The city of Cartago is situated on a smooth plain, between two small streams, seven leagues from the great river of Santa Martha, and near another small stream, the water of which is drunk by the Spaniards.
This river is always crossed by a bridge of those canes which I have already mentioned. The city has very difficult approaches on both sides, and bad roads, for in the winter time the mud is deep. It rains all the year round, and the lightning is great, thunderbolts sometimes falling. This city is so well guarded, that the inhabitants cannot easily be robbed.
The founder of the city was the same captain Don Jorge Robledo who peopled the others which we had passed, in the name of the majesty of the Emperor Don Carlos, our lord, the Adelantado Don Francisco Pizarro being governor of all these provinces, in the year of our Lord 1540. It is called Cartago, because all the settlers and conquerors who accompanied Robledo had set out from Carthagena, and this is the reason that this name was adopted.
Now that I have arrived at this city of Cartago, I will go on to give an account of the great and spacious valley where the city of Cali is seated, and that of Popayan, towards which we journeyed through the cane brakes until we reached a plain traversed by a great river called La Vieja. This river is crossed with much difficulty in the winter time; it is four leagues from the city. After crossing the river in balsas and canoes, the two roads unite, one coming from Cartago, and the other from Anzerma. From Anzerma to Cali the distance is fifty leagues, and from Cartago to Cali a little more than forty-five leagues.
CHAPTER XXVI.
Which touches upon the provinces in this great and beautiful valley, up to the city of Cali.
FROM the city of Popayan this valley begins to spread out like a level plain between the chains of mountains, and is twelve leagues broad, more or less. In some parts it is narrower, and in others broader, and the river which flows through it becomes so narrow that neither boat, nor balsa, nor anything else can pass, by reason of the fury of the stream, and of the stones which come down in it. Boats are upset and go to the bottom, and thus many Spaniards and Indians have been drowned and much merchandise lost, for the rapidity of the stream is such that they have no time to get on land.
All this valley, from the city of Cali to these rapids, was formerly very populous, and covered with very large and beautiful villages, the houses being close together and of great size. These villages of Indians have wasted away and been destroyed by time and war; for, when the Captain Don Sebastian de Belalcazar, who was the first captain to discover and conquer this valley, made his entry, the Indians were bent on war, and fought with the Spaniards many times to defend their land, and escape from slavery. Owing to these wars, and to the famine which arose on account of the seeds not having been sown, nearly all the Indians died. There was another reason which led to their rapid extermination. The Captain Belalcazar founded, in the midst of the Indian villages in this plain, the city of Cali, which he afterwards rebuilt on its present site. The natives were so determined not to hold any friendship with the Spaniards (believing their yoke to be heavy) that they would neither sow nor cultivate the land; and from this cause there was such scarcity that the greater part of the inhabitants died. When the Spaniards abandoned the first site, the hill tribes came down in great numbers, and, falling upon the unfortunates who were sick and dying of hunger, soon killed and ate all those who survived. These are the reasons why the people of this valley are so reduced that scarcely any are left. On one side of the river, towards the east, is the Cordillera of the Andes, and on the other side there is a larger and more beautiful valley called Neyva, through which flows the other branch of the great river of Santa Martha.[239]
In the skirts of the mountains there are many villages of Indians of different nations and customs, who are very barbarous, and who all eat human flesh, which they hold to be very delicious. On the highest parts of the mountains there are some small valleys which form the province of Buga. The natives of these valleys are brave warriors; and they watched the Spaniards who came to their country, and killed Cristoval de Ayala, without any fear.
When he, of whom I have spoken, was killed, his goods were sold in the market at excessive prices. A sow was sold for 1600 pesos, together with a small pig. Sucking pigs went for 500 pesos, and a Peruvian sheep (llama) for 280 pesos. I saw these sums paid to one Andres Gomez, now a citizen of Cartago, by Pedro Romero of Anzerma. The 1600 pesos for the sow and the pig were paid by the Adelantado Don Sebastian de Belalcazar, out of the goods of the Marshal Don Jorge Robledo. I even saw that very sow eaten at a banquet which was given on the day we arrived at the city of Cali with Vadillo. Juan Pacheco, a conqueror who is now in Spain, bought a pig for 220 pesos, and knives were sold for 15 pesos. I heard Jeronimo Luis Texelo say that, when he went on the expedition with the Captain Miguel Muñoz, which is known as that of La Vieja, he bought a shoemaker’s knife for 30 pesos, and shoes went for 8 pesos of gold. A sheet of paper was sold in Cali for 30 pesos. I might relate other facts of this kind to the glory of the Spaniards, as showing how cheap they held money, for if they required anything they thought nothing of it. They bought pigs in the sow’s belly, before they were born, for 100 pesos and more.