We had not set out to rival champion pedestrians. When appetite suggested, I stretched out at the roadside with my pocket lunch, reading Swinburne the while and scattering him page by page on the gusty winds of the sabana. Hays and our baggage drifted languidly past. All the day we followed a massive stone highway, built by the Spaniards of colonial times, now raised well above the flanking dirt roads preferred by the soft-footed travel of to-day. A large stone bridge of clumsy lines lifted us over the little Funza river which waters the sabana, and not far beyond we entered the ancient town of Mosquiera, on a main corner of which stood a statue of the Virgin, unusual only for the fact that she was jet-black of complexion as any African chief. To the South American the color line is not sharp, even in his picture of the after world. Some time later, having drifted together again, we met an ox-cart headed for Bogotá. The half-Indian driver, struck suddenly wide-eyed at sight of our strange garb and the burdened carrier behind us, cried out in consternation:
“Cómo! No hay más función en Bogotá?”
We appreciated the implied compliment. He had mistaken us for performers in the “Keller Circus,” a little fourth-rate affair playing in the capital. Having, no doubt, saved up his billetes for weeks and started for town at last with the price of admission to this wonderful “function,” he was quite naturally dismayed to meet what seemed to be the show trekking southward before he arrived.
At three we strolled into Serrazuela, officially named Madrid. Hays’ pedometer registered seventeen miles. In the little one-story “hotel,” gaping with astonishment at our appearance, we were assigned to a mat-carpeted room opening on the patio, and furnished with two wooden beds exactly five feet long, with very thin reed mattresses over the board flooring that took the place of springs. In this climate there was little gain in traveling leisurely and arriving early. Except for a few hours near noon, it was too cold to lounge along the way; once arrived we could only wander aimlessly about among stupid villagers, uncommunicative as their baked-mud walls. By dark it had grown too wintry to sit reading with comfort, even had there been any other light than the pale flicker of a small candle. There was nothing left but to go to bed, and that had little of the pleasure the phrase suggests to American ears. When Hays set his feet against the footboard, his lips nearly reached his miniature pillow. He complained of feeling like the victim of a “trunk mystery.” Sometime in the night I awoke to hear him growling, “No wonder these people are crooked!” My own was a folding bed—in that I had to fold up to get into it.
A section of the ancient highway, built by the Spaniards more than three centuries ago, leading from the sabana of Bogotá down into the hot-lands of the Magdalena. It was not designed for wheeled traffic, hence is laid in steps, with a slope to carry off the rains
Fellow-travelers at the edge of the sabana of Bogotá
Though we were afoot at chilly six, at nine we were still seeking a cargador. The one from Bogotá had fled during the darkest hours. Moreover, he had evidently spread startling reports of our plans. In a town swarming with gaunt and ragged out-of-works we were a long time finding a man who admitted that he sometimes plied the vocation of carrier. His attitude was that of an heir to unlimited wealth whiling away the days until he came into his own by an occasional choice and easy task. After an endless oration in which he assured us times without number that he was “poor but honest,” just the man required for our “very valuable baggage,” which the “expensive leather boxes” proved it, and which in his hands would be perfectly safe among the robbers that swarmed in the road ahead—providing we walked close beside him—he admitted his willingness, as a special favor, to accompany us to La Mesa, eighteen miles away, for the paltry sum of $200. We offered fifty, and he left in well-feigned scorn.
At the alcalde’s office that official had been due only an hour or so, and naturally had not yet arrived. We spread our resplendent document before his hump-shouldered secretary, demanding a cargador at once. That’s the way the haughty traveler always did in the accounts we had read of journeys in the Andes. But Serrazuela was evidently ill-trained. The secretary stepped to the door and beckoned a few haughty rag-displays nearer, suggesting in a soft voice that perhaps, as a great favor to him personally, one of them would go with los señores and carry a “very light little bundlet.” One by one they replied in as solemn tones as if they fancied we believed them, that they were already engaged for the day, that they had a lame knee, or a sore back, or an exacting spouse, or were in mourning for a mother’s third cousin, and faded silently away. Among the last to go was our original “poor but honest” applicant, who paused to ask whether the offer we had made was $50 paper or $50 gold, because if we meant the latter he....