Through South America

by Harry Weston Van Dyke

II

A still more extensive railroad and one which gives the traveler a more varied view of the Andes, is that ascending from the port city of Mollendo, near the Chilean frontier. This line is the outlet for much of the commerce of Bolivia, and was built by the same gifted Yankee who fathered the Oroya road. Leaving Mollendo, the train speeds over the desert for a few miles and then begins its steady climb upward. All day it labors along the tortuous ascent through echoing walls of rock, bare, repellent, and awe-inspiring in their cold majesty. Suddenly, around a jagged precipice, the passengers look down upon a lovely valley—an oasis of green. In its midst lies the quaint, picturesque old city of Arequipa, which Pizarro, who founded it, was wont to call la villa hermosa—the city beautiful. Seen from the heights, it somewhat resembles La Paz, a group of low, white and blue walled, red roofed buildings, arranged in squares, with a large plaza in the center, the general flatness relieved by many church spires, and its spacious patios a mass of foliage and trees.

Thus far the penetration of the railroad into this quiet retreat has produced but little change in its old-world aspect. It has long been famous for its delightful climate and location, and as Mozans truly says of it, “If it is not the most beautiful place in South America, as its admirers claim, it is certainly the most restful. It is such a place as one would like to retire to after the stress and storms of a busy career, to pass one’s days in quiet and a congenial environment. The people who retain all the light-heartedness and cordiality and culture of old Spain, are worthy denizens of their charming city, and the better one knows them, the more he admires and loves them.”

Overlooking the city are the buildings of a branch of the Harvard Observatory. It is said that, because of the remarkable clearness of the atmosphere and the great number of cloudless nights, this observatory is probably more favorably located than any other in the world, and that, as a consequence, the astronomers stationed there have achieved results of the greatest value to science, especially in photographing the southern skies. Also they are doing valuable work in measuring the heights of the Andean peaks and charting the general topography, as well as in keeping open house to their fellow-countrymen who hunger for the sound of their native tongue after many weeks of effort to comprehend the idioms of the Castilian speech and the patois of the ever-present cholo. The verandas and trim green lawns and tennis courts are a reminder of Cambridge, indeed.

Above the observatory, snow-capped Misti rises sheer from the valley some 21,000 feet, like a perfect cone. Its appearance is so distinct, so impressive in its constancy and brooding grandeur, that it possesses a personality almost human. One feels impelled to address it with the prefix “Señor,” after the manner of the Japanese with their Fuji-san, which, by the way, greatly resembles Misti in shape and location.

Continuing upward through the mountain desert, the Mollendo road ascends to a height of 14,666 feet in the short latitudinal distance of less than two hundred miles, and across the divide to Juliaca, a town near the northern shore of Lake Titicaca, where it separates, one branch extending south to Puno, the center of the gold mining district, thence around the great lake to La Paz, the other extending northwest for about two hundred miles, down the sloping plateau to the valley of Cuzco, at the head of which is the ancient imperial capital of the Incas. Plantations and pastures begin to appear as the train descends from the high ridges into the plain, and, great as is the altitude even here, on an island in this very lake, according to tradition, the remarkable native dynasty had its birth. The legend, as Mozans quotes it from the works of Garcilaso de la Vega, the historian of the conquest, and who was himself, through his mother, a descendant of the royal Inca line, is that—

“Our Father, the Sun, seeing the human race in the condition I have described: living like wild beasts, without religion or government, or town or houses, without cultivating the land or clothing their bodies, for they knew not how to weave cotton or wool to make clothes; living in caves or clefts in the rocks, or in caverns under the ground; eating the herbs of the field and roots and fruit, like wild animals, and also human flesh—had compassion on them and sent down from heaven to the earth a son and a daughter to instruct them in the knowledge of our Father, the Sun, that they might adore him and adopt him as their God, also to give them precepts and laws by which to live as reasonable and civilized men and to teach them to live in houses and towns, to cultivate maize and other crops, to breed flocks, to use the fruits of the earth like rational beings instead of living like wild beasts. With these commands and intentions, our Father, the Sun, placed his two children in the Lake of Titicaca, which is eighty leagues from here” (Cuzco); “and he said to them that they might go where they pleased, and that, at every place where they stopped to eat or sleep, they were to thrust a scepter of gold into the ground, which was half a yard long and two fingers in thickness. He gave them this staff as a sign and token that in the place where, by one blow on the earth, it should sink down and disappear, there it was the desire of our Father, the Sun, that they should remain and establish their court.”

In this region the table-land is of vast expanse, and in many respects the panorama is more impressive even than that in the vicinity of Aconcagua. In the center is the enormous sheet of water, turquoise blue in the sunlight, stretching for a hundred and ten miles off to the south, with an average width of thirty miles and an average depth of a hundred fathoms, and, 12,500 feet high as it is, bordered on either side by superb ranges towering many thousands of feet higher, their clean-cut peaks glittering with mantles of snow and ice. Around the shore and on the islands of Titicaca and Koati are picturesque towns and small clusters of adobe houses surrounded by hills, their sides terraced and covered with farms, the water fringed with fields of reeds, and feeding in them countless birds and herds of cattle. It is no wonder that these “Children of the Sun” should have worshiped as their God and Goddess the great luminous orbs in a region where, thanks to the unwonted splendor of the moon and stars, which enable one to distinguish all the salient features of lake and Cordillera with the greatest ease, the nights, as Mozans says, are glorious beyond words; but where, “however fair the views presented to the enraptured gaze in the subdued light of the moon and her attendant handmaidens, no one can be insensible to the gorgeous vistas that burst upon the vision during the daytime.” It is then, he continues—

“Especially at the hours of dawn and twilight that the snow-crested range of the lofty Cordillera Real is visible in all its transcendent beauty and majesty. For then, as if by magic, various colored fires seem to blaze from the immense glaciers and snow fields and to convert the sparkling expanse into glowing rubies, sapphires, and emeralds, while the lofty peaks of the Sorata range are transformed into gleaming pinnacles of burnished gold. Then in fullest perfection and palpable form is realized that vision of mountain loveliness, that crowning splendor of earth and sky, set forth in Ruskin’s noble lines: ‘Wait yet for one hour, until the east again becomes purple and the heaving mountains, rolling against it in the darkness like waves of a wild sea, are drowned one by one in the glory of its burning. Watch the white glaciers blaze in their winding paths about the mountains, like mighty serpents with scales of fire; watch the columnar peaks of solitary snow, kindling downwards, chasm by chasm, each in itself a new morning—their long avalanches cast down in keen streams brighter than the lightning, sending each its tribute of driven snow, like altar-smoke, up to the heaven, the rose-light of their silent domes flushing that heaven about them and above them, piercing with purer light through its purple lines of lifted cloud, casting a new glory on every wreath as it passes by, until the whole heaven, one scarlet canopy, is interwoven with a roof of waving flame, and tossing, vault beyond vault, as with the drifted wings of many companies of angels.’”

The railroad has been built along the very route that the first Inca and his sister-wife are said to have chosen when they started out to found their capital. Passing between two giant peaks, it descends the gradually sloping two-hundred-mile-long plateau which became the most populous section of the great empire, as it is still of modern Peru. On either side are torrential rivers that rush down through the deep defiles of the mountains to the Amazon. Every foot of the region is associated with legendary and historic events; scattered about everywhere, from the islands of Titicaca on, are wonderful ruins—ruins of towns, bridges, fortresses, temples, burial towers, some Incaic, some thought to be as old as the pyramids of Egypt. There is a lake in which, at the coming of the Spaniards, the Indians are said to have thrown the colossal gold chain that was forged at the birth of Huascar, a chain so heavy, according to the chroniclers, that it was all that two hundred men could do to carry it.

The climate is delightful. All along the road is a succession of wild, gorgeous scenery, quaint towns and villages and big haciendas, with fields green with growing crops and herds of cattle and alpaca ranging about, often tended by pretty copper-colored chola (mixed breed) or Indian girls, as picturesquely dressed as those of La Paz, only here in Peru, instead of the great number of voluminous many-colored skirts the Bolivian women wear—sometimes as many as twelve or fifteen, which makes them appear as though they had on the hoops once worn by our grandmothers—they wear a single, short woolen skirt over the usual cotton ones, and, instead of the peculiar headdress of the Aymaras, broad-brimmed, gaily beribboned hats, though, like the Aymaras, they wear brilliantly colored mantles, fastened around the shoulders by a pin with a spoon-shaped head (which they also use as a spoon), and the men, like the Bolivian mountaineers, wear ponchos that vie with the mantles of the women in color. Ponchos and mantles like those worn to-day, but many centuries old, have been found in the tombs, so ancient is the fashion.

It is in this country between La Paz and Cuzco that the llama is seen in greatest numbers—that remarkable animal which Mozans aptly describes as a creature with the legs of a deer, the body of a sheep, and the head and neck of a camel. They are larger than sheep, however, and far more docile and ornamental than the ugly, ungainly camel. Their coats are of several shades: white, brown, black or parti-colored; their wool is long and thick, and they are noted for their beautiful big, wistfully inquiring eyes. From time immemorial the natives had used them as burden-bearers, and the Spaniards, when they came, found them surer-footed and more enduring than mules or burros, proof against cold and acclimated in the rarefied atmosphere of the high table-lands, and able to go as long as a camel without food and water, and to maintain themselves by grazing along the waysides in parts of the country in which no other animal could live. It was on their backs that all the material that entered into the construction of the steamers on Lake Titicaca was hauled, and most of the mining machinery, and the caravans still compete with the railroads in carrying ores and coca to the coast and bringing back supplies for the mountain towns.

In these days only the males are used for such purposes. It is said of them that when they are loaded with more than they feel that they can comfortably carry (about a hundred pounds), they lie right down in their tracks and refuse to budge for all the cajoling or in spite of the kicks and curses their tenders can bestow. The females are kept in pasture for breeding purposes and for their wool and milk, and in that region rank with cattle as a source of food supply, for their flesh resembles mutton and is quite as palatable and good to eat. It is much used in the native dish called chupe, a sort of thick soup which is made of the peculiar mountain potatoes grown in those parts, first frozen and dried, and then put into a pot and boiled with any other vegetables at hand and fragments of meat and fish, and seasoned with salt and red pepper. This, to the people of the mountains, is what rice is to the Chinese and macaroni to the Italians. Sometimes it is the only fare the traveler can get at the little tambos or inns remote from the railroad; but even so, when properly prepared, as it usually is, with plenty of nourishing ingredients, it leaves little to be desired after a hard day’s climb.

The valley of Cuzco—a pocketlike depression about ten miles long and varying in width from two to three miles, covered with fields of barley and maize, dotted with many attractive-looking gardens and country mansions of the old Spanish colonial type, and hedged in on either side by ranges of mountains towering high above—is at the northwestern extremity of the plateau. The city, which is at the head of the valley, is a little more than a mile and a half in breadth, from the foot of the mountain range on the east to that of the range on the west, and about a mile in length. To the north, the famous hill of Sacsahuaman rises abruptly over it and is separated from the mountains on either side by deep ravines, through one of which flows the little river Huatanay and through the other the Rodadero. The Huatanay tumbles noisily past the moss-grown walls of an old convent, under the houses forming the west side of the great square, thence through the center of a broad street, where it is confined between banks faced with masonry and crossed by numerous bridges, and on beyond until it unites with the Rodadero, which separates the city from the suburb of San Blas.

The most important section of the ancient city was built between the two little rivers, with the great square in the center, and this site, said to have been chosen for it by the first Inca and his sister-wife, is declared by many to be the most wildly, majestically beautiful of all the beautiful mountain city sites in South America—even Santiago, La Paz, Arequipa, Cajamarca, Quito, Bogotá, and Caracas. Respecting the ancient city itself, Prescott tells us that the Spaniards were astonished “by the beauty of its edifices, the length and regularity of its streets, and the good order and appearance of comfort, even luxury, visible in its numerous population. It far surpassed all they had seen in the New World.... It” (the great square), he continues, “was surrounded by low piles of buildings, among which were several palaces of the Incas. One of these, erected by Huayana Capac, was surmounted by a tower, while the ground floor was occupied by one or more immense halls, like those described in Cajamarca, where the Peruvian nobles held their fêtes in stormy weather. The population of the city,” he goes on—

“Is computed by one of the conquerors at two hundred thousand inhabitants and that of the suburbs at as many more. This account is not confirmed, as far as I have seen, by any other writer. But, however it may be exaggerated, it is certain that Cuzco was the metropolis of a great empire, the residence of the court and the chief nobility, frequented by the most skillful mechanics and artisans of every description, who found a demand for their ingenuity in the royal precincts, while the place was garrisoned by a numerous soldiery, and was the resort, finally, of emigrants from the most distant provinces. The quarters whence this motley population came were indicated by their peculiar dress, and especially their head-gear, so rarely found at all on the American Indian, which, with its variegated colors, gave a picturesque effect to the groups and masses in the streets....

“The edifices of the better sort—and they were very numerous—were of stone, or faced with stone. Among the principal were the royal residences, as each sovereign built a new palace for himself, covering, though low, a large extent of ground. The walls were stained or painted with gaudy tints, and the gates, we are assured, were sometimes of colored marble. ‘In the delicacy of the stonework,’ says another of the conquerors, ‘the natives far excelled the Spaniards, though the roofs of their dwellings, instead of tiles, were only of thatch, but put together with the nicest art.’ The sunny climate of Cuzco did not require a very substantial material for defense against the weather.... The streets were long and narrow. They were arranged with perfect regularity, crossing one another at right angles; from the great square diverged four principal streets connecting with the highroads of the empire. The square itself, and many parts of the city, were paved with fine pebble. Through the heart of the capital ran a river of pure water, if it might not be rather termed a canal, the banks or sides of which, for a distance of twenty leagues, were faced with stone. Across this stream, bridges, constructed of similar broad flags, were thrown at intervals, so as to afford an easy communication between the different quarters.

“The most sumptuous edifice in Cuzco in the times of the Incas was undoubtedly the great temple dedicated to the sun, which, studded with gold plates, as already noticed, was surrounded by convents and dormitories for the priests, with their gardens and broad parterres sparkling with gold. The exterior ornaments had been already removed by the conquerors—all but the frieze of gold, which, imbedded in the stones, still encircled the principal building.... The fortress was raised to a height rare in Peruvian architecture, and from the summit of the tower the eye of the spectator ranged over a magnificent prospect, in which the wild features of the mountain scenery—rocks, woods, and waterfalls—were mingled with the rich verdure of the valley and the shining city filling up the foreground, all blended in sweet harmony under the deep azure of a tropical sky.”

The ruins of the palace of the first Inca, on the hill above the city, and those of the immense fortress on the summit—which is admitted by all to have been constructed with a degree of skill equaled nowhere else in the world prior to the use of artillery—are thus described by Sir Clements R. Markham:

“On a terrace, built of stones of every conceivable size and shape, fitting exactly one into the other, eighty-four paces long and eight feet high, is a wall with eight recesses, resembling those of the Inca palace at Lima-tambo, and, in the center of the lower wall, a mermaid or siren, much defaced by time, is carved in relief on a square slab. In one of the recesses a steep stone staircase leads up to a field of lucerne, on a level with the upper part of the wall, which is twelve feet high, and this forms a second terrace. On either side of the field are ruins of the same character, traces of a very extensive building or range of buildings. They consist of a thick stone wall, sixteen paces long and ten feet six inches wide, containing a door and windows. The masonry is most perfect. The stones are cut in parallelograms, all of equal height but varying in length, with corners so sharp and fine that they appear as if they had just been cut—and without any kind of cement, fitting so exactly that the finest needle could not be introduced between them. The doorposts, of ample height, support a stone lintel seven feet ten inches in length, while another stone, six feet long, forms the foot.... Behind these remains are three terraces, built in the rougher style of the masonry used in the first walls and planted in alders and fruit trees, ... where he” (the first Inca, Manco Capac) “is said to have chosen the site of his residence, the more readily to overlook the building of his city and the labors of his disciples....

“On the east end of Sacsahuaman, crowning a steep cliff immediately above the palace of Manco Capac, there are three terraces, one above the other, built of a light-colored stone. The first wall, fourteen feet high, extends in a semicircular form around the hill for one hundred and eighty paces, and between the first and second terraces there is a space eight feet wide. The second wall is twelve feet high and the third is ninety paces around its whole extent.... This was the citadel of the fortress, and in its palmy days was crowned by three towers connected by subterranean passages, now quite demolished.... From the citadel to its eastern extremity the length of the table-land of Sacsahuaman is three hundred and fifty-three paces and its breadth in the broadest part one hundred and thirty paces. On the south side the position is so strong and impregnable that it required no artificial defense. The position is defended on part of its north side by a steep ravine through which flows the river Rodadero and which extends for one hundred and seventy-four paces from the citadel in a westerly direction. Here, therefore, the position required only a single breastwork, which is still in a good state of preservation; but from this point to the western extremity of the table-land, a distance of four hundred paces, nature has left it entirely undefended, a small plain extending in front of it to the rocky heights of the Rodadero.

“From this point, therefore, the Incas constructed a cyclopean line of fortifications, a work which fills the mind with astonishment at the grandeur of the conception and the perfect manner of its execution. It consists of three walls, the first averaging a height of eighteen feet, the second of sixteen and the third of fourteen, the first terrace being ten feet broad and the second eight. The walls are built with salient and retiring angles, twenty-one in number and corresponding with each other in each wall, so that no one point could be attacked without being commanded by others.... But the most marvelous part of this fortification is the huge masses of rock of which it is constructed (one of them being sixteen feet in height and several more varying from ten to twelve feet), yet made to fit exactly one into the other and forming a piece of masonry almost unparalleled in solidity, beauty, and peculiarity of its construction in any other part of the world. The immense masses at Stonehenge, the great block in the tomb of Agamemnon at Argos, and those in the cyclopean walls of Volterra and Agrigentum are wonderful monuments of the perseverance and knowledge of the people who raised them, but they fall immeasurably short in beauty of execution of the fortress of Cuzco.”

The railroad and electric lights and the telegraph and telephone have come to Cuzco now, but in other respects the city is not much modernized. It is still distinctly reminiscent of the royal Inca régime, and even more of the régime of the Spanish viceroys. For many years after the conquest it was superior in importance to Lima. Notaries were required under severe penalties, Mozans says, “to write at the head of all public documents, ‘En la gran ciudad del Cuzco, cabeza de estos reinos y provincias del Perú en las Indias’—In the great city of Cuzco, head of these kingdoms and provinces of Peru in the Indies. Even so late as the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,” he continues, “it was, next to Lima, the city of the greatest social importance in the viceroyalty.” And so now, although there are the same long vistas of low, massive buildings through the narrow streets, the view from the hill presents a panorama of red-tiled roofs instead of thatches, of many tall church towers, and of a great square divided into three.

On the first stories of the old Indian homes Spanish superstructures have been built; on the foundation walls of the ancient temple of Voricancha, the largest and richest of the sanctuaries devoted to the worship of the Sun, has been erected the convent of Santo Domingo; the devotees in the convent of Santa Catalina occupy cells that were once used by the Virgins of the Sun; walls that were retained in the building of the Church of San Lazaro are ornamented with bodies of birds having women’s heads that were carved by the bronze chisels of the artisans of the Incas. The grand old renaissance cathedral, which, with its massive stone walls and pillars and vaulted roof, cost so much to build that one of the viceroys said it would have been cheaper to build it of silver, is one of the most imposing specimens of church architecture in America; the pulpit in San Blas is famed as one of the most beautiful in the world, and many of the interiors and cloisters, particularly of La Merced, where the remains of Almagro and two of Pizarro’s brothers lie, and the patio of the university, are perfectly superb.

CHURCH OF LA MERCED, LIMA—TYPE OF RELIGIOUS ARCHITECTURE OF SPANISH COLONIAL PERIOD.

Of course, like La Paz, Quito, Bogotá and many of the other old mountain cities, which until very recently were isolated so far as the outside world was concerned because of their inaccessible locations, Cuzco is still behind the times in sanitary arrangements. Since there is surface drainage, there are odors, but one need have little fear of any ill effects in such a climate as theirs. Thanks to it, the cities are as healthful as most; and to the archæologist and the lover of art and the beauties of nature in her sublimest aspect, there is no more fascinating city in South America than Cuzco.

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IX
ECUADOR

Ecuador, “the Switzerland of America,” is one of the smallest of our sister republics in the South, yet her area, of 116,000 square miles, is equal to that of our States of Missouri and Arkansas combined, and, if certain pending boundary disputes should be determined in her favor, her territory would be more than doubled. Her population is now about 1,500,000, an average of a little over twelve to the square mile.

Politically, the republic is divided into sixteen provinces, not including the Galápagos Islands. Five are maritime, occupying the strip of coast between the Western Cordillera and the sea, ten are interandine, and then there is the Oriente, so called, which consists of all the country embraced in the slope between the Eastern Cordillera and the Brazilian frontier, in the valley of the Amazon. There are two fluvial systems, both rising in the mountains; one flowing west to the sea and the other down the eastern slope. In all they are composed of ninety-one rivers. Those tributary to the Guayas, flowing westward to the sea, and many of which are of considerable size, are now of the greater commercial importance because the country of the Oriente, through which those tributary to the Amazon flow, is still a wilderness, only sparsely inhabited even by what are left of the aborigines—and this although it is the richest of all in vegetation and fertility of soil, like the adjoining Montaña district of Peru.

Thus, ranging as it does from the sea-level of the coast on one side and the valley of the Amazon on the other to the high interandine plateau, and from thence to the great cloud-piercing peaks of the cordilleras, crowned with perpetual snow, this country directly beneath the Equator, from which it derives its very name, is possessed, as are Peru, Bolivia, and Colombia, of every variety of climate within the sphere of a few hours’ journey—in the lowlands, the eternal summer of the tropics; on the high table-lands, eternal spring, and, in the glacial regions of the mountain summits, winter without end. As the late Professor Orton so aptly put it: “As the Ecuadorian sees all the constellations of the firmament, so nature surrounds him with representatives of every family of plants. Tropical, temperate and arctic fruits and flowers are here found in profusion, or could be successfully cultivated. There are places where the eye can embrace an entire zone, for it may look up to a wheat or barley field or potato patch and down to the sugar cane and pineapple.”

And, in addition to the familiar products, in many places the slopes of the mountains between twelve and fifteen thousand feet are clothed with a shrub peculiar to the high altitudes of the Andes, called chuquiragua, the twigs of which are used for fuel and the yellow buds as a febrifuge. In the valleys between the cordilleras a very useful and valuable, as well as the most ordinary, plant is the American aloe, or century plant, which under cultivation, however, blooms oftener than once in a hundred years. It is the largest of all the herbs, and, with its tall stem rising from a cluster of long, thick, gracefully curved leaves, looks like a great chandelier. Most of the roads are fenced with hedges of them. Nearly every part is said to serve some practical purpose. The broad leaves are used for thatching huts and by the poorer classes as a substitute for paper in writing; a sirup flows from them when tapped; as they contain much alkali, a soap that lathers in salt water as well as fresh is manufactured from them; the fiber of the leaves and roots is woven into sandals and sacks; the flowers make excellent pickles, the stock is used in building, the pith of the stem is used by barbers for sharpening razors and the spines as needles. A species of yucca, resembling the aloe, yields the hemp of Ecuador.

In the lowlands, cacao and sugar cane, coffee, tobacco, rice, cotton, and bananas and other tropical fruits are grown. The forests contain rubber and numerous species of useful trees, among them the tree that yields what is known as the taque nut, or vegetable ivory, from which buttons are made, the grasses and toquilla palm used in the manufacture of the coarser grades of Panamá hats, the chincona from the bark of which quinine is obtained, the mangrove cultivated for tanning purposes as well as its fruit, and the silk-cotton tree that yields the valuable commercial product known as kapok. A considerable portion of the Oriente is verdured with a part of that immense forest which extends in an unbroken mass from the grassy llanos of Venezuela to the pampas of Argentina. In other sections of the country are gold, silver, copper, iron, coal, petroleum, asphalt and other minerals, though since the colonial régime there has been little activity in mining. Only a few years ago work was resumed in the famous mines of Zaruma, formerly the source of much revenue to the Spaniards.

Ecuador has a treasury of wealth in her vast cacao groves. The cacao tree, which grows wild in the forests, is from sixteen to forty feet high and bears a fruit in which the beans lie buried in a cucumber-shaped pod five to ten inches long and three or four inches thick. The bean itself in its raw state resembles a thick almond. When ripe, the pods are cut from the tree by means of a knife with a curved blade, set on the end of a long pole, an implement specially designed to remove them without injury. The pods are then gathered in heaps and left on the ground to dry for a day or two before the beans are removed and cured. From cacao comes cocoa. The name “cacao” signifies the raw, and “cocoa” the finished product. There is still another name—coca—which is often confused with these, but coca is nothing like cacao. Coca is the Peruvian plant from the leaves of which cocaine is extracted. The cacao bean contains the cocoa we drink at our breakfast tables, and our chocolate.

On the skill employed in the curing, which is an extremely delicate process, to a great extent depends the quality of the output and its flavor and color. When ready for the market, the bean is dark red outside and chocolate tinted within. Analyses show that it is rich in fats, albuminoids, caffeine and theobromine, which last is what imparts to it its principal characteristics. What we know as chocolate differs from cocoa in that, in the former compound, the cocoa butter is not extracted; from the latter it is. Cocoa is really a factory product. The cured bean is treated differently in the various countries to suit the taste of the public, and chocolate also is prepared in different ways for the various uses. American and French chocolates are sold all over the world.

The tobacco grown in the Province of Esmeraldas on the coast is claimed to be comparable with that produced in Cuba. And this reminds me that, unless tradition is at fault, the town of Atacames, from around which some of the best of it comes, has quite a unique history of its own. In 1623, so the story goes, a vessel laden with seven hundred African slaves was on its way from Panamá to Peru, where they were to be worked in the mines. When near the mouth of the Esmeralda River, they mutinied, massacred the officers and sailors of the ship, and, landing at Atacames, took possession of the town and killed or drove away every man in the neighborhood, Indian or Spanish, but spared the women, whom they kept as wives. Afterward, however, instead of indulging in further depredations, they kept within the territory they had conquered, and, mixing with the Cayapas, who had attained an unusual state of civilization for lowland Indians before the invasion, became miners and agriculturists on their own account. These African mutineers, therefore, protected by the reputation for ferocity they had acquired in their stroke for freedom, were thus the founders of what afterward became an intelligent and industrious community. The women, particularly, are famous for their skill in making Panamá hats.

Indeed, aside from agriculture, the most important industry in all the coast provinces is the making of these hats. Guayaquil long since supplanted Panamá as the principal market for them. Those of the finest texture, the ones that are so soft and delicately woven that they can be folded and put in a coat pocket like a handkerchief and will last a lifetime, are made of a peculiar grass called jipi-japa, for which the town in the Province of Manavi is named, and, in the weaving of them, considerable time and great skill is required. These we seldom, if ever, see in this country. Many go to Paris, Italy, and Spain; more are taken by the planters along the coast, and in Cuba, who are willing to pay as much as $80 to $100 for them. They are woven by the women by hand, and only in the moonlight, these best grades, because the sun would harden the material, artificial light would attract insects, and the dampness that comes with sunset is necessary to give the flexibility so essential to their beauty. The coarser grades, such as we see here, are woven in the daytime, but under water, in tubs.

Guayaquil, a city of about 50,000 inhabitants, is Ecuador’s principal seaport, and, next to Valparaiso and Callao, the busiest and most important on the Pacific side of the continent. All the way up from Callao the steamer hugs the shore as closely as safety will permit. There is little change in the view. The same arid strip of low-lying coast land, dotted with rocky promontories, fringed here and there with cliffs and crossed with occasional stretches of green where the rivers flow through to the sea, continues day after day—the same background of mountains rising tier on tier for thousands and thousands of feet, in the morning partly obscured by heavy banks of clouds that later melt away and leave the rugged contour sharply silhouetted against the bright blue, are bathed in the evening, as the sun sinks toward the horizon, in the purple haze that becomes them best. Yet there are also the same calm sea and rainless sky and the same cool, aromatic breezes that make the lazy hours on deck a continual delight.

And so it is with mixed feelings of regret and relief that one enters the Gulf of Guayaquil—relief, for here, as we steam past the island of Puna, where Pizarro camped for months awaiting reinforcements before beginning the conquest of Peru, the aspect of the shore line changes and we see foliage as fresh and green and as wildly luxuriant as any in the basins of the interior. Passing the island, we come to the mouth of the Guayas, the greatest of South American rivers emptying into the Pacific. The city is sixty miles beyond at the head of the estuary. The first glimpse we catch is of a street, called El Malecon, that extends along the water front for two miles or more from a shipyard to a hill crowned by a fortress. This is at once the principal shopping, café, and amusement place, the favorite promenade, the warehouse district, and the quay where the lighters that ply between it and the vessels anchored out in the river take on and unload their cargoes. It is faced with what from the deck appear to be long rows of white stone and marble buildings of beautiful and graceful architectural design, for the most part of the usual Moorish type. Long series of arcades in front of the shops remind one of those of the Rue de Rivoli in Paris; above are pretty balconies sheltered by blinds and awnings of gaily colored canvas, screening groups of ladies who like to sit in them and watch the lively scene below as they sip their coffee and chat.

But picturesque as it all is, one finds on going ashore, that the walls of these imposing-looking edifices are merely shells of split bamboo, plastered with cement, ornamented with stucco and painted to resemble marble and stone, which sad experience has taught the people of the city will not resist earthquakes as well as this more elastic imitation they have been compelled to substitute. The residences of the well-to-do are constructed of the same materials and with wide verandas from ground to roof, enclosed with Venetian blinds. Few are elaborately furnished. In that climate it is thought better, for the sake of spaciousness and comfort, to forego evidences of wealth in the form of carpets, hangings, and upholstery, which keep out air and retain the heat. The poor of the suburbs have thatched bamboo or adobe huts with floors of hardened earth. As in Canton, China, many of them live on the water on rafts made from balsa, a species of timber nearly as buoyant as cork, or else of hollow trunks of bamboo. A number of logs, forty or fifty feet long, are lashed together in such a way that they can be propelled by either oars or sails, and a bamboo hut is built in the center. These often serve as the homes of whole families for generations, and are so substantial that they are used in the coasting as well as the river trade for bringing produce to market.

STREET SCENE IN GUAYAQUIL.

CONDOR OF THE ANDES.

In June, 1908, a long-desired and much needed railroad was completed between Guayaquil and the capital, Quito, way up in the interandine table-land, 9350 feet above the level of the sea, and now the trip of nearly three hundred miles, that formerly took from twelve to fifteen days on mule-back, and often more by foot, may be made in two days, in a comfortably equipped passenger train. The scenery en route is gorgeous. The train speeds through forests of stately trees like those of the Amazon—walnut, mahogany, rubber, cacao, cottonwood, with vines entwined around their trunks and hanging from their branches, and beds of mosses and ferns at their feet, slender bamboos shooting up straight as an arrow, and tall, graceful palms, tipped with feathery tufts—the whole mass aglow with scarlet passion flowers and orchids, and blossoms of every hue. Then come broad fields covered with prickly pineapple plants, sugar cane, coffee and snowy cotton plantations and groves of cocoanut palms, oranges, lemons, and limes saturating the air with their delicious fragrance, splendid mango trees with their golden fruit and dense foliage that makes them the best of all shade trees in the tropics, and groves of banana trees, tossing out glossy green leaves eight feet long from their sheathlike stalks, and many bearing bunches of this bread of the poor and delicacy of the rich that weigh from sixty to seventy pounds. Von Humboldt calculated that “thirty-three pounds of wheat and ninety-nine pounds of potatoes require as much space of ground as will produce four thousand pounds of bananas.” They bear fruit but once and die, but the roots are perennial and every year bring forth new plants.

Then, when the traveler has crossed the coast strip, he comes to the foothills and begins the steep, tortuous ascent. On either side of this highland but ever green series of plateaux, crossed by nudos and ascending like steps to the one in which the capital lies, tower mountains, the crests of forty-two of which are more than ten thousand feet high. Twenty of them are higher than Pike’s Peak in Colorado; fourteen are higher than the Alpine giant, Mont Blanc. It was in this vast, magnificent “Avenue of Volcanoes” that the celebrated artist, Frederick E. Church, painted his wonderful picture, “The Heart of the Andes.” Here, he declared, is the grandest mountain scenery in the world.

The most majestic of them all is snow-covered Chimborazo, near the center of the Western Cordillera, and fortunately almost constantly in view, for it is along its spurs that the road between Guayaquil and Quito ascends. One would not imagine its summit so very hard to reach, as it appears from the mountain pass at an elevation of fourteen thousand feet; yet many explorers, from Von Humboldt down, strove for the honor, only to fail until Edward Whymper, an Englishman, finally achieved it in 1879. For years, with its known altitude of 21,420 feet, it was famed as the highest point in America; now the mighty Aconcagua in Argentina, which is recorded at the Harvard Observatory at Arequipa as measuring 24,760 feet, has been awarded the palm. It is from shipboard on the Pacific, though, on a clear day, rather than from the plateau, that Chimborazo is to be seen in all the majesty of its complete proportions, particularly when the evening shadow’s mellowing tint creeps upward to the summit—a vision of gold, vermilion, purple, followed by the glory of the brief tropical sunset—in the few minutes before darkness covers the earth and “the haste of stars, trembling with excess of light, bursts suddenly into view over the peaks,” when the waters of the sea become so impregnated with phosphorescent flashes that each wave seems tipped with silver and the foam that follows in the vessel’s wake is like a stream of fire.

Conspicuous among the crests of the eastern range are Tunguragua, with its perfect cone and great cataract tumbling down fifteen hundred feet from the snow line to the valley beneath; fierce, Plutonic Sangai, the most active volcano in the world; and the beautiful Altar, as it was called by the Spaniards, which is said to have been higher than Chimborazo a few years before the Conquest, but has since collapsed. Now its summit presents the appearance of a superb crown, pointed with eight jagged peaks; its snowy mantle is relieved by rents or fissures in the rock that seem to be colored dark blue in contrast with the white.

And then there is the still more superb Cotopaxi, 19,613 feet, without a rival in height or symmetry among the active volcanoes of the old world. Some faint idea of its grandeur may be conceived by those who have seen Vesuvius, for instance, when it is realized that it is more than fifteen thousand feet—nearly three miles—higher, and that, when in eruption, it vomits forth its fires, with ominous rumblings that can be heard for a hundred miles, from a cone which itself is higher than Vesuvius. Mr. Whymper, who also succeeded here in making the perilous ascent where Von Humboldt and others had failed, described the crater as an enormous amphitheater with a rugged crest surrounded by overhanging cliffs, some snow-clad, others encrusted with sulphur.

“Cavernous recesses,” he says, “belched forth smoke; the sides of the cracks and chasms shone with ruddy light. At the bottom, probably twelve thousand feet below us, there was a ruddy circular spot about one-tenth the diameter of the crater; it was the pipe of the volcano, its channel of communication with the lower regions, and was filled with incandescent if not molten lava, glowing and burning, lighted by tongues of flame that issued from cracks in the surrounding slopes.” On the side of the mountain is a huge rock called the “Inca’s Head.” Tradition has it that this was the original summit, hurled down by an eruption on the very day that Pizarro caused Atahualpa to be strangled. The great eruption of 1859 was succeeded by an earthquake that wrought terrible destruction and loss of life, and by a tidal wave, which in its devastating course carried a United States warship a mile inland, over the roofs of the houses of a town on the coast of Peru and left it high and dry on a sandy plain. Just now the volcano is in a state of “solemn and thoughtful suspense”; only thin clouds of smoke escape from its crater.

At the base of Pichincha, the crater of which the astronomer, La Condamine, likened to the “chaos of the poets,” and Orton describes as “a frightful abyss nearly a mile in width and a half mile deep from which a cloud of sulphurous vapors comes rolling up,” lies the city of Quito. Its origin is shrouded in mystery, but we know that at the time of the Conquest it was the northern stronghold of the great Inca empire, and the place where Atahualpa resided. On this lofty site, which in the Alps would be buried in an avalanche of snow, but in the tropics enjoys an eternal spring, palaces more beautiful than the Alhambra are said to have been built, glittering with the gold and emeralds of the region. But all this passed away with the scepter of Atahualpa. Where the pavilion of the Inca stood is now a gloomy convent; a wheat field takes the place of the Temple of the Sun. Even the Spanish structures that supplanted the original ones seem dilapidated enough. The population is said to number about sixty-five thousand, but there is little of the modern and still less in the way of opportunity for amusement, though it is all most interesting simply because it is so old and because there is much of romance in its history.

The train emerges from the pass on to the plain of Riobamba, the scene of many notable events in the history of the country. Here it was that the great Inca conqueror Tupac Yupanqui routed the Shiri of the Caras and began the conquest of his possessions; it was here that Atahualpa’s great general, Quizquiz, defeated the army of the Inca Huascar and proceeded to the invasion of Peru; it was here that the daring Conquistador Sebastian de Benalcázar defeated the victors and brought the Kingdom of Quito under the sway of Pizarro. The city of Riobamba, which is the first of importance on the line, is also said to have been the birthplace of the eminent historian Juan de Velasco and several others of South America’s most distinguished sons. It has a population of only twelve or fifteen thousand, but, thanks to the demand created by commercial travelers and the employees of the railroad, it serves as an excellent resting place, for there are two or three very tolerable hotels. From this point on to Quito, there are parts of the plain that are arid and desolate. This is attributed partly to the fact that so much of the country was long ago denuded of its trees and partly to volcanic eruptions of a peculiar kind.

Describing one of them, Mozans says:

“But, destructive as are the eruptions of the volcano when it belches forth ashes, cinders, and lava, it is even more so when its terrific operations are followed by deluges of water and avalanches of mud, carrying along with them immense blocks of ice and rock to great distances, causing death and devastation all along their course. Such an eruption took place in 1877, and, so great was the velocity of the angry flood, that it swept the plain with the momentum of an express train, carrying before it bridges, buildings, and everything that stood in its path. The very day of the eruption the irresistible torrent reached the mouth of the Esmeralda River, nearly three hundred miles distant. The catastrophe had been announced the preceding evening by an enormous column of black ashes, which the roaring mountain projected more than three miles above the crater, and which an east wind carried far out over the Pacific. Vessels going from Guayaquil to Panamá were suddenly enveloped in a cloud of dust and transmitted to Europe and the United States the first news of the disaster. After this eruption of ash, there was a welling of molten lava over the rim of the crater which melted the ice and snow and transformed them at once into tremendous avalanches of mud. At the same time immense blocks of ice were transported across the plain of Latacunga to a distance of thirty miles, where they remained several months before they were entirely melted. The foregoing is only one of many similar eruptions that occurred during the last century.”

“But why, it will be asked, do people live in a land in which they are constantly exposed to such sudden and awful disasters?” he continues—“where thousands of victims are sacrificed in a single moment? Why do people cling around the rich flanks of Kilauea and Mauna Loa and huddle around the treacherous slopes of vine-clad Etna and Vesuvius, or pitch their tents on quaking, incandescent Stromboli? Let philosophers reply.” But, in the neighborhood of Quito itself no more of these arid stretches are to be seen. “Notwithstanding the ever-menacing volcano towering above it, Quito,” he tells us, “was always to the Ecuadorian of the interior one of the world’s most favored cities. It was what Damascus and Bagdad in their halcyon days were to the Arabs, what Cordova and Granada were to the Moors. It was ‘Quito bonito’—charming Quito—the city above the clouds, ‘the navel of the world, the home of the continua primavera—perpetual spring—evergreen, magnificent Quito.’ It was like Heaven—Como de Cielo—where there is neither heat nor cold. It was the Paradise of delights. Had Columbus discovered the beautiful valley which it overlooks, he would, we are assured, have pronounced it the site of the Garden of Eden.”

After Lima and Santiago, the suburbs strike one as rather squalid and dilapidated. In the city proper, however, the houses improve in size and finish and continue to improve until the Grand Plaza is reached in the center. The more pretentious are of two stories, a few three, and of massive construction, with adobe walls two or three feet thick and tiled roofs, and are built around a square courtyard, or patio, in the old Spanish style, often with a fountain or flower plot in the center. Here, too, around the patios are pillared arches supporting galleries used as the passage way to rooms in the upper tier; the floors are paved with large, square, red bricks. The public buildings, some of them dating back to Philip II, are clustered about the three plazas. The most imposing, the capitol, a low building adorned with a splendid colonnade, faces the Grand Plaza. With its long rows of columns it looks a little like the Fifteenth Street side of the Treasury Building in Washington. To the right of it is an ancient but beautiful cathedral; on the other side is the palace of the Papal Nuncio. All are fine specimens of the architecture of the periods in which they were built.

The scene in the shopping district and around the market has quite an Egyptian flavor. The shops are very small and exposed; groups in gay ponchos stand chatting and smoking in front of them or lean idly against the walls, enjoying the sunlight; soldiers saunter to and fro; Indians, in every variety of costume, are scattered about guarding heaps of vegetables they have brought in from the surrounding country for sale; bronze-complexioned women in many-colored gowns peddle oranges and alligator pears from baskets carried on their heads; purchasers, mostly men and in more conventional attire, wander from store to store, for it is not here so much as in the vicinity of the churches that one is favored with a glimpse of the ladies of the upper class. They do little shopping themselves, these señoras and señoritas, yet they are very devout, and it is their custom to wrap themselves in their black mantillas and attend mass every day.

ROOM IN THE OLD PALACE AT QUITO, IN WHICH THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE WAS SIGNED, AUGUST 16, 1809.

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X
COLOMBIA

Journeying overland into Colombia from Ecuador, there opens before the traveler the vast mountainous country that was once the ancient kingdom of the Chibchas—the contemporary of the Inca empire, and, later the pivotal state of Bolívar’s great confederation. Colombia occupies the extreme northwestern corner of the continent. With its 465,714 square miles of territory, it is as large as Texas, Kansas, Arkansas and Louisiana, and has a population of 4,320,000.

In this corner of the continent the Andes come to an end in a great splurge of deep-cut ridges presenting an aspect very different from the formations to the south. Here three clearly defined ranges diverge from the Ecuadorian frontier and spread northward like the ribs of a fan; the Western and Central Cordilleras merge before reaching the Caribbean Sea, and slope off into foothills and plains near the coast, and the Eastern Cordillera continues in an almost unbroken line until, as the Sierra de Parija, it plunges into the sea at the end of the bleak, forbidding peninsula (Goajira) west of the Gulf of Maracaibo. Rising from the Pacific, on the west, is an almost entirely distinct range, separated from the Andean terminals by the great basin of the Atrato River, and running along the Isthmus of Panamá into Central America. Just north of the Ecuadorian frontier lies the so-called “Massif,” from which branch off the three Cordilleras just mentioned and in which the four important Colombian river systems have their source; the Patia flowing westward to the Pacific; the Caquetá, eastward, through the Amazon, into the Atlantic, and the Cauca and Magdalena, the great highways of the country, flowing northward to the Caribbean on either side of the Central Cordillera, and joining their floods about one hundred and fifty miles from the sea in the hot, marshy plains of the Magdalena basin.

The Eastern Cordillera slopes off into the Orinoco and Amazon plains—over a territory constituting two-thirds of the republic’s area—and thus gives to Colombia the same astonishing range of productiveness that distinguishes her southern neighbors along the Andean chain. Gold is scattered literally all over the Andean ridges and is picked up along the streams that flow into the lower levels. Silver, iron and lead are almost as universally present; the platinum deposits are surpassed only in Russia; the emerald mines of Muzo, seventy-five miles from Bogotá, have been famous ever since the brilliant stones were torn from the turban crowns of the Indian kings by the Conquistadores, and are the principal source of the world’s supply; the salt mines and pearl fisheries add largely to the republic’s revenue.

The Review Number of the Pan American Bulletin (August, 1911) says of the emerald industry:

“All, or very nearly all, the emeralds mined to-day come from Colombia. And, in spite of the supposed higher value of diamonds, the emerald is the most precious of gems. Carat for carat, a flawless emerald would bring perhaps three times the price of a flawless diamond in the jewelry market. India, the storehouse of precious stones, is credited with producing the first emeralds, but the oriental emerald is not identical with the modern gem, as it is a variety of the ruby, of a green color, and extremely rare. The stone that adorned Aaron’s armor, described in the writings of Moses, if it was a real emerald and not a carbuncle, may have come from the mines of Coptos in Egypt, which furnished the ancients with the precious green gems. Certain of these old mines are known as ‘Cleopatra’s Mines,’ because that remarkable Egyptian queen is supposed to have obtained her jewels from that source. Nero wore an emerald monocle at the gladiatorial combats that came perhaps from the mines of Ethiopia. The Museum of Naples contains fine emeralds taken from the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum, some of which are carved, and the history of this gem shows that it was highly treasured from the earliest recorded times....

“Mexico, Peru, and Ecuador were ravished of their mineral wealth; so wonderful emeralds, as part of the spoil, found their way into the treasury of the Spanish kings. Pizarro and Cortés sent the first emeralds from the New World to Spain, where they acquired the name ‘Spanish emeralds.’ Tradition has it that an Aztec gem appropriated by Cortés was valued at forty thousand ducats. Another wonderful stone, the size of an ostrich egg, was found in the Manka Valley, Peru, where the Indians worshiped it as the Goddess of Emeralds. The Spanish conquerors opened up the mines in Colombia in 1540, enslaving the Indians to work them. The richest mineral areas were those of Muzo and Cosquez, about 75 miles north of Bogotá, at an elevation of about 6500 feet above sea-level. A curious fact in the history of these latter mines is that they were closed and lost to the world in an enveloping forest of jungle for over a hundred years, and only rediscovered some fourteen years ago. The Government of Colombia controls the exploitation, leasing the mining districts to the working companies.

“The Muzo group, from which the finest emeralds come, has an estimated yearly output of 262,548 carats of the first class, 467,690 of the second, 22,700 of the third, and 16,000 of the fourth class. The Coscuez group, named for an Indian princess, which produced a variety of emerald called canutillo, one of the most valuable stones, is now in the category of lost mines. The Samandoco or Chivor group, not now being worked, is supposed to possess a matrix that would yield half a million dollars worth of emeralds a year.... It was” (in the Muzo group) “that the most valuable single emerald in the world was found. It belongs to the Duke of Devonshire and is a perfect, six-sided crystal that weighs 8 ounces 18 pennyweights, is two inches in length and measures across its three thicknesses 2-1/2, 2-1/5, and 1-7/8 inches. Another fine stone is the Hope emerald, weighing 6 ounces, which was also found in Colombia. There can be no doubt that this source of wealth will be greatly augmented in the future, when improved transportation facilities shall make it possible.”

A wealth of agricultural products, typical of nearly every clime, lies in the great river basins and on the eastern slopes and plains in the Orinoco and Amazon regions. In the river basins and part of the way up the mountain sides are great forests, so dense as to be almost impenetrable, but abounding in nearly every species of cabinet and dye woods and nearly every medicinal plant known to science. In altitudes of from two to four thousand feet the coffee plant thrives; the berries from the celebrated Chimbi estates are said to produce the most delicately flavored coffee in the world. But little of it ever reaches the United States. In the tierras calientes, or “hot lands,” the fragrant tonka beans, that have the sweet odor of new-mown hay and are used in some blends of tobacco to give it a bouquet and in the manufacture of soaps and perfumes, and cacao, bananas, yuccas, arracha, sugar, indigo, tobacco, vanilla and rice are among the staple products. The soil of this region is of a rich, black, deep-lying loam, well watered and capable of a greater productiveness than the plains of Louisiana or Texas. In the intermediate areas the culture includes wheat, barley, oats, potatoes and other cereals and vegetables common to the temperate zone. Along the Sinu River is a great cattle belt. This is also the source of the cedar and mahogany, of which Colombia is one of the chief exporters.

It follows naturally that, as in Ecuador, the diversity in altitude that accounts for this varied productiveness gives to Colombia—a wholly tropical country—a range in climate that makes it one of the world’s most attractive abiding places. Von Humboldt is quoted as saying that the traveler here needs but “a thermometer and a mule to find any climate desired within the compass of a few leagues.” When one tires of the torrid heat of the valleys, the frozen sierras are just in sight. When the perpetual spring of the table-land palls upon him, he can by a few hours’ ride find autumn on the steppes above or summer in the plains below. If he is a sportsman, he can find his game among many species of the fauna of three zones: the jaguar, sloth, armadillo, tapir, the red deer, black bear, and panther, and in the jungles of the Amazon region, the tiger.

The overland route to Bogotá from Quito lies over a well-built highway which, in the not distant future, will be paralleled by Colombia’s and Ecuador’s contributions to the long-heralded Pan-American railway from New York to Buenos Aires. Up to the present time Colombia has had but six hundred miles of railways: the little system radiating from the capital and connecting it with the Magdalena River, and, through that natural highway, with the Caribbean ports, and the short lines that run inland from the ports of both oceans; for Colombia is the only country in South America that borders on both the Pacific and the Atlantic.

The traveler who enters the country in the saddle over the route mentioned will profit more than by sailing up the Pacific coast from Guayaquil and entering through the port of Buenaventura. The journey along the lofty heights and down through the lovely green valleys will not only give him much more of the inspiring Andean scenery, but will make him acquainted with the country and village life which he could not see at close range otherwise. But he will have to sacrifice many familiar comforts on the altar of education. The posadas, or village inns, at which he must stop are mere adobe huts with dirt floors, and none but rawhide cots are offered for his rest. The few dishes served at these primitive hostelries are plentifully seasoned with garlic, saffron, and morones, or red peppers. The early hours of the journey will bring the traveler in conflict also with the all-pervading philosophy of mañana (to-morrow), and his progress will be slow. However, the unfailing good humor of his muleteer will do much to dispel his exasperation at delays, and he will find himself more and more repaid for his discomforts by the splendor and beauty and strangeness through which he is making his way.

Passing over the bleak, frozen paramos, or mountain deserts, wrapped in awful stillness by the great peaks rising above them, the scene suddenly changes as the road descends along the heavily wooded slopes and the country becomes alive with verdure and the sounds of birds. Below, in a still more summery clime, lies, perhaps, a beautiful little lozenge-shaped valley fringed about up the sides of the mountains with coffee plantations and groves of bamboo, or some other scene even more picturesque—and then, over equally sudden changes and different pictures of native life, the traveler goes on until there begin to appear extensive plantations with well-built houses and farm machinery, and, finally reaches the railway, which takes him, not unregretfully, from his guide and carries him up into the lofty sabana—the great altaplain on which Bogotá, the capital, is located. This plateau is a level plain, about seventy miles long by about thirty in width, containing some two thousand square miles of cleared, arable land. It lies 8700 feet above the sea in the very heart of the Eastern Cordillera, just below the fifth degree of north latitude, and ranges in temperature from fifty-nine to sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit the year around. From this plateau the descendants of the Spanish conquerors have administered the country since 1538. The sabana is now covered with prosperous plantations belonging to rich Bogotaños.

Bogotá lies on the eastern border. When Quesada, its founder, set foot on the sabana, he was struck by its resemblance to the broad plain of Santa Fé, in his native Granada, on which the armies of Ferdinand and Isabella encamped during the siege that was to put an end to the power of the Moors in Spain. He therefore called the new capital Santa Fé de Bogotá, and New Granada became the name of the northern viceroyalty which was carved out of the Viceroyalty of Peru in 1717. Both names have disappeared. The capital has reverted to its ancient Indian name of Bogotá, and the name of Granada, perpetuated until 1861 in the name of the Republic of New Granada, was succeeded in that year by that of the present Republic of Colombia.

The site of the present city, some twelve miles southeast of the ancient Chibcha capital, was the location of the little Indian village of Tensaquilla, the pleasure resort of the Zipas, nestling, like the Spanish city of Granada, at the foot of two mountains—Monserrate and Guadelupe. Down these mountains tumble the little streams that make up the near-by Funza River, which spreads out over the plain and then plunges down into the upper waters of the Magdalena. On the far side of this great river runs the Central Cordillera, some ninety miles west of the capital, and on clear days the giant white-topped volcano, Tolima, 18,400 feet high, and the Mesa de Herveo, but sixty feet lower—constituting the culminating points in Colombia—are plainly visible.

The traveler’s first impressions of Bogotá are those of surprise and admiration—surprise at finding so large a city (150,000 in population) perched high up in the Andes, fully “six hundred miles from anywhere;” and admiration of the surpassing natural beauty of its locality. His next impression is that it is one of the most conservative, quiet and restful places on earth—conditions greatly to be appreciated after his long, eventful journey. The discovery is soon made that Bogotá possesses a climate that is simply perfect, and a highly educated and accomplished society, that boasts for the capital the appellation of “the Boston of South America.” Like Quito, Bogotá is old, and being so far inland and inaccessible, its Tibet-like seclusion for centuries has bred within its higher circles an aristocratic caste, somewhat arrogant but always suave, kindly, and hospitable. In this eddied fragment of the old-world Spain, the old ceremonious forms of address—“Your servant who kisses your hand,” and that hospitable assurance, “Aqui tiene su casa,” with which even the chance acquaintance is made to feel at home, as in his “own house”—do not seem incongruous, as they would in Spanish cities in closer contact with the outer world.

OVERLOOKING BOGOTÁ.

The streets of the city run eastward up the slopes of a wide avenue cut along the sides of the mountain, and are crossed at right angles by others running north and south. The blocks thus formed rise one above another like the benches of a great amphitheater, overshadowed by the peaks of Monserrate and Guadelupe. On the crests of these peaks stand two massive cathedrals. One wonders why great temples were built in such inaccessible locations, and why, with over thirty more cathedrals and churches in the city, they were needed at all. They can be reached only by pedestrians, and then only after some three hours of hard climbing; no one ever lived near them, and the bleak, icy paramo beyond is uninhabitable. Like the cross, however, their presence is objectively effective in this very religious community.

The city is now well lighted by gas and electricity and is beautified by three large plazas and many smaller parks, in nearly all of which the Bogotaños have erected handsome bronze statues to the soldiers and statesmen of the republic. The great central plaza bears the name of Bolívar, and on a high pedestal in its center stands a bronze figure of the Great Liberator, his sad, thoughtful face turned as if in mute reproach toward the old executive mansion, where, for a brief reign, he ruled the destinies of Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador, then united in his ill-starred Colombian confederation. From a window in that mansion he once leaped, at midnight, to escape the hand of an assassin, raised against him because the people distrusted his rule and permitted themselves to forget his inestimable services to the country.

On the north side of the plaza stands the new capitol building, a plain but well-proportioned structure of white granite; on the east is the fine old metropolitan cathedral, and adjoining it, on the same side, is the ancient palace of the Spanish viceroys, now, however, used for shops and offices. Near the western outskirts of the city is the extensive Plaza de los Martiros, so named in commemoration of the patriots executed on its site by the royalist general, Morillo. Although beautifully laid out and made into an attractive pleasure ground, it has always been shunned by the people, for it was a veritable Golgotha during the revolution, and was used as the execution ground until the early sixties, when capital punishment was abolished in Colombia. Not a great way from the tragic spot is another noted place now called Ninguna Parte (literally “Nowhere”). It is rather a disreputable part of the city in these days, but, when General William Henry Harrison resided there as United States Minister, in 1827, it was a fashionable district. The old house in which he lived is still pointed out, as is the still older, and, if possible, still more dilapidated, house occupied by Baron von Humboldt during his year’s sojourn in Bogotá. On the northern side of the little Plaza de las Nieves stands the city’s oldest landmark—the house built by Quesada.

It would be idle to attempt to enumerate the grand old monasteries and 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.

A POSADA, OR COUNTRY INN, ON THE ROAD TO BOGOTÁ.

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.

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.”

The city is laid out in the usual Spanish colonial scheme—in streets running at right angles to each other, forming blocks of nearly uniform size. Prior to the liberation from Spain, the streets bore names expressive of the dominant influence of religion—names that seem strange to us now: Encarnación del Hijo de Dios (Incarnation of the Son of God), Dulce Nombre de Jesus (Sweet Name of Jesus), Presentación del Niño Jesus en el Templo (Presentation of the Child Jesus in the Temple), Huido á Egypto (Flight to Egypt), and many others of like import—a custom prevalent in most of the ancient cities of Spain and her colonies, and one which still prevails in Cuba. Fronting on the narrow, paveless streets are the plastered, red-tiled houses found in all North Andean cities; behind the bars the pretty Venezuelan girls look out from their cloistered seclusion with the same wistfulness that is noted in Bogotá and Lima.

The House of Congress is on the road to everywhere; inside it the decorations and frescoes are exceptionally fine, and perpetuate many of the principal events in the life of the nation. Miraflores, the appropriately named home of Venezuela’s president, is open to visitors at certain hours. In the Pantéon, to the north of the city, repose the remains of Bolívar in a superb tomb of Parian marble. Upon it stands a statue of the Liberator, wrapped in his military cloak—a noble and dignified figure. In front of the cathedral is the broad Plaza Bolívar, in the center of which, amidst a profusion of tropical plants, rises the equestrian statue of the nation’s hero. Another may be seen in Bolívar Park, on which front several federal buildings; the coins bear Bolívar’s name, and the largest state of the Union, as well as its capital, Ciudad Bolívar, is similarly honored—everywhere throughout the republic his name is revered as is Washington’s with us. In the museum of the University, in a room kept sacred as the “Holiest of Holies,” are displayed the Liberator’s clothing, saddle, boots, and spurs, and many relics intimately connected with his brilliant career. Among them is a portrait of Washington, sent him by Custis, bearing the inscription, “This picture of the Liberator of North America is sent by his adopted son to him who acquired equal glory in South America.”

The white group of buildings of the Vargas Hospital, on the heights near the city, presents a beautiful picture against the mountains in the background. This is one of the most extensive and best equipped in America—either North or South. In the Academía de Bellas Artes are displayed the works of Michelena, a son of Caracas, whose paintings have obtained an international reputation, and many other pictures by native artists from which one may get a good idea of the great scenic beauty of Venezuela.

Although there are no active volcanoes in Venezuela, the country has been subject to many destructive earthquakes, notably in 1812, when Caracas was nearly destroyed at a cost of some twelve thousand lives. As a consequence of the constant presence of this menace, the buildings of the capital are almost uniformly of one story. From the Monte Calvario, on the outskirts of the city, the general aspect is flat and monotonous, but a walk through the broader avenues and the fifteen or more parks and plazas, gives to the visitor vistas of foliage and flowers that leave on his mind the impression of a lovely garden.

The capital is connected by railway with Puerto Cabello, via Lake Valencia. This is the attractive scenic route that is made a part of the Caribbean excursions offered by the steamship lines each winter. The road passes through indescribably beautiful mountains and llanos—alternating wooded slopes and meadows, and richly productive fields of maize and wheat. Frequent stops are made at the stations of important plantations or the busy centers of this great agricultural region: La Victoria, San Mateo, and Valencia, the last-named a modernized city of forty thousand inhabitants and the capital of the State of Carabobo, one hundred and thirty-seven miles from Caracas.

A COFFEE PLANTATION, VENEZUELA—DRYING THE BEAN.

Turning back along the coast, eastward, and passing the last of the coast ranges, the Carib mountains, which taper off to the sharp point of the Paria peninsula, the traveler comes to the Island of Trinidad, which helps to enclose the Gulf of Paria. This island is now a British possession and is famous for its asphalt lakes; it is also the point at which Columbus stopped on his third voyage and met the fresh waters from the Orinoco delta, thus becoming convinced that he was confronted by a great continent. He gave the island its name when he observed from his masthead the three high peaks on its northern coast.

The deltaic region of the Orinoco River basin extends for about four hundred and fifty miles in a southeasterly direction from the mountain ridge on the Paria peninsula to the British Guiana highlands, and covers an area of seven thousand square miles. Here the traveler enters a country of wild, tropical forests, mangrove swamps and mazelike waterways, teeming with strange bird and animal life—practically the same now as when it was a primeval land of mystery that terrified the first navigators.

The delta is made up of fifty or more channels emptying into the Atlantic north of the main stream of the Orinoco. The region is entered by the Royal Mail through the central channel, or Macareo River. The service of ocean steamers, however, extends as yet only as far as Ciudad Bolívar, about six hundred miles from the mouth, although the river is navigable for smaller vessels as far as Apures rapids—over a thousand miles up its course on the Colombian frontier. For fifteen hundred miles the wonderful stream extends into the continent, draining a territory of three hundred and sixty-four thousand square miles. With its numerous affluents, the Orinoco affords four thousand three hundred miles of navigable waters for the service of this vast region. The main river rises in the Parima Mountains, which, with the Pacarima range, form the frontier with Brazil. Near its source it is tapped by the Casiquiare, the remarkable river, which flows in two directions and connects the Orinoco with the Rio Negro, an affluent to the Amazon.

The traveler entering the Orinoco from the sea never forgets his first impressions. There is a weird grandeur about the forests that cannot be described—the magnificent trees, closely grouped and undergrown with tropical jungle plants that create a dense shadow land of mystery that is made ever more awe-inspiring to the uninitiated by the startling cries of the jaguar and puma and the queer howling of the monkeys. The leaves are thick and moist, and tinted a deep rich green, but glisten brightly in the high lights; the foliage never loses that freshness and brilliance which is assumed in our northern woodlands only in the lovely season of early spring. Hence the darker tones blending with the flitting shafts of sunlight develop a play of color effects of never-ending delight to the lover of nature. Countless creepers, decked with gorgeously colored blossoms along the water sides and where the sun’s rays penetrate, twine themselves around the great tree trunks. In many places natural bowers are thrown up, that display a beauty and symmetry which could not be surpassed by the most consummate art. Flame-colored flamingoes, chattering parrots and myriads of strange birds of brilliant plumage, enhance the beauty of the scene and add a welcome touch of life, yet serve to confirm the stranger’s impression that he has wandered into some enchanted realm.

South of the Orinoco there is a gradual rise to the Guiana Highlands, which are as yet sparsely populated and but little given over to cultivation; this hilly country, constituting about half of the republic’s area, ascends in uneven ridges to the higher altitudes of the Brazilian frontier ranges. North of the river the rolling plains, or llanos, sweep inland from the Atlantic between the Guiana highlands and the coast ranges like a great green arm of the sea—past the Mérida sierra and the western escarpment of the highlands, to merge in the hot plains of the Amazon region. These llanos do not correspond exactly with the Argentine pampas; they undulate and ascend gradually from the river bottoms to an elevation of over three hundred feet, whence they continue up into the foothills. They are thus known as llanos altos, or upper plains, and llanos bajos, or lower plains. The llanos present a diversified aspect, with much broken ground and heavily wooded tracts near the upper courses of the Orinoco affluents, and clothed, in some of the lower stretches, with rich tropical vegetation.

In this fertile agricultural and grazing country lies a great source of future wealth of the nation, for although coal and iron have been discovered within its boundaries in practicable quantities, Venezuela’s production, aside from asphalt, is chiefly confined to coffee, cacao, tonka beans, sugar, cotton, indigo, rubber, cereals, cattle, hides, aigrette plumes, sarsaparilla and other medicinal plants, cabinet woods, and fruits. Gold has been mined since the earliest colonial times. Venezuela also possesses several of the world’s most important asphalt deposits. “While the ‘pitch lake’ of Trinidad, a surface a mile and a half across of pure asphaltum,” says the Pan American Bulletin (of July, 1911), “is perhaps the most remarkable occurrence of this mineral in nature, the lake of Bermudez, which covers a thousand acres in the old state of Bermudez, Venezuela, is fast equaling the first in commercial importance. Asphalt is also found in the Perdanales district as well as on the shores of Lake Maracaibo, and as an indication of the value of Venezuelan bitumen, we have the fact that this special variety is used to protect the tunnels of the New York Subway.” The foreign trade of Venezuela in 1910 was valued at $30,336,122, the great bulk of which was with Europe. Her purchases from us amounted to but $3,788,539.

The population of Venezuela is made up of Indians, mestizos, and unmixed descendants of the Spanish; but few North Americans are settled in the country thus far, in spite of its nearness to the United States. A better acquaintance between our people and the Venezuelan land of promise should result from the opening of the Panamá Canal. This most desirable consummation will operate to the benefit of both peoples, for, being but six days from New York and four from Charleston, the flow of the country’s trade should turn our way with increasing volume as our merchants become familiar with the ports of the Spanish Main en route to the canal. So far Venezuela is almost wholly unknown to us. Less than ten years ago, a bill was introduced in our Congress to consolidate the diplomatic missions to the republics of Venezuela and Guatemala, under the impression that the countries were adjacent! and during the debate one member arose and asked in all seriousness, “Where is Venezuela, anyhow?”

Like Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico, Venezuela is a federation of states. In this respect it differs from the other Latin American republics, except Brazil. Its government is modeled closely on our own, although more centralized, the governors of the states being appointed by the federal executive. The country is on a gold basis; its national debt is not excessive; its administration of the postal, telegraph, and customs services is efficient and progressive, and, underlying the whole structure, is the sure guarantee of inexhaustible wealth. With each new crisis in her history, Venezuela has advanced to a higher plane, and has maintained her footing. The men who have lifted her up the steps of her career—Bolívar, Páez, Vargas, Guzmán Blanco, Crespo, and the little Andean general who has recently come again into international notice after a brief eclipse, Cipriano Castro—have been honest in their purpose and patriots first, whatever they may have been in their private lives. Many other names may be written on her roll of fame: the romantic, but visionary, Miranda, the fiery young patriot Yáñez, and the Venezuelan of all others who survived the revolution without question or reproach—Bolívar’s great lieutenant, Sucré, who became the first president of Bolivia.

Of all her latter day sons, Guzmán Blanco accomplished most for his country. After serving in the diplomatic corps in Europe, he returned in 1870 able to assume the supreme authority with an understanding of the needs of his disordered country and the knowledge and forcefulness with which to supply them. During his practical dictatorship of eighteen years, he ruled with a rod of iron; he enriched himself and his favorites, and stamped his personality ineradicably on the country, it may be—but he made Venezuela a thriving country. He beautified and practically rebuilt the capital, subsidized and fostered the railroads, opened the door to foreign capital and traders who learned to believe in his stable government, and improved the ports. Under his energetic administration the production of coffee reached phenomenal proportions; shipping made rapid progress; the population increased in normal ratio, and the homes of the people improved in every way. The work he did lasted.

Castro, also, worked hard to build up a spirit of nationalism with which to withstand the impositions of foreign governments, whose citizens in many instances had sought by fraudulent claims to enrich themselves. He, too, won a good fight and in some respects advanced Venezuela to a higher place in the family of nations. His patriotism has been made grotesque in our public press, but those who know him well have no doubt that it was sincere. He is well born and able and has shown many of the elements of statesmanship. Venezuela unquestionably has suffered injustice at the hands of European governments, and of our own, in the demands they have sought to enforce on behalf of adventurers who have attempted to exploit the country to their own advantage and without regard to her interests—notably in the cases of her dispute with Great Britain over the boundary with British Guiana, and the French cable company.

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XII
THE GUIANAS

On the northeastern shoulder of the continent lies a huge block of territory as large as France and Spain combined. It is in reality an island, since it is bounded on the north and east by the Caribbean Sea and Atlantic Ocean, on the south by the Amazon River, and on the northwest and west by the continuous waterway formed by the Orinoco, the Casiquiare and the Negro rivers, the last named an affluent of the Amazon. Like the north Andean republics, the Guiana country is made up of mountains, highlands, and low-lying plains, and lies wholly in the tropics; its productiveness thus embraces nearly every cereal and vegetable found in the three great zones of the earth.

Guiana was discovered, named, and first occupied by the Spanish in the very beginning of things in South America. It acquired fame in the latter part of the sixteenth century as one of the regions in which the home of El Dorado was supposed to be located—the fateful will-o’-the-wisp that was chased by the early fortune hunters all over the region from the mountain fastnesses about Bogotá, in Colombia, to the Paraná, in southern Brazil, the lure which brought disaster even to such men of intelligence and practical common sense as Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Francis Drake. The long-sought Lake Guatavita (now known to be located near Bogotá), in whose sacred waters El Dorado bathed his gilded body, was once supposed to lie near the source of the Orinoco in the Parima Mountains, and, indeed, geologists now contend that such a lake did exist ages ago in these mountainous heights, and it is unquestionably true that on the line northward from this point runs a vein of gold richer than any in the known world, and that this vein had been worked by the Indians from time immemorial.

The lure of the gold, purged, however, of its myth, has survived to our own day, for we all remember Great Britain’s effort, in her boundary dispute with Venezuela, to extend her Guiana boundary over the rich gold fields south of the Orinoco delta.

Until 1624, the Spanish succeeded in holding Guiana against all comers; but in that year the Dutch West India Company gained a foothold at the head of the Essequibo delta, and was confirmed in its possession by the treaty of Münster in 1648, at the close of the war between Spain and the Netherlands. After this opening, other nations made haste to share in a partition of the rich territory. The French established a colony at Cayenne; the English made a settlement and called it Surreyham, after the Earl of Surrey—whence the present name of Surinam—and eventually the country was partitioned among the five nations: Brazil became the owner of that portion trailing off southward to the Amazon which Portugal had wrested from Spain, and which is now sometimes called Brazilian Guiana, although it is an integral part of the United States of Brazil; France still retains Cayenne, now known as French Guiana; the Dutch are now installed in the Surinam colony, which came into their possession at the time of the British occupation of New York, and is now called Dutch Guiana; Great Britain owns the three settlements at Demerara, Berbice, and Essequibo, captured in 1803 from the Dutch and afterward ceded to her by the treaty of 1814, and which now constitute British Guiana, and, lastly, Venezuela, as successor to the title of Spain, owns the rest of the highlands, south of Parima and Pacarima, the territory formerly known as Spanish Guiana until the revolution of the Venezuelan colonists.

British Guiana is 109,000 square miles in area—larger than the United Kingdom—and has a population of about 300,000, made up of 150,000 negroes, 100,000 East Indians, 15,000 Portuguese, 10,000 British and Europeans, and the balance of mestizos. It is divided into three counties, which correspond to the old settlements—Demerara, Berbice, and Essequibo. Georgetown, the capital, is on the right bank of the Demerara River at its mouth. It is an attractive port city of about 60,000 inhabitants, heavily shaded with tropical trees, and presents the substantial appearance of most British colonial centers. Just now its interests are being rather neglected, but, as the shipping point of a sugar area productive enough to supply the mother country, it could be developed into one of the great ports of the Caribbean.

The area of Dutch Guiana is 46,060 square miles, and its population numbers about 70,000. The capital, Paramaribo, is a city of some 30,000 inhabitants, located at the junction of the Surinam and Commewine rivers, about ten miles from the sea. The colony’s trade in coffee, cacao, rubber, timber, and gold has not yet been developed to such proportions as to make it self-supporting; it is still subsidized by the mother country.

French Guiana is known to us principally as a penal settlement. Since the days of the French Revolution, Devil’s Island, off the coast, has been used by the French government as a penal establishment, and in recent years the world has become familiar with its supposed terrors by reading the account of Captain Dreyfus’s sufferings. Nevertheless, French Guiana has all the capabilities of the other Guianas, and could be made richly productive. Its area is 31,000 square miles and its population about 25,000; that of its capital, the city of St. Louis, on the Island of Cayenne, now numbers slightly over 15,000.

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