By the greatest good fortune, it seemed to us, we finally got aboard a good, comfortable vessel. It was not, however, bound for our objective point—Colon—but for Puerto Limon, in Costa Rica. This, although we did not know it at the time, was a blessing in disguise. Had we gone directly to Colon, we should have been obliged to spend some time in quarantine. By going to Costa Rica, we escaped this and were able, during a week, to combine utile dulci—study with pleasure—under the most favorable and delightful circumstances.
From Puerto Colombia we went directly to Cartagena—a city that, in some respects, possessed a greater interest for us than any we had hitherto visited in South America. We entered this famous harbor, large enough to hold all the navies of the world, early in the morning, just as the sun was beginning to impart a subdued roseate glow to the tiled roofs of the loftier buildings of the once flourishing metropolis of New Granada.
The picture of Cartagena, as it first presented itself to our view, was one of rarest loveliness. As we then saw it, it was not unlike Venice as seen from Il Lido or from the deck of a steamer arriving from Trieste. From another point as we advanced into the placid bay, we discerned in it a resemblance to Alexandria, as viewed from the Mediterranean. As Venice has been called the Queen of the Adriatic, so also, and justly, did the beauteous city of Pedro de Heredia long bear the proud title of Reina de las Indias y Reina de los Mares, Queen of the Indies and Queen of the Seas.
One of the first cities built on Tierra Firme, it was also, for a long period, one of the most important places in the New World. Its fortifications and the massive walls that girdle it have long been celebrated. Even now these are the features that have the greatest attraction for the visitor. Stupendous is the only word that adequately characterizes them. Their immensity impresses one like the pyramids of Ghizeh, and this impression is fully confirmed when one learns their cost and the number of men engaged in their construction. It is said that from thirty to one hundred thousand men were employed on this titanic undertaking, and that it cost no less than fifty-nine million dollars—a fabulous sum for that period. This reminds one of what historians relate regarding the building of the pyramid of Cheops, the greatest and most enduring of human monuments, as the walls of Cartagena are the grandest and most imposing evidence of Spanish power in the western hemisphere. So great was the draft made on the royal exchequer by the construction of these massive walls that Philip II, so the story runs, one day seized a field glass and looking in the direction of Cartagena, murmured with disenchanted irony: “Can one see those walls? They must be very high, for the price paid?”
No wonder that Charles V was always in need of money, and that, to secure it, he was forced to mortgage a large tract of land in Venezuela to the Welsers, the German bankers of Augsburg. No wonder that Philip II, despite the stream of gold and silver that flowed into his coffers from his vast possessions beyond the sea, was, during the second half of his reign, forced to see his royal signature dishonored by bankers who refused him further credit!
Cartagena in Colombia was named after Cartagena in Spain, as the Spanish city, founded by Hasdrubal as an outpost to serve in future Punic campaigns, was named from the celebrated Tyrian emporium that was so long the rival of Rome. And when the sons of the Caribbean Carthage sailed up the Cauca to establish new colonies and extend the sphere of Spanish influence and enterprise, they commemorated their triumph, and exhibited their loyalty to the land of their birth, by founding still another Carthage—the Cartago of the Upper Cauca.
And what an eventful story is that of the Caribbean Cartagena! What changes has she not witnessed! What fortunes of war has she not experienced! What disasters has she not suffered! Like her African prototype, whose very strength caused her rival on the Tiber to decree her downfall, Cartagena seemed to be singled out for attack by all the enemies of Spain for long generations. Her cyclopean walls, that seemed to render her impregnable, did not save her. Time and again she was assaulted by pirates and buccaneers, who levied heavy tributes and carried off booty of inestimable value. Drake, Morgan, Pointis[1] and Vernon attacked and ravaged her in turn, but unlike the Carthage of the hapless Dido, she still survives. And notwithstanding the four long sieges she sustained and the vicissitudes through which she passed during the protracted War of Independence, when she was hailed as La Ciudad Heroica—The heroic city—her walls, after three and a half centuries, are still in a marvelous state of preservation and evoke the admiration of all who behold them.
Everywhere within the city, which during colonial times enjoyed the monopoly of commerce with Spain, are evidences of departed grandeur. Churches, and palaces and monastic institutions, beautiful and grandiose, still retain much of the glamour of days long past. In the charming plazas, shaded by graceful palms and adorned with richest tropical verdure and bloom; along the narrow streets flanked by spacious edifices and ornamented with multi-colored balconies and curiously grated windows, one feels always under the spell of a proud and romantic past, of an age of chivalry of which only the memory remains. The architecture of many of the buildings, erstwhile homes of wealth and culture and refinement, is Moorish in character and carried us back to many happy days spent in fair Andalusia in its once noble capitals, Granada and Seville.
Strolling along the grass-grown pavements of Cartagena, we note in the former flourishing metropolis what Wordsworth observed in Bruge’s town,
“Many a street