convents of the city. Many of them occupy entire squares. Since the
political upheaval of 1860, generally known as the “Mosquera Rebellion,”
these edifices have ceased to be church property. Some are now used as
schools or hospitals, others as hotels, armories, and barracks; many are
now occupied as government offices—the National Mint, the National
Military Academy, the Post Office, the War and Navy Departments, and the
noted Rosario College.
The traveler’s descent from the Bogotá _sabana_ to the Magdalena on his
departure from the country, will store his memory with vistas of
grandeur and beauty that will never be effaced, for the Upper Magdalena
valley is one of the most beautiful in the world. By the old mule path
to Honda, the head of navigation for big steamers on the Magdalena, by
way of La Mesa, Tocaime, and Jirado, one will be traveling over a route
that for centuries was the great thoroughfare for _peon_ or viceroy, and
is to-day practically unchanged in the scenes that make it interesting.
But one can now go by rail from Bogotá to Girardot on the Magdalena,
some eighty miles above and south of Honda, thence by small steamer to
Arrancapluma, where a short railway trip is made around the Honda Rapids
to La Dorada, about twenty miles north of and down the river from the
town of Honda. At La Dorada the five hundred mile journey northward down
the Magdalena to the Caribbean is made in one of the regular steamers
that cover this service. The river trip is full of interest, for the
wild stream, nearly as large as the Mississippi, flows with great
rapidity throughout its course, and has a most varied aspect. For miles
it spreads out in a calm, placid sheet of water several miles in width,
then whirls over a series of rapids, or forms into whirlpools, or later
races through a narrow mountain gorge; and, in consequence of its
eccentricities, the channel is constantly changing, to the great
inconvenience of pilots.
At Calamar, about seventy-five miles from the mouth, the traveler may
exchange the steamer for the railroad to the port of Cartagena, or
continue down the Magdalena, now greatly increased in volume by the
confluence of the almost equally large river Cauca, to the two important
Caribbean ports at the mouth, Barranquilla and Sabanilla. The first part
of the trip from Bogotá to Girardot reminds one of the mountain scenery
over the Oroya road up into the Andean plateau from Lima. Constantly
before him, in the distance, are the lofty frozen peaks of Tolima, San
Ruiz, and Herveo, towering above their fellows in the Central
Cordillera. On either side of the Magdalena, the slopes of the two
ranges in their lower reaches are dotted with coffee plantations; above
them, reaching to the altitude of the _paramos_, the mountain sides are
thickly overgrown with forests, and down in the river basin, in the
hollow of the broad valley, the brilliant green of varied tropical
vegetation continues, on past the point where the Central and Western
Cordilleras merge in the _llanos_, down to the Caribbean coast plains;
here the Magdalena basin spreads out over a vast area of barren waste.
Barranquilla, Sabanilla, and Cartagena are the important commercial
centers of the republic on the Caribbean, the last-named being one of
the oldest and most interesting of the historic old ports. Founded in
1533 by Don Pedro de Heredia, this port was the most glorious monument
to Spain’s military genius in the new world, and was properly looked
upon as the key to her great treasure house. Spain spent over
$60,000,000 on its fortifications, a fabulous sum in those days, but an
expenditure which for over two hundred years secured to her the mastery
of the Indies. To-day these fortifications—the citadel within the
landlocked harbor, the two castles dominating the narrow entrance, the
tremendous walls and ramparts—stand without question as the most
picturesque and characteristic survival of Spain’s colonial splendor.
Not even the perfectly preserved walls of Manila are more impressive.
The visitor who walks to-day through the narrow, Moorish streets comes
with memories of the fabulous wealth and the violent scenes of siege and
bloodshed culled from romances of the days of the buccaneers that
“sailed the Spanish Main.” He will, however, search in vain for the
evidences of the rich traffic once centered here that gave to Francisco
Pizarro the inspiration for his conquest of Peru.
[Illustration: A POSADA, OR COUNTRY INN, ON THE ROAD TO BOGOTÁ.]
[Illustration: BATTLEMENTED WALL, CARTAGENA.]
Cartagena, “The Heroic City,” from its very beginning was the objective
of every expedition undertaken to wrest from Spain her rich domain in
the Indies; its fortifications stood as a perpetual challenge to the
freebooters who pillaged the Spanish Main in the days of the galleons.
This challenge was accepted more than once to Cartagena’s heavy cost.
Sir Henry Morgan, Robert Vaal, Martin Cote, Du Casse, Sieur des Pointes,
and Sir Francis Drake sacked the town, and later it was the object of
the most important attack made against Spain in the new world prior to
the nineteenth century, when, in 1741, the English Admiral Vernon
undertook his memorable campaign on the Caribbean. He assembled at
Jamaica 29 ships of the line and nearly 100 transports, carrying a total
force of 27,000 soldiers and sailors. His siege of Cartagena began on
the 4th of March and lasted two months, and was attended by enormous
losses. The event is peculiarly interesting to North Americans because
of the fact that the land forces, under General Wentworth, contained a
contingent drawn from the thirteen English colonies in North America,
and that the commander of this contingent was Colonel Lawrence
Washington, elder brother of the immortal George. It was through
admiration for Admiral Vernon’s brilliant but unsuccessful action that
Washington gave to his Virginia estate the name of Mount Vernon.
“Cartagena de Indias,” as the old kings of Spain loved to call their
“very royal and loyal city,” ranks third in point of age in the new
world, and still retains more of its early characteristics than any of
the others. Its antiquity is everywhere in evidence. Like the
battlements and castles at its entrance, the city seems to have been
built of the yellow-white coral laid in concrete, which seems to be
indestructible. If one could fly over it in an airship, and look down
upon its closely massed, red-tiled houses, and, beyond, upon the deep
green of the country-side, with the exquisite blue effects of the
Caribbean and the tropic sky, the city would seem gemlike in its
romantic beauty. The narrow streets of rough stone are overhung at
frequent intervals with the protruding windows and balconies familiar to
visitors in Lima and others of the older Spanish cities, yet there is an
individuality about the houses here that is far more fascinating, and
facing the parks are many fine examples of the old churches and convents
which constitute the distinctive architecture of the colonial régime.
Surrounding these buildings are luxuriant gardens, presenting a riot of
color, in which the peculiarly refreshing green of the hot countries
predominates.
Among the many substantial dwellings occupied by the wealthy is one that
was the seat of the terrible Inquisition which sat here from 1610 until
1821. San Felipe de Barajas, an old castle and fort lying on a low hill
overlooking the city, is full of interesting underground passages, as
are many of the fortifications, and although utterly abandoned and
falling into decay, is still a forceful and grim reminder of the
mediæval period of storm and stress. On the top of another hill, called
“La Popa,” lying back of the town, still stands the ancient convent of
Santa Candelaria, serving as a landmark to mariners passing that way,
its white or light yellow buildings being visible for many miles out at
sea. Here the visitor is shown where a buccaneer amused himself on the
occasion of one of the raids by hurling the nuns over the edge of the
perpendicular cliff on which the convent stands.
Cartagena in the old days surpassed Mexico, Lima, Panamá, and Havana in
importance, and stood forth as the commercial giant of Spain in America;
it represented, as did no other American city, the pomp and magnificence
of her sixteenth and seventeenth century imperialism. Now all this is
past; even as the natural gateway for Colombia’s productiveness, she has
lost her position, the North American-built railroad connecting the port
with the Magdalena River, at Calamar, having proved powerless to restore
even a small measure of her prestige against the rising commercial
importance of Puerto Colombia and Barranquilla. The latter port has now
become the _entrepôt_ of commerce with the interior by the great
waterway of the Magdalena.
On the desolate stretch of Colombia’s Pacific coast there is but one
city of importance, Buenaventura. This is the busy exchange that taps
the fertile region of the upper Atrato basin, and when the Panamá Canal
shall have been opened should spring into greater importance along with
the other ports of the West Coast. In the interior Colombia possesses
many cities of considerable size, ranging from thirty to sixty thousand
inhabitants, which are centers for the mining and agricultural
districts—Pamplona in the mountains near the Venezuela frontier,
Bucarmanga, a little to the west, Mompóz, near the confluence of the
Cauca and Magdalena, once a port on the latter river but now, owing to
the erratic wanderings of that stream, twenty miles east of it,
Medellín, in the Cauca valley; Popayán and Pasto near the head waters of
that river, and La Plata on the other side of the Central Cordillera.
The Hon. John Barrett and Hon. William L. Scruggs, both former Ministers
of the United States at Bogotá, have written extensively of Colombia’s
commercial possibilities and predict great strides for the hermit
republic. “Colombia,” writes Mr. Barrett, “is a wonderland of
opportunity. Measured by the standards of other countries it can be said
without exaggeration that the Republic of Colombia, in proportion to
area and population, is the richest of all in the variety and extent of
undeveloped resources, fullest in promise for future growth and reward
to mankind.” “Colombia,” he continues, “is at our very doors; it is
nearer to the principal ports of the United States than any other South
American country, and yet we have done little to study her internal
wealth or to take part in her foreign commerce.” The country is only
nine hundred and fifty miles away from us; from Cartagena to Tampa,
Florida, the distance is less than from New York to St. Louis. The
foreign trade of Colombia last year amounted to $26,000,000, in which
the United States participated to the extent of only $11,000,000.
Mr. Scruggs says in closing his interesting work on Colombia: “Such is
the country as nature has made it—picturesque, beautiful, and
exceedingly rich and varied in undeveloped resources. As yet man has
done very little for it, the greater part being still unbroken
wilderness.... The commercial possibilities of the country are almost
incalculable; and the time is probably not very remote when the fact
will be more fully realized by the great commercial powers of the
world.”
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XI
VENEZUELA
At the end of his “swing around the circle” of South American countries
(having begun with Brazil), the traveler comes to Venezuela—the huge
republic that bulges out into the northernmost nub of the continent,
where the terminal ranges of the Andes turn eastward to meet the great
Guiana Highlands and form those high-flung ramparts that protect the
fertile, low-lying Amazon plains from the Atlantic. This black,
mountainous front runs along the Caribbean coast line for some fifteen
hundred miles, broken at intervals, however, where the lovely blue of
the tropical sea sweeps inland to meet the bright green of some great
river basin.
Southward, Venezuela spreads down over an irregularly shaped territory
extending from twelve degrees north latitude to the equator. Her varied
topography, too, produces almost every change of climate, from the cold
of the mountains—some of whose peaks reach high enough to earn the title
of _nevada_—down through the temperate zone of the _llanos_, or rolling
plains that slope off into the great Orinoco basins, where wheat, corn,
and cattle abound, and the country’s great staples, coffee, cotton, and
tobacco are grown, to the hot Orinoco jungles that trail off to the
south, where rubber and cacao trees luxuriate without cultivation, and
sugar cane, oranges, fruits, and pineapples thrive in the clearings.
More than half of Venezuela’s territory may be ignored from the
commercial standpoint of to-day, for it is either Alaskan or Amazonian
in character and can be reserved for later needs of the human family if,
as Humboldt prophesied, the Amazon valley should become the feeding
ground of mankind.
No description has ever done justice to the beauties of Venezuela’s
landscape of mountain and valley and mighty rivers, of warm green
pastures and blue skies, and the mystic shimmering white of an
occasional snow-capped peak. The country that so appeals to the
traveler’s interest is nearly six hundred thousand square miles in area,
and could include within its confines the States of Iowa, Wisconsin,
Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio. Its mountainous coast saw the
beginning of the European invasion of the new world. Columbus, Vespucci,
and Ojeda touched here. Ojeda gave the country its name. When, on his
way west from the Orinoco, he rounded Cape San Roman and turned into the
Gulf of Maracaibo, he saw Indian villages composed of houses built on
piles in the water along the shores, which suggested something of a
resemblance to Venice, and he called the place Venezuela (Little
Venice); and soon the whole coast, and eventually the country beyond,
became so known—a region larger than all Italy and Spain combined. This
coast and the white-walled cities nestling in the heights among the
magnificent trees formed the storied Spanish Main.
Cumaná, in the middle east, is the oldest European settlement in South
America; it was in its old church that Las Casas preached—the saintly
priest who was the Indian’s ablest champion in the early days of Spanish
devastation, but who, with regret be it said, is reputed also to have
been the father of African slavery in the new world, for it was he, so
the chroniclers say, who suggested that negroes be imported to labor in
the fields and mines and relieve the Indians of a burden they were both
temperamentally and physically unfitted to bear. Venezuela was the
birthplace of the resistance to Spain’s oppression of her colonies, and
of Miranda, Bolívar, Sucré, and the fiery young patriot, Yáñez—the men
who led the van of that resistance. Through her land flows one of the
world’s greatest rivers, the Orinoco, with its four thousand miles of
navigable waters. The vast productiveness of the country and its stores
of mineral wealth are sufficient to sustain twenty times its present
population of two millions and a half. And, finally, Venezuela is nearer
to us than any other country in South America.
A most agreeable route for the traveler leaving Colombian ports for
Venezuela is by the steamers which zigzag around the Caribbean Sea for
ten days or more on the way to Europe, and touch at many of the once
famous old ports before reaching La Guayra, the sea gateway to Caracas.
Immediately after leaving Colombian waters and rounding the Guajira
peninsula, the ship enters the great Gulf of Maracaibo, one hundred and
fifty miles in extent from east to west, and sixty miles from north to
south. Passing along in through a narrow strait, the almost equally
large Lake of Maracaibo swells out before the traveler. This great body
of water drains an extensive basin lying between two terminal spurs of
the Andes—the Sierra de Parija and the Sierra Mérida—and into it flow
many rivers having their source in the surrounding mountains. Inside, on
the east bank of the strait, lies the city of Maracaibo, now one of the
most important centers on the north coast, for here is shipped the
produce of the vast fertile region of western Venezuela—coffee, cacao,
tobacco, castor beans, hardwood timber, and dyewoods. Much of the
produce of the eastern slope of Colombia also finds its way to Europe
and the States through this port; fully half of what is known in our
markets as “Maracaibo coffee” is really a Colombian product.
[Illustration: VIEW OF MARACAIBO LOOKING WEST FROM THE CATHEDRAL.]
The tropical scenery of the plains sloping down to the lake, and the
mountains, with their suggestion of snowy freshness, make the setting of
this port one of the most interesting on the continent. A dozen or more
of the peaks in the Mérida range are snow-capped, and two of them—Concha
and Coluna—rise to a height of over fifteen thousand feet. Years ago a
passing visitor to Maracaibo, mistaking the discomforts of the humidity
and heat for general dissolution, pronounced the place “the graveyard of
Europeans.” Such hasty judgment is a great injustice, for the rate of
mortality here is less than in many of the other tropical ports.
Rounding the eastern enclosure of the Gulf, the Paraguana peninsula, the
traveler comes upon the quaint old town of Coro, founded in 1527, and
one of the very first of the European settlements. It was this town that
the governor, sent out by the Germans to whom the King of Spain at first
leased the country, made his capital, and from which he undertook his
disastrous expeditions in search of El Dorado. Afterward, until 1576, it
was the seat of Spain’s government of the colony, and is now the capital
of the State of Falcón. Here, also, Miranda made his first resistance to
Spanish misrule at the beginning of the revolutionary war. Coro is but a
few miles south of the Dutch Island of Curaçao, that most picturesque
fragment of Amsterdam perched on a coral rock.
Sweeping out eastward over the sea, as if in continuation of the
Mérida range, is the Cordillera de la Silla (the “Saddle Range”),
which terminates abruptly at Cape Codera. Midway between this cape and
Coro, lies the important seaboard city of Puerto Cabello. Its
environment is not only remarkably attractive—like an oasis to the
traveler who has sailed along the bleak coast range for many hours—but
it is to-day one of the finest harbors in the world, as it was in the
days of the early navigators, who said of it that “a vessel is safe
here, anchored by a single hair (_cabello_).” The city is connected by
rail, over the Silla Cordillera, with the prosperous little city of
Valencia, some fifty miles distant, and thence, by waters of Lake
Valencia, with Cura and other important inland towns which are
commercial centers of a large part of the region that slopes inland
from the coast range. Puerto Cabello is, therefore, the export depot
of the States of Carabobo, Lara, and Zamora, three of the most
productive commonwealths of the Venezuelan federal union. It was once
a rendezvous of the buccaneers and, later, the scene of General Páez’s
astonishing night attack on the Royalist forces during the revolution,
when, with his small command, he forced the surrender of General
Calzada’s entire army. To-day the city has a population of about ten
thousand, and many modern improvements—electricity, water supply,
well-paved streets, and a number of attractive new buildings, that
harmonize, however, with the fine old plazas and colonial residences.
Eastward, some sixty-five miles toward Cape Codera, and halfway the
length of the Silla range, the traveler sights the great peak of Picacho
rising from the water’s edge to a height of over seven thousand feet.
Along this promontory, on a narrow strip of beach, are scattered groups
of sixteenth century houses, white and red-topped for the most part;
some of them nestle inland in coves of the mountains or look over the
blue Caribbean from shelves of the cliffs above. This is La Guayra, the
seaport of the republic’s capital. High above, overhanging the business
center of the town, stands the ancient and picturesque Spanish fortress
of early colonial days, and just below, on another bench of rock, is the
old bull ring. Overlooking all, on a high bluff, are the ruins of the
old castle which was the residence of the Captain-General during the
Spanish régime. To those who have enjoyed Kingsley’s great historical
novel, “Westward Ho!” the old ruins will have a romantic interest, for
it was from the walls of this fortress-castle that Amyas Leigh escaped
after his vain attempt to rescue the Rose of Devon.
Baron von Humboldt said that there is but one place in the world that
can rival La Guayra in the splendor of its setting—Santa Cruz de
Teneriffe, which points one of the Canary Islands off the Moroccan
coast. La Guayra is now all business, but not business of the feverish,
bustling kind, as the visitor will find, after an entire morning spent
in passing from one leisurely official to another in the effort to enter
the country. The port usually serves the traveler merely as a landing
place on his way to Caracas. If for any reason, however, he should
prefer to delay his visit to the capital, he would do well to run up the
coast some three miles east of the port city, to the pleasant little
watering place, Macuto, the resort of the leisure class of the near-by
capital.
Caracas is but seven miles inland from the port as the crow flies, but
the actual distance by rail is twenty-two miles. The steep, winding road
was started by American enterprise, and at a cost of over $100,000 per
mile. It is now controlled by Englishmen, and so great is the traffic,
that the little line never fails to be busy. For two hours the train
zigzags up the perilous ascent to a height of three thousand feet before
it turns sharply around a dizzy precipice and enters the beautiful
valley of Caracas. Until this turn is made the traveler is rarely ever
shut off from the gorgeous blue of the Caribbean. So superb is the
constantly changing view, that he will feel more than repaid for the
sensations of giddiness that may assail him as the train swings around
the many curves on the route, and the yawning chasms overlooked from the
car windows are but added beauties to the scene, instead of death traps,
for so excellent is the construction and so efficient the management
that there has never been an accident along the entire length.
Caracas is usually much on the visitor’s mind during the days of his
approach. His mental picture doubtless will have been colored from some
newspaper cut of a dirty, tatterdemalion crew, entitled “The President’s
Body Guard,” or by some equally deceptive idea of chaotic civic affairs.
But he will by this time have learned, from his visits to other
Venezuelan centers, that this charming and progressive country has been
greatly maligned by our North American press. He will be entirely
reassured the instant the train comes to a stop and he descends at the
clean, pleasant little station and, in cab or trolley car, enters the
fine old Spanish metropolis, rich in creature comforts, dignity,
history, and civic pride. The population of the city now exceeds 70,000,
in which there is but a very small percentage of citizens of foreign
birth.
Unquestionably Caracas is one of the most delightful places of residence
in the world. It lies in a valley three thousand feet up from the sea,
on either side of which towers a range of mountains, one about seven,
the other nine thousand feet. The tropical heat is tempered to a
springlike mildness by the high altitude, and the luxuriant fertility
resulting from the misty rains wafted down from the mountains, make of
the city and its environs a garden of astonishing beauty. One old
gentleman, retired from the British diplomatic service after many years
in Caracas, preferred to end his days here, where, he said, it was “but
a step to Paradise.”