We paid a visit to a large sugar estate called La Manuelita, near the town of Palmira. La Manuelita is a little world of its own; it comprises fifteen hundred acres of the most fertile and attractive part of the valley. The ranch-house, occupying a site in the centre, is a rambling two-story building of generous proportions and attractive appearance. The gardens, surrounding it with a riot of color, give it a quaint, old-fashioned charm; there has been no studied effect, no precision in the arrangement of plants or flowers; oleanders, roses, hibiscus, geraniums, and hollyhocks grow in matted profusion. Clumps of magnolias, chinaberries and oranges conceal the high stone fence. Immediately without the wall surrounding the house is the peon village consisting of some fifty-odd houses of uniform size and appearance, and the sugar-factory. The peons are of Spanish, Indian, and negro blood, or of a mixture of any two or all three, and require constant supervision to secure the best results.
All the land is under cultivation, mostly in cane, for the production of which it is well suited. The soil is a rich alluvial loam. Some of the cane-fields at La Manuelita had not been replanted in ninety years; others on the estate of William Barney, former United States consul in Cali, had been producing one hundred and twenty years, and were still yielding eighty tons or more of cane to the acre. It was said, and all indications substantiate the report, that the entire region was at one time covered by a great lake! This accounts for the continued productiveness of the soil.
Cane grows to a height of fifteen feet, there being a dozen or more stalks to each hill. It requires eight to ten months to mature. The fields are divided into sections and cut at different intervals so as to provide a succession of ripe cane for the mill, and furnish steady employment for the several hundred peons.
The factory is modern in nearly every respect; its capacity is from five to eight tons of sugar daily, of good quality. It required a number of years to bring the heavy machinery over the mountains from Buenaventura. The more cumbersome pieces were slowly drawn up the steep slopes with the aid of block and tackle and oxen; the apparatus was so arranged that the animals could walk down-hill as they pulled, adding greatly to their efficiency. It is necessary to carry a complete stock of duplicate machinery to use in case of an accident; otherwise the factory might have to shut down a year or two while some badly needed article was being secured from abroad.
Nearly all machinery is ordered from London, as it can be had more quickly and better packed than from the United States. I heard this same statement in various parts of South America. Although manufacturers were beginning to realize that in order to do business successfully in South America, they must first make a study of general conditions, they have not done so in the past, with the natural result that the bulk of Latin-American commerce has been done with the Old World. It is frequently necessary to ship merchandise on mule-back, or in small river-craft a distance of many days after its arrival at a port and before it reaches its destination; it is exposed to varying weather conditions—great heat and heavy rains; the treatment it receives is of necessity very rough. All this means that packing must have been done with great care and in a special manner. The fact that we have not adopted the metric system, and that there have been practically no American banks to discount bills, have been further drawbacks to the establishment of extensive trade relations between the two peoples.
Perhaps the most attractive thing of all about the Cauca Valley is its climate. A record of the temperature kept at La Manuelita during a period of ten years shows the greatest uniformity. The difference in the average weekly temperature is only 6° the year around.
A belt of tall bamboo entirely surrounds the hacienda; the giant stalks of steel-like toughness are armed with long, murderous thorns and form an interlocking mass that is absolutely impenetrable to man. Contrary to our expectations, birds were not plentiful in this land of tangled verdure. A few nighthawks dozed on the ground in the deep shade, and an occasional yellow-headed caracara (Milvago chimachima) that, perched on the tip of a swaying stalk, gave vent to its feelings in a succession of shrill, long-drawn screams.
Farther away, where clumps of woods grew, birds were more plentiful. There were many red-fronted parrakeets nesting in holes in dead stubs. Red-headed woodpeckers (Chrysoptilus p. striatigularis) in numbers hammered on hollow trunks; the strokes are so rapid that the sound resembles the roll of a snare-drum. Pigmy woodpeckers (Picumnus) no larger than a good-sized humming-bird, worked industriously on the smaller branches. They are obscurely marked mites of feathered energy, of a dark olive color with a few red dots on top of the blackish head. When the nesting season arrives a tiny cavity is excavated in some partially decayed limb in which two round, white eggs are deposited. These birds are nearly always found in pairs, and when the young leave the nest they accompany the parents, forming small family parties that forage for minute insects among the crevices of rough bark and in decayed wood.
Occasionally it seemed as if we were not so far from our northern home after all; for along the edges of the numerous marshes ran an old acquaintance—the spotted sandpiper. In the reeds yellow-headed blackbirds chirped and fluttered; but they are slightly smaller than the North American birds and have even been placed in a different genus (Agelaius). By walking quietly it was also possible to surprise a deer that had been tempted far from cover by the prospects of a luscious breakfast in some little plantation. These animals are so greatly persecuted that they make off at the first sign of danger.