Up the Orinoco and down the Magdalena

by J. A. Zahm

This, undoubtedly, like many similar impressions, is a question of temperament. As for ourselves we never, for a single moment, experienced anything even approaching a feeling of loneliness or remoteness from the world. Probably, like Scipio Africanus, we are among those who never felt less alone than when alone. Far from feeling lonely while crossing the Cordilleras, we congratulated ourselves that we were far away from the beaten track of personally conducted tourists.

We could not help comparing the splendid panoramas around us with the noted show places of Switzerland. In the Andes it was the forest primeval, or the humble cot, or the picturesque village of the unspoiled and simple people of eastern Colombia, where a foreigner is rarely seen, but where he is always sure of a cordial welcome. There were here no tourist resorts, no palatial hotels or restaurants, no sumptuous chalets or villas—seats of opulence and luxury—but Nature alone in all her beauty and sublimity, as she came forth from the hands of her Creator. We were far away from the land of inclined railroads, leading to every peak, and from macadamized thoroughfares, along which reckless drivers and wild chauffeurs are constantly claiming the right of way, regardless of the safety or convenience of the ordinary wayfarer.

The uplands of the Andes should be the last places in the world where the thoughtful mind should experience a sense of loneliness, or be oppressed with tedium or listlessness. There, if anywhere, such a thing as ennui should be impossible. There is so much to excite the imagination, and so much to gratify every sense, so much to exhilarate the weary spirits and to elevate the mind, that one feels oneself in a kind of mountain elysium, where every moment spent is one of unalloyed delight.

Never shall we forget the morning preceding our first crossing of the Cordilleras. The weather was ideal—neither hot nor cold—and the scenery at every turn was magnificent beyond compare. While the vegetation was quite different in character from that of the lowlands, it was, nevertheless, equally attractive and fragrant. Our route at times lay through a narrow defile with wild beetling steeps on both sides of us. Ever and anon we passed by natural bowers, sculptured in the solid rock and entwined with odorous plants and flowers, that might well serve as trysting places of fays and elves, or be the favorite resorts of Titania and Oberon. Farther on our way we descried a dark and romantic chasm which we could fancy might, under a waning moon, be haunted “by a woman waiting for her demon lover.” And higher up on a lofty peak, tinged with the roseate hues of quivering sunlight, C.’s fancy told us was the home of that race of Oreads

“That haunt the hill-tops nearest the sun.”

“Small wonder,” said C, “that the lively fancy of the Indian should have peopled these romantic spots with the creatures of his imagination, and that he should have woven legends about objects and phenomena that had specially attracted his notice. Even we, who see these things for the first time, find ourselves under the spell of the genius loci. Considering the beautiful arbors here formed by tree and vine and flower, the fantastic shapes assumed by rock and mountain spur, the mysterious natural phenomena that frequently obtrude themselves on his attention, and his proneness to refer to supernatural agency everything that his untutored mind is unable to explain, it would be a greater wonder if such legends did not exist, and if the numerous physical features, that have so often excited our interest, were left unpeopled by creatures of the Indian’s fancy.”

The Indian of Colombia may know nothing of our elves and fairies; sylphs, undines and salamanders; gnomes, kobolds and hobgoblins, but his fertile imagination has, nevertheless, found similar beings to people plain and forest and mountain peak. Now, as in the days of their pre-Colombian ancestors, the Indian loves to regard stones and rocks and trees of peculiar form or extraordinary size as the abode of certain spirits, or as being in some way identified with them. Like the Scandinavians of old, they see their deceased ancestors in the dense clouds that veil the neighboring hill tops. And like the peasant in the Hartz mountains, who has a superstitious dread of the spectre of the Brocken, they quail before a similar apparition frequently seen in the summits of the Cordilleras. They venerate the rainbow, and see in volcanoes the abode of beings of power and destruction.

To them, as to peoples of other parts of the world, the owl is a bird of ill omen. One of them, called from its cry ya acabo, ya acabo—it is finished, it is finished—is, when heard fluttering around the house, regarded as a harbinger of death. Another, the pavita, is considered as the spirit of some departed relative who, like the Irish banshee, would warn his kindred against death or some imminent calamity.

The Llaneros, fearless as they are in most respects, entertain the greatest dread of espantos, ghosts or apparitions. The bola de fuego, or the light of Aguirre, the Tyrant, is one of these ghosts. It is in reality nothing more than a kind of ignis fatuus, produced by the decomposition of organic matter, but to their minds, ignorant of the true nature of such gaseous exhalations, it is the soul of the infamous traitor, Lope de Aguirre, who, in punishment for his atrocities, has been condemned to wander through the broad forests and savannas that were the witnesses of his blood-stained crimes.

In their duendes, if they have not the analogues of pucks and brownies, they certainly possess a shrewd and knavish sprite, somewhat like the English Robin Good-Fellow. Among the Llaneros he is noted for the mischievous pranks he plays in the corrals, when occupied by horses and cattle, and, if one is to credit the stories of those who live on the plains, these particular duendes give the owners of live stock a world of trouble.