Twenty-four hours after our last Zone handshake we marched down the gangplank among the little brown policemen of Cartagena, Colombia, and fought our way through a mob of dock loafers to the toy railroad train that eventually creaked away into the city. Our revolvers and cartridge belts we wore out of sight; uniforms and nightsticks no longer figured in our equipment. But the campaign costume we had chosen,—broad felt hats, Norfolk jackets and breeches of olive drab, and the leather leggings common to the Zone—were evidently more conspicuous here than we had suspected. For about us wherever we moved sounded awe-struck stage whispers:
“Psst! Policía de la Zona!”
The ancient city and fortress of Cartagena—and for America it is old indeed—squats on a sandy point jutting far out into the blue Caribbean, with a beach curving inland on either hand. A sea-wall beside which that of Panama seems a plaything, of massive weather-tarnished, ocean-lashed stones, brown-gray with age, with stern, dignified old gateways, encloses the city in irregular form. On its top is a promenade varying in width from a carriage drive to a manoeuver field. Outside, down on the languidly garrulous beach, little thatched huts have drifted together under the cocoanut groves. Inside, the dust-deep streets have long since lost most of the cobbled paving of their Spanish birthright; the narrow, inadequate tile sidewalks are far from continuous, and the rules of life are so lax that only the constant sweep of the sea air accounts for old age amid conditions that should bring death early and often.
Long before we reached our hotel we regretted our penuriousness in scorning cabs and carriers. Not only did the weight of our suitcases double every few yards in the leaden tropical air, and the labyrinthian way through the city elude us at every turn, but at least a score of ragged boys trailed respectfully but hopefully in our rear with the anticipatory manner of an opera understudy waiting in the edge of the wings for the principal to break down at the next note. A generous percentage of the population crowded the doorways and children raced ahead to summon forth their families to behold what was apparently the most exciting thing that had taken place in Cartagena in months. Evidently a caballero bearing his own material burdens was a strange sight in South America. The populace stared fixedly, in as impersonal a way as ruminating oxen, and every few yards half-naked children, evidently abetted by their elders, swarmed out upon us with shrill cries of “Wan sheeling!”
We were soon reminded that we had left behind our power as well as our emoluments. The proprietress whose oily Hebrew smile greeted us at the hotel door was none other than one long “wanted” on the Zone on the charge of running a disorderly house. The room she assigned us was enormous, but the furnishings were scant and thin, the beds mere strips of canvas, as befits a country of perennial midsummer. While we unpacked and shaved, a ragged brown urchin slipped in with the Barranquilla newspaper. In a characteristic burst of generosity Hays tossed him double the price demanded—only to discover just after the vendor was out of reach that the pauperise little sheet was twenty days old. It was a “bunco game” so aged it had grown new again. Maria, the chambermaid, already in the sear and yellow leaf, shuffled in frequently, supremely indifferent to our scantiness of attire. Now and then several younger females of decidedly African ancestry strolled by as nonchalantly, one by one, to inquire whether we had any soiled clothes to wash, and loitered about in a manner to suggest that the question was meant to be taken figuratively. This friendliness was the general attitude of all the town. Outwardly at least we were shown no discourtesy, and there was little confirmation of the reputed hatred of Americans. Yet almost from the moment of our landing we noted that Colombians seemed to avoid speaking to us beyond the requirements of business or the cut and dried forms of their habitual politeness. Still, with only an anemic candle to flicker its pale shadows on the enclosing wall of the droning tropical night, we settled down to the conclusion that Colombia, alleged the deadly enemy of all things American and “heretical,” was less black than she had been painted.
One of the wood-burning steamers of the lower Magdalena, on the route to Bogotá
Along the Magdalena we halted several times each day for fuel, the villagers looking idly on while the crew carried many a woodpile on board across a precarious gangplank
We had reached the land of easy money. Merely to step into a bank with a $5 bill was to emerge with a bulging roll of $500. We could not repress a millionaire swagger when we tossed a hundred-dollar note on the counter to pay for a pair of socks, though it quickly wilted when a few nickel pieces were tendered in change. Hays dropped into a dingy little hole-in-the-wall to buy a cigar, but though it was certainly the only $5 cigar he had ever strutted behind, he soon tossed it away in disgust. The newcomer is apt to be startled when he hears a Colombian casually mention paying $10,000 for a mule—until he realizes that the speaker is really talking in cents. The Colombian notes, even those of the intrinsic value of our copper coin, are elaborately engraved, and the wonder grew how the Government could afford to print them.