of this isolated little world it was only a name, like Moscow or Lhassa. Those who had gone to school as far as the geography lessons had a nebulous notion that it lay somewhere to the south, and that no sea intervened ; but their imaginations could not picture two lone gringos arriving by land. To seek information was simply to waste time. The non- existent cannot be described. The best we could do was to pore over a page map in a foreign atlas, whereon a match, according to scale, was 300 miles long. Quito lay nearly three match-lengths distant “ as the crow flies,” without considering the very mountainous nature of the country between. Yet the hardy Conquistadores had somehow journeyed thither, and in other parts of the world we had both traveled routes that the natives considered “ impossible.” As far away as Panama the horrors of this proposed tramp had been impressed upon me. At dinner one evening a typical, stage Englishman, accent and all, and an incurable monopolist of the con- versation, proved to be the owner of mines in Colombia, and I man- aged once to cut in with a query about travel in that country. “ When the steamer lands you in ,” he began, “ you buy your mules, ten or twelve, hire your mozos and carriers and . . .” “ But I plan to walk.” “Walk!” exploded my fellow-guest, “Why on earth should a man wish to walk?” “ It keeps the girth reduced,” I might have replied. “ It cahn’t be done,” dogmatized the monopolist. “ Absurd ! Why — • why — a man cahn’t travel on foot in Colombia. His social stand- ing depends on how fine a mule he rides. If he walked, he ’d be taken for a bally peon, lose his caste entirely, y’ know, and all that sort of thing.” “ Horrible ! ” I gasped. 39 VAGABONDING DOWN THE ANDES “ Besides, you ’ve got to have a mule-train to carry your tent and bed and supplies and . . . Why, what on earth would you eat ? ” “ Huts ...” I began. “Eh? Of the natives? Of course, but they haven’t a blessed thing to eat, y’ know. They live on corn cakes and beans, and bananas and bread, and that sort of thing. Now and then a chicken perhaps, but you ’d starve to death. And if they saw a white man coming, they ’d know he had a lot of money and rob him. Bandits and that sort of thing, y’ know. And how are you going to cross the rivers — ? ” “ Swim — ” I tried to say, but the sentence was drowned in his cataract of words. “ And the mud ! Why, bless me, one time a party was going along the road in Colombia and they saw a hat, an English hat, lying in a mudhole. One of them started to kick it, when a man’s voice shouted : “ * ’Ere, stop it ! That ’s my bally ’ead ! ’ “‘What on earth are you doing down there?’ said the party. “ ‘ Sitting on my mule, to be sure,’ said the voice. “ Why, bless me, I would n’t go on foot in Colombia for all the gold in the bank of England ! ” It was the end of July when I tiptoed out of the American Legation of Bogota, bearing at last a letter from our magnificent charge d’affaires — a splendid representative of Harvard, but not, thank God, of the United States — and carried it over to the government build- ing opposite. The Minister of Foreign Affairs to whom I made my way through a line of typewriters on which cigarette-clouded officials were pounding out great international matters with two fingers, was one of those rare persons who know why a man should wish to walk, though, being a Colombian, he had never dared do so himself, and was, moreover, certain that Quito could not be reached by land. I was soon armed with a gorgeous, if misspelled, document in which the Government of Colombia permitted itself to recommend los senores americanos therein named to the authorities along the way — should any such turn up. The genuine traveler sets out on a journey by tossing a toothbrush into a pocket and strolling out of town. But even Hays had suffered somewhat from that softening of the vagabond’s moral fiber that is the penalty for dallying with the bourgeois comforts of civilization. We both had the American hobo’s disgust for the “ blanket stiff ” who “ packs ” his own bed ; yet the Andes offer no proper field for ortho- 40 70 Longitude I) Greenwich 60 -ilfcfMAf TINIQUE (*>.) f1 \ BARBADOS • 7iMW {Dr-) iGRENAOi \ f^r.l . «« (C.UmcW SOUTH AMERICA 8,ot* Jir«, 8»b»nll|, inquilia ENGLISH STATUTE MILES u.ndc\N<*«e '""Gul/cob wto- '-Barqvu of Darien KILOMETERS 0 100 200 300 100 600 COO 700 800 000 1000 Dollvnr iac' JucaWfi^J 'DUTCi F^iENCH/^ MALPELO (Col.) cNsi'i f iCQVJAt.OR_ _pich|r,c Btreellos i£}MTOR Obldoj ,b*ngoY 'Ittltuba /Borb* eearako,, i •’Ctrpllna iTbcr*i|nj R Antonin TrujUloV l Stott MarQiJ HI JEiaKneloo )lntnanuno \ Rio do Co 1 Tallo Gw; V ( VjH. B«ll ^ HUMarl JaSia alrtdor do Plat fait of ljtb*^__— ' Malta (Jroeto Mila Pont A / Jjoya.) | / V'X> Janunrla, GALAPAGOS IS. (TO ECUADOR' Same scale as large map. M '"'V^V M' Padilla o StMOVt®* EQUATOR TJ*" |C-& Antonio ConitUopV CauqiVi Concepclot Talcabuanoa ’C.Corrunlet KEY Blanca Bag Puerto do 1 ®V*'VcC&nicn dc I vicdum , S. Malian Gul. rL.KaliUtl Uuapl Route of 'WagaboncT- 1 ing Down tyc Andes" The iol d line represents/regions covered on footjyhe broken line otherf means of transportation. lesshow tne author's El Tr Puerto Me Puerto Mad rln I * Valdei Pen, CHILOE I O. o fC» oun ecas i chonos ar : Xnptno A ii ?■ y*C. of T,ou Bayt (Gulf of St. George Lhinner home. .C.2Y* ikORE OE OlOS\ Virpn WEST trait of Magellan o0u’" rents FalM*1’"1 ^ CJIERRA OEL FUEGO Port Stanley QUEEN ADELAIDE ARCH.\l^^pfJ)'“^" s,U. \ OESOLATlON \ SANTA INE6 bVftVj \ CLARENCE •!.£- ^Illlloa Bay 1‘^rHOEOTOM C-ERNt Roc*. / SHAG ROCKS, Hammond’s 8x11 Map of Soutl. America. \ C.S.Ilammood k Co,, New York. ^NAVARIN l ^WOLLASTON ; Cape Horn FROM BOGOTA OVER THE QUINDIO dox hoboing. The journey of unknown duration and possibilities before us was sure to have variations in climate making extra clothing indispensable ; moreover, we could not take the photographs along the way unless we carried with us means for developing the nega- tives. Our first plan was to buy a donkey and drive him between us down the crest of the Andes. Among the many reasons why this fond dream could not be realized was the certainty that we should have chased the animal off his feet within a week. Observation and reflection suggested that we should do better to follow the ways of the country and hire a human beast of burden. For one thing, if the latter ran away or dropped dead we lost nothing, except perhaps our tempers ; if the donkey came to a like end, we would be out ten or twelve dollars. Hays abandoned the plan with double regret, for with it went the hope of some day reporting the journey under the arresting title, “ Three Uncurried Asses in the Andes.” With hundreds of animated bundles of rags trotting about the city ready to lug anything from a load of hay to a chest of drawers for a mere five-cent piece, we were certain there would be scores of native carriers eager to see the world and to substitute a dismal and inter- mittent hand-to-mouth existence for a steady job. We quickly dis- covered, however, that we were wrong in ascribing our own tem- peraments to the Chibcha Indian. There was not a youth among the swarming cargadorcs of Bogota who had the faintest desire to see the world ; the bare thought of getting out of sound of the clanging cathedral bells filled them one and all with terror. For the first time we had struck the basic economic fact that the South American aboriginal prefers to starve at home rather than to live in comparative opulence elsewhere. In prehistoric times the Indians worshipped the natural phenomena about their place of birth ; each village had its cave or tree, its stone or hill, on which it depended for protection ; and the dread of getting out of reach of these still courses through their primi- tive minds. By dint of repeated packing and throwing away, we reduced our fundamental necessities to little more than the contents of two swollen suitcases. Word of our nefarious project to contract a carrier to bear these to some far-off, unknown world reached the last hovels of the suburbs. But the cargadores we approached quickly named an exorbitant wage and fled at the first opportunity. It was not a question of load, but of road. Hays inticed a sturdy fellow upstairs one day and pointed out our baggage on top of an enormous chest. 4i VAGABONDING DOWN THE ANDES The Indian calmly picked up chest and all, murmuring cheerfully : “ A little heavy, senores, but I can do it. Where to ? ” When we suggested a long trip, however, horror crept into his eyes, though his unemotional Indian face showed none of it, and naming an impossible fee, he slowly and silently slid backward through the door. To our surprise, a man captured late on the day before we planned to start did not show this customary fear. He proved to be a native of the tier r a c alien te, eager to get back to his tropical home, and asserted his ability to carry four arrobas (ioo pounds) day after day. Our baggage weighed far less than that. “Why not take a contract to go with us by the month?” I sug- gested. “ Como que pagaran los senores ? ” he queried reflectively. “ We ’ll pay you,” I answered, setting the sum high so that Hays, to whom money was always a minor detail, could not charge me with losing this eleventh-hour opportunity, $1200 a month, and food.” We could see that he “ fell for it” at once, and was merely pro- crastinating in the hope of getting more. That dream vanished, he announced that he must have a new hat and ruana for “ so important a journey.” We agreed to supply these — when he turned up at six in the morning ready to start. He did not turn up. When we had shivered into our clothes and gone to hang over our rcja, cargadores male and female were already plentiful in the wintry, mist-draped plaza below, squatted inside their ruanas or wandering aimlessly about with a rope over one shoulder. Out of regard for the proprieties we beckoned to none but the men. It was some time before one — who, perhaps, had not yet heard our plans — appeared at the door. We were careful to mention only the first town, a short day’s journey away, and offered fifty cents, at least twice what he averaged in daily earnings. Convinced we would give no more, he accepted. This time we took good care he should not escape. When he had bound the load with his rope — the cargador’s one indispensable possession — we put him outside and went to breakfast. On our return we found him waiting — naturally. He prepared for the journey, not as we of the north would expect, by balancing the suitcases on opposite sides, but by slinging them both on his back, the rope cutting deeply into his shoulder, and set off bent so low, with 42 FROM BOGOTA OVER THE QUINDIO the weight chiefly on his hips, that he seemed some deformed crea- ture shuffling along behind us. At last we were off, marching out of the main plaza of Bogota at eight on the morning of August first. In our flannel shirts, even with our coats still on, we set all the capital staring as we passed. Hays carried a kodak in one pocket and Ramsey’s Spanish Grammar in the other ; my own apparatus and the overflow from my suitcase swung from a shoulder in a mochila, or woven hemp bag. Even our “ One-Volume Library/’ consisting of a few favorite bits in a half- dozen languages bound into a single book, we had been forced to pack away on the carrier’s back. We had exchanged instructions to cover any unexpected outcome of the journey, those which Hays had handed me consisting chiefly of the command, “ In the event of death with boots on, do not remove the boots ! ” The morning paper that overtook us near the statues of Colombus and Isabel announced that we had left for Quito the day before, but failed to specify on foot. Readers would have taken it for a printer’s error, anyway. Hays volunteered to shadow the carrier for the first day. Both ex- perienced enough to know that the pleasure of traveling together is enhanced by traveling apart, we each set our own pace, letting our moods take color from the landscape, drifting together now and then when hungry for companionship, or often enough to assure ourselves of each other’s welfare. Epictetus says, “ As the bad singer cannot sing alone, but only in chorus, so a poor traveler cannot travel alone, but only in company.” Hays, having a mind of his own to feed on, was by virtue thereof an excellent traveling companion. At first the way was lined with houses of sun-baked mud, and peopled by dull-eyed, respectful Indians and haughty horsemen. A bright sun, frequently clouded over, made it just the day for tramping in full garb. The Indian crawled along so slowly that I soon forged ahead. Beyond the outskirts the broad upland plain was cut into ir- regular fields by adobe walls or fences, often tile-roofed, with massive adobe gate pillars. Fields dense with green Indian corn alternated with yellow stretches of ripening grain. Here and there potatoes -were being planted. Masses of big red roses, of geraniums and daisies and unfamiliar flowers, frequently beautified the scene. Two hours away I caught the last view of Bogota, backed by her black, mist-topped range; then the cloistered city sank forever from our sight as the road dipped down from the slightest of knolls on the all but floor-flat plain. 43 VAGABONDING DOWN THE ANDES We had not set out to rival champion pedestrians. When appetite suggested, I stretched out at the roadside with my pocket lunch, read- ing Swinburne the while and scattering him page by page on the gusty winds of the sabana. Hays and our baggage drifted languidly past. All the day we followed a massive stone highway, built by the Spaniards of colonial times, now raised well above the flanking dirt roads preferred by the soft-footed travel of to-day. A large stone bridge of clumsy lines lifted us over the little Funza river which waters the sabana, and not far beyond we entered the ancient town of Mosquiera, on a main corner of which stood a statue of the Virgin, unusual only for the fact that she was jet-black of complexion as any African chief. To the South American the color line is not sharp, even in his picture of the after world. Some time later, having drifted together again, we met an ox-cart headed for Bogota. The half- Indian driver, struck suddenly wide-eyed at sight of our strange garb and the burdened carrier behind us, cried out in consternation: “Como! No hay mas funcion en Bogota?” We appreciated the implied compliment. He had mistaken us for performers in the “ Keller Circus,” a little fourth-rate affair playing in the capital. Having, no doubt, saved up his billetes for weeks and started for town at last with the price of admission to this wonderful “ function,” he was quite naturally dismayed to meet what seemed to be the show treking southward before he arrived. At three we strolled into Serrazuela, officially named Madrid. Hays’ pedometer registered seventeen miles. In the little one-story “ hotel,” gaping with astonishment at our appearance, we were as- signed to a mat-carpeted room opening on the patio, and furnished with two wooden beds exactly five feet long, with very thin reed mat- tresses over the board flooring that took the place of springs. In this climate there was little gain in traveling leisurely and arriving early. Except for a few hours near noon, it was too cold to lounge along the way; once arrived we could only wander aimlessly about among stupid villagers, uncommunicative as their baked-mud walls. By dark it had grown too wintry to sit reading with comfort, even had there been any other light than the pale flicker of a small candle. There was nothing left but to go to bed, and that had little of the pleasure the phrase suggests to American ears. When Hays set his feet against the footboard, his lips nearly reached his miniature pillow. He complained of feeling like the victim of a “ trunk mystery.” Sometime in the night I awoke to hear him growling, “ No wonder 44 A section of the ancient highway, built by the Spaniards more than three centuries ago, leading from the sabana of Bogota down into the hotlands of the Magdalena. It was not designed for wheeled traffic, hence is laid in steps, with a slope to carry off the rains Fellow-travelers at the edge of the sabana of Bogota FROM BOGOTA OVER THE QUINDIO these people are crooked ! ” My own was a folding bed — in that I had to fold up to get into it. Though we were afoot at chilly six, at nine we were still seeking a cargador. The one from Bogota had fled during the darkest hours. Moreover, he had evidently spread startling reports of our plans. In a town swarming with gaunt and ragged out-of-works we were a long time finding a man who admitted that he sometimes plied the voca- tion of carrier. His attitude was that of an heir to unlimited wealth whiling away the days until he came into his own by an occasional choice and easy task. After an endless oration in which he assured us times without number that he was “ poor but honest,” just the man required for our “ very valuable baggage,” which the “ expensive leather boxes ” proved it, and which in his hands would be perfectly safe among the robbers that swarmed in the road ahead — providing we walked close beside him — he admitted his willingness, as a special favor, to accompany us to La Mesa, eighteen miles away, for the paltry sum of $200. We offered fifty, and he left in well-feigned scorn. At the alcalde’s office that official had been due only an hour or so, and naturally had not yet arrived. We spread our resplendent docu- ment before his hump-shouldered secretary, demanding a cargador at once. That ’s the way the haughty traveler always did in the accounts we had read of journeys in the Andes. But Serrazuela was evidently ill-trained. The secretary stepped to the door and beckoned a few haughty rag-displays nearer, suggesting in a soft voice that perhaps, as a great favor to him personally, one of them would go with los senores and carry a “ very light little bundlet.” One by one they re- plied in as solemn tones as if they fancied we believed them, that they were already engaged for the day, that they had a lame knee, or a sore back, or an exacting spouse, or were in mourning for a mother’s third cousin, and faded silently away. Among the last to go was our original “ poor but honest ” applicant, who paused to ask whether the offer we had made was $50 paper or $50 gold, because if we meant the latter he . . Just then the alcalde’s perfume gladdened our nostrils, and one of the men, rounded up by a soldier, having accepted what was still an exorbitant day’s wage, we were off at last. The day was bright and sunny. Behind, across the sabana, masses of white clouds hung over unseen Bogota and her distant black range. I could keep pace with “ Rain in the Face,” as Hays had dubbed our new acquisition, only by 45 VAGABONDING DOWN THE ANDES holding each foot a second or more before setting it down. If I paused to let him get a bit ahead, he was sure to wait for me a few yards beyond. Ten cents spent in a little wayside drunkery gave him new life, but only for a short half-hour. Once he fell in with a friend driving an “ empty ” donkey, and for a space we moved a little less slowly. Then the friend turned off toward his village and with a groan “ Rain in the Face ” took up his burden again and crawled snail-like behind me. Soon after we came to the edge of the world. The sabana had ended abruptly. Before us lay only a great swirling white mist into which disappeared the old Spanish highway that led in broad, low steps down and ever down into an unseen abyss. The carrier began to tremble visibly. The year before, he confided in a choked whisper, he had been held up here by bandits, who had killed and robbed his employer. Only when one of us went close in front and the other at his heels could he be induced to move forward and downward. Now and then a group of Indians, men and women as heavily bur- dened as their pack-animals, loomed forth from the clouds and toiled slowly upward past us. An hour down we came upon a rock grotto into which bareheaded arrieros were crawling with lighted candles. “ It is,” explained one of them, “ that San Antonio once appeared here, and all caminantes stop to pray, because he aids, protects, and betters us.” “Are you sure?” I asked, curious to hear his answer. “ Sure ? ” he cried, staring at me with startled eyes, “ Senor, I have been arriero on this road since I was a boy, always bringing a candle for San Antonio ; in all those years I have been robbed only three times — and then I had no money.” He crossed himself thrice in the intricate South American manner and sped noiselessly away into the clouds after his animals. It may have been our failure to offer tribute to the saint of the grotto that all but brought our expedition to grief thus early. The mist had thinned and the landscape that opened out became more and more tropical. A single palm-tree, then clusters of them, grew up beside me. Banana plants and clumps of bamboo, like gigantic ferns, nodded sluggishly ; a spreading tree pink with blossoms added the needed touch of color. Suddenly I realized that my companions were not with me, and sat down to wait. A half-hour passed. I strolled back along the road, then hurried upward at sharper pace. Fully a mile up I sighted Hays, driving the wabbly-kneed Indian before him. 46 FROM BOGOTA OVER THE OUINDIO They had already tiptoed on the edge of an adventure. Barely had I passed from view when there had fallen in with them, one by one, four evil-faced fellows carrying sugarcane staffs. As thirst came, each fell to peeling and munching his cane. Hays, lost in some prob- lem of Urdu philology, was suddenly recalled to the material world by a throat gurgle from “ Rain in the Face.” He looked up to find the four wayfarers, long sheath-knives in hand, still ostensibly engaged in peeling sugarcane, but closing in around him and the shivering cargador. Haysvhad taken for fiction the stories of dangers on the road, and his automatic was packed away on the carrier’s back. But he had been too long a soldier to betray anxiety in the face of danger. The quartet continued their innocent occupation, crowding ever closer, but had not quite summoned up courage to try their fortunes against so stern-featured a gringo when they fell in with another group of travelers, and the four gradually faded away behind. Thenceforth we took care to wear our weapons in plain sight. “ Rain in the Face ” had with great difficulty been coaxed to his feet again. When darkness fell, he was still wheezing slowly on- ward far from the day’s goal. The abrupt, stony descent was broken now and then by sharp rises, and we stumbled and sprawled over uncounted loose stones and solid boulders. At length white huts be- gan to stand dimly forth from the night ; the voices of unseen groups in the doorways under faintly suggested thatch roofs fell silent with astonishment as we passed ; and in a climate in pleasant contrast to that of night-time Bogota we entered at last the little hotel of La Mesa. “ Rain in the Face ” set down his load for the last time with a stage groan, grasped his fee after the customary plea for more, and with the parting information that he was “ poor but honest,” raised his wreck of a straw hat and disappeared to be seen no more. Morning found us in a long town on a shelf-edge overhanging a great tumbled valley, still a mile above sea-level, again facing the problem of how to make our baggage get up and walk. When we had tramped a hot and stony half-day without getting a yard further on our journey, we returned to the hotel. Hays stretched out on — and over — his bed and drew out his faithful Ramsey, bent on drowning his worldly troubles in study. The first sentence that stepped forth from the page, inviting translation into Spanish, asserted : “ In South America are many arid regions through which travel and the transportation of baggage is difficult.” 47 VAGABONDING DOWN THE ANDES Yet there are those who hold that text-books are not closely re- lated to practical life ! Well on in the day, however, we did get two feeble youths to agree to carry a suitcase each to Jirardot for $180 and third-class fare back to La Mesa. At this rate we could soon have better afforded to build a railroad. Indeed, we had already reduced to an absurdity the ex- periment of trying to mix the tramp and the gentleman. “ A sahib,” said Kim, “ is always tied to his baggage.” It dominates every move- ment and is, after all, of scant value in proportion to the burden it imposes. Hire a carrier and he is always intruding upon your dreams and meditations, and with all the expense and trouble no article of the pack can you lay hands on during all the day’s tramp. Moreover, I am not of that kidney that can make a beast of burden of my fellow- man. I soon found that a cargador toiling under my load behind me made me far more weary than to carry it myself. We decided to revert to type at the next halt and play the “ sahib ” no longer. The road, now chiefly desheclio (“unmade”), descended swiftly into the genuine tropics and the next afternoon we sweated into Jirardot on the Magdalena, a month from the day we had left it to ascend to Bogota. For all our resolutions, however, neither of us contemplated with pleasure the prospect of turning ourselves into pack- animals. We set afoot word that we would pay a high monthly wage to any lad with a stout back and no particular grade of intelligence who would consent to leave home. But the youths of Jirardot were even less ambitious than those of the capital. We set a time limit, ad- vanced it, and at last fell upon our possessions with the rage of de- spair. What we did not succeed in throwing away we made into two bundles of the maximum weight allowed by parcel-post and sent thefn down the Magdalena to Panama and Quito. We were forced to sacri- fice even the “ One-Volume Library,” which did not matter, for we had found it more convenient to buy native novels and toss them away leaf by leaf, thus daily reducing our load. Moreover, we had resolved to read thenceforth only the literature of the country in which we were traveling. Even then there swung from our shoulders some fifteen pounds each, besides the awkward developing-tank filled with films and chemicals with which we alternately burdened ourselves, when we crossed the little toll-bridge over the Magdalena and, leaving the de- partment of Cundinamarca behind, struck off into that of Tolima. An extensive plain, half desert with drought now, blazing hot and sandy, spread far away before us. At first, mud huts were frequent, 48 Approaching the Central Cordillera of the Andes. A typical Andean camino real, or "royal highway,” with a pack-train bound for the capital FROM BOGOTA OVER THE QUINDIO and many country people passed driving drooping donkeys. Curs abounded. Here and there a leper, squatted beside the trail, languidly held out his supplicating stumps. Everywhere were the rock-hard hills of termite “ ants,” sharp-pointed as the volcanoes of Guatemala, while trains of stinging red ones crossed the road at frequent in- tervals. Fields of tobacco and corn stood shriveled beneath the un- clouded sun ; troops of horses and mules laden with the narcotic weed, rolled into cigarros de Ambalema and wrapped in dry plantain- leaves, shuffled past in the dust before their shrieking and whistling arrieros, bound for Jirardot and modern transportation. The camino real, still a “ royal highway ” in spite of its condition, passed now and then through clumsy swinging gates that marked the limits of otherwise unbounded haciendas. We met several haughty horsemen in ruanas and the conventional wealth of accoutrement, and once a cavalcade of men and women, the latter lurching uncomfortably back and forth on their high side-saddles. The half-Indian peon dog-trot- ting behind them carried on his back a large chair with a sheet over it, only the squalling that accompanied him suggesting what it con- cealed. The caste system was noticeable even here on the broad plain. When we had carriers behind us, natives afoot raised their hats and horsemen gave us friendly greetings. Now, with our pos- sessions on our own backs, we received only frozen stares, except from an occasional peon who grunted at us as equals. A few miles beyond the Magdalena we came to the parting of the ways. One sandy trail led south to Neiva and Popayan ; the other, with which we swung to the right, struck off for Ibague and the Ouindio pass over the Central Cordillera of the Andes. We took this longer route to Quito that we might traverse the great Cauca valley. The pedometer registered a mere ten miles when we halted at an adobe hut that to the natives was a “ very fine posada.” A bedraggled old woman pottered nearly two hours over a stick fire in the back yard before she brought us two fried eggs and a small dish of fried plantains, as succulent as wooden chips. Our “ bed ” she prepared by throwing a reed mat on the hardest earth floor known to geography, and by no means as level as the surrounding plain. My shoes and leggings did poor service as pillow, and Hays charged Ramsey with lack of foresight in not binding his grammar in upholstered plush. We were awakened from the first nap by the hubbub of a group of fellow-travelers, nearly all women, who piled their bundles in a corner and stretched themselves out on such floor-space as we had left unoc- 49 VAGABONDING DOWN THE ANDES cupied. Yet the ethics of the road are such in Spanish-America that we felt no misgiving in leaving our unprotected possessions on a bench at the door. With the first hint of dawn our fellow-lodgers stole silently away. Hays was still abed when I struck off in a gorgeous morning across a sea of light-brown bunch-grass, surrounded on all sides by far-off mountain ranges. Behind, blue-purple with distance, the face of the plateau on which sits Bogota in its solitude, stretched wall-like across the eastern horizon, high indeed, yet how slightly above the earth as a whole. Ahead, the snow-clad rounded cone of Tolima stood sharply forth above a nearer range that cut off its base, while a tumbled moun- tain landscape beyond promised less monotonous if more laborious days to come. A native carpenter working on the new toll bridge over the brawling Collo river assured us he would much rather be on the road with us, but that “ unfortunately,’’ he was contracted. For a time broken ground and rocky foothills cut down our progress. Soon we were back again on a level plain of vast extent, a bit higher than the pre- ceding, a garden spot in fertility, though largely uncultivated, with mountains on every hand and Tolima close on the west. As I had already found in Honduras, these upland plains, perfectly level, cov- ered with grass but for a threading of faint paths all following the same general direction, afford the finest walking in the world. Never hard, always high enough to catch a cool breeze, often shaded, gener- ally winding enough to avoid the monotony of a straight road, they make the journey like strolling across an endless lawn or through some vast orchard. Now and then we passed a tinkling mule-train, a horseman, or an Indian short-distance pedestrian, but never a vehicle to disturb the reflective peace of a perfect tramp. Every hour or two we drifted together, generally at a hut selling guarapo, a half-fer- mented beverage of crude sugar and water, tasting mildly like cider and extremely thirst-quenching. Every species of pack-animal ap- peared,— mules, horses, donkeys, steers, bulls, women, children, and even men, all toiling eastward. Often a dozen horses marched in a sort of lockstep, the halter of each tied to the tail of the animal ahead. Many had one or both ears cropped short, not by some accident or gratuitous cruelty, as we at first imagined, but as a system of branding. Now and then a shifting load brought an arriero running to throw his ruana over the animal’s eyes, blind-folding it until it was prepared to 50 FROM BOGOTA OVER THE QUINDIO go on again. One mule-train of more than forty animals was loaded with large boxes marked “ Ausfuhrgut ; Antwerpen, Colon, Buenaven- tura.” German goods consumed in Bogota often make this round- about journey, — to Panama, by ship to Buenaventura, by train over the western range, and more than half way across Colombia on pack animals, all to avoid the exorbitant rates of English-owned steamers up the Magdalena. The haciendas of this region, producing chiefly tobacco, are owned by absentee landlords and managed by mayordomos. The peon labor- ers are paid twenty cents a day with food. Arrieros on the road aver- age fifty cents a day and “ find ” themselves. A few of the latter paused to inquire our destination and otherwise satisfy a fathomless curiosity. Our usual answer, — “ A1 Cauca,” always brought forth a startled, — “Como! Por tierra?” (By land?). In the Andes the expression is used with no thought of the sea as an alternative, but as the opposite of “A caballo ” (On horseback). Occasionally we purposely astounded an inquirer by telling the whole truth. After a speechless moment in which his face clouded over with an unspoken accusation, he usually answered that though we might perhaps fancy we were walking to Quito, we were misinformed, and hurried on after his animals without even the customary “ Adios.” Now and then we met a lone arriero, “ singing his troubles to the solitude,” as a Colombian poet has it, and once I was overtaken by a man who cried breathlessly as soon as his voice could reach me : “ Ha visto, senor, un muchachito con un burro vacio,” to which I could only reply; “ No, I regret to have to tell you that I have not seen a small boy with an empty donkey,” and watch the distracted fellow race on over the horizon. We early discovered the uselessness of asking countrymen of the Andes that simple little question : “ How far is it to — ? ” Ramsey himself could not have catalogued all the strange answers we received, even in the first few days. A few of them ran : “ Perhaps an hour, senor.” “ Only an hour? ” “No more, senor, but because there is much cuesta (ascent or de- scent) perhaps it is two or three hours.” Or the reply came : 5i VAGABONDING DOWN THE ANDES “How far? On foot or on horseback, senor?” Or, more often, “By sea or by land?” Some, tossing their heads toward the sun, replied : “ At evening prayers you are there,” or shook their heads with : “No alcanzan — you will not arrive, senores.” “ Todavia ’sta lejos — It is still far.” “ How far, more or less ; an hour, or three days ? ” “ Between the two, senores.” “Three leagues, then?” “ Ma-a-a-a-a-as, senores, — Much more.” “ Sigue no mas — Just keep on going; A1 otro ladito — On the other little side ; A la vueltita no mas — Around the little corner no more; Arribita — A little above; No mas bajita queda — Just down below it remains ” — and so on through all the gamut of misinforma- tion ; never a simple “ So-many miles.” Above all, it was fatal to ask a leading question. The misinformant was sure to agree with us at all costs, evidently out of mere politeness. One might fancy the ancient rulers of the Andes demanded an affirmative answer from their sub- jects on penalty of death; and the supposition would account for many of the stories of miraculous appearances, of place names and the like, gathered by the Conquistadores. At best, we were assured : “ No hay donde perderse — There is no place to lose yourselves ” — and were almost sure to strike, within ten minutes, a misleading fork in the trail. With fifteen miles behind us I slipped gratefully from under my awkward thirty pounds before one of a cluster of thatched huts called “ Hotel Mi Casa,” on the earth floor of which two broken-legged cots were placed for us. Water to drink was doled out grudgingly ; washing was a luxury none indulged in. Hays was busy consuming six home-made cigars, called “ tobacos comunes,” that had cost him a sum total of one cent. As we sat before the hovel watching the sunset throw its reflections on the red cliffs of the range behind us, the day went out like an extinguished lamp and the stars came sud- denly forth in striking brilliancy. The north star of our home sky was now below the horizon, and many a long month was due to pass before we should see it again. The plateau ahead was even vaster than it seemed. I had walked hours next morning by one of those easy haphazard upland trails, and still it lay endless before me. Clumps of short, squat trees flecked it with shadows here and there, but for the most part it was bare alike 52 Hays, seated before the “Hotel Mi Casa” and behind one of his $5 cigars, watching the reflection of the sunset on the dull-red, broken range we had climbed during a long, stiff day A bit of the road by which we mounted to the Quindio pass over the central range, with forests of the slender palms peculiar to the region. The trail is more prone to pitch headlong up or down the mountainside than to follow a flank in this orderly manner FROM BOGOTA OVER THE QUINDIO of the planting of nature or man. Cattle grazed on every hand, and mule-trains went and came frequently. In every direction stood row upon row of jagged mountain ranges, fading away into the haziest distance. They seemed of a world wholly cut off from the whisper- ing stillness of the broad brown plain. Turning, I could see untold mile upon mile behind me. The blue Central Cordillera that shut off the valley of the Cauca lay piled into the sky ahead. Like a hair on a colored glass, I could make out our sharply ascending trail of the days to come crawling upward toward the Quindio. On the rim of the mountain lap that holds Ibaque, spread about a bulking church at the base of the first great buttresses of the chain, I came upon Hays in the shade of a leper’s hut. Before the marks of his ailment came upon him the outcast had climbed with his mules for many years back and forth over the great barrier, and something like a tear glistened in his eye as we turned our faces toward the land of his youth. The “ Hotel Paris,” in the town below, looked a century old with its quaint wooden rejas of colonial days to peer out through — and also in at, as a half-intoxicated ibagueno demonstrated by thrusting his face in upon us while we were battling with the stains of travel. When I took him to task, he answered wonderingly, “ Why, every one does it, senor,” and refused to take any hint short of a basin of water. Ibague, capital of the province of Tolima, claims 2300 “ souls.” The count takes much for granted. It is a peaceful, roomy little town on a gentle, grassy slope where every resident has ample space to put up his chalky little straw-roofed cottage, yet all toe the street line, as if fearful of missing anything that might unexpectedly pass. Square-cornered, with almost wholly one-story buildings, its calles are atrociously cobbled, the few sidewalks worn perilously slippery and barely wide enough for two feet at once. A stream of crystal- clear water gurgles down each street through cobbled gutters, lulling the tr c/j 3^ • « p ® o* « n . p £. rc • 3 3 3 O* 3- P o 2 *“* • o p ■ a g. p _ 5 5* 3 (7m sr Pa 8ip O gr *