CHAPTER I

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VAGABONDING DOWN THE ANDES

[Illustration:

In the _Monte Grande_, the “Great Wilderness” of Bolivia, the

commander of the first garrison insisted on sending a boy soldier,

with an ancient and rusted Winchester, to “protect” me from the

savages]

VAGABONDING DOWN THE ANDES

Being the Narrative of a Journey, Chiefly Afoot, from Panama to Buenos

Aires

by

HARRY A. FRANCK

Author of “A Vagabond Journey Around the World,” “Tramping Through

Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras,” “Four Months Afoot in Spain,” “Zone

Policeman 88,” etc.

Illustrated with 176 Unusual Photographs by the Author, with a Map

Showing the Route

[Illustration]

New York

The Century Co.

1917

Copyright, 1917, by

The Century Co.

Published September, 1917

------------------------------------------------------------------------

A FOREWORD OF WARNING

A few years ago, when I began looking over the map of the world again, I

chanced to have just been reading Prescott’s “Conquest of Peru,” and it

was natural that my thoughts should turn to South America. My only plan,

at the outset, was to follow, if possible, the old military highway of

the Incas from Quito to Cuzco. Every traveler, however, knows the

tendency of a journey to grow under one’s feet. This one grew with such

tropical luxuriance that before it ended I had spent, not eight months,

but four full years, and had covered not merely the ancient Inca Empire,

but all the ten republics and three colonies of South America.

A considerable portion of this journey was made on foot. The reader may

be moved to ask why. First of all, I formed the habit of walking early

in life, developing an inability to depend on others in my movements.

Then, too, the route lay through many regions in which no other animal

than man can make his way for extended periods. Moreover, there was the

question of caste. It is one of the drawbacks of South America that a

white man cannot efface himself and be an unobserved observer, as on the

highways of Europe. Social lines are so sharply drawn that he who would

be received in frank equality by the peon, by the great mass of the

population, must live and travel much as they do. Merely to ride a horse

lifts him above the communality and sets a certain barrier, akin to race

prejudice, between him and the foot-going hordes among whom my chief

interest lay.

At best these lines of caste are a drag on observant travel in South

America. The “gringo” can never get completely out of his social

stratum. His very color betrays him. It is always “Goot mawning,

Meestear,” too often with a silly, patronizing smile, from the “gente

decente” class; among the rest his mere appearance makes him as

conspicuous as a white man among West Indians. Never can he be an

inconspicuous part of the crowd, as in Europe. To get in touch with the

“common people” requires actually living in their huts and tramping

their roads. The dilettante method of approaching them, “slumming,” will

not do. The disadvantages of the primitive means of locomotion in wild

regions, such as the Andes, are obvious. But the advantages of walking

over more ordinary methods of travel are no less decided. Though the

means be more laborious, the mind is far sharper for facts and

impressions while on foot than when lolling half asleep on a horse or in

a train. The mere pleasure of looking forward to his arrival,

subconsciously building up before his mind’s eye a picture of his goal

complete in every detail, not to mention that of looking back upon the

journey from the comfort of his own armchair, is ample reward to any

true victim of wanderlust. Thousands of men, supplied with all the

comforts money can buy, roam the earth from top to bottom—and are

supremely bored in the process. It is the struggle, the satisfaction of

physical action, the accomplishment of something greatly desired and for

a long time seemingly impossible, that brings real pleasure, that makes

every step forward a satisfaction, every little success in the advance

an enjoyment. For after all, real travel is real labor. He who journeys

only so far as he can without exertion, who shirks the difficulties,

will know no more of the real joy of travel than he who lives without

toil, seeking pleasure only and finding but the cold, dead body thereof,

without ever realizing the joy of life itself.

As in ancient times, so it is in the Andes to-day; distance cannot be

covered without fatigue. On the other hand there is the compensation of

knowing completely the country through which one passes, storing away in

the mind a picture of each long-anticipated spot, indelible as long as

life lasts. The Andean traveler will know the pleasures as well as the

drawbacks of the journeys of earlier, more primitive days, the joy of

evening hours, when suddenly, from the summit of the last toilsome

ascent, he discovers, spread out in its smiling valley below, the

peaceful village in which he is to take his night’s repose, or when he

perceives from afar, gilded by the rays of the setting sun, the towers

of the famous city so long sought,—hours of a vivid joy that few

experiences can equal.

Thanks again to the barriers of caste, he who would really know the

masses of Latin America should not only live with them, but should dress

as plainly as they do. It is hard at best to get into more than

superficial contact with the South American Indian, and to some extent

his traits, like his blood, run through all classes. The upper-caste

Latin American is by nature a masquerader; he treats a “distinguished

stranger” as a real estate agent pilots a prospective buyer about the

streets of some “New Berlin,” cleverly sidestepping the drawbacks; he

shows his real self only when he is not on parade, before he learns that

he is under observation, and claps on the mask he always has instantly

at hand when he wishes to show “himself”; and he rates every man’s

importance by the height of his collar and the color of his spats,

cloaking himself in pretense accordingly. He who does not wish to know

the truth about a Latin-American country should attire himself in a

frock-coat, a silk hat, and appear with letters of introduction to the

“people of importance.” His hosts will take him in regal style along two

or three of the best streets and into the show-places, will gild every

garbage-can that is likely to fall under his august eye, and will shield

him from all the unpleasantnesses of life as carefully as the guardians

of the princess in the fairy-tale. Hence the mere lack of ostentation,

the mere appearance of being one of the negligible masses, goes far

toward giving the unassigned wanderer a vast advantage in getting at the

unmasked truth, in avoiding false impressions, over men of more

brilliant mind and better powers of observation.

My purpose in journeying through South America was primarily to study

the ways of the common people. I am no more fond of the unsavory, either

in physical contact or on the printed page, than are the rest of my

fellow-countrymen. But every occupation has its drawbacks. No traveler

through interior South America with whom I have yet spoken has found

conditions better than herein indicated; though for some strange reason

it appears to be the custom to shield readers from this, to tell

intimate facts only privately and to falsify public utterances by

glossing over all the crudities. The fact is that the man who has spent

four years afield south of the Rio Grande, and has come back to tell the

tale, can only shake with laughter when an exponent of the “germ theory”

speaks. Explorers with millionaire fathers-in-law tell us that the

out-of-the-way traveler to such a country should take with him

numberless supplies, from sheets to after-dinner coffee. It is the best

plan, for those whose aim is to live in comfort—or a still better plan

is to remain at home. Far be it from me to censure the man who journeys

southward for other purposes for taking with him all the comforts he can

carry; but he who seeks to know the people intimately must not merely

tramp their trails; he must become, in so far as is possible, physically

one of them. We should care little about the impressions of a European

studying life in the United States who lived in his own tent and

subsisted on canned goods he brought with him, however much we might

admire his foresight.

It may be argued that by following the plan I have outlined I saw only

the lower class and do not report conditions among the more fortunate

inhabitants. Yet after all, the peon, the Indian, the masses, comprise

nine tenths of the population of South America. There are fewer persons

of pure European blood between our southern boundary and Cape Horn than

in the state of New York; and by no means all of these live in even

comparative comfort. The well-dressed minority of Latin America has

often had its spokesman; numerically, and on the whole, the condition of

these is of as little importance in the general scheme of things as are

the doings of our “Four Hundred” in the life of our hundred million. I

have, therefore, summed up briefly the ways of this small, if

conspicuous, class, and its ways are so monotonously alike throughout

the length and breadth of Latin America that this lumping together is

not difficult. The chief problem in any country is the status of the

great mass of population, the condition of the common people, and it is

to this that I have almost entirely confined myself in the ensuing

pages.

“Have you read ——’s book on Brazintine?” a noted French traveler once

asked me. “He says all the brazintinos are immoral and dishonest. You

and I, who have been there, know this is true. But those are things one

tells to a circle of friends, that one shares over a pipe at the club,

_mais, enfin, ça ne s’écrit pas_”!

It is due, I suppose, to a lack of Gallic finesse that I have never been

able to grasp this point of view. Why the plain truth should be reserved

for the fireside and personal friends, and should be kept from one’s

friends of the printed page, is beyond my fathoming. At any rate, I have

made no attempt to follow that plan. I tried not to expect everything in

South America to be exactly as it is in the United States—I should,

indeed, have considered that a misfortune. After all, I went south to

see the Latin American as he is, not with the hope of finding him

another American merely speaking another language. I have tried to judge

him by his own ideals and history, fully aware that in the latter he did

not have a “fair shake,” rather than by our own. Yet the traveler cannot

entirely lay aside his native point of view; that would imply that he

was not convinced of the wisdom of his own way of life, and the question

would arise, Why not change? Neither the Latin-American nor the American

point of view is all right or all wrong; they are simply different.

Because we criticize does not necessarily mean that we claim

superiority, though I am reminded of the American resident in South

America who asserted that were he not convinced of his superiority to

his neighbors, he would forthwith tie a mill-stone about his neck and

jump in where it was deep. But the traveler who does not express his own

honest opinions, “loses,” as the Brazilians say, “a splendid chance to

keep silent.” I have, therefore, set down my real, heartfelt

impressions. These may be false, even worthless; the reader has full

right to reject them in toto. But at least they have the virtue of

frankness.

Moreover, South America has had its fair share of apologists. Virtually

every country publishes at intervals a luxurious volume of self-praise

that resembles in its point of view the year-book of a high school or

college class. Trade journals are constantly painting things South

American in the rosiest of colors. It has been the traditional policy of

certain branches of our government to cultivate Latin-American

friendship by a myopic disregard of all the shadows in the picture. In

our own capital there exists a criminally optimistic society for the

propagation of emasculated information concerning our neighbors to the

south. Among “distinguished strangers” from our own land who have

visited Latin America there seems to have been a conspiracy to whitewash

everything, an agreement to have all they see or experience bathed,

barbered, and manicured before permitting it to make its bow to our

public. The enormous majority of descriptions of South America resemble

the original about as much as a portrait resembles the sitter after a

professional photographer has finished with it.

I do not know what the Latin American may have been in other

years—perhaps he was the splendid fellow many make him out. I am merely

telling, as charitably as possible, how I found him. I am not interested

in winning or losing his friendship, in selling him goods, or in gaining

his “moral support” to our governmental activities. I am interested only

in giving as faithful a picture as possible of my experiences with him.

There are good things, praiseworthy things in South America; if, in the

telling, these have been overshadowed by the less laudable, it is

because the latter do so overshadow in point of fact.

Obviously, the experiences of four years, even in Latin America, cannot

be crowded within the covers of a volume or two. I have, therefore,

confined myself within certain limits. History, for instance, has been

almost completely eliminated. I have taken for granted in the reader a

certain basic knowledge of South America, though in the case of many

even well-educated Americans this seems to be taking much for granted. I

have passed as briefly as possible over those things which are already

to be found within the walls of our libraries, confining myself so far

as possible to that which I have personally seen or experienced. I have,

however, dipped as freely into the literature of each country as into

the life itself, and in the few cases where I have made use of facts so

acquired, I have not taken of my cramped space to acknowledge the debt

in words. For similar reasons, though it may seem ingratitude, I have

not taken the reader’s time to thank individuals by name for personal

kindnesses. They were many; but the doers know that their deeds were

appreciated, without thanks being detailed here; or if they do not, it

is the fate of those who lend passing assistance to world-roamers to

take their reward in inner satisfaction.

The modern reader is prone to tire quickly of mere description; but

nature is so important a factor in the Andes that it cannot be briefly

passed over. Personally I like an occasional sunset, like it so much

that I sometimes go to the unrequited toil of attempting to paint one.

The reader who prefers his stage bare, as in Shakespeare’s day, can

easily glide over those pages. If he does without stage-setting,

however, and relies only on his imagination, his picture is apt to be

false, for the imagination has very faulty materials from our

school-books and the tales of wandering Münchausens to work upon. Yet

after all, even with all one’s effort, it is sad how little of the

splendid scenery, the atmosphere, the charm of it all—for in spite of

its drawbacks, South America has charm—one can get down on paper.

This was not a voyage of discovery; or rather, if there was discovery,

it was only of a different stratum of life, and not of new lands. My

plan was not so much to find unexplored country in the ordinary sense,

as to go by hitherto unmentioned paths through inhabited and known

regions, the out-of-the-way corners of familiar cities and the

undescribed gathering-places of mankind. In that sense South America is

still chiefly “unexplored.”

Lastly, let me give fair warning that this is no tale of adventures. I

would gladly have had it otherwise. I sought eagerly for experiences

that would make the story more worth the telling; I tried my sincerest

to get into trouble; all in vain. In Mexico I marched peacefully about

between two falling empires. In Guatemala I strolled nonchalantly among

Estrada Cabrara’s band of hired assassins. In Honduras I chatted with

the leaders of the latest revolution. In Colombia I met many cripples of

the civil war but recently ended. In Ecuador I found only peace and

apathy in the very streets through which an ex-president and his

henchman had been dragged to death a few months before. In Peru all was

love and brotherhood—until after I left. In the Bolivian Chaco wild

Indians wiped out a company of soldiers not a hundred miles from where I

was passing in placid unconcern. In the Paraguayan capital I sat with

the man who not a year before had captained a particularly bloody coup

d’état. In Brazil I passed through two sections virtually in anarchy,

and in one of its state capitals watched a riot that came perilously

near being a revolution. In Venezuela I strolled serenely through the

very ranks of revolters mere days before the leader and many of his band

were killed. Yet hardly once did I knowingly come near personal

violence. The fact is that South America is atrociously safe. Dangers

are mostly those of popular novelists, from the pages of travelers who

succumb to the natural temptation to “draw the long bow,” after the

fashion of Marco Polo.

It may be that there was a better way to have told this story than as a

day-to-day narrative. But even at that, it could not honestly have

escaped a certain monotony; for monotony is ingrained in the fiber of

South America. Not to have reported the journey chronologically would

have made for succinctness, but at the expense, perhaps, of truth. It

may be wearisome to hear of virtually every night’s stopping-place; yet

as the traveler through the interior must stop at almost every hut along

the way, the sum total of these is a description of the whole country.

If the story appears sketchy and piecemeal, it is because I have denied

myself, erroneously perhaps, even the Barrovian privilege of transposing

or inventing enough to make a smoother and more interesting story. A

book of travel cannot have something always happening; that is the

privilege of fiction. The novelist can forge his materials to his

liking; the travel-writer is very limited, even in opportunity to

amalgamate, his material being very hard and nonplastic. Even to

transpose and combine incidents is often to falsify, for what is true in

one spot may never have been so a hundred miles further on.

The necessity of suddenly abandoning this task for other and more

important duties has made it impossible to give it final polish, to

eliminate much that should have been eliminated, and to improve much of

what remains.

HARRY A. FRANCK.

Plattsburg, New York, August 1, 1917.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I UP TO BOGOTÁ 3

II THE CLOISTERED CITY 22

III FROM BOGOTÁ OVER THE QUINDÍO 39

IV ALONG THE CAUCA VALLEY 63

V DOWN THE ANDES TO QUITO 85

VI THE CITY OF THE EQUATOR 127

VII DOWN VOLCANO AVENUE 167

VIII THROUGH SOUTHERN ECUADOR 190

IX THE WILDS OF NORTHERN PERU 209

X APPROACHING INCA LAND 244

XI DRAWBACKS OF THE TRAIL 270

XII THE ROOF OF PERU 300

XIII ROUND ABOUT THE PERUVIAN CAPITAL 324

XIV OVERLAND TOWARD CUZCO 342

XV THE ROUTE OF THE CONQUISTADORES 374

XVI THE CITY OF THE SUN 405

XVII A FORGOTTEN CITY OF THE ANDES 454

XVIII THE COLLASUYU, OR “UPPER” PERU 480

XIX ON FOOT ACROSS TROPICAL BOLIVIA 517

XX LIFE IN THE BOLIVIAN WILDERNESS 543

XXI SKIRTING THE GRAN CHACO 573

XXII SOUTHWARD THROUGH GUARANI LAND 600

ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING PAGE

In the _Monte Grande_, the “Great Wilderness” of

Bolivia, the commander of the garrison insisted on

sending a boy soldier, with an ancient and rusted

Winchester, to “protect” me from the savages _Frontispiece_

One of the wood-burning steamers of the lower Magdalena,

on the route to Bogotá 4

Along the Magdalena we halted several times each day for

fuel 4

Hays catches his first glimpse of the jungles of

Colombia 13

The stewards of the “Alicia” in full uniform 13

A village on the banks of the Magdalena 17

Jirardot; end of the steamer line and beginning of the

railroad to Bogotá 17

A typical Indian hut on the outskirts of Bogotá 20

Indian girls and women are the chief dray-horses of the

Colombian capital 20

Bogotá and its _sabana_ from the summit of Guadalupe 28

The central plaza of Bogotá from the window of our room 28

A _chola_, or half-Indian girl, of Bogotá backed by an

outcast of the “gente decente” class 32

A street of Bogotá. The line of flaggings in the center

is for the use of Indians and four-footed burden

bearers 32

Celebrating Colombia’s Independence Day (July 20th) 37

Meanwhile in another square the populace marvels at the

feats of “maroma nacional” of an amateur circus 37

A section of the ancient highway, built by the Spaniards

more than three centuries ago 44

Fellow-travelers at the edge of the _sabana_ of Bogotá 44

Approaching the Central Cordillera of the Andes 49

Hays, seated before the “Hotel Mi Casa” and behind one

of his $5 cigars 53

A bit of the road by which we mounted to the Quindío

pass over the central range, with forests of the

slender palms peculiar to the region 53

The first days on the road; showing how I would have

traveled by choice 60

On the western side of the Central Cordillera the trail

drops quickly down into the tropics again 60

Like those of the days of Shakespeare, the theater of

Cartago consists of a stage—of split bamboo, with a

tile roof—inside the patio of the “hotel” 64

Cartago watching our departure 64

Along the Cauca Valley 69

In places the Cauca Valley swarmed with locusts 69

Worse than the locusts 72

The market-place of Tuluá, with the cross that protects

it against all sorts of calamities 72

A view of the “sacred city” of Buga, with the new church

erected in honor of the miraculous Virgin 76

A horseman of the Cauca in full regalia 76

The scene of “Maria,” most famous of South American

novels, and once the residence of its author 80

The home of “Maria”; and a typical _hacendado_ family of

the Cauca 80

The market-place of Cajibío, in the highlands of Popayán 96

Crossing the Cauca River with a pack train by one of the

typical “ferries” of the Andes 101

A village of the mountainous region south of Popayán 101

Hays, less considerable weight, and a fellow-roadster 108

An Indian woman weaving _teque-teque_ or native cloth,

by the same method used before the Conquest 108

Quito lies in a pocket of the Andes, at the foot of

Pichincha, more than 10,000 feet above sea-level 120

A view of Quito, backed by the Panecillo that bottles it

up on the south 129

A patio of the Monastery of San Francisco, one of the

eighteen monasteries and convents of Quito, said to be

the most extensive in the Western Hemisphere 129

The family of “Don Panchito” with whom I lived in Quito 133

Girls of the “gente decente” class of Quito, in a school

run by European nuns 133

Quito does not put its faith in small locks and keys 140

Ecuadorian soldiers before the national “palace” 140

A corner of Quito—looking through a garbage-hole into

one of the many ravines by which the city is broken up 144

After the bullfight a yearling is often turned into the

ring for the amusement of the youthful male population

of Quito 149

A group of the Indians that form so large a percentage

of Quito’s population 149

The undertaker’s delivery wagon 156

Probably not his own in spite of the circumstantial

evidence against him 156

Almost everything that moves in Quito rides on the backs

of Indians 161

An Indian family driving away dull care—and watching me

take the picture of a dog down the street 161

The street by which one leaves Quito on the tramp to the

south 165

Long before Edison thought of his poured-cement houses,

the Indians of the Andes were building their fences in

a similar manner 165

Typical huts of the _páramo_ of Tiopullo 168

Beyond the _páramo_ of Azuay the trail clambers over

broken rock ledges into the town of Cañar 168

Indians carrying a grand piano across the plaza of Cañar

on a journey to the interior 172

The Indians of Ecuador draw their droves of cattle on

after them by playing a weird, mournful “music” on the

_bocina_, made of a section of bamboo 172

Ruins of the fortress of Ingapirca, near Cañar 176

A mild example of the “road” through southern Ecuador 176

Cuenca, third city of Ecuador, lies in one of the most

fertile and beautiful valleys of the Andes 181

A detail of the “Panama” hat market of the Azogues 184

Arrived at the wholesale establishments of Cuenca, the

hats are finished 184

My home in Cuenca, with the Montesinos family 188

Students of the _Colegio_ of Cuenca 188

The “English Language Club” of Cuenca in full session 193

An hacienda-house of southern Ecuador, backed by its

grove of eucalyptus-trees 193

Plowing for wheat or corn on the hacienda of Cumbe 200

The church, and the dwelling of my host, the priest of

Oña 208

Loja, southernmost city of Ecuador, backed by her

endless labyrinth of mountains 208

The guinea-pigs on which I feasted upon breaking out of

the wilderness on the Peruvian frontier—and the cook 213

The Indians of Zaraguro are different, both in type and

costume, from the meeker types of Quito and vicinity 213

In the semi-tropical Province of Jaen, in north Peru,

sugarcane grows luxuriantly 220

The sugar that is not turned into _aguardiente_, or

native whiskey, is boiled down in the _trapiche_ into

crude brown blocks, variously known as _panela_,

_chancaca_, _rapadura_, _empanisado_, _papelón_, etc.,

weighed and wrapped in banana-leaves, selling at about

5 cents for 3 pounds 220

The _teniente-gobernador_, or “lieutenant-governor,” of

Jaen 229

The two of us 229

The main street of the great provincial capital of Jaen 236

The government “ferry” across the Huancabamba 236

A woman of the jungles of Jaen preparing me the first

meal in days at the typical Ecuadorian cook-stove 248

Peruvian prisoners earn their own livelihood by weaving

hats, spinning yarn, and the like 248

The ancient city of Cajamarca lies in one of the most

magnificent highland valleys of the Andes 257

The only wheeled vehicle I saw in Peru during my first

three months in that country 264

One of the many unfinished churches of Cajamarca 264

One of the few remaining _simpichacas_, or suspension

bridges, of the Andes 272

A typical shop of the Andes 272

Detail of the ruins of “Marca-Huamachuco,” high up on

the mountain above the modern town of that name 289

Pallasca, to which I climbed from one of the mightiest

_quebradas_ in the Andes 289

Catalino Aguilar and his wife, Fermín Alva, my nurses in

the hospital of Caráz 296

An Indian of Cerro de Pasco region carrying a

slaughtered sheep 296

Though within a few degrees of the equator, Huaráz,

capital of the most populous department of Peru, has a

veritable Swiss setting of snow-clad peaks and

glaciers 304

Threshing wheat with the aid of the wind 304

Crossing the Central Cordillera of the Andes south of

Huaráz, barely nine degrees below the equator 308

The fortress of the former Inca city of Huánaco el Viejo 317

A typical residence of the Indians of the high _páramos_ 317

The _arrieros_ with whom I left Huallanga, and the

family inhabiting the hut shown in the preceding

picture 321

The immaculate staff of the Cerro de Pasco hospital 321

The semi-weekly lottery drawing in the main plaza of

Lima 328

All aboard! A Sunday excursion that was not posed 328

The bleak mining town of Morococha, more than 16,000

feet above sea-level 336

The American miners of Morococha live in comfort for all

the altitude and bleakness of their surroundings 336

A typical miner of the high Peruvian Andes 340

Miners of Morococha,—a Welch foreman and two of his gang 340

A hint of what the second-class traveler on Peruvian

railways must put up with 349

The wide main street and a part of the immense market of

Huancayo, said to be the largest in Peru 349

A detail of the market of Huancayo, with a bit of

pottery like that of the days of the Incas 356

“Chusquito” descending one of the few remnants of the

old Inca highway I found from Quito to Cuzco 356

Huancavelica, one of the most picturesque and

least-visited provincial capitals of Peru 365

On the “road” to Ayacucho I overtook a lawyer who was

importing a piano 376

Carrying the piano across one of the typical bridges of

the Peruvian Andes 376

The striking headdress of the women of Ayacucho 385

The friendly and ingratiating waiters of our hotel in

Ayacucho 385

A religious procession in the main square of Ayacucho 392

A gala Sunday in the improvised “bullring” of Ayacucho 392

A familiar sight in the Andes—a recently butchered beef

hung in sheets along the clothes-line to sun-dry into

charqui 400

A typical “bed” in the guest-room provided for travelers

by many Peruvian _hacendados_ 400

The fatherless urchin who fell in with me beyond

Andahuaylas 405

My body-servant in Andahuaylas, and the sickle with

which he was supposed to cut all the alfalfa

“Chusquito” could eat 405

A view of Quito, capital of Ecuador, from the summit of

the Panecillo 408

View of Cuzco, the ancient Inca capital, from the summit

of Sacsahuaman 408

Building a house in Peru 412

The patio of the “Hotel Progreso” of Abancay 412

A religious procession in Abancay 417

A _chola_ of Abancay, wearing the _dicclla_ which all

put on at the age of puberty 432

A chiefly-Indian woman of Abancay 432

The first view of Cuzco 437

An Indian of Cuzco, speaking only Quichua 444

Indian women of the market-place, wearing the “pancake”

hat of Cuzco 444

An Indian required to pay for the day’s mass proudly

clings to his staff of office 449

Youth from a village near Cuzco, each with a coca cud in

his cheek 449

Our party setting out for Machu Picchu across the high

plains about Cuzco 453

Ollantaytambo, the end of the first day’s journey, in

the valley of the Urubamba 453

Spring plowing in the Urubamba valley 460

As we rode eastward into the sunrise down the gorge of

the Urubamba, glacier-clad Piri above threw off its

night wraps of clouds 464

The semicircular tower and some of the finest

stone-cutting and fitting of Machu Picchu 464

We came out on the edge of things and Machu Picchu lay

before us 469

The resounding gorge of the Urubamba, with terraces of

the ancient inhabitants on the inaccessible left bank 472

One of the many stairways of Machu Picchu 472

The temple of the three windows, an unusual feature of

Inca architecture 476

“Rumiñaui” seated on the _intihuatana_, or sun-dial, at

the top of the town 476

The babies of Bolivia sit in a whole nest of finery on

nurse’s back 485

Arequipa is built of stones light as wood, cut from a

neighboring quarry 485

Indians plowing on the shores of Titicaca 492

Sunrise at Copacabana, the sacred city of Bolivia on the

shores of Titicaca 492

One of the two huge figures facing the grass-grown plaza

of modern Tiahuanaco at the entrance to the church 501

The ancient god of Tiahuanaco before which the Indian

woman, herding her pigs, bowed down in worship 501

Arequipa, second city of Peru, in its desert oasis,

backed by misty volcano 504

“Suddenly the bleak pampa falls away at one’s feet” 504

Llamas of La Paz patiently awaiting the return of their

driver 508

Down the valley below La Paz the pink and yellow soil

stands in fantastic, rain-gashed cliffs 508

_Cholas_ of La Paz, in their native garb 513

“Sandy” leading his train of carts loaded with

construction material for the railroad to Cochabamba 528

The “gringo bench” of Cochabamba,—left to right, “Old

Man Simpson”; Tommy Cox; Sampson, the Cockney; Owen;

and Scribner 528

The home and family of the alcalde who could not read 536

Our impromptu celebration of Christmas Eve in Pampa

Grande 536

A street of Santa Cruz de la Sierra after a shower 545

Conscripts of the Bolivian army practicing their first

maneuvers in the central plaza of Santa Cruz 545

Manuel Abasto, a native of Santa Cruz de la Sierra 552

Through the open doors of Santa Cruz one often catches a

glimpse of the patio, a garden gay with flowers 552

Konanz seated on our baggage in the _pelota de cuero_ 560

The force of one of the four _fortines_, or

“fortresses,” with which the Bolivian government

garrisons the Monte Grande against the savages 560

Jim and “Hughtie” Powell, Americans from Texas who have

turned Bolivian peons 564

A jungle hair-cut 564

The old stone and brick church and monastery of San José 573

The fatherly old cura of San José standing before the

Jesuit sun-dial 573

Henry Halsey, the American rancher, of tropical Bolivia,

and his family 577

Saddle-steers take the place of horses and mules in the

muddy parts of tropical Bolivia 577

A German of tropical Bolivia and his “housekeeper” 581

Santiago de Chiquitos, above the gnat-line, backed by

its reddish cliffs 581

“Don Cupertino,” chief adornment of eastern Bolivia,

with his family and dependents 589

The _tipoy_, a single loose gown, constitutes the entire

garb of most of the native women of tropical Bolivia 593

A girl of Santiago de Chiquitos selling a chicken to the

cook of “los americanos” 593

The shoemaker who lived next door to “los americanos” in

Santiago de Chiquitos, and his latest “wife” 597

A birthday dance in Santiago de Chiquitos, in honor of

the German in the center background 597

A view from the promenade-deck of the steamer 604

A Paraguayan landscape, with native cart 604

The mixture of types in the Argentine 608

MAP

The author’s itinerary 40

VAGABONDING

DOWN THE ANDES

CHAPTER I

UP TO BOGOTÁ

When we had “made a stake” as Canal Zone policemen, Leo Hays and I

sailed from Panama to South America. On board the Royal Mail steamer the

waist of the ship, to which our tickets confined us, was a screaming

pandemonium of West Indian negroes, homeward bound from canal digging,

and a veritable chaos of their baggage and household goods—and

gods—ranging from tin trunks to pet monkeys, from battered phonographs

to plush-bound Bibles. We preëmpted deck space for our suitcases and sat

down upon them. It chanced to be the same day on which, eight years

before, I had set out on a “vagabond journey” around the world.

Twenty-four hours after our last Zone handshake we marched down the

gangplank among the little brown policemen of Cartagena, Colombia, and

fought our way through a mob of dock loafers to the toy railroad train

that eventually creaked away into the city. Our revolvers and cartridge

belts we wore out of sight; uniforms and nightsticks no longer figured

in our equipment. But the campaign costume we had chosen,—broad felt

hats, Norfolk jackets and breeches of olive drab, and the leather

leggings common to the Zone—were evidently more conspicuous here than we

had suspected. For about us wherever we moved sounded awe-struck stage

whispers:

“Psst! Policía de la Zona!”

The ancient city and fortress of Cartagena—and for America it is old

indeed—squats on a sandy point jutting far out into the blue Caribbean,

with a beach curving inland on either hand. A sea-wall beside which that

of Panama seems a plaything, of massive weather-tarnished, ocean-lashed

stones, brown-gray with age, with stern, dignified old gateways,

encloses the city in irregular form. On its top is a promenade varying

in width from a carriage drive to a manoeuver field. Outside, down on

the languidly garrulous beach, little thatched huts have drifted

together under the cocoanut groves. Inside, the dust-deep streets have

long since lost most of the cobbled paving of their Spanish birthright;

the narrow, inadequate tile sidewalks are far from continuous, and the

rules of life are so lax that only the constant sweep of the sea air

accounts for old age amid conditions that should bring death early and

often.

Long before we reached our hotel we regretted our penuriousness in

scorning cabs and carriers. Not only did the weight of our suitcases

double every few yards in the leaden tropical air, and the labyrinthian

way through the city elude us at every turn, but at least a score of

ragged boys trailed respectfully but hopefully in our rear with the

anticipatory manner of an opera understudy waiting in the edge of the

wings for the principal to break down at the next note. A generous

percentage of the population crowded the doorways and children raced

ahead to summon forth their families to behold what was apparently the

most exciting thing that had taken place in Cartagena in months.

Evidently a _caballero_ bearing his own material burdens was a strange

sight in South America. The populace stared fixedly, in as impersonal a

way as ruminating oxen, and every few yards half-naked children,

evidently abetted by their elders, swarmed out upon us with shrill cries

of “Wan sheeling!”

We were soon reminded that we had left behind our power as well as our

emoluments. The proprietress whose oily Hebrew smile greeted us at the

hotel door was none other than one long “wanted” on the Zone on the

charge of running a disorderly house. The room she assigned us was

enormous, but the furnishings were scant and thin, the beds mere strips

of canvas, as befits a country of perennial midsummer. While we unpacked

and shaved, a ragged brown urchin slipped in with the Barranquilla

newspaper. In a characteristic burst of generosity Hays tossed him

double the price demanded—only to discover just after the vendor was out

of reach that the pauperise little sheet was twenty days old. It was a

“bunco game” so aged it had grown new again. Maria, the chambermaid,

already in the sear and yellow leaf, shuffled in frequently, supremely

indifferent to our scantiness of attire. Now and then several younger

females of decidedly African ancestry strolled by as nonchalantly, one

by one, to inquire whether we had any soiled clothes to wash, and

loitered about in a manner to suggest that the question was meant to be

taken figuratively. This friendliness was the general attitude of all

the town. Outwardly at least we were shown no discourtesy, and there was

little confirmation of the reputed hatred of Americans. Yet almost from

the moment of our landing we noted that Colombians seemed to avoid

speaking to us beyond the requirements of business or the cut and dried

forms of their habitual politeness. Still, with only an anemic candle to

flicker its pale shadows on the enclosing wall of the droning tropical

night, we settled down to the conclusion that Colombia, alleged the

deadly enemy of all things American and “heretical,” was less black than

she had been painted.

[Illustration:

One of the wood-burning steamers of the lower Magdalena, on the route

to Bogotá]

[Illustration:

Along the Magdalena we halted several times each day for fuel, the

villagers looking idly on while the crew carried many a woodpile on

board across a precarious gangplank]

We had reached the land of easy money. Merely to step into a bank with a

$5 bill was to emerge with a bulging roll of $500. We could not repress

a millionaire swagger when we tossed a hundred-dollar note on the

counter to pay for a pair of socks, though it quickly wilted when a few

nickel pieces were tendered in change. Hays dropped into a dingy little

hole-in-the-wall to buy a cigar, but though it was certainly the only $5

cigar he had ever strutted behind, he soon tossed it away in disgust.

The newcomer is apt to be startled when he hears a Colombian casually

mention paying $10,000 for a mule—until he realizes that the speaker is

really talking in cents. The Colombian notes, even those of the

intrinsic value of our copper coin, are elaborately engraved, and the

wonder grew how the Government could afford to print them.

For those who will exert themselves, even in the tropics, there is a

splendid view of all Cartagena from La Popa, a hill standing forth

Gibraltar-like above the inner harbor, on its nose a massive old church

and fortress combined. From it the cruder details of the town, the

startling pink and sky-blue of newer walls and balconies, fade to the

general inconspicuousness of the more age-mellowed houses. The ancient

red-tile roofs blend artistically into the patches of greensward and the

light pink of royal poinciana trees; the whole city, edged by the

landward-leaning cocoanut palms, is framed by a sea stretching away on

either hand to the world’s end.

The half-grown Colombian of forty in charge of La Popa and the telescope

and telephone by which incoming ships are reported, changed gradually

from canny distrust to garrulous curiosity and invited us to inspect his

entire domain. The purely academic dislike of Americans we soon found

was overcome with little effort by those who addressed men of his class

in their own tongue. Conversation at length drifted to sanitation in

Panama, Colombia’s “rebel province,” as he called it. The fort-keeper

listened to our tales in loose-jawed wonder and summed up his opinions

of such gringo superstitions with:

“But here we do none of those things, señores! The mosquitos prick us

every day, yet we are well.”

Our strange notion that disease could be carried by a mere insect was as

absurd to him as was to us his own habit of relying for health on the

plaster saint in the vaulted fortress church.

Even in Panama information on travel in Colombia had been almost as

lacking as trustworthy reports on the interior conditions of Mars. Only

once in my five months on the Canal Zone had I run across even an

ostensible source of knowledge. He was a native of Cali, and his answers

had been distinctly Latin-American.

“Does it rain much in your country?” I had asked him.

“Sí, señor, when it rains it is wet. When it doesn’t it is dry.”

“Is it cold?”

“Sí, señor, in the cold places it is cold, and in the hot places it is

hot. _No hay reglas fixas_—there are no fixed rules.”

“How far is it from Cali to Popayán?”

“Ah, it is not near, señor.”

“About a hundred miles, perhaps?”

“Sí, señor, just about that.”

“Isn’t it rather about three hundred?”

“Pués, sí, señor, perhaps just about that.”

There the matter had stood when we sailed.

Once arrived in Cartagena, however, we found that a toy train left next

day for Calamar on the Magdalena and that a second-class ticket to

Honda, wherever that was, cost $2000! We had barely crammed ourselves

into two seats of the little piano-box car next day when Hays started up

with a snort and thrust the morning newspaper across at me. Done into

English the item that had drawn his attention ran:

“SOME ONE

who merits our entire confidence, informs us that yesterday there

were in the city, taking photographic views of our forts and most

important edifices, two foreign individuals who wore clothing of

military cut of the cloth called _khaki_, and felt hats with wide

brim. This costume, as it has been described to us, is that of the

army of the United States! Can these really be American soldiers, or

has a great outward similarity caused the suspicious imagination to

see that which in reality did not exist? We cannot assure it!”

We had hardly aspired to be taken for a hostile invasion from the

dreaded “Colossus of the North.” It was characteristic of Latin-American

thinking processes for the paragrapher to fancy that spies—for such the

item covertly dubbed us—would appear in uniform. We had yet to learn,

however, that the makers of newspaper, and of public opinion, in so far

as it exists, in South America would often rank in our own land as

irresponsible and poorly trained school-boys.

The miniature train, ambling away in a morning unoppressive in spite of

the tropical sunshine, wound through a thin jungle, sometimes climbing,

more often stopping at languorous, staring, thatched villages, in a

region suffering from drought but of fertile appearance. By and by the

jungle gave way to what might almost have been called prairie, slightly

rolling and used only for grazing. Toward noon, beyond some swampy land,

we clattered into the carelessly whitewashed town of Calamar, drowsing

on the sandy bank of the Magdalena, here a half mile wide. Even before

we jolted to a halt, the car filled with a struggling mob of beggars,

shrill-voiced boys, and tattered men, eager, in their indolent tropical

way, for some easy errand. Such unwonted energy soon evaporated. The

population was of as mongrel a mixture as the yellow dogs that slunk

about in the shade of trees and house walls, and appeared to hold

identically the same attitude toward life.

At length, in the cool of the following evening, the “Alicia” began to

plow her way slowly upstream. She was a three-story craft with a huge

paddle-wheel at the stern, her lower deck crowded with unassorted

freight, domestic animals, engines and wood-piles, with deck hands,

native passengers, pots and pans and unattractive habits. Among the most

conspicuous of the latter were those of an open-air den that served as

general kitchen. Twice a day a small tub of rice, boiled plantains and

some meat mystery, all cooked in a single kettle, was carried out on one

of the barges alongside, where it was fallen upon not only by the

lower-deck passengers but by the even darker-skinned deck hands, dressed

in what had once been trousers and the wear-forever shirts so popular in

this region. A few owned spoons and others a piece of cocoanut shell,

but these were no handicap to the majority, armed only with the utensils

of nature. Little had we suspected the meaning of “second-class” on the

Magdalena!

Luckily the English agent of the line had been so shocked at sight of

our tickets, particularly, perhaps, in the hands of Hays, who was in

appearance the hero of any of our modern romantic novels stepping bodily

forth from the cardboard of any of our popular illustrators, that he had

ordered the steward to overlook the color thereof and treat us as cabin

passengers. On the upper deck the steamer was open from stem to stern, a

dining table stretching along her center and the sides lined by frail,

box-like “staterooms.” The little canvas cots, narrow as the _charpoys_

of India, used alike by passengers and the unlaundered youths that

passed for stewards, were dragged to any part of the craft that suited

the whims of the sleeper. Our drinking water was the native Magdalena,

sometimes carelessly filtered through a porous stone. There was even a

shower-bath—when the paddle-wheel was elevating enough of the

chocolate-colored river water to permit it to “function”—but it

generally took most of the morning and all the stewards to find the

misplaced key.

Frequently for days at a time there were only the two of us to occupy

the cane rocking-chairs that embellished the upper foredeck. Here day

after day we watched the monotonous yellow bank unroll with infinite

slowness, like a film clogged in the machine. The country, flat,

considerably wooded, and characterless, stood only a few feet above the

river, its soil sandy, though not without fertility, with occasional

clearings and many immense spreading trees. Here and there on the

extreme edge of the stream hung a few scattered thatched villages, all

apparently engaged in the favorite occupation of doing nothing, living

on the few fruits and vegetables that grew themselves and drinking the

yellow Magdalena pure.

At such times there was nothing left but to while away the languid hours

in perfecting our plans for the journey ahead. For once I had chanced

upon a traveling companion who had actually started when the hour of

departure came, and who bade fair to pursue the expedition to the bitter

end. Leo Hays had first seen the light—such as it is in Missouri—six

months later than I, but had overcome that initial handicap by

deflecting the sun’s rays in many a varying clime. The schools had early

scowled upon him—or he upon them—and he had retaliated by gathering in

his own way much that schools have never hoarded away in their

impregnable warehouses. The gleaning had carried him far afield, in

social strata as well as physical distance, but it had left him

unburdened with the bric-a-brac of life so dear to the bourgeois soul.

Wasteful of money and the petty things of life, he was never wasteful of

life itself. He was of those who look at the world through a wide-angle

lens. There is a breadth of vision gained in an existence varying from

“hobo” printer and editor in our pulsating Southwest to sugar estate

overseer in the Guianas, from the forecastle to the Moro villages of the

Philippines, that makes a formal education seem cramped and restricted

by comparison. To those who did not know the Canal Zone in its halcyon

days a mere corporal of police demanding of himself the ability to

converse intelligently a half hour on any subject from astronomy to

Norse literature, from heraldry to Urdu philosophy, may seem a fantastic

figure. To the experienced “Zoner” it is commonplace.

On Sunday morning the entire village of Zambrano, headed by its curate

and dressed in every imaginable misfit of sun-bleached gaiety, swarmed

on board and subjected us to a leisurely detailed examination that gave

us the sensation of being museum exhibits. The “Alicia” was soon off

again and we came to the conclusion that the town was migrating en

masse. A few hundred yards beyond, however, we tied up to the bank once

more and waited a long hour while all Zambrano took leave of the priest.

Every inhabitant under fifteen kissed his hand, which each of the women

pressed fervently, some several times over, after which the men

approached him in procession, padre and layman throwing an arm about

each other’s neck and slapping each other some seven times each between

the shoulder-blades. It was only the customary Colombian _abrazo_ and

the formality of seeing the curate a little way on his journey.

Meanwhile our half-Indian boy captain stood smilingly by, twisting the

two tiny sprigs of mustache that gave him so striking a resemblance to a

Chinese mandarin turned river pirate. He was far too good a Catholic to

cut short the leave-taking even had he guessed that anyone on board

chaffed at the delay. The day was much older before we crawled out into

the middle of the stream again. But no man journeys up to Bogotá

hastily. The Land of Hurry was behind us.

When we addressed him, the priest answered us courteously enough, then

dropped the conversation in a manner to suggest that he did not care to

pursue it further. Like his fellow-countrymen in general he seemed to

have no hunger for knowledge, no notion that he might learn from others.

The attitude of all the upper-deck passengers was as if an edict had

gone forth to dislike Americans. Individually none had any grievance

against us, collectively they seemed banded together in a species of

intellectual boycott, which none of them vented to the extent of losing

his reputation for politeness. Their manner suggested pouting children,

unwilling to declare their fancied grievances and fight them out like

men.

There were a half dozen of us at table that evening, with the priest in

the place of honor at the head. The meal passed without a spoken word,

at racehorse speed. It recalled a placard I had seen in a Texas

restaurant on my journey southward: “Eat first, THEN talk,” and amid the

opening chorus Hays’ memory harked back to a sign that once embellished

a Bowery institution: “Soup should be seen and not heard.” That we

paused for speech between mouthfuls seemed to fill our companions with a

mixture of disgust and amazement. It was perilous, too, for ragged,

barefooted waiters more numerous than the diners, hovered over us, quick

to snatch away the plate of anyone who dared raise his head. How unlike

the sociable meals of Spain was this silent wolfing!

Their own parents could not have distinguished one meal from another.

The soup was always of the general collection variety, the two

vegetables incessantly the same; the beef varied from the hopelessly

tough to the suspiciously tender; for the system on the river steamers

of the Magdalena is to slaughter a steer on the lower deck the first

morning of the voyage and serve it twice daily until passengers are

unanimous in leaving their plates untouched, then regretfully to lead

another gloomy, raw-boned animal forth to slaughter. Yet no one could

have complained on the score of quantity. We no longer wondered at the

sallow flabbiness of those about us in spite of their life in the open

air.

The voracious engines of the “Alicia” required more halting than

movement. Barely had we left the faint lights of Calamar astern when we

tied up for hours before a woodpile in the edge of the jungle, and never

did a half day pass without a long halt to replenish the fuel. The sight

of a bamboo hut or a cluster of thatched shacks crouched in a little

semicircular space gouged out of the immense forest was sure to bring a

shrill scream from the whistle and in the soft air of evening we crawled

up to a tiny clearing where perhaps thirty cords of wood lay awaiting a

purchaser. They were heavy slabs some three feet long, the piles

separated by upright poles into divisions called _burros_, the

conventional load, perhaps, of one ass. On the utter edge of the bank

hung a miserable little hut swarming with dogs and equally unwashed

human beings. There were the usual endless manoeuvers to a mooring, then

the entire crew went ashore on the heels of the captain, armed with his

measuring stick. He and the woodsman, a sturdy, bashful fellow, gave

each other the customary greeting pat on the shoulder, then stood a long

time, each with a hand on the woodpile, discussing the details of the

imminent financial transaction.

But they could not come to terms, and at length the steamer population

returned on board and for ten minutes with much ringing of bells and

screeching of whistles the “Alicia” went through the pretence of getting

under way. The woodsman held his ground, though his wood looked as if he

had already held it several years. At length we returned to the same

mooring and a wash-basin of boiled beef and plantains was carried ashore

as a peace offering. This time we struck a bargain, and the two

populations exchanged places. The countrymen, of all ages and both

sexes, many with evidences of loathsome diseases, one limping on a foot

white with leprosy, swarmed into every corner of the craft, gazing

open-mouthed at her unbelievable magnificence, sitting cautiously down

in the deck chairs, thrusting their fingers into the saucers of dessert

that had been set out an hour or two before meal time to give the flies

fair play, passing from hand to hand anything that caught their fancy.

Their protruding bellies suggested that the hookworm was prevalent. The

men wore over one shoulder a satchel-like pouch called a _garniel_, for

their clothing was not such as might safely have been entrusted with

their minor possessions.

Meanwhile we had taken advantage of the opportunity to stretch our legs

ashore, for whatever their faults these jungle people are not addicted

to thievery. Under the edge of the forest, into the dense green depths

of which we could wander a little way amid a wealth of woodland aromas

and the fitful songs of birds, was planted a little field of corn, the

stalks a full ten feet high, even the ears in many cases well above our

heads, though the jungle was thick between the rows and there was no

sign of other labor than the planting. A bit of sugarcane grew as

luxuriantly, and behind the hut stood a crude _trapiche_, or cane

crusher, a mere stump and lever above a dug-out trough. Palm, gourd,

mango, and papaya trees, the females of the latter heavy with fruit and

the males gay with yellow blossoms, suggested that the spot might have

been one of the most flourishing gardens on earth had the inhabitants

any other industry or desire than to roll about on their earth floors.

From a corner of the patch the stewards cut long reeds and made trumpets

of exactly the sound of army bugles.

The houses of the region are very simply built. Four posts, some six

inches in diameter and rising as many feet above the ground, are set at

the corners of the house to be. Halfway between these are set four

smaller upright poles, giving each wall three supports. Along the tops

of these, saplings about four inches in diameter are tied with green

vines, after which pole rafters are raised. Across these, six to eight

inches apart, are laid strips of split bamboo, also tied with vines. The

roof is then thatched with dried banana leaves, laid lengthwise with the

slope of the roof, those underneath secured by being bent over the

bamboo strips, and layer after layer of them piled on until the thatch

is a foot or more thick. Two poles, tied some distance apart with green

vines, are then thrown over the peak of the roof to keep a sudden gust

of wind from lifting the shelter off the dwellers’ heads, and the

residence is ready for occupancy.

The deck hands, each wearing on his head a grain sack split up one side,

stood in file beside the diminishing woodpile. When his turn came, each

grasped the end of his sack in the right hand and held the arm at full

length while others heaped it high with cordwood. As soon as he had what

he considered a reasonable amount, the carrier threw a rope held in his

left hand over the load, caught it deftly in the already burdened right

and, pulling it taut, marched down some twenty feet of perpendicular

sandy bank and across a wobbly eight-inch plank without a quiver. We

envied them the exercise at every landing, but even to have carried a

stick on board would have been not only to lose our own caste but to

jeopardize that of all our fellow-countrymen.

Nothing would be more futile than to attempt to describe the tropical

sunset, exceeded in beauty, if at all, only by sunrise, as it spread

across this flat jungle and forest country, the curving river and

woodlands. On into the night the languid wood loading continued, lighted

up in irregular patches by the lamps of the steamer and flickering oil

torches ashore. Long after dark, as the last of the _burros_ was

disappearing, the jungle dweller came on board in person and fixed upon

me to figure up how much he had coming, openly putting his faith in a

foreigner in preference to a native. There were 119 burros, for which he

was to receive fourteen cents each. It totalled $16.66, or, as it

sounded to him, $1666, and by and by the purser, who would no doubt have

beaten him a few hundred dollars in the multiplication but for my

pencil, came out of his cabin with an Australian gold sovereign and an

immense handful of Colombian bills. I asked the recipient how long he

had worked to get the pile together and received the expected South

American answer:

[Illustration:

The stewards of the “Alicia” in full uniform]

[Illustration:

Hays catches his first glimpse of the jungles of Colombia]

“Ay! Muchos soles, señor,—many suns,” which of course was as exact as he

could be about it. Strangely enough he resisted the wheedling of the

ragged stewards to exchange his fortune for the cheap straw hats and

brass rings they carried for sale and got safely ashore with the entire

handful of what, in these wilds, could not have been of any great

practical value.

As we pushed off, the captain announced that we had wood enough to last

until the following noon. One would have fancied we had enough to last

to the seventh circle and back. Here we could still “march” all night,

for the river was deep in spite of its great width. As we sat in

solitary glory on the upper deck watching the blood-red moon come up out

of the jungle, Hays suddenly broke off a dissertation on the philosophy

of life of Marcus Aurelius to exclaim:

“We ought to swear off on this. If we’re going to walk along the top of

the Andes we’ll need all the chest expansion we’ve got,” and suiting the

action to the word, he chucked his half-smoked $5 cigar overboard. It

was not until late next morning that I saw him light the next one.

“But I thought you’d sworn off?” I reminded him.

“That’s the great value of resolutions,” he answered, “you make them to

break them and feel the genuine freedom of life. But to-morrow I’ll

swear off in earnest”—which he did, almost daily as long as the journey

lasted. Meanwhile, my birthday making a good date for it, I gave up the

habit definitely myself, none too sure of its effect in the lofty

altitudes before us.

We moved at about the speed of a log-raft towed by a sunfish. Whenever

there was danger of our making a reasonable Colombian distance the

whistle was sure to sound and we drifted inshore to tie up for hours

before another woodpile. Sometimes the flat, disappointing banks of the

river were sheer for miles, with unbroken stretches of swamp grass six

feet high so dense it did not seem that a snake could have wormed its

way through it. The cerulean blue skies were equal to any of Italy, the

light clouds wandering lazily across them sometimes forming in battle

array on the rim of the horizon. Here and there were considerable fields

of sugarcane about a thatched village; but the vast fertile territory

was almost entirely virgin and uncleared. One morning a cry of “Caimán!”

called attention to a point of sand on which lay a score of alligators,

most of which slid sluggishly off into the stream as we approached.

Thereafter we had only to glance along the banks to be almost sure of

seeing several.

For some days Hays and I had made up the deck passenger list unassisted,

sitting through our meals in dignified silence with some half-dozen

waiters to miswait on us—when we could get their attention—headed by the

chief steward, who never tired of boasting that he had once made cigars

in the shadow of Ancon police station. His underlings received six

dollars a month, such food as they could forage, and the right to wear

what the passage of years had left of misfit cotton uniforms, to be

turned in at the end of the trip. They were obliged to pay for all

breakages, and life was indeed slender with only two economical gringos

as passengers. The arrival of a new _pasajero_ was in consequence always

an exciting event. Five days up, in the region known as the Opón

country, there appeared on board a native trapper of wild animals, who

had been shot through the face by an arrow of the savage Opones, but had

performed the rare feat of making his escape. Colombia includes within

her confines several tribes of Indians not only uninfluenced by the

government, but without an inkling of its existence. The Opones live far

back along the tributaries of the Magdalena, descending them only in

certain seasons, and attacking any human beings they come upon. Armed

with a species of arch-bow, they shoot an enormous arrow with a point of

iron-hard black palm barbed both ways, that can neither be pushed

through nor pulled out of the body of the victim. The arrow the trapper

brought with him could barely be forced into his long trunk after being

broken in two, and five cruel barbs still remained after several others

had been cut off and left in the body of his former companion. A few

weeks before, he reported, a harmless fellow fishing somewhat back from

the main river had been made the veritable pincushion of thirty-two such

arrows. The trapper had it that the Opones were cannibals, asserting

that a recent expedition into the Opón country had found a Colombian

woman of good family who was being fattened in a cage of bamboo, but

whom the savages had not yet eaten because of a suspicious sore on her

leg.

Gradually low shadowy mountains began to appear in the far blue

distance, with suggestions of higher ones in the clouds behind them. On

the seventh day a long rugged chain, the Sierra de Peraja in the

Province of Santander, had grown so near that separate peaks and

suggestions of villages could be picked out of the sunlit distance. Next

morning we were half surrounded by deep blue ranges, and the banks were

broad natural meadows with hundreds of cattle knee-deep in rich green

grass. Magnificent spreading trees now stood out against the sky and

ranges. The nights had grown so cool that we took to sleeping in our

“stateroom”—with barely room enough left to sneeze when our cots had

been dragged in. Here we began to go aground frequently, for the

tendency of the Magdalena is to spread out more and more as her sandy

banks keep falling into the river. At our speed the experience was

hardly hair-raising, and generally in the course of a few hours the

“Alicia” worked herself loose again. There were almost no other water

craft, except an occasional _canoa_, a dug-out log crawling along the

extreme lower edge of the forest wall. Now and then we passed large

_balsas_, rafts of hundreds of immense cedar logs, with the Colombian

flag at the prow and the crew camped aft with mat beds, primitive

kitchens, and sometimes their women and a numerous progeny. Great trees,

which the captain called _ceibas_, rose slim and clear more than a

hundred feet, to end in a parasol tuft of branches. Frequently a flock

of parrakeets screamed noisily by overhead. In places we crawled along

between sheer sand banks, gigantic trees of the dense forest hanging on

the brink of miniature Culebra slides as the river washed under them.

Higher still the stream grew so shallow that we could “march” only by

day, anchoring at dark. One night we tied up to the bank on an inner

curve of the river, where the forest cut off the breeze completely and

left us to toss in our cots until dawn. Its first glimmer of light

showed that we had reached Pureto Berrío, where a little narrow-gage

starts—I use the word advisedly, for it never gets there—for Medellín,

second city of Colombia. The “port” itself suspended whatever it was in

the habit of doing to stare at us in long silent rows from the doorways.

Its male population not only wore no shirt but did not even trouble to

conceal that fact by buttoning its tattered sun-bleached jacket. All the

natives seemed obsessed with the notion that, as gringos, we could not

speak Spanish. As often as we addressed one, though our Castilian

vocabulary was as ample and our pronunciation far less slovenly than his

own, he refused to believe his senses until the sensation had been

several times repeated.

We were off again by noon. It had been raining in the highlands beyond

and the visibly rising river was half covered with patches of thick

scum. Now and then it bore by on its swift silent surface a fragment of

forest snatched from somewhere above. We were now some hundreds of feet

above sea-level, and the forest air was fragrant and unfevered. All day

long nothing but forest trailed by. We passed timber enough in a week to

supply the world for a century and rich soil enough to feed a large

section of it permanently. But only very rarely did a little bamboo hut,

roofed with leaves, dot the monotony of virgin nature. The river had

narrowed down to a placid powerful stream; the weather was peerless,

though an almost invisible gnat began to make life less motionless.

In the purple gloaming a forest-built village of some size stood out

more picturesquely than usual on the nose of a land billow jutting forth

and falling sheer into the river, only to have the interminable forest

swallow it up again. Yet there were signs that we were approaching

somewhere or other. Hays sat with his feet on the rail, discoursing on

the relative merits of Turgeniev and Galdós, the point of his “last”

cigar glowing in the darkness, when the captain passed with a package

wrapped in the customary inefficiency of Latin-America.

“Here, I used to be one,” said Hays, reaching for the bundle and

rearranging it.

“Used to be what?” I asked, as he handed it back.

“I was walking along the street of—of—well I don’t remember the stage

setting, but it must have been in the States and a long time ago,” he

began, lighting a second cigar from the butt of the first, “for I know I

hadn’t been to sea or in the army yet, when I saw a sign in a window,

‘Bundle Wrapper Wanted.’ I had to pass up a hundred per as outside man

for a medicine faker to take it, but it was something new and ...” and

he rambled off into one of those experience sketches which, jumping

erratically over the face of the globe, frequently enlivened the voyage.

In the last hours of June we bumped against the wharf of La Dorada,

several hundred yards of tinware building along a sloping river front

with a childish attempt at paving, its main street a forlorn pathway

near the water’s edge, dying away in the forest-jungle on either hand.

Here we took our leave of the “Alicia,” for cataracts make this the end

of the run for steamers plying the lower Magdalena. Next afternoon a

train even more diminutive than that to Calamar wound away in a half

circle into the forest, with now and then glimpses of hazy, far-off

Andean ranges, and three hours later set us down in Honda. To our

surprise we found it a city, the first since Cartagena, as aged and

intricate, as full of its own local color, including many blind and

leprous beggars, as any town of old Spain. Piled close along the

Magdalena, here a series of rocky rapids, it is divided by a gurgling

tributary across which three picturesque bridges fling themselves.

Scores of aged stone buildings, quaint walls, and steep streets of

century-old pavements give it an air reminiscent of Bruges or Nürnberg,

or of some of the ancient towns of Mexico. Its narrow streets are

crowded with laden mules and sunbrowned arrieros of both sexes; its

patios seem primeval forests, and mountain ranges cut its horizon close

off in every direction. A muleteer pointed out to us the ancient trail

to Bogotá where it crossed a high red bridge and climbed steeply away up

one of the natural walls of the town on the way to Facatativá on the

lofty plateau above. But for our baggage we should have struck out for

the capital on this route of centuries.

[Illustration:

A village on the banks of the Magdalena]

[Illustration:

Jirardot; end of the steamer line and beginning of the railroad to

Bogotá]

We went on by rail in the morning. Every woman and girl in the car—not

to mention Hays—was smoking the jet-black cigars of the region. The

little engine with its topheavy smokestack consumed wood as gluttonously

as the “Alicia,” and halted even more often to replenish its supply.

Colombians fancy railroads will work the complete regeneration of their

torpid country, but such as we had seen were only miniature samples of

the real thing, of slight practical value even were they extended all

over the republic. The natives had no notion, however, that the word

train did not stand for the same tiny contraptions the world over as

that to which they applied it.

On all sides were enormous stadiums of mountains, not yet high but

already bulking and rock-strewn. Drought had left the country desert-dry

and fine sand drifted in and deposited itself upon us in shrouds, as in

crossing Nevada. The landscape suggested a cross between the tropics and

a western prairie choking for rain, as did even the towns with their

frontiersman disarray, their burros, mules and broken-down horses

drooping in any patch of shade. Tattered boys and diseased loafers

swarmed into the cars at every stop, drinking from the water jars,

washing in the bowls of the first-class coach, making themselves

completely at home without a suggestion of protest from the trainmen.

Even were there laws against such actions, the languid officials would

have lacked the moral courage to enforce them.

The railway ended at Beltrán, where we boarded the steamer “Caribe.” A

dreary, sun-baked collection of sheds and a few choking huts made up the

town, completely surrounded by desert, with plenty of bushy trees, but a

desert for all that. The wind that swept across the steamer at her

mooring was not the cool one of the lower Magdalena, but one laden with

red-hot sands that stung the cheeks like tiny insects. When the

passengers had gulped their _almuerzo_, the dishes were piled in the

alleyway, where beggars and gaunt boys from the shore came to claw

around in them, after which they were roughly half-washed. There is a

fetching democracy about the road to Bogotá. He who travels it, be he

vagrant or man of wealth, must go through the same uninviting

experiences. It speaks poorly of Colombians that they still endure this

medieval method of travel from the outside world to their capital.

Wealthy _bogotanos_ journey to Europe in luxurious style—once they are

on the ocean. It would seem wiser for them to return steerage and

gradually accustom themselves to what they must endure from the landing

in their own country to the arrival in Bogotá.

All day long we sat in the sand-burning winds of Beltrán while barefoot

and half-naked stevedores dribbled down the steep bank with all manner

of cargo. There was barbed wire from Massachusetts, corrugated iron from

Pittsburg, boxed street-car lines that clattered and crashed as they

fell, and finally, though by no means last, four pianos from Germany

that were rolled heels over head down the long stony bank. Although we

had real cabin tickets this time, neither of us had influence enough to

get a cabin. We dragged our cots out on the open deck and, indifferent

to social rules, marched through the multitude in our pajamas. This

turned out to be entirely comme il faut, for even the son of a recent

president of Colombia soon appeared similarly clad and strolled about

the deck chattering with his fellow-passengers of both sexes, as

nonchalantly as if in full dress.

We were not off until dawn, into which the volcano Ruiz, first of the

long row of snow-clad fire-vents of the Andes which we hoped in time to

see disappear over our shoulders, thrust its aged head. Rock cliffs

along the banks recalled the Lorelei. Fields of corn undulated like

wind-snatched hair on the summits of rounded hills, at the base of which

sweltered the banana groves of the tropics. As the sun was setting we

passed a _chorro_ at the foot of a low range around which the river had

swept in a half-circle so many centuries that its bank was a sheer rock

wall surely sixty feet high. The “Caribe,” with the nose of a washtub,

panted for life against the current, spitting showers of live coals from

her wood fires, seeming several times about to give up the attempt in

despair. But she gained the calmer water above at last and soon after

dark landed us in Jirardot.

We spent the Fourth of July in Jirardot. Not by choice, but because the

train to the capital leaves only three times a week. The town swelters

by day on the edge of the curving river, here hardly fifty yards wide,

where for more than a mile stretches a vista of donkeys laden with kegs

of water, bands of women, all more or less African in ancestry, bathing,

washing, and incessantly smoking immense misshapen cigars, as do even

the children of both sexes that paddle stark naked about the bank in

complete immunity to the blazing sun. The place seemed the headquarters

of contented poverty. At least half the inhabitants either had not

enough sun-bleached garments to completely conceal their dusky skins, or

had laid them away for more gala occasions. Beggars, halt, blind,

misformed and idiotic, were almost as numerous as in similar towns of

India. Even the less miserable inhabitants were dull, neurasthenic,

utterly devoid of energy, anemics with incessant smoking, bad food, and

worse habits, given to living entirely according to their appetites and

never according to will power and reason.

It was not without misgiving that we turned our faces toward Bogotá next

morning. The crowd which the train from the plateau had landed the night

before had been half hidden under the rugs, blankets, and overcoats they

carried, and not a native of Jirardot could speak of the capital without

visibly shivering, some even crossing themselves as often as they heard

it mentioned. The train left at sunrise. By the rules of the line—the

“Ferrocarril de Jirardot”—we were obliged to check our baggage

containing all extra clothing. For the first few hours we were

surrounded by mountains, though still on a slightly rising plain between

them. The land appeared fertile and there was considerable Indian corn,

yet it was surprising to find here in the capacious New World such

swarms of beggars as in Egypt or India. The population along the way,

increasingly Indian in blood, was extraordinarily slow-witted. In a

window near us sat a commercial traveler who tossed at every one he

caught sight of along the way a pictorial advertisement of an American

panacea. The tail of the train was always well past them before a single

one gathered his wits sufficiently to pick up the treasure.

Near noon we were ourselves picked out by a mountain-climbing engine,

made in Schenectady, its boiler well forward and flanked by the water

tanks, a small upright coalbin behind. As we began a series of

switchbacks, I caught a breath of virile white man’s air for the first

time in a half year, and the taste of it was so delicious that the

sensation reached to my tingling toes. Regularly the vista of gouged-out

valleys surrounded by rough-hewn, cool, blue ranges spread to greater

distances. Passengers began to turn red-nosed, to put on overcoats,

blankets, rugs, ponchos, gloves, to wrap towels about their necks. To me

the temperature was delightful, but Hays, who had been long years in the

tropics, took to applying other adjectives.

Now the landscape of meadows and grazing cattle backed by towering

mountains suggested Switzerland. Beyond the one tunnel of the line we

entered an immense valley walled by row upon row of blue ranges. Higher

still, the bleak, stony highlands resembled a more rugged Scotland in

late October, though cultivation was almost general and roads numerous.

It struck us as strange that human beings should shiver and toil for a

scant livelihood in such surroundings when a day’s walk would bring them

to perpetual summer and nature’s well filled larder. A plant must remain

where it chances to be born, but why should man also?

By four, the train had finished its task of lifting its breathless

passengers into the thin air of Facatativá, and scores of half-frozen

barefoot children and ragged adults dismally wandered the stony streets.

A policeman muffled to the ears assured us with what seemed a suggestion

of pride that Facatativá was even colder than Bogotá, for which Hays

gave fervent thanks. Evidently the heat of the tropics was yet in my

blood, for I still felt comfortable.

An hour later we were speeding across a broad plateau by the

“Ferrocarril de la Sabana,” a government railroad equipped with real

trains of American cars. All the languor and ragged indifference of the

tropics seemed to have been left forever behind. The conductor was as

business-like—and as light in color—as any in our own land. We stopped

briefly at towns boasting all the adjuncts of civilized life, somehow

dragged up to these lofty realms. Here was a country built from the

center outwardly; the nearer we came to its capital, the further we left

the world behind, the more modern and well furnished did it become. It

recalled fanciful tales of men who, toiling for weeks through unknown

wildernesses, suddenly burst forth upon an unknown valley filled with

all the splendors of an ancient kingdom.

[Illustration:

A typical Indian hut on the outskirts of Bogotá]

[Illustration:

Indian girls and women are the chief dray-horses of the Colombian

capital]

Yet we could not but wonder why, once they had reached this lofty

plateau, the discoverers had not halted and built their city, instead of

marching far back across it to the foot of the enclosing range. A full

thirty-five miles the train fled across the _sabana_, an immense plain

in appearance like one of our north in early April, intersected here and

there by barbed-wire fences. Broad yellow fields of mustard appeared,

spread, and disappeared behind us. Great droves of cattle frisked about

in the autumn air as if to keep warm. Well-built country dwellings

flashed by, stony and bare in setting, but embellished with huge

paintings of landscapes on the walls under the veranda roofs. The sun

had barely smiled upon us since noon. Now as the day declined I began to

grow cold, bitter cold, colder than I had been since descending from the

Mexican plateau seven months before, while Hays’ hat brim shook with his

shivering. Our fellow-passengers looked like summer excursionists

unexpectedly caught in straw hats by grim, relentless winter. Then as

evening descended the plain came abruptly to an end, and at the very

foot of a forbidding black mountain range spread a cold, smokeless city

of bulking domes and towers. We had reached at last, after eighteen days

of travel, the most isolated of South American capitals.