Up the Orinoco and down the Magdalena

by J. A. Zahm

We have nothing in our country that can bear comparison with the matchless picture seen from Buena Vista. The view of the delta of the Nile—just before harvest time, with its numberless canals and water courses—from the summit of Cheops, contains some of the elements of soft tropical beauty so conspicuous in the Buena Vista landscape; but it lacks the variety, the sweep, the coloring, the harmonious effects of light and shade, the immensity, and above all the wondrous setting afforded the latter prospect by the Titanic Cordilleras.

But the measureless expanse of grassy plain that lies before us is but an insignificant fraction of the llanos. They extend from the southern slopes of the Coast Range of Venezuela to the base of the Parime uplands and the Rio Guaviare; from the Andes to the delta of the Orinoco. They are thus almost conterminous with the Orinoco basin. They, indeed, constitute one of the three immense districts into which the whole of South America is divided. The other two are the Selvas of Brazil and the Pampas of Argentina, separated from each other and from the llanos of the north, by low transverse ridges running east and west from the Atlantic to the Cordilleras.

To geologists these vast lowlands have a special interest, as they were at one time the bed of an inland sea more extensive far than the present Mediterranean. Even now, during the rainy season, certain parts of this immense expanse are covered by fresh water lakes thousands of square miles in extent. A subsidence of a few hundred feet would again bring the whole of this illimitable territory down below sea level and cause again the formation of the great tropical sea that existed in prehistoric times.

To the student of history a special interest attaches to the llanos of western Venezuela and eastern Colombia. It was across these plains and swamps, under the most trying difficulties, that Bolivar led his half-clad, half-famished army, during his memorable march across the Cordilleras, before achieving the independence of New Granada in the famous battle of Boyacá.

But great as was the feat accomplished by Bolivar in traversing the llanos, great as were the difficulties he had to contend with, they pale into insignificance when compared with the hardships and achievements of the early descubridores—explorers—of these then unknown wilds. Bolivar and his men traveled through a country that had been long settled, and were among friends and compatriots. The early explorers and conquistadores were, on the contrary, in an unknown land, among murderous, relentless savages armed with poisoned arrows. They were in a region where it was often impossible to procure food, and where several times starvation was imminent. For months at a time they wandered through dark, tangled forests, cutting a road as they went, lured on by the hope of fame and fortune. Then they had to feel their way through deep and treacherous morasses, in which they had to confront even greater dangers than in the obscure woodlands. But notwithstanding dangers and difficulties of every kind, they kept moving forward through woods and swamps, across rivers and mountains, ever in pursuit of gold and precious stones, and of the fabulous riches of the Meta and the treasure city of Manoa.

Among these famous descubridores was the German, George Hohermuth, whom the Spaniards called Jorge de Spira. Starting from Coró, on the Caribbean, with three hundred and sixty-one men and eighty horses, he directed his course southwards, where, he was assured, were inexhaustible treasures of every kind. Crossing the llanos of Venezuela and New Granada, he must have passed near the present site of Buena Vista.

During our journey we certainly crossed his line of march, which in this latitude was probably near the base of the Cordilleras. Spurred on by an ever-receding ignis fatuus, he continued his march until he reached the Japura, an affluent of the Amazon, and but a short distance from the equator. During this frightful journey he crossed the Arauca, the Apure, the Meta, the Guaviare and other broad and deep rivers. Of the countless difficulties he encountered in his long and painful march, no one who is unfamiliar with the character of forest and plain in the tropics, particularly during the rainy season, can have the faintest conception. They far transcend anything experienced by Stanley, or Mungo Park, or any other African explorer. After more than three years of unheard-of sufferings, he finally returned to Coró with but a small fraction of the brave men that had originally formed part of his expedition.

Hohermuth was followed by Philip von Hutten, in 1541, on a similar expedition, who traveled over almost the same ground as his predecessor. He, too, must have passed near where Buena Vista now stands. His undertaking was quite as fruitless as that of Hohermuth and his losses were greater. He spent more than four years in the llanos and Cordilleras and, before he could return to his starting point, he died at the hands of an assassin.

More remarkable still, in some respects, was the expedition of Nicholas Federmann, who, like Hohermuth and Von Hutten, was in the service of the Welsers, concessionaires of a large German colony near Lake Maracaibo. Crossing the llanos, and the numerous rivers that flow through them, he eventually found himself on the banks of the Meta. Thence he proceeded west and crossed the Cordilleras, not, however, without numerous victims—both men and horses—from the intense cold on the mountain summits. He finally reached the fertile plain of Bogotá, where occurred that famous and unexpected meeting of Belalcazar, who had come with another expedition from Quito, and Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada who, a short time previously, had arrived with a third expedition from Santa Marta.

It would be interesting to know what was Federmann’s itinerary after leaving the banks of the Meta, and the exact spot where he crossed the Cordilleras. This we can only conjecture, as there is no record of it, but we loved to think, while crossing the Andes on our way to Bogotá, that we were still following the conquistadores, and that ours was the same route that had been taken by Federmann and his brave men more than three and a half centuries before.[1]