In the immediate wake of the Spanish Conqueros surged the drift and flotsam of the Old World. Cities soon sprang up along the Spanish Main which reflected a curious blend of the old-time life of Seville and Madrid with the picturesque and turbulent elements of the adventurer and buccaneer. The spirit of the West has always been synonymous with a larger sense of freedom, a shaking off of prejudice and tradition and the trammels of convention. The sixteenth century towns of the New World were no exception, and their streets and plazas early exhibited a multicolored panorama, wherein freely mingled knight and predaceous priest, swashbuckler and staid hidalgo, timid Indian and veiled doncella––a potpourri of merchant, prelate, negro, thief, the broken in fortune and the blackened in character––all poured into the melting pot of the new West, and there steaming and straining, scheming and plotting, attuned to any pitch of venturesome project, so be it that gold and fame were the promised emoluments thereof.
And gold, and fame of a certain kind, were always to be had by those whose ethical code permitted of a little straining. For the great ships which carried the vast wealth of this new land 82 of magic back to the perennially empty coffers of Old Spain constituted a temptation far more readily recognized than resisted. These huge, slow-moving galleons, gilded and carved, crawling lazily over the surface of the bright tropical sea, and often so heavily freighted with treasure as to be unsafe in rough weather, came to be regarded as special dispensations of Providence by the cattle thieves and driers of beef who dwelt in the pirates’ paradise of Tortuga and Hispaniola, and little was required in way of soul-alchemy to transform the boucanier into the lawless and sanguinary, though picturesque, corsair of that romantic age. The buccaneer was but a natural evolution from the peculiar conditions then obtaining. Where human society in the process of formation has not yet arrived at the necessity of law to restrain the lust and greed of its members; and where at the same time untold wealth is to be had at the slight cost of a few lives; and, too, where even the children are taught that whosoever aids in the destruction of Spanish ships and Spanish lives renders a service to the Almighty, the buccaneer must be regarded as the logical result. He multiplied with astonishing rapidity in these warm, southern waters, and not a ship that sailed the Caribbean was safe from his sudden depredations. So extensive and thorough was his work that the bed of the Spanish Main is dotted with traditional treasure ships, and to this day remnants of doubloons or “pieces of eight” and bits of bullion and jewelry are washed up on the shining beaches of Panamá and northern Colombia as grim memorials of his lawless activities.
The expenditure of energy necessary to transport the gold, silver and precious stones from the New World to the bottomless treasury of Spain was stupendous. Yet not less stupendous was the amount of treasure transported. From the distant mines of Potosi, from the Pilcomayo, from the almost inaccessible fastnesses of what are now Bolivia and Ecuador, a precious stream poured into the leaking treasure box of Spain that totalled a value of no less than ten billion dollars. Much of the wealth which came from Peru was shipped up to the isthmus of Panamá, and thence transferred to plate-fleets. But the buccaneers became so active along the Pacific coast that water shipment was finally abandoned, and from that time transportation had to be made overland by way of the Andean plateau, sometimes a distance of two thousand miles, to the strongholds which were built to receive and protect the treasure until the plate-fleets could be made up. Of these strongholds there were two of the first importance, the old city of Panamá, on the isthmus, and the almost equally old city of Cartagena, on the northern coast of what is now the Republic of Colombia.
The spirit of ancient Carthage must have breathed upon this “Very Royal and Loyal City” which Pedro de Heredia in the sixteenth century founded on the north coast of New Granada, and bequeathed to it a portion of its own romance and tragedy. Superbly placed upon a narrow, tongue-shaped islet, one of a group that shield an ample harbor from the sharp tropical storms which burst unheralded over the sea without; girdled by huge, battlemented walls, and guarded by frowning fortresses, Cartagena commanded the gateway to the exhaustless wealth of the Cordilleras, at whose feet she still nestles, bathed in perpetual sunshine, and kissed by cool ocean breezes which temper the winds blowing hot from the steaming llanos of the interior. By the middle of the sixteenth century she offered all that the adventurous seeker of fame and fortune could desire, and attracted to herself not only the chivalry, but the beauty, wealth and learning which, mingled with rougher elements, poured into the New World so freely in the opening scenes of the great drama inaugurated by the arrival of the tiny caravels of Columbus a half century before.
The city waxed quickly rich and powerful. Its natural advantages of location, together with its massive fortifications, and its wonderful harbor, so extensive that the combined fleets of Spain might readily have found anchorage therein, early rendered it the choice of the Spanish monarch as his most dependable reservoir and shipping point for the accumulated treasure of his new possessions. The island upon which the city arose was singularly well chosen for defense. Fortified bridges were built to connect it with the mainland, and subterranean passageways led from the great walls encircling it to the impregnable fortress of San Felipe de Barajas, on Mount San Lázaro, a few hundred yards back of the city and commanding the avenues and approaches of the land side. To the east, and about a mile from the walls, the abrupt hill of La Popa rises, surmounted by the convent of Santa Candelaria, likewise connected by underground tunnels to the interior of the city, and commanding the harbor and its approaches from the sea. The harbor formerly connected with the open sea through two entrances, the Boca Grande, a wide, fortified pass between the island of Tierra Bomba and the tongue on which the city stands, and the Boca Chica, some nine miles farther west, a narrow, tortuous pass, wide enough to permit entry to but a single vessel at a time, and commanded by forts San Fernando and San Josè.
By the middle of the seventeenth century Cartagena, “Queen of the Indies and Queen of the Seas,” had expanded into a proud and beautiful city, the most important mart of the New World. 84 Under royal patronage its merchants enjoyed a monopoly of commerce with Spain. Under the special favor of Rome it became an episcopal See, and the seat of the Holy Inquisition. Its docks and warehouses, its great centers of commerce, its sumptuous dwellings, its magnificent Cathedral, its colleges and monasteries, and its proud aristocracy, all reflected the spirit of enterprise which animated its sons and found expression in a city which could boast a pride, a culture, and a wealth almost unrivalled even in the Old World.
But, not unlike her ancient prototype, Cartagena succumbed to the very influences which had made her great. Her wealth excited the cupidity of freebooters, and her power aroused the jealousy of her formidable rivals. Her religion itself became an excuse for the plundering hands of Spain’s enemies. Again and again the city was called upon to defend the challenge which her riches and massive walls perpetually issued. Again and again she was forced to yield to the heavy tributes and disgraceful penalties of buccaneers and legalized pirates who, like Drake, came to plunder her under royal patent. Cartagena rose and fell, and rose again. But the human heart which throbs beneath the lash of lust or revenge knows no barriers. Her great forts availed nothing against the lawless hordes which swarmed over them. Neither were her tremendous walls proof against starvation. Again and again, her streets filled with her gaunt dead, she stubbornly held her gates against the enemies of Spain who assaulted her in the name of religion, only at last to weaken with terror and throw them open in disgraceful welcome to the French de Pontis and his maudlin, rag-tag followers, who drained her of her last drop of life blood. As her gates swung wide and this nondescript band of marauders streamed in with curses and shouts of exultation, the glory of this royal mediaeval city passed out forever.
Almost from its inception, Cartagena had been the point of attack of every enterprise launched with the object of wresting from Spain her rich western possessions, so much coveted by her jealous and revengeful rivals. It was Spain herself who fought for very existence while Cartagena was holding her gates against the enemies of Holy Church. And these enemies knew that they had pierced the Spanish heart when the “Queen of the Indies” fell. And in no small measure did Spain deserve the fate which overtook her. For, had it not been for the stupendous amount of treasure derived from these new possessions, the dramatic and dominant part which she played in the affairs of Europe during the sixteenth century would have been impossible. This treasure she wrested from her South American colonies at a cost in the destruction of human life, in the 85 outraging of human instincts, in the debauching of ideals and the falsifying of hope, in hellish oppression and ghastly torture, that can never be adequately estimated. Her benevolent instruments of colonization were cannon and saintly relics. Her agents were swaggering soldiers and bigoted friars. Her system involved the impression of her language and her undemonstrable religious beliefs upon the harmless aborigines. The fruits of this system, which still linger after three centuries, are superstition, black ignorance, and woeful mental retardation. To the terrified aborigines the boasted Spanish civilization meant little more than “gold, liquor, and sadness.” Small wonder that the simple Indians, unable to comprehend the Christian’s lust for gold, poured the molten metal down the throats of their captives, crying, “Eat, Christian, eat!” They had borrowed their ideals from the Christian Spaniards, who by means of the stake and rack were convincing them that God was not in this western land until they came, bringing their debauched concept of Christianity.
And so Cartagena fell, late in the seventeenth century, never to regain more than a shadow of her former grandeur and prestige. But again she rose, in a semblance of her martial spirit, when her native sons, gathering fresh courage and inspiration from the waning powers of the mother-country in the early years of the century just closed, organized that federation which, after long years of almost hopeless struggle, lifted the yoke of Spanish misrule from New Granada and proclaimed the Republic of Colombia. Cartagena was the first city of Colombia to declare its independence from Spain. And in the great war which followed the “Heroic City” passed through terrible vicissitudes, emerging from it still further depleted and sunken, a shell of massive walls and battered defenses, with desolated homes and empty streets echoing the tread of the mendicant peon.