Up the Orinoco and down the Magdalena

by J. A. Zahm

According to Padre Simon, Quesada and his companions were frequently, during their journey down the river, attacked by Indians, “who came out to salute them and speed their way with a shower of poisoned arrows.” “With the help of God,” he continues, “joined to eternal vigilance, their own valor and a liberal supply of powder and firearms with which the soldiers of Belalcazar were provided, they were able finally to arrive at Cartagena, and give the first information regarding the great campaign in which Quesada and his followers had achieved such signal success.”[3]

The Magdalena, like many other water courses in South America, was at first known as the Rio Grande—the great river. It was subsequently given the name it now bears in honor of St. Mary Magdalene.[4] At times it is comparatively narrow and deep. Then navigation is easy and without danger. At other times,

“Shallow, disreputable, vast

It spreads across the western plains.”

Then progress is difficult, and the boat may run into a sand bar at any moment. And if the river should then be falling, it may be impossible to get the craft free until the water rises. Only a short time before our trip one of the steamers had been held in a sand bank for forty days. As it was not near any place where provisions could be obtained, the passengers suffered greatly from hunger, not to speak of the suspense and enforced detention on an uncomfortable boat.

Owing to the shallowness of the river, the boat was, during the first part of the voyage, always tied up for the night at the first tree or stump that might be found on the bank at sunset. The following morning we were supposed to resume our journey at daybreak, but, as the firemen did not begin to get up steam before that time, it was usually an hour after sunrise before we were under way. We stopped at every village and warehouse along the river, sometimes to deliver the mail, often consisting of only a single letter or package, or to take on a passenger. Two or three times a day, also, we halted to take on wood to supply the furnace with fuel, for here, as on the Meta, coal is not used. Fortunately, we were never obliged, as on the Meta, to delay until the wood could be cut. Large wood piles are found every few miles all along the river. They usually belong to a negro, who has a hut or shed near by, together with a small garden and a few domestic animals which supply him and his family with food in their sequestered home.

We stopped at several large warehouses, many of them constructed of corrugated iron from the United States. This seems strange in a land where timber is so abundant. But there are no sawmills in the Magdalena valley. South of Barranquilla—where but little lumber is produced—imported lumber would be more expensive and less durable than iron. At these places the chief articles of merchandise are coffee, cacao, hides and vegetable ivory. This last product, also called ivory nuts, is the fruit of a species of palm known as Phytelephas macrocarpa,[5] and constitutes, in this part of Colombia, an important article of commerce. For many things it is a good substitute for elephant ivory, which it rivals in whiteness, beauty and solidity, and collecting it for shipment gives occupation to quite a number of the poor inhabitants of the Magdalena valley.

We usually went ashore at the different landing places to see the people and familiarize ourselves with their mode of life. It was generally as simple and primitive as possible—almost as primitive, in some instances, as we conceive it to have been in the Quaternary period or in the days of the Troglodytes. Often their dwellings were little more than palm-thatched sheds—barely sufficient to shield their occupants from sun and rain. A tulpa, consisting of three stones, served them in lieu of a stove, and on this they broiled the fish caught in the river, or prepared their arepas—corn cakes—or their sancocho, a kind of ragout, as popular in some parts of Colombia as it is in Venezuela.

We were surprised to see in the houses and shops along the Magdalena valley—what we had often observed in various parts of Colombia and Venezuela—the large number of illustrated circulars of Spanish, English and French proprietary medicines. The insides of certain houses were sometimes quite plastered over with them. But what was more surprising was the number of lithographs we saw of the German Emperor. Sometimes he was represented alone, at others he was depicted as surrounded by the members of his family. In several places we saw pictures not only of the emperor and his family, but also those of his father and grandfather and Bismarck. And the remarkable thing about it was that, in some cases, there were no Germans living within hundreds of miles of where we came across these pictures. Had some enthusiastic Teuton tried to start a propaganda in favor of the Vaterland by distributing broadcast these engravings of the imperial family? I know not, but, judging solely from the number of their pictures we came across in Venezuela and Colombia, one would be led to suppose that the Hohenzollern rulers are the most popular of potentates, at least in this part of South America.

While stopping to take on some rubber at a certain small village, we had a remarkable illustration of the rapidity with which the bed of the river is sometimes changed, even when the water is comparatively low. We had scarcely reached the landing place when there was a terrific crash, occasioned by the falling in of a large section of the bank on which the village was built. Soon afterwards another section gave way, and then a third and a fourth. The whole bank seemed to be undermined by the river, and, although the warehouse was fully fifty feet away from the water when we arrived, so much of the bank had been carried away in less than half an hour, that not only the contents of the building, but also the building itself had to be hurriedly removed in order that it and the merchandise stored within might not be borne away by the resistless current. As the structure was of light bamboo, and put together with a view to such an emergency, the transfer was not a difficult task. When we started to continue our course, it looked as if the eroding action of the river would necessitate the changing of the site of the entire village before nightfall.