The South American Republics, Part 2 of 2

by Thomas Cleland Dawson

When Alonso de Ojeda coasted along the Venezuelan shore in the spring of 1499 he stopped short just west of the Gulf of Maracaibo, near the present boundary between Venezuela and Colombia. The following year Rodrigo Bastida doubled the Goajira peninsula and pursued his voyage to the west, catching sight of the giant snowclad mountains of Santa Marta and of the low land which lies between them and the sea. Coming to the mouth of a great river on the day sacred to Saint Magdalene, he named it the Magdalena, and farther to the south-west found the fine harbour where the city of Cartagena now stands. At the head of the Gulf of Darien he came to another great river, the Atrato, and here his explorations stopped.

More than a year later the great Columbus himself, on his fourth and last voyage, sighted the Central American coast at Cape Gracias á Dios, near the present boundary between Nicaragua and Honduras. Thence he sailed south-east along a pestilential shore for eight hundred miles, finally arriving near the point where Bastida had left off his explorations. It is said that Bartholomew Columbus founded a settlement on the Atlantic shore of the Isthmus, but it was soon destroyed by the neighbouring Indians. The long stretch of coast was unfit for the abode of Europeans, but the Indians had gold in abundance, and the Spaniards were satisfied that the interior was full of mines. Hundreds of fortunate adventurers had accumulated fortunes in the placers of Hayti, and with a view of repeating their successes on the mainland, Alonso de Ojeda solicited and obtained from the Spanish Crown the grant of the territory from Goajira to the Atrato, while Diego de Nicuesa was given the coast from the Atrato to Cape Gracias á Dios. In 1510 one of Ojeda's lieutenants founded a town called Sebastian on the eastern shore of the Gulf of Darien. The Indians soon destroyed it, but Antigua was established across the gulf. This place was in fact on the Isthmus of Panama, and not much more than one hundred miles from the Pacific Ocean, of which the Spaniards then knew nothing. Among the military adventurers who had followed Ojeda to Darien were Nuñez de Balboa and Francisco Pizarro. In 1511 the former went a short distance into the interior looking for gold, and fell in with an Indian chief who told him that only a few leagues south lay a great sea whose shores were inhabited by numerous rich and civilised nations. Two years later he headed an expedition from Antigua which resulted in the epoch-making discovery which has immortalised his name. As the band of Spaniards approached the line of hills from which the natives told them they could see the mysterious ocean, Balboa hastened ahead of his men and was the first to catch a glimpse, but in the headlong rush for the honour of first touching its waters he was beaten by Alonso Martin and that lean and tireless soldier who was afterwards to conquer Peru—Francisco Pizarro.

The Pacific side of the Isthmus proved to be more healthful and habitable than the marshy shores of the Atlantic, and the settlers at Antigua were soon driven by fevers and dysenteries, torrential rains and sweltering heat, to the more healthful region of Panama. Nicuesa likewise had been able to do nothing with his long stretch of Isthmian and Central American coast. Nombre de Dios, not far from the present site of Colon, was the only town which he succeeded in establishing, and that maintained itself only as landing-place on the way to Panama. To this day the Caribbean coast from the Atrato delta as far as Gracias á Dios is practically uninhabited by white men; on the site of Antigua there is left not a trace; the Indians in its neighbourhood are still independent savages; and the north shore of the Isthmus has been a hospital and a grave for successive generations of white men during four hundred years. Only its position at the strategical gate to the great South Sea has induced men to go to its noisome shores.

The Isthmian settlements were, as they remain, separated from the continent of South America by the deep and broad valley of the Atrato, where the rainfall is the greatest known, and whose dense tropical forests are uninhabitable and practically impassable. No land communication exists between Panama and Colombia proper. However, the coast east of the Atrato delta is dryer, and at Santa Marta, beyond the mouth of the Magdalena and at the foot of the great outlying mountain mass of Colombia's north-eastern peninsula, was founded in 1525 the first permanent settlement in Colombia proper. It was nothing more than a kidnapping station, whence expeditions scoured the interior for slaves to be sold to the Haytian gold mines. Meanwhile from Coro, established two years later, on the eastern side of Maracaibo Gulf, murdering and slaughtering expeditions were sent across the gulf, returning to Venezuela after making a circuit among the mountains lying south of Maracaibo Bay. Later these expeditions from Coro penetrated over these mountains, reaching the llanos of the Apuré and finally the plains of Casanare lying east of Bogotá, which now belong to Colombia.

OLDEST FORTRESS IN AMERICA, AT CARTAGENA.

The exploring parties from Santa Marta and Coro, and information picked up along the coast, gave the Spaniards a pretty fair idea of the geography of the interior, and the existence of immense quantities of gold and of civilised nations living on the high plateaux was verified from many sources. The conquest of the fertile and salubrious interior of Colombia was effected from three distinct centres,—Cartagena and Santa Marta on the Caribbean coast, and Quito on the Ecuador table-land. Serious colonisation began with Heredia's foundation of Cartagena in 1533. The new leader set vigorously to work to establish himself firmly on the magnificent harbour and seek for gold. Cortes' and Pizarro's marvellous successes had brought a multitude of adventurers to the new world, all of whom were eager for a share in the spoils of the yet independent Indian kingdoms. Heredia found the rocky hills which rise not far south of Cartagena full of profitable gold washings, and the Indians reported that only a short distance in the interior, where the mountains rose higher, there was a region called Zenufana which produced the precious metal far more abundantly. Their story was true, and Zenufana was none other than the present state of Antioquia, which has produced hundreds of millions of dollars of gold. No time was lost in starting on the search. Heredia's first expedition penetrated to the headwaters of the river Sinu, which flows into the Caribbean not far south-west of Cartagena, and though successful in finding gold he was unable to force his way over the high sierra of Abibe, the most northern bulwark of the great Maritime Cordillera, which barred his way into Antioquia and the valley of the Cauca. In 1535 the town of Tolu was founded between the mouth of the Sinu and Cartagena, and the expeditions skirted the northern end of the Andes until they reached the river Cauca where it debouches into the Magdalena. In 1537 Spanish expeditions succeeded in crossing the formidable Abibe Mountains, and penetrated east into the coveted mining country. Up the Cauca they followed for two hundred miles, passing the rapids which place an almost inexpugnable barrier between the upper and lower river. Not far from the present city of Cartago they found traces of white men, and learned that while they themselves had been pushing south the indomitable companions of Pizarro had extended their explorations and conquests more than a thousand miles north from their landing-place on the Peruvian coast. The men from Cartagena went on to Cali, where the conquerors of Popayan had their headquarters, and there an expedition was fitted out which, under the leadership of Jorge Robledo, returned down the Cauca and conquered Antioquia after much bloody fighting with the Indians. It is said that each of Heredia's men received a larger amount than the conquerors of Mexico and Peru. Certain it is that the founding of Cartagena resulted in putting the Spaniards in possession of the valley of the Cauca and the wonderful gold mines of Antioquia as far south as the 5th degree.

Benalcazar, one of Pizarro's lieutenants, after conquering Quito in 1533, had proceeded north along the Andean plateau between the two Cordilleras. A hundred miles from Quito he entered the high region of Pasto, inhabited by vigorous, semi-civilised Indians much resembling those of Ecuador. Near this point the Andes, heretofore massed in one great chain, split into three parallel ranges. The western and central chains are separated from each other by the valley of the Cauca and near the Caribbean dip down to sea-level. The eastern range bears off a little to the right, with the Magdalena valley between it and the central mountains, and six hundred miles north turns north-east and enters Venezuela just south of Maracaibo Bay. Benalcazar went straight north from Pasto and entered the region where the Cauca gathers its headwaters. This was Popayan, a lower country than Pasto, but still high enough to be healthful, pleasant, and densely populated. In rapid succession the tribes inhabiting the whole upper Cauca valley were conquered, and Benalcazar's officers only stopped when they met their countrymen coming up from Cartagena. The city of Cali was founded in 1536, Popayan in 1538, Pasto and Anserma in 1539, and Cartago in 1540. This beautiful valley is one of the most isolated regions on the globe. To the east and west the high walls of the Quindio, or central, and of the western Cordillera shut it off from the Magdalena valley and from the Pacific, and the rapids near Cartago make communication with the Caribbean almost impossible.

Benalcazar himself had returned to Quito and it was not until 1538 that he was able to undertake the conquest of the upper Magdalena and those lovely plateaux and rich kingdoms which nestled on the broad top of the eastern Cordillera. In the meantime he had been forestalled by an expedition coming from the Caribbean. In 1536 Jimenez de Quesada sallied forth from Santa Marta with eight hundred men and one hundred horses. Avoiding the swampy delta of the Magdalena, he passed through the Chimilas mountains which lie east of it, and reached the solid ground of the foothills that approach the river banks some three hundred miles above its mouth. Along these he made his way through incredible difficulties and hardships, months being consumed in the journey, and his men perishing by scores from fatigue, starvation, and continual fights with the savage natives. When he reached the river Opon, he determined to climb to the plateau, near the site of Velez, where he was told that the mountain top was inhabited by a civilised race. After fighting his way through the unconquerable savages of the Opon valley he found himself in the centre of a series of lovely table-lands, many of them the beds of ancient mountain lakes whose alluvial bottoms were inexhaustibly fertile, where the climate was perfect and all the products of the temperate zone grew luxuriantly. The plateaux, interrupted by valleys and ridges, stretched from Pamplona to beyond Bogotá—a distance of more than two hundred miles. This region was then and remains to this day the populous heart of Colombia, the principal seat of power, wealth, and national civilisation. However, it is so isolated that it has never constituted a nucleus around which the widely separated provinces of Colombia could unite into a well organised nation. To reach Tolima, Bogotá's nearest neighbour in the upper Magdalena valley, it is necessary to descend thousands of feet of steep mountainside, along which the sure-footed mule can hardly climb. To reach Cauca, not only must the Magdalena valley be crossed but the enormously high Quindio range must be climbed, and before getting to the Pacific, still another mountain chain intervenes, while the populous gold regions of Antioquia can only be reached by following down the Magdalena and up the Cauca. Weeks of the most difficult journeying are required to get to the seacoast or any of the other states, and Panama might as well be on the other side of the globe so far as practical communication goes.