ENA AND THE 
 KS OF THE SINU 
 
 (NINGHAME GRAHAM 
 
BANCROFT 
 LIBRARY 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 Theo H. Crook Collection 
 
CARTAGENA 
 
 AND THE BANKS OF THE SINti 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 Microsoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cartagenabanksofOOcunnrich 
 
R. B. CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM ON " LUCERO, CARTAGENA DE INDIAS. 
 
CARTAGENA AND THE 
 BANKS OF THE SINU 
 
 R. Bf" CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM 
 
 AUTHOR OT **A BRAZILIAN MYSTIC," ETC 
 
 NEW YORK : GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN 
 

 Printed in Great Britain 
 

 A LA ILUSTRE SENORITA 
 
 CAMILA WALTERS, 
 
 DE CARTAGENA DE INDIAS, CON EL HOMENAGE 
 DE MI ADMIRACION Y AMISTAD SINCERAS. 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 Morne ville jadis reine des Oceans ; 
 Aujourd'hui le requin poursuit en paix les scombres 
 Et le nuage errant allonge seul les ombres. 
 Sur ta rade ou roulaient les galions geants. 
 
 Depuis Drake et l'assaut des Anglais mecreants 
 Tes murs desempares croulent en noirs decombres 
 Et, comme un glorieux collier de pedes sombres 
 Les boulets de Pointis montrent les trous beants. 
 
 Entre le ciel qui brule et la mer qui moutonne 
 
 Au somnolent soleil d'un midi monotone 
 
 Tu songes 6 Guerriere aux vieux conquistadors. 
 
 Et dans l'enervement des nuits chaudes et calmes 
 
 Bercant ta gloire eteinte, 6 cit6 tu t'endors 
 
 Sous les palmiers, un long fremissement des palmes. 
 
 JOSE MARIA DE HEREDIA 
 
 vu 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Nothing could possibly have been a better corrective 
 to the atmosphere of war, the excited newspapers, the 
 people ever on the lookout for news, the accounts of 
 hardships, heroism, and death at the front, and the 
 oceans of false sentiment at home, than a visit to 
 Cartagena and the Sinu. Little enough the people 
 there were stirred by war news, though they regarded it 
 with a mild curiosity, tempered by lack of faith in most 
 of what they heard. True it was that several German 
 steamers lay in the bay, blistered by the sun and 
 dirty, their plates expanding and their paint dropping 
 off in scales. The people looked at them at first and 
 then took them apparently just as they take their city 
 and their lives, as sent by God, and therefore not to be 
 questioned by mankind. They heard the news of the 
 suicide of a German mate, unable to endure the 
 monotony on board, and remarked, " Pobrecito." 
 That was his epitaph. Certainly it was fitting for his 
 death — or, rather, his escape from life. After a week 
 or two within the walls of the " unconquered city " 
 one felt that there possibly might be a war, up some- 
 where in the clouds, but that it did not matter much. 
 In fact, one soon assumed the attitude of a man who 
 passes by an ant-hill and sees the toiling multitudes 
 beneath his feet, and then walks on, smoking a 
 cigarette, and thinking that it is a fine day. 
 
 ix 
 
x PREFACE 
 
 In the bay lay a little warship built at Pola, that 
 once had constituted the navy of Morocco under the 
 name of the Bashir. Now she was still the back- 
 bone of a naval force, that of Colombia. I knew her 
 at a glance, with hei straight bow and air of cranki- 
 ness, and remembered having gone aboard her at 
 Tangier. The sentry who was squatted at the 
 gangway invited me to go down to the w cafe," and 
 this I found to be the captain's cabin. It was fitted up 
 with little tables, and at a charcoal stove a " khawarji " 
 was making coffee. Innumerable cages filled with 
 canary-birds were hung about, their occupants singing 
 their loudest all the time. I thought I had seldom 
 seen a warship so perfectly transformed, but I had 
 still something to learn upon the point. What the 
 Bashir was called in Cartagena I forget ; but when I 
 went on board her a vampire bat was hanging in a 
 deserted alleyway; her decks were scorching, and an 
 old negro, fishing from the stern, was all her comple- 
 ment. Somebody bought her (I think a Yankee 
 speculator of some sort), and she was towed away 
 eventually, towards some port unknown. She may 
 have reached it. I hardly think so, but I hope it was 
 a port in Central America, and that she still floats 
 and is considered the chief defence at sea of some 
 republic — for choice a state that has no seaboard — 
 and that she is commanded from afar by telephone. 
 
 The old, white town, looking like a gigantic 
 wedding-cake, preserved miraculously against the 
 assaults of time to celebrate its double marriage, that 
 of Europe with Salvagia in the Middle Ages, and its 
 approaching union with the modern world, appeared 
 
PREFACE xi 
 
 to slumber quite incurious of wars, of tottering 
 empires, of air-raids, poison gas, and all the benefits 
 that civilization has entailed on a glad world. The 
 whispering palm-trees sang the dirge of its departed 
 glories, made musical like Eolian harps by the 
 soft breezes from the Caribbean Sea. Still, its 
 sleep was now and then disturbed by events that 
 linked it to the bloodthirsty world of Europe, 
 the land where all men's hands were raised against 
 their fellows in the name of Christianity and peace. 
 Well have we played the part of helot to the republics 
 of the Southern Hemisphere, and taught them that all 
 our criticism of their poor, futile revolutions, so sparing 
 of the sacrifice of life, so careful to respect the honour 
 of the home, have been but child's play, compared to 
 our own bloody sport. 
 
 Even to Cartagena there came echoes of the war. 
 An old, condemned stern-wheeler, lofty of side, beam- 
 engined, crank as a coracle, and quite unseaworthy, 
 had lain for three years in the mud at Maracaibo. 
 Her seams all gaped, her paint was cracked and 
 blistered by the sun, her engines rusty, and round her 
 garboard strakes festoons of seaweed had gathered 
 into a veritable forest, clinging to the barnacles. 
 What her name had been when she toiled up against 
 the muddy waters of the Mississippi I cannot tell. 
 The company that bought her named her the Santa 
 Barbara. They set her to run from Cartagena to 
 Quibdo, the capital of the Choco, up the Atrato River, 
 and down the coast, touching at Tolu, Cispata, and 
 other little ports, after a summary repair. Paint hid 
 the opening seams. The rusty engines had been 
 
xii PREFACE 
 
 greased and oiled, and the great beam worked jerkily. 
 Her top hamper was great, her freeboard low. Boats 
 she possessed but one, hung near the stern, and used to 
 keep potatoes, yams, or vegetables, or as a sleeping- 
 place for deck hands or a chance negro passenger. 
 Her engine-room was almost open, after the fashion 
 of old-time, Yankee river-boats. Nothing could well 
 have been imagined more unfit to cope with the rough 
 waters of the Caribbean Sea, or round the Point ot 
 Tigua, fifteen leagues upon her way towards theChoco, 
 for there a heavy sea gets up at the least breeze. 
 Passengers always crowded her, sleeping in every 
 corner, curled up upon the deck, or in the hammocks 
 that Colombians nearly always carry with them, hung 
 to the stanchions of the awning-rail. Some few — 
 mostly rich Syrian storekeepers — going to Quibdo, or 
 mining engineers for the great platinum mines in 
 the Choco, secured the boxlike dens called cabins by 
 antonomasy. She usually was laden to within a foot ot 
 her low freeboard, and all the decks were crowded 
 with boxes, trunks, bundles, saddles, bales, and 
 packages of goods. 
 
 Her crew were negroes and nondescripts, and her 
 engineer, of course, a Scotsman, known as Scottie, 
 stricken in drink and years; but capable and brave 
 to rashness, as he had proved a hundred times by 
 venturing his life in such a Babylonia as was the 
 rechristened Santa Barbara. That nothing should 
 be wanting, and that the link should be supplied 
 between this antique vessel worthy to have convoyed 
 La Pinta and La Santa Maria in their memorable 
 voyage from Palos, had they not outsailed her, a young 
 
PREFACE xiii 
 
 German mate, from one of the Boche steamers, 
 interned in the bay, acted as captain. He proved 
 himself a sailor and a man. The Santa Barbara, 
 after the usual delay of several hours, cleared out of 
 Cartagena in a calm afternoon. She passed into the 
 Cano, 1 at whose mouth the village of Pasacaballos is 
 situated ; then out into the great lagoon beyond it. 
 There, she met the gale that seems to have been 
 blowing since the days of the Conquistadores, and is 
 most likely blowing as I write. She rolled like a 
 galleon, the heavy uppendecks catching the wind like 
 sails. Seas came aboard of her and set the packages 
 and bales upon her decks awash. The miserable 
 passengers were soaked, and as the evening advanced 
 the seas grew heavier, and still the Point of Tigua 
 loomed a league or two in front of her as she lay 
 labouring in the sea. 
 
 The German captain dived into the engine-room 
 and then emerged without his cap, his hair tossed in 
 the wind, and scanned the horizon anxiously. After a 
 look about the deck, and a compassionate glance at the 
 soaked passengers rendering their tribute to Neptune, 
 he took his resolution. Advancing to an Englishman 
 who was sheltering behind a deckhouse, he drew his 
 feet together, clicked his heels, and said, " My name 
 is Einstein, Second-Lieutenant of the Reserve of 
 German Navy," and raised his fingers mechanically, 
 forgetting he had lost his cap. " We are at war," he 
 said ; "but what of that ? — no one cares to die without 
 a fight. You see that headland ? It is the Point of 
 Tigua. The sea is breaking heavily upon it, and if 
 1 Passage between mangrove swamps. 
 
xiv PREFACE 
 
 we drift there we are lost. Only a month ago a 
 steamer failed to weather it, and not a soul was saved. 
 Those that were not dashed on the rocks, the 
 sharks soon tore to pieces. Upon the other side of it 
 we shall be in shelter ; but the swine firemen are 
 frightened and refuse to work. Come down with me, 
 and . . . ah, that is right, you have a pistol : we will 
 help Scottie to persuade them to work on." 
 
 The Englishman, muttering " All right," went 
 down below into the engine-room. The firemen, 
 huddled in a heap, had turned that ashy-grey colour that 
 comes into a negro's face at the approach of death, or 
 strongly moved by fear. A foot or two from the 
 ship's furnaces the water lapped up dangerously. 
 Holding their pistols in their hands, the enemies, made 
 comrades by the deadly peril they were in, distributed 
 a hearty kick or two and forced the negroes to fire up. 
 
 When they had passed the Point of Tigua, and 
 the old Santa Barbara had got under shelter, shaking 
 the water off her decks, as a Newfoundland dog 
 shakes himself on emerging from a swim, they left the 
 engine-room and came up on deck. The two men 
 looked at one another and said nothing, and then instinc- 
 tively their hands stole out towards each other. The 
 Englishman, half shyly, muttered, " You are a damned 
 good Boche. My name is Brown." 
 
 R. B. CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM. 
 
CARTAGENA 
 
 AND THE BANKS OF THE SINU 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 The great Colombian province, known as El De- 
 partamento de Bolivar, though it has an extent of 
 41,000 square miles, is but little known to the outside 
 world. It is bounded on the north by the Caribbean 
 Sea and the department of Atlantico, on the south 
 by the department of Antioquia, on the east by the 
 departments of Santander and Magdalena, and on the 
 west by the Caribbean Sea. The chief towns are 
 Cartagena (the capital), Arjona, Calamar, Santiago 
 de Tolu, El Carmen, Corozal, Chinu, Magangue, 
 Monteria, Sincelejo, and Lorica. 
 
 The ports are Cartagena, Tolu, Cobenas, Cispata, 
 and Magangue, all on the Caribbean Sea, except the 
 port of Magangue, situated on the Magdalena River, 
 not far from its junction with the Rivers San Jorge 
 and Cauca. So little visited is the district that few 
 Colombians ever go there except called by business. 
 Lying within the tropics, Cartagena, the capital, is in 
 latitude 10 degrees north. 1 
 
 1 Herrera, in his " Historia General de Espana," says it is just 
 1,460 leagues from Toledo. This may be so. As the Arab saying 
 runs : " My donkey's off forefoot stands right over the centre of the 
 world. If you do not believe me, go and measure for yourself." 
 
 1 1 
 
2 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 The soil is rich and the climate healthy. Though 
 it was the first of the provinces of the kingdom of 
 New Granada, now the republic of Colombia, to be 
 colonized by the Spaniards, various circumstances have 
 contributed to make it neglected by the inhabitants 
 of the republic and but rarely visited by foreigners 
 up to the present day. 
 
 Rich in all tropical products, with extensive pastures 
 for countless herds of cattle, full of mineral wealth — 
 the platinum mines near Quibdo are renowned all the 
 world over — the department of Bolivar is one of the 
 richest of the republic of Colombia. However, at 
 the conquest, the stream of colonization steadily set 
 towards the cooler lands of the interior. The same 
 thing happened in the republic of Ecuador, and to 
 a less degree in Mexico. 
 
 In Colombia and in the other two republics there 
 had been great Indian towns where now the capitals 
 are situated. The cooler climate and the search for 
 gold, never to be found close to the coast, had set the 
 stream to the interior. Thus, in Colombia and 
 Ecuador, the far interior was sooner civilized than 
 was the coast. This brought about a sort of atrophy 
 of civilization in the distant places, where it had been 
 established first. Old customs were preserved, old 
 forms of speech, and, in the main, old ways of thought. 
 
 The coastal provinces, neglected at the first conquest 
 of the country, in many instances have now become 
 far more progressive than the capitals. This does not 
 apply to the department of Bolivar. Although less 
 than three hundred miles from Panama, with its most 
 modern life, its great canal, its position, which must 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 3 
 
 make it one day the lock-gate through which will 
 pass the greatest flood of the commerce of the world, 
 the province slumbers in an old-world repose. Flat 
 in the main, with but one considerable range of 
 hills, that only rise some eight to nine hundred feet, 
 the whole face of the country, with the exception of 
 the celebrated plains known as Los Llanos de Corozal, 
 was at one time covered with virgin forests. A great 
 part is so still. Two rivers traverse the whole 
 province, in almost its entire length. One, the Sinu, 
 rises in the mountains of Antioquia and falls into the 
 Caribbean Sea at the port of Cispata, its mouth 
 forming a sheltered bay. The other, the Rio San 
 Jorge, falls into the Magdalena, near its junction with 
 the Rio Cauca, not far from the town of Magangue. 
 
 The open plains lie between the two rivers, and 
 nearing the San Jorge are the extensive marshes of 
 Ayapel, in which feed cattle when the plains are 
 parched with drought. 
 
 The climate, hot but healthy, is that of most parts 
 of the tropics, having but two seasons, the wet and dry. 
 In Colombia they are referred to as summer and winter ; 
 but in reality the winter — that is, the season of the 
 rains — is the hotter of the two. The thermometer 
 ranges between one hundred and five and seventy-five 
 degrees. Frost is unknown, and hurricanes seldom 
 or never are experienced except upon the coast. 
 The chief town is the capital, Cartagena, called 
 Cartagena de Indias to distinguish it from the city of 
 that name in Spain. The ancient capital was Santiago 
 de Tolu, known for its balsam extracted from a plant 
 that grew profusely there, at the first conquest of the 
 
4 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 land. Situated about thirty miles from Cartagena 
 upon a little bay, it is a well-built, old-fashioned 
 Spanish colonial town. Its sandy streets, deserted in 
 the middle of the day, when the whole population 
 sleeps, bake in the sun, reflecting back its rays a 
 hundredfold. The low and flat-roofed houses seem 
 uninhabited, and nothing moves, except a vulture now 
 and then, that stretches out its wings and flutters them, 
 as if rejoicing in the heat. 
 
 In the evening, the houses, so to speak, give up 
 their dead, and by degrees, men dressed in white, with 
 jipi-japa hats, open their stores, and sit perspiring in 
 their shirt-sleeves, at the receipt of custom, that is 
 not urgent in its claims. The sun sinks lower and 
 disappears, a ball of fire, into the lagoon, and in the 
 little plaza, girls stroll about accompanied by mothers 
 or by aunts, and gossip with the more or less 
 embattled youths and men. Perhaps a man on horse- 
 back crosses the plaza at the fast shuffling, artificial 
 pace known in Colombia as " el paso," the rider 
 sitting easily and upright in his saddle, after the 
 fashion of all Spanish Americans, who ride almost as 
 soon as they can walk. 
 
 "There goes Don Placido," or "Serior Valenzuela," 
 as the case may be, someone remarks. Don Placido, 
 seeing he is observed, recollects he has forgotten 
 something at the corner store. Then, taking his horse 
 well by the head, he spurs it surreptitiously on the off 
 side, making it plunge, and then dropping his hat he 
 pretends to be annoyed, and stooping from the saddle 
 picks it up gracefully, regains his seat as easily as if 
 he were a circus-rider, talks for a moment to the 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 5 
 
 storekeeper, and once again crosses the square, this 
 time at the best pace his horse can muster up. 
 
 The sea breeze setting in brings with it a little 
 fleet of tapering canoes, all hollowed out of a tree 
 trunk, piled up with plantains, mangoes, bananas, pine- 
 apples, and caimitos, with their dull metallic leaves, 
 green on one side and brown upon the back. Their 
 leaves, indeed, have given rise to a local saying about 
 a double-dealing man, " You are like the leaf of the 
 caimito — fair upon one side, on the other black." 1 
 The other towns each have their characteristics, 
 determined chiefly by their situation and their trade. 
 
 Lorica, on the Sinu, the chief town of the cattle- 
 breeding district, was called after an Indian chief of 
 the same name. Built on the high and muddy bank 
 of an alluvial river that flows dark yellow like the 
 Tiber, it is a port for the canoes of all the district on 
 the river's banks. The market-place, in which sit 
 countless people of colour dressed in white, overhangs 
 the river, and on a market-day hundreds of canoes, 
 piled up with country produce, jostle each other on the 
 bank. Men step from one to the other, performing 
 miracles of equilibrium, passing from the outermost 
 crank, little embarkation, over ten or a dozen others, 
 till they reach the bank. The smallest loss of balance 
 would overset the canoe and all its merchandise ; but 
 long experience enables them to walk as easily over 
 the swaying bridge of slender dugouts, as they would 
 walk upon dry land. 
 
 The great church forms the centre of the town. 
 
 1 The caimito is known in the West Indies as the star apple. 
 It is the Chrysophyllum caimito of botany. 
 
6 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 Built in a sort of nondescript, but not unpicturesque, 
 style, common in Colombia, the door stands always 
 open, giving a glimpse of a great, cool, and empty 
 floor, very inviting to worshippers who have sweltered 
 all the morning in the sun. On each side of the 
 door grows a tall palm-tree, whose leaves rustle an 
 introit at the faintest breeze that stirs their fronds. 
 
 Outside the walls and all along them are planted 
 other palms, so that the church rises from out a verit- 
 able grove. As all Colombia is a land of priests 
 and pious laymen, or at the least of outward, visible 
 conformity, the church's bells are seldom still for 
 more than a full hour, from Angelus to Angelus. 
 Although the congregation may not consist of 
 more than a few devout negro women or half- 
 Indian cattle peons, the service, ad majorem Dei 
 gloriam, still takes its course. On Sundays the 
 whole edifice is thronged at the chief Mass. A 
 congregation dressed in white, holding its panama 
 straw hats in its brown hands, packs all the floor. 
 The women kneel or sit down sideways on the 
 floor, just as they do in Seville or in Cordoba. The 
 men stand with their eyes fixed upon the ground, and 
 at the altar the perspiring priest, choked in his rich 
 embroidered cope, goes through his genuflections 
 with as little energy as he can well expend. As a 
 general rule he is a Spaniard or an Italian, sometimes 
 a Syrian ; but in all cases the coloured population 
 pays him more reverence than a cardinal receives in 
 Rome, hard by the Vatican. 
 
 Two or three crumbling Spanish houses give a 
 character as of the Old World to the narrow plaza at 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 7 
 
 whose corner, opposite the church, stands the great 
 modern house of the chief family, but built entirely 
 in the ancient style, so fitting to the climate and the 
 life. Its patios and open galleries, its well at which a 
 negro seems to pass his life drawing up buckets with a 
 chain, give a strange flavour of Castile. 
 
 Stores in which everything is sold, from bits and 
 reins to China silks and prints from Manchester, are 
 the chief features of the streets. In them sit all the 
 representatives of the chief families, for trade in the 
 republic of Colombia, as in the East, from which, 
 filtered through Spain, most of its customs are 
 derived, does not detract from personal consequence, 
 and a man who can trace his origin from the first 
 conquerors, whose flocks and herds graze over leagues 
 of territory, sells you a pound of tea with as much 
 grace as he would enter into business that involved a 
 hundred thousand dollars, in cattle or in grain. 
 
 Many of the storekeepers come from Syria, and 
 nothing is more common than to hear Arabic spoken 
 and to catch a glimpse of a dark-featured Syrian 
 woman in the back shop, who, though a Christian 
 of the Christians, still by the virtue of her Oriental 
 upbringing draws back when a strange man appears 
 upon the scene. 
 
 Cattle peons, dressed in tight white trousers and 
 short jackets, with hats of dark brown straw, low- 
 crowned and broad-brimmed, stroll about the streets, 
 taciturn and half Indian by blood, a striking contrast to 
 the voluble and lively negro population of the coast. 
 The broad and sandy streets, cut into blocks after the 
 usual fashion of all towns in South America, lead out 
 
8 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 from well-built rows of houses and stores packed to 
 the roofs with hides, with sugar hogsheads, and with 
 grain, till by degrees they trickle past low hovels 
 thatched with banana leaves, finally disappearing into 
 the network of trails that lead into the town. 
 Thus, as in most towns in Colombia, it is difficult 
 to say where the town ends and the true country 
 starts. 
 
 Lorica and Tolu may serve as models for almost 
 any of the towns in the department of Bolivar, 
 situated on the alluvial plains. Sixty or seventy 
 miles higher up the river is situated the purely 
 Indian town of Tucura. Its inhabitants, civilized or 
 "reduced," as the phrase went, not long after the 
 first conquest, are a peaceful race, short, strong, and 
 olive-coloured. Few of them have retained more 
 than a smattering of their native speech, but all speak 
 Spanish. Still, they have maintained relations with 
 the exceedingly quiet and inoffensive "wild Indians" 1 
 in the adjoining woods. The "wild" men some- 
 times stray into the places, leaving their bows and 
 arrows with some storekeeper, and walk about the 
 town speaking to no one, keeping together in a 
 group, just like wild horses, a pitiful, pathetic, and 
 dwarfish remnant of the men who once possessed the 
 land. They still retain their terror of the horse, an 
 animal so fatal to their ancestors, and fly for shelter if 
 a mounted man passes them suddenly. 
 
 The River Sinu runs for about two hundred miles 
 through the department, and is a sort of Nile on a 
 small scale. In the rainy season it overflows its banks 
 
 1 " Indios bravos." 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 9 
 
 for a considerable distance on both sides, leaving a 
 thick deposit of alluvial mud. Then the grass grows 
 luxuriantly and the cattle fatten quickly, even 
 although the drought has left them thin. 
 
 The census of the year 1 9 1 2 puts the population 
 at 420,730, a small proportion in respect of so much 
 territory. Upon the coast, and in especial in the 
 town of Cartagena, the negro element prevails, but is 
 rarely found in any numbers more than twenty miles 
 inland. There the Indian, either pure-blooded or 
 half-bred, prevails. In fact, he lives just where his 
 ancestors lived at the first conquest of the land. The 
 upper classes are in general white, with in some 
 instances a dash of negro or of Indian blood. 
 
 Manners are patriarchal, though democratic, as 
 always is the case in similar societies. Contrary to 
 what is to be observed in Northern Europe, where 
 men so often think that rudeness shows equality as 
 between man and man, in the remote, neglected 
 district of Bolivar, rudeness is held the attribute of 
 brutes. Hence throughout all the length and breadth, 
 not only of the province, but of the republic as a 
 whole, good manners are a natural heritage. 
 
 Houses in the interior are few and far between, 
 except upon the banks of the Sinu, where in some 
 places they form a street on both sides of the stream. 
 Nothing is more interesting than to ride through one 
 of these straggling settlements ; for several miles are 
 cottages all made of canes and pitched with mud, 
 supporting roofs either of reeds from the river banks 
 or of banana leaves. 
 
 Here and there steep, worn paths lead down into 
 
io CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 the river, and at the foot of them two or three canoes 
 are certain to be tied, and round them groups of 
 brown children paddle, but never shout or scream after 
 the way of children in the north. Logs that look 
 nothing but dead logs, may endue themselves with 
 motion and become alligators, for logs and alligators 
 are hardly distinguishable as they float downstream. 
 The children never seem to notice them, but gambol 
 on, as if no perils, either from them, from ray-fish, or 
 the little devilish, sharp-toothed "caribes," 1 existed in 
 the world. Now and then one hears a tale of a child 
 carried off by a " caiman " 2 just as one hears of children 
 killed by a motor-bus. In neither case are the sur- 
 vivors rendered more wary by their companion's fate. 
 
 Sometimes a man brings down his horse, and stand- 
 ing knee deep pours water from a gourd over his 
 back, and then perhaps, mounting him, swims a little, 
 looking like a bronze figure in a fountain ; then leads 
 him dripping up the banks. 
 
 Life seems to pass in the fragile wigwams much 
 as it passes in an Arab tent, but more industriously, 
 for every dwelling has its yam and maize patch, 
 surrounded bv a little fence of canes, round which 
 twine passion flowers and other creepers, whilst tall 
 bushes of bougainvillea, orange bignonias, or crotons 
 with their variegated leaves, peep up above the fence. 
 
 1 Carib6 = cannibal. These little fish, about the size of a dace, 
 swarm in the rivers of Colombia, and are very dangerous to swimmers. 
 Should anyone enter the water with a cut on his arm or leg, or 
 chance to get wounded whilst swimming, his fate is pretty well 
 assured. The caribes come to the scent of blood in shoals, and soon 
 either tear the swimmer to bits or so disable him that he drowns. 
 They are more feared than the alligators. 
 
 2 Caiman = alligator. 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS u 
 
 A patriarchal, in a way idyllic, life goes on in these 
 long streets of villages that edge the river banks. 
 
 No one is rich or poor. Fuel and clothes, the 
 problems of the north, affect the people little. The 
 earth yields crops with the minimum of cultivation, 
 and fruit is plentiful. Outwardly there seems to be 
 content ; but no doubt envy, hatred, malice, and the 
 rest of the passions with which men plague them- 
 selves the whole world over, are to be found there, as 
 they were in the garden by the Tigris, when the 
 world was young. 
 
 In many places virgin forests run down close to 
 the river bank, forming an almost impenetrable 
 barrier in their native state. All sorts of trees, many 
 even to-day unplagued by botanists, spring up, rise 
 to two hundred feet in height, and die, standing for 
 a brief season, bald and sere, signposts upon the road 
 of time ; but signposts that endure only the space of 
 two or three rainy seasons, so rapidly does nature 
 claim them to fertilize another growth. 
 
 The Ceiba, 1 the Bongo, and the Campano tower 
 above the rest, their roots, as it were, awash in the 
 black earth, monstrous and gnarled. Bunches of 
 lilac flowers hang from the Ceiba, as grapes hang 
 from a vine, and they and all the other trees are full 
 of orchids, and bound together with a thick cordage 
 of lianas, whose flowers burst into bloom above the 
 topmost branches of the woods. 
 
 The ground is deep in the debris of centuries, 
 
 1 Bombax ceiba. The Campano and Bongo are, I think, of the 
 same family. The Bongo is the silk-cotton of the West Indies, 
 Eriodendrum anfractuosum. 
 
12 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 and streams in places run under a tunnel of thick 
 vegetation. Where they come to light, tortoises 
 bask with their heads emerging from the water, and 
 now and then a water-snake slips across from one 
 side to another, looking just like a miniature sea- 
 serpent as it swims by, with head and neck erected in 
 the air. 
 
 Along the banks of streams and bayous, as they 
 would be called in Texas and Louisiana, grow 
 clumps of guaduas, 1 feathery and slight. Silence 
 reigns eternally, for the parrots and macaws fly 
 chattering about the edges of the forest and never 
 penetrate its depths. One feels that nature is an 
 actual force, not castrated and brought to heel by 
 man, as in the countries men call civilized. 
 
 Silence reigns through the noonday heat, and as 
 the evening brings its freshness the howling monkeys, 
 locally known as araguatos, 2 begin their psalmody. 
 The humming-birds, macaws, and the white ibises 
 that frequent the marshes, all disappear, and vampire 
 bats circle about on noiseless wings, hideous and 
 menacing. 
 
 The forest, with its howling monkeys, its jaguars, 
 rarely seen by day, but when they bound across an 
 open glade, its tapirs and carpinchos, 3 shy, semi- 
 amphibious animals that only venture out at evening 
 time, its flights of red and blue macaws and bright 
 green parrots that hover chattering about the edge of 
 the primeval woods, the wealth of vegetation and the 
 
 1 Bamboos. 2 Simia ursina. 
 
 3 Hydrochaerus capybara. Carpincho is the Argentine name. 
 In Colombia the animal is called ponche, at least in Bolivar. 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 13 
 
 air of mystery and of hostility to man that emanates 
 from the recesses of its everglades, is but a portion of 
 the department after all. Its wealth is centred in its 
 plains, natural, such as Los Llanos de Corozal, or 
 artificial, as those about the banks of the Sinu that 
 have been formed by burning off the jungle and 
 sowing down the land reclaimed with the perennial 
 grasses of Guinea and Para. 1 
 
 The jungle cleared by fire is left just as a clearing 
 in the woods is left in Western America or in Brazil, 
 with all the stumps of the charred trees standing 
 in a sea of ashes. The seed is sown and springs up 
 after the first rains, and soon the stumps rot and 
 decay away. The result is excellent pasture almost 
 the whole year round. The fences are of native 
 wood, and wire, and in the middle of the pastures 
 clumps of trees are left for shelter. 
 
 These trees are the resort of flocks of parrots, and 
 as you ride beneath them you are pretty sure to get 
 a shower of broken twigs or nuts thrown by the 
 howling monkeys or the small grey sajou, 2 who 
 gambol in the boughs. Oviedo, in his " Historia 
 Natural de las Indias," says : " When the Christians 
 make an expedition to the interior, and have to pass 
 by woods, they ought to cover themselves well with 
 their bucklers . . . for the monkeys throw down 
 nuts and branches at them." There may have been 
 such danger when there were more monkeys or when 
 
 1 Guinea grass is the well-known perennial grass of most tropical 
 countries. Para is a Brazilian perennial grass that grows to three feet 
 in height ; both are excellent pasture for cattle and resist almost any 
 drought. 2 Simia sajou. 
 
i 4 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 their antics were less known to " Christians " than they 
 are to-day. However, he goes on to say : " I knew 
 one, Francisco de Villacastin, who was a servant of 
 Pedrarias Davila, in Panama. This man threw a 
 stone at a monkey, 1 who caught it and returned it 
 with such force that it knocked out four or five of 
 Francisco's teeth. I know this to be true," he says, 
 " for I often saw the said Francisco, always without 
 his teeth." 2 Waterton, in his "Wanderings of a 
 Naturalist," says monkeys never throw things at 
 people. The Bachiller Enciso was quite as good an 
 observer as Waterton. He declares they do ; the 
 deficiency in Francisco's teeth surely goes for some- 
 thing as proof. 
 
 The cattle stand underneath the trees, or wander 
 knee deep in the artificial grasses on the plains. 
 
 They are all tame and do not run before a mounted 
 man as do the wilder herds of Venezuela, Texas, and 
 the River Plate. The herdsmen work them with the 
 lazo as in the other countries of America, both North 
 and South, and they are rounded up once or twice 
 weekly on to a bare space called " el rodeo " for 
 counting, and to examine them for ticks. Mounted 
 on their active, little horses, the herders round the 
 cattle up, just as they do in other cattle countries. 
 They use the saddle to be seen in Mexico, which 
 ranges from the far north of Canada down to the 
 Amazon ; but never crosses it. Upon the other side it 
 is replaced by the "recado " used in the River Plate. 
 
 1 Oviedo writes "el gato" — that is, "the cat." The old 
 explorers always referred to monkeys as " gatos monillos." 
 
 2 " Muchos veces le vi, sin los dientes." 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 15 
 
 The bits of the Colombian cattlemen are of the long- 
 branched Brazilian pattern. The reins are single, and 
 the hand is held high, as it is held by all the horsemen 
 of the world who ride for business and not merely as 
 an amusement or for exercise. 
 
 The apparent future of the province lies in 
 cattle-farming, although the recently discovered oil 
 deposits may turn out valuable. There are at 
 present, it is estimated, almost two million head 
 of cattle in the department 1 of Bolivar and the 
 adjoining state of Magdalena, across the river of that 
 name. By burning jungle off and forming what are 
 called " potreros," room could be made for nearly 
 double the amount. Whether the present system of 
 burning down fine timber to make room for cattle 
 is sound economy, might well be arguable. However, 
 it has existed since the conquest, and was the plan 
 the Indians used long before they ever saw white 
 men when they desired to plant a field of maize. 
 The proceeding may be foolish and extravagant. 
 On the other hand, it may be that it is the system 
 most fitted for the country. Only time can show. 
 
 1 The greatest length of the department is about two hundred 
 and eighty miles ; its greatest width about one hundred and forty. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 Of all the towns of the department of Bolivar, 
 Cartagena is the most picturesque. Not only is it 
 the most old-world town of the department, but of 
 the whole republic, and perhaps of the whole continent 
 of South America. Mexico and Lima have, of 
 course, the air of capitals. Their fine positions and 
 the traditions that hang about them make them 
 interesting and beautiful. Quito and Bogota, La 
 Paz and Sucre are strange old-world places that 
 have got into a backwater, as it were, of time. 
 Santiago de Chile looks towards the Andes, and in 
 the middle of the town rises a hill like those of 
 Edinburgh and Prague. Of Buenos Aires nobody 
 need speak. It is the Paris of the New World. 
 Monte Video is a city set upon a hill, sun-warmed 
 and wind-swept, ever increasing, but still Spanish to 
 the core, with its wide streets and plazas full of 
 flowers. 
 
 Rio, Bahia, Santos, Pernambuco, and the Brazilian 
 ports in general are marvels of the tropics, yet 
 Cartagena still holds its own as a thing unique in 
 the New World. No wonder that its citizens call it 
 affectionately Cartagenita, or El Corralito de Piedras, 
 in allusion to its ring of walls. 
 
 16 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 17 
 
 The blue, pellucid sea, broken but when a huge 
 iridescent, tropic fish springs up into the air and falls 
 with a resounding splash, washes the walls, against 
 whose base there plays a ring of milk-white surf. 
 Tall, whispering palm-trees cluster on the sands, their 
 roots in water and their heads in fire. Among them 
 shallow wells are dug, known as " cacimbas," and 
 fresh, cool water fills them within but fifty feet away 
 from the seashore. 
 
 Thickets of icaco, called by the people of the 
 place "uvas de playa," 1 surround the walls, and from 
 them hang long clusters of a fruit, sufficiently like 
 grapes to bear the name. All day the old, white 
 town basks in the sun, and at the Ave Maria, when 
 the innumerable church bells jangle and clang, a 
 breeze springs up from off the sea. Nature and man 
 revive, and as it rustles in the palms a thin, white 
 cloud of mist or spray seems to envelop all the city 
 and its green gardens, letting them just appear beneath 
 it, with all their colours toned down and softened, just 
 as you catch the tone of caftan and burnoose under 
 the fleecy texture of a diaphanous haik from Fez 
 or Mequinez, as a rich Moor rides past in Africa. 
 
 In the dark, winding streets, where houses, over 
 whose iron-studded doors are cut the crests of 
 conquerors, men stand before the grated windows, 
 as they do in Seville or in Cordoba, whispering the 
 tale, so wearisome to any but the ear it is intended 
 for ; old as the world, but which will yet be fresh after 
 a thousand years have passed away. 2 
 
 1 Grapes of the shore. It is Chrysobalanus icaco. 
 
 2 A Spanish writer says about these bars and gratings : " Las 
 balconerias y rejas son de madera, materia de mas resistencia en aquel 
 
 2 
 
1 8 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 The city once was the place of meeting of the 
 great Plate fleet, that took the silver gathered 
 together from all the mines of the New World, across 
 the seas to Spain. Many a time the British and 
 French corsairs hung off and on, just out of sight of 
 land, to attack it with varying success. 
 
 Hawkins and Frobisher — known to the Spaniards 
 of those days as " Aquino " and " Ofrisba " — must 
 have often seen its walls, the tops of the white houses, 
 and the palm-trees, as they lay outside La Boca Grande 
 watching for chance galleons. 
 
 From the beginning the city was a prey to corsairs. 
 In 1544 "certain French rovers attacked it, guided 
 by a Corsican who had lived long within its walls," 
 as says one of its chroniclers. 
 
 In 1585 a greater far than he, Sir Francis Drake, 
 to whom the said old chronicler refers as a " pirata 
 ingles," plundered and burnt the town, and then 
 sailed off with his ships laden down with loot, con- 
 scious of having deserved well of his country and his 
 God. He seems to have been one of our earliest 
 empire-builders ; but naturally a different opinion is 
 held about his exploits in England from the opinion 
 held in Spain. 1 
 
 temple, que el hierro." In fact, iron soon exfoliates and decays when 
 exposed to weather in Cartagena, on account of the damp climate 
 and the salt breezes from the sea. (Jorge Juan, in his " Viage la 
 America Meridjonal," Madrid, 1748). 
 
 1 It is sometimes forgotten that, when Drake and the rest of his 
 bold compeers, so to speak, " worked " the Spanish Main, Spain and 
 England were at peace. This in a measure justifies the celebrated 
 speech of Gondomar to James I. (and VI.) when he burst suddenly 
 into the presence with a cry of " Pirates ! Pirates !" and refused to 
 add another word. 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 19 
 
 After Drake's crowning mercy, the exploits of a 
 French filibuster, one Pointis, in 1697, seem a little 
 tame. This bold sea-rover also sacked and burned 
 the town, but in a trifling Latin way, without 
 apparently a thought of principle, of idealism, or 
 indeed any of those stalking-horses dear to the Saxon 
 mind. The futile Frenchman seems to have been 
 merely a business man, and all the plunder that he 
 got can have been little after so skilled and up-to-date 
 practitioner as Drake had been at work, only ten years 
 before. 
 
 Don Pedro de Heredia founded the city in 1533. 
 It had been visited by the celebrated Alonso de Ojeda, 
 the companion of Columbus, in 15 10. He en- 
 deavoured to found a town there, but the Indians of 
 the place defeated him and forced him to flee for his 
 life with the loss of all the soldiers who had accom- 
 panied him as far as a place called Turbaco, some 
 twelve miles distant from the coast. 
 
 Amongst his men perished the celebrated Juan 
 de la Cosa, the cartographer, and pilot of Columbus 
 on his second voyage. Ojeda himself struggled back 
 to the coast alone, almost in a dying condition and 
 badly wounded. Left in a miserable position with 
 the remnant of his men shut up in an Indian village, 
 where now stands Cartagena (but then known as 
 Calamar), Ojeda was wellnigh desperate. For two 
 years he and another conqueror, Captain Diego de 
 Nicueza, had been at open war with one another. 
 However, Nicueza, hearing of his rival's wretched 
 state, sailed for Cartagena and placed his fleet and 
 soldiers at the disposition of Ojeda. 
 
20 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 Thus reinforced, the two captains drove back the 
 Indians and determined to found a town. Fresh 
 troubles with the Indians forced them to abandon the 
 place, and Ojeda, wounded by a poisoned arrow, 
 returned to die in the Habana, after incredible ad- 
 ventures, his ship having been driven ashore on the 
 coast of Cuba, and himself forced to continue his 
 journey on foot, enduring hardships that would have 
 overwhelmed an ordinary man. Arrived in the 
 Habana, though his wound was cured, he fell into 
 poverty and died in misery. 
 
 So perished one of the most brilliant and romantic 
 figures of the conquest. He it was, before Columbus 
 sailed, who ran out to the end of a beam fixed at a 
 dizzy height in the cathedral tower, known as La 
 Giralda, at Seville, and before Ferdinand and Isabella 
 and the assembled populace threw a tennis ball over 
 the weathercock. 
 
 From 1 510 until 1533 the Bay of Cartagena 
 seems to have been only occasionally visited. 
 
 Diego de Nicueza, Ojeda's rival and friend, 
 perished even more miserably than himself. A 
 revolt of his men forced him to put to sea in a launch 
 with only sixteen companions. They either drove 
 ashore and were slaughtered by the Indians or their 
 launch was swallowed up by the waves, for they were 
 never seen again. 
 
 Herrera, in his history of the Indies, says that 
 
 Diego de Nicueza was of a noble family and had 
 
 been "Yeoman of the Mouth " l in the household 
 
 of Don Enrique Enriquez, uncle of Ferdinand the 
 
 1 « Trinchante." 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 21 
 
 Catholic. He was, so says Herrera, a great courtier 
 and very witty, a fine horseman and an accomplished 
 performer on the lute. As Colonel Joaquin Acosta, 
 in his u Compendio Historico del Descubrimiento y 
 Colonizacion de la Nueva Granada," somewhat un- 
 kindly remarks, " Nicueza had no opportunity of 
 exercising any of those accomplishments on the coast 
 of Colombia." 
 
 A harbour so well sheltered, and a site so fitted for 
 a town, could not escape for long the observation of 
 the adventurers who flocked from Spain in shoals 
 during the early portion of the fifteenth century. 
 Few ports in the whole world are better sheltered or 
 less exposed to wind. Built on a sandy, wide-stretching 
 island which it almost entirely covers, the city's north- 
 west walls stand facing the open sea. The south-east 
 portion of the wall runs along the harbour. 
 
 Another island, known anciently as Xiximani, lies 
 to the eastward, and is connected with the first by a 
 long causeway, and another high -raised road connects 
 both islands with the land. Above the town towers 
 the hill called La Popa, from its resemblance to the 
 stern of an old Spanish galleon. Woods clothe its 
 sides, and on the top is an old convent, visible miles 
 out at sea. 
 
 The port itself is twofold and runs to about six 
 miles inland, with a width varying from two to four 
 miles at the broadest point. Two narrow entrances 
 — called respectively La Boca Grande and La Boca 
 Chica — defended by old, mouldering Spanish forts, 
 give access to the bay. The humpbacked island called 
 Tierra Bomba lies just inside La Boca Chica, and as 
 
22 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 a vessel gradually opens up the town a splendid 
 panorama is disclosed. 
 
 Fear of the " English corsairs " caused the inhabi- 
 tants to block up La Boca Grande, so that all vessels 
 have to enter by the smaller mouth. As in old times 
 the Spaniards did all things solidly, and built to defy 
 the ravages of time, they made a sure job of La Boca 
 Grande. A solid wall, almost cyclopean in its pro- 
 portions, extends across the entrance, more than a 
 mile in width. It rises to within a few feet of the 
 surface, and it is said that in the middle a narrow gap 
 was left, just wide enough to let a vessel pass. This 
 gap either never existed, or the action of the waves 
 has quite destroyed it, for it has never been found in 
 modern times. Small craft can cross the sunken wall, 
 and it could easily be blown up with dynamite. 
 
 On a less gigantic scale than Rio de Janeiro (that 
 marvel of the world), without the backing of the 
 Organ Mountains, or the high peaks of the Tijuca 
 such as its greater rival prides herself upon, without 
 the lofty Sugar Loaf towering above the narrow 
 entrance to the enormous island-dotted bay, yet 
 Cartagena has charms and traditions of its own that 
 Rio de Janeiro never could have claimed. It may be 
 that the vegetation of the more northern harbour is a 
 shade less luxuriant ; it may be that the hill on which 
 is built the convent of La Popa is insignificant beside 
 La Gabia ; still, Cartagena does not found her charm 
 upon mere natural advantages, though those are great ; 
 but upon history and tradition and on the incompar- 
 able picturesqueness of the town and of its monu- 
 mental walls. Built of the finest masonry, and thirty 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 23 
 
 feet at least in height, they ring the city round, giving 
 it an air of Avila, San Gemigniano, or of Aigues 
 Mortes, gone astray into the tropics. In places the 
 walls go sheer into the sea. In others they take 
 advantage of the natural position of the ground and 
 leave only a narrow road between them and a man- 
 grove swamp. 
 
 At La Tenaza * they are machicolated, and a deep 
 tunnel connects them with a flanking tower. At the 
 Cabrero, a small spit of land, on which stands the 
 white, mosque-like church, raised to the memory of 
 President Nunez, and finishing in a long, sandy street, 
 over which wave ever-murmuring coco-palms, the 
 walls tower high above the houses, as the ground 
 rises towards that point. From them you look down 
 upon the tops of villas and on a sea of brightly 
 flowering shrubs and trees. Long lines of Ponciana 
 Regias, with their long clusters of bright, scarlet 
 flowers, two feet in length, shade the avenue on 
 which the villas stand. A crimson bougainvillea, 
 known locally as " la flor del Habana," and a bright 
 blood-red creeper called in Colombia "la bellisima" 
 (a most appropriate name), bignonias, crotons, and 
 all kinds of flowering plants, unknown outside the 
 tropics, bury the suburb of El Cabrero in a sea of 
 colour and make the white walls of the little monu- 
 mental church appear still whiter than they are. 
 
 The top of the encircling medieval ramparts is 
 so broad, that four carriages could pass quite easily, 
 and up the inclined planes of masonry a motor-car 
 
 1 La Tenaza is a fortified postern gate. Admiral Vernon's forces 
 were defeated there in the attack on Cartagena in 1741. 
 
24 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 can — and often does at evening time, when the sea 
 breeze blows freshly and the whole city withers as 
 in a furnace — perform the circuit of the walls. 
 Such walls, such bastions, and such flanking towers, 
 such massive gates and drawbridges, cost, as they say 
 in South America, a Potosi. So often was the 
 exchequer, far away in Spain, called on for grants 
 to finish them, that tradition says one evening in the 
 Escorial, Philip the Second, the prudent king, whose 
 aphorism was, M Time and myself against three 
 others," dressed we may suppose in the black, velvet 
 suit, the livery of the House of Austria, was observed 
 by his courtiers to gaze westward earnestly. 
 
 He did not speak, as was his wont — is it not 
 historical that when he received the news of the 
 defeat of " La Invincible," as it is called in Spain, he 
 merely looked up from his desk and said, " There is 
 still oak enough in Spain to build another " ? 
 
 So long he gazed that the Duke of Alba asked 
 him, " What is it that your majesty is looking for ?" 
 The answer was, " I am looking for the walls of 
 Cartagena. They cost so much, they must be visible 
 from here." 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 Hardly was Cartagena settled when the stream of 
 adventure and of discovery set inward from the coast. 
 It turned quite naturally first to the province of Sinu, 
 as the department of Bolivar was then called. Long 
 before this — or what was long in such an epoch- 
 making period as was the conquest of America — the 
 Sinu had been visited and described. 
 
 In 1 5 19 appeared at Seville the rare and curious 
 book, " La Suma de Geografia del Bachiller Martin 
 Fernandez de Enciso, Alguacil Mayor de Castilla de 
 Oro." Amongst the many curious diaries, or logs, of 
 soldiers and discoverers, few are more curious or more 
 exact in every detail than that of the aforesaid 
 Alguacil Mayor. 
 
 The general outline of the coast he gives is as 
 correct as that of any modern map. The notes on 
 the inhabitants, the fauna, flora, and the configuration 
 of the soil, are so informing and minute that I know 
 of no modern work on the Sinu that can compare 
 with it. 
 
 Many of the conquerors of the New World 
 wielded the pen almost as well as they did lance or 
 sword. Cortes, in his five letters giving an account 
 of all that he had done in Mexico, to the Emperor 
 
 25 
 
26 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 Charles V., showed himself not only master of a 
 vigorous style, but of a cultivated mind. His powers 
 of observation and description were rare in any man ; 
 but in his case the more extraordinary as he was first 
 and foremost, at the time, a man of war. Of all the 
 greater conquerors of the New World he was the 
 man who had received most education. When he 
 first appeared in public life in the Habana he was a 
 lawyer, and Bernal Diaz says : " I heard tell he was a 
 bachelor of laws, 1 and, when he spoke to men of 
 letters and Latinists, he answered in that tongue." He 
 may have graduated either at Salamanca or at Alcala ; 
 but even if he did, that did not make him a good 
 writer or give him his penetrating view into the 
 hearts of men. " What Nature does not give, 
 Salamanca cannot lend/' 2 the proverb goes, and in his 
 case all that the university could do was to give polish 
 to a brilliant that always must have shone. 
 
 His great lieutenant, Pedro de Alvarado — he 
 whom the Mexicans referred to as " El Sol " in the 
 two reports sent from his government of New Galicia 
 — showed himself little inferior to his chief. 
 
 These reports by men such as Cortes, to Spain, or 
 by inferior officers to their chiefs, as in the case of 
 Alvarado, Diego Godoy, 3 and others, form a great 
 feature in the literature of the conquest of the New 
 World, hardly to be equalled in their kind. Many 
 of the conquerors wrote actual histories. Amongst 
 these, two will ever shine above the rest. The 
 
 1 " Bachiller en leyes." 
 
 2 " Quod Natura non dat, Salamanca hon praestat." 
 
 3 Another lieutenant of Cortes. 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 27 
 
 splendid history of the Conquest of Peru, by Pedro 
 Cieza de Leon, who from the age of fifteen up to 
 twenty-seven wrote by the light of the camp-fire 
 each evening all that happened in the day, contains 
 an account of the Incas and their government which 
 is unrivalled even by that composed by Garcilasso de 
 la Vega (Inca), whose mother was a princess of their 
 line. 
 
 Nothing in all the literature of all those stirring 
 times can equal for simplicity and truth, for observa- 
 tion, charity, and sense, the chronicle that the stout 
 soldier, Bernal Diaz del Castillo, wrote of Mexico 
 and of its siege and fall. Prescott gets all his colour 
 from it. Sometimes he acknowledges the debt in 
 footnotes, but now and then appears to incorporate 
 long passages without acknowledgment. 
 
 Ercillas' epic poem of the wars in Chile with 
 the Araucanos, was written upon scraps of paper, 
 pieces of hide, on bones and bark, as he himself 
 informs us, and there are several histories of the kind, 
 written with the sword and arquebuse laid ready to 
 the hand. The Bachiller Enciso was, as his title 
 shows, an educated man, holding high office in the 
 newly conquered territory. For all his accuracy and 
 observation of the countries, his well-written logs, 
 and careful estimates of distances from one port to 
 another, so careful that they would serve to take a 
 vessel from Santa Marta right to Panama almost 
 without a chart, he yet shows a simplicity of mind 
 not to be found in more sophisticated days. 
 
 Perhaps it is the turn of phrase that seems to us 
 more simple than it was. Perhaps the newness of 
 
28 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 the scenes he wrote of caused him to write, as 
 Spaniards say, with his soul in his hand, 1 but the 
 effect is something differing in essence from that 
 produced by any traveller to-day. 
 
 The sense of mystery is gone out of the world. 
 Better communications have destroyed it. Even the 
 conquest of the air, with all its wonder and its 
 difficulty, cannot and never will produce a man apart, 
 a sailor of the air, differing in speech, in life, and 
 point of view, from those who crawl upon the earth, 
 as was the sailor of the seas. We know the Bachiller 
 Enciso was in Darien in 1 5 1 5, under the orders of 
 the celebrated Pedrarias Davila. Thus the work 
 written in 1 5 1 8 (the date of what is called in Spanish 
 the " privilege " 2 — that is, the licence, showing it had 
 been examined and approved both by the civil and the 
 ecclesiastical authorities) evidently was done when 
 the impressions of the voyages were still fresh in his 
 mind. 
 
 As he made, in or about the year 1515, two 
 voyages up and down the coast from Panama to the 
 Cabo de la Vela, perhaps he had his log books to 
 assist him in his work. This most rare book for long 
 was only known to exist in a single copy in the 
 National Library in Paris, though perhaps it may 
 have been reprinted recently. 
 
 Of all the coast, down to the Cabo de la Vela, he 
 has preserved most curious details. Thus he tells us 
 that near Santa Marta all the gravel on the beach 
 looks as if it had been gilded, adding, " though this is 
 not the case." " The Indians," he says, " have much 
 1 "El alma en la palma." 2 " Privilegio." 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 29 
 
 gold and copper, which they know how to colour just 
 like gold. This they do with the juices of a certain 
 herb that grows upon that coast, passing the copper 
 through a fire." 
 
 Stags and wild boars 1 were plentiful, just as they 
 are to-day. He gives the first account of the 
 celebrated manchineel-tree, so often spoken of by the 
 older navigators. Speaking of the poisoned arrows 
 which the natives use, he tells how they procure the 
 poison chiefly from the apple of a tree that grows 
 close to the water's edge. " If a man," he says, " eats 
 of the apple of that tree his body soon is filled with 
 maggots, and if by chance he sleeps beneath its shade 
 his head begins to ache, his face swells hideously, and 
 if he does not rise and come away he becomes blind 
 or dies." What modern science says about the 
 manchineel I am uncertain ; but there can be no 
 doubt that travel in the days of the Bachiller Enciso 
 had attractions that have disappeared to-day. 
 
 The Indians between Santa Marta and a port called 
 Zamba " were all good people, and do harm to 
 nobody, unless the others first begin." 2 Not an 
 unnatural state of mind for savages, and one that 
 might be copied with profit by the most civilized 
 of men. 
 
 A little farther on, and, I regret to say near 
 Cartagena, where I protest I never should have 
 thought at any time the ladies so behaved, the 
 women all went naked, and fought as fiercely as the 
 men, shooting their arrows desperately and far. 
 
 1 Probably peccaries. 
 
 2 "Es buena gente, que no hace mal ... si a ellos no gelo 
 hacen primero." 
 
3 o CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 " I had," he says, " a girl whom I took prisoner, of 
 twenty years of age. She told me that in the battle, 
 when she was taken by our men, she had killed eight 
 Christians. ,,1 To my regret, the Bachiller says 
 nothing more about this amazon. By all the laws, 
 both of expediency and war, she should have married 
 some stout soldier of the Bernal Diaz type of man, 
 and brought up warlike sons. Perhaps the Bachiller 
 married her himself; but on this matter he preserves 
 an absolute discretion, keeping most strictly to such 
 things as appertain to the mission of a " Christian 
 governor." 
 
 His first account of the Sinu — or, as he always 
 writes it, Cenu — occurs when he mentions that, from 
 Cartagena to the Port of the Cenu, there are some 
 twenty or more leagues. This is the actual distance 
 to the port now called Cispata, which lies, as the 
 Bachiller Enciso says, in a large bay, formed by the 
 river's mouth. In the Cenu, he says, much salt is 
 made, and this continues to be made down to the 
 present day. In ancient times, amongst the Indians 
 of South America, salt was a scarce commodity, and 
 was so highly valued that in some places it was used 
 as currency. 
 
 The infidels 2 in those parts used to make 
 mummies of the bodies of their chiefs, painting their 
 faces, putting crowns of feathers on their heads, and 
 placing bows and arrows in their hands. This done, 
 
 1 " Ocho hombres cristianos." 
 
 2 "Los infieles." This word has always seemed to me to be 
 used with singularly little application to men such as the Indians of 
 America, who had had no chance of being faithful to anything, but 
 their own gods. 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 31 
 
 they set the bodies up in some convenient place, and 
 offered up to them bits of old rag, fruits, broken 
 arrows, or anything they had. This was not done, 
 apparently, in worship, but as an act of homage, or for 
 memory, just as we put a tombstone over graves. 
 
 Padre Simon, 1 the best authority on things 
 Colombian of the early days, informs us that at 
 Zipaquiru they found offered up to an idol a rosary, 
 a priest's biretta, and a Guide to the Confessional 
 (" Un Libro de Casos de Conciencia "). Whether the 
 Indian devotee had some knotty point upon his 
 conscience, or whether the book to him was simply 
 a " great medicine," is, and must always be, buried in 
 mystery. Possibly the first mention of mandioca, 2 or 
 cazabe, bread is to be found in the pages of the 
 Bachiller. 
 
 " There are roots," he says, " of which they make 
 their bread, as they do in Cuba, Jamaica, and in 
 Hispaniola ; but they are of another quality, for those 
 of the islands are all poisonous, and if a man eats of 
 them he dies infallibly, as if he had taken arsenic, and 
 to make bread of them they must be boiled and 
 scraped, before that they are ground. 
 
 " In the Cenu, upon the contrary, the people eat 
 the roots raw or roasted, and they are wholesome and 
 sweet-tasted " (" de gentil sabor "). He was evidently 
 unaware that there are several kinds of manioc, and 
 that the wild variety is poisonous till it has been 
 treated, as he has explained. The Indians also had 
 another kind of bread made out of Indian corn. 
 
 1 " Conquista de Tierra Firme" (edition of Bogota, 1892). 
 
 2 yatropha manioc. 
 
32 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 This bread is quite unlike all other kinds of bread 
 made out of maize or Indian corn." It was the staple 
 food of the Indians of the coast of Colombia and 
 Panama, at the conquest, and has remained in use 
 (upon the coast) amongst all classes down to the 
 present day. The celebrated navigator, Jorge Juan, 1 
 speaking of this bread, says: " It has no likeness 
 to wheaten bread either in colour or taste, but is 
 insipid in extreme." It is rolled up in a maize or 
 a banana leaf, in pieces about the size of a small 
 sausage. The local name is " bollo," and Oviedo in his 
 " Historia Natural de las Indias " gives the following 
 description of it : " The Indian women grind the 
 maize 2 between two stones . . . and as they grind 
 it mix a little water with it, which by degrees 
 converts the flour into a paste. Then taking a bit of 
 the leaf of a plant of that country, or of the maize 
 itself, they roll it up and make a cake of it." This 
 is the way the people of the Colombian coast make it 
 to-day, and I can certify that it has, as was said by 
 Jorge Juan, neither the colour nor the taste of bread ; 
 also that it is insipid to the last degree when cold, 
 but tolerable to hungry men when warm — that is to 
 say, if there is nothing in the world to serve as sub- 
 stitute. How little necessity the Indians had to offer 
 up books of u Casos de Conciencia " to their idols 
 is shown by the following passage, which redounds 
 as much to the credit of their reasoning powers as to 
 
 1 Jorge Juan y Ulloa : " Relacion Historica del Viage & la 
 America Meridional" (Madrid, 1749). 
 
 2 He spells it " mahiz." This was the original spelling, for it is 
 a Carib word, first heard by the Spaniards in Santo Domingo, and 
 by them carried over the whole world. 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 33 
 
 the open-minded attitude of the Bachiller, who 
 quotes all that they say, without a comment on it. 
 
 " I notified, from the King of Castile, two caciques 
 of the Cenu, that we were followers of the said King, 
 and that we had come to let them know that there 
 was only but one God, who was in three parts, and 
 yet one. 1 That he was Ruler of the heavens and the 
 earth. That God had come down upon earth and left 
 St. Peter to rule for him. That St. Peter had left as 
 his successor the Holy Father, and that the Holy 
 Father was Lord of heaven and earth, acting on behalf 
 of God. That the said Holv Father as Lord of the 
 universe had made a present of all the Indies, including 
 the Cenu, to the King of Castile. I further notified 
 them that in virtue of this gift they were all subjects 
 of the aforesaid King. That they must pay him full 
 obedience, and send him something 2 every year. If 
 they did this the King would help them against their 
 enemies, and send them friars and priests to in- 
 doctrinate them in the Christian faith. 
 
 " This said, I asked them for their answer, which 
 they gave, saying, . . . that as to there being but 
 one God, Ruler of heaven and earth, it seemed quite 
 reasonable ; but that the Pope was Lord of heaven 
 and earth on God's behalf, and acting with that 
 power had given their land to the King of Castile, 
 they looked upon it as the action of a madman. 
 
 " The Pope, they said, must have been drunk when 
 he did such a foolish thing as to give away some- 
 thing that never had belonged to him, and the King, 
 
 1 " Que era trino y uno." 
 
 2 " Alguna cosa cada ano." 
 
34 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 who received it, just as mad as the Pope. . . . They 
 said that they were lords of their own territory, and 
 wanted nothing either from Pope or King. I again 
 notified plainly to them that in that case I would 
 make war upon them and sell them all for slaves. 
 Their answer was that they would kill me and stick 
 my head upon a pole. This they tried hard to do, 
 but we were too strong for them and took their 
 villages, though they killed two of our men with 
 poisoned arrows, although their wounds were small." 
 In fact, civilization, as we know, must enter in 
 with blood. The curious thing about it all is the 
 attitude of mind of the Bachiller Enciso, for he was 
 no rough soldier, as was Pizarro or Valdivia, but an 
 educated man. The fact that he makes no comment 
 on the affair, or on the answer that the Indians gave to 
 what he must have known was arrant nonsense and 
 the rankest of injustice, is most significant. Most of 
 the other conquerors who often found themselves in 
 similar predicaments — notably Cortes in Mexico and 
 Pizarro in Peru — are loud in condemnation of the 
 Indians' folly and of their insolence in not accepting 
 out of hand a king and a religion quite unknown to 
 them and offered with the alternative of death. The 
 Bachiller's position was quite different from theirs, 
 for, before passing from the narration of his mis- 
 sionary efforts, he tells us : "I took a chieftain in 
 another part of the Cenu . . . and found him to 
 be a very truthful man, 1 who kept his word on all 
 occasions, one who knew good from evil as well as 
 any man." 2 He does not add "as well as any Chris- 
 
 1 " Hombre de mucha verdad." 
 
 2 " Y que le parecia mal, lo malo, y bien, lo bueno." 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 35 
 
 tian," though he might have done so. Perhaps deep 
 in his heart of hearts he was ashamed to do so, 
 knowing, as he himself must well have done, that 
 what is right is right, and what is evil evil, as did 
 the Indian chief. 
 
 It is most curious to read the account Enciso 
 gives of all the animals he saw whilst travelling in 
 the district of the Sinu. His descriptions certainly 
 are quaint, but still most accurate, and not a trace of 
 the marvellous enters into them any more than it 
 would enter into the head of one of our most modern 
 hunters after "specimens," who go out with their 
 comfortable tents, camps, beds, and medicines, and 
 their quick-firing slaughter rifles. Theology and 
 natural history he seemed to keep apart in reason- 
 tight compartments, just as some scientific men of 
 our own times keep science upon one side of their 
 heads and superstition on the other, without allowing 
 the least ray of light to fall on the dark side. 
 
 In the high mountains near the Gulf of Uraba, 
 he says, " there is great store of lions and of tigers, 1 
 and long-tailed cats like monkeys, only their tails are 
 longer. 
 
 " Wild boars are plentiful, and animals almost as 
 large as cows, of a brown colour, their heads like 
 mules, with longish ears, and feet exactly like the 
 cow's." 
 
 This animal was, of course, the tapir, and, though 
 
 the description may sound strange to modern ears, it 
 
 is most accurate. 
 
 1 It is to be remembered that both the English and Spaniards 
 referred to the puma as a lion, and the jaguar as a tiger. 
 
36 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 " Ounces, they say, are found, but I have never 
 seen them ; but what I did see as I crossed a river in 
 those parts were lizards of huge size. These lizards 
 lie about the banks, and if an animal or an 
 incautious Christian passes by, they rush and seize 
 him, carrying him off below the surface of the stream 
 to make a meal of him." 
 
 Even to - day the " incautious Christian " is 
 carried off occasionally by those same lizards that 
 Enciso writes about. In this respect, I am in the 
 same position as was the Bachiller in regard to the 
 ounces, for, though I have seen Christians sufficiently 
 incautious of their lives and reputations, I never saw 
 one eaten by an alligator, though I have heard of it 
 as taking place. 
 
 With not unnatural pride the Bachiller relates 
 that it was he who caught the first of these great 
 lizards, and tells, quite in the manner of our own 
 great naturalist Waterton, the struggle that he and 
 his followers had to despatch the alligator. The 
 point at which I join issue with him is when he says 
 that the flesh of these lizards, although it smells of 
 musk, is of a pleasant flavour, white and nice. 1 
 
 Either the first conquerors were not particular, or 
 food was very scarce. 
 
 His best description, considered as a literary effort, 
 and one that does great credit to his powers of 
 observation, is of the armadillo, about which he says: 
 " There are in this land little animals about as big as 
 is a sucking-pig. They have got feet and hands just 
 like a horse, and their head is just like that of a little 
 
 1 " Blanca y gentil." 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 37 
 
 horse with its corresponding ears. It is all covered 
 with a shell from its head to its tail. Thus it looks 
 like a horse when it has armour on. These 
 animals are very handsome to look upon. They also 
 graze just like a horse." 1 
 
 The curious thing about this, possibly the first 
 description of the armadillo, is that it should also have 
 struck Oviedo, the writer on natural history of the 
 Indies, as being like a horse. Oviedo, who was in 
 Panama about the same time as was the Bachiller 
 Enciso, although his great work " La Historia 
 Natural de las Indias," did not appear till some years 
 afterwards, either had seen the work of his compatriot 
 or talked with him about the animal. 
 
 He says these animals are well worth looking at 
 by Christians ; s Christians, indeed, have many things 
 beneath their noses well worth looking at. They 
 rarely see them, being, perhaps, absorbed in higher 
 matters. Luckily for us, Oviedo and the Bachiller 
 Enciso had their attention turned upon sublunary 
 affairs. Simple as are the observations of Enciso, 
 they yet have an impress of truth and of sincerity that 
 makes them priceless to the student of a district such 
 as the Sinu, so little written of in modern times. 
 
 1 " En esta tierra ay unos animales pequenos como un lechon de 
 un mes. Estos tienen los pies y las manos como un caballo encubertado, 
 con sus orejuelas, y esta todo cubierto de una concha desde las orejas 
 hasta la cola, que parece un caballo encubertado ; son fermosos de 
 mirar, pacen como un caballo." It is only fair to say that " mano " in 
 Spanish is used for the forefoot of a horse. In point of fact, the 
 armadillo has claws and not " manos" like a horse. As to their being 
 " fermosos de mirar "... well, well. ... " Hay gustos que 
 merecen palos." 
 
 2 " Son animales mucho de ver para los Cristianos." 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 After the Bachiller Enciso had published his notes 
 upon the flora, fauna, and the Indians of the Sinu, 
 preserving for us, as in a slightly distorted but still 
 achromatic glass, glimpses of all he saw, no mention 
 of the province is to be found till the year 1533. 
 In that year Pedro de Heredia was named governor 
 of all the territory from the mouth of the River 
 Magdalena up to Darien. Having sailed from Cadiz 
 towards the end of 1532, he disembarked in Cartagena 
 upon January 14th of the year 1533. 
 
 Heredia had already had considerable experience 
 of the New World ; as lieutenant to Vadillo, governor 
 of Santa Marta, he had taken part in all his expeditions, 
 and had accompanied his lieutenant Palamino upon 
 the last of all. On this occasion Palamino's horse at 
 the crossing of a river suddenly got into deep water 
 and with his rider disappeared. In a short time the 
 horse came up and swam to shore, but Palamino was 
 never seen again, either alive or dead. 
 
 Thus Heredia was no neophyte in America, but 
 a man who understood completely, all that was 
 required for an expedition to the New World. It has 
 been well observed by a writer on the Conquest of 
 
 38 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 39 
 
 New Granada 1 (Colombia) that all the expeditions 
 that were fitted out from Haiti or from Santo 
 Domingo — that is, the island we call Hispaniola, and 
 the Spaniards knew as la Isla Espanola (the Spanish 
 Island) — were more successful than those that came 
 from Spain. 
 
 Certain it is that the expedition of Cortes was fitted 
 out in the Habana; that of Pizarro in Panama. Legaspi 
 also, the conqueror of the Philippines, started from 
 Mexico. Nearly all the expeditions that came from 
 Spain were commanded either by courtiers or at least 
 by noblemen. These, even, though some of whom 
 certainly had had experience in the Italian wars, were 
 quite at sea in the Americas. Generally they arrived 
 in shining armour, or in embroidered clothes, bringing 
 with them a long train of pages, followers, secretaries, 
 and others of the kind. The expeditions that started 
 either from Cuba or Hispaniola were composed of a 
 very different class. In them came men accustomed 
 to the climate, trained to bear arms within the tropics, 
 good horsemen, for horses soon become plentiful and 
 wild in the West Indies, and your wild horse makes 
 your good rider, better than he can possibly be made 
 in military riding schools. 
 
 These men, cruel and bigoted no doubt, were 
 worth a dozen of those fresh from Spain, and called 
 " bisonos," 2 or " chapetones," by the Spaniards. In 
 his youth Heredia had been, as was Cortes, a famous 
 duellist. Having had his nose almost cut off in a 
 
 1 "CompendioHistoricodelDescubrimiento de la Nueva Granada " 
 (Colonel Joaquin Acosta. Paris, 1848). 
 
 2 Bisono = a raw soldier. Chapeton corresponds to the American 
 " tenderfoot," or the Australian " new chum." 
 
40 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 street fight in Madrid, after it was repaired (" re- 
 parado ") by a good surgeon, he never rested till he 
 had slain three of his assailants. This was the cause 
 that took him with his good sword (and his repaired 
 nose) to the New World. 
 
 Having landed at Santo Domingo, he had the 
 luck, in a short time, to inherit a large estate there. 
 This got him the chance to go as lieutenant to Vadillo, 
 governor of Santa Marta, to the new colony upon 
 the coast. There he distinguished himself greatly, 
 and in a few years went home to Spain, after the 
 fashion of the conquerors of those days, to get himself 
 made governor of a portion of the newly conquered 
 territory. He chose a small, but well-selected expedi- 
 tion, consisting of but one hundred and fifty soldiers, 
 all seasoned men, many of whom had already been in 
 the Indies. With him came, as lieutenant, Francisco 
 Cesar, who gave his name to the great river, still 
 partially unexplored, upon whose banks he lost his 
 life. Pedro de Alcazar and Captain Muio de Castro 
 also were officers of his, and it is said that descendants 
 of both of them are to be found, either in Cartagena 
 or in the province, down to the present day. Heredia 
 did not bring rich furniture, brocades, or pictures, as 
 other of the captains who had sailed from Spain had 
 done. Instead of that, he put aboard his ships great 
 store of ammunition, cannons and muskets, swords, 
 lances, and defensive armour, fitted for warfare in hot 
 countries. 
 
 He took much wine and flour and, with a fore- 
 thought that shows him to have been a born explorer, 
 he had constructed a large barge, of little draught, to 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 41 
 
 sail up rivers and to penetrate their creeks. All the 
 expense of the expedition he bore himself, settling it 
 with the gold he had won by force of arms in Santa 
 Marta and upon the coast. He touched at Puerto Rico 
 and took on board some of the companions of 
 Sebastian Cabot, who had accompanied him on his 
 disastrous voyage up the River Plate. 
 
 In Santo Domingo he found remains of the 
 expeditions that had been in Venezuela with Captains 
 Sedeno and Orgaz. These were all men accustomed 
 to the climate and experienced in Indian warfare, and 
 proved a tower of strength to him when he began to 
 fight. They advised him to have made articulated 
 breastplates of stout leather, as a defence against the 
 poisoned arrows used by the Indians of the coast. 
 
 He then sailed for Cartagena, taking on board 
 forty-seven horses, but so stormy is the Caribbean Sea, 
 and the ships of that time were so slow and little sea- 
 worthy, that twenty-seven of the horses perished in 
 the short crossing from the islands to the coast. 
 This was a great misfortune, for horses played so 
 great a part in all the battles of the conquest of the 
 Americas. 
 
 It is uncertain whether Cartagena 1 was first so 
 called by Ojeda or by Bastidas ; 2 but when Don Pedro 
 
 1 The Indian name was Calamar. 
 
 2 Rodrigo de Bastidas was a native of Seville, who founded Santa 
 Marta. He died of the effects of wounds given him in a mutiny, 
 though he reached Cuba before his death. Padre Simon, in his 
 u Historia de la Conquista de Tierra Firme," says of him that " he 
 was a man of good reputation and good family, and esteemed by all." 
 The great Las Casas writes of him : "I always knew him kind in his 
 dealings with the Indians, and a severe critic [blasfemaba de los que 
 
42 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 de Heredia arrived there, it already bore that name. 
 Here, the expedition ran considerable danger, for they 
 made their land-fall close to Santa Marta, and 
 coasting on, as was the habit in those days, were 
 nearly wrecked somewhere about the mouth of the 
 River Magdalena ; probably not far from the point 
 which juts out near the long pier of Puerto Colombia, 
 called Sabanilla by the Spaniards of those days. 
 Colonel Acosta 1 says that Heredia's vessels entered 
 the harbour by the Boca Grande (now closed up), 
 but that they did not disembark until next day. 
 
 No Indians were to be seen, but a horse having 
 wandered off to feed, the Indians came out of a wood 
 and tried to seize upon him. Heredia, with fifteen 
 men, attacked them and drove them all before him 
 to their village (Calamar), which they deserted upon 
 his approach. Water was scarce and brackish, so, 
 guided by an old Indian called Corinche, whom they 
 had taken prisoner, but who stayed with them volun- 
 tarily (perhaps attracted by the novelty of all he saw 
 amongst them), they set out for a place called Zamba, 
 farther down the coast. Heredia had brought with 
 him from Santo Domingo an Indian girl from Zamba, 
 who had been taken prisoner several years before. 
 She had been baptized by the name of Catalina, and 
 had become a Christian, and, as often happened in 
 those days with Indian prisoners, proved of great 
 
 les hacian agravios] of those who injured them." This was high 
 praise from such a man, and Las Casas was always sparing of his 
 praise. 
 
 1 "Compendio Historicodel Descubrimiento de la Nueva Granada" 
 (Paris, 1848). 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 43 
 
 service to the conquerors. How much Cortes was 
 helped in Mexico by the Indian princess called 
 Malinche, is one of the romantic episodes of the 
 whole great adventure of the conquest of America. 
 
 As they marched on, Heredia riding on a fiery 
 horse — for, as the chronicler remarks, " the things and 
 animals of men take on a likeness to their masters " 
 — they came upon a town. The inhabitants attacked 
 them furiously. The battle raged three hours, and 
 Heredia lost two horses and a man or two. As he 
 was " lancing and disembowelling the Indians with 
 great satisfaction," 1 he nearly perished, suffocated by 
 his steel cuirass and helmet, designed for use in the 
 colder climates of the north. He would have fallen 
 from his horse, and in that case have lost his life, had 
 not his followers, perceiving the condition he was in, 
 rushed up and hastened to disarm him speedily. 
 This saved his life, and he was spared to lance and 
 disembowel many Indians at a future date, no doubt 
 with equal satisfaction to himself. These Indians 
 were the Turbacos, and in their territory, not far 
 from where their village was, and where now stands 
 the town of Turbaco, are to be found the celebrated 
 little mud- volcanoes, described by Humboldt in his 
 account of Venezuela and Colombia. 
 
 They are situated in a glade underneath a hill, are 
 about eighteen in number, and now and then send up 
 
 1 " Iba cebandose en alancear y destripar los Indios" (PadreSimon). 
 He did not always have things all his own way, for on one occasion 
 his horse, a hard-mouthed brute ("tenia un caballo tan duro de 
 boca ") took him into the middle of the enemy. The horse emerged 
 so full of arrows that he looked like a hedgehog, says Father Simon. 
 Its life was saved by repeated bathings in salt-water. N Thus, he did 
 not die, as so many [horses ?] died, by arrow wounds." 
 
44 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 a shower of mud. In fact, the little cones are more 
 like geysers than volcanoes, for some of them are but 
 flat, open mouths. From Turbaco comes the water 
 which to-day supplies the capital. Curiously enough, 
 the want of water in Turbaco in those days was what 
 led Heredia to retrace his steps to Cartagena when 
 he determined to erect a town. 
 
 Before he started on his backward journey to the 
 coast, he conscientiously burned down the Indian 
 village, leaving it, as Padre Simon tells us, " a heap 
 of ashes, and having abandoned heaps of the bodies 
 of dead Indians to the birds of prey." To do him 
 justice, the good Father does not exult in the exploit 
 of Heredia, but tells the episode quite feelingly, much 
 in the spirit that a man, seated in his club, who reads 
 that an earthquake has overwhelmed ten or twelve 
 thousand Chinamen in some remote place on the 
 Yiangsi, exclaims, " Poor things !" and goes on with 
 his tea. 
 
 Don Pedro de Heredia solemnly founded the city 
 of Cartagena, and named magistrates on January 21st, 
 under the patronage of St. Sebastian, both because it 
 was his day, and in remembrance of his own escape 
 from poisoned arrows in the fight. I should be 
 loath to disagree with any member of the clergy on such 
 a point as the right day that appertains to any saint. 
 Padre Simon was a professional, and it is seldom wise 
 to disagree with men about points of their own 
 profession, as a mere amateur. For all that, Father 
 Ribadenyra, in his " Flos Sanctorum," 1 a monumental 
 
 1 " Flos Sanctorum." Por el Padre Pedro de Ribadenyra, de la 
 Compania de Jesus (Natural de Toledo), Barcelona, en la Imprenta 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 45 
 
 work, in which are to be read the lives and miracles 
 of all the saints of any consequence, says that the 
 saint of Narbonne passed into Paradise upon the 
 twentieth of the month. 
 
 As the Bay of Cartagena was rich in fishings, 
 several Indian tribes were found established on its 
 shores. In Boca Chica there reigned a chief called 
 Carex, and when Heredia heard of him he sent the 
 Indian woman Catalina to offer him the friendship of 
 the King of Spain. The chief, who probably had 
 heard about the exploits of the Spaniards up and down 
 the coast, replied that the Christians were only a band 
 of thieves and murderers, and, for his part, he would 
 resist them to the death. 
 
 Heredia, of course, set out to reduce the village, 
 and after a stiff fight, in which he killed many of the 
 Indians, took the chief prisoner. In this adventure 
 they took an Indian who united in himself the 
 threefold functions of doctor, sorcerer, and priest — 
 functions which even now are sometimes to be found 
 united in one man. 
 
 Padre Simon calls him a person of some repute 
 in the district. 1 Therefore Heredia elevated him to 
 the position of ambassador and sent him on a mission 
 to a chief. This reputable man, whose name, as it 
 chanced, was Caron, set out in a canoe. No one at 
 first was willing to accompany him, for everybody 
 felt instinctively that, after the fighting at Turbaco 
 and with Carex, it was perilous to visit other 
 
 de Teresa Piferrer, viuda, administrada por Thomas Piferrer, librero, 
 ano 1 75 1. Vendese en su casa, en la Plaza del Angel. 
 1 " Persona de respeto en la comarca." 
 
46 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 tribes. At last two youthful Spaniards offered their 
 services. Caron set out with them to see a chief by 
 the name of Bahaire at a place now known as 
 Pasacaballos, where steamers going up the coast call 
 at to take in wood. It stands just at the mouth of 
 what is called a " cano" — that is, a narrow channel in a 
 mangrove swamp upon a sandy flat. It cannot have 
 been very different in those days, except that it was 
 peopled by Bahaire's Indians, instead of negroes as at 
 the present time. 
 
 Bahaire, evidently, was a man of a quick temper, 
 though he intended to accept the peace that Caron 
 offered him. He called a council, but, as the 
 chronicler of those events informs us, " only for form's 
 sake, to satisfy his people," just as occurs, so says the 
 ancient writer, in the like circumstances, even in 
 Christian lands. 1 This may be so, though it makes 
 lamentable reading for friends of progress and for 
 optimists. At the great council of the tribe, Bahaire 
 declared his views, saying that it was prudent to make 
 peace with adversaries such as were the Spaniards, 
 who with their horses and their firearms were 
 irresistible. 
 
 All would have passed off quietly with the usual 
 vote of confidence in the government, had not an 
 opposition chieftain risen to speak. This patriot, 
 whose name is not preserved by history for us, taunted 
 Bahaire with his cowardice. He called him traitor, 
 said he was afraid to face the enemy ; in fact, he made 
 the opposition speech usual in parliaments. 
 
 1 " Christian lands " seem to have changed but little, in their 
 political morality, since the conquest of America. 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 47 
 
 Bahaire, who, as it would appear, but little under- 
 stood the freedom of debate, or was restrained by 
 parliamentary methods, raising his club, at one fell 
 blow dashed out the speaker's brains. No one else 
 rising to continue the debate, the vote was carried and 
 peace agreed upon between this energetic parlia- 
 mentary hand and the King of Castile. 
 
 Heredia himself, in a letter to the King, 1 says 
 that he was anxious as to the fate of the two young 
 Spaniards who had accompanied his ambassador. 
 They happened to be Andaluces, and Heredia was 
 rejoiced to find them safe. The treaty that he made 
 with the vehement Bahaire brought him in, as he 
 tells us, seventy thousand dollars, mostly in gold-dust 
 and in precious stones. 
 
 The subsistence of the colony assured, and the 
 treasury well filled, Heredia naturally set out to look 
 for gold, after the fashion of the conquerors. He 
 showed the Indians by ocular demonstration that it 
 was to their interests to be friends with him, for if 
 they hesitated, he burned their villages and killed a 
 goodly number of them, as Castellanos, a contemporary 
 historian (or chronicler), tells us with quiet satisfac- 
 tion, as if their slaughter was an ordinary thing 
 during those stirring times. 
 
 In Cipagua, Heredia found a temple in which an 
 idol was adored under the figure of a porcupine. 
 This idol stirred his pious wrath exceedingly, for it 
 was made of gold. He cast it down at once, holding 
 it for another Dagon, as it would appear, and saying 
 that he could not tolerate such bestiality. 2 This 
 
 1 Philip II. 
 
 2 " Que no podia consentir tan bestiales idolatrias." 
 
48 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 bestial idol weighed five arrobas 1 and a half, as 
 Castellanos tells us, and proved the largest ever found 
 in New Granada, so that the faith of him who threw 
 it down, was justified by weight. The priest of Tunja 
 goes on to remark, " the hawk-bells, axes, and red caps 
 the conqueror gave the cacique of the place consoled 
 him for his idol." 2 This may have been so ; but an idol 
 of such size was poorly paid for by the small products 
 of the industry of Spain the conqueror disbursed. 
 Ideas of that sort never troubled conquerors, and so 
 Heredia set out again, seeking for idols to destroy, 
 and to implant the faith. After a five months' 
 journey he returned to his new town, and entered it 
 in triumph, bringing a million and a quarter ducats 
 with him, and mostly all in gold. This tried icono- 
 clast, after deducting the fifth part of his loot, which 
 he sent to the King, being his share according to 
 capitulations entered into before Heredia set out, at 
 Seville, reserved a portion for the governor (himself), 
 and after he had given largely to the hospital and 
 paid his captains, still had enough to pay the soldiers 
 in his troop six thousand ducats each. 
 
 So great a treasure did not fall to the lot either of 
 Pizarro or Cortes, or else those conquerors were not 
 so generous with their gold, as was Heredia. Honour 
 and profit cannot be carried in one bag, the adage has 
 it ; but it would seem that faith and profit sometimes 
 may go together, at least a portion of the way. 
 
 1 The arroba was about twenty-five pounds. 
 
 2 Juan de Castellanos was the parish priest of Tunja, a town in 
 the Sabana of Bogota. His " Elegias de Varones ilustres de Indias " 
 was printed in Madrid in 1589. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 In about a year after its first foundation Cartagena 
 began to take on the appearance of a capital. The 
 frequent traffic between it and the Islands kept it in 
 touch with Spain. Everyone who anchored in the 
 bay was struck with its extent and its security from 
 storms. Houses began to rise with great rapidity, 
 built in the style of houses in the mother-country. 
 In fact, many of the houses that still adorn the streets 
 were built but little after the first conquest of the 
 place. Merchants flocked to the new-built town, 
 which soon became a centre both of commerce and 
 of wealth. All the time it was growing, Heredia 
 was being reinforced with men and horses from Santo 
 Domingo and the other islands of the Caribbean Sea. 
 
 Castellanos, who, though a priest, seems to have 
 been what in old times was called a wag, speaks of 
 the ladies who came from Spain looking out for 
 adventures. Some, as he says, followed their own 
 sweet will, whilst others were a little more restrained 
 by what he calls " the ties of matrimony." 1 
 
 It seems these feminine knights-errant always laid 
 claim to relationship with greater families 2 than they 
 
 1 " Maritales ligaduras." 
 
 2 " Una se puso Dona Berenguela, otra hizo llamarse Dona 
 Sancha, de manera que de genealogia esa tomaba mas " (Castellanos, 
 * Elegias de Varones ilustres de Indias "). 
 
 49 4- 
 
/ 
 
 So CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 had any right to claim. This shows how well 
 advised the Anglo-Saxons were to invent the peerage ; 
 it gave them scope, as a wit said, to show their best 
 imagination in the art of literature, and put a bar 
 to Dona Berenguelas and Dona Sanchas to pose as 
 peeresses, either in Canada, New Zealand, or in 
 Australia. 
 
 Heredia's next expedition was to the Sinu. Not 
 that he knew he was going there, or even of its 
 existence, for he tells us that as his expedition 
 marched along, devoured by thirst, and hardly know- 
 ing what direction to pursue, sheltering themselves 
 against the overwhelming heat in dry ravines and 
 under scrubby trees, they chanced to meet two 
 Indians who came out from a little hamlet that they 
 passed. These men, a father and his son, talked 
 with them, and one, perhaps in exchange for hawk- 
 bells, or some other indication of the power and 
 wealth of Spain, gave them a plate of gold. 
 
 When they asked where it came from they said 
 from Finzenu. 1 The sight of gold, and the knowledge 
 that more was to be obtained at no great distance off, 
 always acted upon the Spaniards of the Middle Ages 
 as a magnet does on iron filings. Nature changes but 
 little in the course of centuries. The miserable search 
 after riches that took place at the first conquest of 
 
 1 Fray Francisco de G6mara, in his " Historia General de las 
 Indias," says : " Zenu es rio lugar y pesca, puerto grande y seguro " 
 — that is, " Zenu is a river, a district, and a large, safe port." The 
 port is that now called Cispata. He goes on to say there is much salt 
 there, and good fishings on the coast. The Indians work silver well, 
 and gild it with herbs that grow on that coast. The salt remains ; 
 but the few Indians that are left are sunk too low to work at anything 
 except to make their bows and arrows and their spears. 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 51 
 
 America was repeated in South Africa, but twenty 
 years ago. The only difference was that amongst the 
 Spaniards many men of lofty character rose superior 
 to the base race for wealth, and in South Africa all 
 the scum drawn from the ghettoes and the Stock 
 Exchanges of Europe appear to have been vile. 
 
 The Indians whom they met guided them across the 
 mountains, which, as Heredia says, though not extra- 
 ordinarily high, are bad and rough for horses. 1 In 
 this I certainly can bear him out, having had to lead my 
 horse for several miles through virgin forests, over a 
 mountain path, and with a temperature of a hundred 
 degrees Fahrenheit. After the mountains had been 
 passed the expedition came out on an extensive plain, 
 and a short distance on came to an Indian town 
 surrounded by a multitude of little tumuli. 
 
 This was the Indian cemetery of Finzenu, in which 
 the Indians buried all their chiefs. Inside these graves, 
 when they were opened, the Spaniards found an 
 incredible quantity of gold. The place was ruled 
 over by a chieftainess, who with her husband received 
 the Spaniards hospitably. Heredia seems to have 
 entirely lost his head when he heard of the buried 
 treasure in the cemetery. Up to this time he certainly 
 had not been cruel to the Indians, and he had shown 
 himself most generous to all his followers. He sacked 
 the town in which he had been hospitably entertained. 
 That nothing should^ be wanting, in a temple in the 
 town the Spaniards found some four and twenty idols, 
 but not so bestial as the great idol that first excited 
 
 1 "La sierra ... no muy alta pero de tierra fragosa para los 
 caballos." 
 
52 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 Heredia's pious fury, for they were only cased in gold. 
 A sad deception, which showed such a deceitful 
 attitude of the infidel that Heredia was almost 
 justified in what he did. However, as a compensation 
 to these Christians ambulant, hung on some trees 
 outside the temple were several bells of gold. These, 
 one of the chroniclers of the expedition says, they 
 also tore down and found the worth of them — together 
 with the shabby idols, we may suppose — to total one 
 hundred and fifty thousand crowns. Thus did 
 Heredia pursue his missionary course, upon the one 
 side laying up merit for himself by the destruction of 
 false gods, and on the other accumulating wealth. 
 
 All might have gone on well with him had he not 
 turned ungenerous to his soldiers. These men, each 
 and all of whom were just as ardent in their faith as 
 was their leader, and just as eager to amass wealth for 
 themselves as he, held it as flat blasphemy that they 
 should be defrauded of their gains. This was the sin 
 against their Holy Ghost, a thing never to be condoned, 
 and from that time a party rose that in the future 
 threw him into prison and forcedihim in the long run 
 to return to Spain to plead before the King, perishing 
 miserably in a shipwreck on the way. For the 
 meantime, however, all went well with him. 
 
 By an ingenious stratagem, after having buried 
 three hundred thousand crowns that he took from 
 the Indian tumuli, he got the expedition to move on 
 farther into the undiscovered country, intending to 
 send his slaves from Cartagena to dig the treasure up. 
 It always seems amazing where the great quantities of 
 gold found by the conquerors came from, not only in 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 53 
 
 Peru and Mexico, but by Heredia in the district of 
 Sinu. In fact, so plentifully was gold found in the 
 Indian cemeteries of the Sinu that it became a 
 common saying, " It was an ill day for Peru when 
 they discovered the Sinu." Either the gold had been 
 accumulated by degrees during past centuries, or else 
 the Indians knew of mines, whose secret perished with 
 them. Certainly in no part of the whole continent 
 has gold been found in quantities comparable to those 
 found at the conquest by Heredia, Pizarro, or Cortes. 
 
 Padre Simon says that the Spaniards called the 
 tumuli " mogotes," a word generally applied to hills 
 of sand that run out on a beach. 
 
 Heredia's guide (the Indian who gave the little 
 plate of gold) was the first to inform what wealth lay 
 buried in the mogotes that were scattered about the 
 plain for miles. The soldiers were unwilling to leave 
 the place where for a week they had been opening 
 tombs, some of them, according to Oviedo, 1 so rich as 
 to produce fifteen to twenty thousand dollars each. 
 However, partly by threats, and partly by persuading 
 them that there was much more treasure to be found 
 the farther they penetrated into the undiscovered 
 territory, he got them to march on. The expedition 
 that had left Cartagena, richly equipped and clothed, 
 two hundred infantry in strength and fifty cavalry, 
 was now much worn with fevers and with hardships, 
 and looked just like a tribe of gipsies as they tramped 
 onwards into the unknown, driving the baggage- 
 mules and the horses of the cavalry in front of them, 
 all loaded up with gold. A certain number of the men 
 1 " Historia Natural de las Indias." 
 
54 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 had died ; others had been killed in the continual 
 skirmishes with the Indians. This did not damp the 
 survivors in the least, for they, like all the Spaniards of 
 the conquest, cared not a whit for dangers, heat, cold, 
 or hunger, if there was gold in view. 
 
 After long days of painful wandering they came 
 to what was known as the land of Zenufana, which 
 seems to have been the borders of the province now 
 called Antioquia, for they arrived at really high 
 mountains, and there are none such in the district 
 through which flows the Sinu. It was the season of 
 the rains, that in Colombia are torrential, and the 
 whole expedition, once engaged in the defiles of the 
 high mountains, suffered most terribly from cold. 
 
 Most of the Indians that they had impressed to 
 serve as carriers died of the change of climate, for 
 they were all men born in one of the hottest districts 
 of the world, 1 most likely were half-naked, and were 
 sure to have been overworked. Little enough the 
 conquerors cared about the death of Indians, but, 
 unluckily, their guides were amongst those who 
 perished of the cold. The Indians, who saw the 
 plight the Spaniards were in, attacked them every 
 minute of the day, and to complete the difficulties 
 of the position the rivers rose behind them, cutting 
 them off completely from the fertile lands of the 
 Sinu. 
 
 Heredia, who was a born leader, seeing that force 
 
 was out of place, entered into negotiations with 
 
 the Indians, and prevailed on them to build him 
 
 bridges over the river that barred his way upon his 
 
 1 El Departamento de Bolivar. 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 5s 
 
 retreat. How far he actually got towards Antioquia 
 is difficult to say, but as he had been marching for 
 a month he must have gone some way. Colonel 
 Acosta 1 tells us that Heredia began to scale the 
 mountains on March 24th. As he left Cartagena on 
 January 8th, and passed a month opening the mogotes 
 that he found at Finzenu, he must have employed 
 the remainder of his time in his march towards 
 the mountains. He could not have remained 
 more than a few days in such a temperature or he 
 would have lost most of his horses and his men. 
 
 The more the history of the conquest of America 
 is studied — no matter whether in the tropic woods of 
 Panama, amongst the snows of the high mountains of 
 Peru, in Chile or in Mexico, or in the expedition 
 that Heredia led to the Sinu — the more extraordinary 
 always must appear the courage and the tenacity of 
 the Spaniards of the time. Although their arms were 
 far superior to the arms the Indians had, and their 
 horses gave them an immense advantage, yet their 
 numbers were always small. 
 
 The guns they had, carried but little distance, and 
 were slow to load, so that, unlike the modern 
 openers -up of Africa, they could not slaughter 
 their enemies with safety to themselves at long 
 range, but frequently fought hand to hand with 
 armies three times as numerous as theirs. The pity 
 of it was, like other openers-up of darker continents, 
 they came to invade the lands of other people who 
 had never done them harm. 
 
 As always happens in an expedition that has got 
 1 " Compendio Historico," etc. 
 
56 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 into trouble, the Spaniards threw the blame upon the 
 general. Being a general he ought to have produced 
 rain or fine weather exactly as he pleased, smoothed 
 out all difficulties, and foreseen everything. 
 
 Seeing the temper of his men, Heredia resolved 
 to return to Cartagena with the best speed possible. 
 After a painful march they arrived there, but so few 
 in number, and so much wasted by hardships and 
 disease, that they were scarcely recognizable. The 
 death of about a third of the men who had set out was 
 the gain of the survivors, for it left fewer to share the 
 booty when it was counted out. After laying on one 
 side the fifth part due to the King of Spain, Heredia had 
 left four hundred thousand crowns ; these he shared out 
 amongst his men. As by the time that he returned 
 his whole force numbered less than two hundred, the 
 booty was immense. The poorest soldier had enough 
 with which to return home to Spain and end his days 
 in comfort and in ease. Few did so. The majority 
 spent all their money upon fine clothes and arms, on 
 horses that they sent for to the Islands, 1 in dissipation, 
 and at the gambling table. Padre Simon relates that 
 when the deputy whom Heredia had left in Cartagena 
 heard the news of the riches of the mogotes of the 
 Sinu, "taking his nose between his fingers he began to 
 sing." 2 
 
 1 Cuba, Santo Domingo, and Jamaica. 
 
 2 " Quedo tan alegre que tomendose las narices entre las manos, 
 commenz6 a cantar." Though I have seen an Arab singer in the 
 town of Fez put his fingers in his ears before he broke into the high 
 falsetto voice in which the Arabs of Morocco sing, the action of the 
 deputy governor of Cartagena, I confess, is new to me. It may have 
 some occult significance, not yet made plain to us. 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS $7 
 
 Certainly, if wealth without having ventured 
 anything to acquire it is food for joy, his curious sing- 
 ing was well justified. However, not content with 
 this transient and Punch-like manifestation of his 
 interior spiritual grace, he too determined to set out 
 for the Sinii to open sepulchres. 
 
 In Heredia's absence Fray Tomas Toro, the first 
 Bishop of Cartagena, had arrived. With him came 
 Don Alonso de Heredia, the brother of Don Pedro, 
 one of the conquerors of Guatemala. Heredia, with 
 a disregard of policy that does him little credit, 
 immediately appointed his brother his lieutenant- 
 general, depriving Don Francisco Cesar of the post. 
 As Cesar had served him faithfully since the first day 
 they landed, was a brave soldier and a man of parts, 
 to deprive him of his post just after a campaign 
 looked like rank favouritism. 
 
 In general, Spanish commanders of these days, 
 even when superseded justly and on the orders of the 
 Kings of Spain, were wont to raise the standard of 
 revolt. Both in the conquests of Peru and Mexico 
 revolts of that kind took place that often put the new- 
 conquered territory in the greatest danger, and were 
 the cause of much blood being shed. 
 
 Luckily for Heredia and for all concerned, and 
 for the safety of the infant colony, Francisco Cesar 
 was a man of a very different stamp from the great 
 part of his contemporaries. Few braver men or finer 
 captains ever passed to the New World. Courage 
 was general enough amongst the conquerors, and 
 military skill not rare, as many of them had served 
 in the Italian wars. Few showed much abnegation, 
 
58 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 and few such probity and sense of discipline as Cesar 
 did after his unjust treatment by his general. 
 
 His deposition caused much ill feeling amongst 
 the soldiery, but he himself accepted it without a 
 murmur, and, when he was appointed by his chief to 
 head another expedition to the Sinu, busied himself 
 industriously to get all ready for the road. In 
 August of the year 1534 he set out with about two 
 hundred men, and in due course arrived at the Sinu. 
 The rains which generally begin about that time in 
 the province of Bolivar, and last two months or more, 
 caught Cesar and his men just as they arrived at the 
 great cemetery. They could not work for the bad 
 weather, and even had there been no rain nothing 
 remained for them to work at, for the Indians during 
 their absence had stripped the sepulchres and carried 
 off the gold. Where they had hidden it no one was 
 ever able to find out. Its resting-place remains a 
 mystery, for it disappeared as absolutely as did the 
 bulk of the treasures of the Incas of Peru. In the 
 latter country Indians are said still to possess the secret 
 of the Incas' treasure-houses, but, if it is so, the secret 
 never was revealed to any member of the dominating 
 race. In Peru and in the Sinu alone did the 
 Spaniards ever come on Indian cemeteries that 
 furnished quantities of gold. 
 
 Since the days of the conquest nothing further of 
 the kind has been found in the Sinu. The very site 
 of the Indian town of Finzenu has become a matter 
 of some doubt, although the excavations made by the 
 Spaniards ought not to be difficult to find. In Peru 
 the opening up of huacas, as the Indian graves are 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 59 
 
 called, is still an industry, though finds of treasure are 
 infrequent, the violated tombs yielding but little else 
 than pottery and a few images. So little has been 
 written 1 on the Indian cemetery of Finzenu, except 
 what is to be found in the pages either of Piedrahita 2 
 or of Padre Simon, that the whole subject has fallen 
 into oblivion, and hardly a Colombian in a hundred 
 seems to have heard of them. The description of the 
 Indian funeral rites and of the cemetery itself, pre- 
 served by Padre Simon, is interesting, and shows he 
 was a man of keenest observation, and took deep 
 interest in the antiquities of the newly conquered 
 land. 3 
 
 " The cemetery of Zenu," he tells us, " was 
 composed of an infinity of tumuli, some conical and 
 some foursquare. When an Indian died they dug 
 a grave, and in it with the corpse they put his arms 
 and valuables, laying them on his left side — that 
 is, the left side, looking to the east. All round the 
 body were placed jars of chicha, 4 maize in the cob, 
 
 1 Nothing, as far as I have ever found. 
 
 2 " Historia General de las Conquistas del Nuevo Reino de 
 Granada." 
 
 8 Most of the contemporary writers on the conquest were equally 
 observant and interested in everything. Cortes, Bernal Diaz del 
 Castillo, Pedro Cieza de Leon, and many others, have left minute 
 descriptions of all they saw. One, whose name is lost and who 
 figures as the " Unknown Conqueror " in the pages of Ramuzio's 
 "Voyages," has left a drawing of the great teocalli (temple of 
 Mexico). Dictionaries might be exhausted and academies toil vainly 
 to produce a more tremendous name, than the " Unknown Con- 
 queror." His only literary compeer, is Death. 
 
 4 Chicha is a fermented beverage made from maize. In ancient 
 times the maize was chewed by the old women of the tribe to 
 macerate it. I believe this practice still is followed by the wilder 
 tribes upon the Amazon and Paraguay. Advancing civilization, or 
 
6o CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 and a stone to grind it with, so that the warrior 
 should .have provisions for the road. If he was a 
 great chief his wives and slaves were buried with 
 him, having been first made drunk. The whole was 
 covered over with a red earth that they brought 
 from a place far away." 
 
 As the mourners remained drinking round the 
 grave for days, and in the intervals of funereal 
 drunkenness they piled more and more earth above 
 the chief, the consequence of the deceased was 
 estimated by the amount of drink consumed and the 
 height of the mound. 
 
 In one of the chief sepulchres, known to the 
 Spaniards as " La Tumba del Diablo," they found 
 " images of every kind of animal, from man down 
 to the ant," 1 all of the purest gold. These objects 
 Heredia valued at thirty thousand crowns. This 
 " Devil's Tomb " must have resembled some of the 
 museums of Rome and Naples, in which so many 
 animals (including man) are to be found well imitated, 
 but, alas ! not in gold. 
 
 Piedrahita relates that Finzenu was ruled over by 
 a chieftainess, 2 and that " her majesty was such 3 that, 
 when she lay down in her hamac, she placed her 
 
 degeneracy, or perhaps refinement (who shall judge the heart?), views 
 this good old custom with disfavour, and the maize is pounded in a 
 mortar in a mere bourgeois way. Chicha was drunk in Colombia, in 
 Chile, and in Peru, and is drunk to-day in all these countries. Taken 
 in excess, it induces semi-paralysis and idiocy. 
 
 1 " Encontraron objetos de oro que eran imitaciones de figuras de 
 toda especie de animales, desde el hombre hasta la hormiga." 
 
 2 "Cacica." 
 
 3 " La majestad de ella era tal . . ." 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 61 
 
 hands upon two female slaves and used a third one as 
 a footstool." 
 
 All of the spoilers of these Indian sepulchres are 
 said by Padre Simon to have come to a bad end. 
 " Impenetrable judgment of the Lord," he says. 
 " All who violated these sepulchres that, though they 
 were graves of idolaters, were yet sacred . . . died poor 
 in hospitals, and the riches they amassed never passed 
 to their sons." 
 
 It seems too good to be believed, and one is left 
 hoping the simple, old priest was right in what he 
 says. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 All the time that the various expeditions were 
 exploring the Sinu and opening Indian graves for 
 treasure the town of Cartagena steadily was being 
 built. With great rapidity, the first thatched hovels — 
 hurriedly run up to protect the earliest settlers from the 
 tropic rains — were giving place to tile-roofed houses 
 in the fashion of Old Spain. Solidly built mansions, 
 with a patio in the middle, rose as by magic, 
 for conquerors who had grown rich suddenly, wished 
 to found families. Most of them called to mind 
 they were of noble race, and if they were not it 
 was all the same out in the Indies. Above nearly 
 every door a massive coat of arms proclaims, even 
 to-day, that the builders of the houses all were 
 " sons of somebody." 1 
 
 The usual Spanish plan was followed of grouping 
 the chief buildings round a square right in the middle 
 of the town. In the same square, built by the 
 conquerors, stand the cathedral, the palace of the 
 governor, the House of the Inquisition, and at one 
 corner the first house built in Cartagena by a 
 conqueror. From the chief square the streets radiated 
 at right angles, for in few cities of the New World 
 
 1 " Hijosdalgo " — i.e., " hijos de algo " = sons of somebody. 
 
 62 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 63 
 
 are the dark, winding lanes of medieval European 
 towns to be observed. Perhaps the knowledge or the 
 intuition — for who shall say where the one ends and 
 the other begins, either in individuals or societies? — 
 that open spaces were a necessity in towns within the 
 tropics, influenced them ; but it is certain that the 
 chessboard was the pattern of nearly all Spanish towns 
 built by the conquerors. It has remained so down to 
 the present day in Spanish America. Despite it, 
 Cartagena, which must have early taken on the aspect 
 that it still has, is picturesque in the extreme. 
 Whether the conquerors laid it out exactly as it is, is 
 quite uncertain, although so many of its buildings 
 date from the conquerors' time. The great walls, the 
 finest in America, and the chief ornament, pride, and, 
 as it were, achievement of the town, could not have 
 been begun much before Philip II. was on the throne 
 of Spain. 
 
 When Heredia returned from the last expedition 
 to the Sinu, bringing with him two million dollars' 
 worth of gold, great stores sprang up like mushrooms, 
 and in them were to be seen silks, jewels, brocades, 
 richly embossed saddles, and arms of every kind. In 
 fact, as an old writer says, there was as much luxury 
 to be found in Cartagena as in Madrid itself. So 
 much, indeed, did Cartagena imitate Madrid that the 
 duels of the "guapos" 1 and " valentones " of the 
 
 1 " Guapo " literally = " handsome," and by implication " brave." 
 The word is common in Spain, and has also survived from the time 
 of the Spanish domination, in Naples. The guapo there has the same 
 signification that it had in medieval Spain — i.e. y a " bravo." In 
 America it is never used in that sense. In the Argentine, when 
 applied to a horse, it means " good for a long journey." 
 
64 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 capital were reproduced in the streets of the new 
 city that was springing up beyond the seas. These 
 nocturnal duellists or rufflers, so like our Mohawks r 
 were always known as "men of the sword and 
 cloak." 1 
 
 The climate of Cartagena, in which a man can 
 hardly tolerate a shirt, made the cloak impossible, and 
 thus these rufflers had to fight with their faces 
 uncovered, and were not able, as they were in 
 Madrid, to stab and brawl unknown. So great 
 became their insolence that one night, as Heredia 
 himself was walking in the front of his own house 
 and talking to a friend, he was set upon by nine of 
 these night-hawks. The experiences of his youth 
 now stood him in good stead, for he made such a 
 stout defence and was so well assisted by his friend 
 that, after leaving several of their number stretched 
 upon the ground, his assailants fled and left him master 
 of the field. 
 
 Nocturnal brawls of a like nature were little to 
 Heredia's mind, which was set on the exploration 
 of the country and to amass more gold. His brother, 
 Don Alonso, to soften down the slight done to 
 Francisco Cesar, made him his lieutenant, and sent 
 him to a town, then called Balsillas, 2 to see a chief who 
 ruled there who was friendly to their cause. The 
 chief's name was Tolu, and when the Spaniards, under 
 Alonso de Heredia, founded a town there, they 
 called it Santiago de Tolu, naming it, as they often did 
 
 1 " Gente de capa y espada." 
 
 2 Balsillas = little rafts. The Indians of the place were great 
 raft-builders. 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 65 
 
 in New Granada, after the Indian chief. In the same 
 way Lorica, on the Sinu, was so named after the 
 cacique whose residence it was. 
 
 Tolii proved a true friend to the Spaniards, giving 
 them provisions in abundance, and also ten thousand 
 castellanos 1 in pure gold — a goodly sum, taking into 
 consideration the much greater value of money in 
 those days. 
 
 Alonso de Heredia, though an experienced 
 captain, seems from the first to have been jealous of 
 his lieutenant, Francisco Cesar. When Cesar arrived 
 in Tolu (then called Balsillas) he set the Indians at 
 work to build a raft, in order to shorten the journey 
 from that port to Cartagena, because the road, by 
 land, lay across hills and marshes and through 
 trackless everglades. This showed his foresight, for 
 Tolu is only distant about forty miles from Cartagena, 
 and is a port of call. Even to-day there is no road 
 between the two ports : nothing but cattle-tracks serve 
 to connect them. On the land side the way is 
 arduous, with grass and water scarce. When Alonso 
 de Heredia heard of the ten thousand castellanos 
 that Cesar had received from the chief Tolu, he 
 called on him to give them up. 
 
 Cesar had already shared them with his soldiers 
 and was unable to comply. For this Alonso de 
 Heredia tried him by court martial and sentenced 
 him to death. His life was spared, for not a soldier 
 in the host would act as headsman, and so Francisco 
 Cesar, the future conqueror of Antioquia, and far 
 
 1 The castellano, according to Clemencin, was worth eleven 
 dollars ("Compendio Geografico ") . 
 
 5 
 
66 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 the finest of the conquerors of Tierra Firme, after 
 Balboa, was forced to march with the expedition as a 
 prisoner in chains. 
 
 Alonso de Heredia, after he left Tolu, must have 
 marched right through the middle of the famous 
 Llanos de Corozal, for he was striking at a venture 
 towards the territory of a chief called Ayapel. This 
 worthy also has given his name to the whole district. 
 Castellanos says the Spaniards journeyed " a la 
 ventura," for they had lost their guides, who had been 
 killed in the attack upon a village. As the country 
 in the Llanos de Corozal is cut by frequent patches 
 of dense forest, that in those days must have been 
 denser still if possible, and here and there has stony 
 hills of not inconsiderable height, but rough and 
 very bad for unshod horses on account of beds of 
 gravel, their progress must have been both perilous 
 and slow. 
 
 However, nothing ever daunted the conquistadores, 
 and in such circumstances the men described by Padre 
 Simon under the name of M baquianos " l must have 
 been the salvation of the expedition in its worst diffi- 
 culties. " The baquianos are those whose counsel is 
 valuable (on such occasions). They find the way 
 . . . they watch and never sleep. They suffer heat 
 and cold and thirst and hunger . . . they go in front 
 and discover ambuscades. They find and know such 
 fruits as can be eaten. ... It is they who make 
 arms fit for the country, as bucklers, lances, and even 
 
 1 The word " baquiano " is still used all over Spanish America 
 in the sense of guide. In those days it more nearly equalled scout. 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 67 
 
 alpargates 1 for the troops. Accustomed as they are 
 to savage warfare, neither the shouts, the drums, nor 
 the screaming of the war-whistles affright them in 
 an Indian attack. They do not feel the climate and 
 are not subject to the boils and blains and the attacks 
 of fever that afflict the bisonos and the chapetones, 
 who, though they are brave fighters, are soon 
 discouraged." Padre Simon probably meant soon 
 discouraged by the rigours of a campaign in such a 
 country and in so severe a climate as tropical 
 Colombia. 
 
 The chief Ayapel was prepared for the coming of 
 the Spaniards, for he knew what to expect of them. 
 As they marched on, the soldiers in bad humour, for 
 they expected that they would have found more 
 Indian graves to open, they entered into a great cane- 
 brake, extending several miles. Fortunately for them 
 some of the baquianos who had gone forward on their 
 horses descried the points of Indian lances appearing 
 high above the canes. They just had time to gallop 
 back and give the alarm when the Indians, seeing 
 their ambush was discovered, charged with the yells 
 and blowing of their war- whistles that gave the name 
 " guazabara " to a similar attack. 
 
 Of course their efforts were in vain against the 
 well-armed Spaniards, whose cavalry gave them a great 
 advantage in all such Indian fights. They took some 
 prisoners, who are described as " tall and handsome 
 men." These prisoners told them that the town ot 
 Ayapel was quite deserted and that the chief had hidden 
 
 1 In Spain the alpargata is a canvas shoe with hemp soles. In 
 America it was of hide. 
 
68 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 all his gold. However, the expedition found abundance 
 of provisions. The thirst for gold still spurred them 
 on, and as the Indians told them that none was to be 
 found in the territory of Finzenu, and all the golden 
 ornaments they had taken from the graves had been 
 obtained from a land of high mountains, rarther to 
 the west, they set their faces once more towards the 
 wilderness. In reading of their doings in Sinu, it 
 seems strange that the Indians never raised a protest 
 against the violation of the sepulchres. This has 
 inclined some writers to hazard a conjecture that the 
 graves were of a race superior in civilization to the 
 dwellers in Sinu, and that that race had disappeared. 
 It may have been so, but on the other hand, the 
 Bachiller Enciso speaks ot the Indians working in 
 silver and gilding it with herbs. Gomara also talks 
 of the Indians' silverwork 1 and says "they cast the 
 metal and also parcel-gild it with certain herbs 
 they use." 
 
 Heredia still pushed on, although his soldiers 
 got more discontented day by day and difficulties 
 increased. At last they reached a river, too wide and 
 deep to cross. This was the River Cauca, that falls 
 into the Magdalena,just above Magangue. For days 
 they had been without provisions, except some bales 
 of dried fish they found in a deserted Indian town. 
 In no part of the Americas, except upon the prairies 
 of the north, was game abundant, as it was in Africa, 
 and so the expedition had to maintain itself with such 
 wild fruits as they chanced to come across, and tops 
 of palm-trees, cut down and roasted in the fire. 
 1 u Gentil plateria de Indios." 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 69 
 
 They must have looked a veritable company or 
 death as they straggled onwards, fainting from hunger, 
 thin, and travel-worn. In reading of these expeditions 
 of the conquerors of America, it is not to be forgotten 
 that they did not know where they were going to, and 
 thus their journeys had an element of mystery in 
 them unattainable to-day. Even in voyages to the 
 South Pole the explorers know that their goal lies in 
 such or such a latitude ; and, in the case of Africa, they 
 are but filling up the waste spaces of a map, whose 
 outlines are well known. No matter what the motives 
 were that inspired the Spaniards of those days, whether 
 the thirst for gold, a desire to spread their faith, or 
 perhaps a mixture of the two, no one can cavil at 
 their courage or their persistence in the face of 
 difficulties. 
 
 Marching along the unknown river's banks, they 
 came at last in front of a large island on which they 
 saw a town. Starving, and without boats or canoes 
 to cross the stream, the famished men plunged into 
 the water and swam over to the place. Those who 
 have seen the River Cauca, with its immense and 
 turbid flood, its shallows full of alligators, electric eels, 
 and stinging ray-fish, its waters full of ravenous 
 caribes, 1 always ready to attack the swimmer, can but 
 be astonished at the feat. What was their horror as 
 they struggled to the bank to see the town burst into 
 flames and the inhabitants make orT in their canoes ! 
 Nothing remained for those who had crossed the 
 stream, but to come back again as famished as when 
 
 1 The carib£ is a small ravenous fish about the size of a sprat. 
 It goes in shoals. 
 
70 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 they set out on their swim, for the inhabitants of the 
 burnt town had carried off all food. Even the iron 
 will of Don Pedro de Heredia was forced to yield to 
 circumstances. He gave the order sadly to retrace 
 their steps to Cartagena. By this time the discontent 
 of the soldiery had risen to a pitch. 
 
 After seven or eight days ot hunger and of 
 continual fighting, Don Alonso de Heredia arrived at 
 Ayapel, having lost a third of the expedition by the 
 way. There he met Captain Caceres, sent by his 
 brother Don Pedro to his assistance. Unfortunately 
 Caceres arrived without provisions, so that all he 
 did was to add to the misery of the rest. Don Pedro 
 de Heredia, seeing neither his brother nor his captain 
 had returned to Cartagena, came out himself to aid and 
 rescue them. He arrived in time, for the soldiers, so 
 he says, looked like a troop of living skeletons. As 
 he had only just provisions for his men, his brother's 
 expedition had to return towards Tolu. The Indians, 
 seeing no other method of defence, had swept the 
 lands of the Sinu quite bare of everything. 
 
 A serious mutiny broke out, but for a curious 
 reason, the soldiers did not wish to leave the lands of the 
 Sinii with empty hands after their sufferings. Weak 
 and emaciated as they were, and threatened with 
 starvation, they yet petitioned to remain and open 
 graves to see if they could find gold. Heredia 
 pacified them as best he could, and probably allowed 
 such of them as were most unreasonable to remain 
 where they were. A detachment, headed by Captain 
 Caceres, embarked in rafts, hoping to get to Cartagena 
 before Heredia could arrive, and overturn his govern- 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 71 
 
 merit. Heredia, hearing of their project, immediately 
 descended the Sinii in a canoe, and arrived two weeks 
 before them at the town. 
 
 In all the histories of revolts in Mexico, in Chile, 
 in Colombia, or Peru, at the time of the conquests, the 
 mutineers never seem to have attempted to separate 
 from Spain. All their endeavours, with the possible 
 exception of the revolt of Hernandez de Giron in 
 Peru, were against their governors. If the revolt 
 succeeded, the triumphant general either went home 
 to Spain or sent a confidential agent to the King, 
 asking to be confirmed in the post that he had won. 
 Spain was so far away, communications were so slow, 
 and the Kings usually were so ill advised, that the 
 request of the triumphant rebel was always granted. 
 Thus did things move in an entirely vicious circle, 
 and the King in a way was a participator in a plot 
 against his own authority. Once only, in a matter of 
 this kind, did a King of Spain behave with energy. 
 This happened in the wars with the Pizarros, when 
 the Licenciado de la Gasca was sent out to Peru to 
 restore order and put the outbreak down. This he 
 accomplished, though a churchman, and though he 
 landed in Peru without a soldier at his back. All 
 that he did he accomplished in the King's name by 
 proclamation, and certainly he gave evidence of a 
 strong will and great diplomatic power. As often 
 happens with a man of peace, invested suddenly with 
 military power, he stained his victory by his severity 
 when he obtained the upper hand. 
 
 Don Pedro de Heredia found himself in a difficult 
 position in Cartagena, even though he had got there 
 
72 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 before his enemies and had upset their plans. His 
 wealth was stored in the island of Codego, in 
 Cartagena Bay, and, a revolt having occurred, he 
 sailed there with his immediate followers and his 
 slaves. Once there in safety, he was not the man to 
 sit down quietly under such a serious affront. His 
 prestige with the conquered Indians stood high. It 
 is a curious fact that the same happened to Cortes 
 and with the two Pizarros in Peru. Whenever a 
 revolt broke out against either of them, their staunchest 
 friends were always to be found amongst those very 
 Indians who only a year or so before had been 
 defeated by the leaders, to whom they rallied to 
 assist. 
 
 Cartagena was in no position to resist such a force 
 as Heredia disposed of, and so they sent a deputation, 
 iust as the Romans sent to Coriolanus, begging 
 Heredia to spare them and the town. He, of course, 
 spared them, after the fashion of most men in similar 
 position, but the fright they had sustained was little 
 calculated to make him popular. Discontent, deeply 
 seated, bided its time against him. He was well 
 aware of it, and understood if he could not go on 
 leading his soldiers to victory and wealth, that he was 
 certain to be lost. So he detached his brother, Don 
 Alonso, to found a settlement in the territory of the 
 chief Tolu. He himself, always energetic, always 
 keen, both for adventure and for gold, set out upon an 
 expedition to the province of Darien to seek for a 
 supposititious El Dorado, at a place called Dabaybe, 
 which was a sort of ignis fatuus to all the conquerors 
 of Darien and Panama. 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 73 
 
 During his absence his brother, Don Alonso, with 
 a well-equipped expedition, retraced his steps to the 
 Sinu. There he found the soldiers, who despite ot 
 hunger and disease had remained to open Indian 
 graves, still hard at work. They had got so skilful 
 at the work, they found it was only worth their 
 while to open tumuli on the left side. Upon the 
 right side no gold or ornaments were ever found. 
 The quantity of tumuli was so enormous that opening 
 them remained a profitable industry for many years to 
 come. 
 
 Don Alonso, after providing these industrious 
 ghouls with all the provisions he could spare, went on 
 till he came to the River Catarrapa, which he followed 
 to its mouth. On it he founded Santiago de Tolu, 
 the oldest settlement in the department of Bolivar, 
 after Cartagena, and at one time the capital. Here 
 first were found the trees 1 from which the celebrated 
 balsam of Tolu is taken, a medicine that still keeps its 
 virtue in spite of fashion and of time. The Indians, 
 after one hostile demonstration, soon submitted to his 
 rule, for they were agriculturists, and had not that 
 ferocious spirit of independence that characterized 
 most of the wilder tribes throughout America. This 
 spirit has survived down to the present day. A priest, 
 in the wild regions of the new Santa Cruz de la Sierra, 
 in Bolivia, only a year or two ago, took prisoner five 
 Indians in a sort of Gospel raid. 
 
 Being agog to save their souls, which must inevit- 
 ably have perished had they remained just as the 
 Creator of the world called them into being, he tied 
 
 1 Myrospernum toluiferum. 
 
74 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 his captives up to posts. Then he expounded to 
 them the dogmas of our faith, wrestling with Lucifer 
 to snatch the wildings from his claws. All was in 
 vain, perhaps because he strove in Spanish, a language 
 which they unfortunately had never learned. For 
 days he preached and prayed without success. These 
 infidels were so hard-hearted and so rooted in primeval 
 villainy that they refused all food. Still he prayed on, 
 until three of them inconsiderately died upon his 
 hands. The other two he then let loose, and they 
 at once returned into the woods, to lose their souls 
 and live. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 Don Alonso de Heredia was one of the few 
 conquerors who treated the Indians with humanity. 
 Even his brother Don Pedro was not cruel. His 
 chief fault was his love of wealth ; but on the whole 
 the record of the two brothers stands high in the 
 history of the times. 
 
 The Indians all about Tolu were the most 
 civilized the Spaniards had found in their experience 
 of the Sinu. They cultivated crops of maize, yams, 
 and manioc, and from the first building of the town, 
 peace seems to have reigned between the Spaniards 
 and themselves. Certainly they have left their traces 
 in the population of the district, for most of the in- 
 habitants show a strong Indian type. 
 
 The town is excellently situated, just at the mouth 
 of the River Catarrapa, and vessels of a moderate size 
 can anchor in its considerable bay. Outside, the 
 stormy Caribbean Sea, usually vexed and tossing, 
 may rage its worst. Inside the point, a grove of 
 coco-palms shuts out its waves and noise. A long 
 ramshackle pier runs out some little way, and when the 
 crank dugout canoe has put ashore its passengers, 
 they stumble landwards on the crazy structure that 
 seems coeval with the foundation of the town. 
 
 75 
 
 < 
 
76 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 Padre Simon, generally an accurate observer, says 
 the water of the place is singularly soft, and in this 
 statement I can bear him out. Perhaps through lack 
 of faith, in the same way that Bernal Diaz could not 
 see Santiago, but in the battle only discerned Francisco 
 de Morla on his white horse, I failed to find the 
 wondrous springs that the good father talks about. 
 " Near the town of Tolu," he says, " spring two 
 wondrous fountains, close to the roots of a great tree, 
 whose leaves on falling into their water are straight- 
 way petrified. This spring is clear, and the water 
 flowing from it pleasant to the taste of those who 
 drink of it. The water of the second fountain gushes 
 out, a deep blue colour, although at times it runs as 
 white as milk. The water, like that of the twin 
 spring, is very good to drink." These portents, and 
 the groups of balsam-bearing trees, constitute the 
 chief wonders of Tolu. 
 
 I saw the trees. My want of faith or lack of 
 observation may have come in between me and the 
 springs, in the same way as the presence of a mis- 
 believer is often fatal to the materialization of Dante 
 or of Julius Caesar at aspi ritualistic seance in the 
 dark. I found the strange old Spanish town, the 
 white sand, the surf-lashed beach, the whispering 
 coco-palms, and the deep blue lagoon, sufficiently 
 mysterious. 
 
 In the meantime Don Pedro de Heredia, with a 
 well-equipped expedition of more than two hundred 
 men on horseback and on foot, had set out towards 
 Darien to find one of the numerous El Dorados, 
 that always danced before the imagination of the 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 77 
 
 adventurers of those days, from Raleigh down to the 
 meanest captain of them all. Don Pedro embarked 
 his expedition in launches, and after sailing up the 
 River Darien he disembarked on the right bank and 
 struck into the woods. 
 
 From the first, bad fortune dogged his steps, and 
 the adventure was the most unlucky he ever under- 
 took. The country on the right bank of the Darien 
 River has changed but little since those days. Swamp 
 succeeds swamp, and inundated forests, almost im- 
 penetrable on foot, extend on every side. All round 
 the Isthmus of Darien to the south, though it was the 
 first part of America to be occupied, Nature has 
 proved so powerful that she has maintained herself 
 almost without a change. Only in the zone of the 
 Panama Canal has she been bridled and subdued. 
 Even there, were but the hand of man relaxed a year 
 or two, all would fall back again. 
 
 Heredia committed an initial error in taking 
 horses with him on the march. As they had been 
 the greatest arm the Spaniards had against the Indians 
 on other expeditions, so in this one they proved the 
 greatest curse. Lost in the trackless, inundated forests, 
 exposed to ceaseless rains, a prey to every kind of 
 insect, and to vampire bats that sucked the incautious 
 sleeper's blood, fanning him gently with their wings, 
 so that he did not wake, until the morning found 
 him weak and nerveless with the loss of blood, the 
 luckless Spaniards struggled through the woods. 
 Sometimes they had to halt a week to build a bridge 
 to let the horses pass a cano, 1 and in the black and 
 1 Backwater, running between woods. 
 
78 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 viscid marshes men had to haul them through with 
 ropes. 
 
 Since those days, most probably, no horse has ever 
 entered into those dreadful swamps, and possibly will 
 never do so in the history of the world. The best 
 means of penetration might have been in canoes, for 
 the Spaniards could not get through the inundated 
 bush as did the Indians. 
 
 To all the protests of Heredia the Indian guides 
 rejoined, " It is your fault and of your animals. We 
 could have done the journey from the coast up to the 
 hills in a few days." This probably was true, for the 
 native Indian of Darien glides through the bushes like 
 a snake. Silently he slips through the woods and 
 leaves no trail behind. 
 
 After three months of fruitless toil and suffering 
 Heredia gave the order to return. As the road that 
 he had come by was now clear to some extent of 
 wood, the journey only took him forty days. When 
 he got back to San Sebastian de Uraba, from whence 
 he started, he had lost all his horses and more than 
 half of all his men. The disastrous expedition 
 destroyed his popularity, and when he entered 
 Cartagena the population closed their doors upon him. 
 
 Francisco Cesar, who had remained in inactivity, 
 now asked Heredia's leave to set out with another 
 expedition to find the El Dorado his chief had failed 
 to reach. Seven months he wandered in the wilds, 
 failing to attain the El Dorado of their dreams, but 
 crossing for the first time the mountains of Abibe, 
 which for the past twenty years had been impassable 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 79 
 
 by any conqueror. Thus he discovered, though 
 probably without his knowledge, what is now the 
 province of Antioquia, one of the richest in the 
 republic of Colombia to-day. 
 
 Although Francisco Cesar set out as Heredia had 
 done, from San Sebastian de Uraba, he followed 
 quite a different road. Instead of involving himself 
 amidst the forests and the swamps, he struck directly 
 for the hills. Though by this choice of road he 
 certainly avoided all the difficulties that had beset 
 Heredia, he encountered others almost as formidable. 
 So great were the obstacles he had to face, and so 
 hard did the Indians fight against him, that when at 
 last he emerged into the fertile valley of the Cauca he 
 had lost a third part of his horses and his men. The 
 valley of the Cauca is renowned in South America 
 both for its beauty and fertility. Although at the 
 time that he first penetrated to it, crossing the 
 mountains that for twenty years had baffled all 
 explorers, he probably but little estimated all its 
 worth ; to him belongs the honour of the discovery. 
 No record of his name, as far as I know, is preserved 
 in any place in Antioquia. 
 
 The most warlike of any or the Indian chiefs 
 encountered since the foundation of Cartagena fought 
 vigorously with Cesar in the Cauca territory. This 
 chief, called Nutibara, fell upon the little Spanish 
 force, now reduced to about sixty men and ten or 
 eleven horses, with two thousand of his followers. 
 Never before had Cesar been in such peril of his life 
 as in the battle that ensued. As usual in the New 
 
80 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 World, the horses gained them the victory. 1 Seeing 
 that Nutibara's brother was the most active in 
 rallying the foe, Cesar spurred through the Indians, 
 and after a keen fight despatched him. With his 
 death the Indians became disheartened and retired. 
 The chief Nutibara, like a good general, covered his 
 followers' retreat, carrying off his brother's body in a 
 hamac, and marching by its side. The Spaniards 
 watched the sad, little procession winding through the 
 woods till it was lost to sight. Not till it disappeared 
 did they perceive that they had gained the day. As 
 always happened in all battles when the Spaniards 
 were hard pressed by the enemy, Santiago, mounted 
 on his white horse, appeared to cheer them on. All 
 things are possible to the interior vision, and, from the 
 days of Constantine down to more recent times when 
 angels fluttered in the sky over a host of Protestants, 
 portents and signs have appeared to those who looked 
 for them — upon the winning side. 
 
 After his victory, Cesar collected all the gold he 
 could and then returned to Cartagena with all speed. 
 In the seven months that he had been away much 
 had occurred at Cartagena. The unpopularity of the 
 Heredias had grown with the ill success of their two 
 last expeditions, and at the request of the inhabitants 
 an officer had been sent from Spain to look into 
 affairs. This man having died upon the journey in 
 the island of Hispaniola, the Supreme Court of the 
 
 1 Piedrahita says : " Son los caballos los nervios de la guerra con 
 los naturales." The word " natural " would seem to be the original 
 of our word " native," the use of which endears us so much to our 
 coloured brethren in the Lord. 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 81 
 
 island — known as La Audiencia — commissioned one 
 of its chief members, Pedro Vadillo, to go to 
 Cartagena and institute what in the Spanish law of 
 those days was called a ** residencia " against Heredia. 
 
 The residencia was a general inquiry into the 
 administration and affairs of a colonial governor under 
 the laws of Spain. When in the colony abuses got 
 too flagrant to be borne, an officer entitled either 
 an " Oidor M1 or a " Visitador " was sent out, with full 
 powers to sift and to examine, and, if need be, to send 
 the erring governor home. Naturally such powers 
 led to great abuses when vested in dishonest officers. 
 The first act of the taker of the residencia was 
 always to confiscate the money of the governor under 
 pretence of sending it back to the Treasury. As 
 a general rule, the money never reached the govern- 
 ment, but enriched the taker of the residencia for 
 life. There were exceptions, as in the case of the 
 Licenciado de la Gasca in Peru, but few and far 
 between. The Oidor Vadillo was an ambitious man, 
 active and energetic, and not withheld by any scruples ; 
 so he at once threw Pedro and Alonso de Heredia 
 into prison, tortured their slaves till they confessed 
 where the Heredias had concealed their money, 
 confiscated it, and, not content with that, sent to the 
 interior, and having seized upon some Indian chiefs, 
 extracted a large sum from them in gold. This he 
 sold in Hispaniola, and, after having taken on himself 
 the power and functions of the governor, began to 
 oppress and to illtreat the Indians. 
 
 The Heredias were confined in a damp prison 
 
 1 Oidor = hearer. 
 
 6 
 
82 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 underneath the level of the sea. Most probably 
 the place where they were confined was an old 
 building called " Las Bovedas," a noisome den, hot, 
 damp, and situated on the beach. In it many of the 
 best and finest patriots of Colombia have languished 
 out their lives. Alonso de Heredia emerged from 
 it crippled for life with rheumatism, for few resist it 
 long. 
 
 Just at this moment Francisco Cesar disembarked 
 on his return from his long expedition, rich and 
 acclaimed by all. Although his vessel anchored in 
 the bay at midnight, he went at once to see his 
 former chiefs, an action that does credit to the 
 goodness of his heart, as both had treated him unjustly, 
 and Don Alonso had loaded him with chains. One 
 cannot but admire his magnanimity, on reading that 
 he endeavoured to console Don Pedro with kind 
 words, insisted that his chains should be knocked off, 
 and, more than that, gave him half the gold that 
 he had brought from the interior, well understanding 
 that a man who has to plead before the courts in 
 Spain pleads better if his purse is weighty and well 
 filled. 1 
 
 Certainly Cesar, who had been deeply wronged 
 by both Heredias, showed that he was a man of 
 magnanimity of character, and rose superior to 
 revenge and jealousy, recognizing that his old 
 chief, with all his faults, did not deserve the treat- 
 ment meted out to him by the base, money-loving 
 Oidor. 
 
 1 The same, of course, applies to Japan, China, England, the 
 United States, France, and the republic of Haiti. 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 83 
 
 The interesting career of Francisco Cesar was 
 now drawing to a close. Unable to remain in ease at 
 Cartagena, he commanded another expedition to the 
 interior, under the Oidor Vadillo, and after number 
 less adventures died exhausted by his toils in a little 
 Indian town called Cori, not far from the great river 
 that still bears his name. Had he but had a wider 
 theatre he would have equalled either Pizarro or 
 Cortes. As it is, his character stands high amongst 
 the ranks of the conquerors of the New World, both 
 for his military skill, his courage, and above all, for 
 magnanimity. On no occasion did he treat the 
 conquered Indians with injustice, still less with 
 cruelty. Such men were all too rare in those days 
 amongst the Spaniards, though there were many 
 honourable exceptions, a thing often forgotten by 
 English historians, who seem to think all conquerors 
 but our own, were steeped in villainy. Curiously 
 enough, the name of Cesar has been remembered in 
 Colombia, only in a false quantity, repugnant to all 
 ears attuned to Spanish prosody and sound. The 
 river on whose banks he died still bears his name, 
 distorted, and figures as " Cesar." * The country round 
 the river is still some of the wildest in Colombia, and 
 tribes yet roam the woods upon its banks, half-naked, 
 carrying bows and poisoned arrows. Some say that 
 they are cannibals. 
 
 Francisco Cesar's grave is, I believe, unknown; but 
 probably his soldiers buried him under some spreading 
 bongo or ceiba, stamping the earth down hard and 
 
 1 Instead of C£sar. This is as if one were to pronounce London, 
 Lond6n. 
 
84 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 watering it well. Then perhaps they rode their 
 horses backwards and forwards over it, so that the 
 Indians should never find the place. This his 
 followers did in the case of Hernando de Soto; 1 but 
 even then they were in doubt, and took his body up, 
 and after placing it in a great hollow log they sunk it 
 in the Mississippi that he was the first to navigate. A 
 fitting grave for an explorer, either to lie beneath an 
 unmarked ceiba, with its long bunches of purple 
 flowers, or in a hollow log sunk in an unnavigated 
 stream. Soto and Francisco Cesar must, one would 
 think, sleep better where they lie, than under marble 
 in the damp-smelling side aisle of a church. 
 
 1 The discoverer of the Mississippi. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 In i 54 i, probably with the assistance of the money 
 so generously given him by Francisco Cesar, Heredia 
 was restored to favour at the Court of Spain and 
 declared innocent of the charges brought against him 
 in his government. So well had he succeeded in re- 
 establishing his reputation that he once more returned 
 to Cartagena, as the governor, with all his previous 
 titles and powers confirmed. The inhabitants re- 
 ceived him joyfully, and it must have been a proud 
 day for him to return absolved and once more the 
 governor of the city that he had founded and seen 
 grow. 
 
 He found plenty to his hand to do, at once, for 
 the inhabitants of the town of Mompox upon the 
 Magdalena, founded by his brother, Don Alonso, had 
 rebelled against their governor. Don Pedro fell upon 
 them like a thunderbolt, hanged some of the chief 
 rebels, and restored order in the energetic way that 
 long campaigns against the Indians had taught him 
 thoroughly. The leader of the movement, one 
 Zapata, fled to the woods, and, though they searched 
 for him for months, eluded their pursuit. Most prob- 
 ably he perished miserably, for in the woods around 
 Mompox, even to-day, he who gets lost is a dead man. 
 
 85 
 
86 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 Had but Heredia remained in Cartagena and attended 
 to his government, all would have gone well with 
 him. In spite of bickerings, certain to arise in 
 a new-founded colony, the inhabitants respected 
 and were proud of him. They had seen him, from 
 the first foundation of the town, always alert and 
 energetic, ever helpful, large-handed, and to no small 
 degree large-minded, despite the love of gain that 
 marred his character. Of his tried valour and his 
 military skill there was no doubt in anybody's mind, 
 and the fact that he had returned from Spain vic- 
 torious over all his enemies gave him increased 
 renown. 
 
 However, as the Spanish adage has it, " a 
 man's face and character go with him to the 
 grave." 1 
 
 Heredia was an example of the truth of it. The 
 supposititious mines of El Dabaibe were, as a 
 Colombian writer says, the El Dorado of the province 
 of Cartagena,* as Manoa 3 was the El Dorado of the 
 interior. Heredia's first action, after the revolt was 
 quelled, was to prepare another expedition to the 
 same fatal place. No governor of those who were in 
 power at the time of the conquest ever would 
 consent to remain quietly in his government. 
 Perhaps the exigencies of their position drove them 
 onward, or popularity was only to be kept at the price 
 of fresh conquests and of activity. Perhaps the 
 
 1 " Genio y figura, hasta la sepultura." 
 
 2 Now el departamento de Bolivar. 
 
 8 Manoa was the fabled city that led Sir Walter Raleigh to his 
 ruin and death. 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 87 
 
 adventures they had already undergone made life 
 seem valueless without excitement and without diffi- 
 cuities to overcome. Certain it is that all of them, to 
 the last moment of their lives, dreamed of fresh 
 conquests and new kingdoms to subdue. Cortes, past 
 middle age, 1 engaged in the disastrous voyage to Cali- 
 fornia, suffering and undergoing hardships that might 
 have overwhelmed a younger man, with equanimity. 
 Pedrarias Davila, the celebrated governor of Panama, 
 only took up his government in his old age, and 
 never rested for an instant till he returned to Spain. 
 
 Don Pedro de Heredia was of the same breed of 
 man. When he set out upon his second expedition 
 to Dabaibe, he must have been sixty years of age, 
 yet he set out as full of hope as if he had been 
 young. Hardly had he begun to navigate the River 
 Atrato in canoes than he fell into difficulties. 
 Incessant rains had swollen the stream. The Indians 
 harassed him, pouring in flights of poisoned arrows ; 
 and, last of all, his men were all attacked by fevers, 
 and he lost many of them. The journey lasted 
 several months, and once again, after his son had been 
 severely wounded, he was forced to return to San 
 Sebastian de Uraba. 
 
 When he arrived there he had to deal with one 
 Robledo who in his absence had usurped his govern- 
 ment. The rebellion settled and Robledo sent back 
 to Spain to be dealt with by the courts, instead of 
 
 1 Age never counted with the conquerors, and all of them died 
 young in spirit and most of them active in body to the last. Witness 
 Francisco de Pizarro, who, long past seventy, killed with his own 
 hand three of the assassins who came to murder him. 
 
88 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 returning straight to Cartagena, as he should have 
 done, he set out for Antioquia. His men, after so 
 long a period in the hottest of the tropics, suffered 
 severely from the cold in the high mountains thai lie 
 between the provinces. Heredia himself seems to 
 have been impervious to both heat and cold, to 
 hunger, fevers, and to most of all the ills the flesh is 
 heir to in countries such as Colombia, where climates 
 vary from the greatest heat to the severest cold, after 
 a few days* march. 
 
 When he arrived at length in Antioquia, after a 
 month's journey, most of his men were ill. Troubles 
 were always waiting for him, for he found the settlers 
 hostile to him and partisans of the celebrated 
 Sebastian de Belalcazar, whose government overlapped 
 his own. Want of communications, the length of 
 voyages, and the absence of good maps, contributed 
 at the time of the conquest, and for long afterwards, 
 to these overlapping governments. The territories 
 were immense ; and, w T hen the different conquerors 
 arrived in Spain to solicit confirmation of their rule 
 in the region they had won, the Crown of Spain 
 seems to have granted many of their claims without 
 inquiring whether they were contested by some other 
 governor. 
 
 In this particular instance neither Heredia nor 
 Belalcazar seems to have acted in bad faith. Heredia 
 had come up from Darien and Belalcazar from Peru. 
 Probably neither of them knew the other claimed the 
 government of Antioquia till their respective forces 
 met. Heredia had sent out the greater portion of his 
 men to explore the country, remaining himself in the 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 89 
 
 camp with all the invalids. A captain, one Don 
 Juan Cabrera, whom Belalcazar had sent on with a 
 strong force to occupy what he considered was his 
 government, hearing of Heredia's position, surprised 
 his camp and took him prisoner. 
 
 Not content with this, he let his soldiers plunder 
 the camp and appropriate the horses, clothes, and arms 
 and illtreat everybody. Heredia himself he sent under 
 a guard to Popayan, 1 which was the seat of Belalcazar's 
 government. As the Court of Appeal (Real 
 Audiencia) had been established in Panama for the 
 last three years, Belalcazar sent Heredia there to 
 justify himself. What happened is not recorded ; but 
 in a short time Heredia was at liberty again, as full of 
 fight as ever. As soon as he arrived in Cartagena he 
 set to work to fit out another expedition for Antioquia, 
 for he still maintained it fell under his government. 
 Most probably he had already heard of the great 
 mineral wealth of Antioquia, and knew the Indian 
 graves in the Sinii were all worked out and no hopes 
 of a speedy fortune to be expected from them. 
 
 In 1544 "certain French corsairs," 2 under the 
 command of one Roberto Baal (surely an ominous 
 name), after sacking Santa Marta, appeared off 
 Cartagena, where, as Spain and France were not at 
 
 1 Popayan is an old-fashioned town in the Andes, very full of 
 churches and convents. Many of the best families of Colombia 
 come from there. It is a remote place, and is only accessible on 
 mule-back from Bogota, a journey of ten days — provided there is no 
 " novelty " (as the Spaniards say) on the journey. Novelty may take 
 many forms, as floods, deep mud, landslips, or Indian attacks. Popayan 
 has given rise to the excellent Colombian adage, " Todo el mundo 
 es Popayan " — i.e. y " All the world is Popayan — that is, the same. 
 2 " Ciertos corsarios franceses." 
 
90 CARTAGENA DE 1NDIAS 
 
 war, nothing was known of what happened to the 
 other town. The pirates, having landed at midnight, 
 by daybreak were masters of the place. Don Antonio 
 de Heredia, the governor's son, was wounded, and the 
 bishop taken prisoner. After having sacked the town 
 the corsairs still demanded ransom from the inhabitants 
 who had not fled into the woods. To avoid more 
 outrages and violence Don Pedro de Heredia came 
 forward and sacrificed his entire fortune and all the 
 treasure taken from the Indian graves. The pirates 
 then made off, leaving Heredia totally ruined, after so 
 many years of struggle, but as a recompense — one that 
 no doubt a man of such tried valour and of so much 
 public spirit could well appreciate — firmly enshrined, 
 both as a hero and a benefactor, in the minds of 
 everyone. 
 
 By a strange freak of fortune, this maladventure 
 fell upon him on the day his daughter was to have 
 married Captain Mosquera, one of the principal 
 inhabitants. Even these blows of fortune did not 
 damp his spirit, and he went on with preparations for 
 a new venture into Antioquia to reassert his govern- 
 ment. When he arrived there he found the 
 inhabitants divided into two parties of about equal 
 strength. His own adherents took the name of 
 Carthagenians, and those of Belalcazar, the Peruvians. 
 
 After some months of political intrigue, diversified 
 by an occasional appeal to arms, Heredia saw that 
 nothing was to be made of the affair. Yielding for 
 once to prudence, he returned to Cartagena, only to 
 find himself confronted with another difficulty. For 
 some time past the Emperor, Charles V., had been 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 91 
 
 disturbed by the reports presented to him by the great 
 Las Casas and many other priests and bishops, as to 
 the treatment of the Indians in America. At last he 
 had drawn up by the great Council of the Realm the 
 celebrated code of laws known as " The Laws of the 
 Indies," confirming all the wise ordinances of his 
 grandmother, Isabel the Catholic, calling upon the 
 colonists to treat the Indians well, not to make slaves 
 of them, and to convert them to the Catholic faith. 
 This code of laws would have been the charter of 
 freedom of the Indians had they been justly carried 
 out. It is not difficult to divine how they were 
 welcomed by the colonists, accustomed to treat all 
 Indians as slaves. 1 In most places the laws were 
 received with derision and treated as a dead letter. 
 In others a sham obedience was given, and from that 
 time the celebrated phrase, " I obey, but I do not 
 comply " * became the watchword of colonial 
 governors. For all that, the Laws of the Indies had 
 a good effect, and now and then served to repress 
 flagrant injustices. The code itself was liberal and 
 far-seeing, and much the most humane of any system 
 of colonial laws in force for centuries. 
 
 Had the provisions of the laws been carried out, 
 the history of South America would have been far 
 different. The Indians of to-day would have been ten 
 times more numerous and as much civilized as the 
 rest of the inhabitants. 
 
 1 Englishmen will have the right to hurl a moral stone at the 
 Spaniards of those times on the day when a white man is hanged for 
 the murder of a " native " in any of their colonies. 
 
 2 " Obedezco, pero no cumplo." 
 
92 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 When Heredia arrived at Cartagena he found the 
 Licenciado Miguel Diaz de Armendariz arrived from 
 Spain to promulgate the new code of laws and to 
 institute another residencia against him and his 
 government. This residencia seems to have been 
 without result, for Heredia continued in his post of 
 governor, loved and esteemed by all. 
 
 It was not written that he should have a moment's 
 peace, for a conspiracy broke out, known as the 
 " Friars' revolt." A friar called Albis, " a turbulent 
 and lewd " priest, as ran the phrase in those days, 
 entered into a league with discontented soldiers from 
 Peru to rise and kill the governor during a function 
 in the church. The " sacred rogue " himself, who 
 had to preach upon the day fixed for the revolt, 
 arranged to give the signal from the pulpit. Heredia 
 got wind of what was likely to occur, so when the 
 friar mounted the pulpit he found the church was 
 packed with soldiers, who at once arrested him. 
 Several of his coadjutors paid for their villainy upon 
 the scaffold. The friar himself pleaded the benefit of 
 clergy. Heredia sent him back to Spain. In the 
 Habana, Albis tried to escape by climbing down the 
 cable of the anchor of the ship ; but, falling off, was 
 drowned. 
 
 Misfortunes never seem to have given Heredia any 
 respite, for hardly had the rebellion of the friars been 
 squashed than a great fire broke out that burned the 
 city almost to the ground. Heredia, who in such 
 moments never had a thought of self, flew with his 
 slaves to try and save the church that from the first 
 had been his pride. 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 93 
 
 After incredible exertions he had the flames 
 extinguished, only on his return triumphant to find 
 his own house burned to the ground and everything 
 he had, consumed. Once more he set to work to 
 rebuild the city he had founded in his youth. This 
 time he refused to allow a single house of wood to be 
 run up, but pledged his credit to the uttermost to 
 the inhabitants, enabling them to borrow money to 
 construct well-built and solid houses of stone, after 
 the Spanish style. 
 
 A year went past, and all the time he laboured, 
 sometimes working with his own hands, to reconstruct 
 the town. His popularity was never greater. The 
 people saw the aged founder of the town, now grey, 
 but still erect and vigorous as when full thirty years 
 ago he had ridden out upon his " valiant horse " for 
 his first Indian fight, working both day and night 
 assiduously, with admiration and respect. All might 
 have yet been well, and Pedro de Heredia might 
 have gone honoured to his grave in Cartagena, the 
 city that he founded in his youth and strove for 
 in old age. One day, however, without a warning a 
 ship came into the bay bearing one Juan Maldonado, 
 to take another residencia upon some old com- 
 plaint forgotten long ago by those who made it, but 
 pigeon-holed in Spain. All the inhabitants were 
 indignant, and, rallying round their governor, refused 
 permission to the Oidor to proceed against him. 
 
 Heredia himself determined once more to visit 
 Spain, remembering his kind reception at the Court 
 so many years ago. At Cartagena he embarked for 
 the last time, reached the Habana after a stormy 
 
94 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 passage, and re-embarked for Spain. Storms, similar 
 to those that had pursued him all his life, whether by 
 land or sea, kept him three months upon the voyage. 
 At last, when close to Cadiz, a sudden tempest over- 
 whelmed the ship, and sank her only a cable's length 
 or two from land. 
 
 The crew all perished in the waves, and Heredia, 
 left alive upon the wreck, swam strongly for the 
 shore. Those standing on the beach thought him in 
 safety, when a great billow dashed him on the rocks, 
 washing his body out to sea. 
 
 His corpse was never found, and so he perished, as 
 he lived, struggling with destiny. " It was notable," 
 says Padre Simon, " the grief his death caused when 
 the news reached Cartagena, for the affection that all 
 held him in was great. They loved him as the 
 founder of the city, and as the father of it, and for 
 his character, for he was one who soon forgave 
 his enemies, an almsgiver, and always strove to settle 
 quarrels and smooth out troubles when it was possible." 
 
 No man can have a better epitaph. For thirty 
 years he ruled the town that he had founded, in evil 
 and in good repute, but always honourably. His life 
 was typical of the best conquerors of America : 
 always in action, still pushing onward to the unknown. 
 His bones lie buried in the sea. No marble marks 
 his resting-place ; but surely his spirit must still 
 haunt Cartagena, the city of his dreams. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 The heroic age of Cartagena may be said to have 
 terminated with the death of Pedro de Heredia. 
 The conquest of the coast country was now completed, 
 and Federman, Quesada, and Belalcazar had pushed 
 on to their wondrous meeting in the plains of Bogota. 
 The interior of the country had assumed much the 
 same appearance that it still keeps, and all the most 
 important towns were built. The River Magdalena 
 had become the chief channel of communication with 
 the interior, and has remained so down to the present 
 day. The mountain passes through the Andes that 
 lead to the great plains of Casanare, an extension of 
 the Llanos of Venezuela, on which were bred the 
 cattle and the horses that were the arms and support 
 of the independence wars, had all been pretty well 
 explored. 
 
 In the interior life began to be arranged after the 
 Spanish fashion, but on a larger basis, and without the 
 fear either of attacks from Barbary by the Moors, or 
 from the fear of poverty within. As the whole 
 Spanish race is democratic socially, distinctions 
 amongst the white population were but slight. 
 Nobility was in the main based upon purity of 
 blood. 
 
 95 
 
96 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 Twenty miles from the coast the negro popula- 
 tion — then all slaves — ceased to prevail. Their place 
 was taken by the Indians who, though politically 
 free, were held in economic slavery by the system 
 known as " peonage." 1 
 
 The aristocracy of race and intellect collected in 
 Bogota, and in such remote and old-world towns as 
 Pasto and Popayan. Business and energy were to be 
 found, as they are to-day, principally on the coast, for 
 there the people had the benefit of more frequent 
 intercourse with Spain and with the outer world. 
 
 In the remote interior — for it is not to be forgotten 
 that a journey to the capital, slowly ascending 
 the River Magdalena in canoes or in the barges 
 known as bongos, propelled by poles, took three or 
 four weeks, and the trip might easily last a month 
 — customs, beliefs, and modes of thought were 
 crystallized. As the first conquerors had come from 
 Spain, when the Catholic faith was, in addition 
 to a creed, a bond of race and national unity against 
 the Moors, it is but natural that the clergy had 
 enormous power. The Indians had to conform by 
 force, and outwardly at least were most devout, 
 although there are not wanting those who say outward 
 conformity did not exclude adherence to their older 
 customs and the faith of their ancestors. 
 
 The coastal negroes seem to have been but little 
 tinged with Voodooism or with Obi worship, 
 creeds that they brought from Africa and still clung 
 to in the islands of the Caribbean Sea. In Colombia 
 
 1 This was, and still is in Mexico, a sort of aggravation of our 
 own (now disused) truck system. 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 97 
 
 they all were Christians — that is to say, temperamental 
 Christians, a blend of child and savage, so intermingled 
 that you can never say with certainty which side is 
 uppermost. In the small towns the merchants 1 
 formed the aristocracy. These may have been 
 descended from good families in Spain, who left their 
 native country at a time when trade was a degradation 
 that no self-respecting person cared to engage in ; 
 but once settled in Colombia their view was abso- 
 lutely changed. Just as amongst the Arabs, where 
 "merchant" (tagir) almost equals "gentleman," so 
 in Colombia the scions of the first families of Spain 
 were not ashamed of trade. 
 
 Most of them, beside their stores, had cattle-farms, 
 sugar-plantations, or some other industry ; but the best 
 portion of their lives was passed within their stores. 
 So it has continued, and nothing is commoner than 
 to be served with sugar or with tea by a man who 
 holds high military rank, but does not think he 
 derogates at all from his position by weighing out 
 his goods. 
 
 This state of society has produced the modern 
 Colombian character, and rendered most Colombians 
 high-spirited and imbued with national and racial 
 pride, and at the same time progressive business 
 men. As everyone considers that he is a gentleman, 
 and generally is one in manners and in speech, 
 society is truly democratic, for insolence and rude- 
 ness are most rare to meet in the republic from 
 any class of man. All South Americans seem to 
 know by intuition that democracy without good 
 
 1 As in Scotland, in Colombia every shopkeeper is a merchant. 
 
 7 
 
98 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 manners is impossible, and that rudeness in speech 
 or insolence is a sure sign of social slavery. Through- 
 out the continent, in all the varying republics, a 
 South American, even though quite unlettered, is 
 a gentleman — that is, a man who without servility 
 can talk to any other human being on an equality. 
 Votes, citizenship, reading and writing, knowledge 
 of a profession or a trade, yet leave a man a boor, 
 unless social equality between man and man makes 
 men true citizens. Few people of the Anglo-Saxon 
 or Teutonic races seem to take this in, and strive 
 by self-assertion to supply what they do not possess. 
 In the same way the painter, writer, sculptor, or 
 composer, who sets out to be original, of set 
 purpose, consciously, only attains vulgarity, or at 
 the best that eccentricity that always marks the 
 inferior mind ; so does the man who wishes to 
 be the equal of his fellows always remain on 
 an inferior plane. In every case, by taking thought 
 upon the matter, he only takes a cubit off his 
 height. This is an error that no South American 
 ever falls into. He never thinks about it and is 
 exactly what he seems. No one need talk down, 
 even to an ignorant man, in South America. 
 In fact, it would be instantly resented, for all feel 
 that every man knows more on some particular 
 subject than his fellows, but that both still are 
 men. 
 
 If he is ignorant of geography, he knows he 
 is a better horseman than any European can 
 aspire to be ; but does not therefore think himself 
 better than the European on that account, and fails 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 99 
 
 to see he is inferior in that he does not understand 
 the mechanism of a motor-car. 
 
 In Colombia the national character was formed 
 through many circumstances. When the fire of 
 discovery and the search for gold at any price had 
 died down a little, the settlers naturally turned to 
 the great plains of the Sinu as fields for cattle- 
 breeding. From the first the policy of the Spanish 
 Government was to encourage cattle-breeding when- 
 ever possible. No doubt they felt that the feverish 
 thirst for gold would soon expire, and that the 
 population should be securely seated on the land. 
 
 In most respects their policy in regard to the 
 Indies 1 was liberal and well conceived. Had it 
 been carried out, the " Indies " of to-day would have 
 been in a vastly different state. However, it was 
 uniformly defeated by the colonists, who relied on 
 the want of communications with the mother- 
 country to disregard the laws, and did so with 
 complete impunity. All sorts of privileges were 
 given to settlers on the banks of the Sinu, in 
 Cartagena, and throughout the province that to- 
 day is called Bolivar, in which the Sinu acts as the 
 Nile in Egypt, both as an artery and as a fertilizer. 
 On December 8, 1535, the Queen, then in Madrid, 
 received a petition from Alvar Torres, in the name 
 of himself and several families and inhabitants of 
 Cartagena, who had farms on the Sinu, praying 
 for remission of the customs dues on goods from 
 
 1 " Las Indias " — /.<?., the Indies — always meant America to the 
 Spaniards, hence the name Cartagena de Indias to distinguish it from 
 Cartagena in Spain. 
 
ioo CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 Spain for the space of seven years. It runs as 
 follows : 
 
 " To the Queen. I, Alvar Torres, in the name of 
 our families and other of the inhabitants of the 
 province of Cartagena, wish to make known that 
 whereas there is a scarcity of cattle, both in the 
 province and the adjoining islands, 1 we suffer great 
 necessity, and if there is not something done to 
 help us the country will become depopulated. 
 Therefore we humbly pray that for seven years we 
 may be excused from paying all import duties of 
 whatever kind." 
 
 The petition was allowed and the permission 
 signed : " I, the Queen." 2 On the same date she 
 signed a grant of five hundred ducats to the same 
 petitioners to build a church in " which God shall 
 be served and praised." 3 
 
 Also, on the same date, the Queen granted two 
 hundred dollars of gold 4 to one Pedro de Lerma, 
 whose horse had been " killed in battle by the Indians, 
 in the service of the Crown." This shows a careful 
 inquiry into detail that does Her Majesty great 
 honour, and points to a different state of mentality from 
 that prevailing in our own time, when the Crown 
 would probably instantly recognize and pay a debt of 
 a million, but refuse one of two hundred dollars as 
 being quite outside its province. Still, the larger 
 sum is made up dollar by dollar, and only the snob- 
 bishness of the contemporary mind makes it refuse 
 to take due notice of small sums. By this attention 
 
 1 Jamaica, Cuba, Hispaniola, etc. 2 " Yo, la Reyna." 
 
 3 " . . . Dios sera servido e loado." 4 " Pesos de ore" 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 101 
 
 to small matters did the Crown of Spain attach its 
 people to itself and make them feel that they were 
 part and parcel of a great national whole. The 
 Spanish character has its defects, in plenty, but 
 nobbishness was never one of them. A certain 
 homeliness pervades the fibre of most Spanish things 
 — art, literature, and manners — and shows the people 
 nearer to nature than are any northerners. This 
 trait, of course, passes to their descendants in America. 
 
 As Cartagena gradually became important and the 
 chief depot for the Plate ships, and known over the 
 whole of South America for its wealth and luxury, 
 so did the interior lapse into somnolency, until few 
 provinces of the republic became so little known. 
 
 The towns were as a rule mere rows of huts 
 thatched with palm leaves, irregularly grouped round 
 the church, which usually was built of brick and 
 stuccoed over and seemed quite disproportionately 
 large for its surroundings. The richer cattle-farmers 
 lived a semipatriarchal life on their haciendas or in 
 their houses in Cartagena, visiting their farms 
 occasionally. All dressed in white, and all thought 
 little of a day of twenty leagues upon a pacing mule. 
 All carried arms, though usually their guns were out 
 of order and rust-eaten. Still, all the upper classes 
 prided themselves upon their culture, and never fell 
 into the state of ignorance that prevailed in other of 
 the republics thirty or forty years ago. No country 
 of the New World had so fierce and desperate a fight 
 for independence as Venezuela and Colombia, then 
 joined together into a single State. 
 
 In all the battles and the sieges Cartagena had its 
 
102 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 share ; but the plains of the Sinu lay far off from the 
 seat of conflict, and the change of government from 
 Spanish rule to the republic cannot have greatly 
 influenced the national life. The province slumbered 
 on, much as a sloth sleeps on a tree, until by slow 
 degrees the influence of the United States drew it 
 insensibly into the maelstrom of contemporary life. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 The district of the Sinii and the old-world city of 
 Cartagena, once the most important of the Spanish 
 possessions in New Granada, 1 of recent years are 
 coming back into their old estate. Nothing can stop 
 the port of Cartagena from becoming eventually the 
 chief emporium of trade upon the coast. Its un- 
 rivalled harbour, sheltered from every wind; its 
 healthy climate, compared with those of other cities 
 in like latitude; its nearness to the Panama Canal; 
 and the traditions it enshrines, will, when the railway 
 system of the republic is a little more advanced, 
 render it the glory of the land. Its rival, Barranquilla, 
 has no harbour ; ships have to unload their goods at 
 Puerto Colombia, 2 thus adding greatly to their 
 expense. 
 
 The plains of the Sinu are becoming known as 
 cattle-breeding areas, and the cattle are steadily being 
 improved in class. Thus with, say, three or four 
 million head — a quantity that they could easily sustain 
 — and one or two packing houses, a supply of meat 
 would be available that hitherto has been untouched. 
 
 1 Colombia. 
 
 2 This port is not in reality a port at all, but merely a long pier. 
 It is situated only two or three miles from the once well-known 
 Sabanilla, now useless and silted up. From Puerto Colombia a rail- 
 way some eighteen miles in length connects it with Barranquilla. 
 
 103 
 
104 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 Therefore the future of Cartagena as the maritime 
 capital of both the republic and the district of 
 Sinu, seems to be well assured. The legends that 
 have gathered round the city, its frequent sieges, its 
 struggle in the revolutionary war of independence, 
 its very name of " Cartagena of the Indies," always 
 attracted me. Something there was about it that 
 made it different from any other town in all America. 
 Fallen from its proud estate I knew it was, and a 
 mere shadow of its former glory of the days when 
 the great silver-fleet used to assemble in the bay. 
 Something there was attaching to it that seemed to 
 bring it into touch with its unlucky founder, Pedro de 
 Heredia, as it appeared to me ; I often read the works 
 of Padre Simon, and pondered on its fate, formerly so 
 magnificent, and now, as the French poet has it, 
 "a sad city, once queen of the oceans," 1 uncrowned 
 and sleeping between the white surf and the green 
 palm-trees. 
 
 The war, that brought so many changes and sent 
 so many people into countries that they had never 
 thought to see, gave me the opportunity to visit 
 Cartagena and the Sinu. 
 
 Those who had to cross the seas during the war 
 are never likely to forget their voyages. On a cold 
 January morning I found myself aboard the s.s. Cavma, 
 going down channel in a storm of snow. All 
 lights were out for fear of submarines and other 
 German wonders of the deep. Few passengers on 
 board, for none but those obliged to travel travelled 
 in those days ; an ice-cold ship ; and the prospect of 
 1 Jose Maria de Heredia. Sonnet, on " Cartagena de Indias." 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 105 
 
 the danger-zone in front of us — did not exactly make 
 for high spirits or for mirth. We crossed the zone 
 without misadventure, as quietly as if it had been the 
 Channel in the piping times of peace. In those days 
 it was supposed to extend about two hundred miles 
 westward of Ireland — that is, two hundred more or 
 less, for now and then ships were sunk farther out, 
 as the ship's officers observed, to cheer us up. Then 
 the patrol boats left us to our own devices, and we 
 ploughed westward through the snow. Day followed 
 day, and freezing nights succeeded one another. All 
 our diversion, if it can fairly so be called, was to look 
 out for raiders, for hardly had the danger-zone been 
 passed than the wireless picked up messages of vessels 
 sunk right on the course, and sometimes to the east 
 or west of it. 
 
 So piercing was the cold and so monotonous the 
 days, the snowstorm so continuous, that it seemed 
 we had embarked upon an Arctic expedition. The 
 great event was the arrival of the wireless news, 
 telling about the varying fortunes of the war. As we 
 drew nearer to America even that failed us, for the 
 news from the American stations only spoke of base- 
 ball, telling how " Star-Pitcher Wilbur " had been 
 re-engaged by the Tuxedo Club at a salary of fifteen 
 thousand dollars. Interesting, of course, to " baseball 
 fans," but rather of the nature of Dead Sea fruit to 
 men anxious about the war. 
 
 When the weather cleared enough we went to 
 gun-practice, but thriftily, for the Admiralty that 
 maintained some twenty thousand u flappers " to 
 muddle its accounts was mighty sparing of the 
 
106 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 national treasury as far as merchant seamen were 
 concerned, and doled out ammunition with as much 
 parsimony as if the cartridge-cases had been made of 
 gold. 
 
 Still, it was interesting to watch, and much more 
 interesting to watch the demeanour of the crew and 
 passengers. We cheered each hit, as if it had been a 
 submarine, whilst a miss produced a feeling of dis- 
 appointment, for everyone, though he said nothing, 
 saw in the practice the image of a fight. 
 
 The captain standing on the bridge — a gallant 
 figure, with his sunburnt face and keen sea-eyes, 
 alert and vigorous — shouted his orders to the gunners : 
 "Three thousand yards, four thousand, five thou- 
 sand — fire!" and the gun whizzed the shot close to 
 the tub put out as target, or plumped into it. We 
 knew the skipper must have stood up on his bridge, 
 strenuous and seamanlike, in the same attitude, 
 shouting his orders, when the year before, almost in 
 the same week, he sunk a submarine after a hot fight, 
 somewhere in the Levant. The gunners, naval 
 reserve men, were such good marksmen that we 
 almost wished a submarine would show its periscope, 
 for none of us had any doubts as to the result. 
 None showed itself, and though we did not know it at 
 the time the Cavinas days were numbered on the sea. 
 
 Time passed so slowly and so uneventfully that the 
 appearance of a tramp on the horizon brought every- 
 one on deck. As we all knew the raiders were 
 disguised, it was an anxious moment, till the captain, 
 shutting his glasses with a snap, pronounced : " A 
 Britisher !" 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 107 
 
 Officers and men on board had been torpedoed 
 two, three, and four times, and we listened to their 
 yarns just as a conscript listens to a seasoned soldier 
 telling his experiences under fire, and wondered how 
 we should behave when it was up to us. The yarns 
 were far from reassuring, for the average sailor-man 
 never allows a tale to suffer any deterioration in the 
 telling if he can manage it. u You see," said one, 
 "it was this way. Me and Bill and Jack and old 
 George Southcote was 'angin' to a boat. Torpedoed ? 
 Why, yes, of course, or else why should we all 
 have been a-'angin' to the boat ? We wasn't bathing. 
 Our ship, one of the Wilson Line, just stopped a 
 torpedo right amidships, off the Fastnets. She sunk 
 in 'alf an hour. That's why we was a-'angin' to the 
 boat. And cold ? Yes, as cold as 'ell or the South 
 Shetlands. Bill says to me : ' 'Enery, I can't 'old on ' ; 
 and I says : ' Can't ye ?' and he drops off ; that left 
 the four of us. Old Southcote, 'e 'ad sailed all his 
 life out of the Hartlepools, 'e drops off next. Jack 
 goes the last. I says to 'im : ■ 'Old on ; don't 
 leave a fellow all alone.' 'E says : ■ No use, 'Enery '; 
 and he drops off, and leaves me 'angin' to the boat, 
 froze to the gizzard, in a Bull o' Barney of a sea. 'Ow 
 it all 'appened I don't know, but I finds myself on 
 board of a destroyer, a-goin' into Plymouth Sound. 
 They says they found me lashed to the boat with a 
 bit of sennit and my braces ; but I never knowed. 
 Anyhow, I turns in and 'as a sleep, and in the 
 morning, after breakfast, borrows a rig-out from a 
 sailor-man, a friend of mine, and goes ashore. There 
 I takes the train right 'ome to Maiden Newton, and 
 
108 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 next day I gets married. That was a year ago, and 
 'ere's a bit of baby's 'air I always carries in my pocket- 
 book." 
 
 That was the kind of yarn that made one long to 
 be torpedoed in cold weather, not altogether with a 
 view to matrimony. The Newfoundland barquantine, 
 ninety days out from San Francisco, that spoke to us, 
 asking for the right latitude, for she was out of her 
 reckoning, was a great incident. I see her now, and 
 probably shall always see her, backing her fore-topsail 
 as she hove-to a bit to signal us. Her lines were 
 beautiful, her sails well cut and fitting as only vessels 
 of her class ever appear to get their sails to fit, and 
 she was bound to Heart's Content. How in her 
 lengthy pilgrimage she had escaped the raiders and 
 the submarines u only the Lord can say," the second 
 officer remarked, adding reflectively, " but as He will 
 not say, it does not matter if He knows." We dipped 
 our flags, and she filled her fore-topsail and came up to 
 her course again, and, I hope, reached Heart's Content, 
 if it can be that such a place exists upon the earth. 
 
 We coaled in Hampton Roads, still in a blizzard, 
 which took us down south of Cape Hatteras, with- 
 out encountering the German raider that was said to 
 be upon the coast. Spirits began to rise, the berths 
 gave up their dead, and it appeared to even the most 
 timid of us that the bitterness of German death had 
 passed. Next morning the men washing decks were 
 warming their frozen hands in the tepid Gulf Stream 
 water, although the temperature was low. A dense 
 sea-fog hung on the water making the Gulf Stream 
 look like a landscape in the mountains of the moon, 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 109 
 
 fantastic, beautiful, and taking shapes like islands, 
 promontories, and cliffs. Out of it might have 
 appeared the fata morgana, though I am glad it did 
 not do so, for so few ships were on the seas that the 
 apparition must have been that of an enemy, some- 
 where hull down, but dangerously near. Jamaica 
 in a day or two, the Palisados, Port Royal, and the 
 Blue Mountains, as in " Tom Cringle's Log." 
 
 The passengers all went ashore and disappeared 
 into the inky crowd that jostles one another on 
 Kingston quays and streets. In the evening the 
 Cavina cleared out for Port Limon. I watched 
 her in the red and purple sunset sink by degrees 
 into the Caribbean Sea, first her hull disappearing, 
 and then her funnel and her spars. When she had 
 vanished into the setting sun my friend and secretary, 
 turning to me, said : " Well, good luck to her. I 
 hope she gets home safe." It was not written so, and 
 in a month or two news came that she was sunk. 
 Vain was our gun-practice, and vain the fight she 
 made. The first shot took away her rudder, the 
 second smashed her gun, and she lay helpless. The 
 skipper was the last man to leave her. No one who 
 had ever seen him could have doubted it. No one 
 was killed except one of the gunners who, so to speak, 
 poor fellow, was indeed hoist with his own petard, as 
 the dismantled gun fell on him. The passengers and 
 the crew watched her sink slowly from the boats, 
 a sight that must have seemed to them a sacrilege, 
 though their own lives were in such jeopardy. They 
 were all saved after four hours' drifting in the boats. 
 Poor old Cavina ! 
 
no CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 On the dread day when the green, cruel sea gives 
 up its wrecks, if she should still be fated to sail 
 phantom oceans, I hope the powers that be, if 
 powers of any kind survive, will see to it that she 
 has better heating-apparatus in her, for ghosts are 
 sure to be a chilly crew. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 The poor old Cavina seemed to take away a portion 
 of one's life, so much a ship eats into the vitals of the 
 soul, even of passengers. The neglected island of 
 the woods and streams 1 has always seemed to me 
 a piece of Africa gone astray in the Caribbean Sea. 
 The only European things I can discover in it — 
 I speak but as a passer-by, and know there is a 
 settled, well-established planter life in the interior — 
 are the hideous houses of the new Kingston, and the 
 stunted little thoroughbreds that draw the cabs. It 
 is said there is no other horse in all the island, but the 
 thoroughbred. In-breeding and the climate have 
 stunted him in stature. He still remains a thorough- 
 bred, with all the qualities and defects inherent to 
 his caste. 
 
 The white race rules, of course, in Jamaica, but 
 does not dominate. Now, man cares little for mere 
 rule, one would suppose, if he cannot dominate ; not 
 by the knout, but by his moral force. This certainly 
 he fails to do in the fair island that seems always 
 in one fashion or another to have eluded us. Streets, 
 lanes, and fields, the beach, the valleys, sides of 
 streams where clusters of negro huts han glike wasps' 
 
 1 "Xaimaica" was the Carib name of the island, and it is said to 
 have signified " land of woods and streams." 
 
 in 
 
ii2 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 nests from a bough of larch — they all are filled with 
 negroes engaged in their chief function of continuous 
 babbling. Though the men wear what they, I think, 
 call " pants " and " vests," and certainly straw hats 
 and clean white shirts, the women, always more 
 racial than the sex they rule, revel in their pink 
 skirts under green blouses, and purple neck-hand- 
 kerchiefs, an atavism of the " Long Ju-ju," that 
 seems appropriate enough in the surroundings 
 where they live. The general look of being at 
 home in their own house is very striking amongst 
 negroes in Jamaica. They may have once been 
 slaves, although I doubt it, thinking that the 
 alleged " masters " were most probably the slaves, 
 in the same way the owner of a great country 
 house in England is the servant of his servants and 
 has to humour them to make them take their pay. 
 Possession, philosophically viewed, is moral, not 
 material. Although most of the property in Jamaica 
 is vested in the whites, who make the laws and 
 have imported their religion and their code of 
 morals, the blacks have modified them all, insensibly. 
 In the same way that the " mere Irish " altered 
 the substance of all the Normans brought to 
 Ireland, and carefully preserved the shadow, so 
 have the black race in Jamaica insensibly fashioned 
 the social aspect of the land, according to their 
 taste. Whilst they look quite at home, the whites 
 look mere exotics and mere foreigners. This in 
 spite of the fact that Jamaica is one of our 
 oldest colonies, won for us by that Lord Protector 
 who revived the glories of our flag, but entailed the 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 113 
 
 now happily mitigated " British Sunday " on an ale- 
 loving, once merry land. He it was who sent the 
 first thoroughbred horses to the island, for Old Noll, 
 though he upset his coach with the six Flemish 
 mares at Hyde Park Corner, loved horses all his 
 life. 
 
 The island might become a centre for horse- 
 breeding, or certainly for that of mules. At the 
 time of the conquest of Mexico, and generally of 
 Tierra Firme, it sent out most of the horses that 
 trampled the Indians underfoot to the satisfaction of 
 Don Pedro de Heredia, 1 and no doubt of Cortes. 
 Some of the horses and the mares whose colours, 
 qualities, and fate Bernal Diaz has preserved for us in 
 his great chronicle, perceiving that they too were 
 "conquerors," came, no doubt, from the plains 
 round Spanish Town. 2 As the whole island lacks 
 advancement, and certainly should be able to export 
 at least two thousand mules a year, if the breeding of 
 them were attended to, perhaps the Government 
 might be induced to look into the matter, for the 
 Jamaican mule is excellent. It lacks the size and 
 weight of mules bred in Missouri and in Kansas, but 
 it is a well-made, compact, and lively animal of about 
 fourteen hands, active and serviceable. Its feet are 
 good, and high, and very hard — remarkably so, even 
 amongst a breed of animal renowned for standing 
 work on stony roads. A little encouragement from 
 the Home Government would do wonders in the 
 island, but that encouragement never seems to come. 
 The result is that the attention of the people is turned 
 1 See note on p. 43. 2 Then called Santiago de la Vega. 
 
 8 
 
ii4 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 to the United States, where a market always is to be 
 found for all the island can produce. 
 
 Tourists from New York descend in flocks upon 
 Jamaica every winter, whilst those from England are 
 few and far between. Little by little, as it appears to 
 the casual observer, the island is being delivered over 
 to the negro race. This may not be a bad thing, for 
 after all they till the soil and do all the hard work, 
 but when they begin to rise to administrative offices 
 a serious problem will present itself to British states- 
 manship. 
 
 The island, a terrestrial paradise of lofty mountains, 
 clear, crystal rivers, rich alluvial plains, and beaches 
 fringed with coco-palms, only wants development to 
 be once more one of the most flourishing of our 
 Crown Colonies. Glasgow made it, or it made 
 Glasgow, a hundred or a hundred and fifty years ago, 
 and there exists no reason, except the absolute neglect 
 of it by every Government, why Kingston should not 
 have a Glasgow Street, nearly as full of traffic as is 
 Jamaica Street in the great city on the Clyde. 
 
 Even in Kingston, hideous and Board-of- Works 
 looking as it is, there yet exist fine, old colonial 
 houses that have escaped the ravages of earthquakes 
 and of fires. Throughout the island are dotted 
 here and there great country mansions, some of them 
 dating from Cromwellian times, that serve to show 
 the riches and the state in which the planters lived in 
 the old days. They seem like pieces of old England 
 gone astray amongst luxuriant vegetation, clear skies, 
 and brilliant sun. They yet remain in testimony of a 
 brighter time. They remind me of old houses in 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 115 
 
 South Carolina or in Georgia, states that have 
 suffered as Jamaica suffered when slavery came to an 
 end ; but in those states proprietors seem to have 
 adapted themselves to the new conditions more readily 
 than in the " Island of the Woods and Streams." The 
 difficulty is the labour question, complicated by the 
 undoubted fact that the black race is singularly averse 
 from work. 
 
 All the roads and the lanes of the island are full 
 of chattering negroes, merry and well-fed looking, 
 going apparently to nowhere, to do nothing in 
 particular. No land in all the world is better suited 
 to the race. The earth laughs crops. The climate 
 does not require warm fires or winter clothing, and 
 so they chatter on, having grasped the fact that in 
 increased production lies the future of finance. 
 
 In no part of the world do they appear more 
 absolutely at home. Their religion, always a chief 
 preoccupation of their race, they take even more 
 jovially than their ancestors could have done on the 
 coast of Africa. There at least there was the chief 
 who made them work for him occasionally; the 
 Ju-ju man who terrified them with his gri-gris and his 
 fetishes ; the fear of spirits that pervades the savage 
 negro's life, like a black nightmare ; and the once 
 present terror of the witch doctor with his accusations 
 of mysterious crimes, and almost certain death by 
 poison or by torture to everyone accused. 
 
 In Jamaica these all are absent. In the various 
 sects in which the negro race is shammed, as Swift 
 so jovially expresses it, the congregation pays the 
 minister, and thus takes away from him the keys of 
 
n6 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 hell. As the gates of heaven are said to be cast open 
 by the gift of Peter's pence, so are the gates of hell fast 
 closed by the withholding of the pence. No one was 
 ever easier to convert to Christianity than the negro. 
 Animistic to the core, a god or two was but a welcome 
 addition to the black Pantheon, in which Aphrodite 
 was the chief divinity. The churches, Anglican and 
 Roman, said but little to him ; the chapels claimed him 
 as their own. In them he felt he was at home ; the 
 fervent prayers — he likes to " sweat 'urn Jesus " — and 
 the bellowed hymns were far more to his taste. No 
 man more fervent in belief, no man less actuated by 
 mere works, than is our coloured brother in the 
 Lord. 
 
 It is whispered darkly in the island, that the 
 Voodoo cock sometimes is still slain at midnight, and 
 that mysterious rites are held in secret, remote from 
 observation of the whites. Who shall say whether 
 this is true ? They certainly exist, both in Haiti 
 and in Santo Domingo, and perhaps in other islands. 
 The phallic dance, the mento, the counterpart of 
 the candomble of the negroes of Brazil, and the 
 cumbiamba of Colombia, is danced quite openly, for 
 negroes do not dance exclusively for exercise as people 
 are alleged to dance here in this frigid isle. 
 
 Still, all the hard work of the island is done by 
 the negro race. They dug the Panama Canal and 
 made most of the railways of the Central Republics. 
 Well treated, they work well, and it should never 
 be forgotten that nothing can be done throughout 
 Jamaica without their muscle and their brawn. Good 
 wages and, above all, fair treatment are essential in all 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 117 
 
 dealings with them, and it should be remembered that 
 the natural man is quite averse from work if he can 
 live without it. This in the Island of Jamaica he can 
 do quite easily, and thus to work at all is to confer a 
 favour, a proposition that the negro understands 
 thoroughly. 
 
 In such a natural garden of Eden as is Jamaica, 
 the chief blots are the towns and villages. The 
 larger towns are commonplace beyond belief, bad 
 copies of poor originals at home. The villages, long 
 straggling streets of negro huts, all built of wood 
 looking like rows of empty match-boxes. Nature 
 does all she can, embowering the meanest " shack " 
 in masses of bright-coloured creepers, and shading 
 miserable wooden living boxes under majestic trees 
 that spring up, as if by magic, in a year or two. 
 
 Man, black and white alike, does little towards 
 embellishment, though here and there fine villas are 
 to be seen outside the towns, or old colonial houses in 
 the country districts, surrounded by great trees. The 
 negro village is an eyesore, a waste of ragged 
 chickens, with but the coloured petticoats of the 
 women hanging out to dry to give relief to it. One 
 town in all the island stands out alone to show what 
 towns should be in such surroundings. Right in the 
 middle of the plain from which it takes its name 
 stands Santiago de la Vega. 1 Its ancient name is that 
 I like to think of when I recall the place to memory, 
 although to-day it masquerades as Spanish Town. A 
 straight, white, dusty road, that breaks off to the left 
 at Constant Springs, leads out to it. Along it wander 
 
 1 Vega = vale, or plain. 
 
n8 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 groups of negroes, all chattering, all merry-faced, and 
 looking as if the primeval curse sat lightly on them. 
 Others drive scraggy mules in carts, unpainted and 
 uncleaned. After each cart a yellow dog or two 
 plods on amongst the dust. You pass Tom Cringle's 
 tree, a bongo or a ceiba, if I remember rightly, and 
 in the distance the town comes into sight. You rub 
 your eyes, not only to get the dust out of them, but 
 because you are amazed. You scarcely note the 
 groups of negresses that pass you, statues in ebony, 
 with their inimitable walk, ivory teeth, bright- 
 coloured clothes, their handkerchiefs about their heads, 
 and air of Africa, for it appears a cinematograph has 
 been at work, and you are looking at a town either in 
 Mexico or Spain. 
 
 Here is no modern horror of cement-built 
 phalansteries as in Kingston, no negro squalor as at 
 Port Antonio or Anotto Bay. You pass at once into 
 a stately Spanish plaza, surrounded by great trees. 
 Little bricked paths lead to the sacramental garden 
 in the middle, with its stone benches, flowers, and 
 fountain, moss-stained and secular. Great clumps of 
 crimson bougainvilleas fill the angles of the plaza, and 
 the bright creeper known in Colombia as "la bellisima" 
 climbs on the mouldering iron railings which 
 surround the square. The sound of murmuring 
 waters is always in the ear, as the bricked rills 
 meander to the fountain, where swim goldfish, not 
 blotched and unhealthy-looking as they are in colder 
 climates but really golden, and deserving of the name. 
 
 One looks around, expecting that a Spanish girl 
 in black mantilla will cross the square upon her way 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 119 
 
 to Mass, followed by an attendant negro woman. She 
 does not pass. Nor does a ragged gentleman ask alms 
 with the air of doing you a favour, nor on the benches 
 does there sit a group of politicians, railing at the 
 Government and anxious to avail themselves of any 
 little post that it may throw to them. No Spanish 
 soldier, smart, clean, and olive-coloured, in his suit of 
 snowy drill, saunters across the plaza (for it is really a 
 plaza, not a square) rolling a cigarette. No priest read- 
 ing his breviary strolls beneath the trees, or friar with 
 his bare feet and well-lined belly hurries back to his 
 convent, not to miss Mass or meat. 
 
 None of these types are to be seen ; not the lithe 
 bull-fighter, swaying upon his hips just as a Spanish 
 dancer sways and undulates, nor yet the stout and 
 shawl-wrapped women with their unstable busts all 
 innocent of stays. 
 
 Somehow one feels that they still haunt the plaza, 
 where they walked a thousand times in days forgotten 
 and long past. Surely their images are photographed 
 upon the stones and benches, for nature prodigal of 
 life, of vegetation, and of all she makes and casts away 
 without a thought, must preserve shadows, for after 
 all they are the most enduring part of man. Spain, 
 or its shadow, still lives in the plaza ; but all around is 
 Georgian England, homely and picturesque, looking 
 as if a country town in Sussex had been transplanted 
 and had taken root, flourished, and died, and remained 
 petrified. 
 
 The parish church, with due, squat spire on which 
 St. Peter's cock swings about languidly as if it felt 
 the heat, brick-built and savouring of the days when 
 
120 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 churches were a sort of cross between a barrack and 
 a windmill, fills one angle of the square. A slate- 
 flagged path leads up to it, and when you enter into 
 its sacred precincts, the familiar, mouldy smell, pre- 
 served, no doubt, just as miraculously as the orders of 
 the bishops who rule over it, assaults your nostrils, 
 bringing back any parish church in Sussex or in Kent. 
 
 Worthies in full-bottomed wigs, all wrought in 
 marble or in alabaster, lie under mighty Georgian 
 catafalques, awaiting the last trump that chubby 
 angels perched on the cornices like swallows perched 
 upon a rail, seem eager to blare out. Their virtues 
 and their services to the island are couched in Latin, 
 rather bovine than canine ; yet they sleep on, as 
 undisturbed by sermons or by hymns as they would 
 sleep in a dark corner next to the yew-tree under 
 the lush grass of a churchyard in the old country, 
 with an intruding nonconformist pony grazing above 
 their heads. The groups of Georgian buildings and 
 Rodney's monument under its cupola give an air 
 of Kensington or Kew, gone astray in the tropics. 
 They do not make too jarring a discord with the old 
 Spanish plaza and its tall rustling trees. 
 
 All seems to blend together into an harmonious 
 whole. Even the negroes seem to walk more warily 
 in the decaying streets, and the mulata girls put on a 
 foreign air as they go chattering about the lanes. 
 Possibly reformers have marked down Spanish Town, 
 as the cockney " big-game " shooter, with his " shoot- 
 ing licence," marks down a giraffe for destruction 
 in East Africa. 
 
 In the meantime it slumbers peacefully, a relic 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 121 
 
 of the days when planters, sitting down to dinner 
 at three o'clock, sat on till midnight, eating pork 
 chops and good corned beef, washed down with port 
 and rum. Long may it slumber, and soon may the 
 other towns wake up; for they need progress and the 
 vivifying breath of trade : but Santiago de la Vega, 
 with Toledo, Granada, Fez, and other relics of the 
 past, should be preserved intact for us to wander 
 in and meditate, when our heads ache with the rude 
 shouting of the votaries of 10 per cent, bowing 
 before their god. 
 
 A delightful island with its high mountains and 
 its fertile vales, its tropic forests, and its memories of 
 the past : its Spanish names preserved distorted in 
 their Anglo-Saxon aspect, Wagwater for " Agua Alta " 
 and " Boca de Agua " turned into Bogwalk. An 
 island of great capabilities, a sort of Hamlet of the 
 West Indies, lacking advancements, poor in the 
 midst of natural riches, ready to fall into the 
 hands of the United States, unless we, like the 
 Devil, " tak' a thocht," and mend our ways. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 The fruit-boat steamed past all that now remains 
 of the once famous harbour of Port Royal, with 
 all its memories of Nelson and the buccaneers. It 
 dropped the Palisados, leaving them a long, brown 
 line that melted in a moment into nothingness, only 
 the shoals remaining, white and angry, until they too 
 were lost. Kingston, with its long, new phalansteries, 
 and wooden houses with their high brick steps before 
 the doors, was blended with the flowering trees and 
 shrubs into an harmonious haze of purple and of red. 
 The plain of Liguanea, its hospitable club-house, 
 shaded by clumps of star apples and papaws, and 
 fringe of sturdy lignum-vitae trees with their dark 
 purple flowers, the racecourse, and the bright green 
 lanes, vanished into the past that has swallowed up so 
 many pleasant memories of happy days. 
 
 Lastly, the Blue Mountains slowly began to sink. 
 Newcastle, with its white houses clustering on the 
 hillside, its tropic forests, and its palms, melted re- 
 luctantly into the atmosphere. Then, the tall peaks, 
 diaphanous and blue, hung for an instant in the sky, 
 looking like reversed atolls. They too disappeared, 
 and then we set our course to Cartagena of the 
 Indies, across the Caribbean Sea, choppy and wind- 
 
 122 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 123 
 
 curled as when the first of the old mariners entered 
 its humours in their logs. Gradually the sea grew 
 calmer and more tropical, the shoals of flying fish 
 more frequent, and then a long, low line of coast 
 appeared, fringed with a growth of- coco-palms. 
 The warm air of the tropics floated out, until at 
 last even the Caribbean Sea was stilled by it, and 
 lay out calm and blue, with the reflection of a few 
 white clouds seeming to float upon the surface, as 
 water-lilies float upon the surface of a pond. Islands 
 appeared to rise out of the sea to meet the ship, 
 and, as she hastened past them, the huts and 
 hamlets buried in the trees impressed you with an 
 air of comfort and content, probably quite illusory 
 in fact. 
 
 Most harbours and most towns, upon whatever 
 coast they lie, are visible a long way off; but when a 
 vessel coming from Jamaica to Cartagena makes its 
 landfall, a city seems to rise out of the waves. 
 Cadiz, the Silver Cup, 1 and Mogador, called Sueira — 
 that is the Picture — by the Moors, alone can rival it. 
 Both of them emerge as if a coral reef had suddenly 
 been raised out of the depths, and both of them look 
 sea-born and ethereal, seen from a vessel's deck. They 
 spring out, as it were, suddenly, as if the coral insects 
 working upwards, had finished only the night before, 
 so white the houses and so dazzling the walls. The 
 tropic haze only allows the unconquered city, 2 Carta- 
 gena, and its outworks to become visible, as it were, 
 through a veil of gauze. 
 
 As you stand watching the low coast, fringed 
 1 "La taza dc plata." 2 " La ciudad invicta." 
 
I2 4 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 with its palms and ringed about with surf, on the left 
 hand a block of masonry appears out of the sea. It 
 takes the shape of an old Spanish fort. The 
 crenellated walls have mouldered, the battlements 
 have fallen, in places, on the sand. No more the 
 blood and orange standard with its castles and its 
 lions flaps in the light air ; but the flat parapets, the 
 deep embrasures, through which the noses of the 
 brass carronades still peep, the massive iron-studded 
 doors, the counterscarps, the mamelons and ravelins, 
 the machicoulis and round pepper-boxes in which the 
 sentinels dressed in their buff coats, their morrions on 
 their heads, their halberts in their hand, stood sentinel 
 in vain against El Draque and of Pointis — all speak of 
 Spain. Gone is her glory, and gone the glory of the 
 fort — that is, its military glory has departed ; but as a 
 feature in the landscape it still holds its place. The 
 lofty water-gate, the central tower, and the long 
 flanking walls, shelter but a trading schooner, white 
 and yacht-like, with her tall, tapering masts and 
 bulwarks with their sheer, recalling slavers of the 
 past, and a few crank canoes. 
 
 The dense, metallic-looking vegetation surges up 
 behind the ruinous Castillo de San Fernando, just as 
 the ocean surges up to kiss it on the seaward side. 
 A grass-thatched lean-to shelters the guardian and his 
 family, and a small garden overgrown with weeds is 
 part of the parade ground where the Spanish soldiers 
 paced about in times gone by, listening to the long- 
 drawn-out cry of " Centinela alerta-a-a," from the 
 pepper-boxes. 
 
 Sic transit — that is, if anything ever really changes, 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 125 
 
 and if a phantom guard does not still listen to a 
 phantom sentinel, so deep the roots that Spain struck 
 down into the heart of the New World. 
 
 Opposite to the Castillo de San Fernando the 
 Castillo de San Jose frowns ruinously upon the strip 
 of calm, blue sea between their walls. Upon it the 
 same air of neglect has cast a shroud (perhaps a veil), 
 and great, green patches on the stonework look like 
 designs drawn by that king of decorators, Time. 
 Bright flowering creepers twine themselves about the 
 embrasures, and a canoe or two rock, with the round 
 bullet head of a negro propped against the gunwale 
 as he sleeps, balancing himself instinctively, just as a 
 frigate bird is said to sleep upon the wing. 
 
 As the vessel at half-speed makes her way through 
 the oily waters, where the " shark pursues the 
 mackerel," 1 and schooners lie becalmed, their sails 
 flapping against the mast, suddenly a city rises from 
 the waves. 
 
 A mass of domes and towers, of houses painted 
 pink, with brown-tiled roofs, gleam in the sun. A 
 golden haze softens and blends them into a picture ; 
 showing no outline, melting into the atmosphere, 
 intangible and looking like the mirage of a town, 
 seen in a dream. The floating city is ringed round 
 with a vast, brown wall, turreted here and there with 
 towers, broken by bastions and by counterscarps. Great 
 gates yawn here and there in which portcullises are 
 ready, or were ready till time devoured them, to drop 
 upon the foe. All the medieval art of fortification 
 
 1 "Le requin poursuit en paix les scombres": Sonnet, on 
 " Cartagena de Indias," Heredia. 
 
126 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 seems to have been exhausted, as if some Vauban of 
 those days had wrought his masterpiece and then 
 retired, knowing his work impregnable if hearts were 
 stout enough behind its walls. Palms and more 
 palms fringe all the shores; castle succeeds to castle, 
 El Pastelillo, El Manzanillo, and finally San Lazaro 
 upon its isolated rock, now ruinous, and a mere 
 playground for lizards and for snakes. 
 
 Beyond it rises the hill known as La Popa, from 
 its resemblance to the stern of a galleon. A convent 
 crowns it, once tenanted by Discalced Augustinians, 
 and still under the patronage of Nuestra Serlora de la 
 Popa. 1 The Augustinians have long departed ; but 
 the advocation of Our Lady of the Popa still remains, 
 although the convent with its massive walls and deep, 
 sunk well is ruinous, tenanted by day by humming- 
 birds and at night by armadillos and by bats. Pointis 
 and Drake, to show their patriotism or their faith, 
 both held it to ransom, and to-day a sea of tropic 
 vegetation flows up, threatening to engulf its walls. 
 
 The rocky road that leads to it is a stiff pull in 
 such a climate, but once beneath the asgis of Our 
 Lady at the top, the view repays the effort more than 
 a hundredfold. The harbour with its mouths lies 
 out beneath one's feet. The castles still keep their 
 illusory watch at La Boca Chica, and farther off" 
 El Castillo Grande stands on guard over the forgotten 
 glory of medieval Spain. So clear the air is that 
 you can see the flying-fish rise, fluttering like a shower 
 of emeralds, and disappear into the waves, scarcely 
 as large as minnows, seen thus from afar. Canoes 
 1 " Con la advocacion de Nuestra Senora de la Popa." 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 127 
 
 with their white sails drift along lazily, the trees upon 
 the surf-kissed beaches rustle in the breeze, looking 
 like gigantic, ostrich feathers growing from the sand. 
 From the vessel's deck, as she advances up the bay, 
 La Popa seems to shut the world out. Only the 
 faint blue line of the hills above Turbaco to the south, 
 take away the illusion of a town set on an island, in 
 its dark blue lagoon. 
 
 As you draw near the shore, the cathedral dome 
 seems to detach itself from the sea of rose-pink 
 houses, and the towers of La Merced, Santo Tomas, 
 and La Trinidad stand up like lighthouses above the 
 massive walls and the compacted houses of the town. 
 
 The vessels anchored in the port lie blistering in 
 the sun ; no sound breaks on the ear; the very waters 
 seem asleep and quite unstirred, except when now 
 and then a shark's triangular back-fin cuts them like 
 a black wedge, and then sinks down into the oily 
 depths. No one would feel surprised if there were 
 still galleons at anchor, or if the captain of the port 
 were to come off dressed in trunk-hose and cloak, his 
 rapier riding on his thigh. 
 
 What is surprising is the arrival at the modern 
 wharf of La Machina, with its corrugated-iron roof, 
 its derricks, and the appliances of commerce that have 
 rendered all the world great, prosperous, and most 
 uncomely to the eye. 'Tis true, the movement of 
 the wharf is not excessive, and the perspiring negro 
 labourers often relax their toil to mop their faces and 
 to light their cigarettes. All dress in white, all wear 
 straw hats, and all chatter as negroes chatter all the 
 world over, ceaselessly, though at La Machina their 
 
128 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 voices are less harsh than in Jamaica, and the lisping 
 dialect that they speak is not unpleasant to the ear. 
 
 A blend of Andaluz and of Mandingo, with all the 
 terminations of the words left out, or " eaten " as the 
 Spaniards say, the Costeno * dialect is very difficult to 
 catch for Castilians, who rattle out their consonants as 
 sharply as hail falling on a window-pane. A little 
 railway, running two or three miles through scrub, 
 leads to the town, passing close to the harbour, with 
 the walls, the churches, and the town seen just across 
 the bay. It finishes at a great railway-station, fit for 
 the terminus of a great line, but built in the middle 
 of a waste, sun-swept and arid, in which the little 
 negro boys play baseball, regardless of the heat. 
 The public gardens, with their usual stucco seats seen 
 everywhere in South America, and the great modern 
 market with its iron roof, are on the left hand of the 
 square. The Martyrs' Monument rises hard by, to 
 mark the place where patriots were shot down 
 by other patriots. O Liberty, thou bloodstained 
 goddess, as I once heard an orator in one of the 
 republics say, what crimes have been committed in 
 thy name ! 2 Certain it is that the same goddess 
 usually eats her children, and perhaps counts as many 
 victims in her cause as Mumbo-Jumbo or as Jugger- 
 naut, or any other of the causes or the faiths for which 
 men persecute and slay. 
 
 A modern gateway with a clock, the space cut 
 out of the Cyclopean-looking walls, is the chief 
 
 1 "Un costeno" is a man from the coast — black, white, or 
 Indian. 
 
 2 I doubt if he had ever heard of Madame Roland. The phrase 
 probably sprang from personal experience. 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 129 
 
 entrance to the unconquered city, as its inhabitants 
 delight to call it. 
 
 Once passed beneath it, and after having crossed 
 the little square, known as La Plaza de los Coches, in 
 which stand dozens of open vehicles, each drawn by a 
 slight, well-bred horse, that looks a little like an Arab, 
 long, sandy streets lead off on every side. Some, it is 
 true, are paved for a short distance, but all relapse 
 into their native sand until they " die," as the Spanish 
 phrase goes, either at the seashore or passing by other 
 apertures cut in the walls come out on the great 
 waste where stands the railway-station. 
 
 Surely few cities in the world can equal Cartagena 
 for its beauty, its quietness, its air of fallen greatness, 
 and for the silence of the streets. The rose-pink 
 houses with their deep eaves and overhanging 
 balconies, the massive doors studded with iron nails, 
 and grated windows, give a look of Seville ; but a sad 
 Seville, without the air of joyousness and paganism 
 that stamps the city, under the patronage of the saints 
 Justa and Rufina, and whose emblem is the Knot. 1 
 
 In no place in the New World has Spain 
 impressed herself more strongly, with the exception 
 perhaps of Mexico, than in this city on the sand. The 
 massive crests above the doors show that the first con- 
 querors were hidalgos, and the vast mouldering houses 
 speak of the time when the saying, " I am glad of it, as 
 said the governor of Cartagena," became proverbial in 
 the Spanish tongue. The streets were narrow, and it 
 
 1 The Knot was given to Seville by Aionso el Fabio, son of 
 St. Ferdinand, as its emblem. It is supposed to be the Nostus 
 Herculis of the Phoenicians, who used it as a mark for their bales of 
 merchandise to signify they were of full weight. 
 
 9 
 
130 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 appears to have been the custom of those days for 
 gallants to tie their horses to the gratings of the 
 windows, as they stood courting the ladies penned 
 behind them in the medieval Spanish style. 
 
 This in the narrow streets blocked up the traffic, 
 for Cartagena was in those days a busy mart crammed 
 full of soldiers fitting out expeditions to discover gold 
 mines, to conquer empires, and to extend the power 
 and might of Spain. Slaves thronged the streets, 
 negroes but just arrived from Africa, bozales — that is, 
 muzzled, for they could speak no Christian — or Indians 
 taken with the blunderbuss and lance. 
 
 The governor — unluckily fame, ever careless of its 
 greatest sons, has not preserved his name — was a 
 reforming spirit. He straight wrote out an edict, and 
 had it promulgated. " Horses," he said, " found tied 
 to balconies, shall all be hamstrung by my body- 
 guard. Read this and mark it well, ye citizens 
 of Cartagena." The citizens, accustomed to high- 
 sounding phrases and to ukases that never were 
 enforced, obeyed but did not think about complying. 1 
 They tied their horses, as they had always done, to 
 the gratings of the windows, for gentlemen of their 
 calibre could not go afoot, and an impatient, unneces- 
 sary page would have been an uncomfortable adjunct 
 to their love-making. 
 
 At last upon a day the governor held a reception, 
 and all the " flower and cream " 2 of Cartagena were 
 
 1 " Obedezco, pero no cumplo " — /.*., " I obey, but do not 
 comply " — was the set phrase used by Spanish governors in the Indies 
 when either an absurd order or one enjoining them to put down 
 the enslavement of the Indians arrived from Madrid. 
 
 2 " Flor y nata." 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 131 
 
 bidden to attend. This was the chance the halberdiers 
 had waited for to prove their vigilance. The governor 
 was seated at the receipt of fashion and of rank, 
 exchanging compliments with grave and reverend 
 though perhaps addle-pated counsellors, and with 
 an eye, we may suppose, upon the ladies, for even 
 governors are men. 
 
 A page approached him and whispered, H Sir, the 
 halberdiers have just come on two horses tied to a 
 window-grating and have hamstrung them both." 
 The governor, pleased that his foolish edict had been 
 carried out, exclaimed, " I am glad of it," and the 
 page withdrew. He had hardly reached the door 
 than another, rushing in, desired to speak instantly with 
 the governor. " Sir," he said, as he twisted round his 
 hat, " the soldiers have indeed hamstrung two fine 
 horses tied to the window-bars." u What of that," 
 said the governor, " the edict has been complied 
 with and the halberdiers did well." The page replied, 
 " That is so, sir ; but the two horses were your own." 
 The governor, making, as one supposes, a rabbit's 
 laugh, 1 said, " I'm glad of it," and hence the saying, 
 "I am glad of it, as said the governor of Cartagena," 
 passed into a phrase. 
 
 1 " La risa del conejo." The phrase corresponds to " laugh on 
 the wrong side of the mouth." 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 The silent city strikes an air as of monasticism. 
 Long stretches of brown walls, with the minutest 
 windows looking out upon the world, speak of the time 
 when the streets of Cartagena were filled with friars, 
 for friars in every age seem to have passed their time, 
 everywhere but at home. The convents are but shells, 
 for now the friars have gone to other worlds, none 
 of which can be hotter than the old town itself. 
 Though they are gone, their influence remains, as it 
 were, in the air, and certainly in the hearts of the 
 population, for Cartagena is a stronghold of Catholi- 
 cism. The sandy streets, the population in its snow- 
 white clothes, the slender traffic, and the soft and 
 balmy atmosphere, make up a picture almost unique 
 in South America to-day. 
 
 The high Andean cities, Bogota, La Paz, and 
 Quito, certainly are restful enough in their remoteness 
 from the world. Still, their harsh climates and the 
 necessity to wear thick clothes and move about, if 
 only to keep warm, destroy much of the air that their 
 old Spanish houses, massive walls, and churches 
 springing up in unsuspected corners, gives them at 
 first sight. Up in the Andes the people huddle 
 wrapped up in blankets, as in the plateaux of Castile, 
 
 132 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 133 
 
 and " take the sun " at the corners of the squares. In 
 Cartagena the sun is looked on as an enemy. Every- 
 one seeks the shady corners of the streets. Thus 
 you may say that the Andean cities represent Castile, 
 whilst Cartagena stands for Naples or for Seville, with 
 all the acuteness of the wits of Southern Europe and 
 a far greater energy of body and of mind. The 
 churches and the empty convents speak of medieval 
 Spain, and yet you feel that the population is alive 
 and businesslike according to its lights. 
 
 Once a stronghold of clericalism, the city, although 
 still strongly Catholic, is slowly getting free from the 
 bonds of bigotry that still bind Bogota and Popayan, 
 Pasto, and the towns of the interior. The fine 
 cathedral built on the site of the first church Heredia 
 founded, with its high tower that stands up like a 
 lighthouse, just as a mosque tower stands up in the 
 East above the sea of flat-roofed houses that the Moors 
 took to Spain and the Spaniards transplanted to 
 America, has something bare about it, as if the 
 familiar air of churches in the Old World could not 
 survive the transplantation to another hemisphere. 
 
 No beggars throng the doors whining for alms that 
 sanctify the giver, and no old women dressed in rusty 
 black hold back the screens before the door, as they 
 extend a hand. No yellow dogs stray in and out, and 
 in the choir no monks sit singing, spitting occasionally 
 with fervour, as they sing. Religion has an air of 
 having been brought over with the conquest. The 
 air of homeliness, of having grown up with the 
 country, and of being as well established in the soil 
 as are the trees, is absent. Just as, in Protestant 
 
134 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 countries, the church is rather, as it were, a temple, 
 than God's house, where the market-woman sets down 
 her basket full of vegetables beside her, as she turns 
 in to pray, and squats upon the floor, her eyes fixed 
 on her favourite saint in ecstasy, or simply fixed from 
 habit, so throughout Spanish America the church 
 is rather a place of worship than a home. In Bogota, 
 and there only in the churches built at the time of 
 the conquest by men from Spain with all the feelings 
 and traditions of their native land still fresh upon 
 them, is the European look of homeliness and ease 
 to be observed. There, indeed, in the barnlikc 
 sanctuaries run up hundreds of years ago, without a 
 definite plan ; in haste, as it were, to have some place 
 in which to glorify the Deity who had protected the 
 stern warriors in their cruelty ; dark, with the dust of 
 ages on the windows making the gorgeous gilding 
 gleam fitfully in the prevailing gloom — all speaks of 
 Spain. In them, Jimenez de Quesada, Belalcazar, and 
 the rest, even the bloodstained Federmann, may have 
 heard Mass together at their strange meeting on the 
 plains of Bogota. 
 
 To-day the Indians stroll in and out of them just 
 as they walk through the doors of their own ranchos, 
 and gaze upon the saints, under whose eyes so much 
 injustice was perpetrated on their ancestors, with that 
 inscrutable, veiled look the Indian turns on everything, 
 so baffling to men of other race. He bows his head 
 before the God of his oppressors, just as he bows his 
 shoulders to the burden that the descendants of his 
 conquerors have placed upon them, and in neither 
 case says anything. What he is thinking of no one 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 135 
 
 has ever fathomed; but outwardly he is a sad and 
 exemplary Christian, believing everything, enduring 
 everything, questioning nothing, never repining, and 
 as unfathomable as the Sphinx. Still, for all their air 
 of coldness, the churches of the unconquered city are 
 remarkable for having nothing of the Jesuit style, so 
 common in the New World, with its central dome 
 and mouldings like the pastry on an old-fashioned 
 open tart over the windows and the doors. 
 
 The cathedral is a long, low building in the 
 Grasco-Roman style. The tower is square, and in its 
 openings the great bells, so seldom silent, hang on 
 their wooden beams. Sometimes a vulture flaps 
 lazily and seats himself upon the sacred embrasure, 
 spreading his wings as if he gloried in the sun, and 
 then flies down on to a piece of carrion in some 
 deserted corner of the town. 
 
 The church in Cartagena has a look of the 
 cathedral in Valladolid, the pride of Philip and of 
 Herrera his favourite architect. Something it has of 
 the Escorial and something purely its own, sun-baked 
 and calcined, without the smallest lichen clinging to 
 its stones. Inside, like other Graeco-Roman edifices, 
 it is gaunt and empty-looking ; but a refreshing 
 coolness always reigns about its aisles. Its glory is 
 its pulpit, preserved miraculously from perils of the 
 deep, from pirates, barratry of mariners, and from the 
 enemies of our lord the King. The story goes that 
 the Pope of those days, hearing of the great faith and 
 piety of the citizens of Carthagena of the Indies, 
 wished to reward them with a gift, suitable to him- 
 self and them. So he called to him the best artists 
 
136 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 of his time and bade them carve a pulpit in the finest 
 marble, to be set up in the cathedral. The work 
 accomplished and duly blessed by God's vicegerent 
 upon earth, it was despatched to the Americas on 
 board of a galleon. She sailed from Cadiz, clearing 
 out with salvos of artillery, left the black shoal 
 known as Las Puercas on her port bow, and set her 
 course towards the Indies. All went well with her 
 till she had nearly reached her goal. The castles and 
 the lions, in their blood and orange field, floated out 
 gallantly from the high jackstaff that she carried on 
 the poop ; the captain paced his quarter-deck, in his 
 buff jacket, with his long rapier by his side ; the crew 
 lounged on the lofty forecastle ; the lookout man, 
 without a doubt, was slumbering in the cross-trees, 
 when someone cried, " A sail !" All was confusion, 
 for in those days in southern latitudes all strange 
 sails were those of enemies, and the accursed French 
 or English corsairs were always imminent. The 
 corsairs, for pirates seems an ugly word to write 
 of our own countrymen, who were no doubt 
 inspired by the highest motives and actuated chiefly 
 by the hate of Romish errors, soon fired a gun 
 and forced the galleon to back her mainsail and lay to. 
 They came aboard, and, in their proselytizing hatred 
 of idolatry and zeal for a pure faith, thoroughly 
 ransacked the ship. They packed up all the gold 
 and silver that they found, not even sparing sacred 
 vessels of the Romish faith the chaplain had stored 
 in his cabin, or others of rich plate the captain kept 
 beneath his bed for his own private use, tumbling 
 them all promiscuously into a gunny sack and 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 137 
 
 carrying them off. This done they opened con- 
 scientiously the boxes and the bales. What was their 
 disgust to find in certain, solid cases a marble pulpit, 
 defiled with images of saints sculptured in high 
 relief upon its sides. Their fury knew no bounds, 
 and in a holy orgasm of zeal, comparable alone to 
 that which armed the hand of Jenny Geddes to launch 
 the stool at the head of the Erastian preacher long 
 ago in Edinburgh when faith and morals both were 
 pure, they cast the cases on the waves. Our Lady of 
 the Sea stretched out her hand, and all the cases, 
 though packed with marble, floated like pumice-stone. 
 Fear fell upon the heretics. Straightway they 
 manned their boats and went on board their damnable 
 freebooting craft and sailed away, packed to the 
 water-line with spoil. But round the Catholic ship 
 the sacred cases floated buoyantly, like children's 
 balloons that have escaped their owner's little hands, 
 upon the Serpentine. Then, for the first time in 
 their lives, did all the crew work overtime. They 
 got the precious cargo all aboard again, and then the 
 captain, after a due thanksgiving, came up upon the 
 poop. Long did he gaze upon the sun, using his 
 astrolabe to check the degrees upon the quadrant 
 (or perhaps cross-staff), and shouting to the Spanish 
 timoneer, who leaned against the tiller taking 
 tobacco, " Keep her full and by," he set her course 
 again towards Cartagena, a spoiled and harried man, 
 but yet contented that the hand of Providence was 
 still about him, instant to defend. He sailed a day 
 or two, and now the breezes turned more balmy and 
 the winds fell light. His thoughts, no doubt, for even 
 
138 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 captains of galleons were not exempt (as history tells 
 us) from the ordinary frailties of mankind, began to 
 dwell upon the ladies of the unconquered city, 
 especially on one, a mulatilla, whom he referred to 
 as a " tizon del infierno," 1 adding some details of her 
 charms that possibly he might as well have kept for 
 his own private ear. He hummed a seguidilla, and, 
 looking up occasionally at the after-leach of the fore- 
 topsail, gave orders to sheet home such sails as were 
 not drawing properly. A voice from the fore-top 
 was heard, hailing the deck, " A sail, a sail, on the 
 port bow !" Soon she drew near, and the black flag 
 flew from her peak. Confusion! she was a Dutchman, 
 worse even than the accursed English who had 
 plundered them before. This time, either our Lady 
 of the Sea was sleeping or the profane and amorous 
 musings of the captain had offended her, for the rude 
 Dutchmen, clattering in their wooden shoes, were 
 filled with fury when they found nothing remained 
 worth taking, so thoroughly had the Englishmen gone 
 through the bill of lading and the charter party. 
 Cursing their fellow-heretics as skellums, they most 
 methodically butchered the crew and set the ship on 
 fire. Then they sailed off towards the doom that 
 certainly awaits Dutch pirates after their lives are 
 over and the seas rest from all their exploits. The 
 giant galleon burned like the funeral pyre of all the 
 oceans going up to the sky in expiation of the crimes 
 committed on the sea and in commemoration of 
 
 1 For the information of such as know no " Christian," I may 
 say that the phrase means " brand of hell," but in no wise snatched 
 from the burning. 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 139 
 
 the nameless, innumerable acts of heroism, of simple 
 mariners. 
 
 Her topmasts were burnt through. Her heavy 
 yards, squared in the Carraca, Puerto de Santa Maria, 
 Rota, or in the Trocadero, fell into the sea with a loud 
 crash, and after sticking up for a brief space, blackened 
 and burning, sank down into the water and floated 
 alongside looking like maimed sea-monsters, as they 
 rose upon the swell. On the high forecastle the 
 great, carved lantern that so long had flickered fitfully 
 over the waves, making the darkness even more 
 impenetrable at night, went up, consumed in a fierce 
 blast of flame. The masts sagged, swayed, and then 
 fell overboard to join the yards. The decks burst 
 open, releasing a hurricane of fire, as if the interior of 
 the ship had been a solfatara, belching out flames that 
 licked up soon the standing rigging and the boats. 
 
 The seams all opened as the fire gained on the 
 seasoned teak, and by degrees the vessel slowly settled 
 by the head. The castellated poop, with its carved 
 balconies and gilded mouldings, was raised high in 
 the air. On it still flew the castles and the lions of 
 the Spains, defiantly. A dense smoke slowly crept 
 aft, shrouding all that remained of the doomed vessel 
 in its folds. Through it all appeared a shower of 
 sparks that played an instant in the tropic air as 
 fireflies play about a bush of flor de la Habana and 
 fell into the sea with a long hiss. Then with a 
 moaning sound the vessel lurched more forward, 
 the water crept up hungrily, and with a sigh she 
 dived, the blood and orange flag, tattered and 
 scorched, disappearing sullenly beneath the waves. 
 
140 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 Some wreckage floated here and there, a breeze 
 blew off the smoke, the sharks fed greedily upon the 
 bodies, when lo ! a miracle. Up from the whirl- 
 pool that the great ship had caused as she went to 
 the resting-place of countless galleons and galeases, 
 the sacred cases were wafted slowly to the surface 
 of the waves. The tumult and confusion of the 
 water caused by the sinking vessel slowly was 
 appeased. The black dust floated away and was 
 absorbed into the sea. The sharks sailed off replete, 
 to their sea lairs. Nothing was left to mark the 
 tragedy that had been enacted, except a fleet of 
 nautiluses hoisting their little sails, and the great 
 packing-cases that rose and fell upon the surge. 
 Wonder of wonders, some invisible power aligned 
 them into the semblance of a fleet. It seemed they 
 understood what was expected of them, or else great 
 Neptune, superinduced by forces greater than his own, 
 impelled them on their way. How long they 
 wandered on the deep is not within our ken ; but 
 what is certain, is that they were wafted to their 
 proper destination and went ashore upon the beach, 
 just underneath the walls of Cartagena, and rested 
 from the perils they had undergone. 
 
 The sun beat down upon them, whitening the 
 wood and cracking the dry boards. Barnacles 
 gathered on their weather side, where the tide lapped 
 up and kissed them. Seaweed attached itself to the 
 rough nails and splinters of the cases, and now and 
 then a flight of seagulls alighted tenderly upon the 
 sea-tossed packages, resting a little, then floating off 
 again to hang poised just above the surf. 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 141 
 
 Years passed, and still no pious hand impelled by 
 a mysterious dream or vision came to their rescue. 
 People cantering on the beach cursed at them volubly 
 when their horses shied, and sailors sat and smoked as 
 they gazed out to sea in that eternal quest to which 
 long years have trained their eyes. Then came some 
 merchants, men without imagination, with an eye to 
 the main chance. Opening the cases rudely, just as 
 if they had contained mere merchandise, they were 
 struck with the beauty of the work. Thinking 
 to turn an honest penny, they embarked them on a 
 vessel bound to Spain. " The saints," as a Protestant 
 but quite impartial writer has it, w still kept their 
 eyes on the Pope's ofFering. ,,1 
 
 A gale arose, as might have been expected in the 
 circumstances, and forced the vessel to put back. By 
 this time the news had reached the bishop and the 
 consistory, who, calling for the captain, offered to 
 buy the goods. He, though a Catholic Christian, 
 refused to part with them except at such a price 
 as was prohibitory, for of late years the offertory had 
 been held in slight esteem in Cartagena, although 
 the faith was pure. Sadly the bishop and his priests 
 returned to the cathedral, and the skipper put to sea. 
 Again a gale sprang up and wrecked his vessel, and 
 he and all his crew went to the fate appointed for 
 hard bargainers and for heretics. This time the 
 cases floated back at once, straight through La Boca 
 Chica, and came and lay upon the beach. The 
 bishop now perceived that a third miracle had 
 
 1 Albert Milligan, " Adventures of an Orchid- Hunter," p. 211 
 (London, 1891). , 
 
142 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 taken place, so in procession the predestined work of 
 art was taken up to the cathedral through the glad 
 population, with incense and with psalms. 
 
 The offering of St. Peter's apostolic vicar upon 
 earth had reached its destination, though cast upon 
 the waters for an infinity of days. All was concluded 
 satisfactorily. In the cathedral stands the pulpit, 
 erect and glorious. Under its canopy tedious but 
 painful 1 preachers hold forth on due occasion, as 
 their congregations drowse. No one, except some 
 travelling heretic, thinks of the perils that the marble 
 work of art underwent upon its wanderings on 
 the seas. The congregation, as they perceive the 
 perspiration trickling down the preacher's face, know 
 he is drawing to a close. Gradually, by ones and 
 twos, they all disperse, and when the monaguillo 
 comes round with the collecting-box only a few 
 beatas still remain, gazing in ecstasy or pinned down 
 by rheumatism. 
 
 1 Painful, in the Elizabethan sense. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 The celebrated pulpit still remains as the chief object 
 of Italian art in Cartagena, and, with its coloured 
 marbles and figures raised in high relief, looks 
 curiously cold and lonely in the vast church where 
 at last it rests from all its perils on the deep. 
 
 The town is rich in churches, and perhaps that of 
 San Pedro Claver is the most interesting. 1 Although 
 the architecture is that the Jesuits employed all over 
 the New World, from the modest mission chapels in 
 San Antonio Texas, in Arizona, and in Paraguay, 
 right down to Chile, yet the Church of San Pedro 
 Claver has something different about it from anv 
 church in the Americas. The eastern front is made 
 of massive stone, brought from the mountains near 
 Turbaco, and as the church stands in a square 
 hemmed in by houses, it has an air as of a church in 
 the Castiles, more homely and yet more dignified 
 than often is the case in South America. Two 
 square, squat towers flank the east front, and over the 
 chief entrance is a rose window, a detail of architec- 
 
 1 The church was founded in 1 603 by a Real Cedula of Philip III. 
 It was first dedicated to St. Ignatius of Loyola. The body of San 
 Pedro Clav6r is preserved and venerated in the church. 
 
 H3 
 
144 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 ture unusual in the Southern Hemisphere. In each 
 of the side towers are set two little marigold windows, 
 and the effect is quite original. The building is bare 
 and simple ; but the colour of the stone — a rich, dark 
 brown — gives it a look of warmth, in the same way 
 that the red rocks give warmth occasionally to the 
 drear landscapes to be seen in Iceland. 
 
 The church originally belonged to the Company 
 of Jesus, an Order much maligned ; but one that, after 
 all, did the best missionary work amongst the Indians 
 in America. 
 
 Along the bay stretches what is now known as 
 the Parsonage, most probably the Jesuit establishment 
 of other days. The city walls, running up from 
 the water's edge, retain it on one side. In front, 
 the Martyrs' Monument stands up, modern and stark, 
 with an air of challenge, and a tall fan-palm with its 
 hanging leaves serves as an aeolian harp to sing the 
 dirge of the departed Jesuits, when the soft breezes 
 blow from the Caribbean Sea. 
 
 Cartagena was no exception to the general 
 rule that the patriot is the greatest enemy of the 
 patriot, as man is the wolf of man. No greater 
 Spanish patriot could well have lived than General 
 Morillo, who in 1815 commanded the armies of 
 the King of Spain — in what is now Colombia. 
 Staunch to his king, and faithful, bloodstained and 
 cruel, he swept across the land, like a destroying 
 angel. 
 
 Even Bolivar was not more sanguinary, or careless 
 of his life. 
 
 Thus they were both true types of patriotism, 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 145 
 
 convinced and steadfast in their ideas and inaccessible 
 either to fear or argument. 
 
 The Cartagena martyrs were shot in 1 8 1 6, by the 
 order of the Viceroy Montalvo, after General Morillo 
 captured the town. Their leader was one Colonel 
 Anguiano. 
 
 This officer had served in the Spanish army, and 
 having embraced the popular cause became deputy 
 for the town of Tolu. In the Popular Convention 
 he was noted for his fervid advocacy of the cause 
 of liberty. Such a man, of course, had nothing to 
 hope for at the hands of his enemies, and was 
 accordingly shot at once as a traitor, and has since 
 been venerated as a martyr. 
 
 The church and parsonage and their surround- 
 ings are old-world and picturesque ; but the chief 
 glory of the shrine is in the man whose name they 
 bear to-day. The Bollandists, in their "Acta Sanc- 
 torum," place him " inter prastermissos " — why, is 
 best known to themselves. They chronicle his arrival 
 in the Indies in 16 10; his death in 1654. Pope 
 Benedict XIV., by a decree, declared him " possessor 
 both of the theological and cardinal virtues in an 
 heroic degree." This probably was the first stage 
 upon his her aa astra, for it established his beatific 
 state. 
 
 When he was canonized is not made manifest in 
 the " Acta Sanctorum " of the Bollandists. America, 
 so far, has not been too prolific in the glorious com- 
 pany of saints — at least, of those who have been so 
 declared by Holy Mother Church. 
 
 With the exception of Saint Rose of Lima, 
 
 10 
 
146 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 few saints whose pilgrimage on earth was in the 
 Indies have, so to speak, got across the footlights 
 of the Old World and been accepted upon equal 
 terms with those who, by their antiquity or the 
 strange, cruel manner of their death, become authentic 
 in our minds. Saintship, like a knowledge of the 
 classics, is usually paid for in blood. 1 If not in 
 blood, most certainly by suffering and a self-denying 
 life. 
 
 Although the Bollandists, for reasons best known 
 to themselves, pretermitted from their history the 
 life and miracles of San Pedro Claver, it was not 
 destined that they should be lost to fame. In 1653 
 a Life of Father Pedro Claver appeared in Madrid, by 
 the Licenciado Don Geronimo Suarez de Somoca. 
 He confesses in his prologue that he copied most 
 of it from a Jesuit of Cartagena de Indias, one Father 
 Alonso de Andrade, who makes "honourable mention 
 ot the heroic works done by that servant of the 
 Lord, Father Claver, upon the earth, and of the 
 miracles that ensued after his translation to the skies." 
 This confession, so unusual amongst authors as to 
 be almost unique in all our annals, does Father Suarez 
 de Somoca the highest credit and reflects lustre on 
 our confraternity. We take our goods where we 
 can find them, as a general rule, and then, after 
 the fashion of the adulterer in Holy Writ, we 
 wipe our mouths and hope our deeds may never 
 see the light. As Suarez de Somoca gives the lead, 
 pointing the path to literary honesty, it would ill 
 befit a more modern plodder, by the way, to leave 
 1 " El Latin con sangre entra," is a saying in Spanish. 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 147 
 
 the trail so boldly blazed by the honest Jesuit upon 
 the via cruets of San Pedro Claver. El Reverendo 
 Padre Alonso de Andrade, of the Company of Jesus, 
 u natural de Toledo," published his Life of San 
 Pedro Claver in Madrid in the year 1667 (con 
 privilegio). It is dedicated to the " Most Excellent 
 Seiior Padre Juan Everardo Nidhardo, Inquisidor 
 General of the Spains." In it Father Andrade 
 enters most fully into the miracles and the ministries 
 of the life of San Pedro Claver, completely " wiping 
 the eye " of the Bollandists, if one may apply the 
 phrase to such a company of reverend men, and thus 
 fills up a gap in their great chronicle of the acts 
 of all the saints. 
 
 They left him, as we have seen, amongst the 
 " praetermissos," preferring, with European prejudice 
 and that disdain of the Americas that the Americas 
 to-day are paying back with interest, to chronicle 
 the miracles of the most trifling European saint 
 in preference to his. 
 
 We who, like Father Alonso de Andrade, know 
 " those Indies " are grateful to him, and Cartagena 
 might well place a tablet in the church where the 
 saint ministered so long to his historian's memory. 
 
 Pedro Claver was born in Cataluna at the town 
 of Verdii in 1585. That town is situated in the 
 bishopric of Solsona, a see probably as well known 
 to the majority of English readers as that of Sodor 
 and Man is known in Spain. His family was 
 noble, and related to the Counts of Benavente. He 
 went to school in Barcelona, studying Latinity and 
 Rhetoric. Greek was not compulsory, as far as we 
 
148 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 know, but what is known as " la ciencia media " P 
 in common Spanish parlance, probably prevailed. He 
 speedily distinguished himself in both branches of his 
 studies, and was sent to a superior college in the 
 old town of Tarragona. Here he became a deacon, 
 and at the age of twenty-five, his superiors having 
 perceived his worth, he was sent out to Cartagena as 
 a missionary. On his arrival he went to Bogota for a 
 short interval, but soon returned to Cartagena, where 
 he received priest's orders and said his first Mass in the 
 Jesuit College about the year 1616. 
 
 When he had finished it he took a vow always to 
 say the last Mass at the same altar where he first 
 celebrated. Until his death, during the thirty-seven 
 years that intervened, from that day forth he always 
 kept his vow. 
 
 The missionary field was vast. Infidels were wild 
 and savage and lived apart in the thick woods. They 
 issued forth when they perceived occasion to give the 
 crown of martyrdom to the incautious missionary who 
 travelled without arms. The Spanish settlers were, 
 as we learn, "lax and adulterous/' Perhaps the 
 softness of the climate impelled them to the latter 
 failing of the flesh. 
 
 In addition to all this, negroes from Africa were 
 constantly arriving in the slave ships, ignorant of 
 the true faith, polygamous, and sometimes canni- 
 bals. When they arrived they naturally spoke no 
 
 1 The saying goes, "Pasteles en le pasteleria y ciencia media 
 en la Compania (de Jesus) — i.e., " Cakes in the pastrycook's and 
 ciencia media in the Company of Jesus." I leave to theologians the 
 exact translation of the term "ciencia media," holding that the 
 world will suffer little if they fail to render it. 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 149 
 
 Christian, 1 and so the Spaniards referred to them as 
 muzzled. 2 
 
 It consequently became the duty and the pride of 
 San Pedro Claver to unloose their muzzles, both of the 
 body and the mind. We are told that in his life he 
 baptized more than two hundred thousand of them, 
 besides a great quantity of Moors, English, and other 
 heretics. 3 How he performed this miracle, for I hold 
 it the chiefest that he wrought, is difficult to say. 
 
 After all is said, common sense and faith are but 
 synonymous. Faith usually finds out a way to justify 
 itself. It may be that San Pedro Claver, who was a 
 Catalan, and the Catalans are the Scotch of Spain, 
 resorted to the methods that used to be observed in 
 Rome, when in St. Peter's the peasants thronged that 
 shrine at festivals. A priest, with the hyssop fastened 
 to a cane, used to dispense the holy water, as with a 
 fishing-rod. In the same way, San Vicente Ferrer, in 
 Palma de Mallorca, when called upon to convert a 
 community of Jews that still persisted in outraging 
 our faith by clinging to their own, resorted to the use 
 of the long cane. Upon a certain day he placed 
 himself, armed with his sacred cane, beside an 
 enormous cauldron full of holy water. The un- 
 believers were mustered in the square. On one side 
 stood the cauldron with the blessed water, on the 
 other burned a bonfire. Those who refused the 
 holy rite had the alternative of passing through the 
 flames. None were so unbusinesslike as to refuse the 
 
 1 Christian «= Spanish. 
 
 2 " Bozales." " Bozal ** is a muzzle in Spanish. 
 
 8 " Ademas de gran suma de Moros, Ingleses, j otros hereges." 
 
ISO CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 sanctifying water on their brow. They lost their 
 faith to the last man, but kept their noses, as any 
 traveller can see who takes a stroll in the dark, 
 tortuous streets of " El Barrio de los Chuetas " down 
 to the present day. San Pedro Claver, however, did 
 not stop at baptism, after the fashion of so many 
 missionaries. As far as in him lay he tried to render 
 the poor wretches' lives more tolerable, treating them 
 as fellow human beings and ministering to their 
 wants in sickness and in adversity. 
 
 One of the superstitions that the poor creatures 
 had was that they were all to be killed and their bones 
 ground down to manufacture gunpowder. Through 
 all the horrors of the " middle passage," this terror 
 used to work upon their minds, and the good Father 
 (now a saint, and most deservedly) used to go down 
 and speak to them upon arrival, to comfort and dispel 
 their fears. Had he done nothing else he had 
 deserved his saintship, for the poor savages, torn 
 from their native wilds, confined below decks in the 
 ships, were like wild animals in a corral, trembling 
 in every limb. When he had calmed their fears he 
 used to lead them all ashore, for they walked after him, 
 " just as a flock of sheep follows its shepherd," dumb 
 and pathetically, towards the slaughter-house. 
 
 Work was their portion until death released them 
 in most cases, but in so far as he was able the saint 
 alleviated their lot. Still, all of his labours were not 
 confined to materialistic and soul-numbing good 
 works. One day a fellow-labourer in the vineyard of 
 the Lord came to him in distress and asked him his 
 advice. It seems that he (a priest) had laboured 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 151 
 
 strenuously with a sick negro, urging him to accept 
 the rite of baptism and save his perishable soul. The 
 negro, who perhaps was a stout votary of Mumbo- 
 Jumbo, or a man convinced of the efficiency of 
 prayer at the Long Ju-ju, had steadily declined. 
 Nothing could move him from the faith in which 
 he had been reared. His fathers, so he said, had 
 all died pagans, and he looked forward to meeting 
 them again in the same faith in which they all had 
 died. 
 
 " San Pedro Claver," so says his biographer, 
 "rushed quickly on his prey." 1 Long did the good 
 Father wrestle in prayer by the bedside of the game 
 fetish worshipper, pouring in his gospel broadsides 
 with accuracy and effect. As the faint streaks of the 
 false dawn appeared, and the mosquitoes, sated with 
 blood, flew buzzing off to rest, the unbeliever gave up 
 his false and animistic gods. With joy the good 
 priest poured the soul-saving water on his head, and 
 in an hour or two his " soul gained heaven." 2 In fact, 
 the operation was successful, but the patient died, 
 after the saying current in Harley Street. One is 
 glad to learn that the new Christian was buried with 
 considerable pomp and circumstance. His funeral 
 cortege was headed by Father Claver in person, no 
 doubt contented with the victory he had won over 
 the powers of evil. With psalms they bore the 
 erstwhile votary of Gri-gri and of Feitico to the 
 cemetery. Music and lights accompanied the proces- 
 sion, and flowers were strewed upon his grave. 
 
 1 " Corrio ligero a la presa." 
 
 2 " Su alma gan6 el cielo." 
 
152 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 Few negroes in Cartagena have had so fine a 
 funeral, and yet one almost wishes that the old pagan 
 had been steadfast to the last. It is possible in that 
 case that his soul might not have gained the 
 (Christian) heaven, but it would have gone to 
 some place or another and joined his ancestors. 
 
 I pass by, as of little moment, as a mere skirmish 
 in the gospel-field, the saint's conversion both of a 
 criminal and of the executioner upon the scaffold, for 
 executioners are almost always sentimentalists. If it 
 were otherwise the criminals would have to execute 
 themselves. Viewed rightly, the executioner is a 
 scapegoat, taking the sins both of the criminal and of 
 the judges on his own head. 
 
 Perhaps his greatest exploit was the conversion 
 of an archdeacon from London, 1 a foeman worthy of 
 his steel. How two such well-matched protagonists 
 met each other is difficult to say, or what was the 
 business that brought the archdeacon to such a 
 distant place, so far beyond the faintest twinkle of 
 Bow Bells. 
 
 A concentration camp had just been formed for 
 several cargoes of "black ivory," newly arrived from 
 Guinea, and all attacked with plague. At the same 
 time a numerous squadron of English had arrived, 
 and it may well have been that the archdeacon 
 came as chaplain to the fleet. This Churchman 
 ambulant was, we are told, a man of middle-age, 
 grey, and of great authority amongst his fellows. 2 
 Moreover, he was ** a great preacher and a master 
 
 1 " Un Arcediano de Londres." 
 
 2 "De gran autoridad entre los suyos." 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 153 
 
 of the heresy." 1 The battle raged most furiously, and 
 texts flew fast between the two ; citations were 
 adduced, the Fathers of the Church were quoted and 
 duly twisted as either combatant lost or secured the 
 trick. At last, overcome either by the climate or by 
 the reasoning and the faith of Father Claver, the 
 heretical archdeacon laid down his arms and turned a 
 Christian. Great was the joy in Cartagena of the 
 Indies over the one archdeacon that repented. 
 Solemnly the now repentant heretic was received into 
 the fold. 
 
 Whether he stayed in Cartagena a true son of the 
 Church, or once again returned to London to his 
 heresy and beer, we are not told, for Father Andrade has 
 a knack, just like a storyteller in the Soco of Tangier, 
 of breaking off his narrative at the most interesting 
 point. True, he does not come round for a collection, 
 as do the Moors, before he recommences. Would 
 that he did, for the fate of our good countryman, in 
 this world and the next, leaves one perplexed and 
 even hesitating. 
 
 After long years of patient work amongst the 
 negroes, of daily visitation of the prisons and the 
 hospitals, Father Claver's pilgrimage here on earth 
 drew to a close. His health had suffered much 
 by his unceasing labours in the severe and burning 
 climate of Cartagena. His sufferings were grievous, 
 but he bore them as uncomplainingly as he had 
 borne the attacks of the mosquitoes all his life, for 
 it is said he never brushed one off either from 
 his face or hands. 
 
 1 " Gran predicante y maestro de la heregia." 
 
154 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 On September 8, 1654, being the day of the 
 Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, he died like a true 
 soldier of the Company of Jesus. 
 
 His chiefest miracle was his self-denying life. 
 Well is he called the Apostle of the Negroes, for all 
 his life was given to their cause. The habits of 
 his life were simple, for though he loved it he would 
 listen to no music, and never once would walk upon 
 the walls to see the vessels in the bay. He never 
 went to theatres or to hear " dialogues," no matter 
 how well acted or how good they were, 1 nor would 
 he walk in gardens or see interesting things. He 
 did not think it right even to listen to the news from 
 Spain, a thing, his chronicler observes, " so pleasurable 
 to all who live out in the Indies." To this I too can 
 add my testimony, and can imagine what he must 
 have felt when a great fleet sailed in and anchored off 
 the town. It is not probable that Cartagena will 
 produce another saint of his calibre, so humble and so 
 self-denying or so devoid of pride. As we have seen, 
 he had a short way with a sceptic, and yet I trust 
 that it will not be quite unpleasing to him, this brief 
 memorial of his miracles and work penned by a 
 heretic. 
 
 It pleases me to think that his self-sacrifice and 
 life of toil amongst the negroes was not unrecog- 
 nized, although the recognition came, as recognition 
 generally comes, a little late. 
 
 In 1 85 1 Pius IX. beatified the saint of Cartagena, 
 and, as with such a man the arguments of the 
 
 1 « 
 
 Jamas oy6 comedias 6 dialogos, por buenos que fuesen. 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 155 
 
 Advocatus Diaboli could not have been convincing, 
 his canonization followed in 1888 under Pope 
 Leo XIII. 
 
 Long before that the inhabitants of the " noble 
 and loyal town "* had enshrined him in their hearts. 
 
 1 " Noble y leal ciudad." Most Spanish towns have their titles. 
 Madrid is known as " La muy leal, noble y coronada villa." 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 If the greatest ecclesiastical interest is concentrated 
 round the beautiful old church of San Pedro Claver, 
 there are not wanting other old-world buildings in the 
 town. 1 Now turned to a more pacific use (I think 
 a hard-goods store is situated in its lower storey), the 
 House of the Inquisition is a fine monument of the 
 late Renaissance style. It stands in a beautifully 
 shaded square planted with palm-trees, watered by 
 little rills in their cemented channels. In the middle 
 of the square, upright and graceful on a " llanero " 2 
 horse, his long reins dangling almost to the ground, 
 his right hand pointing to the inaccessible abode 
 of Liberty upon the highest summits of the Andes, a 
 perpetual menace to Inquisitions of all sorts, Bolivar 
 rides. The fine, old house, with its heavy, carved 
 stone mouldings above the door, looks just like many 
 a house of the same period in Spain, especially like 
 
 1 At the time of the desamortization of the convents many 
 churches and convents were secularized, including La Merced, San 
 Francisco, La Vera Cruz, Santa Teresa, San Diego, and San Agustin. 
 The Palace of Justice stands on the site of the convent of La Merced. 
 A friend in Cartagena used to say, quoting a Mexican poet, that by a 
 stroke of irony, the new edifice, stolen from the Church, has " Palacio 
 de Justicia" written on it in letters of gold. "Con refinada malicia 
 dice en letrero dorado, el Palacio de Justicia, y el edificio es robado." 
 
 2 Llanero — that is, from los llanos, the plains. 
 
 156 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 157 
 
 one in the corner of a little plaza in Valencia which 
 might have been its prototype. 
 
 Gone is the Green Cross, the ancient symbol 
 of the Holy Inquisition. No more the inquisitor sits 
 with his secret conclave, the forerunner of the 
 diplomatist of modern days and of the trade-union 
 leader, who, both, like the inquisitor, work secretly, 
 their wonders to perform. Many a relapsed heretic 
 must have secured his eventual entry into paradise by 
 the medium of the rack, in the dark dungeons where 
 now a heap of rusty chains, of iron collars, and 
 the rest of the paraphernalia of the " faith " lie rotting 
 in the dark. One only wonders how the Archdeacon 
 of London escaped being translated to a heavenly 
 archdeaconry through the dark vaults of the old house. 
 All things considered, he was prudent to confess 
 himself a convert, for if, as Henry of Navarre said, 
 " Paris is worth a Mass," life certainly is worth 
 so small a sacrifice as a mere change of Mass. 
 
 Now, with its massive door, its heavy balconies, 
 and red-tiled roof, the Casa de la Inquisicion serves 
 at the same time as a memorial of old times 
 and a good hardware store, and certainly is one 
 of the finest medieval houses yet remaining in the 
 Americas. 
 
 Plaza succeeds to plaza in the curious old town, 
 and but a step divides the Plaza de la Independencia 
 from that of Fernandez de Madrid. In all America 
 there is no square more absolutely Spanish than this. 
 The stuccoed seats would look at home either in 
 Caseriche or Andujar, or any other of the decaying 
 towns, either of Andalucia or Castile. On them 
 
158 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 sit chattering, mulata nurses, whilst their charges play 
 underneath the trees. A swarthy half-Indian soldier 
 saunters up and down smoking a cigarette. The 
 milkman or the water-seller drives his donkey, laden 
 with wooden barrels or with cans, in the deep, 
 sandy streets outside the iron railing. Only the 
 barquillero 1 and the water-seller, with his harsh cry 
 of " Agua-a-a," are absent to complete the picture. 
 The railings of the square appear coeval with the 
 conquest, but then the climate soon exfoliates all iron 
 and makes it look centuries older than in reality it is. 
 Six Cuban palms, their trunks shiny and looking 
 like gigantic bottles, rustle melodiously over the little, 
 square corral, if I may use the word, where is 
 raised the statue of Fernandez de Madrid, one of the 
 Liberators. Of all the titles that mankind has in its 
 power to bestow, I prefer that of Liberator. Defender 
 of the Faith is mouth-filling, but then the doubt 
 creeps in : Which faith is worth defending ? Knight- 
 hood and the O.B.E. are glorious enough distinctions ; 
 the Garter brings no damning merit in its train ; and 
 all the rest, from Duke down to Lord Mayor and 
 Labour Leader, have something comic in their train ; 
 but yet mankind craves for them thirstily. Liberator 
 alone has something in the sound of it that places it 
 
 1 A barquillero is a man who sells barquillas, a kind of crisp 
 wafer. He carries them in a tin vessel like a churn, slung over his 
 shoulder. On the top of the churn is a miniature roulette table. 
 The barquillero is the delight of the children in Spanish towns. 
 Bonafoux, the late Spanish journalist, a man of genius, depicts his 
 meeting with a barquillero at Etretat, who naturally spoke no French. 
 Asked how he had got there, he answered, "Sometimes embarked 
 and sometimes on foot." Where he " embarked " heaven knows. 
 He may have applied the phrase to a train journey. 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 159 
 
 above the realm of comedy. For one thing, the few 
 Liberators that the world has known have generally 
 died poor and despised. Either mankind cannot 
 support the gift of liberty, or else the Liberators 
 have not been fitted to survive in the struggle of the 
 unfit. That fact alone confers on them a patent 
 of nobility. Bolivar, perhaps the greatest man that 
 all America, Spanish or English or Portuguese, has 
 yet produced, died poor and disillusioned in the 
 curious old Spanish country house of San Pedro de 
 Alejandria, a few miles from Santa Marta, just at the 
 foot of the Andes that he had crossed so many times 
 during his struggles to emancipate his countrymen. 
 General San Martin was laid to rest in Boulogne, far 
 from his exploits ; and so of all the rest, with the 
 exception of Washington, who doubtless would have 
 shared the fate of his compeers had not he voluntarily 
 gone into the seclusion of his Virginian home. Thus 
 it is pleasing to reflect that the man whose marble 
 effigy stands in the middle of the little square that 
 bears his name, lived to a hundred years of age, loved 
 and respected to the end. It may be that as Fernandez 
 de Madrid was not a soldier, he was immune from 
 that ferocious jealousy that arms mankind against 
 its heroes in the field. Still, from the first he bore 
 an important part in the long struggle against 
 Spain, that raged more furiously both in Colombia 
 and Venezuela than anywhere throughout the 
 continent. 
 
 Half-naked negro children play round the little 
 railing that surrounds the statue, and probably of all 
 the lounging population that in the evening, when 
 
160 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 the sea breeze sets in, saunters about the plaza, only 
 a moiety have heard the Liberator's name. 
 
 The various plazas, green and shady, form as it 
 were a series of oases among the piles of low-browed 
 houses, with their overhanging eaves, iron-studded 
 doors and balconies, with windows at whose bars 
 stand lovers whispering just as they do in Spain. 
 Most of the streets run out on one side to the sea 
 through deep cuts in the walls, and on the other to a 
 cano — that is, a backwater — buried in mangrove-trees. 
 Only two hundred miles or so away Colon and 
 Panama, now modern towns and " sanitated," enjoy 
 good drainage, heavy taxation, a fine supply of water, 
 with modern lighting, prostitution at the corners of 
 the streets at night, freedom from mosquitoes, police- 
 men, and all the benefits of what is pleasantly called 
 modern civilization, and have become health resorts 
 for the wealthy of New York during the winter 
 months. 
 
 In Cartagena nothing of all this exists. Mos- 
 quitoes, after nightfall, render night hideous. The 
 mangrove swamps that stretch about the town on 
 every side have not been treated with petroleum, as 
 in Colon and Panama. Water, though good, is not 
 abundant, drainage so primitive as to be practically 
 of no avail. Yet, such is the way of Nature, and so 
 great her absolute disdain of man and all his fumbling, 
 that Cartagena is at least as healthy as the two 
 Isthmian towns. Wandering about the streets of 
 Cartagena one comes at unexpected corners upon 
 long, sloping paths that lead out on the walls, 
 constructed, I suppose, in bygone days for the move- 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 161 
 
 ment of artillery and troops. To-day a motor-car 
 glides up them easily, and you emerge from the heat 
 of the town, after the struggle of the day is over, when 
 the sea breeze sets in, into a different world. The 
 palm-trees bend under the wind, the sea is ruffled, and 
 a pinkish haze envelops everything. The avenues 
 that lead on one side up to the suburb of Manga, 
 and on the other to El Cabrero, are planted with the 
 Ponctana Regia, whose bunches of bright scarlet 
 flowers, two feet in length, are full of fireflies, and 
 the white villas, buried in the thickets of bananas, 
 gleam out behind their leaves. Everyone breathes 
 afresh, and motors steal about noiselessly upon the 
 sandy roads. The little church at El Cabrero, built 
 to commemorate President Nunez, a son of Cartagena, 
 looks so like a mosque in the fast falling light, one 
 waits involuntarily for the Call to Prayer when walk- 
 ing on the walls. 
 
 A mile or two away the hill crowned by the 
 Convent of La Popa takes on a look as of Vesuvius, 
 conelike and isolated. Then is the time to drive out 
 to La Boca Grande and take whatever air is to be 
 found. Passing through the negro quarter, not much 
 unlike a village near Accra or Jella-Coffee, with its 
 long streets of shanties where naked negro children 
 play with mangy dogs, their parents sitting at their 
 doors with chairs well tilted back, you come out on 
 a little plain. Palm-trees surround it, and lagoons 
 bisect it here and there. In a depression in the 
 ground all the tin pots and cans of Cartagena are 
 thrown out, and in them lizards innumerable have 
 made their lairs. Vessels for domestic use are there 
 
 ii 
 
1 62 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 by hundreds, so that the place may well be styled the 
 valley of the jordans, to use a Georgian phrase. 
 
 After this interlude, that brings back civilization so 
 vividly before one's eyes, the road towards La Boca 
 Grande runs between palm woods, till it comes out 
 upon the shore. Before emerging from the woods 
 the palm-trees disappear, and on the sandhills clumps 
 of icaco bushes, called in Colombia "uvas de playa," 
 form a thick underwood. Among them negresses sit 
 patiently waiting for holes dug in the sand, known as 
 " cacimbas," to fill with drinking water. Though 
 dug often but fifty feet away from the salt water, they 
 are always fresh. Good water in the tropics has an 
 irresistible charm about it, and thirst is permanent, 
 so that when a negro girl advances with a gourd and 
 offers it, fanning herself with a piece of palm leaf, you 
 drink, and if you do not necessarily admire — " Drink 
 and admire," so runs the legend on the fountain in 
 Marrakesh 1 — you yet are grateful and reflect how many 
 times the conquerors must have drunk thankfully 
 at the same water-holes. The land that forms a 
 natural breakwater to the bay runs out in a long spit. 
 On one side is a ruined castle with its walls and 
 counterscarps. Upon the other an inimitable view of 
 Cartagena ; but a Cartagena sublimated and softened 
 in the sea haze. The walls and churches, castles, and 
 low, flat houses, rising tier by tier, are blended into an 
 harmonious whole ; the fringe of palm-trees looks 
 mysterious in the failing light ; the city, as by degrees 
 the darkness thickens and the moon rises, lies out 
 enchanted and enchanting, as if cut out of cardboard, 
 1 " Shrab-u-shuf." 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 163 
 
 in the blue, tropic night. No sound is heard but the 
 caressing swishing of the waves falling on the beach, 
 and, as the soft breeze brings new life and freshness to 
 the world, you feel inclined to stay for ever listening 
 to the sea and probably would do so were it not for 
 the mosquitos' warning, shrill and menacing. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 Nothing could well be more unlike the steamers of 
 the Great White Fleet, as the Americans delight to 
 call the fruit boats that ply between New York and 
 Santa Marta, taking bananas from Puerto Limon, 
 Jamaica, and the other ports of the Caribbean Sea, 
 than the old Lancha Bufalo. 
 
 On the one side all modern luxury : fans, ice, and 
 negro servants, Maimey and Belle and Sadey in their 
 smart clothes from Little Old Noo York, and 
 millionaires passing the winter in the West Indies, 
 contemptuous of everyone who is not rich. Humanity 
 with them commences at the million (dollars), just as 
 in Austria in the old days it started with the baron : 
 the rest are pawns. Perhaps when all is said the 
 " baron " was nearer to a human being, in manner 
 and sympathy, than is the dollar-gatherer. Morals, of 
 course, are as mankind chooses to see them, and in 
 this respect I fancy that the difference between the 
 types is small. On board the fruit boats all was 
 republican and democratic, after the fashion of the 
 copybook headings rife in North America. In 
 reality nothing was farther from democracy, just as is 
 the case in New York, Chicago, or any other city of 
 the States. 
 
 164 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 165 
 
 The Lancha Bufa/o, though in design she looked 
 like an old barge, was driven by a wheezy motor- 
 engine. So progress and the past seemed to have 
 kissed each other on the crank vessel, after the 
 fashion of mercy and of truth, though with as scant 
 results. 
 
 Her passengers were certainly sons apart from 
 those of the fruit boats in aspect and in their point 
 of view. Neither more merciful nor just than were 
 their brethren in the Lord of the more ambitious 
 craft, they yet were much more human, kindly, and 
 far less hypocritical. Good manners kept them men, 
 whilst not removing them too far from the other 
 animals that tread the earth and breathe the air with 
 us, and without whose co-operation in the Creator's 
 scheme of things we should soon cease to be. 
 
 Through a hole roughly cut in the old city walls 
 you passed on to a wharf, ragged and dirty and 
 sweltering in the sun. 
 
 On it was crowded a heterogeneous mass of people 
 sufficient to have filled the Lancha Bufa/o a hundred 
 times or more if they had all been passengers. 
 However, in Colombia, as in Spain, a railway-station 
 or a station platform or a steamer wharf is a sort of 
 agora on which as many of the population as can find 
 room upon it delight to loiter and to criticize, to pass 
 the time of day, or bid farewell to friends in tearful 
 accents, however short the voyage. It is too hot in 
 Cartagena for girls of the lower middle classes to 
 stand about as they do at a southern Spanish railway- 
 station, their faces white with powder, and carnations 
 in their hair. Moreover, in old-fashioned towns such as 
 
1 66 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 Cartagena, girls do not go about alone. No water-seller, 
 as in the East and Spain, slips in and out amongst the 
 crowd. Such customs are for hot, but not for torrid 
 countries, at least in the Americas. It is too hot for 
 fruit-sellers at the time the Lancha Bufalo used to put 
 out to sea. Faith in the stability of institutions in the 
 " loyal and noble " town of Cartagena tells me she 
 still casts off at three o'clock precisely, at the hottest 
 hour of the whole torrid day. 
 
 The Lancha Bufalo boasted two cabins, mere 
 wooden boxes with a framework for a bed, and a 
 rusty, tin-enamelled washing-basin stuck in a shaky 
 stand. Such as they were, they represented luxury 
 and were usually engaged " with anticipation/' as runs 
 the Spanish phrase. Once inside them you could lay 
 the bedding, without which no one leaves his house 
 throughout Colombia, upon the wooden frame. 
 The bedding was a simple matter that everyone could 
 easily take up and walk with, consisting of a piece of 
 matting, 1 a pillow, blanket, and a mosquito curtain. 
 This with your saddle gear and " gripsack " made a 
 tolerable bed. From this coign of luxury and comfort 
 you could survey the deck of the little vessel piled 
 high with luggage, and with a moving mass of 
 people, a complete microcosm of the republic. The 
 crew were negroes from Jamaica, the engineer a 
 Dutchman from Curacao, the captain a Colombian 
 who I think had been a storekeeper and an apothecary, 
 
 1 The piece of matting, six feet by three, was Japanese, and after 
 paying freight and customs from Japan, was sold, I presume at a 
 profit, for two dollars (gold) in Cartagena. The same matting made 
 in the country, though more durable and of better design, cost five or 
 six dollars. 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 167 
 
 before he went down to the sea in ships. Just as in 
 the accounts of the early Spanish navigators, the pilot 
 was the chief man on the vessel, for it is doubtful if 
 anyone but he had but the most elementary ideas of 
 seamanship. Little by little, as the Bufalo moved out 
 and met the invigorating breeze that about four 
 o'clock generally springs up from the sea on the 
 Colombian coast, the heterogeneous mass of passengers 
 evolved from a kaleidoscopic mass of white-clothed 
 men, of draggled women, all mixed up with bales 
 and packages upon the little deck, into its component 
 parts. Then individuals, such as the portly Syrian 
 merchant going to Quibdo, the cattleman from the 
 Sinii, with his tight linen trousers and his flat hat made 
 of dark-coloured straw, his right hand carried with the 
 palm turned out and thumb held upwards from 
 constant lassoing, contrasted strangely with the smart 
 Colombian officer in his spotless, white duck uniform. 
 All these wore the large round spectacles made of cellu- 
 loid to look like tortoise-shell, with yellowish glasses, 
 that every American, and hence most of the Colom- 
 bians, who chiefly have been educated in the States, 
 affect upon a voyage. In the sixteenth century, in 
 Spain, those kind of spectacles were called " quevedos," 
 after the poet of that name, whose effigy (spectacles 
 and all) Velazquez has preserved for us in his realistic 
 paint. The effect when many of these spectacled 
 citizens is seen 'at the same time resembles that of an 
 assemblage of owls, all blinking in the sun. 
 
 We passed into a narrow passage between 
 mangrove swamps, called in Colombia a " cano," and 
 took on board some sort of cargo at a little place 
 
1 68 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 called Pasacaballos, a negro village, as African in its 
 appearance as if it had been on the Niger or the oil 
 rivers. Why the conquistadores, for it was they 
 who named the place, so called it, it is difficult to 
 understand. A long experience in passing horses 
 across rivers has always made me look for a place where 
 the animals can enter and can leave the water upon 
 solid ground. Certainly in the little open space 
 before the huts — perhaps the natives dignify it under 
 the title of a " plaza " — the sand is hard enough. 
 Upon the other side there is nothing but a swamp. 
 In countries like Colombia there is a tendency to date 
 all history from the year of independence, and thus 
 most interesting place-names become quite meaning- 
 less, sometimes impossible to explain. 1 Luckily the 
 contemporary historians of the conquest were minute 
 in all they chronicled, and a search in their pages 
 often clears up points long forgotten and fallen into 
 neglect. Spanish Americans have retained much of 
 their far-away Arabian ancestors, who, of all men, 
 soonest forget what happened yesterday. 
 
 We took in a few bales and packages wrapped in 
 banana leaves, and watched a negro bathing his horse, 
 a job that he performed standing stark-naked like a 
 statue cast in bronze, and pouring water with a calabash 
 over the horse's back. The horse appeared to like it, 
 for he stood quietly enough, and for the negro the 
 fact that all the passengers were looking at him not 
 
 1 Thus names such as " los ballesteros " (the crossbowmen), " frayle 
 muerto" (the dead friar), "Fray Bentos " (the name of an anchorite), 
 and many others, have lost their original significance; most of them 
 sprang out of some incident of the conquest. 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 169 
 
 twenty yards away, apparently was just as little in- 
 convenience to him as it would have been centuries 
 ago to his wild ancestors upon the Guinea Coast or 
 in the Cameroons. 
 
 Dinner was served upon the deck, the captain, so 
 to speak, in the chair, perspiring, but polite, eager to 
 talk what he called " American," having " learned him 
 in the college to Philadelphia, where I pass a year." 
 
 As he essayed this idiom, which in his mouth 
 became a sort of pidgin-English, raucous and shotted 
 plentifully with slang, he became an ordinary, not to 
 say vulgar specimen, of a commonplace American, but 
 changed at once into a courteous, well-bred Colombian, 
 in his own native speech. After a meal of rice and 
 beef; of plantains stewed and roasted, boiled and raw ; of 
 Indian corn bread called " bollo," x baked in banana 
 leaves, viscous and white ; of excellent black coffee, and 
 fruits preserved in syrups, and after a contemplative 
 smoke, watching the Southern stars, each one retired 
 to find a sleeping-place. 
 
 Some lay down on their blankets behind the deck- 
 house, others in the boat, 2 whilst we retired to what I 
 think were called " los camarotes de preferencia," 
 thinking that we should rest. By this time the 
 Bufalo had passed the great, land-locked lagoon that 
 stretches out after the cano, and got into the open sea. 
 It was a night such as exists but in those latitudes, 
 serene and beautiful, with every star mirrored in the 
 
 1 See Chapter III. 
 
 2 There was only one, and it was half full of vegetables. For 
 about seventy passengers there were three or four lifebelts, so that in 
 case of accidents, even if the sharks were left out of the reckoning, 
 the calling, if not the election, of most of us would have been assured. 
 
170 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 water and reflected back as in a looking-glass. The 
 vessel left a golden trail behind her in the soft 
 moonlight, and from the land there came a breeze 
 laden with the scent of tropic vegetation. Such nights 
 the early navigators must have known, and probably 
 upon the fateful second watch, when from La Pintas 
 shrouds the sailor * saw the light on Guanahani, it was 
 iust as entrancing and as beautiful. 
 
 Nothing is permanent in life, and weather still 
 less permanent upon the Caribbean Sea. Expecting 
 to pass several hours at rest, I closed the door of my 
 " preference cabin," and after having placed my 
 pillow in the hollow between the cantle and the horn 
 of the high-peaked saddle, soon fell asleep. It was 
 not destined I should sleep for long, for as we neared 
 the Point of Tigua, where the old Santa Barbara 2, 
 so nearly left her rotten timbers and her rusty engines, 
 a sea sprang up so fierce and short, that except once, 
 upon a trip down the Gulf of Mexico from the 
 mouth of the Achafalaya to Matamoros, I never saw 
 the like. The first buck (so to speak) got my head 
 clear of the saddle, and then for two long hours the 
 Bufalo knocked about furiously. How the men 
 in the engine-room stuck to their duty is a marvel to 
 me, and how the wretched passengers upon the deck 
 were not all washed away, a greater marvel. As for 
 myself, when after getting round the point the sea 
 as suddenly went down, the moon shone out, the 
 
 1 Some of the early historians, and I think Pedro Martir de 
 Angleria amongst them, say that Columbus himself first descried the 
 coast. I hope it was so, for the remembrance of it must have made 
 his chains easier to bear in after years. » 
 
 2 See Preface. 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 171 
 
 stars again beamed down, sending long shafts of light 
 into the tranquil sea, I was as bruised and sore as I 
 have ever been on getting off a " bronco," 1 or emerging 
 from a football scrimmage in my youth. The vessel 
 doubled a little headland, and in a few minutes 
 dropped her anchor in a harbour that in the moon- 
 light looked as if it was a port in some enchanted 
 archipelago in the South Seas. Only the outline 
 of a scarce visible and sleeping town was to be seen, 
 set in a grove of palms. Long did the Bufalo 
 scream on her whistle fruitlessly. Nothing was 
 stirring. Suddenly, just as the moon began to set, an 
 hour or two before the dawn, two long, dug-out 
 canoes appeared as it were from nowhere, and paddled 
 alongside. A gentle but sufficient swell was rolling 
 shoreward, and in it the long, crank canoes rose and 
 fell gently, looking like gigantic fish. Carefully, in 
 the increasing darkness, we piled our saddles in one of 
 them, and, holding gingerly to each side of the canoe, 
 set off toward the shore. It seemed a desperately long 
 way off, and the huge, black, triangular fins that rose 
 occasionally close to the gunwale were not exactly 
 reassuring to people not accustomed to canoes. 
 
 The paddlers now and then would point to one of 
 the great fish as it turned up a little, its belly shining 
 silvery in the pale starlight, and remark cheerfully, 
 " That is a tiger ; he always hangs about us as we go 
 to and fro." After ten minutes or a quarter of an 
 hour that felt three times as long, a broken pier 
 
 1 Bronco=wild horse. The word in Spanish means "rough." 
 It is usually spelled by Englishmen and Americans " broncho," for 
 reasons known (perhaps) to themselves. 
 
172 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 seemed to rise suddenly out of the sea. The steps 
 that led down to the water were all broken, covered 
 with seaweed, and slippery as glass. To negotiate 
 a landing was a feat of equilibrium, rendered exciting 
 by the thought that, though unseen, the " tiger " was 
 probably upon the watch. Once on the surface of 
 the pier, the air felt like a furnace, and the short 
 distance, two hundred yards or so, carrying one's 
 saddle in the dark, stepping over broken planks — for 
 the pier had certainly never been repaired since it was 
 built — bathed one in perspiration, so that our entry to 
 the historic city of Tolu, the erstwhile capital of the 
 old Spanish settlement, was an experience I like 
 to think of, but should not care to have to undergo 
 again. 
 
 Except the paddlers and a half Indian, dressed 
 in white, but with a cap bound with gold lace 
 to show he was the captain of the port, all the world 
 was asleep. We beat upon the door of the locked-up 
 customs-house, eager to pay to the Colombian Caesar, 
 whatever might be due. Then, finding all our efforts 
 vain, we crossed the wide, sandy street to a wooden 
 edifice labelled " Hotel," and finding no response from 
 anyone, no matter how we knocked, untied our beds 
 and saddles, hitched our mosquito curtains to the 
 veranda posts, and stretched ourselves upon the floor. 
 I remember looking for a little at the fireflies flitting 
 about the bushes, and listening to a monkey roaring 
 in the woods that lie all around the town, and then 
 waking as it seemed directly, to find the sun shining 
 upon my face, and a grave Indian leaning against the 
 railing of the veranda watching me silently. As 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 173 
 
 I awoke he took his hat off, and after long and 
 courteous salutations, in which he asked me how 
 I had passed the night, and how I liked Tolu, he 
 said Don Julian Patron (to whom I had a letter) was 
 expecting us, and that he hoped we should honour 
 his poor dwelling that was quite at our service, 
 during our sojourn in the town. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 The ancient and hereditary house of Don Julian 
 Patron was seated commodiously, just at the corner 
 of the plaza of the town. One of those solid, Spanish 
 houses, so frequent in Colombian towns, it had a sort 
 of old-world dignity. Not that it displayed any 
 special architectural features, but it had that air of 
 being built for somebody, and not run up for anyone 
 to live in, that characterizes all Spanish houses in 
 America. It followed the almost universal plan of 
 such kind of houses, being low and long, with lengths 
 of wall that gave it somehow a conventual air. The 
 patio led into a garden, and under a sort of loggia, 
 sitting in his hammock drinking the strong black 
 coffee sweetened with "panela," 1 that all the world 
 drinks in Colombia, we found Don Julian waiting to 
 welcome us. He rose and offered us his house, just 
 glancing at the letter we had brought to see the 
 signature. " Anyone that my good friend Don 
 Eustaquio commends to me, is welcome." He clapped 
 his hands and a little negro girl appeared with coffee 
 
 1 Panela is unrefined sugar, and is used in most of the re- 
 publics under varying names. The Brazilians call it " rapadura " 
 and the Mexicans "pilon." It is usually done up in maize or 
 banana leaves in a sort of cake. In summer, melted in water, it 
 makes an excellent " refresco." 
 
 174 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 175 
 
 and sweet cakes, exactly like the cake the Moors offer 
 you on similar occasions in Morocco, upon a silver 
 tray. 
 
 My host was not a common-looking man. His 
 manners, though off-hand, were courteous and befitting 
 to a man who evidently passed his life on horseback, 
 for, like the patriarchs of old, his flocks and herds 
 were his chief source of revenue and pride. Sturdy 
 and strongly built, his olive-coloured face tanned a 
 rich brown by sun and weather, his legs a little bowed 
 with riding, his thick, grey hair a perfect fell, but 
 shortly cropped upon his neck, he wanted but a 
 helmet on his head to look a veritable conquistador. 
 His hands were muscular and brown, his feet small 
 and well shaped, but rather square, as is so often seen 
 in men of Spanish blood. His manner, though 
 courteous in the extreme, was that of one who 
 thought himself the equal of any man on earth (not 
 his superior), and you felt his courtesy sprang from 
 the right motive of all courtesy — his innate self- 
 respect. Long did we talk on things and others, as 
 the saying goes, the war and all that it had brought 
 into the world and taken out of it, as we sat in our 
 hammocks, keeping them swinging with one toe, and 
 drinking coffee, as we whiled the time away till break- 
 fast should be brought. When it was announced it 
 appeared that several notables had been asked to do 
 us honour, and to satisfy their curiosity no doubt, for 
 in the city of Tolu foreigners are not an everyday 
 occurrence, and more especially when they appear 
 with even such a slight, official stamp as I then 
 happened to possess. In South America, just as in 
 
176 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 the East, talents, even wealth itself, to which in 
 Europe we all bow the knee, are held but slightly in 
 comparison with governmental rank. That opens 
 every door to the possessor of it, and smooths all 
 difficulties, or a good many of them. 
 
 Our talk ran not on governmental matters, but 
 luckily upon more serious things — the price of cattle, 
 the best breeds with which to cross the native stock, 
 and the best ports from which to ship the produce of 
 the packing-house, that all the guests had heard the 
 British Government was going to erect. As all the 
 other guests were cattle-owners, except an educated 
 young Italian, who had drifted to the town and set 
 up as a land-surveyor, and knew as little about cattle- 
 raising as the others knew about his mystery, he 
 naturally felt at sea, and after trying vainly to 
 comprehend our jargon about Herefords and Angus, 
 Shorthorns and Zebus, sat silent smoking, now and 
 then muttering " barbari " in an undertone. 
 
 Tolu does not afford much scope for sightseeing, 
 so after breakfast all retired to pass the siesta in their 
 hammocks till it was cool enough to start upon our 
 ride, twelve miles or so along the beach, to see a little 
 port from which in former days cattle had been shipped 
 to the West Indies and the United States. Our ride 
 lay along the seacoast bordered by palm-trees, and 
 now and then by jungle, so thick it seemed a wall of 
 vegetation. Numberless little streams ran from the 
 woods down to the beach, all forming quicksands in 
 which the horses sank up to their hocks, and every 
 rivulet had its bar in miniature, causing a little surf, 
 with tiny rollers, setting in regularly towards the 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 177 
 
 shore. Above the jungle rose high trees, covered 
 with purple, yellow, or red flowers, whilst the 
 lianas, clasping them like ivy in their folds, 
 struggled towards the light and crowned the trees 
 with bunches of great blossoms, so that it was not 
 easy to make out whether the flowers sprang from 
 the tree or from the parasite. We followed a deep 
 bay, so that although in an hour's riding we saw the 
 point towards which we travelled, sunset was near 
 before we passed the Punta de Piedras and found 
 ourselves inside a smaller bay, sheltered by headlands 
 that made it almost land-locked and calm as a lagoon. 
 Don Julian, who had been riding upright and grave as 
 a statue, suddenly put his horse into a fast pace, and 
 pointing with his whip to a low house buried in 
 coco-palms, said, "That is ' La Hacienda de la Punta 
 de la Madre de Dios,' my house and yours. Spur on 
 and let us drink some cool milk from the green 
 ccco-nuts before the sun has set." 
 
 His lively little grey struck into such a furious 
 " sobre-paso " * that we had to gallop to keep beside 
 him, and with the heat and the spray from the surf, 
 beside which we rode so closely that sometimes it 
 washed up nearly to the horses' knees, we might as 
 well have plunged into the sea. A last stream had to 
 be negotiated before we reached the house. Don 
 
 1 The sobre-paso is an artificial gait that used to be known to 
 the horsemen of the Middle Ages as the over-pace. In it the horse 
 trots with the hind legs and gallops with the fore. It is extremely 
 easy, and Don Juan's grey could easily make nine miles an hour at it 
 and keep it up all day. All the horses of Colombia, Costa Rica, and 
 generally throughout Central America and the north of South 
 America, are trained either to it or one of the other various artificial 
 gaits. 
 
 12 
 
178 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 Julian went first, his heavy mule spurs playing 
 ceaselessly upon his horse's flanks, for pacers always 
 must be kept up to their pace, to show the 
 ford. Luckily it was not very deep, and with a 
 struggle through the quicksand on the far side we 
 emerged upon hard ground. A quarter of a mile 
 away stood the hacienda house. Riding up to the 
 door, we found the occupant stretched in his 
 hammock, from which he got up lazily, and, stretch- 
 ing out his hand, bid his employer welcome, and 
 called up several peons to take our horses. Then 
 with the air of a man ordering a cocktail, he said, 
 " You will drink a coco-nut or two after your 
 ride." 
 
 An Indian boy, at a signal from him, walked 
 quickly up a tall palm-tree, with as little effort as if 
 he had been going up a stair, and threw some nuts 
 down on the sand. One of the peons cut them open 
 on his hand, a conjuring trick that he performed with 
 a machete nearly three feet in length. They were 
 as cool as if they had been grown under a jungle, and 
 not been baking all the day under a tropic sun. We 
 had passed no other house upon the ride of twelve or 
 thirteen miles, and the hacienda, just at the point of 
 the deep bay, buried in palm woods, and not fifty 
 yards from the seashore, had an air of being the only 
 human habitation in the world, it was so silent and 
 remote. Nothing but sand and palm-trees were to be 
 seen upon the landward side, with the exception of 
 a little mangrove swamp just at the river's mouth. 
 To seaward nothing but a calm, deep-purple sea, with 
 the stars mirrored in it, and not a sail in sight. A 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 179 
 
 tiger 1 snarled in the jungle, half a mile away. His 
 snarling sounded just like the noises that cats make 
 in London squares. The peons said they heard him 
 sharpening his claws upon a tree. This may have 
 been so, for their ears are quicker far than those of 
 men attuned to motor horns and factory buzzers. I 
 could not hear him, perhaps for lack of faith. What 
 I did hear was the caressing rhythm of the surf as it 
 washed gently on the sand. There were too many 
 sharks to bathe ; but luckily the nearness to the sea 
 kept off mosquitos, and as the light waned rapidly, 
 the lonely house, shrouded in darkness, seemed to lie 
 guarded by the palm-trees against the perils of the 
 night. 
 
 For hours we sat and talked, " taking the cool " ; 2 
 but what we talked about I do not quite forget, but 
 disremember. I fancy, as is usual in such conversa- 
 tions in such countries, that the talk ran, not on the 
 war, or about Paris, London, or New York. Rather 
 it turned upon Colombia, Bogota, the Magdalena 
 River, the rolling plains beyond the Andes that 
 stretch along the Rio Meta down to the Orinoco; on 
 snakes and boa-constrictors, feats with the lazo, and 
 most of all on horses and the enormous distance that 
 they had covered in a day. When men from cities 
 talk with those who dwell nearer to nature round the 
 camp fire, the less sophisticated always seem to have 
 much more to say, for they speak unreservedly of the 
 daily incidents of their lives, whereas the city dwellers 
 often have no incidents worth mentioning to talk 
 about. That which enthrals us in the realms of the 
 1 Jaguar. 2 " Tomando el fresco." 
 
180 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 electric light ; in streets that reek of petrol and of 
 horse-dung ; our nice dissections of our motives ; the 
 why and wherefore and the details of the last divorce 
 case ; the literary style of so-and-so ; whether a painter 
 should set down that which he sees, or merely cubes 
 of what he sees ; the sordid strife of politics ; and all 
 the infinite and intricate coil of life in cities — become 
 as vapid as a fashionable revue, out on the prairies, 
 in the virgin forests, or on the mountain trail. 
 Not only could the men who listen not comprehend 
 it, but the strayed man of culture could not for very 
 shame talk of futilities to men whose lives are passed 
 in action and in the face of facts. 
 
 So it chanced at the lone hacienda by the 
 Caribbean Sea. We wandered with the conquerors 
 up the Magdalena River, toiled with them in the 
 swamps, and froze upon the passes of the Andes upon 
 the road to Bogota. It seemed as natural to talk of 
 these things as it does in Rome to talk about the 
 Caesars. Bolivar, the most interesting man the 
 Americas have yet produced, and his fantastic life and 
 strange career appeared quite natural told by Don 
 Julian Patron. The various revolutions, so bewilder- 
 ing to Europeans, became as clear as noonday, and 
 when related by the men who had taken part in them, 
 ranged one involuntarily on one side or the other, and 
 made one hang upon adventures of some unknown 
 general or another as if his victims had been told in 
 thousands instead of but a miserable poor score or two. 
 As we talked on, great vampire bats occasionally sailed 
 by as noiselessly as barn-owls, and howling monkeys 
 serenaded us, or perhaps held a meeting on their 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 181 
 
 political affairs. No matter how late Colombians 
 sit talking overnight, at sunrise everybody is astir. 
 
 The little port of Cobenas — destined, no doubt, 
 one day to be important, for ports are few between 
 Cartagena and the Isthmus — is just the place where in 
 old days a slaver might have come into, discharged 
 her cargo and got to sea again with not a soul to say a 
 word. Situated as it is, between the two points that 
 stretch out into the sea, and deeply indented, it 
 makes a sort of horseshoe, and is sheltered against all 
 winds except the north. This wind blows for six 
 weeks during the year, and for the remaining time 
 Cobenas is perfectly secure. The tide goes out only 
 about six feet, so that deep water comes almost to 
 the shore. A little pier of wood runs out a hundred 
 yards into the sea. Two hundred yards still farther 
 out the water deepens to about thirty feet. 
 
 Nothing more primitive in the way of loading 
 up a vessel can be seen, except, perhaps, in some of the 
 Pacific Islands or the Arabian coast. At the pier- 
 head there is a crush for cattle constructed of bamboos. 
 The vessel loading lays out a warp, which is made 
 fast around a palm-tree to keep her steady. The 
 cattle that have come straight from the pastures, not 
 a mile away, are driven down the pier aboard the 
 ship. If one falls overboard he swims ashore and 
 joins the herd again. The steers stand on the 
 beach, " held back," as the phrase goes, by mounted 
 herdsmen, and the whole scene is wild and curious, 
 calling up memories of the buccaneers, who prob- 
 ably often shipped cattle at this very port to take 
 to Cuba or farther up the Main to some of their safe 
 
1 82 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 hiding-places, 1 to salt them down or dry their meat on 
 the boucan, from whence they took their name. 
 
 Everything conjoins to make Cobefias an ideal 
 cattle port. The shores of the bay are sandy, and, 
 except the mangrove swamp in miniature at the 
 little river's mouth, no mangroves grow to block the 
 pathway to the beach. Except when the north wind 
 blows right on the shore there is no surf, and there 
 appears to be no coral reef to set up rollers. Even if 
 it exists, the water deepens so rapidly that it would 
 have little effect at such a depth upon the surface of 
 the waves. Its only rival in the Gulf of Morrosquillo 
 is Cispata; 2 this port, only nine miles farther to the 
 north, is larger, and is sheltered from most winds, 
 but vessels have to lie much farther out, and the 
 savannahs are several miles away, and round the 
 port there is a mangrove swamp. At both the little 
 ports the roads to the interior are good — that is, 
 for Colombia — in the dry season of the year. In 
 winter — that is, the rainy season — nearly all roads in 
 the republic become mere quagmires, into which 
 horses and mules struggle along, up to the knees in 
 mud. Water is plentiful close to Cobenas, and the old 
 well in the hacienda house, sunk probably by the 
 Spaniards before the independence, is at least ten feet 
 deep. 
 
 As day broke at the hospitable hacienda of Don 
 Julian Patron, the sun slowly dispersed the mist that 
 
 1 I was not present when cattle were being shipped at Cobenas, 
 but have often seen them shipped under similar conditions at ports on 
 the Uruguay and the Parana. 
 
 2 See Introduction. 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 183 
 
 wrapped the palm-wood as in a seething cauldron, 
 blotting out the trunks and setting all the feathery 
 tops afloat in a great, silent sea. Then by degrees it 
 won its perennial victory over the mist that rises from 
 the sea and from the sun-scorched ground. Slowly the 
 veil that overhung the woods was lifted and revealed 
 Tolu twelve miles away, with all the houses shining 
 in the sun, and the wet roofs reflecting back its rays 
 like sheets of looking-glass. The Gulf of Morros- 
 quillo, sailless and dark as purple, unruffled by the 
 slightest breeze, unbroken, but where here and there 
 a shoal of flying fish sent up a shower of diamonds as 
 they flashed into the sun for the brief moment of 
 their baulked existence in the air. Humming-birds 
 hung poised above the flowers, macaws sailed past 
 uttering their raucous cry, white ibises stood fishing 
 by the little river's bank, and the whole world braced 
 itself for its daily battle with the sun. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 At sunrise we left the hacienda, the heavy dew 
 dropping off the eaves of the house like rain, and 
 the world feeling fresh and young. We struck into 
 the palm-wood, passed a complicated system of corrals, 
 rode about a quarter of a mile, and came to a high 
 gate. Passing through it, it then appeared the 
 palm-wood that had seemed a forest was but a 
 fringe, for in a hundred yards or so we found 
 ourselves in quite a different world. On every 
 side a rolling plain stretched out, but a plain set 
 with bushy thickets here and there, and here and 
 there with clumps of noble forest trees, most of 
 them at that season of the year great pyramids of 
 flowers. When you looked closer at the country 
 you saw it was an artificial plain, and that originally 
 it had been a virgin forest, cleared by fire and sown 
 with artificial grasses. 
 
 Here and there blackened and decaying stumps 
 stood up amongst the grass, looking like strange 
 animals in that sea of green. Though it had not 
 rained for months, and all the ground was baked and 
 parched, with gaping cracks wide enough to take 
 a horse's foot in them, yawning on every side, and all 
 the places that had been swamps in winter, as it were 
 
 184 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 185 
 
 frozen by the sun into a series of little pits that 
 had been footmarks poached by cattle in the mud, 
 the planted grasses, Para and Guinea, were still 
 quite green and fresh. Hundreds of cattle stood 
 about the parklike scenery, some grazing and some 
 sheltering from the sun under the forest trees. 
 These trees, bongos and ceibas for the most part, 
 were tenanted by colonies of red, howling monkeys, 
 locally called araguatos, 1 and by whole flocks of 
 parrots and macaws. The trees themselves had 
 once formed part of the primeval forests, and had 
 been left to serve as shelters and as the rallying-points 
 for cattle, whilst wells in many instances had been dug 
 beneath their shade. 
 
 The whole scene gave the impression of great 
 antiquity, and it required but little imagination to 
 fancy that the groups of cattle were antediluvian 
 animals, especially as many of the beasts were of the 
 curious, humped breed known as zebus, and grew to 
 a great size. To make the illusion more complete, 
 one or two armadillos scuttled to their holes, and 
 great iguanas, three or four feet long, ran swiftly 
 through the grass. 
 
 As we rode through the plain, every now and 
 then a " vaquero " would come out from behind 
 a clump of bush, so that at last we had a bodyguard 
 behind us who watched our every movement without 
 apparently looking at us in the least. Somehow one 
 felt just as one feels on entering a Moorish house in 
 Morocco or Algeria, where, though no one is seen, 
 the presence of scrutinizing eyes peering through 
 
 1 Si mi a ursina. 
 
1 86 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 crevices and under lifted blinds, makes itself felt 
 magnetically between your shoulders and sends a 
 shiver down the back. The difference was that now 
 and then in Africa a stifled laugh makes you in- 
 voluntarily turn your head. I will not say the 
 Colombian vaqueros could not laugh ; but their 
 brown faces, looking as if cut out of wood, suggested 
 anything but laughter. In fact, most people who 
 pass long days upon the plains, whether in Colombia 
 or elsewhere, alone, exposed to sun and wind, to rain 
 and cold and heat, laugh little, and when they do, 
 there is something almost sinister that seems to mingle 
 with their mirth. Upon the other hand, their 
 manners were most courteous, and all of them saluted 
 Don Julian Patron with natural assurance and with 
 ease. Nothing escaped their observation, for if a 
 horse happened to start, and I was riding " a jade 
 that would start at a feather," in the words of the old 
 Georgian song, a murmured " Vaya " or " Jesus " 
 showed they were on the watch. After confabulation 
 with Don Julian, they separated into a fan-shaped 
 formation and drove together slowly two or three 
 hundred head of cattle on to a bare space close to a 
 clump of trees. 
 
 Though there were monkeys in the trees they 
 did not throw anything down at us, after the fashion 
 of the " gato monillo " in the Bachiller Enciso's narra- 
 tive. 1 The cattle were quieter than any prairie cattle I 
 have ever seen, and came up in long lines, the vaqueros 
 never being obliged to gallop or to shout, as is the case 
 both in the Argentine Republic and in Mexico. 
 1 See Chapter III. 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 187 
 
 Considering the long time that had passed without 
 a shower of rain, they were in excellent condition. 
 Nearly all of them were either a light, fawn colour, or 
 fawn and white, a uniformity caused by a far-off 
 strain of Norman blood. A few were parti-coloured, 
 brown or black and white. This in Colombia is 
 known as " mapurito," a word also applied to skunks, 
 which are all black and white. It may be Indian in 
 its origin, for it does not sound like a Spanish word. 1 
 Nothing could well be more unlike a wild " rodeo " 2 
 in the Argentine, Brazil, or Mexico. Here were 
 no tossing manes, and horses pulled up on their 
 haunches with a jerk, no fluttering ponchos, no lazos 
 swinging round the herdsmen's heads, no dust, no 
 panting dogs stretched out after their gallop with the 
 herd. The cattle did not move round restlessly, with 
 fiery eyes and lashing tails, seeking an opportunity to 
 break away. In all the herd on the Colombian 
 rodeo only two or three long-horned, angular, 
 old-fashioned-looking prairie steers from Venezuela 
 showed the least uneasiness. These animals, bred 
 on the great savannahs on the Orinoco, were what is 
 called "criollo" 3 cattle — that is, native — and hence 
 descended from the cattle brought by the Spanish 
 
 1 However, it is not safe to make too sure of words in Spanish 
 America, as so many words, now obsolete in Spain, have been 
 preserved in the various republics by the descendants of the conquerors, 
 crystallized in the current of their colloquial speech. 
 
 2 A rodeo is a bare plot of ground on which cattle are assembled 
 for inspection or counting. Sometimes, as in Brazil, salt is placed for 
 them to lick in great blocks. 
 
 8 ** Criollo — ».*., " Creole " — means " native." Hence, a black 
 man or a white man, a mulato or a zambo, can be a Creole of 
 America. Cattle, horses, and animals in general are always spoken 
 of as Creole, if they are of native breeds. 
 
1 88 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 at the conquest. Raw-boned and fierce-eyed, though 
 rather low in condition, they yet were heavy animals, 
 weighing at least twelve hundred pounds. Of all the 
 cattle on the rodeo they probably would have been 
 by far the most dangerous when shut in a corral. 
 Their hides were heavy and their horns immense, and 
 in their native wilds they probably were fleet of foot 
 as antelopes. 
 
 They had been brought by ship from Venezuela 
 a year before, but had not fattened well after the 
 voyage. In the rodeo there were several other very 
 heavy animals, and as distinct from all the rest as 
 were the Venezuelan steers. Dark red, and very high 
 upon the leg, Don Julian pointed them out with 
 pride as we rode slowly through the docile herd that 
 parted mechanically as we advanced. He said that 
 they were crosses from a zebu bull that he had 
 brought from the Island of Jamaica. Certainly they 
 were splendid specimens for size and bulk, if not 
 for quality. One young bull, only three years old, 
 weighed twenty hundredweight, and it appeared his 
 sire was heavier. Don Julian explained with pride 
 that the race is immune from ticks, runs to great size, 
 and, as it took its origin in the tropics, is little subject 
 to the diseases that attack breeds coming from the 
 north. The native cattle were the best native cattle 
 I had ever seen, tamer, and heavier, and better shaped 
 than are the cattle of the native breeds either of the 
 Argentine Republic or Brazil. Many were fully nine 
 hundred pounds in weight, and some few nearly 
 twelve. The vaqueros were as quiet-looking as 
 their cattle. Though all had lazos, none carried 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 189 
 
 arms or had that air of wildness that you see in the 
 cowboys of the Western States, the Mexicans, or 
 Argentines. Still, they were quite efficient at their 
 work, though without much apparent pride in their 
 horse-gear or in their own appearance, a thing unusual 
 amongst cattlemen, no matter where they live. 
 
 The heat was Stirling, and their little horses hung 
 their heads and let their ears flap backwards and 
 forwards, a sign that they were suffering from the sun. 
 When the rodeo had dispersed, we rode in a sun fit 
 to roast an ostrich egg, for several hours, through the 
 "potrero," looking at the cattle and especially searching 
 for the great zebu bull that Don Julian referred to "as a 
 portent." 1 As often happens in a search for something, 
 that you find another thing of equal or superior 
 value, in riding up and down the vast potrero, 2 I 
 had great opportunities for observing both the cattle 
 and the land. The cattle still continued to be all of 
 the same fawn, fawn and white, or cream colour, with 
 an occasional " mapurito " animal. There had not 
 been sufficient time for the recently introduced cross of 
 zebu blood to take effect, except in a few instances. 
 When it had done so, the tendency had been to darken 
 the colour, to give weight and strength, and to add 
 fierceness to the breed. 
 
 With all the advantages of a race originated in the 
 tropics, and therefore more or less immune from ticks, 
 its suitability for draught purposes, and its hardy 
 constitution, I should consider it a misfortune if the 
 
 1 " Un portento." 
 
 2 "Potrero," literally a place for colts ("potros"). This ony 
 was many miles in extent, and the idea of its being bounded be 
 fences was never present, as the fences chiefly ran through woods. 
 
190 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 breed were to spread itself over Colombia. The 
 country is not one in which draught oxen are much 
 used. The beef of the zebu is coarse. The animal 
 itself is much less reproductive than is the Angus or 
 the Hereford. Lastly, if the zebu were to spread 
 itself over the vast savannahs on the Meta and the 
 Casanare, known as Los Llanos de Casanare, a breed 
 would spring up likely to become extraordinarily 
 wild and coarse. This probably would not matter so 
 much, for during the late war it was almost proved to 
 demonstration that wild prairie cattle are just as suitable 
 for the packing-house as were the better breeds. 
 
 Beside the zebu cross, scattered about the potrero 
 were a few Herefords, chiefly of one and two years 
 old. They seemed to thrive, as do their race in almost 
 every climate of the world. In such a climate as that 
 of El Departamento de Bolivar, where the thermometer 
 probably seldom falls much below eighty degrees (of 
 Fahrenheit) I am convinced no breed would give such 
 good results as would the Hereford. They are the ideal 
 cattle for a ranch, easily fed, enduring rapid changes 
 of temperature, and not too heavy in the hide or 
 bones. Certainly they soon become extremely wild 
 and run at the approach of man, but on the other 
 hand are rarely savage when enclosed, and every 
 cattleman knows the advantage of having gentle 
 animals to deal with when shut up in a corral. 
 Crossed with the native breed they would produce a 
 splendid animal, and one that easily might run to 
 a considerable weight. In the true tropics the 
 Shorthorn soon degenerates, and needs infusion of 
 new blood. Strange as it may appear, the Angus 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 191 
 
 seems suited to the climate, but suffers much from 
 ticks, and its savage temper renders it dangerous in 
 ranch work. After much riding up and down, and 
 just as we were giving up the search, we came on 
 "El Portento," the old zebu bull of which Don 
 Julian had spoken with such admiration and respect. 
 As he glowered at the horsemen from a thicket, 
 beneath whose shade he stood to shelter from the 
 sun, he really looked portentous and like an inhabitant 
 of a primeval world. 
 
 Dark brown, so dark that in the shade he 
 seemed quite black, his enormous shoulders and com- 
 paratively light legs made him exactly like a buffalo. 
 Apparently about six years old, he had acquired 
 that look about the neck and shoulders, as if in 
 armour, so thickly did his hide fall into folds around 
 his dewlap, that bulls often take on when they 
 advance in age. His owner estimated that he weighed 
 at least twenty-two hundredweight, a considerable 
 bulk even for a Shorthorn, and I should think his 
 estimate was right. Few cattlemen in the possession 
 of their senses, unless mounted on an exceptionally 
 heavy horse, would have dared to lazo him, and even 
 then would have had a formidable task. Though I 
 have known Mexican vaqueros 1 catch and subdue 
 a grizzly bear, the risk of lazoing " El Portento " 
 would not have been much less. We did not put the 
 venture to the test, but prudently rode round him at a 
 little distance, keeping our eyes well open for a sudden 
 rush, a thing that he was said to be quite prone to 
 
 1 To accomplish this feat at least four horsemen are required, and 
 they run great danger. 
 
192 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 execute. As he stood underneath his thicket, with 
 the band of mounted men watching him from a 
 respectful distance, amidst the wild surroundings and 
 with the hoarse cries of the flocks of parrots that flew 
 occasionally over our heads, the scene was striking 
 and not easy to forget. 
 
 Though the surroundings were so different, I 
 thought that in the Caledonian forest in the days of 
 Hector Boece and Fordun, one of the fierce white 
 bulls of which they speak, when brought to bay 
 under an old, gnarled oak, must have looked much as 
 the portentous zebu ' looked, on that hot morning 
 in the Colombian wilds. 
 
 Although, like nearly all ranchmen, I was con- 
 vinced the Hereford is the only ranch steer, it may be 
 that Don Julian Patron was right in his opinion that 
 a cross of the zebu with the native breed was the 
 best animal for Colombia, or at least for the low, 
 tropic lands. In cases of the kind, expert opinion 
 usually proves valueless against good level knowledge 
 of existing circumstances. 
 
 By this time we had been riding six or seven 
 hours, and even Don Julian confessed that it was hot. 
 Two stricken hours lay between us and the little 
 ranche town of Palmito, for in the great potrero 
 where we were, there was neither shade or anything 
 to eat. We struck into the " paso " x and faced the 
 heat that came down from the sky and met the 
 heat that rose from the parched ground. It was 
 so hot, the sweat dried on the horses' coats like the 
 salt water dries upon a sailor's beard. We passed 
 1 See note on p. 177 ; also p. 4. 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 193 
 
 innumerable low hills, went through several high 
 gates of similar potreros, 1 and watched the cattle 
 bunched, just as sheep bunch on a hot day, their 
 heads together, pushed as far as possible under the 
 slightest shade afforded by a thicket or a clump of 
 trees. We rode through dried-up swamps, all poached 
 and pitted with old cattle-tracks, remarking as we 
 rode along, with our hats pulled down as far as 
 possible over our eyes (the stirrups hot enough to 
 blister the bare hand), that the cattle, though they had 
 suffered from the drought, were still in marvellous 
 condition. Disease of any kind was rare, and ticks, 
 in spite of heavy bush, infrequent. At last, when we 
 had almost thought Palmito must be a city ambulant, 
 after riding down a sandy hill, the exhausted horses 
 stumbling and tripping, and the vaquero spurs 
 keeping up a constant jingle on their sides, we sud- 
 denly came upon a little river running between high 
 rocks. For about half a mile we followed it, riding 
 along its sandy course, splashing delightfully in the 
 tepid water that in the heat seemed almost cool, 
 until Palmito burst upon our sight. 
 
 Set on a little hill, with a great, unfinished church 
 standing up high above the houses, the town appeared. 
 All were asleep, for it was just the hottest time of the 
 whole day, between the hours of three and four. 
 We rode past sleeping cottages buried in hedges 
 of bright crotons and of bignonias, shaded by coco- 
 palms. Even the dogs were sleeping, an unusual 
 thing in towns, such as Palmito, in South America. 
 The occasional horses, standing saddled under reed- 
 
 1 Potrero = fenced pasture-land. 
 
 13 
 
194 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 thatched shelters, rested on a hind-foot and were too 
 listless even to switch their tails against the myriads 
 of flies that buzzed about them. 
 
 As we advanced into the little town, we passed by 
 stores with the doors left wide open. Such goods as 
 were on the shelves were left undefended, but by the 
 general genius of sleep. Sometimes in passing by a 
 house, through open windows we could see the 
 inhabitants stretched in their hammocks, slumbering 
 underneath mosquito curtains. Remembering that 
 once, in youth, I had ridden into a store in the 
 Argentine Republic, rapped with my whip upon the 
 counter, and no one answering, turned and ridden out 
 again, as we passed by an open store at the outskirts 
 of Palmito, just at the angle of a street, I rode into 
 one door and through the other, and no one stirred 
 within the house. 
 
 When we arrived in the middle of the enormous 
 plaza, round which straggle the low, one-storey 
 houses, thatched with palm leaves, to be seen in every 
 country town throughout the tropics in Colombia, 
 we pulled up at the veranda of a house where lived 
 a friend of Don Julian Patron. No one was stirring, 
 so we unsaddled, threw our horse-gear into the 
 middle of a darkened room, and after seeing that the 
 horses were tied in the shade, sat down upon the 
 saddle-cloths till someone should wake up. 
 
 Though we were all men broken to the tropics 
 and the saddle from our youth upwards, our clothes 
 were saturated, and perspiration dripped from our 
 faces on the ground. At last a sleepy voice was 
 heard saying : " Is that you, Julian ?" and from an 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 195 
 
 inner room appeared a man who bade us welcome 
 and not unnaturally asked, " Why in God's name 
 have you been riding all these hours in the sun ?" 
 
 Then, to our great astonishment, for certainly I 
 should as soon have looked for " artichokes at sea," x 
 as goes the Spanish saying, he said, " I will send 
 out for ice." I never ascertained whether the offer 
 was merely an instance of " dandose charol " 2 or not, 
 although I fancied I detected a faint smile run over 
 the grim features of Don Julian Patron. At any rate, 
 no ice made its appearance, and we proceeded to drink 
 " panela-water " 3 to our hearts' content. 
 
 It was not a long task to inspect the natural 
 beauties and the architectural features of Palmito. 
 The church, a huge, unfinished building, was rather 
 interesting. Before it stood several large wooden 
 crosses, part of a Calvary. Inside it was the beau- 
 ideal of a church for a hot country, scrupulously 
 clean and empty, and not disfigured by cheap prints 
 from Germany of the Stations of the Cross, abomina- 
 tions set up in so many Catholic churches in all 
 parts of the world. 
 
 When we had seen our horses fed, a ceremony 
 always pleasing to a horseman, and necessary in 
 countries where they must carry you next day, we 
 strolled into one or two of the stores, which in towns 
 like Palmito take the place of clubs. As usual 
 in Colombia, their owners were all Syrians, called by 
 the natives of the country " Turcos," a cruel name 
 
 1 " Pedir cotufas en el golfo n — *.*., '* ask for artichokes at sea." 
 
 2 Literally, " putting on patent leather " — /*.*., giving oneself airs. 
 5 " Panela," unrefined sugar. 
 
196 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 enough to give to Syrians had those who gave it 
 comprehended its full irony. Both in Colombia and 
 Venezuela, Syrians seem to have monopolized the 
 stores. In the smallest hamlet in the interior they 
 are to be found. Industrious and intelligent, they 
 easily outdo the native-bred Colombians as shop- 
 keepers, and fill the same place that is held in East 
 Africa by the Banyans, and are as cordially disliked. 
 All of them were well posted on the varying fortunes 
 of the war, and all were pro-Allies. As we walked 
 back across the sandy plaza, under the stars, and with 
 the bats in dozens shrieking above our heads, the 
 fireflies flitting in the orange-trees, all was so still 
 and so remote, that the world seemed to have stood 
 still a century or two, or we ourselves to have been 
 marooned, in a kind of fourth dimension, outside 
 of ordinary life. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 When we arrived at the house in the plaza that we 
 had taken possession of so unceremoniously, it was 
 evident that something had gone wrong. There 
 were no lights and no sign of a dinner, only a 
 messenger, who said Don Julian was waiting for us 
 at another house a little distance off, close to the out- 
 skirts of the town. Through sandy lanes we ploughed 
 our way for about half a mile, passing by ranchos 
 where the dogs, having recovered energy after their 
 noonday sleep, greeted us like a pack of jackals. The 
 house where Don Julian was waiting for us proved 
 to be near the river in an imposing clump of forest 
 trees. Dinner was ready, and we all sat down to it 
 most heartily, except Don Julian's major-domo from 
 Cobenas, who had a touch of fever from riding in the 
 sun. He lay upon the floor groaning occasionally 
 and taking aspirin with avidity from the tubes 
 proffered him from every side. No self-respecting 
 Colombian ever seems to stir from home without his 
 tube of aspirin and bottle of specific of some kind or 
 another against the bites of snakes. 
 
 Don Julian presided at the board with all the 
 dignity of a conquistador. 
 
 As usual, several " notables " had been invited to 
 
 197 
 
198 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 attend. As they all knew the object of my visit to 
 Colombia was to set up a packing-house, should it prove 
 feasible, and most of them were cattle-owners, the talk 
 quite naturally ran on the proper place to build in and 
 on the quantity of cattle that were obtainable ; from 
 that it wandered off, so to speak, into fairyland. As 
 I sat perspiring in a linen jacket, and more or less 
 " molido y quebrantado," like Don Quixote, 1 after 
 my ten or eleven hours on a fractious horse in a 
 terrific sun, I heard myself referred to as the " Saviour 
 of the Country." Knowing my public, I sat quietly, 
 now and then killing a mosquito, or brushing some 
 long-legged wonder of the insect world from off my 
 neck ; now and then extracting some flying pest or 
 other from my coffee, and ever and anon murmur- 
 ing " Gracias caballero " at the end of a fervent 
 period. 
 
 It appeared the generous heart of the Colombian 
 nation had always yearned towards England. 
 
 " You, sir," said a young orator, " embody for us 
 the fufilment of our hopes. England in days gone by 
 sent out her legions to shed their blood for liberty, 
 under the glorious banner of the Liberator. There 
 is a subtle sympathy between our countries that 
 extends itself across the sea, leaps over mountains, 
 overcomes all difficulties, making the hearts of our 
 far-divided fatherlands, beat in one great pulsation 
 and in unison. This packing-house which England 
 is to found will pave the way for even greater 
 
 1 Don Quixote, after his various adventures, especially after his 
 encounter with the Yangueses, is always described as "molido y 
 quebrantado " — literally, " passed through a mill and broken up." 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 199 
 
 mutual esteem between our peoples. Our fertile and 
 prolific, tropic soil needs but the fructifying touch 
 of capital ... of English capital. I see the Old 
 World, with its secular experience, stepping in to 
 help its younger sister that the illustrious Genoese 
 brought into the family of nations. England, the lamp 
 of liberty, that little island set like a brilliant in the 
 stormy northern seas, that rose to eminence by the 
 valour of her sons and through the fostering care of 
 a long line of wise and liberal statesmen, 1 will aid us 
 with her advice and . . . and capital. 
 
 " Our hearts are virgin, and from our virgin soil 
 shall come a fervent and a generous response. Long 
 live the packing-house ; long live England, victory to 
 the Allies ; from the topmost summit of the Andes 
 the spirit of the Liberator looks down upon us in 
 Palmito here to-day ! . . . I have spoken ; now I 
 extend the right hand of a Colombian in sympathy 
 and welcome. Long live Liberty !" 
 
 It was a glorious effort, and as the perspiration 
 rolled down the speaker's brow, I tried to recollect all 
 that I knew of the history of Colombia and of the 
 independence wars, for I have always held that 
 oratory has but one useful function ... to excite 
 enthusiasm and tell the audience that which they 
 know a thousand times better than the orator himself. 
 So I sat waiting, waging a guerrilla warfare with the 
 insect world, mopping my forehead, and sipping my 
 panela-water. Several more guests, so to speak, took 
 the floor, although in most cases they did not rise, 
 but spoke, like Roman senators, seated in their chairs. 
 1 Mr. Asquith was, I think, Prime Minister at the time. 
 
200 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 One gentleman thought I might mention to the 
 spiritual descendant of the illustrious Pitt who now 
 directs the destinies of Britain, 1 that the institution of 
 a land bank, to be styled " El Banco Hipotecario del 
 Departamento de Bolivar," would be, not only a great 
 boon to cattle-owners, but would do much to cement 
 the friendship between our peoples, to which his 
 friend, Don Emilio Vazquez, had alluded in terms of 
 eloquence. 
 
 I hope I rose to the occasion. 
 
 Of one thing I am certain, in my discourse 
 Bolivar, Boyaca, and Carabobo, the brave llaneros 
 under General Paez, the infamies of General Morillo, 
 and the Cartagena martyrs, jostled one another. In 
 my mind's eye I saw the Liberator, passing the 
 Andes like a second Napoleon or a Hannibal, heading 
 his troops alone — superb, young, enthusiastic, the 
 darling of the " daughters of the republic," the 
 lodestar of the men. I watched him entering Lima, 
 with flowers showered down upon his head, and saw 
 him at the zenith of his fame. Then came the rift 
 within the patriotic lute and disillusions thickened, till 
 at last, betrayed, sick, poor, and heartbroken, he paced 
 the garden in the little Quinta de San Pedro near 
 Santa Marta, under the secular trees, beneath the 
 shadow of the mountains, and heard him ask to be 
 buried in Caracas ..." ungrateful country that I 
 have tried to save." My scanty audience took it, I 
 think, for a sound business statement, quite in the 
 English style. No, senor, not eloquent perhaps — 
 
 1 It may be after all that it was Mr. Lloyd George, not Mr. 
 Asquith, who was Prime Minister at the time that I was at Palmito. 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 201 
 
 the English waste no words, they have a saying : 
 " Times is money " — but pertinent and illuminating 
 such as only a son of Albion could have possibly 
 evolved. 
 
 Now and then Don Julian, I thought, smiled 
 grimly during my remarks, but when I had concluded 
 said quietly, " Yes, I think what we want is capital, 
 but we have got first to provide the raw material." 
 The others, though some of them had been in the 
 United States and all were quick-witted, as are most 
 Colombians, were pleased with what I said, though 
 any one of them could have said it far better for 
 himself, for oratory in South America grows upon 
 every hedge, and as the hedges usually are formed of 
 crotons, or some other variegated plant, it takes the 
 hue they lend. 
 
 When this unofficial meeting, which perhaps may 
 best be described as a " ccenaculum," came to a close, 
 we were left — that is, my secretary and myself and 
 Don Julian, his major domo and a nephew, who had 
 attached himself to us, partly as guide, partly as 
 philosopher and friend — to sit and smoke, for as it 
 was but ten o'clock, and no one in Colombia, at least 
 in the hot regions of the coast, dreams of going to 
 sleep before midnight at the earliest, we had an hour 
 or two to waste. In almost every language, men 
 talk of killing time. In Spanish the expression is 
 " to make time," * which more or less corresponds to 
 our own " passing time," and thus avoids the murder- 
 ous inference, for after all, time is our greatest friend. 
 " Time and myself against three others," was a 
 
 1 " Hacer tiempo." 
 
202 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 reported saying of Philip II., known to his country- 
 men as the Prudent, and this shows he had under- 
 stood how valuable is time . . . when it is on our 
 side. 
 
 By degrees the company dispersed, leaving us with 
 our host and Don Julian. Both were educated men, 
 had travelled, and had seen the world — that is, the 
 world of the West Indies and the United States. 
 One, an absolutely white Colombian of pure Spanish 
 blood, assured me that a land bank would be a 
 capital investment. He thought it might well 
 advance capital to landowners on the security of 
 their cattle and their estates. Local capitalists 
 exacted two per cent, per month for all advances, 
 and capital was scarce. The idea seemed good 
 enough, and without doubt some day the United 
 States, or perhaps a syndicate, will take it up, and in 
 a little the Colombian landowners will find they 
 have become its slaves, and have to sell their 
 hypothecated lands for anything that they can get. 
 Such is the general effect of institutions of the kind 
 in countries such as Colombia, where, though the 
 " gombeen-man " is perfectly well known, he is a 
 native of the place, and local use and wont keep his 
 nefarious practices to some measure in restraint. A 
 foreign syndicate is not amenable to any restraint 
 of that kind, and if by chance any " desgracia," 1 
 as it is called euphoniously, befalls a citizen of the 
 United States, a howl goes up about the " massacre 
 
 1 A " desgracia " — literally, " an accident " — is of many natures. 
 If it should take the form of assassination it is still referred to as a 
 " desgracia " in Colombia and Spain. 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 203 
 
 of our citizens," and the big stick is brought to 
 bear. 
 
 By this time Don Julian's major-domo, by dint of 
 aspirin and frequent applications to a bottle of old 
 rum, had got his fever under. Old rum (ron viejo) 
 is a standing joke throughout Colombia, where it is 
 said to be distilled on Saturday and become old by 
 Monday. Such as it was, it had a marvellous effect 
 on Anacleto Ramos, who sat up and volunteered a 
 fund of information upon botany, on international 
 law, 1 and upon snake-bites. On the latter theme he 
 soon waxed eloquent, as most Colombians who live 
 in the coast regions are not unnaturally rather apt to 
 prove, as snakes of many and varying breeds are rife 
 in all the woods. 
 
 Don Anacleto had much to say about the waco- 
 plant, which under different names is known in nearly 
 all the republics in Central America, in Mexico and 
 Texas, and right up to the States. 8 The waco was, 
 as he averred, " good medicine," but mere gullery 
 compared to a plant growing not far from Cartagena, 
 which by his description seemed to be an aristolochia 
 of some sort or other. The juice of the root chewed 
 and introduced into a serpent's mouth, " of the most 
 venomous that lives," straightway stupefies it, and 
 you can handle it with impunity. " Yes, sir, with 
 
 1 u Derecho de gentes " — international law — is a favourite study 
 in South America, and is possibly as useful to the students of it as the 
 higher mathematics, spiritualism, or mysticism would be ; but decidedly 
 less useful than a tincture of veterinary surgery might be to men who 
 are constrained to travel on horse or mule back. 
 
 2 Your real Texan, in his familiar talk, never seems to think, or 
 at least allow, that Texas is one of the United States, as he always 
 speaks of a " man from the States " or a " horse from the States." 
 
2o 4 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 complete, complete impunity ; but more than that, if 
 the malevolent creature that first deceived our Mother 
 Eve is forced to swallow a few drops, it dies incon- 
 tinently, in fierce convulsions, so sovereign is the 
 juice." Don Anacleto never had tried the experiment 
 himself, but knew that it was as he had narrated it, for 
 he had had it from a priest, a friend of his, a man 
 who could not lie. 
 
 As snakes abounded in Palmito, and probably 
 were crawling in the jungle not fifty yards from 
 where we sat, we were all much impressed. It may 
 be that there are several methods just as efficacious 
 with a snake as to introduce poison in its mouth, 
 which seems a sort of carrying coals to Newcastle, 
 but we said nothing, though I reflected that after all 
 it might be as Don Anacleto said it was, for I 
 remembered the old Spanish rhyme of the tarantula * 
 which savs it " is a wicked beast that neither sticks 
 nor stones avail against." 
 
 At last even Don Anacleto became silent and 
 stretched himself to rest in the hammock that he had 
 been using as a chair, remarking that if a vampire-bat 
 were to fix upon his toe he knew a plant that would 
 soon staunch the blood. However, he did not 
 communicate its name or its appearance to the rest of 
 us. Don Julian said he was an original, but " good as 
 bread "; moreover, he knew bookkeeping, and though 
 he had heard he belonged to a Freemasons' Lodge, 
 
 1 " La tarantula es un bicho rau' malo, no se mata con piera ni 
 palo." Beasts being given to mankind to kill in any way they please, 
 the tarantula seems, as it were, a sort of lusus nature, and it is a pity 
 that there is no death-compelling aristolochia placed by Providence 
 in Spain. 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 205 
 
 was a true Christian at the heart, and, though a little 
 dark in colour, perfectly white. This enigmatic 
 phrase I took to mean that Don Anacleto was an 
 educated man, wore a good suit of clothes, and did 
 not labour with his hands. He also carried a re- 
 volver with a mother-of-pearl stock, although, as fate 
 would have it, he was out of cartridges. This useful 
 piece of furniture proclaimed his racial status, for in 
 Colombia only " los blancos " carry weapons of the 
 sort. 
 
 The others gradually, after hoping that we should 
 rest and pass a good night, wrapped themselves in 
 their light cotton M ruanas " 1 and lay down, some in 
 their hammocks, others on the floor, with their heads 
 resting on their saddles, the fittest pillow after the 
 kind of day that we had passed. 
 
 I stood a little under a great tree, listening to the 
 noises that in such kind of places as Palmito rise from 
 the woods at night. It seemed that the whole forest, 
 so silent, but for the parrots here and there in daylight, 
 had come to life in the dark hours, and that strange 
 beasts were on the prowl. One heard the parting of 
 the bushes as they passed along, and the soft swishing 
 of the twigs as the leaves came back to their position 
 when the animal had passed. Bats and owls floated 
 by. A heavy scent of flowers, that seemed to relax 
 and shed their fragrance in the cool air after the long, 
 hot day had kept it back constrained and sunbound, 
 filled all the atmosphere. 
 
 1 A "ruana" and a "poncho" are the same thing — /'.<-., a 
 square piece of cloth or other material with a hole to pass the head 
 through. 
 
206 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 The sky was deepest purple, the stars brilliant and 
 steady, without the fitful twinkling that they show in 
 northern latitudes, and in a patch of moonlight, 
 standing near a well, a gourd-tree with its great 
 bloated fruit and air as of a primeval vegetation looked 
 strange and terrible. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 Next morning, according to the immemorial 
 Colombian use and wont, the horses had strayed far 
 into the recesses of the pasture where they had been 
 turned out to graze. Quite contrary to the usual 
 custom in the Argentine Republic and Mexico, none 
 of them had been hobbled or tied to a stake rope. 
 So we waited, drinking strong coffee, till the sun was 
 high in the horizon, losing the precious hours just 
 after dawn, when every horseman likes to kill a league 
 or two before the heat begins. 
 
 At last the horses were all found and driven in, 
 and luckily none of them had been bitten by a 
 vampire-bat and rendered weak through loss of blood. 
 We saddled hastily, bidding good-bye to our host 
 and to Don Anacleto, to whom we gave a tube of 
 aspirin, a gift he qualified as " precious in the extreme 
 and grateful as the manna to the Israelites." Don 
 Julian, in spite of our entreaties, rode with us half 
 a league upon the way, sitting erect and looking 
 like the Commendatore's statue in the opera. I 
 thanked him, making him promise to visit us in 
 England, in which place I assured him he had a 
 servant and a house. Similarly, he placed his mansion 
 in Tolii once more entirely at my service, and we 
 
 207 
 
208 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 clasped hands. No sooner was this ceremony 
 accomplished than he touched his horse with the spur, 
 checked him and made him rear, and, turning in the 
 air, struck into a fast sobre-paso 1 on the homeward 
 road. In fifty yards or so he stopped, shouted 
 " Adios Don Roberto !" to which I answered " Adios 
 Don Julian, and go with God !" He vanished into 
 the cloud of dust that has shut off so many hospitable, 
 good friends in South America — friends of a day or 
 two sometimes, but unforgettable. 
 
 For the ensuing fortnight or three weeks we rode 
 all day, or at least until the siesta-time, in the hot 
 sun, endeavouring to reach a house to pass the hottest 
 hours. Houses are few and far between in El 
 Departamento de Bolivar, and now and then we had 
 to pass the siesta under the trees, by river banks, 
 lighting a fire to keep off the mosquitos, and sitting 
 on our horse-gear in the smoke. 
 
 Haciendas, large and small, we stopped at to 
 inspect the cattle, always receiving the hearty 
 welcome that distinguishes the Colombian. I used 
 to think that, in addition to their natural kindness and 
 their hospitality, they liked us in our character of 
 newspapers ambulant. Travellers are infrequent in 
 that country, and news a rare commodity, and as it 
 had not rained for full five months the tracks, though 
 good to travel on, were pretty nearly waterless, and 
 pasturage was scarce. 
 
 Though not unduly curious about the war that 
 
 1 Sobre-paso is the over-pace that was common in Europe in the 
 Middle Ages. In it the horse gallops with front and shuffles with 
 the hind legs. 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 209 
 
 at the time had left Colombia untouched economically, 
 the people naturally were pleased to hear about it 
 from one, who, so to speak, came from the centre of 
 affairs. Though in reality, as it was several months 
 since I had left home, I knew but little more of what 
 was going on than they did, I found myself looked on 
 as an authority. So on arriving at one of the groups 
 of buildings that constitute a hacienda in Colombia, 
 with the store, overseer's house, corrals for cattle, and 
 the dwelling-house — long, low, with overhanging 
 eaves and thick thatch roof — after the compliments 
 that are necessary had been interchanged, the drought 
 discussed, and the condition of the cattle ; inquiries 
 made as to whether there was water in such and such a 
 place, or if the tigers had been killing many calves, and 
 how Don Marcos Fidel Suarez' 1 chances were looking 
 for the approaching presidential election, I sat down 
 on a solid, old Spanish chair, seated with raw hide, 
 to talk of strategy. I found it was surprising how 
 much I knew about the matter, giving my views 
 on military affairs with, I hope, accuracy. The 
 diplomatic situation was far easier. As every South 
 American has his own idea upon diplomacy, I used to 
 wait until my host delivered his opinions on the 
 Balkan question, upon the attitude of Greece and of 
 Roumania — on the necessity of a free Albania, and 
 whether Enver Pasha and Talaat were German agents 
 or international rogues. Then I agreed with him 
 upon his major premises, and now and then put in a 
 query or hazarded a doubt on minor matters, saving 
 my face and his as far as possible. 
 
 1 This gentleman eventually became president. 
 
 14 
 
210 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 Our business took us to many a strange corner, for 
 we travelled without a plan, going from one hacienda 
 to another, where the greatest quantity of cattle were 
 to be found. In none of them were there the vast 
 herds of Brazil or of the Argentine, or those of Mexico. 
 Perhaps the finest hacienda in El Departamento de 
 Bolivar is that called Berastegui. It has been in the 
 possession of the same family since the days of 
 Charles III. 1 This really fine, semi -feudal place 
 extends to about thirty thousand acres, and contains 
 some of the richest cattle pasture in South America. 
 From the old-fashioned hacienda house, with its 
 dependencies, stores, corrals, and peons' huts, a vast and 
 open plain stretches out, dotted with palm-trees here 
 and there. On the horizon, about four miles away, 
 is a low range of hills, which are included in the 
 property. As the plain is as level as the sea, the hills 
 appear immense though in reality not more than three 
 to four hundred feet in height. Feeding in the tall 
 Para grass, in a sea of green, on every side were cattle, 
 and all in good condition in spite of the fierce drought. 
 Amongst them ran three or four Angus bulls that 
 seemed to stand the rigorous climate to perfection, 
 looking quite sleek and fat. 
 
 Some wild and angry-looking Venezuelan bullocks 
 with enormous horns moved away with their heads 
 high in the air, and broke into a trot, a hundred yards 
 or so away from where we rode. The rest were of 
 quiet Colombian stock, and went on feeding as we 
 passed through them, though there were six or seven 
 
 1 Charles III. of Spain succeeded to the throne in 1759. He 
 had previously been King of the Two Sicilies. 
 
CARTAGENA DE 1NDIAS 211 
 
 of us spread out in a long line. In no ranch country 
 in the world have I seen cattle so extraordinarily tame, 
 and certainly few cattle ranches within the tropics 
 finer than Berastegui. 
 
 Water is permanent on the hacienda, and the cattle 
 never are moved to marshes in long droughts as is 
 the case in almost every other place in the hot coast 
 lands of Colombia. 
 
 Life on the hacienda was entirely different from 
 that of Palmito, for we sat down to dinner in a dining- 
 room, and conversation was less local in its character, 
 for the owners of the place had travelled widely, had 
 been in Paris, and spoke French and English fluently. 
 Still there was something patriarchal in their relation- 
 ship to their dependents, such as I had not seen 
 before in the department. 1 The talk in the veranda 
 after dinner turned upon Venezuela. It appeared 
 that by the overland route it took the cattle at least 
 two months to reach the Magdalena River at El Banco, 
 a little port from where they were ferried over and 
 driven down to the coast lands. It must be a most 
 interesting trip across the Andes through the great 
 forests on the foothills, and down the trails that come 
 out in many places on the River Magdalena's banks. 
 The country that lies between El Banco and the 
 Andes is some of the wildest in the republic. Along 
 the banks both of the Rio Cesar and the Lebrija are 
 tribes still unsubdued. Some of them are reported to 
 be cannibals, and all use poisoned arrows of an 
 extremely deadly kind. One of the guests had made 
 the journey and had much lore of Venezuela and the 
 
 1 Departamento de Bolivar. 
 
212 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 llaneros l that interested me greatly, as all he said 
 reminded me so much of the gauchos that I 
 remember in my youth. 
 
 Their melancholy songs, mostly of horses, of love, 
 and of revenge, struck me as almost identical with 
 those that I had heard long years ago in Entre 
 Rios, the Banda Oriental, and round Bahia Blanca,* 
 when it was exposed to Indian raids. These songs 
 were as interminable as were " forebitters " in the 
 days of sailing ships, and were invariably sung in a 
 high falsetto voice to the accompaniment of a guitar, 
 whose strings were often mended with raw hide. 
 The guitar used to be passed round all the company, 
 and those who could not sing declined the com- 
 pliment saying, " I am not a musician" 3 and usually 
 called for a quart of wine to help the more able 
 throated in their task. 
 
 The gaucho and the llanero of the Orinoco 
 were singularly alike. They both were centaurs ; 
 both were taciturn, hospitable, kind, bloodthirsty, and 
 vindictive ; and both held life (their own and that of 
 others) the cheapest thing in the whole world. 
 Curiously enough for inland peoples, both races were 
 great swimmers and took to water like a duck. The 
 
 1 "Llaneros" — i.e., inhabitants of the llano, the plain. The 
 great plains that stretch to the north of the Orinoco have always 
 been the cradle of a race of hardy and patriotic men. They were 
 the backbone of the armies of Paez and Bolivar in the independence 
 wars. 
 
 2 It is now a great and flourishing port, with several lines of rail- 
 way running to it. I remember it a little town remote from civiliza- 
 tion and defended by one or two little forts of sun-dried bricks on 
 which several little brass guns were mounted. 
 
 8 " No soy musico." 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 213 
 
 llaneros lived in a far hotter climate, and this perhaps 
 made them more indolent than were their cousins of 
 the south ; but speech and customs were very similar, 
 and widely different from those to be observed 
 throughout America. 
 
 The following stanza of a song I heard that 
 evening, might have been sung at any estancia in 
 Uruguay or in Bahia Blanca in days gone by : 
 
 Por los anos de seisenta 
 
 Pa' cuidar el ganao 
 Me dieron pa' mi silla 
 
 Un cabayito melao. 1 
 
 All the adventures of the llanero and his 
 " honey "-coloured horse were set forth in great 
 detail, just as they would have been in the Argentine 
 Republic, in the same syncopated dialect and to a 
 similar accompaniment. 
 
 Fights, cattle robberies, adventures with tigers 
 and with crocodiles carried me back for forty years, 
 with but the difference that in the Argentina they 
 are things of the past, and on the Orinoco are in full 
 vigour and are incidents of daily life. 
 
 Not more than a few months before the evening 
 that I passed at Berastegui, a troop of bandits had 
 attacked the little frontier village of Arauca (in 
 Colombian territory), put it to sack and pillage, killed 
 the chief magistrate, cut off his head and then played 
 football with it in the square. 
 
 The deliberate opinion of all the cattle-owners at 
 Berastegui was that in the three departments of 
 
 1 " Melao " — literally, " honey-coloured " — is applied to a white 
 horse with yellow skin. 
 
2i4 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 Bolivar, Magdalena, and Atlantico, there was room for 
 six million head of cattle, three million in Bolivar, 
 and at least three in the two adjoining states. Beyond 
 the Andes, the great plains between the Meta and the 
 Orinoco might carry several million head. There 
 are still cattle districts left in Colombia, the state of 
 Antioquia, with its breed of beautiful white cattle 
 with black ears, unique throughout America and not 
 unlike the native, wild, white cattle at Lyme and 
 Chillingham. The Cauca valley at present may 
 contain two hundred thousand head, and so on of 
 the other districts, as Boyaca, Tolima, and the plains 
 on the Patia close to the frontier of Ecuador. 
 
 Everyone at Berastegui considered that the 
 immediate future of the country was bound up in 
 cattle- raising. Though, of course, it can never support 
 such immense herds as the Argentine, Brazil, or 
 Venezuela, it is the nearest great stock-raising 
 country by several days to Europe, and, of course, 
 nearer to the United States. 
 
 In the old mansion of Berastegui, with its wide- 
 spreading eaves, its groups of trees on every side, and 
 the great plain stretching out to the low hills, there 
 was an air as of an older world. The proprietors, all 
 descended from the early settlers, were educated men 
 and yet born horsemen and accustomed to wild life. 
 Most of them had been through several revolutions ; 
 but all of them saw clearly that their country wanted 
 peace, and none seemed to love fighting for its own 
 sake, after the fashion of the Mexicans. 
 
 The small hours found us talking over things 
 and others, of monstrous boa-constrictors, and how 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 215 
 
 a foolish peon had lassoed a jaguar and been nearly 
 mauled to death, with many other feats by flood and 
 field, told with due emphasis. 
 
 It seemed to me that we had only just settled 
 down in our hammocks when a peon came round 
 with the black coffee to say that in another half- 
 hour it would be daylight, and it was time to rise 
 and ride again. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 The sun was just rising over the forest behind the 
 house, and its reflected light lit up the plain in front, 
 leaving the distant hills floating in a sea of mist, as we 
 mounted our horses to leave Berastegui. Great dew- 
 drops fell off the steeply thatched roof, upon the ground. 
 The horses played with their bits, put their backs up, 
 and danced about in the freshness of the morning air. 
 
 Flights of macaws were on the wing towards their 
 feeding-grounds. The cattle were all stringing out, 
 like pictures of big game in Africa, in books by 
 Livingstone and Galton, towards the water-holes. 
 
 Upon a sandy place beside a stream one of the 
 peons pointed out a tiger's trail looking exactly like 
 the footprints of a cat enormously enlarged. 
 
 Beside the river a capybara x scuttled through the 
 reeds and took the water, with his back awash 
 exactly like a hippopotamus in miniature. 
 
 As we passed through the high potrero gate into 
 the woods beyond, the hacienda of Berastegui, seen 
 for a moment from the forest path, looked like a 
 woodcut in an old book of travels, then vanished into 
 the book of memories, that the mind keeps, ever half- 
 shut, half-open, according to one's moods. 
 
 1 The carpi ncho of the Argentine Republic. He is the largest 
 of the rodents, and amphibious. Naturalists call the poor beast 
 Hydrochaerus capybara. In Colombia the local name is " ponche." 
 
 216 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 217 
 
 Almost immediately the freshness of the morning 
 disappeared, and on the forest trail the sand heated up 
 as it were by magic, and yet the smell of the wet leaves 
 and flowers just dried, hung in the air and scented 
 everything. As we struck into the forest path we 
 bade good-bye to the open plains of the Sinu. 
 
 These plains, fertilized by the deposit left by the 
 River Sinu in its annual flood, resemble Egypt in their 
 productiveness, though quite unlike it in the richness of 
 their vegetation. In this respect no country of the Old 
 World, except Ceylon, Java, and Singapore, can hold 
 a candle to it. There is something hungry-looking 
 about the richest bush in Africa that differentiates it 
 from the same kind of country in the Americas. It 
 may be something in the soil itself that also causes the 
 extreme difference to be observed in the action of 
 the sun upon the human organism. 
 
 Even in Morocco sunstroke is frequent and ten 
 times more so in the Soudan, in India, and throughout 
 the tropics of the Old World. In them, no sane man 
 ventures in the sun without a solar topee ; in the 
 Americas a man may wear an ordinary, soft, felt hat in 
 perfect safety. The solar topee is unknown, and the 
 Panama straw hat, which is perhaps the worst defence 
 against the sun imaginable, is used throughout the 
 central and northern parts of South America. 
 
 The district towards which the deeply shaded 
 forest path was leading us was quite distinct in 
 character from those of the Sinu. 
 
 The path itself ran through a wall of forest and 
 reminded me of the paths I had ridden through 
 long years ago in Paraguay, although the vegetation of 
 
218 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 Colombia is even more luxuriant and overwhelming 
 and more menacing in its invading air of strength. 
 
 Bird life was scarce, as it is usually in tropic woods ; 
 but in the clearing humming-birds hovered over 
 flowering shrubs and yellow toucans occasionally 
 flew past. Sometimes I think I heard the harsh notes 
 of the tropial, but never once the bell-bird as in 
 Paraguay, where sometimes it sounds its note so like a 
 chapel bell, I have thought that I was near a settle- 
 ment, when many miles away. 
 
 Now and again where trees had fallen a shaft of 
 light lit up the gloom of the dark path, just as an air 
 shaft lets in the light in a long tunnel in a railway. 
 
 Occasionally scurrying along at a fast " pace," we 
 met a traveller, who always stopped to hear the news 
 and light a cigarette, as we sat underneath the shade 
 of some thick, spreading tree. 
 
 This function of exchanging and transmitting 
 news is an art that everybody understands in countries 
 where the distances between the towns are long, 
 communications difficult, and posts are rare and 
 unreliable. 
 
 To the native of such lands the art is inborn and 
 he knows, as it were by instinct, what tinge to give it 
 so as to make it palatable to the receiver's ear. Just 
 as two painters draw a face, intelligent and in- 
 teresting, or dull and plain, according to the vision of 
 their minds, so does your perfect transmitter of the 
 news tinge it with what he thinks will please you ; and 
 yet the news and painter's model are unchanged. 
 All's in the art that makes them interesting or leaves 
 them duller than they are. 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 219 
 
 Often these meetings in the forest path took place 
 just at a clearing so that the riders were illumined as 
 by a halo, whilst we remained in shade. We used to 
 pass the time of day, exchange a cigarette, unpack our 
 news, and separate upon our several ways, like ships 
 at sea that speak each other and sail on. 
 
 On the wide, open prairie, and the steep mountain 
 trail, in the dark forest paths, such as that from 
 Berastegui, and countless others in Mexico, Brazil, and 
 Paraguay, I have crossed travellers and hope that I 
 live in their memories, as they still live in mine, with 
 all their turns of gesture and of speech, their horses* 
 colours and their brands as deeply burned into my 
 brain as they were burned upon their hips, and the last 
 flutter of their ponchos as they turned to go still in 
 the corner of my eye. 
 
 Let them all go with God, wherever they were 
 going to. 
 
 They cannot take themselves out of my memory, 
 and in some limbo or another, some place where 
 horses never tire, nor riders stiffen, where camping- 
 grounds are always well supplied with water and with 
 grass, perhaps we all may meet again and ride. 
 
 Even dark forest paths must have an ending, and 
 this one came out at a little settlement called La 
 Cienaga de Oro — that is, the Golden Marsh. 
 
 Lost in the woods and quite unchanged, I should 
 suppose, since its foundation by some unknown 
 conqueror, the little hamlet lay with its little church 
 standing out like a lighthouse over the sea of green. 
 
 A nephew of the owners of Berastegui, a student 
 of something or another in Cartagena, upon his long 
 
/ 
 
 220 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 vacation, accompanied us, riding a pacing mule. He 
 was supposed to know the road ; but had we followed 
 his advice we might have found ourselves lost in the 
 forest at least a dozen times, for he branched off on 
 any little trail that crossed the path, announcing that 
 by following it we should save several miles. As 
 upon leaving the hacienda the sun was on the near 
 side of the horses, and we knew that the road ran 
 east and west, once was enough, and we refused to 
 follow him after his first essay had landed us in front 
 of a great pool carpeted over with the Victoria Regia 
 and quite unfordable. 
 
 When after several plunges up to our girths we 
 had got back to the highroad, we quite dispensed 
 with him as guide, although we kept him as a 
 philosopher and friend. 
 
 He also had a pistol without cartridges, just as in 
 days gone by in England, when all wore swords, men 
 of his stamp had their swords rusted in the sheath and 
 quite undrawable from disuse. Still, in each case the 
 unlethal weapon proclaimed their status as a gentle- 
 man. Though quite unarmed, he yet was furnished 
 against the usual ills that may beset Colombian 
 humanity. His tube of aspirin was ever ready ; his 
 vial of "Curarina," sovereign for snake-bites, peeped 
 from the habit of his coat. 
 
 Few go abroad in the coast lands of the republic 
 without this much approved specific, sold at one dollar 
 in all pharmacies. Its fame has not been dimmed 
 by the disconcerting circumstance that its inventor, 
 after having realized a handsome competence by its 
 sale, chanced to be bitten by a snake. The poor man 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 221 
 
 swallowed a whole bottle of his stuff immediately, 
 and died within the hour. Some were so cruel as to 
 say the snake that bit him was of a harmless species 
 and that he died of his own medicine. 
 
 Colombia is a land of snakes, and yet one thinks 
 but little of them, in the same way that death occupies 
 little of one's thoughts, though ever imminent. To 
 be bitten in the wilds is generally to die, though now 
 and then the actual cautery and whisky in large 
 quantities may chance to make a cure. When in 
 spite of our blind guide we reached La Cienega de 
 Oro, it turned out that he had a harmless and perhaps 
 unnecessary wife domiciled in the place. She and 
 her family received us hospitably. On the veranda of 
 the house the children were playing with a tiger cub 
 about the size of a large cat. It appeared desperately 
 savage and snarled at anyone it did not know, though 
 with the children it was tame enough. The people 
 of the place had taken it alive and killed its mother. 
 They said when it was six months old it would be far 
 too dangerous to keep. Unlike the puma, that often 
 makes a perfectly safe pet and is known in some of the 
 republics as " the friend of man," — the jaguar is quite 
 untamable. Whilst the horses fed, we went down 
 to what the people called an oil spring, and skimmed 
 off about a pint of raw petroleum from the surface of 
 the spring with a large kitchen spoon. It must have 
 risen from some source or other farther up the stream, 
 which no doubt some day will be found and the oil 
 bored for scientifically. 
 
 The country round the Cienega de Oro is open, 
 with occasional low hills, and much more like the 
 
222 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 pampas of the Argentine Republic in its character, 
 than are the banks of the Sinu. Towns dot it here 
 and there, and all of them are curiously different from 
 each other. This is due partly to their extremely 
 different positions, and partly to the lack of com- 
 munications and of roads. This has imprinted special 
 features upon all of them. Thus Sincelejo is a city 
 set upon a hill, and stands nearly six hundred feet 
 above the sea. Its population may be about ten 
 thousand, more or less, for naturally there are no 
 figures to rely upon. The streets are hilly, with now 
 and then a boulder cropping up in them, and appear 
 at one time to have been cattle tracks, upon whose 
 edges houses have been built irregularly. Still, there 
 are one or two short arcaded streets after the pattern 
 of a town in the Castiles. An enormous and barn- 
 like church dominates the place. The bells ring 
 constantly, and, as throughout Colombia the people 
 are religious, or at the least observant, on Sundays and 
 upon saints' days it is crowded to the door. 
 
 Syrians as usual keep the stores, and chaffer in 
 their guttural Spanish even more determinedly than 
 the Colombians themselves. The stores contain all 
 the unconsidered trifles necessary in little towns in 
 South America — things that few people could 
 possibly require and even so on credit. But, besides 
 these, they are marvellously well supplied with 
 electric torches, celluloid spectacles that look like 
 tortoiseshell, kodaks, and in general all those products 
 of modern life that naturally appeal so much to 
 people who, living in a world that has stood still for 
 centuries, grasp at all newness with avidity. There 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 223 
 
 are no drinking-bars, such as are to be found in nearly 
 every town in Argentina ; no cinemas ; no hooligans ; 
 no poor ; few rich; and, in general, life rolls along 
 pleasantly enough. 
 
 The hotel was a sort of cross between a Spanish 
 venta and a Mexican meson, both of which institu- 
 tions owe their genesis to the Oriental caravanserai. 
 Perhaps the Colombian establishment was superior in 
 comfort to either of them. In the meson there is a 
 vault-like, spotlessly clean room with a plaster step in 
 it, on which you lay your saddle-gear to form a bed. 
 The key is solemnly delivered to you, as in the East, 
 and may be six or more inches long. No food is to 
 be procured. You have to go out on the plaza, and, 
 seated at a table, eat stews cooked with red pepper, 
 and the tortillas that take the place of bread. Your 
 horses drink at a trough, and someone almost certainly 
 is there to sell you corn and the chopped straw 
 they eat. In the Spanish venta the only differ- 
 ence to be found is that the room is dirty and 
 the key a foot in length. In the Spanish hostelry 
 you ride in through the kitchen and leave your horse 
 tied in a dark and filthy stable and take your meals in 
 a room above it, so that in the frequent pauses in your 
 meal you hear the animals stamping at flies and 
 munching at their corn. 
 
 In Sincelejo you have to take your horses out to 
 grass and swelter in the sun, watching them graze 
 tormented by the flies, water and bathe them, and 
 then buy corn for them, and stand by whilst they 
 feed to stop the grain from being stolen. 
 
 Meals in the hotel were served under a trellis- 
 
224 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 work, shaded with creepers, and were both plentiful 
 and good. 
 
 The company was varied and pleasant in the 
 main. An Antioquian shopkeeper on his way to 
 the coast was an active, pushing, and a business man 
 down to his finger-tips, like all his countrymen. 
 Tall, clean, intelligent, and absolutely white, these 
 people form a sort of caste apart, and differ totally 
 from all their countrymen. Some say they are 
 descendants of the Jews of Spain, and others say they 
 are Moriscos who escaped and coming to the Indies 
 changed their faith, but not their nature, for the 
 Moriscos were born traders and good business men. 
 This may be so, but it would seem more probable 
 that they came from the Biscay provinces, for they 
 resemble the Biscayans in character and type. 
 
 All over the republic you are sure to meet them, 
 and in their province no Syrian is to be found, 
 just as no Jews are said to thrive in Aberdeen, the 
 natives of both countries being as keen in money 
 matters as the best Israelite. The Antioquians no 
 doubt are the backbone of the republic of Colombia, 
 and, as is frequently the case with peoples of the kind, 
 are quite well satisfied both with themselves and the 
 position that they occupy. This is the case with the 
 Catalonians in Spain. Some people have observed it 
 of the Scottish race, although I have good reasons to 
 suppose, this is a calumny. 
 
 Two of the wandering Chinese pedlars who are 
 to be found in most of the coast towns throughout 
 Colombia appeared during the dinner and talked 
 in pidgin-Spanish, entering into the conversation, 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 225 
 
 although not sitting down to table; but, in Colombia, 
 as in old-fashioned towns in Spain, the servants 
 all talk during the meals upon an equal footing 
 with the guests. We did not purchase any of their 
 goods, but that did not impair their imperturbable 
 good humour, and they continued talking pleasantly, 
 occasionally bringing out silks and little boxes that 
 they put back again, when no one bought them, with 
 an air of being pleased. 
 
 The Antioquian, a man of observation and a 
 humorist, told us that once, in a small ranche town in 
 the plains of Venezuela, called San Fernando de Apure,. 
 he had been present during the feast of Corpus 
 Christi and watched the usual procession of the saints 
 that in such places are carried through the streets* 
 This ceremony, known familiarly as " taking out the 
 blocks," * always creates enthusiasm and collects a 
 crowd. By his side a Chinaman was standing, and 
 the Antioquian said to him, " What kind of gods 
 have you in China ? Do they look like these ?" The 
 Chinaman took a long look at the procession, thought 
 for a little, and rejoined, " Ours are far better ; they 
 are made of bronze." 
 
 A philosophical answer, if you look at it in an 
 impartial spirit, for certainly a brazen god is far more 
 durable than one hewn out of wood. 
 
 An officer or two, a wandering student, and an 
 Italian santero — that is, a saint-seller — comprised our 
 company, and though the story of the Chinese gods 
 was rather personal to one who dealt in plaster figures 
 of the saints, he laughed as heartily as any of us, and 
 1 " Sacar los bultos." 
 
 15 
 
226 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 did not seem annoyed, remarking with a smile, " Bronze 
 gods would last too long to be good business ; mine 
 break easily, and that is good for trade." 
 
 Quite a philosopher was the saint-seller, although 
 perhaps his table manners lacked subtlety, and his 
 economies, although sound enough, were brutally 
 expressed. 
 
 The two Colombian officers, slight, elegant, and 
 looking rather like flies in a milk-pot, with their dark 
 faces and their white uniforms, regarded the Italian as 
 curiously as if he had been some sort of strange 
 marsupial animal, for they were educated men and 
 liberals, opposed to priestcraft and its works, and yet 
 perhaps, after the fashion of some anticlerical Spanish 
 Americans, may have gone out and bought a little 
 plaster image from the wandering saint-seller, as it 
 were, on the sly. 
 
 A curious little town is Sincelejo, a sort of 
 rallying-place and centre for the trade of the surround- 
 ing country, with an individuality of its own, for in it 
 the Old World still lingers, and yet much trade is done 
 and business carried on with the United States. 
 
 Nothing could well be more unlike Sincelejo than 
 is Corozal, 1 the town from which the celebrated cattle 
 plains, known as Los Llanos de Corozal, are named. 
 
 The road between Sincelejo and Corozal is infamous 
 for unshod horses in the dry season, for here and 
 there great tracks of gravel, extending to a mile, cover 
 its surface and soon make horses' feet too tender for 
 the road. Sometimes the track winds into the 
 
 1 The corozo is a species of palm-tree. Corozal is a grove of 
 corozos. This palm bears an oily nut. 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 227 
 
 primeval woods, following a watercourse that when 
 we travelled it was dry. How in the season of the 
 rains people can use it as a road is a mystery, for the 
 dry stream is bounded by high banks. Sheets of flat 
 rock surround the town, reminding one of the 
 approaches to towns that I have seen in the Atlas 
 Mountains, or in Lower Aragon. It was just getting 
 dark as we stumbled and slithered on the rocks, and 
 the town was desolate and dark. 
 
 It boasted an hotel of quite a different kind from 
 that in Sincelejo, and may have been the house of some 
 old-fashioned family of local magnates and had seen 
 better days. 
 
 It reminded me of a posada in the outlying 
 districts of Castile, for there was no one to receive 
 us, not even dogs to bay, as we rode up to the front 
 door. 
 
 So desolate it seemed, I thought it was deserted, 
 and feared we should have to call upon the priest 
 and ask for a night's lodging or try if any Syrian store- 
 keeper would take compassion on our plight. But 
 before doing so we rode through the front door into 
 an inner courtyard, where in the increasing darkness 
 I discerned a man sitting in an old Spanish chair, 
 tilted against the wall. 
 
 He welcomed us, if the word applies to such a 
 perfunctory act, into the gaunt, dark house. It soon 
 appeared that there was plenty of everything, that we 
 had brought ourselves. Except a venta in Castile, or, 
 to be more accurate, in some old Spanish book of 
 travels, perhaps no such hotel exists as the drear 
 hostelry of Corozal. 
 
228 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 Civility was the one sauce to every dish, and, to be 
 candid, with it, even hunger is more bearable. We 
 sallied out and bought provisions and some candles, 
 whilst supper was in preparation, and we were wise in 
 doing so. Sardines and cheese with Spanish raisins 
 are a fit feast for hungry kings ; moreover, they are 
 standard eatables in every one of the republics in South 
 America. It may be that in monarchies they would 
 seem exiguous ; but in a democratic state, and after a 
 hard ride, they are as filling as was the black broth 
 and the cheese of Sparta to its citizens. 
 
 As we were in the position of the devil — that is, 
 our time in Corozal was short ; for few would choose 
 to make a long stay in the curious, old, rocky-streeted 
 town, unless he were a Daniel Vierge looking for 
 landscapes and for settings for a life of Don Quixote — 
 we lighted the whole packet of old-fashioned candles 
 and surveyed the room that fate had brought us into. 
 The light revealed an enormous, vaulted chamber that 
 seemed to have been part of some ancient Spanish 
 mansion, built in the early years of the first conquest. 
 A ruined chandelier covered with yellow gauze and 
 fly-blown, till it looked like a lady's spotted veil, hung 
 in the middle of the room. 
 
 Two chairs; two beds, with their accompanying 
 mosquito curtains hung from a bar capped with a 
 tarnished crown in ormolu ; a little table ; and a tin 
 washing-stand with an earthen pitcher in it, comprised 
 the furniture. Upon the walls was hung a coloured 
 print of Gower Street Station, in the unreformed, 
 underground railway, showing a train disappearing 
 into an Avernus in wreaths of volleying smoke. In 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 229 
 
 the chief place of honour, but all askew, was a print 
 of Simon Bolivar, El Libertador himself, directing the 
 entire Colombian forces at the crowning victory of 
 Boyaca. 
 
 A cheap and German picture of a saint — St. 
 Anthony of Padua, if my memory serves me — hung 
 facing the Liberator. These were the decorations of 
 the apartment, unless about a dozen bats, that circled 
 round about our heads, might count as ornaments. 
 
 Supper was rather a fragmentary meal, for the 
 boiled rice and leathery beef-stew, that after a long 
 wait made its appearance, was not inviting. The 
 bats swooped down at intervals like harpies, and the 
 mosquitos sounded their shrill horn. Centipedes 
 crawled on the walls, threatening to fall on to the 
 plates. We ate some of the stew unwillingly, not to 
 offend the host, and luckily two or three dogs came in 
 and helped us in our task. 
 
 The night was interesting, for a fierce storm arose. 
 The lightning now and then lit up the gaunt apart- 
 ment, making effects upon the walls and on the roof 
 as in a theatre. These sort of nights are worth a 
 whole long day of riding in the sun — that is, to recollect 
 them with all the little irritations softened by time 
 and distance, and the effect left clear upon the mind. 
 
 Throughout the province there are several little 
 towns upon the central plateau much like Corozal : 
 one called Oveja almost as curious. The road to 
 it from Corozal is five -and- twenty miles, hilly and 
 broken and quite uninhabited. 
 
 When we arrived there it was raining, and the 
 thermometer may have stood about ninety-six, or, 
 
230 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 perhaps, a hundred degrees. Our host, an ancient, revo- 
 lutionary colonel, now turned a storekeeper, regretted 
 bitterly that he had not a bottle of old rum to offer us, 
 for he knew well (he said) that Englishmen looked on 
 it as a first necessity of life — at least, some mining 
 engineers who had passed by the town a month ago 
 had drunk two bottles of it. 
 
 Twenty-five miles or so of hill and dale, and now 
 and then of stretches of thick forest, lie between 
 Oveja and El Carmen, a town that lies on a flat plain, 
 surrounded by plantations of tobacco, that at the time 
 I visited the place were quite neglected, for all their 
 produce used to go to Hamburg, there to be dressed 
 and worked into cigars that were exported to 
 America with a Habana label on the box. El Carmen 
 and the town of Monteria are the two hottest places 
 in the department. The sun pours down on both of 
 them like boiling metal from a blast furnace, yet they 
 are healthy, and Monteria especially so, in spite of the 
 great heat. 
 
 These inland towns and others — such as San Juan 
 Nepomuceno, stuck upon a hill, San Cayetano, on the 
 edge of a primeval forest, and Sahagun, right in the 
 midst of a wide plain, the last well built and with 
 wide streets and a fine church dating from Spanish 
 times — are amongst the most remote and curious little 
 places that I have seen in South America, except in 
 Paraguay. 
 
 Till yesterday but little breath from the outside 
 world has penetrated to them, and they have slumbered 
 on. Perhaps to say that they have slumbered is 
 unfair, for what is progress, after all, except as it 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 231 
 
 affects the mind and the intelligence? Although 
 material progress has been scant enough for the last 
 fifty years, culture and education seem to me upon a 
 higher level in this group of little towns than in the 
 country towns of Mexico and of the Argentine 
 Republic. 
 
 Naturally everyone makes verses, for that is quite 
 endemic in Colombia ; but in addition those who can 
 afford them buy books and newspapers, and many 
 followed all the phases of the war in Europe quite as 
 intelligently as in most European towns. 
 
 I left them with regret, and after wandering about 
 from one town to another, now riding through dense 
 forests, and again leading our horses up and down 
 the hills, then passing open plains, sun-swept and 
 quite deserted, as the cattle had been driven to the 
 swamps, we set our faces towards the Magdalena 
 River upon the homeward trail. 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 The westward trail left Sahagun, a curious little place 
 in which the trees impinge upon the houses, and the 
 houses run into the woods irregularly. 
 
 Still, a place that insists and stamps itself upon the 
 memory, on account of its gigantic plaza, resembling 
 that of Cerete on the Sinii, and its two or three wide 
 streets that appear uninhabited but yet give you the 
 impression that eyes are watching you as you ride 
 past, and make you straighten yourself up and feel 
 your horse's mouth, so that he makes the best 
 appearance to the invisible, but subtly felt critic, 
 possibly peeping through the blinds. Just outside 
 Sahagun, before the road enters upon an open plain, 
 in a little clearing in the wood, there is a cemetery, 
 one of those desolate Colombian cemeteries that are 
 amongst the most forlorn of any of their kind. 
 Sometimes a wall of sun-dried bricks surrounds them, 
 sometimes a rusty, barbed-wire fence. 
 
 In any case there is a gateway built of adobe, 
 painted originally white or a pale lemon colour, but 
 bleached by sun and rain into an indistinguishable 
 smear. The gate is almost off the hinges and is 
 blistered by the sun. The crosses usually are of iron 
 and almost always stand askew. Wild animals make 
 
 232 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 233 
 
 little paths amongst the graves, and now and then an 
 armadillo has his lair in one of them. All is so sun- 
 dried and so neglected-looking, that as you pass the 
 gate, you involuntarily compassionate those who lie 
 in the sandy sepulchres, exposed in death, as they 
 have been in life, to a continual battle with the sun. 
 
 No flowers are ever placed upon the graves, or, 
 if they are, they are so soon burned up it is the same 
 as if they never had been put there, and the dead seem 
 more forgotten and alone than they could be in any 
 other cemetery in the world. Better by far than this 
 is an unfenced Moorish graveyard with its rough 
 stones buried in lentiscus-bushes cut by a hundred 
 paths, for everyone rides through them. There at 
 the least the dead may hear the footfalls of the passing 
 horses or the mules — sounds that have been familiar in 
 their lives. 
 
 As you pass by a graveyard such as that of 
 Sahagun, it would be vain to drop a tear, for it would 
 evaporate before it reached the ground. You can but 
 look at it and hope that those who lie beneath the 
 sand are not disturbed by the harsh cry of the 
 macaws. 
 
 The trail runs out into the open plains, but plains 
 dotted with islands and cut by peninsulas of wood. 
 At last these disappear and leave a steppe, all full of 
 anthills, and, at the season of the year we crossed it, as 
 brown and bare as is the Sahara below Morocco at the 
 Sahiat-el-Hamara. 
 
 In the great droughts the people burn the woods 
 to open up new pasture-lands, and as we rode, on the 
 horizon we saw the virgin forest all aflame, a miserable 
 
234 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 sight, and comparable to the action of a man who lies 
 in wait for someone, kills him, and throws his money 
 down a well. 
 
 In a cattle-breeding country it may be necessary to 
 clear fresh pastures, but to burn trees hundreds of 
 years of age is a sin against nature and should be 
 dealt with by the law. A light breeze blew the 
 ashes of the burning forest towards us. They fell 
 upon our hair and clung upon the horses' coats. It 
 made one wish to rend one's clothes, to think of the 
 destruction of so much beauty in such a wanton way. 
 Labour is scarce and nature more exuberant than can 
 be imagined in the north, and it may be the ashes 
 fertilize the soil, but I was glad at least we had the 
 ashes on our heads ; it seemed that someone mourned. 
 
 In the fierce noonday sun, before we halted under a 
 ceiba-tree, 1 the trail ran through a strip of virgin forest 
 that was all on fire. The path was narrow and at 
 times led close beside great trees aflame, burning 
 their funeral pyre. 
 
 The dry lianas all were flaming, the heat intense, 
 the ashes suffocating. Now and then in the forest 
 a great tree toppled down with a crash, and a 
 thick cloud of smoke went up into the sky. The 
 horses snorted, now jumping over a charred log, and 
 now edging away from one of the tall, fiery trees in 
 terror. Over our heads the sun shone down like 
 brass and met the heat that rose up from the burning 
 wood. All was as silent as the grave, except for the 
 quiet murmuring of the fire, for all the birds and the 
 animals had fled, and so we rode along, stifling and 
 
 1 Bombax ceiba. 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 235 
 
 coughing, winding about a veritable purgatory of 
 nature, made by man, who in his folly, has made for 
 nature and himself so many purgatories. 
 
 All the wide, open country between Sahagun and 
 the River Magdalena, and as far as the Cienega de 
 Ayapel upon the banks of the San Jorge River, is 
 where the Spaniards at the conquest found the 
 richest of the Indian graves. No trace of them 
 exists to-day, for the first conquerors did their work 
 so thoroughly that there is no tradition of any Indian 
 burial-place having been found again. 
 
 The plains were desolate, for all the cattle had 
 been moved into the swamps along the banks of the 
 San Jorge and the Magdalena. Houses are few and 
 far between, as is the case in every pastoral country, 
 and as the tracks left by the cattle on their way down 
 to the water-holes intersect the road, itself a trail made 
 by the feet of passing horses and of mules, nothing 
 is easier than to go astray and follow a wrong path. 
 
 Just as night fell we called at a small ranche under 
 some sandhills near a little stream. The owner, 
 getting barebacked on his horse, showed us the way 
 across the stream. Then, after taking half a dollar, 
 he gave directions that he said were quite infallible. 
 " Follow the trail, which as you see is clear." It was 
 scarcely visible in the bright moonlight that destroys all 
 perspective, and all sense of values. " Be sure to keep 
 the wind on the left side of you, and keep on westerly 
 by south. When you get through the medanos 1 — 
 they run about a quarter of a league — you pass a dead 
 tree on the right. Leave it upon the right and still 
 
 1 Medanos = sandhills. 
 
236 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 ride westerly by south. Do not forget the wind, 
 always on the left side. Your horses seem a little 
 tired, don't kick them over much or they may tire 
 entirely. That would be awkward, for San Benito is 
 about four hours on. There are no houses on the 
 way except a ranche. It is deserted. Look out for 
 the tigers. Adios, go with God." 
 
 He turned his horse and vanished down a sand- 
 hill, leaving us amazed. No wayfarer, even although 
 a fool, could err with such directions, and so we 
 stumbled on. Long did we wander in the sandhills, 
 that in the moonlight looked like the Umbrian Hills 
 in miniature, riding down slopes and scrambling up 
 others, that in the false light of the moon appeared 
 most terrible, though perhaps in the light of day they 
 would have been nothing but mere molehills. 
 
 When we emerged again upon the plains our 
 guide confessed that he was lost. 
 
 Though a bad guide, he was a man accustomed 
 to the wilds, and lying down upon the ground he 
 listened carefully for the sound of a passing traveller 
 or for the barking of a dog. Then he remembered 
 that a road ran from Corozal to Magangue, and, 
 looking at the stars, said he believed we were not far 
 from it. 
 
 Riding in ever-widening circles, round a man 
 with a box of matches who now and then struck one 
 of them to show us where he was, we hit the road at 
 a point nearly half a mile away. 
 
 Then, fixing on a star, we rode towards it, keep- 
 ing the wind on our left side and going to the west. 
 
 No house appeared or the least trace of any town. 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 237 
 
 The moonlight cast long shadows on the ground, 
 making the horses look like camels and every stone a 
 boulder, turning the bushes into the shapes of strange, 
 fantastic animals. The horses, that had been fourteen 
 or fifteen hours upon the road, had sweated and had 
 dried so often that all their coats were white as if they 
 had been sprinkled with salt brine. They stumbled 
 on the stones, and when at last we came to a deserted 
 hut under a clump of sheltering bongo-trees we put 
 up for the night. There was no water and no food, 
 and all the grass was dry and wiry; but a hungry horse 
 will attack any kind of pasture, and they set at it with 
 a will. Throwing our saddles down beneath a tree, 
 and spreading a mosquito net above us, we slept the 
 sleep of the just — or of the unjust, for both are equal 
 before sleep. 
 
 Next morning, parched with thirst and hungry, 
 we started out upon the road, the horses stiff and leg- 
 weary. In two hours and a half we reached the town 
 of San Benito, and, riding up to the house of the 
 Alcalde, asked for hospitality. 
 
 As it fell out, that morning he had sallied forth to 
 catch a thief, who had ensconced himself, armed with 
 a large knife, in a deserted house. We were not in 
 the best condition for what in the wild portions of 
 Colombia is known as a " molestia " — that is, a 
 " trouble " — but thought it best to assist our prospec- 
 tive host, with a view of benefits to come. Slowly 
 and most unwillingly we rode up to the house 
 where the thief had taken refuge and listened to the 
 magistrate summon the miscreant to yield, telling him 
 that the two Americans outside were both armed to 
 
238 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 the teeth and would assist him to the death. Either 
 his resolution failed him, or the terrors of our name 
 unnerved his arm, for when the Alcalde boldly went 
 inside the house, which he did at the peril of his life, 
 after a scuffle he emerged holding the man by an 
 arm bent behind his back. 
 
 Thus was law vindicated. Peace reigned once 
 more in the town of San Benito, and we sat down to 
 a good breakfast, whilst our horses munched their 
 corn. 
 
 The town of San Benito was as much buried in 
 luxuriant vegetation as one of the Jesuit "capillas" 1 
 in Paraguay. The reed-thatched houses were abso- 
 lutely covered to the eaves with every kind of red 
 and yellow creeper. Ropes of lianas, all in flower, 
 festooned the trees, and in the open spaces a white 
 and purple striped convolvulus carpeted the sand. 
 
 The prisoner by this time had come to reason and 
 sat sullenly with his hands tied behind his back in 
 what the Alcalde termed the " house of malefactors." 
 It was a little hut, from which a child might easily 
 have escaped by pulling down the wall. 
 
 However, as we know, fear guards the vineyard 
 more than does the fence. 2 
 
 After due compliments and thanks, we took our 
 way upon a path that led through swamps on which 
 grazed herds of cattle, fat and sleek, in spite of the 
 great drought. 
 
 These swamps are never dry, and in them are 
 
 1 Capillas = chapel; but in Paraguay it is often used to designate 
 whole villages. 
 
 2 " Miedo guarda vinas, no vallado." 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 239 
 
 countless alligators and great flocks of wading and 
 aquatic birds. 
 
 Sometimes the road ran on a narrow causeway 
 between deep swamps where alligators basked in the 
 sun. As we rode by they swam off sluggishly. At 
 other times the trail passed shallower swamps on 
 which fed cattle, standing up to their hocks in water 
 and in mud. 
 
 White ibises sat on the cattle's backs, swaying to 
 keep their balance, as a sailor sways upon a deck. 
 Others stood at the water's edge so motionless and 
 sacramental-looking, that one saw at a glance why the 
 Egyptians worshipped them. 
 
 Again, the track twisted out into small, open 
 spaces, three or four hundred yards in breadth. 
 
 A mile or two away the woods upon the banks of 
 the San Jorge River stood up like a wall, blocking the 
 view towards the south. To the west the swamps of 
 Ayapel, at that season of the year packed with the 
 cattle moved from the drought-swept plains, stretched 
 up towards the boundaries of Antioquia. 
 
 Now and then herds of horses were intermingled 
 with the cattle, giving a look of what the plains of 
 Africa must have been, with herds of quaggas and of 
 gnus, before the advent of the cockney and his battery 
 of guns. 
 
 All of a sudden we came out on the San Jorge, 
 a broad and yellow stream, three or four hundred yards 
 in breadth. The bank on which we stood was high 
 and sun-swept. On it were perched some miserable 
 huts, and underneath them ten or twelve canoes, all 
 tied to poles driven into the stream, rose and fell, lazily. 
 
240 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 Upon the other side was a small town buried in woods, 
 that seemed to block it off from all the world. 
 
 Piling our saddles into a long, crank dugout, 
 and standing up performing miracles of equilibrium, 
 as it appeared to us, though any child upon the river's 
 banks can walk in a canoe as well as on dry land, we 
 crossed the river, and, struggling up a staircase cut 
 in the hard mud, entered the town of Jegua, once a 
 thriving place, but fallen into decay. We passed the 
 siesta in the public hall, used also as the school-house, 
 a dusky edifice, whose walls were decorated with 
 German kindergarten plates, but with the text in 
 Spanish, explaining all the parts and particles of the 
 rhinoceros, the camelopard, and the elephant, " for 
 the Colombian youth." 1 
 
 Long did we slumber, quite undisturbed by the 
 mosquitos that buzzed in myriads in the deserted 
 room. Then, sallying out to buy provisions and to 
 find some means of transport down to Magangue, the 
 port upon the Magdalena where the river steamers 
 call, we found ourselves in difficulties. 
 
 The one steam-launch that Jegua boasted was 
 away upon a trip to Ayapel and not available. Upon 
 the bank that we had quitted in the morning there 
 was no trail, unless we had returned to strike the road 
 from Corozal, forty or fifty miles away. 
 
 Canoes were plentiful and paddlers easy to be 
 found, as all the population was, as it were, amphibious 
 and born to the canoe. 
 
 One Anastasio Giron, described as a " good, 
 faithful Indian, one who will not get drunk until he 
 1 " Para la juventud Colombiana." 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 241 
 
 reaches Magangue," was recommended to us by a 
 man in uniform, who may have been some sort of an 
 official in a not improbable customs-house. 
 
 The good and faithful Anastasio was asleep be- 
 neath the palm-thatched roof of his canoe, his head in 
 shade, his naked feet stuck well out in the sun. Since 
 my youth in Argentina I have always been a little shy 
 of breaking the slumbers of a male 1 white Christian. 
 However, Anastasio, though a Christian, as a scapulary 
 showed hung round his walnut-coloured neck, was 
 certainly not white. 
 
 This fact removed all hesitation on my part. 
 When he was well awake, and after swallowing some 
 rum from a small calabash that he produced, and after 
 salutations which were not short, we fell a-chaffering. 
 It seemed that the canoe, in Anastasio's phrase, 
 " gained two dollars gold a day." This seemed 
 excessive, and for "gold" I substituted "silver," exactly 
 half the price. This must have been far above the 
 usual tariff, for the owner jumped at it, only requiring 
 half to be paid at once. I feared the calabash would 
 be refilled, but turning round he gave the money to 
 an Indian woman who he said was his wife. How 
 she appeared upon the scene I never knew or ever 
 shall know, but perhaps, whilst we were bargaining, 
 she had glided up, her shoeless feet making no sound 
 upon the sand. 
 
 Our saddles and our bags filled at least half of the 
 thatched awning in the middle of the canoe, leaving 
 us barely room to shelter from the sun. A Syrian 
 who kept a little store sold us some sardines, some 
 
 1 Un Cristiano Macho. 
 
 16 
 
242 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 biscuits, and half a dozen bottles of light beer and 
 half a dozen more of kola, with a bundle of cigars. 
 Thus being furnished for the voyage, we waited till 
 the sun was low, and Anastasio and his mate, a 
 lathy, Indian youth, who he professed was " born to 
 paddle, just as a mule is born to carry packs," we 
 pushed into the stream. No single soul stood on the 
 bank to witness our departure, yet I am certain that 
 every mortal in the little town was watching it, and in 
 years to come will talk about myself and of my 
 secretary, describe our clothes and saddles, and will say, 
 I hope, that for Americanos we were almost Christians. 
 A few strokes of the paddle took us round the bend 
 and out of sight of Jegua, which disappeared into the 
 overwhelming woods, as if it had never existed, or had 
 been blotted out. 
 
 The evening breeze blew pleasantly as we sat on 
 the top of the straw shelter in the middle of the canoe, 
 eating the provisions that we had laid in at Jegua, 
 and the voyage promised well. The paddlers seemed 
 untirable, just as a fresh horse seems untirable when 
 he begins his course. 
 
 Soon the breeze fell, the moon shone out and lit 
 the river, turning it from the turbid yellow that it 
 was in sunlight into a sheet of silver, that mirrored 
 the tall trees whose shadows seemed to penetrate into 
 vast depths of water and of shade. The fireflies 
 played about the bushes, and now and then a night 
 bird flew above our heads, uttering a hoarse cry. 
 For several miles we floated gently down the stream, 
 the paddlers by degrees becoming listless, even the 
 youth who " was born to paddle " taking a perfunctory 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 243 
 
 stroke at intervals. At last sleep overtook them, and 
 they lay their paddles in-board and fell asleep, sitting 
 upon the floor of the canoe. We must have also slept, 
 for we were roused in an hour or two by the canoe 
 sticking its nose into the bank. This roused the 
 paddlers, who feared the current would upset the 
 dugout. Their voices roused us to find that we had 
 come out in a clearing in the woods of several miles 
 in length. We landed to stretch our legs and 
 reconnoitre, and found ten or a dozen horses feeding 
 peacefully. 
 
 One of them was so tame that I walked up to 
 pat him, but he became uneasy, snorted, and moved 
 away. I see him now, and always shall, a roan with 
 three white feet and a white nose, and could, if 
 necessary, draw his brand from memory. Cattle fed 
 farther off, but to approach them for a man on foot 
 would have been dangerous, especially at night. 
 The canoe had grounded not far from where the forest 
 bounded the clearing, and in the moonlight the trees 
 formed a continuous wall so black and solid-looking 
 that it seemed made of masonry. We re-embarked, 
 refreshed, drank the last bottles of the kola, and for an 
 hour sat smoking, lulled by the current lapping up 
 against the side of the canoe and by the plashing of 
 the paddles as they dipped regularly. 
 
 We slipped down once again between dark woods 
 without a trace of human habitation. Once a large 
 animal crossed swimming, not far in front of us. It 
 may have been a tapir or a capybara, but when it saw 
 us it swam instinctively into the shadow of the trees, 
 leaving a gentle ripple as it passed. The Southern 
 
244 CARTAGENA DE IND1AS 
 
 Cross hung in the sky above our heads, Sirius gleamed 
 redly, and all the stars seemed to shoot beams of 
 softest light into the water in the still tropic night. 
 
 Occasionally, but rarely, sounds of wild animals 
 came from the recesses of the everglades. It seemed 
 that we, afloat in our canoe, were the sole inhabitants 
 of an unpeopled world, alone with destiny. Once more 
 sleep overcame us, but still we drifted on. Two or three 
 times I woke and looked out on the interminable 
 woods. The boatmen both were sleeping bowed over 
 their paddles, and once when I looked up, my secretary 
 was paddling, seated beside the slumbering Indian. 
 
 The night wore on, and so we passed it, sleeping, 
 and waking fitfully, now paddling for a space, now 
 drifting noiselessly. At last I woke, dripping with 
 dew and stiff, to find the world all buried in white 
 mist. We were afloat upon a ghostly river. The 
 trees appeared gigantic, seen through the steaming 
 cauldron. The Southern Cross had set, and the chill 
 in the air showed that the day was just about to break. 
 
 Little by little a faint glow of red appeared, and 
 the mist slowly disappeared. As the sun rose, in the 
 fresh air of the new day, we found ourselves drifting 
 between two sandbanks, with shallows stretching out 
 between them, peopled by myriads of cormorants. 
 They seemed asleep, for as we noiselessly were wafted 
 past, none of them stirred from where it stood. Almost 
 immediately the sun's rays shone upon the stream, 
 and then a miracle occurred — one of those miracles 
 that Nature sometimes exhibits for the benefit of those 
 who seek her out, or chance to stray, as we had done, 
 to her remotest haunts. 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 245 
 
 Myriads and myriads of fish leaped up into the 
 air. The water boiled with them, and the sun shone 
 upon their silvery sides. Fish, three or four feet long, 
 shot up into the air and fell into the water with 
 a resounding crash. Fish, of the size of herrings, 
 shot up gracefully, their bodies bent in a half 
 circle, and disappeared again so quickly that we 
 rubbed our eyes, to make sure that they had really 
 leaped and disappeared. 
 
 Millions of fish, the size of minnows, put their 
 heads up into the air, and made a tiny caper as if they 
 too wished to salute the sun. The water boiled ; 
 showers of spray darted up and fell upon the floor of 
 the canoe. It seemed a universal act of adoration of 
 the sun by all the fish, past, present, and to come, that 
 ever swam in the San Jorge River, since the first 
 conquest of the land or the beginning of the world. 
 
 The miracle, for I maintain it surely was one — that 
 is, if miracles in their real essence are but the triumph 
 of the forces that Nature holds deep buried in her 
 womb — lasted but a few minutes, and then the fish, 
 as if tired of the upper air, or as if their duty was 
 discharged, all disappeared into their natural element. 
 
 It left us wondering. Even the stolid Indian 
 boatmen were astonished, and one said, " Jesus, what 
 a world of fish !" 
 
 Then they bent to their paddles sturdily, whilst 
 we sat underneath the " toldo" 1 sheltering from the 
 sun. 
 
 In a few hours we passed the mouth of the great 
 
 1 Awning or tent. 
 
246 CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 
 
 Cauca River, then ran into the Magdalena, more than 
 a mile in breadth. 
 
 Great barges, known as bongos, crept along the 
 banks, propelled by crews of Indian punters, and rafts a 
 hundred feet in length swept down the current, with 
 whole families camped upon the logs. 
 
 Long, arrow-like canoes shot out occasionally 
 with a man standing in the stern, like a Venetian 
 gondolier. 
 
 Great herds of cattle fed upon the banks, and now 
 and then a swart vaquero, swinging his lazo, rounded 
 them up, galloping furiously. On every sandbank 
 there were basking alligators, log-like but watchful, 
 whose little eyes, sunk in their scaly foreheads, seemed 
 immovable. The forest upon both banks of the river 
 towered high above us, making us feel as small in our 
 canoe as ants afloat upon a water-lily leaf, feeble and 
 impotent to cope with the gigantic vegetation that 
 seemed antagonistic to mankind. 
 
 The fierce sun blazed upon the water, which 
 reflected it upon our faces as through a magnifying 
 glass, and still we paddled on. 
 
 Then, passing round an elbow of the stream meet- 
 ing the influx of a creek, that raised a little seaway, in 
 which we tossed about in the canoe like a log tosses 
 in the surf upon a beach, we came upon the town as 
 if by accident. Built upon piles and looking like a 
 Dyak village in the Straits of Singapore, the town of 
 Magangue lay sweltering, half buried in the haze. 
 We had come into our port. Canoes and horses; 
 old-world towns; the infinite, wide plains; the forests 
 all bedecked with orchids and lianas ; the heat, the 
 
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS 247 
 
 morning chill, and the discomforts of the road, with 
 all that these things mean to a traveller, when at home 
 he muses by the fire, had become memories. 
 
 Next day saw us aboard a high-decked, stern- 
 wheel steamer, on our passage to the coast. 
 
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