| By Author | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Title | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Language |
|
Download this book: [ ASCII | HTML | PDF ] Look for this book on Amazon Tweet |
Title: Through South America
Author: Dyke, Harry Weston Van
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.
*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Through South America" ***
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CROWELL’S TRAVEL BOOKS
=RAMBLES IN SPAIN.= By JOHN D. FITZGERALD. Map and 135
illustrations. 8vo, $3.00 net. (Postage, 30 cents.)
=SWITZERLAND.= Its Scenery, History, and Literary
Associations. By OSCAR KUHNS. Map and 32 illustrations.
8vo, $2.00 net. (Postage, 20 cents.)
=A MEXICAN JOURNEY.= By E. H. BLICHFELDT. Map and 32
illustrations, 8vo, $2.00 net. (Postage, 20 cents.)
=THROUGH SOUTH AMERICA.= By H. W. VAN DYKE. Introduction by
Hon. John Barrett. Map and 32 illustrations. 8vo, $2.00
net. (Postage, 20 cents.)
=CHOSEN DAYS IN SCOTLAND.= By JOSEPHINE HELENA SHORT. Map
and 32 illustrations. 8vo, $2.00 net. (Postage, 20
cents.)
=FROM GRETNA GREEN TO LAND’S END.= By KATHARINE LEE BATES.
32 illustrations. 8vo, $2.00 net. (Postage, 20 cents.)
=GEORGE ELIOT.= Scenes and People in her Novels. By CHARLES
S. OLCOTT. 24 illustrations. 8vo, $2.00 net. (Postage,
20 cents.)
=OBERAMMERGAU.= By JOSEPHINE HELENA SHORT. 32 illustrations.
12mo, $1.00 net. (Postage, 10 cents.)
THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY
[Illustration: _See page 125._
“THE SOLDIER’S LEAP”—GORGE IN THE ANDES, ACROSS WHICH ONE
OF O’HIGGINS’S CAVALRY LEAPED HIS HORSE TO ESCAPE
THE ROYALISTS.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THROUGH
SOUTH AMERICA
BY
HARRY WESTON VAN DYKE
WITH INTRODUCTION BY
JOHN BARRETT
DIRECTOR-GENERAL OF THE PAN AMERICAN UNION
NEW YORK
THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
COPYRIGHT, 1912,
BY THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY.
_Published October, 1912._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TO
MY FRIEND
JOHN BARRETT
IN TOKEN OF MY ESTEEM AND MY APPRECIATION OF
HIS MANY KINDNESSES
------------------------------------------------------------------------
INTRODUCTION
BY HON. JOHN BARRETT, DIRECTOR-GENERAL OF THE PAN AMERICAN UNION AND
FORMERLY UNITED STATES MINISTER TO ARGENTINA, PANAMA, AND
COLOMBIA
I have real pleasure in complying with the suggestion that I should
write an introduction to this interesting and instructive work by Mr.
Harry Weston Van Dyke. As it was through me that he was led to make his
studies and investigations which resulted in the preparing of this book,
I naturally find much gratification in the success with which he has
handled the responsibility. No one can read his travel story of South
America without being impressed with the importance of these countries,
the enjoyment and value of visiting them, and the advantage of the
development of closer relations between all of them and the United
States.
As the executive officer of the Pan American Union, an international
organization maintained in Washington by all the American republics,
twenty-one in number, including the United States, for the advancement
of commerce, friendship, and peace among them all, it is my lot to
realize, possibly better than any one else, the remarkable growth of
interest which is being manifested now, not only throughout the United
States but in all parts of the world, in the countries of the southern
portions of the American continent commonly classed as Latin America.
When the Pan American Union was reorganized about five years ago, and it
began an active propaganda for making the twenty Latin American
republics better known in the United States, and correspondingly, the
United States better known among them, there was little cause for
encouragement. The average newspaper editor, the man in public life, the
manufacturer, the exporter, the importer, the traveler, and the student
seemed to be largely absorbed in studying and watching the development
of our commercial relations with Europe and the Orient, and not with
Latin America. The persistent and continued effort, however, of the Pan
American Union in educating the world to the importance of the Latin
American countries and to an appreciation of the commercial
opportunities and moral responsibilities of the United States in its
relations with them, has now resulted in a complete change of conditions
which is indeed gratifying. To-day the manufacturers and merchants in
all parts of the world, the editors of American and European and even
Asiatic newspapers, special writers on foreign subjects, lecturers,
members of Congress, professors and students in universities and
colleges, librarians, professional and amateur travelers are
corresponding with the Pan American Union or visiting its headquarters
in order to gain accurate information about the Latin American
republics.
As an illustration of this growth of interest a few comparisons can be
made. Five years ago the total number of printed reports, pamphlets, and
other publications distributed by the Pan American Union was
approximately one hundred thousand. This year, the total will
approximate nearly one million. None of these have been sent broadcast
in a careless way. Five years ago there was little or no demand for the
“Monthly Bulletin” of the Pan American Union; now the demand for it is
greater than can be supplied. Then it was an uninteresting public
document; to-day it is an attractive and instructive illustrated
magazine, descriptive of the progress and development of the American
nations. Five years ago the Pan American Union was housed in a small
building, used formerly as a private dwelling, on the corner of
Lafayette Square and Pennsylvania Avenue; to-day it occupies a building
which a great French architect has described as combining beauty and
utility better than any other public building of its cost in the world.
The library of the Pan American Union, which is a practical collection
of books useful to all persons who wish to study those countries, has
been increased from twelve thousand to twenty-three thousand volumes,
while its collection of photographs has grown from one thousand to
eleven thousand.
During this same period the foreign commerce of Latin America has grown
from one billion seven hundred million dollars ($1,700,000,000) to two
billion three hundred million dollars ($2,300,000,000). Of this, the
share of the United States has increased from less than five hundred
million dollars ($500,000,000) to nearly seven hundred million dollars
($700,000,000).
The total annual contributions of all the American republics, including
the United States, for the maintenance of the Pan American Union in 1906
was $54,000; now the total of their quotas for support approximates
$125,000.
All these facts I mention, not to call attention to the Pan American
Union especially, but to emphasize with actual truth the evidences of
the growth of interest throughout the world in the countries which are
described in part by Mr. Van Dyke in this practical volume. If its
reading stimulates further interest in them, the Pan American Union will
be only too glad to furnish any information in its power.
While this book will perhaps be most appreciated by persons who are
contemplating a visit to Latin America, it should be read by all those
who wish to know more of what the American nations aside from the United
States are doing. What is their interesting history, what are their
resources, what are the characteristics of their peoples, what is the
progress being made by them in national and municipal government, in
education, and in solving social and economic problems? Most of the
people of the United States and even of Europe have been so absorbed in
their own histories, development, and general progress that they have
given little attention to the twenty republics of southern America.
After reading Mr. Van Dyke’s story they cannot fail to appreciate that
there are other important nations and peoples in the world than those of
northern America, Europe, and Asia.
Possibly a few general facts may be mentioned here which will enable the
reader better to appreciate what follows in the chapters of this book.
It must be remembered that the twenty republics lying south of the
United States in the Western Hemisphere occupy an area of nine million
square miles. This is three times greater than the connected area of the
United States. Their total population now exceeds seventy millions. This
is seven-ninths of the total population of the United States. Their
foreign trade—and commerce is often called the life blood of nations—now
exceeds two billion three hundred million dollars ($2,300,000,000) a
year, which in turn represents an increase of nearly one billion dollars
($1,000,000,000) during the last ten years. Nearly all of these
countries secured their independence under the leadership of generals
and patriots who were inspired by the example of George Washington.
Nearly all of them have written their constitutions with the
constitution of the United States as their example. All of them to-day
are watching the United States in its efforts to solve its endless
variety of social and economic problems, and they will profit by the
example which the United States sets them.
They are not to be classed as lands of revolution, because two-thirds of
all Latin America has known practically no revolution during the last
fifteen or twenty years. The revolutions which occurred should possibly
be called evolutions, and are efforts of their peoples, even though
sometimes crude, to improve their permanent conditions of prosperity and
progress. They are not by any means solely “tropical lands,” as is often
supposed or as may be judged from a glance at the map. The great
southern section of South America, including southern Brazil, Uruguay,
Argentina, Chile, and a large section of Bolivia, are in the South
Temperate Zone, where they have climatic conditions corresponding to
those of the United States. The countries, moreover, which are actually
under or near the equator have a mingling of high lands with low lands
which means much for their future development. There are high plateaux
ranging from three thousand to twelve thousand feet above the sea,
covering oftentimes individual areas as large as that of Connecticut or
Massachusetts, where the climate the year round is like that of New
England in June or September and where the white man can live in
corresponding climatic comfort.
Although, because of the slight seasonal changes, the average
temperature of the low-lying lands of the tropical sections is somewhat
trying to the resident of northern bringing up, yet under the influence
of modern methods of sanitation and practical methods of living, they
are being transformed into healthful sections of growing population,
commerce, and influence. The example which the United States has set at
Panama, and the demonstration which this government is giving there of
the possibility of white men thriving in the tropics, is having its
influence throughout the tropical belt of our sister republics and great
changes are resulting.
The approaching completion and opening of the Panama Canal gives a
special interest to this work of Mr. Van Dyke’s. Only the person who has
thoroughly studied what the Panama Canal means, its effect not only upon
the commerce of the world but upon the commerce and influence of the
United States, and what it will do for the Latin American countries, as
well as for the United States, can appreciate fully how important to the
future of the relations of North and South America is the completion of
this mighty waterway. Its opening should be followed not only by a great
development of the export trade of the United States to those countries
but of their export trade to this country. It should cause a remarkable
increase in the travel between North and South America. There is no
better influence for commerce and friendship than that of mutual
acquaintance of peoples of different countries. When the Canal is
completed there should be a great increase in the number of North
Americans going to South America and of South Americans coming to the
North.
When the shipping of the world goes through the Canal, it will have
direct access to a remarkable coast line which heretofore has been so
isolated that it could only be reached from the eastern part of the
United States and the western part of Europe by the long journey around
South America. The coast line which is made immediately accessible by
the Canal reaches for eight thousand miles from the California-Mexican
line south to Cape Horn, three thousand miles from Panama northwest to
San Diego in California and five thousand miles south from Panama to
Punta Arenas. This coast, without the Canal and in its isolated
position, conducts now an average foreign commerce valued at four
hundred million dollars ($400,000,000). With the opening of the Canal
this should be doubled or trebled in the next ten years. It is a safe
prediction that the Panama Canal will have the same influence upon the
western shore, comprising the following countries: Mexico, Salvador,
Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and
Chile, which the construction of the transcontinental railways had upon
the Pacific coast of the United States. The fact that their population
and their commercial and industrial development to-day is somewhat
limited is no argument against their possibilities in the future. There
was a time when the best experts and judges in the public and official
life of the United States declared that the Pacific coast of the United
States was not only of little value but never would be of great
consequence. There were, however, some wise men like Seward who
recognized the mighty potentialities of our Pacific coasts and of the
Pacific seas. There is every reason to believe that western or Pacific
Latin America, in view of its varieties of resources and climate, will,
under the influence of the Panama Canal, experience a development and
progress that will astonish the world.
In conclusion, a word can be added of personal appreciation of our
sister republics which I believe will be shared by all those who read
this book and later visit Latin America and study carefully its
possibilities and potentialities. It was my privilege, before being
elected by the vote of all these countries to the position of
Director-General of the Pan American Union five years ago, to have
served as Minister of the United States in such representative countries
of South America as Argentina, Panama, and Colombia. My association with
the officials and the rank and file of the peoples of these countries,
and my travels both in a public and private capacity throughout the
Latin American countries, have developed in me a regard for them that
approaches real affection. The more I have learned and seen of them, the
more I have admired them. They have their faults and weaknesses, as have
the government and the people of the United States; but they have a
great many virtues and numerous favorable features which are too often
overlooked by the critics who have not studied Latin America from a
sympathetic standpoint.
If we of the United States will remember that they are our sister
republics, that they gained their independence under our example, that
they have written their constitutions upon that of the United States,
and that they will learn to love or hate us according as our attitude is
that of sympathy and love or of selfishness and material concern, we
shall in turn gain their confidence and sympathy and they will join with
us in that spirit of Pan American unity and of solidarity which will
make the Western Hemisphere the world’s leader in civilization, in
business, and in enduring friendship among all nations.
JOHN BARRETT.
WASHINGTON, _June 1, 1912_.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. HISTORICAL SKETCH 1
II. BRAZIL 133
III. ARGENTINA 190
IV. URUGUAY 228
V. PARAGUAY 239
VI. BOLIVIA 257
VII. CHILE 275
VIII. PERU 314
IX. ECUADOR 352
X. COLOMBIA 375
XI. VENEZUELA 400
XII. THE GUIANAS 424
BIBLIOGRAPHY 429
INDEX 433
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ILLUSTRATIONS
“The Soldier’s Leap” _Frontispiece_
OPPOSITE PAGE
Map of South America 1
Francisco Pizarro 38
Inca Burial Tower near Lake Titicaca 56
Cloisters of Dominican Monastery, Cuzco 56
Cathedral at Lima, built by Pizarro 76
Pizarro’s Palace, Lima—Now the Government Building 90
San Martín’s Passage of the Andes 126
Statue of Bolívar, in Lima 132
The City of Bahia 156
Botafogo Bay, Rio Harbor _between_ 162 _and_ 163
Bay and City of Rio de Janeiro 166
Avenue of Royal Palms, Rio Botanical Gardens 170
Avenida Central, Rio de Janeiro 170
Coffee Plantation, Brazil 184
Colón Theater, Buenos Aires 204
Federal Capitol, Buenos Aires 204
Jockey Club’s Grand Stand at Race Track 210
Prize Winners from “the Camp” 216
The Uspallata Pass 222
Iguazú Falls 226
Solis Theater, Montevideo 232
Cagancha Plaza, Montevideo 232
Government Palace, Asunción 242
View of Asunción and River Paraguay 242
Shrine of Our Lady of Capacabana 266
Town and Mountain of Potosí, Bolivia 266
Church of the Conservidas, La Paz 272
Old Spanish Residence, La Paz 272
Punta Arenas 312
Plaza Mayor, Lima 326
Scene on the Oroya Railway 330
Church of La Merced, Lima 350
Street Scene in Guayaquil 362
Condor of the Andes 362
Room in Old Palace at Quito 374
Overlooking Bogotá 386
A _Posada_ or Country Inn 392
Battlemented Wall, Cartagena 392
View of Maracaibo 404
A Coffee Plantation, Venezuela 414
[Illustration: SOUTH AMERICA]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_Through South America_
I
HISTORICAL SKETCH
I
A little more than four hundred years ago, when Europe was emerging from
the darkness of the Middle Ages into the era of printed books, when the
Field of the Cloth of Gold had impressed the official stamp of culture
on her civilization, when gunpowder was changing the aspect of war—in an
age that produced such intellects as those of Machiavelli, Copernicus,
Lorenzo the Magnificent, Cardinal Wolsey, and John Werner—wise men were
still groping blindly for knowledge about the world in which they lived
that is regarded as elementary by the school children of our day. What
was its shape? What lay beyond the western horizon of the Atlantic, the
vast and stormy _Mare Tenebrosum_ of fabled terror to mariners? What was
south of the African countries bordering the Mediterranean? How far east
did Asia extend? No one knew.
In the year 150 A.D., the learned Alexandrian Claudius Ptolemy had made
a map of Europe and of those parts of Asia and Africa which were then
known, or supposed to exist; and on that map, for the first time in
history, the world was represented as a sphere—_though a stationary
one_. Therefore, speculated those who thought about it at all, assuming
Ptolemy’s theory to be correct, how could a mariner, even were he
successful in navigating his vessel down the awful declivity on one side
of the globe, hope to make it climb up again on the other? How could he
cross the equator, which Aristotle and Pliny had declared was an
uninhabitable zone, so torrid that the earth around was burnt up as with
fire and only marine salamanders, if such monsters existed, could live
in the super-heated waters? And, even if the equator were passable, how
could the frightful abysses into which the ocean was supposed to
discharge itself at the pole be escaped?
Some time in the sixth century a monk named Cosmas had attempted to
answer these questions by means of a theory evolved from a study of the
Bible and more consistent with its descriptions and metaphors. In the
map he made, the world was represented as a level rectangle, its sides
composed of blue walls, supporting a dome that separated the mortal
domain from the Paradise where dwelt the Creator and his angels; and,
fanciful as was this cosmos of Cosmas’ devising, his map was regarded as
the standard of geographical knowledge down to the time of Columbus.
Even after his time the famous astronomer Galileo was imprisoned as a
heretic partly for reasserting the theory of Ptolemy. No one but a few
scientists even imagined that the east could be reached by sailing west;
no one, not even they, yet knew that Africa could be circumnavigated and
the treasures of gorgeous Far Cathay (as China was then called) brought
to Europe’s doors by water. _Yet it was to accomplish that very object
that the series of voyages was begun that led eventually to the
discovery of America._
Venice and Genoa, grown rich and powerful through trade with India and
the nearer countries of the Orient, had for a space enjoyed a prosperity
and revival of culture that were felt throughout Christendom. Then had
come the conquest of Spain and domination of the Mediterranean by the
Moors, and, afterward, the wars of the Crusades, which had checked the
Saracen advance but interrupted all other commerce with the infidels.
Meanwhile, as though to compensate for this loss, the great Mongolian
conqueror Genghis Khan had fulfilled his remarkable destiny and, instead
of adopting measures to prevent it, invited western intercourse with the
countries he had brought under his sway, and China, about which almost
nothing was then generally known, was visited overland by traders,
adventurers, and missionaries. Marco Polo, a Venetian, after spending
more than twenty years in the far east, part of the time in the service
of the Great Khan Kubilay, had returned by way of India and Persia,
laden with jewels of enormous value, and had written a book descriptive
of the countries he had seen and the wealth and customs of the people.
In the fourteenth century, when the Mongolian dynasty was overthrown,
the Asiatics had again turned hostile and the land route was closed.
But during this open season it had become known that Cathay was not the
end of the world, as had been supposed—that there was an ocean beyond
and the wonderful Island of Cipango (Japan) and other islands rich in
spices and costly products; and Europe began to wonder, since the
Tartars barred the route by land, whether these desirable places might
not be accessible by water. “Between wondering and the attempt,” says
Hawthorne, “there was a considerable interval, for the idea was too
novel to be digested all at once. But it was an age of unbridled license
of imagination and of desperate courage. The mere possibility of
encountering perils never until then conceived of was allurement enough,
as, even to-day, our young adventurers go forth to die on the ice fields
of the north and south poles, or in the mysterious heart of savage
Africa, or on the ghastly plateaux of Tibet. In addition, there were the
fabulous rewards that success seemed to promise.”
At first, though, if the plan of sailing west was even thought of, it
would seem to have been regarded as less feasible than that of rounding
Africa. Prince Henry, a son of King John I of Portugal—for it was the
Portuguese, not the Spanish, who were the pioneers in this series of
discoveries—determined to devote his life to the work. Retiring from the
splendors of the Lisbon court, he built an astronomical observatory on
the promontory of Sagres (in southern Portugal), extended its
hospitalities to all the wise men of the age and sent out expedition
after expedition to the south. “Until then,” says Dawson, “nautical
knowledge was very meager. The compass served only to indicate
direction, not distance or position, and did not suffice for the
systematic navigation of the open Atlantic. The Portuguese first made
that possible by using astronomical observations and inventing the
quadrant and astrolabe.”
This knowledge, once acquired, was promptly applied. Madeira was
discovered in 1418, the Canaries in 1427, the Azores in 1432. To the
west the Portuguese ventured no farther, but, continuing south, they
reached Cape Blanco in 1441, Senegambia and Cape Verde in 1445, the Cape
Verde Islands in 1460, and the Gulf of Guinea in 1469. In 1471 they were
the first Europeans to cross the equator. The idea was then conceived
that they had only to keep on and they could round the southern
extremity of the continent and reach Abyssinia and India by sea—a hope
that was realized in 1487 when Bartholomew Dias arrived at last at the
Cape of Good Hope. A few miles beyond, however, he was compelled by the
condition of his crew to return and it remained for his compatriot Vasco
da Gama some years later to double the cape and complete the voyage up
the eastern coast and across the Indian Ocean to Hindustan.
II
The significance of these early voyages of the Portuguese lies in the
fact that thereby it was demonstrated that a shorter route was
needed—that with the very small and badly equipped vessels of the period
the trip around the Cape of Good Hope, at least for commercial purposes,
was impracticable; also in the fact that with Dias had sailed the
Genoese navigator Bartholomew Columbus, a brother of the discoverer of
America.
Years before that first great achievement, Christopher Columbus—who had
studied at the University of Pavia and had himself taken part in one or
more of Prince Henry’s African expeditions, and even ventured to the
northwest, probably as far as Iceland—had been converted to the theory
that the world was round and that the oceans west of Europe and east of
Cathay were the same. As a consequence, he had concluded, the East
Indies (as India, China, Japan, and the other countries and islands east
of the Indian Ocean were indiscriminately called) _could be reached from
Europe by sailing west_. Eighteen years before he was finally enabled to
put this theory to the test, he had written Toscanelli, one of the
foremost astronomers of the time, asking his opinion as to this
possibility. Toscanelli sent him a copy of a letter he had written
shortly before to King Alfonso of Portugal on the same subject, in which
he said:
“I have formerly spoken of a shorter route to the places of
spices than you are pursuing by Guinea. Although I am well aware
that this can be proved by the spherical shape of the earth, in
order to make the point clearer I have decided to exhibit that
route by means of a sailing chart, made by my own hands, whereon
are laid down your coasts and the islands from which you must
begin to shape your course steadily westward, the places at
which you are bound to arrive and how far from the pole or
equator you ought to keep away.” (Neither in the chart nor in
the description was there indication of anything whatever
resembling the continents of North and South America.) “From the
city of Lisbon as far as the very great and splendid city of
Quinsay” (Pekin), he continued, “are twenty-six spaces, each of
250 miles. This space is about a third of the whole sphere. But
from the Island of Antilia, which you know, to the very splendid
Island of Cipango” (Japan) “there are ten spaces. _So, through
the unknown parts of the route, the stretches of sea are not
great._”
In his letter to Columbus he congratulates him on having undertaken an
enterprise—
“Fraught with honor, as it must be, and inestimable gain and
most lofty fame among all Christian peoples. It will be a voyage
to powerful kingdoms” (he prophetically added, though he had
never even dreamed of the empires of the Aztecs and the Incas)
“and to cities and provinces most wealthy and noble. It will
also be advantageous to those kings and princes who are eager to
have dealings and make alliances with the Christians of other
countries. For these and many other reasons, I do not wonder
that you, who are of great courage, and the whole Portuguese
nation, which has always had men distinguished in such
enterprises, are now inflamed with a desire to make the voyage.”
Thus encouraged, Columbus began his efforts to secure patronage and
money for the expedition. He tried in his birthplace, Genoa, and in
Portugal and Spain, even in England, where he was accompanied by his
brother Bartholomew after the latter’s return from the voyage to the
Cape of Good Hope, and suffered many refusals. Toscanelli had been dead
eight years before he at last succeeded; and then, had he known that the
distance from Lisbon to the coast of Asia was in fact some 13,000 miles,
or twice that which the astronomer had estimated, and that, even so, the
route straight across was barred by the Isthmus of Panama—had he known
that Cathay did not, as his mentor believed, extend some thousands of
miles farther east than it does, even such a man as Columbus might have
abandoned the project as chimerical when the cockleshells then available
for ocean travel were taken into consideration. Nor, if she too had not
been misled by the same “valuable pieces of ignorance,” is it likely
that his plea would have prevailed on the practical Isabella of Castile,
however elated and invincible she may have felt over the taking of the
last of the Saracen strongholds at Granada and the expulsion of the
Moors from Spain, for in that she was engaged when Columbus finally
succeeded in securing her aid.
Fortunately, however, whatever might have happened if Toscanelli had not
held the voyage to be practicable, Columbus was not only a man of
indomitable spirit but possessed of a presence that inspired in others
the confidence he felt in himself. A man of striking personality, he is
said to have been about forty-five years of age at the time, tall, well
formed, and dignified, with sharp gray eyes, alight with “that divine
spark of enthusiasm which makes true genius,” and hair prematurely
white. And so, in spite of his many disheartening failures, he did not
abandon the project; so also was Queen Isabella sufficiently impressed
by his learning and appearance to agree, in consideration of a fifth
share in the profits, that he should have the rank of Admiral and
govern, as Viceroy, all the lands that he might discover and bring under
her dominion. With the great astronomer’s chart before him, therefore,
and vowing to devote his share of the profits to the rescue of the Holy
Sepulcher, he set out from Palos, Spain, on the 3d of August, 1492. His
vessels, the _Niña_, _Pinta_ (well named the “Pint Cup”), and _Santa
María_, bore a company of but ninety, including the crews.
After a voyage of ten weeks, filled with difficulties and hardships,
even threats of mutiny, that taxed his courage and diplomacy to the
utmost, he came to land on an island (now known as Watling’s) on the
outward bow of the Bahamas, to which he gave the name of San Salvador.
The wild beauty of the foliage, the tropical luxuriance, the clear,
fresh-water streams, the soft climate and perfume-laden breezes, more
than ever delightful to men who had given themselves up for lost, and
the natives themselves, bedecked with gold ornaments and dusky-skinned
as those of Cathay were said to be—all seemed what might have been
expected in the outlying spice islands of the east. So, supposing this
to be one of those islands of which they were in quest, the adventurers
cruised about for ten days more and finally arrived at Cuba, which they
assumed to be Cipango.
In his infatuation, Columbus now saw his journey’s end. He had, he
thought, but to sail a few courses farther to reach the mainland of
Cathay, exchange compliments with the Great Khan at Quinsay, and return
in triumph with the wealth he was to amass and herald the news of his
wonderful achievement to a skeptical Europe. _And all the while Cathay
was ten thousand miles away—due west!_ Sailing across the strait to
Hayti, he was directed south by the natives when questioned as to the
source of their gold; but there, for the time being, his explorations
were brought to an end. The flagship was wrecked on a sand bar and
Pinzon, captain of one of the remaining two, stole treacherously away,
to anticipate the Admiral in announcing the discoveries in Spain.
Leaving a volunteer colony of about forty men to await his return with
reinforcements, however, he at once set sail, overtook and captured the
deserters, and, on the way back to Palos, was driven into the port of
Lisbon by a gale.
“The news of his exploit set all Portugal afire,” says Hawthorne.
“The King was urged to have Columbus run through the body and to
appropriate his discovery; but John II perceived that there was
more peril than profit in such a scheme, and he invited him to
court and made much of him instead. In due time he resumed his
voyage and reached Palos on the 15th of March. This was
Columbus’ apogee. He was called to Barcelona and welcomed in
triumph; he was even allowed to sit down in the august presence
of Ferdinand and Isabella. The half dozen Caribs he had brought
with him were assumed to be East Indians and the Admiral’s
interpretation of his discoveries was accepted without question.
The little detail that nothing of oriental magnificence—no Great
Khans, no mighty cities—had yet been revealed, was passed over.
Land had been found and it could be nothing but Cipango and
Cathay. The short route to the Indies had been discovered for
Spain.”
This so completely overshadowed all that Portugal had accomplished that
an intense rivalry sprang up between the two powers. The Pope, as the
Vicar of Christ on earth, and accordingly the repository of the title to
all lands still occupied by infidel peoples, was appealed to to confirm
the discoveries to Spain. He issued a bull granting to His Most Catholic
Majesty the lands then, and such as might thereafter be, discovered in
the western sea, and to the Portuguese such as they might discover by
way of the African route. This was supplemented by a second to the
effect that only those lands lying west of a meridian of longitude a
hundred miles west of the Azores and Cape Verde Islands should belong to
the Spaniards. Dissatisfied even with that division, the Portuguese
demanded a line still farther west, and, by a treaty signed at
Tordesillas in June, 1494, Spain agreed that it should be advanced in
that direction 370 leagues. This resulted eventually in giving Portugal
title to the then yet undiscovered country of Brazil.
Meanwhile, on the 25th of September, 1493, Columbus set out on his
second expedition—this time with seventeen ships and fifteen hundred
men, among them his brothers Bartholomew and Diego and many adventurers
of noble rank, for there was no lack either of men or money now. “Their
dreams,” Professor Fiske tell us, “were of the marble palaces of
Quinsay, of islands of spices and the treasures of the mythical Prester
John. The sovereigns wept for joy as they thought that such untold
riches were vouchsafed them as a reward for having overcome the Moor at
Granada. Columbus shared these views and regarded himself as a special
instrument for executing the divine decrees. He renewed his vow to
rescue the Holy Sepulcher, promising within seven years to equip, at his
own expense, a crusading army of fifty thousand foot and four thousand
horse.” When the fleet arrived at Hayti and the company landed at the
place where the little colony had been left, it was found that it had
been annihilated. Not a whit dismayed by that, however, Columbus ordered
a town to be built and the island, which he named Española (Little
Spain), became the base of hundreds of exploring expeditions undertaken
by the hordes of adventurers that followed in his wake and soon overran
the neighboring islands.
Columbus himself made two other voyages, in the course of which he
discovered Jamaica and the Island of Trinidad at the mouth of the
Orinoco, reached the southern shores of Cuba, and, having heard rumors
of another ocean to the west, coasted along the Central American
mainland in search of a passage through. There he found stone houses and
towns and what appeared to be a semi-civilized people, who wore clothes
and knew how to weave cotton, embalm their dead, and carve ornaments on
their tombs, and who had plenty of gold; and all this only confirmed his
conviction that he was drawing nearer the countries of his quest. During
this period, however, his fame was in turn overshadowed by that of Vasco
da Gama, who had at last succeeded in discovering the African route to
the Orient and had actually seen some of those spice islands and mighty
cities that Columbus was still only searching for on the other side of
the world so many thousands of miles away.
In 1506, soon after his return from his fourth expedition, he died at
Valladolid, discredited and defrauded of his viceregal powers, a victim
of treachery, jealousy, and intrigue, yet still believing that he had
found the western route to the Indies. Even then “nobody had the
faintest idea of what he had accomplished,” says Professor Fiske.
“Nothing like it was ever done before and nothing like it can ever be
done again. No worlds are left for future Columbuses to conquer. The era
of which this great Italian was the most illustrious representative had
closed forever.”
III
Having, in the interval between the second Columbian expedition and the
discovery of the African route by Vasco da Gama, induced Spain to agree
to the extension of the Papal meridian 370 leagues farther west, the
Portuguese continued their activities with renewed ardor. In March,
1500, on his way to the Cape of Good Hope, Pedro Alvarez Cabral, a
Portuguese nobleman in command of an expedition intended to resume the
work begun by Da Gama, was blown across the Atlantic to the coasts of
Brazil, where he touched at a point in the southern part of what is now
the State of Bahia. Under the impression that it was an island, and
assuming that it lay east of the Tordesillas treaty line, he landed and
took possession in the name of his King. The news having reached
Portugal in the Fall of the same year, no time was lost in asserting
title and sending out a small fleet to ascertain the extent and
resources of the region, also in the hope that a wealthy and civilized
people like that of Hindustan would be found.
This expedition was placed under the command of Amerigo Vespucci, a
Florentine astronomer and navigator, who had already made two voyages
for Spain and skirted the coast of Yucatan and the northern continent,
around Florida, as far north as the Chesapeake. Setting sail now to the
south, he made a systematic examination of the Brazilian coast for two
thousand miles. All he found that seemed to have any immediate
commercial value were immense quantities of a dyewood known in Europe as
“_brazil_” (the color of fire); it was from this, of course, that the
country took its name. The Portuguese, being by that time, however, too
engrossed in their African mines and sugar plantations and East Indian
trade to think it worth while to found colonies in such a region, did
nothing to develop it until thirty years had passed by and it became
necessary for them to protect their rights, particularly from the
French, who had been tempted by the great demand for the dyewood to
engage in coastwise poaching on a large scale.
For this reason, to his contemporaries, the most interesting feature of
Vespucci’s report was the conviction he expressed that this country
south of the equator was neither Asia nor an island, _but a new
continent_, or, as he himself called it, a “new world”—“for it
transcends the ideas of the ancients,” he said in a letter to his friend
Soderini, “since most of them declare that, beyond the equator to the
south, there is no continent but only the sea which they call the
Atlantic; but this last voyage of mine has proved that this opinion of
theirs is erroneous, because in these southern regions I have found a
continent more thickly inhabited by peoples and animals than our Europe
or Asia or Africa, and, moreover, a climate more temperate and agreeable
than any known to us.” In 1504 this letter was published under the title
“_Mundus Novus_.” The term “new world” caught the popular fancy, and
although, in 1497, Columbus first of all, and later Vespucci himself
with Alonso de Ojeda, had cruised along and touched at points on its
Caribbean coast, by virtue of his Brazilian explorations Vespucci was
acclaimed the discoverer.
And therein was the source of the confusion that gave to South America,
and eventually to the northern continent as well, the name they bear
rather than one commemorative of Columbus. No one suspected that there
were _two_ oceans instead of only the Atlantic between Europe and Asia;
that the land Amerigo Vespucci had explored south of the equator was of
a piece with that discovered by Columbus to the north. It was conceived
to be entirely detached from and to the south of _Cathay_, which
Columbus was still supposed to have reached, and to lie in a position
somewhat similar to that which Australia was afterward found to occupy.
Consequently, when in 1507 Mathias Ringmann published his “_Introductio
Cosmographie_,” he proposed that this (as he estimated it) “fourth part
of the globe” be called “_Amerigo_.” The following year Martinus
Waldseemüller published his map, whereon for the first time the name
“America” appeared. Investigation has made it clear that there was no
attempt, as Vespucci’s maligners charged, to immortalize his name at the
expense of Columbus. The southern continent was not named for Columbus
simply because it was thought to be distinct from his discoveries; the
northern, because it was thought already to have been named Cathay.
At last, when the existence across the Atlantic of a continuous stretch
of land had been comprehended, and when, in the light of the Portuguese
discoveries by way of the African route, it was realized that these
strange coasts did not in the least coincide with the ideas formed of
them by those who had assumed them to be Asiatic, the conviction grew
that the fabulous treasure lands of the Orient had not been reached by
this western route at all. _The whole stretch must be embraced in the
new world_, it was concluded; _there must be another ocean than the
Atlantic beyond_. “Rumors of it had been heard, or glimpses caught,
perhaps, at one time or another,” says Hawthorne, “before the actual
fact was understood. Meanwhile Spain was very anxious to get through or
around this singular barrier of islands, or whatever it was that was
keeping her from sharing the profits that Da Gama had brought to
Portugal from Hindustan, and she sent out expeditions to accomplish it.”
In 1505 Amerigo Vespucci (who had returned to the Spanish flag), with La
Cosa, explored the Gulf of Darien and penetrated two hundred miles up
the Atrato, thinking it might prove a strait leading to the Asiatic
waters. Juan de Solis was trying to find it when he explored the Rio de
la Plata and met his death at the hands of the natives. Jacques Cartier
was seeking it when he explored the St. Lawrence, D’Ayllon when he tried
the Chesapeake and James, and Hendrik Hudson when he ascended the river
that bears his name.
In 1513, Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, Governor of Darien, a valiant adventurer
who had been prominent in the conquest and colonization of the Isthmus,
undertook by means of an expedition by land to ascertain whether such an
ocean did really exist. Starting with a company of about a hundred and
ninety Spaniards and a few Indians, he skirted the coast of Panama to a
point near Cape Tiburon, and there disembarked and headed inland. For
twenty days his party persevered over forest-clad swamps, valleys, and
mountains, fought a pitched battle with the natives, and finally cut its
way through the dense undergrowth to the heights overlooking what is now
known as the Gulf of San Miguel, on the Pacific side, and thus resolved
all doubt into certainty and completed an event which, declares Dawson,
“was second in its far-reaching consequences only to Columbus’ first
voyage.” Balboa dubbed it the Southern Sea, little thinking that it was
a body of water more vast than the Atlantic that he had found to bar the
way to Cathay. “So elated was he over his epoch-making discovery,” says
Mozans, quoting from an early chronicler, that—
“With no lesse manlye courage than Hannibal of Carthage shewed
his souldiers Italye and the promontories of the Alps, he
exhorted his men to lyft up theyre hartes and to behoulde the
land even now under theyre feete and the sea before theyre eyes,
which shoulde bee unto them a full and juste reward of theyre
great laboures and trauayles now ouerpassed. When he had sayde
these woordes, he commanded them to raise certeine heapes of
stones in the steede of altars for a token of possession. Then,
descendynge from the toppes of the mountaynes, lest such as
might come after hym shoulde argu hym of lyinge and falshod, he
wrote the Kyng of Castelles his name here and there on the
barkes of the trees, both on the ryght hande and on the lefte,
and raysed heapes of stones all the way that he went untyll he
came to the region of the nexte Kynge towarde the south, whose
name was Chiapes.”
“The act of taking possession was so typical of similar formalities of
the Conquistadores,” continues Mozans, “that I transcribe from Oviedo
his account of the manner in which Balboa and his companions claimed for
his sovereign the Sea of the South, all islands in it and all lands
bordering on it, in what part of the world soever. Armed with his sword
and bearing aloft a banner on which were painted an image of the Blessed
Virgin and the Divine Child and the arms of Castile and Leon, Balboa,
followed by his associates, entered the water until it rose above his
knees, when in a loud voice he said:
“‘Long live the high and mighty monarchs, Don Ferdinand and Doña
Juana, Sovereigns of Castile, of Leon and of Aragon, in whose
name and for the royal crown of Castile, I take real and
corporal and actual possession of these seas and lands and
coasts and ports and islands of the south, and all thereunto
annexed, and of the kingdoms and provinces which do or may
appertain to them, in whatever manner or by whatever right or
title, ancient or modern, in times past, present or to come,
without any contradiction; and if other prince or captain,
Christian or infidel, or of any law, sect or condition
whatsoever, shall pretend any right to these islands and seas, I
am ready and prepared to maintain and defend them in the name of
the Castilian Sovereigns, present and future, whose is the
empire and dominion over these Indias, islands and _terra
firma_, northern and southern, with all their seas, both at the
arctic and antarctic poles, on either side of the equinoctial
line, whether within or without the tropics of Cancer and
Capricorn, both now and at all times so long as the world shall
endure and until the final judgment of all mankind.’ And then
the Notary, who always accompanied such expeditions, was ordered
to make on the spot an exact record of what had been said and
done, which was duly signed and authenticated by all present.”
It was to the Portuguese navigator Fernão de Magalhães (Ferdinand
Magellan in the English rendering of the name) that the honor finally
fell of being the first, not alone to find the passage through the new
continent that was being so eagerly sought, but to cross by the western
route to the East Indies and thereby blaze the way to making geography
an exact science. He had already been to the Moluccas by the African
route, and, disgusted by the failure of his King suitably to reward his
services, had transferred his allegiance to Spain and managed to secure
from the Emperor Charles V a commission and five ships, the largest of
but 120 tons’ burden. On the 20th of September, 1419, he sailed from the
Guadalquivir, with a crew numbering 280, all told, and, having entered
the Plata River and satisfied himself that it was not a strait, ran down
the Patagonian coast through many storms until he found shelter in the
harbor of St. Julian, where, on Easter Sunday, a mutiny broke out that
only a man of such remarkable courage and resourcefulness as Magellan
possessed could have suppressed. It had been a hard voyage, the chances
of finding the strait seemed slim, there was only the prospect that
there they must remain throughout the antarctic winter in idleness and
discomfort; it is small wonder that they wanted to desert.
However, during the last week in August spring began (the seasons are
reversed south of the equator, it must be remembered) and the fleet,
without the _Santiago_, which had been wrecked, proceeded to the south.
After experiencing much more bad weather, they made Cape Virgins on the
21st of October and entered a large bay, which was flanked by lofty
mountains, crowned with glaciers and snow. This at last was the entrance
to the passage, but at that very point one of the vessels, the _San
Antonio_, seized an opportunity to make its escape and return to Spain.
“For five weeks,” as Hawthorne relates, “the remaining three ships wound
along through the tortuous channel. Provisions were running short, yet
Magellan would not turn back ‘even if he had to eat the leather off the
ships’ yards.’ At length his persistence was rewarded by a sight of the
open sea. ‘When,’ to quote Richard Eden, ‘the Capitayne was past the
strayght and saw the way open to the mayne sea, he was so gladde thereof
that for joy the teares fell from his eyes and he named the poynte of
the lande from whense he first saw that sea Cape Desiderato.’ And the
broad ocean which lay before him was so calm, after his many stormful
days, that he called it the Pacific.”
“But months of a voyage as trying as any they had encountered still lay
before them,” Hawthorne goes on. “Could the planet be so vast? Until
December they kept a northerly course, then struck out boldly across the
unknown waste. They ran across one or two islands, but erelong were
swallowed up in the seemingly endless immensity of ocean. They were
reduced to the utmost extremities for food and water; scurvy broke out;
nineteen men died and thirty were too ill to work. Finally, on the 6th
of March, they reached the Ladrone Islands, so named because of the
thievishness of the natives. Here they got fruit and other food, and the
worst was over. Ten days later the Philippines were sighted and Magellan
knew the extent of his achievement. He had sailed round the world.
Happier than Columbus, he did not survive this mightiest exploit of his
time; in a fight with the natives the great sailor was killed.”
Only one of the little vessels ever got back to Spain. Returning by way
of Africa, she arrived at the Guadalquivir in September, a year after
she had set out, and with but eighteen survivors of the expedition.
“What a picture!” the historian exclaims—“those eighteen seaworn
mariners in their battered craft, survivors of the greatest feat of
navigation that has ever been performed. What a poem is their story,
what an event in the history of mankind! What reward did Magellan have?
None that mortal could bestow. He was dead and his wife and son had also
died. Del Cano, the captain of the ship, was given a crest, with the
legend, on a terrestrial globe, ‘_Primus circumdedisti me_,’ together
with a pension of five hundred ducats, and Espinosa was likewise
pensioned and ennobled. But every mariner who sails the seas knows
Magellan and the story of his exploit, and mankind accords him the honor
that Spain could not bestow. Of all the great explorers, he is perhaps
the one whose character and deeds we can contemplate with the most
unalloyed satisfaction.”
IV
Until the great Dutch navigator, Willim Cornelis Schouten, found the way
around Cape Horn nearly a hundred years later, however, no practical
advantage over her rival resulted to Spain from Magellan’s
discoveries—so far as trade with the East Indies was concerned, that is.
The passage through the Strait was too perilous for sailing vessels, the
distance across the Pacific too great. Yet only a year before Magellan
set out on his famous voyage an era began in her new possessions that
was to pour into her coffers a stream of gold in comparison with which
the profits Portugal was deriving from her trade with the Orient seemed
trivial. For in that year Hernando Cortés, the greatest soldier and
statesman Spain ever sent to the new world, began his conquest of
Mexico.
Except for the spirit of emulation it inspired, except for the knowledge
it brought of the existence in the newly discovered countries of a
people less barbarous than the aborigines of the Antilles, of mines that
were worth while and of enormous hoards of treasure, the story of that
conquest has no place in the history of South America, and, therefore,
will not be gone into here. It is related somewhere as an interesting
commentary that in an obscure little house in the City of Mexico still
lives a modest, well-educated gentleman who is directly descended from
the Emperor of the Aztecs. Señor Montezuma entertains no hope of a
restoration, it is said, but quietly accepts the meager pension allowed
him by the present government, while the heirs of Cortés receive immense
revenues from their Mexican estates and the Marquis del Valle, as the
present-day Cortés is called, lives in luxury and is a man of influence
and power in the land.
In 1526, Sebastian Cabot was commissioned by the King of Spain to locate
the Papal meridian in America and then to follow in Magellan’s track and
determine the corresponding longitude on the Asiatic side; but, when he
put in at the mouth of the Rio de la Plata, he heard rumors of a great
and wealthy people who dwelt near the headwaters of the river—rumors
like those Grijalva had heard respecting the Aztecs and which had led to
the Mexican conquest by Cortés; only these wonderful accounts were of a
South American empire. In proof of what they said, the Indians of the
Plata exhibited silver ornaments that had passed from hand to hand from
the highlands of Bolivia and Peru, along the river to the Atlantic; and,
too strongly tempted to resist, and trusting that the discovery of the
rich mines from which this silver came would excuse their disobedience,
Cabot and his company abandoned their survey and spent three years
exploring and prospecting along the Uruguay and Paraná as far north as
the present site of the city of Asunción. As their forces and provisions
were inadequate to enable them to penetrate farther, the search was in
vain; and so, having found, on their return to a fort they had
established, that it had been taken by the Indians and the garrison
massacred, Cabot abandoned the effort and went back to Spain to make
what explanation he could.
The news of this supposed encroachment, added to the ever increasing
poaching of the French, proved what was needed to stimulate the
Portuguese at last to make a serious attempt at colonization in Brazil.
One Christovão Jaques and a few settlers had already established a small
sugar factory in the neighborhood of the present site of Pernambuco, and
it had been found that much of the land in the northern part of the
country was admirably adapted to the cultivation of that staple, the
demand for which in Europe was constantly increasing. Five vessels were
sent out, therefore, under the command of Martim Affonso da Souza. Early
in 1531 he drew near Cape St. Roque, captured three French ships laden
with brazil wood, sent part of his own fleet north to explore the coast
beyond, and with the other ships sailed south and dropped anchor near
the site of what is now the great coffee port of Santos. There he
established São Vicente, the first permanent colony in Brazil.
There also they came across one João Ramalho, a former sailor who had
been put ashore for mutiny years before by a ship on its way to India
and was living among the natives of the neighborhood with his half-breed
children. Glad enough to welcome his countrymen, he disposed the Indians
to peace and showed the Portuguese the way up the mountains to the vast
plateau that begins only a few miles from the sea. There, near the
present site of São Paulo, was founded another settlement, from whence
they could stretch out in all directions over what was destined to
become the greatest coffee-producing country in the world.
A year or two afterward, encouraged by Da Souza’s success, Duarte Coelho
set out with a carefully selected and more numerous company and founded
the colony of Pernambuco. Here, as in the south, the country back of the
coast was fertile and easily accessible and there was little trouble
with the Indians. Sugar planting proved wonderfully profitable, Coelho
turned out to be a good manager, and so politic was he in the relations
with the mother country that within a few years the colony had become
self-supporting and, like the other, possessed of all the elements of
permanence and prosperity. Soon afterward São Salvador da Bahia was
established. With such a beginning, it was not long before the
Portuguese began flocking to Brazil as the Spaniards had to the
Caribbean.
V
In the meanwhile in this region of the Caribbean much progress had been
made. Towns had been built, not only in Española, but in Cuba, Jamaica,
Porto Rico and in Darien and other places on the Isthmus, landed estates
(_repartimientos_) had been apportioned, as rewards for services, among
such as desired to cultivate them, mining rights had been allotted.
These plantations and the mines were being worked by natives impressed
into slavery, some of the communities had become large and thriving, in
Spain a Council of the Indies and in the islands local governmental
tribunals (_Real Audiencias_) had been created.
Whole fleets of ships plied back and forth across the Atlantic, those
setting out from Spain laden with implements of agriculture and war,
clothes, and fresh companies of adventurers, coming over as colonists,
or to continue the work of conquest and the search for treasure; those
returning, laden with the products of the tropics and with gold and
precious stones. Emeralds had been found near the coast of Colombia, and
Balboa had discovered in the Gulf of San Miguel—that famous group of
islands where, as Mozans tells us, “pearls were so common that the
natives used them for adorning the paddles of their canoes”—pearls “as
large as filberts and of exceeding beauty of form and luster,” many of
which, “found in the same fisheries a short time subsequently, at once
took place among the largest and most perfect of the world’s gems.”
Nevertheless, neither there nor anywhere else in the Caribbean region,
had any vast wealth and civilization comparable to that of the Mexicans
been discovered. Balboa, however, had married, according to the Indian
custom, the daughter of a _cacique_ (native chief), and, being in the
confidence of the Indians of his province, had heard rumors, even before
the conquest of Mexico, of a rich and powerful empire to the south (the
same that were afterward heard by Cabot); and, after he had been
succeeded as Governor by his jealous rival, the notorious Pedrarias
Davila, was commissioned to take charge of an expedition to go in search
of it. Already he had accomplished the unheard-of task of taking four
ships to pieces on the Caribbean shore, transporting them across the
Isthmus and reconstructing them on the shore of San Miguel, and, when
about to sail, had been arrested by order of Pedrarias, tried on a
charge of treason, and executed before he could appeal to Spain. Some
years later, having forestalled his great rival in that summary way,
Pedrarias entrusted the venture to one Francisco Pizarro, an
opportunist, without money, rank, or credit, and then nearly fifty years
old, yet one who startled the world by an achievement equaled only by
Cortés’ own.
Francisco Pizarro had been but a swineherd in his boyhood, but later had
served under Gonzolo de Cordova (_El Gran Capitan_) in that splendid
body of infantrymen which fought its way to the foremost rank in Europe,
and was a son, too, though an illegitimate one, of a Spanish officer of
noble blood. For such a man, as Dawson says, “an admirable soldier,
conscious that he possessed powers of the highest order yet hopelessly
handicapped in old Europe by his base birth and illiteracy, the
discovery of the new world opened up a field for his talents” that led
him “eagerly to embrace the opportunity to embark with Alonso de Ojeda
in 1509 for the Darien gold mines.” His first appearance in history is
as a member of the party that went with Balboa to search for the
Pacific; afterward he was among the first of “the adventurers that
flocked to the new city of Panama, looking over the mysterious sea, like
a pack of wolves eager for a share in the spoils of its unknown shores;”
later he happened to be the officer chosen by Pedrarias for Balboa’s
arrest.
As he had no funds of his own, and since it was the custom of the times
for the Conquistadores who undertook such expeditions to do so at their
own expense, he associated with him a priest named Hernando de Luque,
who had some capital, and Diego de Almagro, a soldier of still more
advanced age but of ability and good reputation. It was agreed that the
Padre de Luque should contribute the funds, that Almagro should attend
to the collecting and forwarding of troops and supplies, and that
Pizarro himself should have the active command. Whereupon they bought
one of the ships that had been carried across the Isthmus by Balboa and
set out on their first expedition in 1524. As so frequently occurred in
such cases, however, inadequacy of provisions caused the venture to
fail.
[Illustration: FRANCISCO PIZARRO.]
Eighteen months later they sailed again, with a much larger stock of
supplies and this time with 160 men. For hundreds of miles they found
nothing but the same swampy, forest-clad wastes along the Colombian
shore, inhabited only by naked tribes of savages. Pizarro’s disheartened
companions, too ready to believe that the country they were seeking was
but a myth, would have had him return; but one day the pilot, who had
been sent on ahead, suddenly reappeared with the news that he had
penetrated south of the equator and had there met a large trading raft
on its way north, bearing cloth, silver work, vases, and other things
pertaining to civilization and manned by a crew that wore clothes. These
men, the pilot reported, had told him that they came from a town called
Tumbez, which lay in a fertile valley behind a penetrable coast—that the
whole interior of the country was inhabited by a civilized people,
subjects of an emperor whose capital was a great city, high up in the
mountains still farther south. On this confirmation of their hopes, the
commander succeeded in inducing his men to push on until they had
reached nearly as far as the northern boundary of Ecuador, where he
landed most of the company on an island called Gallo and sent Almagro
back to Panama for more provisions and supplies.
At Gallo the climate proved unhealthful; fevers soon decimated the
party; even their clothes were rotted by the almost incessant rains and
steamy heat, and, as though that were not enough, when the Governor
learned from members of the crew who had returned that the men were
being held there against their will, he flew into a rage, instead of
sending supplies and reinforcements, and despatched a ship to bring back
all who wished to desert. Only emboldened by these misfortunes, Pizarro
“drew his sword and traced a line with it on the sand from east to
west,” says Montesino in his _Anales del Perú_. “Then, turning toward
the south, ‘Friends and comrades,’ he said, ‘on that side are toil,
hunger, nakedness, the drenching storm, desertion, and death; on this
side, ease and pleasure. There lies Peru with its riches; here Panama
and its poverty. Choose, each man, what best becomes a brave Castilian.
For my part, I go to the south,’ and, so saying, he stepped across the
line.” He was followed by the pilot Ruiz, a Greek cavalier named de
Candia, and only eleven others. There is, indeed, as Prescott comments—
“Something striking to the imagination in the spectacle of those
few brave spirits consecrating themselves to a daring enterprise
that seemed as far above their strength as any recorded in the
fabulous annals of knight-errantry. A handful of men, without
food, without clothing, almost without arms, without knowledge
of the land to which they were bound, without even a vessel to
transport them, were left there on a rock in the ocean with the
avowed purpose of carrying on a crusade against a powerful
empire, staking their lives on its success. What is there in the
legends of chivalry that surpasses it?”
For weary months they awaited the return of Almagro with the provisions,
and the moment they arrived set sail for the Gulf of Guayaquil. Landing
at Tumbez, says Dawson, “with their own eyes they saw confirmation of
what the Indians of the raft had told them. Irrigated fields, green with
beautiful crops, lined the river bank; eighty thousand people, all
comfortably housed, lived in the valley; commerce was flourishing; large
temples, profusely ornamented with gold and silver, testified to their
wealth and culture; the government was well ordered and stable, and the
people received the visitors with open-handed hospitality.” It is easy
enough to imagine with what longing eyes these forlorn adventurers who
had risked and endured so much must have gazed on such a scene as this!
Yet, concluding that his force was too small even for a raid, and
thinking it wiser, anyway, after what had happened, to be invested with
independent powers before making any attempt at a conquest, Pizarro made
his way back to Spain and related his experiences to the King, who was
so greatly impressed both with the story and the petitioner’s noble and
commanding presence that he did more than merely commission him to
undertake a new expedition: he legitimized him and created him marquis,
appointed him _Adelantado_ (governor) of such countries as he might
conquer, created Almagro marshal, and made the thirteen who had so
gallantly stood by them gentlemen of coat armor.
On Pizarro’s return to Panama, he brought with him a few kindred spirits
selected from among the very flower of the fighting men of the
Peninsula, including his brothers Hernando, Juan, and Gonzalo and his
half-brother, Francisco Alcantara, his equals in valor if not in
audacity and intellect. And then, as he believed from what he had seen
of the fighting on the Isthmus, that a few scores of good men, mail-clad
and well provided with artillery and horses—for these, unknown in the
new world before the advent of the Spaniards, had never failed to strike
terror to the natives—would be as effective as thousands in overcoming
undisciplined masses of Indians, armed in their inferior fashion,
instead of attempting to assemble an army he got together only a small
company composed of men of whose courage and experience he was well
assured. Having arranged with Almagro to follow with what reinforcements
he could recruit from among the unemployed adventurers in Nicaragua, he
set out once more.
This time he happened to land first among the less civilized tribes in
Ecuador, where he had the good fortune to find a rich store of emeralds
and gold, which he sent back to Almagro to encourage him in his work.
Then, marching down the coast to Guayaquil, he crossed to the island of
Puna to await the reinforcements, conquered the fierce inhabitants of
the place, and was afterward joined by a detachment sent out by his
associate under the command of Hernando de Soto, an adventurer who had
served with Cortés in Mexico and was later to attain still greater fame
as the discoverer of the Mississippi. Even with those De Soto brought,
the whole force numbered less than two hundred and fifty.
Though they had not the faintest idea of it then, the empire they were
destined to bring under the Spanish sway covered a territory along the
plateaux and eastern and Pacific slopes of the Andes extending from
Quito in Ecuador to the river Maule in Chile, a distance of nearly three
thousand miles, inhabited by hardy and warlike races, that numbered,
according to the estimate of the early historians, somewhere near twenty
millions of people.
VI
So great was the empire of the Incas. But from whom were these
remarkable rulers descended who brought their people to a state of
civilization relatively so superior to that of the savages east of the
Andes? To what race did they belong? From whence did they originally
come—Europe or Asia?—and, if so, how did they get to South America? How
did they acquire the knowledge of the arts and sciences that they
possessed? “Students of archæology have essayed in vain to answer these
questions,” says Mozans. “All is still shrouded in mystery—in mystery
even darker than that which veils the advent of the Toltecs and Aztecs
to the valley of Anahuac, more profound than that which obscures the
first beginnings of the civilizations on the elevated Pamirs and in the
valleys of the Nile and Euphrates. In all this uncertainty and mystery,
however,” he adds,
“One fact seems to remain incontrovertible, and that is that
Manco Capac and Mama Oello” (the founders of the dynasty) “first
appeared on the shores of Lake Titicaca” (a body of water nearly
as large as Lake Erie, lying between the two main Cordillera of
the Andes in southeastern Peru, two miles and a half up above
the level of the sea). “On this point tradition and the
concurrent testimony of the earlier historians are practically
at one.... Another fact, too, is unquestioned. Whether Manco
Capac, the Minos of Peru, was of foreign or of native birth, it
is certain that he was able, in the space of thirty years, to
lay the foundation of that vast empire which, under the Inca
Yupanqui, extended its conquests to the Maule in Chile, and,
under Huayna Capac, planted its victorious banners above the
fortresses of the Shiri” (the _Cacique_ of the Caras), “in the
extended territory of Quito, and which gave its laws and
religion and language to hundreds of conquered tribes.”
“What is one to do with no historical records to study over?” asks
Hawthorne.
“The Aztecs did have some sort of writing, and, though we have
not yet learned how to read it, we may solace ourselves with the
hope that enlightenment may sometime come; but the people of the
Andes did not even use hieroglyphics. Their sole documents were
knotted strings. These strings, which they called _quipus_, were
of course merely aids to memory—in the same way that a knot in a
handkerchief enables a husband to remember the instructions his
wife gives him when he sets out for the city, and which could
not be written down in many pages.... Nevertheless, we have
traditions in plenty.... Starting with the reasonable assumption
that there must have been a very considerable past before the
Spaniards appeared, we may construct various more or less
plausible surmises, based on the Cyclopean architectural ruins
which are distributed about the country. Marvelous works they
are, though their form, and the carvings with which they are
decorated, are less impressive than their mere size and
weight.... It has been very generally thought that they were the
handiwork of the prehistoric Piruas; yet, since the Piruas are
prehistoric, it is not to be expected that much historic
information concerning them is obtainable.... The ruins had been
abandoned long before the Spaniards came and the Indians knew
nothing of their origin.”
“Still, it is indisputable,” he goes on to say,
“that in Peru the grade of culture found in Mexico at the time
of the conquest must have been reached and passed many ages
earlier. In proof of this we have the fact that the Peruvians
alone had succeeded in domesticating animals. Only the dog had
been adapted to man’s service in other parts of America. Here
the domestic llama, for instance, was derived from the wild
huanacu and the alpaca from the vicuna. Many centuries would be
required in order to bring about these results. Several
varieties of maize were also produced under cultivation, and the
Peruvian species of cotton plant is known to exist only as it
appears under cultivation. Wild tubers were found in Peru from
which the potato was educed. Now, it has been proven by
experiment that wild potatoes require a very long time to put on
a civilized complexion. It was in Peru that the potato, as _we_
know it, was first discovered. It was not cultivated north of
Darien. Raleigh brought the first specimens to Ireland in 1568,
but it was not until the end of the eighteenth century that they
came into general use in Europe. The Peruvians practiced
irrigation and manured their crops with guano.”
And he continues:
“The materials for this nation were provided by the four
tribes—Incas, Quichuas, Canas, and Cauchis—scattered over the
northwest of South America. They were all mountaineers, short
but strong and active, with soft, brown skins, black hair, and
arched noses. At first the tribes were composed of clans, but
the Incas settled in the lofty valley of Cuzco and from that
coign of vantage gradually subdued the other tribes. Unlike the
Aztecs, they confirmed their conquests, not by exacting tribute,
but by military occupation of the subject territory. The town of
Cuzco was built about the end of the twelfth century and the
work of internal organization was begun. It is at this point
that solid historical information first comes to hand. A
succession of head chiefs or kings had already been instituted.
These monarchs were called Incas _par excellence_—_the_ Inca of
all minor Incas. To this general name, nicknames were added, by
way of distinguishing them. Finally, the eighth of the line was
called Viracocha, which means Sun-God, and indicated that by
that epoch the Incas had acquired something of the divinity that
doth hedge a king.
“Viracocha annexed the land of the Aymaras” (in Bolivia), “who
are suspected of descent from the builders of Tiahuanucu” (where
are some of the most interesting of the ruins). “In the next
reign the strong tribe of the Chancas, living close to the
equator, resisted the march of conquest, but were finally
defeated under the walls of Cuzco and their country afterward
annexed. The Chimus, who gave its name to Chimborazo, were the
next victims of the Incas, who now ruled the region from Lake
Titicaca to the equator and from the Andes to the sea. It was
under the Inca Yupanqui that this conquest took place, and he is
regarded as the great hero of Peruvian history. To him was
applied the name Pachacutec, Changer of the World. The successor
of this champion extended the dominion of his people so much
farther that it became necessary to found the city of Quito to
keep watch over the northern portion of the empire. He brought
in the valley of Pachacamac, where there was an ancient and
desirable temple, and also penetrated far into Chile....
“The Inca language was spoken throughout the empire. Garrisons
were distributed at strategic points and were connected by the
famous roads which have been the wonder and admiration of the
world.... There was a central highway from Quito to Cuzco, and
thence southward, which is thus described by the historian
Cieza” (de Leon): “‘I believe that since the history of man has
been recorded there has been no account of such grandeur as is
to be seen on this road, which passes over deep valleys and
lofty mountains, by snowy heights, over falls of water, through
the living rocks and along the edges of furious torrents. In all
these places it is level and paved, along mountain slopes well
excavated, through the living rock cut, along the river banks
supported by walls, in the snowy heights with steps and resting
places, in all parts clean-swept, clear of stones, with posts
and storehouses and temples of the sun at intervals. Oh, what
greater thing could be said of Alexander, or of any of the
powerful kings that have ruled in the world, than that they had
made such a road as this and conceived the works that were
required for it! The roads constructed by the Romans in Spain
are not to be compared with it.’ The post houses were some four
or five miles apart and in each were two Indians who carried
messages to and from the next house in line, whereby the
government was kept constantly informed of what was going on in
all parts of its dominions. In this way messages could travel at
the rate of nearly a hundred and fifty miles a day.”
The Inca deities were the Sun and Moon. The Sun they regarded as God the
Father and the Moon (believed to be the Sun-God’s sister and wife) as
the Goddess-Mother. The people called themselves Children of the Sun.
The reigning Inca was at once the Chief Priest and absolute temporal
ruler. Following their conception of the divine relationship, he could
marry only his sister of the full blood and only their eldest son could
inherit the throne. If no son was born of this first incestuous
marriage, or if he died and no other was born, the Inca married the next
sister, and so on until there was one capable of inheriting. But there
were morganatic marriages, as a result of which each of the reigning
Incas left numerous sons and daughters, whose descendants constituted a
privileged class, and in the course of ages the throne came to be
surrounded by thousands of men of the royal blood who were devoted from
their birth to warfare, learning, and state-craft. A subject, however,
could have more than one wife only by favor of the Inca. The government,
though exercised in a _kindly_ spirit, as we are told by the ancient
chroniclers, was in form a military despotism.
There was no money or other medium of exchange; gold and silver were
used only for purposes of adornment; such trade as there was, was by
barter. Every man was obliged to work for the common good at some form
of industry or occupation suitable to his strength and age and, if able,
to take his turn at the maintenance and extension of the irrigation
systems, which in that way were brought to such a state of perfection
that modern Peru still lives on the half-ruined fragments of their
canals and conduits and reservoirs. Hardly a spot of arable soil was
left uncultivated. Whole mountains were terraced for thousands of feet
up their sides.
Private ownership in land did not exist; it belonged to the communes.
The custom was to divide it into tracts, each large enough to support a
family, and parcel it out; for every child born there was an additional
allotment, and, at intervals, a general revision and redistribution. The
produce was divided into three parts: one for the Inca and his
establishment, one for the priesthood, and one for the commune. When one
section of the country was impoverished by war or some other casualty,
its needs were supplied by assessments levied on the others. The
occupations of the women, both in town and country, were essentially
domestic. Some were brought up from childhood and specially educated to
serve in the religious rites and in the household of the reigning Inca.
These were known as Virgins of the Sun.
The capital, Cuzco, was located in a valley about two hundred miles
northwest of Lake Titicaca and at a lower elevation, yet still more than
two miles up above the level of the sea. A colossal, massive-walled
citadel loomed over it from the heights of Sacsahuaman above the town.
Strong walls and towers inclosed it on every side. In its midst was a
great square, from which started the remarkable roads leading to the
four corners of the empire, referred to by Hawthorne. One whole side was
occupied by the temple, and near by were the dwellings of the priests
and the palaces of the Inca and the Virgins of the Sun. This sacred
space was a citadel in itself, protected by five heavy walls.
Describing the temple, the historian of the conquest, Garcilaso de la
Vega (and there was no one better qualified to write on the subject, for
he was himself, on the maternal side, a grandson of one of the last of
the Inca kings), says that “All the four walls were covered from roof to
floor with plates and slabs of gold. In the side, where we should place
the altar, they placed a figure of the Sun, made of a plate of gold of a
thickness double that of the other plates which covered the walls. The
figure was made with a circular face and rays of fire issuing from it,
all of one piece, just as the sun is represented by painters. It was so
large as to occupy one side of the temple from one wall to the other.”
Even the doorposts were of gold. One door, encased in silver, led to a
hall dedicated to the Moon-Goddess, where the images and furnishings
were all of silver, as were also the decorations of the mummies of the
Incas’ wives.
“The walls of their palaces,” Markham says, “were built of stone, of a
dark slate color, with recesses and doors at certain intervals, the
sides of the doors approaching each other” (narrowing toward the top)
“and supporting huge stone lintels. The side walls were pierced with
small square windows, as in the ruins of Manco Capac’s palace, and the
roofs were thatched with the _ycha_, or long grass of the Andes. The
interior consisted of several spacious halls, with smaller rooms opening
into them, and the interior walls were adorned with golden animals and
flowers, executed with much skill and taste. Mirrors of a hard stone,
highly polished, hung on stone pegs, while in the numerous recesses were
utensils and _conopas_ (household gods) of gold and silver,
fantastically designed. The couches were of vicuna cloth of the softest
and finest texture.”
Of the palaces of the Incas, Francisco Lopez de Gomara tells us that
“all the service of their house, table and kitchen, was of gold and
silver, or at least of silver and copper. The Inca had in his chamber
hollow statues of gold, which appeared like giants, and others naturally
imitated from animals, birds, and trees, from plants produced by the
land and from such fish as are yielded by the waters of the kingdom. He
also had ropes, baskets and hampers of gold and silver and piles of
golden sticks to imitate fuel prepared for burning. In short, there was
nothing that his territory produced that he had not got imitated in
gold.”
Cieza de Leon says of the magnificence of the harvest festivals
celebrated in the great plaza of the temple: “We hold it to be very
certain that neither in Jerusalem, nor in Rome, nor in Persia, nor in
any other part of the world, was such wealth of gold and silver and
precious stones collected together.” In his later years, while living in
Spain, Garcilaso de la Vega, who had been just as enthusiastic in his
description, and seemed to fear that he might be suspected of romancing,
took occasion to write that “this is not hard for those to believe who
have since seen so much gold and silver arrive here from that land. In
the year 1595 alone, within the space of eight months, thirty-five
millions of gold and silver crossed the bar of San Lucar in three
cargoes.”
“Many generations of culture and Inca rule had produced men of a very
different physical type,” Markham tells us, “from the Peruvian Indian of
to-day. We see the Incas in the pictures at the church of Santa Ana at
Cuzco,” he continues.
“The color of the skin was many shades lighter than that of the
downtrodden descendants of their subjects. The forehead was
high, the nose slightly aquiline, the chin and mouth firm, the
whole face majestic, refined, and intellectual. The hair was
gracefully arranged, and around the head was the _llantu_, the
sign of sovereignty. The _llantu_ appears to have been a short
piece of red fringe on the forehead, fastened around the head by
two bands. It was habitually worn, but, when praying, the Inca
took it off and put it on the ground beside him. The ceremonial
headdress was the _mascapaycha_, a golden semicircular miter on
the forehead, to which the _llantu_ was fastened. Bright colored
feathers were fixed on the sides and the plume” (of black and
white falcon feathers, he says in another place) “rose over the
summit. Long golden eardrops came down to the shoulders. The
tunic and mantel varied in color and were made of the finest
vicuna wool. On the breast the Incas wore a golden semicircular
breastplate, representing the sun, with a border of signs for
the months.
“The later Incas wore a very rich kind of brocade, in bands sewn
together, forming a wide belt. The bands were in squares, each
with an ornament. The material was called _tocapu_. Some of the
Incas had the whole tunic of _tocapu_. The breeches were black
and in loose plaits at the knees. The _usutas_, or sandals, were
of white wool. The Inca clad for war had a large square shield
of wood or leather. There was a loop of leather at the back to
pass the arm through. In one hand was a wooden staff, about two
feet long, with a bronze star, of six or eight points, fastened
at one end—a most formidable warclub. In the other hand was a
long staff with a battle axe fixed at one end. The Ccoya, or
Queen, wore the _lliclla_ or mantle fastened across the chest by
a very large golden _topu_ or pin, with head elaborately carved
with ornaments and figures. The _lliclla_ or mantle and _acsu_
or skirt varied as regards color. The head was adorned with
golden circlets and flowers.... The nobles wore headdresses of
egret feathers and gold breastplates over their tunics. The
princesses wore long mantles of various colors, and the Virgins
of the Sun long white mantles, secured across the bosom by large
gold pins.”
[Illustration: INCA BURIAL TOWER NEAR LAKE TITICACA.]
[Illustration: CLOISTERS OF DOMINICAN MONASTERY, CUZCO.]
Mozans, writing of the spot they held most sacred of all, says:
“It would be difficult to find any place in the world richer in
legends and traditions than is Lake Titicaca. Every cove and
inlet, every rock and island has its myth, and many of these
places were held in special veneration by the Incas for long
generations. This was especially true of two islands—Titicaca,
sacred to the Sun, and Coati, sacred to the Moon, the Sun’s
sister. What a fascination there was about these two islands!
Beholding the cradle and sanctuary of Inca civilization, it was
easy to fancy oneself a spectator of one of those long
processions of reed _balsas_” (boats) “conveying the children of
the Sun from the mainland to the sacred islands of their race,
where were the rich temples dedicated to their Sun-Father and
Moon-Mother. Adorned with gorgeous trappings of gold and
silver—royal colors—the Inca’s barge, manned by stalwart young
oarsmen, specially selected for this service, led the way.
Immediately following the Sphinxlike Inca came the members of
his court arrayed in gaudy vesture. Next to them were the
ministers of the temple and the officers of the army, gleaming
in barbaric attire. The rear of the procession was made up of
the humble tillers of the soil, who had gathered from all parts
to greet their idolized ruler and to swell the number of
worshipers congregated about the effigies of the Sun and Moon,
or in front of the sacred rock decked with richest tissues and
plates of burnished silver and gold....
“In these temples and palaces, according to the old chroniclers,
were immense treasures, rivaling those in the temples of Cuzco.
The riches in the temple of the Sun were especially great, for
‘here,’ writes Garcilaso, ‘all the vassals of the Inca offered
up much gold and silver and precious stones every year, as a
token of gratitude to the Sun for the two acts of grace that had
taken place on that spot. This temple had the same service as
that of Cuzco. There was said to be such quantity of gold and
silver heaped up in the island, besides what was worked for the
use of the temple, that the stories of the Indians concerning it
are more wonderful than credible. Father Blas Valera, one of the
earliest Spanish chroniclers, says that the Indian colonists,
called _Mitimaes_, who lived in Copocabana, declared that the
quantity of gold and silver heaped up as offerings was so great
that another temple might have been made of it, from the
foundations to the roof, without using any other materials. But
as soon as the Indians heard of the invasion of the country by
the Spaniards, and that they were seizing all the treasure they
could find, they threw the whole of it into the great lake.’”
VII
Fortunately for Pizarro, at the time he made his appearance on the
scene, it happened that these people were either still engaged in or had
only just terminated a civil war that had been brought on by an attempt
of Huascar, the then reigning Inca, to impose his will on his
half-brother, Atahualpa, a rebellious vassal. It appears that Huascar’s
father, the Inca Huayna Capac, having completed the subjugation of the
Caras and their brave allies in Ecuador, had found it necessary to
remain in Quito nearly all the rest of his life, to keep the inhabitants
in subjection and suppress revolts that frequently occurred. As a
political move, perhaps, he had married the daughter and heiress of the
defeated Shiri and by her had had a son. This was Atahualpa. As he, too,
had continued to live in Quito, he had come to be regarded rather as a
scion of the ancient Shiri dynasty than as a prince of an alien
conquering house.
And so when in 1525 Huayna Capac died, he left this northern kingdom to
Atahualpa and only the southern to Huascar, his eldest son of the full
Inca blood, born of his sister-wife; but, to preserve some sort of unity
in the empire, he commanded that Huascar, as the only legitimate heir,
should be paramount. Huascar, nevertheless, had declined to acquiesce in
any such virtual division of dominions that he regarded as his by right
of succession, and at the first opportunity had quarreled with Atahualpa
and invaded the territory apportioned to him. In the battles that
followed Atahualpa’s forces had been uniformly victorious, for, always
superior in prowess to the now more effete soldiery that had defeated
them in their former less organized state, years of Inca rule had taught
these northerners how to make better avail of their energy and courage.
Suffering enormous losses in every engagement, the forces of Huascar had
been driven farther and farther south, until at last, in spite of
reinforcements which, it is said, brought his army up to fully seventy
thousand, he was beaten before the walls of his capital and made
prisoner.
As soon as his capture had become known, what was left of his army had
dispersed, the city had surrendered, and Atahualpa, if we are to believe
the chroniclers, had taken a terrible revenge, first causing all
Huascar’s subjects that were of royal blood, and who could be found, to
be put to death, and afterward the captured officers who had fought for
him. His cruelty, Garcilaso de la Vega tells us, “was greater than that
of the Turks. Not content with the blood of his own two hundred
brothers, the sons of the great Huayna Capac, he passed on to drink that
of his uncles, nephews, and other relations, so that none of the blood
royal might escape, whether legitimate or not. They were all murdered in
different ways.... He ordered all the women and children” (of royal
blood) “to be assembled, of whatever age and condition, reserving only
those who were dedicated to the Sun in the convent of Cuzco. He ordered
that they should be killed outside the city, by little and little, and
by various cruel tortures, so that they might be long in dying.”
When Pizarro and his party reached Tumbez, Atahualpa, accompanied by a
small army, was at the baths near Cajamarca, a town on the Peruvian
plateau not far from the Ecuadorian boundary. It was to him there that
the report came that strangers had landed—strangers of a different
color, who had long hair on their chins and wore strange clothing and
armor, who had weapons different from any that had been seen in the land
and bestrode terrible monsters that carried them over the ground with
incredible speed. The effect of such startling news may be imagined.
Pizarro, however, after having fully informed himself respecting the
political status of affairs, thought he saw an opportunity to further
his ends by diplomacy and protested that his mission was a friendly one.
It would seem that Atahualpa must have realized that the strangers were
far more formidable than was indicated by their mere number, for he sent
his brother Titu to welcome them and make inquiries as to their desires
and the purpose of their visit. By him Pizarro, having first expressed
his thanks, sent a message to the effect that he would go at once to
Cajamarca and call on Atahualpa in person. What then occurred is thus
related by Dawson:
“On receiving Pizarro’s answer to his friendly message,
Atahualpa resolved to await the promised visit, apparently
suspecting no evil. The audacious Spaniard had, however,
conceived the design of capturing the victorious claimant of the
throne of the Incas, well knowing that in its actual distracted
condition the country would be left without a center about which
it could rally. Open war, no matter how overwhelming his first
victory might be, could hardly be ultimately successful.
Atahualpa, once safe at Cuzco or Quito, and surrounded by the
disciplined soldiers who had overthrown Huascar, a defensive
campaign might be undertaken in which Pizarro would find every
step toward either capital bitterly disputed. Hundreds of
thousands of Peruvians pouring up from the numberless provinces
of the empire would be thrown in a never ceasing succession of
armies against the little band of Spaniards and the latter would
infallibly be driven back to the coast by starvation and
fatigue, if not by defeat in the field.
“Apparently foolhardy, in fact Pizarro’s plan offered the only
chance of success. Never dreaming that such a step was in
contemplation, Atahualpa took no precautions. Leaving fifty-five
men at the little port of San Miguel in the Paita valley to
secure his retreat, Pizarro marched south with one hundred and
two foot soldiers, sixty-two horses, and two small cannon, two
hundred miles along the coast plain to a point opposite
Cajamarca, and ascended along an Inca military road, meeting a
friendly reception from the wondering natives, and supplied with
provisions by Atahualpa’s orders. On the 15th of September,
1532, he entered Cajamarca. He found an open square in the
middle of the town, surrounded by walls and solid stone
buildings, which he received permission to occupy as quarters.
From his camp outside Atahualpa sent word that on the following
day he would enter the town in state and receive the Spaniards.
“Marvelous good fortune favored Pizarro’s designs. The Indians
had furnished a trap all ready made, and now Atahualpa
deliberately walked into it. On the morning of the 16th the
Indian army broke camp and marched to Cajamarca, followed by the
Emperor, who was borne in a litter and surrounded by his
personal attendants, the great chiefs and the nobles belonging
to his own lineage.” (Those belonging to Huascar’s he had caused
to be killed.) “At sunset he entered the square, accompanied
only by these unarmed attendants and found Pizarro and a few
Spaniards awaiting him. The rest were hidden in the houses
around the square with their horses saddled, their breastplates
on, and musketry and cannon ready charged. From among the group
that surrounded Pizarro, stepped forward Friar Valverde and
approached the Inca monarch, who, reclining in a litter raised
high above the crowd on the shoulders of his attendants, waited
with dignity to hear what these strangers had to say.
“The priest advanced with a cross in one hand and a Bible in the
other and began a harangue which, clumsily translated by an
Indian boy, the Inca hardly understood. But in a few moments he
realized that this uncouth jargon was meant to convey an
arrogant demand that he acknowledge himself a vassal of Charles
V and submit to baptism. With haughty surprise, he threw down
the book Valverde tried to force into his hand. The priest
shouted: ‘Fall on, Castilians—I absolve you!’ and into the
helpless crowd burst a murderous fire from the doors of the
houses all around. Aghast and bewildered by this display of
powers which to them seemed necromantic, the survivors
nevertheless stood manfully to the attack of the mail-clad
horsemen who rode into the huddled masses, ferociously slashing
and slaughtering. The Indians strove desperately to drag the
Spaniards from the horses with their naked hands and interposed
a living wall of human flesh between the murderers and their
beloved sovereign. At length Pizarro’s own hands snatched
Atahualpa from the litter. The Indian soldiers outside, hearing
the firearms and the noise of the struggle, tried to force their
way into the square, but the Spanish musketry and cannon mowed
them down by hundreds and they fled before the charges of the
cavalry, dispersing in the twilight.”
Atahualpa was then confined in a small stone house adjoining the palace
of the Virgins of the Sun (the latter is now a convent, occupied by
Sisters of Charity), and every precaution possible under the
circumstances was taken to prevent his rescue. Pizarro’s next move in
the conquest was to murder him. But, in the meanwhile, he had suggested
in conversations with his prisoner that Huascar’s followers would
probably take advantage of the opportunity afforded by his capture to
reorganize their scattered forces and make an effort to regain the
throne; he had hinted, too, at the advisability of arbitration, and
Atahualpa had taken alarm and secretly ordered Huascar’s execution;
whereupon Pizarro had feigned the greatest indignation and had contrived
to frighten his victim into offering his famous ransom. “I will fill
this room with gold,” he said, “as high as I can reach, if only you will
liberate me.” (The room in which he was confined was 32 feet 9 inches
long, 20 feet 9 inches wide, and 10 feet 9 inches high.) Pizarro
accepted, a truce was agreed upon, Atahualpa ordered all preparations
for war on the Spaniards to be suspended, and arranged for the
collection of the gold. When the amount stipulated for was at last
assembled, it was found to have a value equivalent to more than
seventeen millions of dollars in our currency. Some historians say much
more. Dawson, for instance, says it was more than twenty-two millions.
One-fifth was sent to the royal treasury in Spain and the rest was
divided among the adventurers. The share of the private soldiers even
was large enough to make each of them rich for life.
Nevertheless, Pizarro had not performed his part of the agreement by
setting his prisoner at liberty. Whether or not he had ever intended to
can only be conjectured. It is clear only that, even if he did enter
into the agreement in bad faith, as was charged by the chroniclers, he
was afterward confronted by a problem which, in the opinion of recent
writers, justified his perfidious behavior. Quizquiz, the general whose
ability had enabled Atahualpa so often to defeat his late rival, was
known to have taken the field with a large body of troops. Could a man
such as Atahualpa had proven himself to be, released and at the head of
a great army once more, be expected to permit these foreigners, who had
so treacherously captured him and slain his attendants while on a
friendly visit, to depart in peace with their loot? It did not seem
likely. On the other hand, retreat through a then hostile country with
the prisoner still in custody was out of the question, and, if he should
continue to hold him in Cajamarca, Quizquiz, who had only been awaiting
the word, would no longer hesitate to attack.
No; a bold _coup de main_ of some sort was imperative. If Atahualpa
could be gotten rid of altogether, for instance, there was a chance, in
the confusion that must follow, to reach Cuzco and form an alliance with
the partisans of the murdered Inca, with a view to ousting the usurper’s
party and restoring the throne to the legitimate line. Such a chance had
only to exist to be appreciated by one so clear-sighted and audacious as
Pizarro. It was his life and his friends’—and, of course, the Indian
treasure—against only the life of Atahualpa, and the prisoner’s fate was
sealed. There was a mock trial, wherein he was convicted of the murder
of Huascar, conspiracy against the Spaniards, and other high crimes and
misdemeanors, and then he was strangled to death in the public
square—strangled rather than burned, says Hawthorne, as an act of grace,
in consideration of his having professed at the last the Christian
faith.
Some weeks before this, Almagro had joined the Conquistadores at
Cajamarca with reinforcements that brought the Spanish force up to about
five hundred. As soon as Atahualpa had been disposed of, the commander,
with all his men, began his advance, by forced marches, on Cuzco, an
advantageous position near which he was fortunate enough to secure
without having encountered Quizquiz, though some of the cavalry under De
Soto were engaged by a detachment on the way; all efforts to interpose
the main body of the Indian army were frustrated by their speed.
However, though “the true heir to the crown was a second son of Huayna
Capac, named Manco, a legitimate brother of the unfortunate Huascar,”
says Prescott, “Pizarro had too little knowledge of the disposition of
this prince and he made no scruple to prefer Toparca, a young brother of
Atahualpa and to present him to the Indian nobles as their future Inca.”
So, to make assurance doubly sure, he did not, before he set out,
announce his purpose of driving off the enemies of the rightful heir,
but took the boy with him, “attended by a numerous retinue of vassals
and moving in as much state and ceremony as if in possession of regal
power.” Before they reached Cuzco, much to Pizarro’s chagrin, the boy
fell sick and died.
But the misfortune was soon repaired, for, sure enough, when the
adventurers went into camp outside the walls of the capital, no less a
personage than Manco Capac II himself called on the commander in person
and proposed the hoped-for alliance; and, just a year from the day he
had taken Cajamarca, he entered Cuzco as the protector of the real Inca,
whose coronation he permitted to be celebrated with all the splendor of
the ancient rites. The Indians of central Peru hailed him as their
deliverer from the tyranny of the usurper. Manco Capac, for his part,
soon assembled a great army, and, with the help of some of the
Spaniards, decisively defeated Quizquiz and drove him back to Ecuador.
VIII
But there was a sad awakening in store for the Inca on his return from
that victorious campaign. He had permitted these allies of
his—rapacious, recklessly daring as they were, and unscrupulous, cruel,
and fanatical in their attitude toward infidels—to obtain a foothold in
the very capital of the empire. And what manner of man was it of whom
the great body of his subjects was made up? He was brave,
yes—physically; he could fight, and conquer, too, when ably led, but
also he was morally utterly irresponsible, “a slave,” as Mozans puts it,
“utterly devoid of energy and individual initiative,” accustomed to look
to the ruling class for guidance, to regard the Inca “with superstitious
awe, as a being of a superior order.” Centuries of despotic government,
rigid religious ritual, communal ownership of property, and labor, not
for himself but for the commonwealth, had robbed him of all ambition and
instilled into him the habit of accepting with patient resignation
whatever fate might decree.
And now, after all these centuries of complaisance, what must have been
his mental attitude at the end of such a succession of events? First,
the late legitimate Inca Huascar, omnipotent as he was supposed to have
been, directly descended from the Sun-God and Moon-Mother themselves,
had been overthrown and put to death by an illegitimate rival. Then that
rival, also of the Inca blood, had in his turn been captured in the very
face of his army, and put to death despite another and much greater
army, by a little band of mysterious strangers, against whose mail-clad
bodies the battle-axes and spears of the Indians had been
powerless—strangers who had made fierce, “fleet-footed monsters”
(horses) subservient to their will and who carried terrible weapons that
went off with a noise like thunder and vomited fire and smoke, and with
which they killed their enemies before they could come near enough to
get in a blow. Had not these invincible strangers, and apparently by
supernatural means, overcome even the legitimate Inca’s conqueror?
Surely, then, they must be some still superior order of beings, sent by
the Sun-God to accomplish some wonderful purpose. Therefore they must be
obeyed. Pizarro himself could not have created a people more suited to
the carrying out of his designs had he had the power.
Probably realizing this, he promptly abandoned all subterfuge. As a
consideration for the help he had been given in the campaign against
Quizquiz, the Inca had been induced by stress of circumstances to
acknowledge the supremacy of the King of Spain. It was only as a matter
of form, he had been led to believe, but Pizarro now exacted the fullest
compliance. As Adelantado by appointment of the overlord, he established
a municipal council to govern the city, transformed the great temple
into a church, made use of certain of the public buildings as officers’
quarters and barracks for the soldiers, seized all the treasure that was
to be found—even the private dwellings and tombs were searched and
stripped of it—and required the authorities to supply troops and
carriers to accompany the exploring parties he sent out. “Pizarro, on
entering Cuzco, had issued an order forbidding any soldier to offer
violence to the dwellings of the inhabitants,” says Prescott:
“But the palaces were numerous and the troops lost no time in
plundering them of their contents as well as in despoiling the
religious edifices. The interior decorations supplied them with
considerable booty. They stripped off the jewels and rich
ornaments that garnished the royal mummies in the temple of
Coricancha. Indignant at the concealment of their treasures,
they put the inhabitants, in some instances, to the torture and
endeavored to extort from them a confession of their hiding
places. They invaded the repose of the sepulchers, in which the
Peruvians often deposited their valuable effects, and compelled
the grave to give up its dead. No place was left unexplored by
the rapacious conquerors, and they occasionally stumbled on a
mine of wealth that rewarded their labors. In a cavern near the
city they found a number of vases, richly embossed with figures
of serpents, locusts, and other animals. Among the spoils were
four golden llamas and ten or twelve statues of women, as large
as life, some of gold, others of silver, ‘which merely to see,’
says one of the conquerors, with some naïveté, ‘was truly a
great satisfaction.’... The magazines were stored with curious
commodities—richly tinted robes of cotton and feather work, gold
sandals and slippers of the same material, for the women, and
dresses composed entirely of beads of gold.’... In one place,
for example, they met with ten planks or bars of solid silver,
each piece twenty feet in length, one foot in breadth, and two
or three inches thick. They were intended to decorate the
dwelling of an Inca noble.... The amount of booty is stated
variously by those present at the division of it. According to
some, it considerably exceeded the ransom of Atahualpa.”
Fully appreciating also the desirability of establishing a capital of
his own at some strategic point much more easily accessible from Panama,
Pizarro made a careful study of routes and possible sites and finally
chose one beside the river Rimac, on a fertile, elevated plain near the
base of the Cordillera, only about three leagues from one of the best
harbors on the coast, and at the point where the Inca military road
began its ascent to the plateau. Here, only about a year after he
entered Cuzco, he founded _La Ciudad de los Reyes_ (the City of the
Kings), so named in honor of the Three Kings or Wise Men of the East,
because their feast day, Epiphany, occurred at that season of the year.
Soon it became known as Lima. “Before the erection of a single house was
permitted,” he had a plan drawn up, Mozans tells us, providing for large
squares and streets unusually wide, “and in making this plan he had in
view, not the small number (only sixty-nine) of those who were then
prepared to make their homes there, but the future greatness of ‘The
Empire City of the New World.’ Moreover, as the city had to be in God
and for God and in His name—_en Dios y por Dios y en su nombre_—to use
his own words, work was first begun on the church, which was named
_Nuestra Señora de la Asunción_. The first stone and the first pieces of
timber were put in place by the hands of the Adelantado himself, who
wished, like the other Conquistadores, to emphasize his zeal for
religion and his devotion to _La Santissima Virgen, Madre de Dios_.”
In the meanwhile his brother Hernando had gone to Spain with the King’s
fifth of the loot, and on the way had spread the news. Once more all was
excitement on the Isthmus. It was not long before Pizarro’s forces were
augmented by three or four hundred soldiers that had been led into
Ecuador by Pedro de Alvarado, Governor of Guatemala, who consented to
abandon his expedition when persuaded by Almagro, who went at once to
meet him, that he was trespassing on Pizarro’s preserves, for which act
of grace the Spanish King added the province of Honduras to Alvarado’s
jurisdiction, and Almagro gave him a large sum of money; and, when
communication was established between Lima and Panama by sea,
adventurers of every degree began to flock to the new city as they had
before to Mexico and Central America.
This enabled Almagro, with an army of nearly six hundred Spaniards and
fifteen thousand Indians, the latter under the command of one of the
Inca’s brothers, to make an excursion into Chile for purposes of
exploration, for it had been agreed that he should have the southern
half of the territory they might conquer and Pizarro the northern.
Sebastian de Benalcázar, another of Pizarro’s lieutenants, went to
Ecuador with a force of two hundred Spaniards and a large Indian
contingent and completed the defeat of Atahualpa’s adherents, took
possession of Quito and founded the city of Guayaquil at the mouth of
the Guayas River, which provided for that country, too, independent
access from the sea.
[Illustration: CATHEDRAL AT LIMA, BUILT BY PIZARRO.]
Also by this time any illusions the Inca may have had as to the
continuance of the ancient dynasty under the protection of the Spaniards
were dispelled. By this time even his complaisant subjects must have
discovered that these superhuman deliverers, as they had thought them,
were mere men—or else, if they were indeed a different order of beings,
that order, they must have concluded, was infernal rather than divine.
The sovereignty of the Inca had become little more than a fiction. As in
the islands of the Caribbean and elsewhere, the fairest lands in the
country had been divided into vast estates and great numbers of natives
practically reduced to slavery and set to work them for the benefit of
their new masters. With respect to their treatment in general, though
Pizarro himself seems to have been guilty of few acts of wanton cruelty,
he either could not, or did not if he could, restrain the oppression of
them by his followers. If their behavior was not quite as atrocious as
that of other Spaniards toward the tribes in the north, there was an
utter lack of considerateness in it and disregard of their property and
rights that galled even them.
Roused at last, the Inca took advantage of the opportunity afforded by
the scattering of the Spanish force and made his escape from Cuzco,
where Hernando Pizarro and his younger brothers Juan and Gonzalo were in
command, and, finding his subjects ripe for revolt, had no difficulty in
raising two large armies. One he sent against the Adelantado, who was in
Lima; with the other he returned to Cuzco and took the great citadel of
Sacsahuaman, overlooking the town, and began a siege that was to last
more than six months, and during which Juan Pizarro was killed in an
attempt to recapture the citadel. The army that went to the coast was
ambushed and defeated by the Spaniards and their local adherents before
ever it reached Lima. All that what was left of it could do was to
prevent the sending of reinforcements to Cuzco despite the desperate
straits to which the Spanish force there was reduced. Pizarro was
himself compelled to send to the Isthmus for help. Just before it was
too late, however, he managed to get away two hundred and fifty men to
the relief of his brothers, and just at that juncture also, Almagro, on
his way back from Chile, turned up with his followers, and, caught
between Cuzco and these two new detachments of the enemy, the Inca was
overwhelmed and concluded to retire into the wild region of Vilcabamba,
where the Spaniards could not follow with any hope of success, and there
held out for some years. But with his retreat all that remained of the
Inca dominion came to an end. There were a few other attempts, but
neither he nor his descendants ever succeeded in recovering the throne.
As for Almagro, he had had a frightful experience during his excursion
into Chile and had met with nothing but disappointment and disaster. The
route unwittingly chosen had been over the bleak Bolivian plateaux and
across the mountains where the Cordillera reaches its highest, at a
season when the passes are buried in snow and swept by furious storms,
and his men had perished by thousands, some of the best of his Spaniards
among the number. When he had at last made his way to the beautiful
central valley between the Cordillera and the coast range and down to
the river Maule, he had found nothing of the opulence of Peru, but only
a poor but brave, warlike people who in a fierce battle had succeeded in
checking his advance. And now, disgusted with this country of his to the
south, he returned and made claim to Cuzco as being within his half of
the conquered territory and demanded of the Pizarros its surrender. On
their refusal, he promptly carried it by assault, made Hernando and
Gonzalo his prisoners, and went out to meet the troops that had been
sent to their relief by the Adelantado and defeated them.
And then, as Hawthorne puts it, “had he cut off the heads of both of
these gentlemen on the spot, he would have saved himself years of
struggle, with a death on the scaffold at the end of them. But he was
not of the right fiber for the work that was laid upon him; he was not
what the English would call ‘thorough’”; he temporized and listened to
his wily associate. “Civil disturbances went on for eleven years,”
continues Hawthorne, “‘in the course of which,’ as Professor Fiske
remarks, ‘all the principal actors were swept off the stage as in some
cheap blood-and-thunder tragedy. It is not worth while to recount the
petty incidents of the struggle—how Almagro was at one moment ready to
submit to arbitration and the next refused to abide by the decision; how
Hernando was set at liberty and Gonzalo escaped; how Almagro’s able
lieutenant, Rodrigo de Orgoñez, won a victory over Pizarro’s men at
Abancay but was totally defeated by Hernando Pizarro at Las Salinas and
perished on the field; how at last Hernando had Almagro tried for
sedition and summarily executed. On which side was the more violence and
treachery it would be hard to say. Indeed, as Sir Arthur Helps observes,
“in this melancholy struggle it is difficult to find anybody whom the
reader can sympathize much with.”’”
Then, once more Francisco Pizarro entered Cuzco in triumph, this time
wearing an ermine robe that had been presented to him by Hernando
Cortés, and again he devoted himself to organizing his government and
extending the Spanish dominion over the distant provinces. The number of
his compatriots had increased to eight thousand. Gonzalo was appointed
Governor of Quito, from whence he strayed to make a disastrous journey
down the eastern slope of the Andes in search of the mythical Eldorado,
which he did not find, but which resulted in the discovery of and voyage
down the Amazon, from the mountains to the sea, by Francisco de
Orellana, his second in command. Hernando went to Bolivia to search for
the mines from which the Incas were supposed to have gotten their
wealth, a labor that was rewarded by the discovery of Potosí, which has
yielded more than two billions of ounces of silver—_and silver and gold
were of equal value in Europe in those days_. Pedro de Valdivia
undertook the conquest of Chile and Alonso de Alvarado, one of the most
generous and humane of the Conquistadores, that of the mountains of
northern Peru. The Adelantado himself traveled over most of the empire,
founding cities at strategic points in the more populous and fertile
valleys, among them Arequipa, and here in Bolivia as in the country
about Cuzco he divided the most desirable of the lands into
_repartimientos_ and apportioned them among his favorites.
In the meanwhile Almagro’s adherents, helpless and impoverished, were
burning with envy of their more fortunate comrades, who were, by favor
of the successful rival, rapidly enriching themselves with Indian
tribute and gold and silver taken from the mines. At last, unable to
stand it, they sent the news of their leader’s illegal execution to
Spain, with a demand for justice against the Pizarros. The rest of the
story is told by Dawson as follows:
“The Spanish government was not unwilling to secure a selfish
advantage from the disputes among the original conquerors and
sent out Vaca de Castro to investigate and report. When the
Royal Commissioner arrived at Panama early in 1541, the latest
news from Peru was tranquilizing. Pizarro was busily engaged in
enlarging and beautifying Lima, in regulating the revenue and
the administration, in distributing ‘_encomiendas_,’ and in
restraining the rapacity of his Spaniards. However, Lima was
full of the ‘men of Chile,’ as Almagro’s adherents were called,
all bitter enemies of the Governor. They passed him in the
street without saluting, and their attitude was so menacing that
Pizarro received repeated warnings and was urged to banish them.
Absolutely incapable of personal fear, magnanimous when his
passions had not been aroused, he only replied: ‘Poor fellows.
They have had trouble enough. We will not molest them.’ He even
sent for Juan de la Rada—the guide, counselor, and guardian of
the young half-breed who was Almagro’s heir—and condescended to
try to argue him into a better frame of mind, saying, at
parting: ‘Ask me frankly what you desire;’ but the iron had
entered too deeply into Rada’s soul. He had already organized a
conspiracy to assassinate Pizarro.
“At noon, on Sunday, the 26th of June, 1541, Pizarro was sitting
at dinner in his house with twenty gentlemen, among them his
half-brother Francisco Alcantara, and several of the most
illustrious knights who had taken part in the conquest. The
great door into the public square was lying wide open. The
conspirators, to the number of a score, had assembled in a house
opposite. All of a sudden they rushed into the square fully
armed and carrying their swords naked in their hands. A young
page standing in front of the Governor’s house saw them and ran
back shouting: ‘To arms! All the men of Chile are coming to kill
the Marquis, our lord.’ The guests rose in alarm from the table
and all but half a dozen fled to the windows and dropped into
the garden. Pizarro threw off his gown and snatched up a sword,
while the valiant Francisco Chaves stepped forward through the
ante-room to dispute the passage at the staircase. The ferocious
crowd of murderers rushed up and laid him dead on the stairs.
Alcantara checked them for a few moments with his single sword,
but was soon forced back into the dining-room and fell pierced
with many thrusts. The old lion shouted from the inside: ‘What
shameful thing is this! Why do you wish to kill me?’ and, with a
cloak wrapped round one arm and his sword grasped in the other
hand, he rushed forward to meet his assassins and strike a blow
to avenge his brother before he himself should fall. Only two
faithful young pages remained at his side. Though over seventy
years of age, his practiced sword laid two of the crowd dead
before he was surrounded. The two boys were butchered, and, in
the mêlée, Pizarro received a mortal wound in his throat, and,
falling to the floor, made the sign of the cross on the boards”
(with his blood) “and kissed it. One of the ruffians had
snatched up an earthen water jar and with this pounded out the
old man’s brains as he lay prostrate, disdaining to ask for
mercy.
“Thus perished by the sword this great man of blood. The measure
he had meted out to Atahualpa and Almagro was measured to him
again. He who had shamelessly broken his oath times without
number to gain his own high ends was slain by treacherous,
cowardly assault. But his great vices should not blind us to his
greater virtues. Courageous, indomitable, far-sighted,
patriotic, large-minded, public-spirited, possessing a God-given
instinct to see straight into the center of a problem and the
energy to strike at the psychological moment, he was equally
great as an explorer, a soldier, a general, a diplomatist, and
an administrator. Even his shocking moral delinquencies lose
something of their turpitude when we consider the greatness of
his aims and the baseness of his origin.... But that his real
nature was magnanimous, generous, and truthful is proven by the
many instances in which he forgave his enemies and kept his word
to his serious loss, and that his ambition was not too sordid is
shown by his self-sacrificing devotion to the public good during
the later years of his life. Formed in nature’s grandest mold,
circumstances and environment had much deformed his character,
but the original lineaments are plain.”
Pizarro thus disposed of, young Almagro assumed the governorship and
transferred his headquarters to Cuzco, where his father’s party was
stronger than at Lima, and the Royal Commissioner, appointed Governor by
the King, sailed from Panama, got together an army with the help of
Pizarro’s friends, and proceeded to Guamanga, to which point the usurper
was advancing with his forces from Cuzco. The battle that ensued was
more hotly contested than any that had theretofore been fought. Of the
twelve hundred Spaniards engaged, less than five hundred escaped death
or wounds. Almagro’s troops were practically annihilated. Two days
afterward those of the Adelantado’s murderers who had survived were
executed in the public square and young Almagro himself, who had
succeeded in making his escape, was recaptured and put to death. Then
for the time being Vaca de Castro administered the office without
further opposition.
Before this, the great-hearted Padre Bartolomé de las Casas, the
Indians’ indefatigable champion and friend, had written his famous book
exposing the horrors of their treatment and had so successfully appealed
to the King in their behalf that it had been decided to abolish native
slavery and gradually do away with the system of _repartimientos_ and
_encomiendas_ (allotments of land and Indians); and, since manifestly
such a course would result in trouble with the Conquistadores, it seemed
best to appoint a viceroy who would not be subject to their influence
and invest him with absolute power. This dangerous office was bestowed
upon Blasco Nuñez de Vela, whose integrity, piety, and rigid obedience
to the King had already gained for him high positions. Arriving in Peru
early in 1544, he promulgated the new laws abolishing personal service
by the Indians, providing that _encomiendas_ might not be sold or
descend by inheritance, and, worst of all, that those granted to
participants in the war between Pizarro and Almagro should lapse. To set
the example, in his journey down the coast, the Viceroy sternly insisted
that no Indian be compelled to carry a burden against his will.
To the Spaniards this seemed an outrageous violation of the natural
order of things. The whole fabric of their fortunes was based on
enforced Indian labor. Without it how could they work their mines and
estates or transport their goods? In the general dismay, armed
resistance was decided on, and Gonzalo Pizarro was called from his
estate in southern Bolivia and induced to take the lead. He seized the
artillery and stores at Cuzco and was soon at the head of some four
hundred desperate men, well armed and provided. “The Viceroy retreated
north beyond Quito to Popayan,” says Dawson—
“But, being joined by more recruits, rashly returned to the
neighborhood of Quito to offer battle. He was defeated and
killed. Pizarro went back to Lima, while his lieutenant,
Carbajal, hunted down and put to death every loyalist who
remained under arms in southern Peru. Gonzalo’s administration
lasted three years. They were golden ones to the Spanish
adventurers. The marvelous silver mines of Potosí and the gold
washings of southern Ecuador were discovered. _Encomiendas_ were
lavishly granted; the Indians were sent back to their fields;
the mining industry began that marvelous development which soon
made Peru the treasure box of the world and Potosí the synonym
for limitless wealth. But the dazzling sunlight of prosperity
was dimmed by the shadow of Pizarro’s scaffold slowly creeping
across the Atlantic and down the coast. His chief lieutenants,
knowing that they had sinned past forgiveness, urged him to
declare himself King of Peru, but he was at once too proud and
too patriotic to fling away his right to die a loyal Spaniard.
Philip, the leaden-eyed, close-mouthed despot, was regent of
Spain. Bitterly chagrined that the stream of Peruvian gold had
ceased to flow into the royal treasury, his vindictive heart had
no mercy for the gallant soldier whose sword had helped win the
riches now temporarily diverted. He selected a man after his own
heart—Pedro de la Gasca, an ugly, deformed little priest,
hypocritically humble, though astute and untiring, whose success
as an inquisitor was a guarantee that he would be as pitiless
and cruel as even Philip could wish.”
This man, says Hawthorne, was—
“A real diplomatist, with a tongue capable of making the worse
appear the better reason and of winning support from the ranks
of the enemy. He was endowed with official powers, but chiefly
with brains and with the tongue aforesaid. His first step was to
repeal such parts of the abolition laws as were hardest upon the
colonists, and thereby he won their favor. Not until after these
good news had been promulgated did Gasca venture to leave Panama
for Peru. The captains of Pizarro’s fleet had been despatched to
Panama to meet and watch the new emissary and either stop or
bribe him, as might seem most expedient. But allowance had not
been made for that tongue. Gasca wagged it with such good effect
that they thought perhaps they were not Pizarro’s captains after
all; at all events they put their fleet at his disposal and to
Peru he came, landing at Tumbez in June, 1547.... Captain Diego
de Centeno, acting for Gasca, captured Cuzco, but was defeated
in the battle of Huarina. Hereupon Pizarro pressed on, nothing
doubting—and indeed one can hardly blame him for his confidence,
since it lay not in human foresight to anticipate the magical
seductiveness of this Gasca’s conversation. The armies met, but
Gasca did but open his mouth and Pizarro’s soldiers began
deserting by troops. The thing was inexplicable; it was uncanny.
We would call him a magnetic man nowadays, and Pizarro’s men
were the iron filings. Even those who stood by him could not be
induced to fight. By great efforts fifteen men contrived to get
themselves slain, and then Pizarro, losing patience, got on his
horse, rode over to Gasca’s camp, and gave himself up.”
With his execution, Spain’s conquest of Peru was complete.
IX
In 1525, at the foot of the great outlying mass of mountains on the
peninsula that lies between the Gulfs of Maracaibo and Darien, and not
far from where the Magdalena River empties into the Caribbean Sea, the
town of Santa Marta had been founded—the first Spanish settlement in
Colombia beyond the Isthmus. It was nothing more than a slave station
for a time, from whence kidnaping parties made raids into the country
round about and captured natives to sell to the gold miners in Española.
Real attempts at colonization were not begun until Pedro de Heredia
founded Cartagena, farther west, in 1533; but it was from these points
that the explorations were undertaken that led to the discovery of the
next great stores of gold and also to fresh, and this time seemingly
trustworthy, affirmations of the truth of the story told by the Indians
of the Isthmus, of the king the Spaniards called _El Dorado_ (the Gilded
Man), in whose country the rivers were said to run over sands of silver,
where the palaces were of gold, with doors and columns studded with
precious stones and the king bathed in aromatic essences and covered his
body with gold dust.
[Illustration: PIZARRO’S PALACE, LIMA—NOW THE GOVERNMENT BUILDING. IT
WAS HERE THAT THE GREAT CONQUISTADOR WAS ASSASSINATED.]
Heredia had found that the hills south of Cartagena contained profitable
gold washings and had learned from the Indians of a region called
Zenufana back in the mountains of the interior where the deposits were
more valuable still, and this story, having proven true, had brought
about the conquest of the rich valley of the Cauca and the development
of mines that have yielded hundreds of millions in gold. The shares,
even of Heredia’s men in the first outcroppings, are declared by the
chroniclers to have been greater than those of the followers of Pizarro
in the ransom of the Inca. And, at about the same time, Pizarro’s
enterprising lieutenant, Sebastian de Benalcázar, the conqueror of
Quito, had continued north and fought his way through the warlike,
semi-civilized tribes that inhabited the high plateaux around Pasto to
the lower country now known as Popayan, where the Cauca gathers its
headwaters, and, in rapid succession, had overcome the tribes that
opposed his progress until he had met the expedition from Cartagena,
after which he had gone back to Peru.
His purpose was to return and undertake the conquest of the region of
the upper Magdalena and the rich Indian communities on the broad
table-land on top of the eastern Cordillera; but, before he could set
out, an expedition from Santa Marta, under the command of the gallant
young Gonzalo Jiminez de Quesada—ranked by many as the greatest of the
Conquistadores after Cortés and Pizarro—had forestalled him. Quesada too
had heard the stories of El Dorado and had been directed to a lake
called Guatavita, two miles high in the mountains, that was supposed to
be in the country over which El Dorado ruled, and also the dwelling
place of a powerful goddess to whom the people offered jewels and gold
by throwing them in the water. “They had a legend,” says Hawthorne—
“To the effect that the Goddess of the Lake had been the wife of
a former chief who had thrown herself into the lake to escape a
whipping, and, like the maidens of Greek mythology, had been
made one of the immortals. Pilgrims came from afar to add their
offerings of gold and emeralds to the divinity. At every
installation of a chief there was an imposing ceremony. First
marched a squad of naked men painted with red ocher, as
mourners, then men adorned with gold and emeralds, with feather
headdresses, then warriors in jaguar skins. These shouted and
made an uproar on horns, pipes, and conch shells. Black-robed
priests accompanied the procession, with white crosses on their
breasts, and in the rear came the nobles, bearing the new chief
on a barrow hung with gold disks. He was naked, his body
rendered sticky with resinous gums and then smeared over with
gold dust. Having reached the shore of the lake, he got on a
barge and was rowed to the center, where he dived into the water
and washed off his gold, while the assemblage on the shore
shouted with joy and flung their offerings into the transparent
abode of the Goddess.”
This, it seems, had once been true, but, although the Indians of the
lowlands may not have known it, the custom had ceased to exist long
before the coming of the Spaniards. Many of the bravest were lured to
their death in the vain quest, not only in the Colombian Andes but in
the valleys of the Orinoco and Amazon, and even south along the Paraguay
and Paraná, before the discovery was made that the custom was a thing of
the past.
In the belief that it still existed, therefore, Quesada and his company
of nearly eight hundred men had left Santa Marta sometime in 1536, and,
harassed by bands of savages, forced their way, with almost
inconceivable difficulty, through the wild forests and undergrowth,
along the foothills bordering the Magdalena and up the steep side of the
Cordillera to the delightful series of plateaux which were then, as they
are yet, the populous heart of the country and the principal seat of her
wealth and culture. In the continual fights with the Indians and from
starvation and fatigue, three-fourths of the company had died, but here
the survivors found themselves at last in a beautiful, fertile region,
where the climate is perfect and all the products of the temperate zone
grow luxuriantly, and where the inhabitants, the Chibchas, had reached a
state of civilization not much inferior to that of the Aztecs of Mexico
and the Caras of Ecuador. Quesada, after having subdued them, had
founded Bogotá near the site of the Chibcha capital, on the 7th of
August, 1538.
Later the same year, to his dismay, Benalcázar, who had come down the
Magdalena from Pasto, in the opposite direction, reached this same
plateau, and, a few days later, to the confusion of both, another
expedition, under the command of Nicolaus Federmann, which had started
from Coro in Venezuela, crossed the mountains south of Maracaibo,
continued in that direction along the _llanos_ (plains) at the eastern
base of the Cordillera and ascended at that point, also put in an
appearance. Thus these three adventurers, believing they had almost
reached the goal for which many were yet to search, found themselves
simultaneously in the very neighborhood of the former domain of the
gilded chiefs, but each confronted with the prospect of losing all that
he had toiled so hard for unless he could overcome his rivals.
What was to be done? Undoubtedly Quesada had the right to possession by
virtue of his prior discovery and conquest, but the other two made claim
on plausible grounds, and he had not been commissioned by the King. With
his depleted force he could not hope to defeat their forces combined.
Besides, as all realized, if they should fight, there would probably not
be enough of the men left to hold the country against the natives, who
would only be emboldened by such a dissension. So when it was found that
Quesada had already gathered in all the spoils in sight—which consisted
of several thousand emeralds and gold vases and ornaments that made a
pile so high that a man on horseback could be concealed behind
it—Benalcázar and Federmann allowed themselves to be persuaded to accept
shares in the loot and submit to the King’s arbitration their respective
claims to the country. Soon afterward the three captains set out for
Spain in the same ship, leaving Quesada’s brother in command. None of
them ever returned. Federmann and Benalcázar were censured for exceeding
the authority given them by their superiors and undertaking conquests on
their own account, and, instead of appointing Quesada Adelantado, the
King sent over another governor with considerable reinforcements, after
which the process of assimilation and settlement went on about as it was
going on in Peru.
X
Very different was the experience of Pedro de Valdivia in Chile. Unlike
these other adventurers, when he set out it was not in the expectation
of finding any great store of gold, since Almagro had reported that the
inhabitants were poor, but with the intention of conquering the country
and converting it into a province of Peru. In accomplishing only a part
of this purpose, he was to have a far more difficult task, had he but
known it, and many more Spanish lives were to be sacrificed, than in all
the other conquests put together. It had already been discovered by
Almagro, however, that as far south as he had gone, the natives were
subjects of the Inca and that their civilization and system of
irrigation and agriculture had been brought to almost as high a
standard. He had advanced down the great central valley as far as the
river Maule, finding everywhere a population as dense, probably, as that
which exists to-day, and had met with little resistance, probably
because of the presence in his party of the brother of the Inca, until
he reached the boundary of the empire and encountered the independent
tribes beyond, and there met his reverse.
As a consequence, misled by this favorable experience with the northern
tribes and his own with the easily conquered natives of Peru, Valdivia
took with him, besides his Indian auxiliaries, only about two hundred
Spaniards and a number of women belonging to their families. He soon
found that, since they had learned of the execution of Huascar and
Atahualpa and that the new Inca, Manco Capac, was little more than a
mere puppet of Pizarro’s, the disposition even of these northern tribes
had changed; that they now regarded themselves as released from their
vassalage. He found also that, although they all spoke the same language
and appeared to belong to the same race, they still maintained their
tribal organizations, each with its own Cacique and entirely distinct
from the others; that the Inca socialistic system had not been adopted,
and that individually they were democratic, resentful of encroachments
on their liberty, and self-reliant. Hardly had he entered their country
when his troubles began. To this second invasion, these people, who had
only looked askance at Almagro, now promptly showed their hostility.
Their lack of efficient military organization and concert of action made
it easy, however, to overcome what resistance they could offer on the
spur of the moment, and Valdivia succeeded in pushing on for several
hundred miles until he came to the section of the valley through which
flows the river Mapocho.
There, fascinated doubtless by the gorgeousness of the environment, he
selected a site at the river side, at the base of an isolated hill
(called Santa Lucia), in the midst of the broad plain that lies between
the two great mountain ranges, two thousand feet above the level of the
sea, and founded the city of Santiago, which has ever since remained the
capital. Following Pizarro’s example, among the first buildings he
caused to be erected were the Cathedral and Bishop’s house, and
afterward, and only just in time to save the colony from annihilation,
he fortified Santa Lucia, for the town itself was soon attacked by an
overwhelming force of Indians and half the houses burned to the ground
before they could be driven off with the help of an exploring party that
opportunely returned. This was only one of many such vicissitudes, in
the course of which, so beset were the invaders and so reduced did their
number and the health of the survivors become by privations and
fighting, that all but Valdivia were for abandoning the conquest and
making a dash for Peru.
Mutiny was only prevented by the discovery of gold in the mountains near
by and the arrival of reinforcements from Lima. After that he was
enabled to found the town of Coquimbo on the coast about two hundred and
fifty miles north of the capital, and visit Peru to arrange for the
sending of more colonists and supplies. While there he assisted in the
suppression of Gonzalo Pizarro’s revolt, and had no difficulty in
inducing a large body of adventurers to go back with him, for Lima now
was swarmed with men who were eager enough to win lands and slaves or
take their chance of making their fortunes in the mines. “With their
help,” says Dawson, “the conquest and settlement of all Chile as far
south as the Maule was effectually completed. The land was apportioned
among the cavaliers, each becoming a sort of feudal baron, and in effect
creating a landed aristocracy which has continued to rule the country to
the present day.”
In 1544, Valdivia founded Valparaiso, the seaport of the capital, and
rebuilt Coquimbo, which had been taken and burned by the neighboring
Indians during his absence in Peru. He then devoted several years to
making good his conquest and firmly establishing the colony, and in 1550
turned his attention to the country south of the Maule. Between the
Maule and the Bio-bio were the Promaucians and their kindred tribes, and
south of the Bio-bio was a confederacy composed of tribes, also related
by blood and language, which inhabited the forests and mountains and
lake region for a stretch of two hundred miles. Chief among these were
the Araucanians—the one unconquered aboriginal race in the new world,
the one aboriginal race in America, North or South, that never was
conquered by Europeans, the one race that checked the victorious march
of the Spaniards and compelled them, after more than a hundred years of
almost incessant warfare, to acknowledge their independence and accept
the Bio-bio as the southern boundary of the Spanish possessions—not
warfare of the usual desultory, treacherous Indian sort, but warfare
abounding in formal campaigns and sieges and pitched battles, in which
large armies were engaged, in numbers often evenly matched.
Inferiorly armed with clubs, spears, and bows and arrows, their bodies
protected only by leather cuirasses, they met the Spaniards and their
native auxiliaries in open field and charged and fought them hand to
hand, and defeated them too in many a Homeric fray in spite of the steel
armor and swords of the Conquistadores and their cavalry, artillery, and
firearms. Inspired by admiration, a chivalrous Castilian, the
soldier-poet Alonso de Ercilla, who was himself in some of the fights,
has told the first part of the story in his historical epic in
thirty-seven cantos—the story of how their lion-hearted chief,
Caupolican, undismayed by defeat in the first encounter, persisted until
he had destroyed an army of the invaders and driven the survivors back
to Santiago; how, when wounded and helpless, he was captured at last and
underwent torture and death with the stoicism of a Mohawk; how his wife,
indignant at his having permitted himself to be taken alive, ran to the
scaffold and threw their baby at his feet, crying out that she would no
longer be the mother of the child of a coward; how the brilliant young
Lautero took three Spanish strongholds, invaded the country north of the
Bio-bio, defeated every army that was sent against him, and laid siege
to Santiago itself; how the fiery Tucapel, while besieging a Spanish
fort, scaled the wall alone, ran the gantlet of the garrison, killed
four mail-clad Spaniards in fighting his way through, and escaped by
leaping from a cliff; how another of their chiefs, moved to pity by the
straits to which he had reduced a town he was besieging, gallantly
challenged the Spanish commander to single combat, on condition that if
he should defeat him the town must be surrendered, but that if he were
himself defeated the siege would be raised, and how, when he was killed,
the Indians kept the compact and withdrew—and many other such stories,
some of them rivaling those told of the Scottish chiefs.[1]
-----
Footnote 1:
The story of the Araucanian wars is told in full in Hancock’s “History
of Chile.”
-----
These Araucanians “had not felt the influence of Peruvian culture,” says
Hawthorne; they were “still in their healthy, primitive condition. In
person,” he goes on—
“Most of them were tall, strong, and active, with a complexion
of light, reddish brown, sometimes approaching white. They had a
copious language, cooked their food, made bread and brewed a
dozen kinds of spirituous liquors. Cities, in the Peruvian
sense, they had none, but lived in patriarchal hamlets, ruled by
_ulmens_, who were in turn subject to a _cacique_ of the tribe.
Each farmer was master of his own field; there was none of that
land ownership by the state that obtained in Peru.... They made
cloth garments, which their women adorned with embroidery and
dyed with vegetable or animal extracts. They manufactured a kind
of soap, and their utensils were of well-fashioned pottery, wood
and marble.... They went to sea in canoes and fished with fish
hooks. They knew something of astronomy and physics and had some
rather crude notions of drawing and carving. They called
themselves Children of the Sun, and are supposed to have
worshiped the sun and moon; they had the red man’s vision of
happy hunting grounds after death, and believed that those who
died fighting in battle were certain of a happy immortality....
Cleanly they were in the extreme, in this respect offering a
sharp contrast to their invaders.... They took particular pains
to keep their magnificent teeth white and clean, and were
careful to remove all hairs from their faces and bodies. The
women were dressed in woolen garments of a green color, with a
cloak and girdle; the men wore shirts and breeches, woolen caps
and footgear, and over all capacious woolen _ponchos_ (capes).
The military system was efficiently organized.”
Having learned that the Araucanians and Promaucians were hereditary
enemies, Valdivia’s first step toward the conquest of the former’s
country was to form an alliance with the latter and to establish a base
of supplies at the mouth of the Bio-bio, where he founded the city of
Concepcion, and, during the year 1551, occupied himself in fortifying it
and making preparations for the invasion. On the arrival of
reinforcements he had sent for, he advanced a hundred and fifty miles
south, and, encountering but little opposition, founded the city of
Imperial, and from that point pushed on a hundred miles farther and
founded the city to which he gave his name. On the way back in 1553 he
built several forts and at Santiago found awaiting him a fresh body of
troops and horses. Two hundred of the men, with an Indian contingent, he
sent across the Andes to begin the conquest of what is now the Province
of Mendoza in Argentina; and then, as Hawthorne relates it—
“The Araucanians, uniting with local tribes, made ready to clear
the country of Spaniards. An army of four thousand Indians
crossed the bloody Bio-bio and gave battle to Valdivia, but that
stout warrior succeeded, after a desperate conflict, in driving
them back for the time. In the following year he carried the war
into the enemy’s country.... There was among them a remarkable
old Ulysses named Colocolo, who added to ardent patriotism a
wonderful sagacity in both war and intrigue. He traveled over
the country preaching a crusade against the invaders. A great
conference was held among the various tribes, and a chief named
Caupolican was, at Colocolo’s suggestion, chosen commander in
chief. This hero was modest and valiant, a giant in stature, and
wise in counsel as he was brave. His first exploit was the
capture of the fort of Arauco, which he accomplished by an
unexpected attack, compelling the garrison, after severe
fighting, to evacuate and retire to the fort at Puren. The
garrison at Tucapel fort was in like manner driven to Puren,
from which place word was sent to Valdivia of their peril.
“He started for the seat of war with two hundred men and five
thousand Indians.... The two armies came in sight of each other
on the 3d of December, 1553, and maneuvered for position. The
right wing of the Araucanians was led by Mariantu, the left by
Tucapel, the Murat of the host. At the opening of the battle
Mariantu attacked and cut to pieces the Spanish left, and served
in the same manner a detachment sent to their support. At the
same time Tucapel swept down on the Spanish right. The latter’s
artillery wrought terrible havoc among the Indians and they were
thrice repulsed, though without being thrown into confusion. At
the critical moment of the fight, a young man saved the day for
the Araucanians. His name was Lautero. He had been previously
captured by Valdivia, baptized and made a page, but he seized
this opportunity to escape from the enemies of his country and
join his friends. He called on them to follow him in a final
charge. They caught the contagion of his valor, and, collecting
themselves, swept the Spaniards and their allies from the field
with awful carnage.
“Valdivia himself was captured. He begged hard for his life,
even promising, if he were spared, to quit Chile with all his
followers. Nor did he scruple to entreat Lautero to intercede
for him. This the magnanimous former page did, but in vain. The
grim old _ulmens_ knew too well the worth of Spanish promises,
and, disregarding Valdivia’s screams for mercy, one of them
crushed his skull with his war club. And the next day the trees
that grew in the great plain again bore Spanish heads as fruit,
and Lautero was appointed Caupolican’s second in command. At the
council which was forthwith held, it was resolved, in accordance
with the advice of old Colocolo, to make a general attack upon
all the Spanish strongholds. Angol and Puren were promptly
abandoned by the invaders, who congregated in Valdivia and
Imperial. Lautero fortified himself on the precipitous mountain
of Mariguenu, in order to prevent possible Spanish incursions
southward. Of a band of fourteen Spanish cavaliers who were
riding from Imperial to Tucapel, seven were slain by the
Araucanian Lincoyan.
“The inhabitants of Concepcion were terrified at these
catastrophes. Villagran was chosen Valdivia’s successor. He made
careful preparations and advanced with a strong army of
Spaniards and native allies toward Mariguenu. In a narrow defile
Lautero fell upon him. The Spaniards tried to scale the mountain
but were checked by slings and arrows, and a body of the
Indians, falling furiously upon the Spanish cannoneers, captured
the guns. An attack was then delivered upon the Spanish front
and it gave way, Villagran flying headlong with the rest and
barely making good his escape. The remnant of the Spanish army
was pursued by Lautero to the river Bio-bio, where the
Araucanians paused, and the fugitives staggered into Concepcion.
There Villagran stayed only long enough to gather together what
property he could, and then, with all the inhabitants, he fled
to Santiago. When Lautero entered Concepcion the next day, he
found nothing but empty houses, which he destroyed. The seven
cities were having a hard life of it.
“An attempt some time afterward to retake and rebuild Concepcion
was prevented by the Araucanians, who met and defeated the
Spaniards in open plain and again drove them back to
Santiago.... In the next campaign Lautero went against Santiago,
while Caupolican attempted the siege of Imperial and Valdivia.
Lautero laid waste the country of the Promaucians and fortified
himself on the Claro. A Spanish reconnoitering party was
surprised and cut to pieces and Santiago was in danger.
Villagran, being ill, gave the command to his son Pedro, who was
led into an ambuscade by Lautero and his army slaughtered. But
this was Lautero’s last victory, for a few days later, standing
on his battlements to watch the approach of a Spanish party, he
was killed by a chance shot, and though in the battle that
followed the Araucanians fought valiantly, they were finally
overpowered. The death of Lautero was for three days celebrated
by the Spaniards; and indeed his fall meant much to them. He had
invariably defeated them in battle and outgeneraled them in
maneuvers, and at the age of only nineteen had made a reputation
as a warrior such as any veteran might envy.”
From then on the war continued with varying success, the Spaniards
stubbornly persisting in their efforts to conquer their indomitable
opponents, the Araucanians always resisting, and, when beaten for a
time, retreating to the mountains, only to recruit and return to the
contest with renewed vigor, and this even when their enemies had grown
so numerous that they could put thousands of their well armed and
trained soldiers into the field instead of hundreds. Gradually, in the
course of many years, the Spaniards secured more and more of a foothold,
until the great leader Paillamachu took command of the Indians and began
an uninterrupted series of victories. He burned Concepcion and Chillan,
a hundred miles to the north, ravaged the whole country as far up as the
Maule, carried Valdivia by storm and captured, besides the garrison and
inhabitants, $2,000,000 of booty and a large store of arms and
ammunition, afterward reduced Imperial, Osorno, Villarica, Cañete,
Angol, Coya and Arauco, and, by the time of his death in 1603, every one
of their cities and forts on the mainland; and, at last, when the
Spaniards, after many other attempts, had failed to recover the lost
ground they were forced to resort to a treaty. Says Hawthorne:
“Another term of raids and reprisals ensued, with no conclusive
results to either party. Spanish governors and Araucanian chiefs
succeeded one another year after year; the operations now
favored one side, now another, but the Spaniards on the whole
lost more than did the Indians. It was not until 1640, about a
hundred years since the outbreak of the war, that anything
approaching a settlement was made, and the initiative came from
the Spaniards. At the village of Quillin the Spanish Governor,
the Marquis of Baides, met the Araucanian chief Lincopichion,
both being attended by a great retinue. The treaty was ratified
by speeches and the sacrifice of a llama. The Spaniards and
Araucanians were mutually to refrain from incursions and the
Araucanians were not to permit the troops of foreign powers to
land on their coasts or to furnish supplies to the enemies of
Spain. This clause was inserted in view of recent attempts of
the Dutch to effect a lodgment in Chile. This compact was kept
by the Indians, in spite of temptations to break it, for ten or
a dozen years, when hostilities broke out afresh owing to bad
faith on the part of Spain. The Spanish were overwhelmingly
defeated in 1655 and during ten years the power of Spain in
lower Chile was broken. In 1665 the Spaniards were glad to make
another treaty with the Indians, which was kept for half a
century. The invaders from the first had gained much more by
their treaties than by their arms.”
“Thenceforward,” says Dawson—
“The Bio-bio remained the southern boundary of the Spanish
possessions. An army of two thousand men and a line of forts
guarded the frontier; and, though hostilities were frequent, for
centuries no real progress was made toward depriving the
Araucanians of their independence. In the progress of time the
slow infiltration of Spanish blood and Spanish customs modified
their characteristics, but it was not until 1882 that they
became real subjects of the Chilean government.”
It may be that the Spaniards ought not to be blamed for these efforts to
complete their conquest of Chile and the appalling amount of bloodshed
and distress they caused. After all, they only did what the Aztecs,
Caras, and Incas had already done to the peoples of their neighboring
countries, what the European peoples were constantly doing to each
other, what England soon afterward did in India, and what, within the
last century, our own people did in Mexico, the French in Algiers, and
the English in South Africa. It may be true, as is asserted by their
apologists, that the motive that actuated the Spanish in their conquests
was not alone greed of land and gold, but in large part to Christianize
a pagan people and bring them into the true fold; but for the long,
brave fight these Araucanians made, for their high standard of
patriotism, for their adherence to their convictions, both religious and
political, we can feel only admiration and sympathy. For these things,
as Hawthorne puts it, “they merit the thanks of all friends of manhood
and liberty.”
The northern areas of Argentina submitted more quietly to the
conquerors. In 1542, Diego de Rojas led the first expedition from Peru
down through the Humahuaca Valley. Though he was killed in a fight with
a wild tribe near the main Cordillera, his followers continued their
march. Near the site of the present city of Tucumán they passed out from
the mountain defiles, and, leaving the desert to their right, penetrated
through Córdoba to the Paraná River country beyond. Lured by the reports
of peaceful and wealthy native communities in the irrigated valleys and
the magnificent pasture lands in the pampas stretching away to the
east—now the scene of Argentina’s enormous stock-raising and wheat
industries—other adventurers soon followed from Peru and Chile and were
met by expeditions from the Atlantic coast, marching west in quest of
another Peru. No permanent settlement was made on the site of the
present city of Buenos Aires until 1580. The two parties that had
attempted it, the first commanded by Juan Diaz de Solis, the other by
Pedro de Mendoza, had been defeated by the Indians and driven off, but
Mendoza had penetrated into the interior, and his lieutenant, Domingo
Irala, who remained and founded a colony, became the dominant figure of
the new agricultural empire.
XI
The system adopted by Spain for the government of her vast colonial
possessions is set forth in the famous code known as the Compilation of
Laws of the Kingdoms of the Indies, framed in the reign of Philip IV and
published in 1680 in the reign of Charles II. The American possessions
had originally been divided into two great political entities by the
Emperor Charles V in 1542. These were known as New Spain and New Castile
and were governed only by _Real Audiencias_, (royal audiences, or
tribunals that had both legislative and judicial functions). Later they
were created Viceroyalties, and the name New Castile was changed to
Peru. “We order and decree,” said the King in Law 1, Title 3, Book III
of the Compilation, “that the Kingdoms of Peru and New Spain be ruled
and governed by Viceroys who shall represent our royal person. These
shall exercise superior power, do and administer justice equally to all
our subjects and vassals and apply themselves to all that will promote
the tranquillity, repose, ennoblement and pacification of these
provinces.”
At that time the Viceroyalty of New Spain embraced all the provinces of
Central America and the islands of the Caribbean, and Mexico and (west
of the Mississippi) pretty much all the land to the north, and in the
Viceroyalty of Peru were included Panama and all the land in South
America, except, of course, Brazil. These viceroyalties themselves were
subdivided into great provincial districts, each administered by a _Real
Audiencia_. These audiencia districts were in turn divided into lesser
governmental jurisdictions known as _Gobernaciones_ (provincial
sub-districts), _Alcaldias Mayores_, _Alcaldias Ordinarias_ and
_Corregimientos_ (municipal districts of greater and lesser extent),
and, in harmony with this political arrangement, there was also an
ecclesiastical division: into Archbishoprics, coextensive with the
audiencia districts, Bishoprics, corresponding with the _gobernaciones_
and _alcaldias mayores_; and Parishes and Curacies, corresponding with
the _alcaldias ordinarias_ and _corregimientos_. The Viceroys were
respectively Presidents of the Audiencias and Captains-General of the
military forces at Lima and the City of Mexico, the viceregal capitals;
the provincial audiencia districts were presided over by Gowned
Presidents (_Ministros Togado_) and were under the military command of
Captains-General, both of which officers were subordinate to the
Viceroys.
Within the jurisdiction of the Viceroy of Peru were seven royal
audiencias: Panama (created in 1535), Lima (created in 1542), Santa Fé
de Bogotá, now Colombia (created in 1549), Charcas, now Bolivia (created
in 1559), San Francisco de Quito, now Ecuador (created in 1563), Chile
(created in 1609) and Buenos Aires, now Argentina (created in 1661). In
the eighteenth century two more viceroyalties were created from
districts withdrawn from the Viceroyalty of Peru: New Granada and Buenos
Aires. That of New Granada, established in 1717, was made up of the
Audiencias of Santa Fé de Bogotá, Panama, San Francisco de Quito and
Venezuela; that of Buenos Aires, established in 1778, included the
territory now embraced in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Patagonia,
Bolivia (Charcas) and the southern part of Chile. Afterward the
Audiencias of Venezuela and Chile were constituted independent
Captaincies-General, subordinate only to the Council of the Indies in
Spain, and the Audiencia of Charcas was returned by royal decree of 1810
to the Viceroyalty of Peru. From these colonial divisions logically
sprang the South American republics as they exist to-day—of course,
again excepting Brazil, which, after she had secured her independence in
1822, retained a monarchial form of government until 1889, when she
became a republic like the others.
Under this Spanish colonial system, therefore, _the King was absolute
sovereign_, and governed, not through his ministers of the cabinet—for
the various provinces were regarded as appanages of the Crown—but
primarily through his Council of the Indies, to which his officers in
America reported directly, and secondarily through these officers
themselves—the Viceroys and Captains-General, and their subordinates. In
addition to these executive officers and the royal audiences, there were
_Cabildos_ (municipal councils), which had jurisdiction of local affairs
in their respective communities, but there were no _elective_ officers
or tribunals, or legislative bodies representing the people. The King
regarded the provinces as his personal property and their occupants as
instruments for their development for his benefit alone. Incidentally,
they might derive for themselves what profit out of it they could, but
only in ways consistent with his interests and policies.
Consequently, during this colonial period, the Spanish Americans had no
opportunity to develop a representative and self-sustaining body
politic, which, in the course of time, might by peaceful means have
altered this theory and corrected the evils of such a system—as was the
case in Brazil, where the Portuguese King in person resided in the
country for several years (during the period of Napoleon’s Peninsula
invasion) and in that way became familiar with local conditions and the
needs of his people. He, on his return to Portugal, opened the Brazilian
ports to the commerce of the world and created Brazil a vassal kingdom,
with a form of government almost wholly autonomous.
In contrast with this, no Spaniard (and certainly no foreign trader) was
allowed to freight ships for the colonies, or to buy a pound of goods
anywhere else, without obtaining special permission and paying well for
the privilege. Cadiz was the only port in Europe from which ships were
permitted to sail for America, and the whole trade was farmed out to a
ring of Cadiz merchants. Every port in Spanish South America was closed
to transatlantic traffic except Nombre de Dios on the Caribbean side of
the Isthmus of Panamá, near the present city of Colon. Not a merchant
ship could enter Buenos Aires, Valparaiso, Callao or Guayaquil. Imports
from Spain must first go to the Isthmus, there be disembarked and
transported over the Andean passes and the Bolivian plateaux on the
backs of llamas, and finally be carried down over the Argentina pampas
to Buenos Aires, or along the arid coast to the Peruvian and Chilean
settlements. Under such conditions in the southern provinces European
manufactures, agricultural and mining implements, and other essentials
for a people’s advancement were to be had only at fabulous prices.
On the other hand, also, the system made exports impossible, except the
precious metals mined in the north, and drugs, and other easily
transportable products. Hides, hair, wool, agricultural products and
hard woods would not stand the cost of such long and difficult hauls.
The Peninsula authorities acted upon the theory that America should be
confined to producing gold and silver. The Plata settlements,
especially, and all others south and east of the Peruvian-Bolivian
mining region, suffered from this ruinous suppression. Having no mines,
they were considered worthless, so far as the royal treasury was
concerned, and were in consequence ignored—until they came in conflict
with home industries by the cultivation of olives and grapes, and then,
to protect the Peninsula growers, the Argentinos were forced to cut down
their olive trees and uproot their vines. The inevitable results
followed. Smuggling, bribe-giving, evasion and contempt for all law, and
hostility to the fiscal authorities of the Peninsula grew up when, in
their stead, the colonists could have been developed into a bulwark for
Spain, which was so soon to totter from her proud position as the
greatest of the world powers. Where science of government and national
up-building should have been taught and fostered, revolution became the
only political refuge.
In 1808, when Napoleon forced the abdication of Charles IV, held him and
his successor, Ferdinand VII, prisoners in France, and established his
brother Joseph on the throne, came the colonists’ opportunity. In April,
1809, a _Junta_ (national assembly) was formed in Caracas; in July of
the same year the example was followed in Peru, and in August at Quito;
in May of the next year, Santa Fé de Bogotá and Buenos Aires followed,
and Santiago elected the Chilean _Junta_ in September. The colonists
expected by these steps to release the Indians from slavery in the mines
in the north and west; to restore and develop the cultivation of grapes,
olives and tobacco, and build up their grazing and agricultural industry
in the south and east; also to open their ports to commerce with Europe,
so that they might buy commodities essential to their growth, and export
their own products by way of exchange; also to lighten the crushing
imposts and internal taxation, to abolish the tithe system, and reclaim
and parcel out the vast feudal estates which had gradually been absorbed
by the Spanish officials in the course of an administration which could
only be likened to that of the rapacious Roman proconsuls against which
Cicero inveighed so impotently.
But the ambitious attempts at reform met with immediate and successful
opposition. The country was full of Spanish office-holders who saw in
them their dismissal and the death blow to their spoils system. In the
short struggle that followed, the success of the royal forces was almost
universal. The colonists had had no training in warfare, nor had they
yet developed as a people the unity of purpose and sturdy
self-dependence which was eventually to bring them their freedom. The
_junta_ governments were everywhere effectively suppressed, except in
Bogotá and Buenos Aires, where the fires of revolution smouldered during
the succeeding years of Peninsula chaos that preceded Waterloo, and the
colonists, with eyes opened at last to the true and only remedy for
their ills, were formulating their great resolve to separate themselves
entirely from the mother country; for, while their measures of reform
had been suppressed, the ideas that called them into being could not be
obliterated. Furthermore their unsuccessful clash with the viceroys and
lesser officials brought even more glaringly before their eyes the
extortions and brutal indifference of the ruling class. The attitude of
the Peninsulares toward the creoles and _mestizos_ of the colonies had
always been contemptuous, and now at last the creoles, being for the
most part of unmixed Spanish descent (they were called creoles only
because born in America) found their resentment of that attitude more
than they could endure.
The series of military successes that was destined to lead to the
desired result began with the fights at Tucumán in the northern part of
Argentina, in the fall of 1812, and at Salta, a little farther north, in
February, 1813. By these battles the persistent efforts of the royalist
forces in Peru to put an end, to the _junta_ government of 1810 in the
Plata settlements, were checked under the leadership of Manuel Belgrano.
But on the first of October following, the Royalists, in violation of
the armistice entered into after Salta, almost destroyed Belgrano’s army
at Vilcapujio. Disastrous as was the reverse for the time-being, this
before long proved a distinct service to the colonists, for it placed in
command of the remnants of Belgrano’s army General José de San Martín,
one of the two great patriots who finally brought the war to a
successful issue, and who had then just returned with the experience and
prestige acquired by twenty years’ service in the Peninsula armies
against Napoleon’s famous marshals. The other of these great patriots
was Simon Bolívar.
San Martín recognized at once the futility of pursuing the campaign and
attacking the Royalists in the mountainous regions of Bolivia, with over
a thousand miles of difficult roads between his army and base of
supplies. He conceived, therefore, the idea of compelling Spain to
defend her own bases at Lima and Callao, and to this end elaborated a
plan for the invasion of Chile and capture of Valparaiso, and, from
thence, a combined military and naval attack on the capital of Peru, the
seat of Spain’s continental power. With this purpose in view, he
repaired to the almost inaccessible town of Mendoza on the Argentine
slope of the Andes, on about the same parallel with the Chilean capital,
Santiago, and remained there two years, recruiting and training a strong
force and accumulating equipment.
Shortly after he had established his camp of instruction, the Chileans
under General Bernardo O’Higgins had extorted from the Royalist General
at Talca a truce whereby the protracted struggle to maintain the _junta_
government in Chile was for the moment suspended. This truce of Talca,
however, was repudiated by the Viceroy at Lima, and General Ossorio was
soon on his way south with another Royalist army, against which,
weakened by local political dissensions, the Chilenos were unable to
prevail, and were decisively beaten at Rancagua in October, 1814. As
this meant a complete restoration of Spanish authority in Chile,
O’Higgins and a few of his officers made their escape with the wreck of
their army, crossed the Andes and placed themselves under the command of
San Martín.
In January, 1817, San Martín’s army, four thousand strong, was ready to
move against the unsuspecting Spanish in Chile, who had been led by a
stratagem to believe that he would enter the country through one of the
more easily accessible of the Andean passes to the south. San Martín,
however, chose the highest and most terrible of them all, one four
thousand feet higher than St. Bernard, and which lay to the north
instead of south of Aconcagua, and accomplished a feat which, in
endurance and skill, is thought by the historians to have surpassed
Napoleon’s famous crossing of the Alps. Descending the western slope, he
fell upon the Spanish outpost at La Guardia on the 7th of February, and
on the 12th, surprised and defeated Ossorio’s main force at Chacabuco.
Two days later the liberating army entered Santiago. The patriot
government was at once re-established and the directorship conferred on
O’Higgins after San Martín, refusing to be diverted from his plans for
the liberation of the entire continent, had declined the honor.
On the first day of the ensuing year the independence of Chile was
proclaimed. _De facto_ independence was not achieved until the decisive
defeat of the Royalists on the plains of Maypú, on the 5th of April,
1815, and then, with Chile cleared of Spanish troops, and the port of
Valparaiso at his service as a base of supplies, San Martín was ready to
enter upon the next stage of his work—the liberation of Peru.
[Illustration: SAN MARTÍN’S PASSAGE OF THE ANDES—FROM VILA’S FAMOUS
PAINTING.]
Another period devoted to recruiting, organizing, and drilling elapsed.
In August, 1820, his combined military and naval expedition set out from
Valparaiso with some 4500 troops. Thus far this stronghold of Spain had
undergone less violent revolutionary disturbances than any other part of
her American possessions. In 1820 it was fully under the control of Don
Joaquín de la Pezuela, the forty-fourth successor of Pizarro. But it was
three years now since Pezuela had reported to the Madrid government that
he stood over a volcano liable to burst into action at any moment, and
had received no aid, a situation San Martín understood. In this
expedition he was ably seconded by Lord Cochrane, a former British naval
officer, who was to render most valuable service in the naval warfare
that was at once begun against the Viceroy. Cochrane’s first success was
the capture of Valdivia, Spain’s best harbor on the Pacific south of
Valparaiso, in spite of the fact that his rockets were filled with sand
instead of powder, the Chilean authorities having imprudently employed
Spanish prisoners in the manufacture of ammunition.
Arrived off Callao, the seaport of Lima, the liberators entered upon
operations and negotiations lasting several months, during which
effective missionary work in the cause of independence was done
throughout Peru by San Martín’s lieutenants. At last, on the 6th of
July, 1821, the Spanish leaders, neglected by their home government, and
realizing the ineffectiveness of their forces, evacuated Lima, which was
at once occupied by San Martín. He did not come, he said, as a
conqueror, and it was with much hesitation that he accepted the supreme
power offered by the patriots; he styled himself Protector of Peru,
promising to surrender the government to the people as soon as the
Peruvian congress should be assembled to take over the burden, and
retained his control of the embryo republic for a year, notwithstanding
the hostility that was engendered by misconception of the high purposes
embodied in the title he assumed. The wisdom of his retention in power
at such a critical period is hardly to be contested.
This was the decisive campaign of the war of independence on the
continent. The future of Buenos Aires and Chile, of New Granada and
Venezuela, and of all the Spanish settlements depended on the battles
that were now to be fought in the mountains of Peru, where the Royalist
forces had concentrated, for this was the very heart of the Spanish
stronghold. San Martín was not to fight these final battles, but to him
is due the credit of conceiving the plan of action, of executing it
almost to the end, and of showing, by his retirement in favor of a more
convincingly popular fellow-patriot of the north, a modesty, soundness
of judgment, and generosity almost unparalleled among statesmen—for in
the meantime the northern movement, under the direction of Simon
Bolívar, was approaching Peru. It arrived at the coast town of Guayaquil
in the spring of 1822. San Martín immediately repaired to that port for
a conference, leaving his administration in the hands of the Marquis of
Torre Tagle, a member of the old nobility who had turned revolutionist,
and Bernardo Monteagudo.
The meeting of the two Liberators marked the close of San Martín’s
military career. He saw clearly that there could be no room for himself
and a brilliant, ambitious, magnetic leader like Bolívar in the same
sphere of action, that it was necessary for the welfare of the common
cause that one of them should retire. He was great and patriotic enough
to make the sacrifice. Returning to Lima, he resigned the supreme
authority and retired to Europe. There was no place for him in Buenos
Aires, except as a leader in the civil wars which by this time were
distracting the country, and this rôle he disdained. In 1850 he died in
France at the age of seventy-two, after a thirty years’ struggle with
sickness and poverty, but attended always by his devoted daughter. After
his death his body was brought to Buenos Aires and reverently placed in
a tomb, one of the handsomest in the world, about which stand three
marble figures representing Buenos Aires, Chile, and Peru.
Bolívar’s career had begun in Venezuela, where he was born. After
Spain’s suppression of the _junta_ established in Caracas in 1810,
Bolívar, with the revolutionist Miranda, had landed in Venezuela and
called into being the first congress of the people, and the independence
of the country was proclaimed. In the fighting that followed, the
movement thus started met a speedy end—literally shattered by an awful
earthquake that occurred on Holy Thursday of 1812, which the Royalists
claimed was a stroke of Divine vengeance against those who would have
overthrown the anointed of the Lord.
Miranda was captured and ended his days in a Spanish prison, but Bolívar
escaped into New Granada and soon had full sway in the revolutionary
councils of the northern provinces. In 1813 he founded at Bogotá an
active revolutionary _junta_ and a military organization. With the
latter he struck the Royalists at Cucutá, just within the eastern border
of Colombia, and passed over the mountains to Caracas, proclaiming war
to the death. Here his rôle of Dictator began. His career, however, was
punctuated by many disasters before the decisive battle of Boyacá placed
Bogotá permanently in his hands and gave assurance of eventual success.
But from this triumph Bolívar hurried to the revolutionary congress he
had some time before called at Angostura and procured the enactment of a
law providing for the union of Venezuela and New Granada, to form the
Republic of Colombia, and was elected President; and by the end of the
year 1821 all of this territory, except Panama and Puerto Cabello, near
La Guayra, had been freed from the control of Spain.
The famous battle of Pichincha, won on the 24th of May, 1822, by
Bolívar’s great lieutenant, Antonio José de Sucre, gave Ecuador also to
the northern federation; later it was formally incorporated into the new
Colombian Republic. Still for two years the final clash between the
Royalists and the patriots was deferred, during which time the confusion
of sectional interests and negotiations by the now desperate mother
country threatened to undo the great work of the liberators. But once
more Bolívar triumphed. By the withdrawal in his favor of San Martín,
harmony was restored; with his victory at Junín on the 6th of August,
1824, and the decisive battle on the plain of Ayacucho, midway between
Lima and Cuzco, on the 9th of December, the war came to an end. In that
brilliantly fought battle the patriot army, again under Sucre, defeated
a largely superior force commanded by the Viceroy in person in less than
eighty minutes. The Viceroy wounded and a prisoner, and his men having
deserted by hundreds, his second in command sued for terms, and that
afternoon fourteen generals, five hundred and sixty-eight officers of
other grades, and three thousand two hundred privates became prisoners
of war.
[Illustration: STATUE OF BOLÍVAR, LIMA.]
Following this victory, Sucre proceeded to Charcas and convened the
patriot congress which in August, 1825, proclaimed the Republic of
Bolívia, and became its first President. Bolívar was then at the head of
affairs in Peru. He soon, however, relinquished his dictatorship and
returned to Bogotá to resume, for a brief term, his functions as
President of the federation of Colombia. From that time on he sank
rapidly from his apogee and, beset on all sides by the enemies his
supposed imperial designs had made for him, died on his estate of Santa
Marta on the 17th of December, 1830, at the early age of forty-seven.
Disheartened, his personal fortune gone, he had abandoned any designs of
that character he might once have had and only a few days before the end
wrote to the Colombians: “My last wishes are for the country’s
happiness. If my death can contribute to the quieting of party strife
and to the consolidation of the union, I shall go down to the grave in
peace.” To him also in after years his people erected monuments in tardy
recognition of his matchless services.
The Portuguese provinces were the only ones to continue the monarchical
system. They too, however, declared themselves independent, and became
known as the Empire of Brazil, until 1889, when the present republic was
declared.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
II
BRAZIL
I
The United States of Brazil, next to our own United States, form the
largest of the American republics. Brazil has an area fifteen times
greater than Germany’s, sixteen times as great as that of France,
250,000 square miles greater than ours, excluding Alaska and our island
possessions. At its greatest width, the country extends inland more than
2000 miles and its coast line on the Atlantic is more than 3700 miles
long, twice the distance from Portland, Maine, to Key West; yet the
population, although it has doubled in the last forty years, is not
quite a fourth as large as our own. It is estimated that if the whole
country were as densely populated as France, the inhabitants would
number 622,000,000, or, if as densely populated as Germany, 955,000,000.
Some time it may be. Except in the regions near the large cities, only a
small part is even sparsely settled now.
It argues well for the industry and enterprise of what inhabitants there
are, however, that Brazil’s international commerce is relatively nearly
as great in proportion to her population as ours. Some idea of the
remarkable progress she has made is given in the following extract from
a pamphlet recently published by the _Commissão de Expansão Economica_,
entitled “Do you Know the Wealth of Brazil?”
“In the colonial days, the foreign trade of Brazil was done
exclusively through Lisbon, under the protection of Portuguese
men-of-war.... The colonial produce was distributed among the
principal Portuguese commercial centers and the imports came
exclusively from Portugal to the ports of Bahia, Rio de Janeiro,
Pernambuco, Pará, and Maranhão. Until the end of the eighteenth
century, the foreign trade of Brazil was continued more or less
on this basis, but the exports were considerably more than the
imports. By decree of January 28, 1808, the King of Portugal,
Don João VI of Braganza, lately arrived at Bahia” (when he fled
from the Peninsula as a result of Napoleon’s invasion),
“resolved to open all the ports of Brazil to the commerce of
foreign nations, until then closed for the benefit of Portugal.
The first consequence of this decree was the establishment of
commercial relations with England. English agencies were opened
at Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, and Pernambuco for the purpose of
importing manufactured articles and exporting sugar, alcohol,
gold, cotton, hides, coffee, cocoa, timber, and indigo. After
the proclamation of independence in 1822, the trade developed
enormously, France, the United States of America, Germany,
Holland, and Sweden following the example of England.... From
1846 to 1875 the imports increased 110 per cent. and the exports
175 per cent. From 1876 to 1905 the imports increased 175 per
cent. and the exports 272 per cent.... In 1909 its total value
was £101,844,549 (over $500,000,000).”
In 1910 it was $545,581,275, in which we participated to the extent of
$142,437,986, including $58,808,467 worth of coffee and $47,409,030
worth of rubber that were exported to us. For the principal industry is
still, as it has always been, agriculture, though in the mountainous
sections there are vast regions containing gold and precious stones and
minerals of incalculable value, millions of square miles in the interior
still covered with virgin forests; and yet even the relatively small
sections that have been cultivated produce more than three-fourths of
all the coffee consumed in the world and more than three-fifths of all
the rubber, not to mention the other products. But within the last few
years immigration has been encouraged and many conditions that were
preventing development have been improved. Wonders have been
accomplished in making the cities as healthful as any in the world. The
railroads have been, and are still being, extended tremendously and
facilities for commerce along the great inland waterways continually
increased.
The first of the important seaports of Brazil that are accessible by
steamer from New York is Belém, the capital of the State of Pará. It
ranks only as the fifth in size, but to the tourist it is of surpassing
interest because it is situated on the Pará River, the southern or
commercial mouth of the Amazon, that mightiest and most majestic of all
the rivers in the world.
Imagine!—a river more than 3400 miles in length, with its source in the
Peruvian Andes, 16,000 feet above the level of the sea—a river which,
with its vast tributaries, many of them themselves from a thousand to
two thousand miles in length, drains a territory of 2,300,000 square
miles, two-thirds as large as our United States, and so rich in
indigenous resources, and so fertile, that many years ago, when it was
wholly a wilderness, the great scientist Von Humboldt said of it that
“it is here that one day, sooner or later, will concentrate the
civilization of the globe”—a river that is a mile and a half wide at
Tabatinga, the last Brazilian port to the west, and gradually broadens
on its way to the sea until it attains a width of 150 miles at its
northern mouth alone, and discharges into the Atlantic a volume of water
more than four times as great as the outpour of the Mississippi—a river
that is navigable, that is now actually being navigated by _ocean
liners_, for 2000 miles, clear across Brazil to Iquitos in the frontier
of Peru.
Yet, although as early as 1541 Francisco de Orellana, one of Pizarro’s
little band of conquerors, who had crossed the Andes in quest of the
fabulous country of _El Dorado_, and, after having traversed the whole
course of the river through Brazil with a few companions in a canoe, had
made his way back to Spain and told amazing stories of the wealth of the
region he had discovered, and although a century later the astronomer La
Condamine, and still later Baron von Humboldt, Castelnau, and others had
successively published alluring accounts of their explorations in the
same region, it was not until 1867 that the river was opened to free
navigation.
It is gratifying to reflect that, probably more than to any other
outside influence, it was due to the publication of the report of an
expedition undertaken in 1851 by William Lewis Herndon, a lieutenant in
the United States Navy, and to the explorations of Louis Agassiz, a
Harvard professor, that the interest was aroused which at last brought
this about. Lieutenant Herndon, like Orellana, started from Lima, and,
braving the passes of the Andes, entered the Amazon from one of its
western affluents and made the journey in a canoe, with only a Peruvian
guide and a few Indian rowers, all the way to its mouth. Professor
Agassiz, whose explorations were begun fifteen years later, started from
Belém and traveled in a steamboat, such as it was, accompanied by his
wife and a corps of scientists, and was given every assistance possible
by the late Emperor Dom Pedro, who took a lively interest in the
expedition. But even then in Brazil, the Professor says in his book, “so
little was known of the Amazon that we could obtain only very meager,
and usually rather discouraging, information concerning our projected
journey. In Rio, if you say you are going to ascend their great river,
your Brazilian friends look at you with compassionate wonder. You are
threatened with sickness, with intolerable heat, with mosquitoes,
_jacaraes_ (alligators), and wild Indians.”
Lieutenant Herndon, however, had already made known to the scientific
world that the climate is healthful, notwithstanding the mosquitoes;
that, humid and hot as it is during certain hours of the day, the nights
are always cool, and that “the direct rays of the sun are tempered by an
almost constant east wind, laden with moisture from the ocean, so that
no one ever suffers from the heat;” and, when he got back to Rio de
Janeiro, Professor Agassiz assured the Brazilians that this was so.
Arthur Dias indignantly protests (in his _Brazil of To-day_) that “it is
not true, as they say, that the climate of this region prevents the
existence and the extending of the population.” “It is a legend, a
fiction,” he adds. Mozans, who made a similar journey to Herndon’s very
recently, also testifies to the same effect.
Here in this Amazon country, Lieutenant Herndon had reported, “we see a
fecundity of soil and a rapidity of vegetation that is marvelous and to
which even Egypt, the ancient granary of Europe, affords no parallel....
Here trees, evidently young, shoot up to such a height that no
fowling-piece will reach the game seated on their topmost branches. This
is the country of rice, of sarsaparilla, of cocoa, of tonka beans, of
mandioca, black pepper, arrowroot, ginger, balsam, tapioca, gum copal,
nutmeg, animal and vegetable wax, indigo and Brazil nuts, of India
rubber, of dyes of the gayest colors, drugs of rare virtue, variegated
cabinet woods of the finest grain and susceptible of the highest polish.
Here dwell the wild cow, the fish ox, the sloth, the anteater, the
beautiful black tiger, the mysterious electric eel, the boa constrictor,
the anaconda, the deadly coral snake, the voracious alligator, monkeys
in endless variety, birds of the most brilliant plumage, and insects of
the strangest form and gayest colors.”
More than forty years of progress and improvement have passed since Dom
Pedro decreed that the river should be open to international trade, yet
all these wonders may still be seen there—the vast expanses of water,
the shore lines varied by lofty bluffs and low plains of sand, rugged
rocks and dense masses of foliage, the river surface dotted by islands,
large and small—the magnificent forest still crowding to the banks and
teeming with all the exuberant life and brilliant hues of the
tropics—giant _sumaumeras_, their crests towering high above all other
trees, their huge, white-barked trunks and limbs standing out in
striking relief from the masses of green; tall cocoanut palms, tufted at
the top with fan-shaped leaves cut into ribbons and bedecked with creamy
blossoms; slender, graceful _assai_ palms, tall and clean-stemmed like
the cocoanuts, but with fluffy, feathery crowns; wine palms from which
the flowers hang in long, crimson tassels, studded with berries of
bright green; _jupati_ palms with plumelike leaves forty to fifty feet
long that start near the base of the trunk and curve upward on all sides
in the form of a vase; the familiar fan palm, and a legion of others.
And there are rubber trees, which resemble in this region our northern
ash; stately _castanhas_, the trees on which the Brazil nuts grow, and
_cacaos_, that look like our cherry trees, only they give us our
chocolate and cocoa beans instead and have blossoms of a saffron tint;
mahoganies, rosewoods and satinwoods and great sheaves of whispering
bamboo; myriads of ferns and exquisitely tinted orchids, acacias,
scarlet passion flowers, begonias, yellow and blue—flowers innumerable
in the wildest profusion. Not little ones like our violets hiding
modestly among the mosses and grass, but big blossoms growing
luxuriantly on bushes and on the parasite vines that twine about the
trunks of the trees and hang in festoons from their branches, until the
whole river border seems ablaze with their vivid lights; and there are
still the monkeys and beautiful butterflies and humming birds, and the
parrots, macaws, herons, egrets, toucans, and countless other gorgeously
feathered birds, and the Indian villages, too, in the midst of their
orange and banana groves or huddled near the beaches where the turtles
breed.
Only now all these may be seen from the decks of ocean liners, or, if
one starts from Belém or Iquitos, from river steamers as safe and
comfortably equipped and setting as good a table as most of those in our
northern waters. Now the alligators and snakes and tigers have been
driven far from the beaten tracks—not too far, though, for the sportsman
who loves the excitement of hunting big game—now the negro slaves have
been freed and the Indians are no longer hostile; now, in many places,
lands have been drained and clearings made in the forests, and waste
marshes and giant trees have made way for pastures and thrifty-looking
plantations, where grain, coffee, sugar, tobacco and cotton, and
pineapples and many other things are cultivated; now the rubber and
cacao and nut gatherers penetrate far into the woods; now small,
isolated communities have grown to be large ones, that send their
produce directly from their own docks to the markets of the world.
There is Manãos, for instance, the capital of the State of Amazonas.
Manãos is situated at the mouth of the Rio Negro, which empties into the
Amazon a thousand miles from the coast. When Lieutenant Herndon was
there in 1851, it was a wretched little town, containing but four
hundred and seventy houses, most of them one story in height, and had a
population of about four thousand—whites, Indians, mixed breeds, and
negro slaves all combined. To-day it is a modern, rapidly growing city,
with a population already numbering fifty thousand, perhaps more,
including many foreigners. There is an imposing stone State House, a
white marble Palace of Justice, and a splendid monument commemorating
the opening of the Amazon to international trade. It has broad, shaded,
well-paved streets, lined with handsome buildings; it has electric
lights, trolley lines, a telephone system, water and harbor works, an
ice plant, banks, hotels, newspapers, up-to-date shops, warehouses and
public markets, a good library and excellent educational institutions,
and is rated among the greater ports of South America because of its
extensive shipments of rubber and other products of the country round
about.
A visit to the beautiful public gardens, where an orchestra plays in the
evenings, and to the Amazonas Theater is well worth while. It is said to
have cost $2,000,000 in gold, that theater—which is not at all
surprising to any one who has seen it, for it is truly superb, a
structure of stone with marble supporting columns, that stands on a
great causeway of masonry occupying a commanding site on the Avenida
Eduardo Ribeiro, the principal thoroughfare and fashionable promenade,
and has a lofty, brightly colored dome that can be seen from the harbor,
and a magnificent foyer adorned with paintings by a famous Italian
artist.
Obydos, too, perched on the bluffs beside an old fortress near the mouth
of the Trombetas, and Santarem, at the mouth of the Tapajos, about
midway between Manãos and the coast, are other progressive cities that
offer opportunities for agreeable breaks in the long journey. As it was
in the Tapajos that gold was first found in the region, Santarem is one
of the oldest if now one of the most up-to-date of the towns. It is
possessed, besides, of a peculiar interest for North Americans because
after our civil war it became the home of quite a number of our
“unreconstructed” Confederates.
But Belém, or Pará as it is more generally called by foreigners (one may
take his choice, since the full corporate name is _Santa Maria de
Nazareth de Belém do Grão Pará_), is by far the largest and most
interesting of them all, for not only has the wealth that has poured
into it in recent years transformed it into a big city of about two
hundred thousand inhabitants, boasting, like Manãos, all the modern
public utilities and conveniences, but it is old and rich in relics
associated with its romantic history, much care has been taken in the
adding of the new to beautify it, its climate is much more delightful
than the others (the mean annual temperature is only 82° F.), and it is
also charmingly clean and picturesque. “Who comes to Pará,” runs a local
proverb, “is glad to stay; who drinks _assai_ goes never away”—though
_assai_ need have no real terrors for that reason. It is nothing more
seductive than a most refreshing beverage made from the fruit of the
_assai_ palm.
Almost at the very threshold of the city, on the approach from the sea,
one encounters some of the wonders in which the region abounds—first the
“_pororoca_,” which is the name originally given by the Indians to the
huge waves that are created by the conflict of the descending waters of
the river with the inrushing current of the Atlantic and follow each
other in series of three or four, with thunderous intonations. For
nearly an hour in the progress through the great estuary the conflict
can be observed. Then the river seems to prevail; its surface grows more
placid, the color changes from the dark hue of the ocean to light green,
and, on beyond, to the tawny yellow of the Amazon. Yet they say the ebb
and flow of the tide is perceptible as far up as Obydos, 700 miles away,
and, when it ebbs, that the tawny yellow can be seen many miles out at
sea. Then, scattered about, here, there, and everywhere on the
twenty-mile-wide bosom of the Pará, as though in the titanic struggle
some larger body had been broken into bits, are hundreds of wooded
islands, moist and radiant in the sunlight, their varied greens in
delightful contrast with the silvery sheen on the waters and the bright
turquoise of the sky.
The city, seen from a distance, with its background of forests and rows
of white-walled, red-roofed houses, separated into clusters by the parks
and tree-lined avenues sloping down to the shores of its own spacious
bay, has the gay, holiday appearance of a summer resort. Only a closer
view dispels the illusion, for its harbor is filled with vessels of
every size and description, from the little _monatrias_, or canoes, of
the Indians, to the great liners of the Brazilian Lloyd. Its compact
business section in the vicinity of the quay, the Custom House and
market and the warehouses of the steamship companies present a
commercial aspect substantial and busy enough to command the respect
even of a Chicagoan or New Yorker. As already stated, more than three
fifths of the rubber supply of the world comes from Brazil, and two of
these three fifths pass this very port, to say nothing of the cacao,
nuts, oils, tobacco, woods, and other things shipped there, or of the
importations.
One of the features of a stay in Belém, by the way—that is, for any one
interested in seeing how the first crude form of an article so familiar
in its finished forms is produced, is a trip to one of the near-by
rubber estates. It has not yet been necessary in this section, if
anywhere in Brazil, to resort to cultivation to any great extent, and so
the huts of the _seringueiros_ (gatherers) are located right in the
woods, where the rubber trees grow promiscuously among the others, and
each _seringueiro_ is allotted as many as he can attend to. The sap,
which resembles milk in color and consistency, is collected in cups
placed under incisions in the bark, then brought into camp in bucketfuls
and reduced by a primitive process of evaporation to the slabs or cakes
forming the raw article of commerce. One does not have to leave Belém
itself, however, to see rubber trees and most of the other species, too,
for there the people have been generous enough to preserve within the
city limits a large tract of primeval forest, which has been cleared of
underbrush and converted into a park, known as the _Bosque Municipal_.
Also there is a wonderful botanical garden and a museum where the rarest
specimens of the vegetation, and animals and the birds and reptiles of
the country are assembled.
And even in the business section there are charming public squares. The
one nearest the quay, named for the Bishop Frei Caetano Brandão, whose
statue is in the center, is particularly interesting because facing it
is a fine old seventeenth-century cathedral of the Portuguese type,
massive and grave, an old marine arsenal now used as a hospital, and an
ancient fortification, called the _Castello_, which has been maintained
because of its historical associations. Then there is the Praca da
Independencia, where the Governor’s Palace is, and a quaint old
blue-walled City Hall, built in colonial times for a Portuguese
minister, the Marquis de Pombal, who dreamed of the permanent transfer
of the seat of the Lusitanian empire to the banks of the Amazon. In the
heart of the city, on its most elevated ground, is the celebrated Largo
da Polvora, now commonly called the Praca da Republica, after a superb
monument it contains—of marble surmounted by figures in bronze, symbolic
of the republic proclaimed when the Emperor Dom Pedro was dethroned in
the bloodless revolution of 1889. It is from this point that the four
principal avenues extend through the city in the cardinal directions.
“The Largo da Polvora,” Arthur Dias pays it the compliment of saying
(though this may, perhaps, be rather too enthusiastic), “shames our
Avenida da Liberdade in Lisbon; if they could place there the Arc de
Triomphe, it would rival the Champs-Elysées.” It may be that for most
its fascination lies not so much in its beauty as in its other
attractions, for it is the great social and amusement center of a
prosperous and pleasure-loving community, the thoroughfare along which
the best of its hotels and clubs and the fashionable cafés and concert
halls are located and many of its finest residences. It adds the lively
mundane touch that is needed to relieve the impressiveness of a region
where all nature is so overpoweringly beautiful. In the midst of the
gardens, which are separated by luxuriantly shaded streets, is the
Theatro da Paz, regarded as one of the best in Latin America, and the
Apollo Circus and Paz Carrousel. Near by is the handsome Paz Hotel, with
its popular café.
In the evenings, when the cool breeze sets in from the ocean, the whole
scene becomes animated. The brilliantly lighted avenues and driveways in
the park are thronged with the carriages and motor cars of the “four
hundred,” the sidewalks with crowds of pleasure-seekers, cosmopolitan
and well dressed. Then the cafés all have out their little zinc tables,
jammed with customers of both sexes (these cafés are not mere drinking
places, most of them, but a sort of peculiar combination of café, candy
store, and ice-cream saloon), dozens of orchestras play, the places of
amusement are in full blast, and music and gayety reign supreme.
II
Because of peculiar economic conditions, the railroads of Brazil, as
originally planned, were not intended, like ours, to facilitate commerce
among the States, but only for the purpose of bringing the products of
the various developed sections of the country to the nearest shipping
points. Thus Recife, the seaport of the State of Pernambuco, is the
focus of one system, São Salvador da Bahia of another, Rio de Janeiro of
a third, Santos, the port of São Paulo, of a fourth, and Porto Alegre,
the chief port of Rio Grande do Sul, of a fifth. Not long ago, when
these conditions began to undergo radical changes, the government
realized the desirability of establishing connections by means of lines
running north and south. The Rio de Janeiran system was extended north
to the growing port of Victoria, in the neighboring State of Espirito
Santo, and connected with the systems of São Paulo and Rio Grande do
Sul, and in 1910 pushed still farther south into Uruguay, so that by the
end of the year it was possible to travel by rail from Victoria to
Montevideo, a distance of more than two thousand miles.
The lines north of Victoria, however, have not yet been connected and
the nearly twenty-five-hundred-mile journey from Belém to Rio,
therefore, must still be made by sea. But, long though the trip is, it
is very far from being a monotonous one, if only the tourist has the
time to make it on a coastwise steamer that stops at the principal ports
of call. São Luiz da Maranhão, “the City of Little Palaces”; Fortaleza,
the port of Ceará, regarded as one of the loveliest in Brazil;
Pernambuco, with its canals and lagoons and bridges, a city that
inspired a famous Brazilian poet to exclaim: “Hail, beautiful land! O
Pernambuco, Venice transported to America, floating on the seas!” and
terraced, crescent-shaped São Salvador, enthroned on the hills beside
its magnificent bay—all these are so interesting that they richly repay
a visit. All are older than the oldest English settlement in the
northern continent, yet, unlike Jamestown, there is not one of them that
has not kept pace with the national progress.
The huge breast of land on which these cities are located, that reaches
out in a direct line toward the western extremity of Africa and lies in
the track of all ships bound by way of the Atlantic to and from the
country south of the equator, is the great sugar, cotton, and tobacco
region, and was the first in Brazil to contain a large European
population. The French coveted and poached on it and were the first to
settle São Luiz in Maranhão; the Dutch seized it in 1630, while Holland
was at war with Spain and Portugal and her possessions had fallen under
Spanish suzerainty, and held it for twenty-five years in spite of all
the Portuguese and Spanish could do, only to be driven out at last by
the persistence and courage of the colonists themselves.
It is doubtful whether anywhere else could be found such a mingling of
the classic, medieval, and modern in architecture, such quaint old
institutions and customs of living in an atmosphere permeated with
up-to-date business methods, such strangely attractive displays of
primitive ornaments and curios as may be seen in their shops side by
side with importations from Paris. In few other places could such
results be studied as have come from the process of racial assimilation
that has been going on for centuries in the mestizo classes—the Indian
by the Caucasian, the African by both; for in Brazil, as in the islands
of the Caribbean, immense numbers of blacks were brought over in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries after the enslavement of the Indians
had been forbidden. Nor could more cordial courtesy be met with anywhere
than that with which one is here treated by all, as a rule, from the
highly cultured, thoroughbred Portuguese to the poorest and most
illiterate mixed-breed or negro laborer—though this is true of nearly
every place in South America.
[Illustration: THE CITY OF BAHIA.]
Of all these cities, though, Pernambuco is perhaps the most interesting.
After Rio, São Paulo, and Bahia, it is the largest and most important in
the country. Its canals and lagoons and handsome bridges, which give it
an attractiveness distinct from the others, are accounted for by the
fact that the city is divided into sections by the channels of the river
at the mouth of which it lies, and a few hundred yards out from the
shore is a long reef, running parallel with it, that forms a natural
breakwater, which encloses the harbor and protects it from the heavy
rollers in time of storm. It is from this reef that the section known as
Recife, the old city proper, derives its name.
Recife is the commercial and shipping section now. There is not much to
commend it to the sightseer except a few fine old churches and the Praca
do Commercio, a place of general resort facing the local Wall Street,
where almost every one who is engaged in business down town is to be
seen taking a breathing spell at some hour or other during the day. Near
by is a large hucksters’ market, which, it must be confessed, serves
better than the hotel _menu_ to disclose the peculiarities of the fare
with which the denizens of the neighborhood regale themselves. And good
fare it is, too, and wonderful to behold—to a northerner unaccustomed to
such luxuriance.
The section in which the government buildings and custom house and the
principal retail stores, theaters, and places of amusement are to be
found is the one called São Antonio, on a large island a little to the
southeast. This part of the town is much better built. Many of the old
houses, as in Recife, are reminiscent, some of the early Portuguese,
others of the Dutch occupation—tall, pointed-roof structures, painted
white or pale blue or pink—but the newer ones, and the streets
generally, are more sightly and characteristic of the indulgent,
easy-going, artistic temperament of the people. The fashionable
residence district is called Boa Vista and lies back on the mainland,
where the bishop has his palace. Most of the houses here are the
charming one-story affairs, surrounded by beautiful gardens, so suited
to life in the tropics.
Three or four miles to the north is a suburban section called Olinda,
where many of the old families still have their homes. In colonial
times, as Dawson tells us, when this part of the country was supplying
Europe with nearly all of the sugar it used and the planters were
rolling in wealth, this “was the largest town in Brazil and the one
where there was the most luxurious living and the most polite society.
Great sums were spent in fêtes, religious processions, fairs, and
dinners. The simple Jesuit Fathers were shocked to see such velvets and
silks, such luxurious beds of crimson damask, such extravagance in the
trappings of the saddle horses. Carriages were unknown and, instead,
litters and sedan chairs were used, and these remained in common use
until very recent times.” Lots of these old houses and customs still
exist, and there are many new features of the town that are worth
seeing.
São Salvador da Bahia, “where the wicked Brazilian cigars come from,”
was the provincial capital once, and the seat of government of the whole
Portuguese empire when the King was forced by Napoleon’s aggressions to
take refuge in Brazil. Formerly, too, it was the headquarters for
diamonds, before the mines in the south and in South Africa were
developed. Now it is the capital of the rich Bay State, and is the third
of the big cities in point of size and importance—though here the
percentage of negro blood is much higher than anywhere else in the
country.
Its location is delightfully picturesque, the upper section built on
bluffs several hundred feet above the level of the bay, the lower along
the shore. In this lower section, behind the docks, are the warehouses
and factories, the arsenal and a great lighthouse, and, aside from
defensive works of modern type, the old fortifications which the Dutch
had made the most formidable in America in colonial times; and on the
upper terraces are the Governor’s palace and public buildings, one of
the best public libraries in the country, the cathedral and convents,
the municipal theater, and the better class of residences and amusement
resorts. In general, the streets are much like those of Belém and
Pernambuco: paved with cobblestones and narrow in the shopping and café
districts, with long white rows of two and three story houses built
closely together, many with balconies above the show windows; and the
parks are as beautiful and the residences out along the wide, palm-lined
driveways are fully as sumptuous.
But, interesting as are all these places, their attractions are fairly
dimmed by Rio’s, and especially by her gorgeous bay. From the Guianas to
its southernmost boundaries, in fact, Brazil is one grand series of
prismatic forests, majestic rivers and cascades, immense rolling plains
and mountains—a panorama that is matchless anywhere in the world—but, if
I were asked to point out some one feature that was preëminent among
them all, I should not hesitate to select that bay. The bay of Naples,
the Golden Horn of Constantinople, all those wonderful aspects by the
mention of which writers have sought to impress those who have not seen
the Rio bay with its grandeur and beauty, can but suffer by the
comparison. “Extravagant language must be used in writing of it,” says
Burton Holmes, “for there all is extravagance—extravagance of color,
extravagance of form.” It is so incomparably sublime, says the Rev.
James C. Fletcher, the author of one of the most noted of the
descriptions—though no pen or brush could possibly do it justice—that
“the first entrance must mark an era in the life of any one. I have seen
the rude and ignorant Russian sailor, the immoral and unreflecting
Australian adventurer, as well as the refined and cultivated European
gentleman, stand silent on the deck, lost in admiration of the gigantic
avenue of mountains and palm-covered isles, which, like the granite
pillars of the Temple of Luxor, form a fitting colonnade to the portal
of the finest bay in the world.”
Entering the outer bay, we see to the left the huge, fantastic figure of
Gavia looming up from the shore, rock-capped and bald, and, a little
beyond, the more symmetrical crests of the Three Brothers. Just
distinguishable, off behind where the city lies, the summit of Corcovado
(the Hunchback) appears. On the right are mound-shaped islands called
the Father and Mother, that protrude from the water like tops of
mountains partially submerged, and, off in the distance, the pinnacles
of the Organ group mount higher than all. In the center, on a point
jutting out from the mainland, is an isolated peak fifteen hundred feet
high, called the Sugar Loaf, that stands like a sentinel guarding the
narrow entrance to the harbor. As we draw nearer, the coloring of the
mountain sides and shores, only a confusion of vague tints before, grows
more and more vivid as the foliage begins to take form, and we see that
on the hills above the rocks at the extremities of the peninsulas that
extend from either side to form the gateway, are white-walled forts.
These are known as São João and Santa Cruz, and, passing through, we are
confronted by still another called Lage, midway between but a little
beyond. It is steel-clad like a man of war, this one, and frowns down
from an island of big rocks, dominating the passage. Once by this, we
are in the harbor itself.
[Illustration: _Copyright, 1911, by W. D. Boyce._
BOTAFOGO BAY, HARBOR OF RIO DE JANEIRO.
Photograph used by courtesy of Mr. W. D. Boyce and the Pan American
Union.]
Just within are shapely arms of the bay, Botafogo on the Rio side and
Jurujuba on the other, that sweep around in wide, graceful curves to two
other and much larger peninsulas opposite, like those of São João and
Santa Cruz; and on one of them, the one to the left, is the old or
commercial district of the national capital, on the other the pretty
little city of Nictheroy, the capital of the State of Rio de Janeiro—for
the city of Rio is the national capital and located in a separate
federal district, like our city of Washington. Above these larger
peninsulas the water broadens to a vast expanse, a sort of inland sea.
Inclosing it like a wall, and on beyond as far as the eye can reach,
stretch the serried peaks of the Coast Range.
Everywhere, bathed in the intense golden sunlight, are the same
gradations of green, the same riot of brilliantly colored flowers, that
we saw on the Amazon—only here the water is not muddy but deep blue, and
the beaches are lined with almost snow-white sand. Then, as we steam
slowly across to the anchorage, which lies over between the Villegagnon
and Cobra islands near the quay, we have the first view of the city,
dense in the center where it covers the peninsula, and stretching along
the shore and here and there back between the foothills, for miles and
miles to the north and south. The roofs of the houses are tiled in reds
and browns; the walls are cream or rose-tinted or else dazzling white.
“It looks like a fragment of fairy-land,” as Curtis expresses it—“a
cluster of alabaster castles decorated with vines.”
Perhaps I ought to give warning that some of the writers on Brazil,
after going into raptures over the scene in the bay, express themselves
very differently respecting the experience on entering the city. That
same Mr. Curtis, for instance, goes on to say that “the streets are
narrow, damp, dirty, reeking with repulsive odors and filled with
vermin-covered beggars and wolfish-looking dogs.” But he was writing of
experiences encountered many years ago, before the reforms and
improvements were undertaken, which, when completed, will have cost some
sixty millions of dollars. It is still true, no doubt, that in the
commercial district several of the ugly old sections remain, where there
are narrow, tortuous streets and dingy warehouses, ship-chandleries,
saloons and stores that cater to the stevedore class of trade, such as
there are in all great shipping centers as old and as busy as Rio, and
of course there are the districts in which the lowest classes
foregather. But since he and Dr. Fletcher wrote their books, the old
passenger landing place called the Pharoux quay has been transformed
into a handsome square; adorned with gardens and a big bronze fountain;
hills have been leveled to permit extensions and relieve the congestion;
literally thousands of marshy, mosquito-breeding places have been filled
in and reclaimed; a fine drainage canal has been constructed, an
adequate sewerage system installed, and a system of masonry docks is
nearing completion that will rival the celebrated docks of Santos and
Buenos Aires; some of the streets have been broadened and more have been
repaved, and the sanitary conditions and healthfulness generally have
been so improved that yellow fever is a thing of the past.
Besides all this, many magnificent new government buildings have been
erected, notably the Congressional Palace on Tiradentes Square. The
estimated cost of this building alone was $15,000,000 and it is proudly
claimed to be one of the finest in South America; also the Palace of the
Supreme Court, of rose-tinted stone and marble, with bronze
ornamentations, and the Post Office and Mint, National Printing Office
and National Library, all of great architectural beauty, and the City
Hall and Municipal Theater. This last is an ornate, high-domed marble
and stone structure of Moorish design that cost $5,000,000 to build.
And, to facilitate traffic, a superb hundred-and-fifty-foot wide avenue,
the Avenida Central, has been constructed clear across the business
section of the city for a mile or more, opening a vista from bay to bay.
To do this more than six hundred houses had to be purchased and torn
down; they have been replaced by others of a pleasing general uniformity
and elegance of appearance, of which any city in Europe or America might
well be proud. The _Jornal do Commercio_ building, for example, looks
more like one of our fashionable metropolitan hotels or apartment
houses, than a business establishment. The sidewalks are paved with
mosaics and kept perfectly clean.
[Illustration: BAY AND CITY OF RIO DE JANEIRO FROM SUMMIT OF CORCOVADO.]
Beginning at the southern end of this avenue and following the contour
of the shore past the elegant residence districts of Gloria and
Flamengo, they have constructed an esplanade a mile long, called the
Avenida Beira Mar, and, farther on, around the exquisite inlet of
Botafogo, where some of the handsomest of the residences are, have
converted the semicircular beach into a still lovelier avenue, adorned
with alternate rows of trees and arc lights like the other, and flower
beds and formal lawns. Unless it is the more comprehensive one from the
top of Corcovado, there is no more enchanting view than that of this
whole ensemble from the Morro da Viuva at the northern end of the
semicircle, especially looking straight across at the hills on the
opposite side, where the rose-tinted buildings of the Military School
nestle in the green depths of a rocky cleft, with the Sugar Loaf
towering behind.
And then, up near the business section again, there is the Paseio
Publico, with its park and lakes and broad waterside terrace overlooking
the whole southern part of the harbor, and the naval barracks and
fortifications on historic Villegagnon, quite close at this point. It
was here that the adventurer for whom it is named made the first attempt
at colonizing the neighborhood: with a party of Huguenots sent over by
Admiral Coligny to escape religious persecutions in France and to found
a place of refuge for those of the Protestant faith. The Paseio Publico
is regarded by many as the most charming of the parks, but there are
lots of these beautiful spots. One of them, the Botanical Garden, which
is larger and more complete than the one in Belém, is known the world
over from the thousands of pictures that have been published of its
magnificent avenue of royal palms. Few visit Rio without going there;
and now that a good cog-wheel railroad has been built from one of the
trolley lines up to the summit of Corcovado, the whole mountain side has
become a wildwood park. With reference to the view from the summit, I
cannot resist quoting from Arthur Ruhl, who describes it so
delightfully.
“The Corcovado is a rock jutting over the trees,” he says, “so sheer
that you look down on Rio and the blue harbor as from a balloon—down two
thousand feet of velvet green descents to the terra cotta roofs and
sun-washed walls and the wheel-spoke streets like lines on a map. Not
one of our smoke hives, but a city of villas and palms and showering
vines and flowers, meandering about over the foothills, immersed in the
blazing sun. The cool, laughing sea envelops it—blue, and bluer yet in
the sun; and, all about in it, islands—agate in turquoise—jut out as
though the gods had tossed a handful in the water. It is, as I heard an
American say of the backward look toward Rio as the train climbs to
Petropolis, as though one had been taken up into the mountains to see
the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them.” Petropolis, though, is
not simply another viewpoint, but one of the loveliest of the suburban
mountain cities, where the late Emperor lived, surrounded by the
ambassadors and ministers of the foreign countries and the nobility and
aristocracy of the old régime. It is still the home of the diplomatic
corps, and the most fashionable of the suburbs.
Do not imagine for a moment, however, that the pleasures of a visit to
Rio are limited to such things. Like all cities of its respectable age
and size—for it has almost, if not quite, reached the million mark
now—it has its antiquities and places of historical interest, its
museums, art galleries, libraries, statues and churches (the paintings
and decorations in the beautiful Candelaria Church are the richest in
South America), and its theaters and amusement resorts of every
description; and, down town in that same commercial part that Mr. Curtis
scored so heavily, is the noisy, vivacious old Rua do Ouvidor, of all
things Rio de Janeiran the one that possesses the most individuality,
the place where everybody who is anybody is to be seen. It is only about
twenty feet wide—just think of it, the “Broadway” of a great city like
Rio!—so narrow and crowded that vehicles are not allowed to go through
at certain hours of the day, but most of the old somber Portuguese-style
buildings have been replaced by modern ones, and what it lacks in width
is compensated for by the attractiveness of the stores and cafés.
[Illustration: AVENUE OF ROYAL PALMS, RIO BOTANICAL GARDENS.]
[Illustration: AVENIDA CENTRAL, RIO DE JANEIRO.]
These cafés, principally devoted to the service of the _demi tasse_, are
everywhere in Brazil, but here particularly they are the rendezvous for
the official, military, professional and more prosperous commercial
classes, who drop in at all hours to talk things over to the music of
the orchestra—everything from business, religion and politics to the
idlest society gossip—only they sip coffee, for the most part, instead
of highballs and beer. And such coffee! A North American never realizes
what a perfectly delectable flavor coffee really is capable of, how
deliciously rich and sirupy it is when brewed by those who know how,
until he has drunk it in the Orient or down there in Brazil.
There was a time, and not so very long ago, when these crowds along the
Rua do Ouvidor were all of one sex. The ladies of the upper classes—when
they went shopping at all, instead of simply having samples sent to
their houses to choose from—remained in their carriages while the
shopkeepers brought out to them for their inspection the various
qualities of such articles as were desired; but this old world idea of
seclusion, like many others at the capital, has given way to more
advanced ones now. Brazilian metropolitan womanhood is beginning to
awaken and follow the general trend toward emancipation. In these days
ladies not only appear on the streets and go from shop to shop on foot,
as do the ladies of our cities, but drop in at certain unexceptionable
cafés for luncheon, or perhaps at a matinée or some moving picture show,
unattended by their husbands or fathers or brothers. The Avenida,
Saturday afternoons when the weather is pleasant, reminds one of a
Parisian boulevard, so densely is it thronged with smartly gotten up
promenaders and so well patronized are the little sidewalk tables under
the awnings in front of the cafés. Needless to say, on these occasions
the ladies do graciously suffer the attendance of their admirers or the
male members of their families.
“‘Superb’ is the word that best fits the beautiful Brazilian woman,” no
less an authority than Burton Holmes enthusiastically declares.
“‘Striking’ is the word that best describes her dress.” Then, referring
to their appearance at the opera: “The belles of Rio seem to have taken
the styles of Paris and given to them a strange, exotic something that
makes the toilettes seen at the Municipal Theater far more striking and
effective than those at the Paris opera,” he goes on. “Mere man cannot
say in what the difference lies, but the fact remains that while the
gowns may have been made, or at least designed, in Paris, they are not
Parisian; they are instead pronouncedly Brazilian. The men, too, deserve
a word of mention, for they are very well-dressed men, much better
dressed than the men of Paris or of Lisbon—all of course in evening
dress, all looking as if they were accustomed to wearing it. The women
in the boxes retain their hats. The men might as well retain theirs, for
they are quite invisible behind the massed millinery of their fair
companions.”
Rio, of course, has all the up-to-date public utilities—electric
street-car lines, lights, telephones, taxicabs and the rest; but, as
Arthur Ruhl so aptly puts it, “Before the things seen and heard and
vaguely felt,” in this city of such strange, peculiar charm, “the
endless procession of vague, unrelated things that baffle and
allure—semi-antique humans living languidly in the midst of a
sun-drenched nature, which, by its very luxuriance, might seem to
have overpowered them—Latin sensibility tinged with African
superstition—negro coachmen in top-boots, such as Puss-in-Boots
might have worn—dusky, velvet-eyed _donzellas_—palms, blazing walls
and indigo sea—one loses interest in railroads and power plants and
the things we do better at home. Brazilians must interest themselves
in such things, for therein lies their salvation. If I seem to
neglect them, it is because it seems absurd to visit a conservatory
full of orchids and spend one’s time seeing how the steam-pipes are
put in. By the same token,” he adds—
“There is a certain mellowed dignity in the Brazilian scene—the
natural inheritance of the empire, and doubtless, also, a
reaction of race and climate—lacking in the more energetic
Argentina. It was only in 1889 that good Dom Pedro—that kindly,
cultured, old-school gentleman—was dethroned and shipped off to
Portugal. It is only since 1887 that the negroes ceased to be
slaves. Brazil’s foremost statesman, the big, able Minister of
Foreign Affairs, who, as he moved amongst his slender Caribbean
brethren at the 1906 conference, looked like the senior partner
of some old firm of Wall Street bankers, is still called ‘Baron’
Rio Branco. You can still see in Petropolis the house of the
Princess Regent and her husband, the Conde d’Eu, overgrown
somewhat with vegetation and buried in somber shades. Rio’s
great public library was started by King João VI himself when
the Portuguese court was transferred to Brazil in 1808.
“There is still a suggestion of the old world and grand manner.
They have their Academy of Forty Immortals; their politicians
are often pleased to practice the politer arts. Senhor Joahim
Nabuco, who presided at the conference, has written his
‘_Pensées_.’ These littérateurs may be, as Senhor Bomfim
suggests in ‘_A America Latina_,’ ‘inveterate rhetoricians whose
abundant works are taken as a proof of genius.’ Yet at least
they have a certain way with them. Pompous, grave, they go
through the solemn motions. In spite of the vast majority who
neither read nor write, Brazilians of the upper class are
probably more ‘cultured,’ in the narrow literary sense of the
word, than our average man of the same class at home. They speak
and write French as a matter of course in addition to their own
language, and most of them make fair headway with English. They
enjoy and encourage music and painting and poetry. Opera not
only comes to Rio each winter as it does to Buenos Aires, but
they have their National Institute of Music and their native
composers, one of whom especially, the late Carlos Gomez, has
heard his operas successfully produced in Europe. They have
their National Academy of Fine Arts and a gallery which, I am
sure, is visited and appreciated more than the really excellent
one tucked away upstairs in Buenos Aires’ Calle Florida.”
III
As already said, from Rio one may go to São Paulo, the second
largest—and, with the exception of Rio, the most important—city in the
country, by railroad, and almost as comfortably, too, as one may travel
from New York to Chicago. The city of São Paulo is the capital of the
State of that name, the great land of coffee, the land in fact that
produces more than half of all the coffee grown in Brazil, and Brazil as
a whole produces more than three-fourths of all that the world consumes.
The city has a population of about 350,000, and is located in the
mountains, about forty miles back from the coast and three thousand feet
above the level of the sea. It is connected by railroad with Santos, its
seaport, where the best docks in the country are now. These two cities,
though founded in early colonial times, are not quite as interestingly
characteristic as Rio and the others that have been mentioned, for they
are far enough south to be in the temperate zone, and have, therefore,
attracted a very much larger foreign element, particularly German,
Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. There are not so many negroes and mixed
breeds among the laboring classes, and their institutions, business
methods and social life more nearly resemble our own; and, as a
consequence, they have certainly not been behind the rest of Brazil in
development. As in Rio, enormous sums have recently been spent for
sanitation, public buildings, and improvements.
São Paulo has thus been transformed into one of the most healthful
cities in the world, and one of the handsomest. Its climate, uniformly
mild like that of southern Europe, has never left anything to be
desired—except, perhaps, snow and ice, if there are among the residents
there any homesick northerners who prefer the sharper seasonal contrasts
to which they are accustomed. The site is too near the tropics and the
mountains are not high enough for freezing cold, yet so high that the
air has a bracing, invigorating quality. As Senator Root declared when
he was visiting the country: “There is something in the air of São Paulo
that makes strong and vigorous men.” Their strength and vigor are not
attributable, however, to the climate alone. It is an inheritance. The
early Paulistas were of the sturdiest type, men who were compelled to
maintain themselves and extend and defend their possessions by fighting
and the hardest kind of work—an instance, they were, of the survival of
the fittest. It is small wonder that their descendants, with their rich
heritage of health and vitality and traditions, and their enormously
productive lands, should be distinguished for their enterprise as well
as for their wealth and social and intellectual culture. In political
and educational progress they have always been prominent.
A splendid monument to their patriotism and enterprise is Ypiranga, a
great building of classic design, erected on the site of the
proclamation of independence on a hill overlooking the city, and
intended both to commemorate the event and to be used as an institution
of learning. Among other interesting things, it contains a remarkable
museum. They have a polytechnic school in the city that is the pride of
the whole country, and the graduates of which are in demand everywhere
because of the particularly efficient system of training; an institution
known as the Lyceum of Arts and Crafts, devoted to the practical
instruction of the artisan classes, which graduates skilled workmen by
the hundreds every year; and an excellently equipped normal school that
occupies a whole square, facing the Praca de Republica—these in addition
to primary institutions and conventional colleges and law and medical
schools, that are attended by students from all over Brazil.
There is even a well-patronized non-sectarian North American
institution, known as the Mackenzie College, which has been in existence
for thirty-five years or more, and, of all surprising things—and this is
only one of many indications of the liberal catholicism of their views
respecting other religious beliefs, notwithstanding the fact that, as
everywhere else in South America, Roman Catholicism is the religion of
the state—an Episcopal seminary, conspicuously located in a beautiful
building opposite the Jardim Publico. By mentioning particularly these
institutions, I do not mean to imply that there are not excellent
educational facilities elsewhere in Brazil—especially, of course, in
Rio—but the people of São Paulo seem to devote more attention to
education than in the other parts of the country and the percentage of
illiteracy there, among the people as a whole, appears to be much
smaller.
The Governor’s Palace and the principal office buildings of the
administration are located around two large squares, one called the
Largo de Palacio, the other the Praca Municipal, in the heart of the
city. Several of them are spacious, imposing-looking buildings of
stone and marble that compare favorably with those of the national
government at Rio; all are in keeping with the importance of the city
and State—particularly their superb big theater, which is another of
those surprisingly costly and attractive places of amusement
maintained by the municipality that one sees so many of in South
America. The streets in the Triangle, as the commercial district is
called, are crowded and busy. There is an air of briskness about them
that is refreshing—although many of the busiest are narrow and
unattractive in appearance, this being the old part of the town.
Even the Rua São Bento, the principal shopping street, is not much wider
than the Rua do Ouvidor in Rio; but from this district a viaduct eight
hundred feet long and fifty wide leads to the new parts, where there are
broad, handsomely built-up avenues and shaded promenades, detached
houses of modern type, surrounded by gardens, and an atmosphere of ease
as well as luxury, as in the less bustling cities to the north. The
Avenida Paulista is charming. There are few handsomer thoroughfares in
America, either North or South, than this—and it is the common boast
that along the Rua des Palmeiras, their most fashionable residence
street, and in certain of the suburbs, the palatial homes of their
millionaires are unrivaled in Brazil.
The great coffee port of Santos, once numbered among the dread homes of
Yellow Jack, but now as healthful as any port in the tropics, is only
sixty or seventy miles away by railroad—an excellently equipped road
that runs down the slope from the mountain range to the coast over a
route strikingly rich in scenic effects and grand views. The city, which
has a population of about sixty thousand, is situated on the western
shore of a landlocked bay connected with the ocean by a narrow but deep
riverlike channel, ten miles long and flanked, like the city itself, by
picturesque hills. The streets are well paved and clean, the residence
section and suburbs attractive, and a narrow-gauge railroad affords an
opportunity for an enjoyable trip to a seaside resort near by, where
there are good surf-bathing and plenty of places of amusement.
It is said that more than 10,000,000 bags of coffee, each weighing 132
pounds, are shipped from this port every year. The extensive system of
masonry docks and cranes is famous for its efficiency and is the best in
South America next to that in Buenos Aires. The big steamers and sailing
vessels lying broadside to these docks and anchored in the broad harbor,
the custom house and warehouses facing the quay, the groups of dealers
and agents standing bargaining out in front, the sailors scurrying
about, the heavy teams heaped up with sacks of coffee, the long lines of
negro stevedores, each with a bag or two balanced on his head, carrying
them aboard the ships, all working in the blazing sun in this labyrinth
of white-walled streets, with their background of green hills and blue
water, make up a scene that is both lively and bizarre.
The custom of coffee drinking is relatively of rather recent development
among peoples of Europe and their descendants in America. For some
reason, for a long time after it made its way west from Arabia and
Turkey, it was under the ban of the church. Maybe this was because of
its Mohammedan origin. It was not until 1652 that the first house that
made a specialty of serving coffee was opened in London, and about the
same time it was introduced in France. From then on it has spread until
the amount now consumed the world over is simply enormous, especially in
the United States, where we take somewhere near half of all that is
grown. At first it came only from northern Africa, Arabia, and Turkey;
then the Dutch began experimenting and succeeded in cultivating it in
Java, and the French in the West Indies. For a while these were the
principal sources of supply. The story goes that in 1760 a Portuguese,
João Alberto Castello Branco, planted a bush in Rio, and from that small
start, thanks to her peculiarly favorable soil and climate, Brazil soon
outstripped the others and took the lead. And it is in these uplands of
the State of São Paulo that more than half of all of this enormous
amount of coffee that is consumed in the world to-day is produced. There
are between fifteen and twenty thousand cafezals, or plantations,
employing hundreds of thousands of laborers, and some of the plantations
are so vast that they grow millions of trees. Here it is that most of
the immigrants flock. There is a million of Italians alone.
[Illustration: COFFEE PLANTATION, BRAZIL.]
The general contour of the country is not flat but rolling. In great
patches the bushy little trees cover the hills and valleys in long,
parallel rows, from six to eight feet high, for they are kept pruned to
a certain height to facilitate cultivation. The leaves are dark green
and glossy, somewhat resembling myrtle, only not so dry and thick; the
flowers are white and grow in clusters from the axils of the branches;
the fruit, when ripe, is about the size of and resembles a dark red
cherry, and grows in clusters, like the flowers, and the air is fragrant
with perfume. No more beautiful sight could be imagined than one of
these plantations in full bloom. Each of the red berries contains two
coffee beans, embedded in a yellowish, sweetish pulp. The bean, in its
natural shape, is convex on one side and flat on the other. As sold on
the market, with the shell, pulp and skin removed by a mechanical
process that requires an expensive outfit of machinery, the product is
the result of a development in agricultural methods that is not
surpassed in the wheat industry of Argentina or our own country, and
which is very far ahead of that of the rubber industry in the north. It
is said that no new trees have been planted since 1903 because the
production has been so great that the government has thought best to
restrict it until the demand shall once more have equaled the supply.
The reverse of this condition has existed for several years.
The neighbors of the Paulistas in the State of Rio Grande do Sul are
principally engaged (with Paraguay) in supplying the twenty or more
millions of consumers in South America and growing numbers elsewhere,
with the leaves from which the beverage is made that is known as _yerba
maté_, or Paraguay tea, which those who drink it contend has all the
stimulating and nourishing qualities of the tea we use, but none of its
injurious effects. Next to coffee and rubber, this is the greatest of
Brazil’s sources of revenue. These southerners also raise cattle and
sheep on a large scale—though not yet sufficiently large for export—and
do a good deal of canning and manufacturing. Their principal seaport,
Porto Alegre (Smiling Port), has a population of nearly 150,000, and, as
in Pernambuco and Rio, and all the big coast cities in fact, extensive
harbor improvements are under way. This city too is to have a system of
masonry docks and hoisting machinery and new warehouses along the quay.
A few miles north, and connected with Porto Alegre by railroad, is São
Leopoldo, the port of a large German colony that was founded in the
State nearly a hundred years ago.
From Rio it is possible also to go by railroad to Bello Horizonte, the
remarkable capital of Minas Geraes, the most densely populated of all
the Brazilian States. This city is unique in that it did not have its
beginning in the usual way and get itself chosen as the capital; it was
built only a few years ago on a previously unoccupied site _for the very
purpose_, and at a cost, for only the buildings owned by the government,
of more than $30,000,000. It is located in a lovely, wooded, farm-dotted
valley, through the length of which flows a river, interrupted at
intervals by cascades. Near the city, both sides of the stream have been
converted into a delightful park. One of the avenues that run through
the center of the city is named for its founder, Affonso Penna, and is a
hundred and fifty feet wide and shaded by three rows of trees. The
hotels are comfortable, train service good, and the journey through a
country of beautiful scenery and interesting people and towns.
This is the great mining State of Brazil. Of it Marie Robinson Wright
says: “Few countries can boast of such an abundance and variety of
mineral resources as Minas Geraes, which derives its name, signifying
General Mines, from the industry that gave it existence, and which owes
to this principal attraction the preponderance of its population.” Gold
was not discovered during the first two hundred years after settlement
had been begun by the Portuguese, but, when it was at last discovered,
the yield was very great. In 1792 the amount registered in Rio—and this
record, of course, was incomplete—was 360,000 pounds in weight. An
English authority has estimated the total output up to within recent
years at £200,000,000 sterling. “Of all the fabulous tales related of
bonanza princes,” Mrs. Wright goes on to say, “the palm for extravagance
belongs to the history of the early mining days in Brazil, when horses
were shod with gold, when lawyers supported their pleadings before
judges with gifts of what appeared at first sight to be the choicest
oranges and bananas, but proved to be solid gold imitations, when guests
were entertained at dinner by the discovery of gold pebbles in their
soup instead of grains of corn, when nuggets were the most convenient
means of exchange in the money market;” but here, as in some of our own
mining regions, with the gradual exhaustion of the surface deposits and
the impossibility of continuing by primitive methods, mining came to be
more and more neglected. Modern methods and machinery are once more
bringing the industry into prominence, and a considerable amount of gold
is even now being taken out by the few companies that have already
installed up-to-date plants.
The diamond mines in the neighborhood of the old town of Diamantina
(also easily accessible by rail) have been famous since the first
discoveries were made in 1727. In these parts several of the most
valuable gems in the world are said to have been found—for instance, the
Braganza, the richest of the Crown jewels of Portugal, the Regent, named
in honor of Dom João VI, the _Estrella do Sul_ (Star of the South), that
weighed a hundred and twenty-five carats after lapidation and was
purchased by the Rajah of Baroda, it is said, for $15,000,000, and the
Dresden, which weighed sixty-five carats after lapidation and was also
bought by an Indian prince. For many years, until the South African
mines came into competition, this was the chief source of the world’s
supply. The country is also rich in amethysts, tourmalines, topazes and
aquamarines. The State of Bahia is still the principal source of the
black diamond, known as the _carbonado_. The largest _carbonado_ known
was found there in 1835. It weighed 3150 carats.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
III
ARGENTINA
I
No nation of the southern continent is better qualified than Argentina
to rebuke the stupid jest that refers to the Latin-American countries as
opera bouffe republics. It has a domain one-third the size of the United
States, or as large as the territory lying east of the Mississippi, with
Texas added, stretching from tropic heat to antarctic cold, and
possessing a frontage on the Atlantic as extensive as our own coast line
from Portland, Maine, to Key West, Florida. It has over 500,000,000
acres of its 1,135,840 square miles of area available for the
cultivation of life-sustaining products and distributed over vast,
treeless, well-watered plains, every one of which is easily accessible
to the seaboard with the simplest of railway construction. These plains
have no such natural obstructions to transportation as our Alleghanies
or Rockies, and have for their produce a much shorter haul to the
European world of consumers.
Argentina has the further advantage of over 18,000 miles of up-to-date
railways radiating from its port cities, and five river systems, one of
which, La Plata, the outlet for the waters of the Paraná and Uruguay, is
second only to the Amazon among the world’s great rivers. It is 180
miles wide at its mouth, and pours into the Atlantic a flood greater by
eighty per cent. than that cast by the Mississippi into the Gulf of
Mexico.
The timber regions of the country are rich in structural and cabinet
woods. It has a grazing industry that ranks second only to Australia in
sheep, second only to the United States in cattle, and second only to
the United States and Russia in horses. In 1910 it exported to Europe
190,430 live animals and $130,000,000 worth of frozen beef, mutton,
pork, hides, and other animal products. Its total foreign commerce
amounted to $702,664,810 in value. It has an agricultural output that
places it in the first rank of exporters of maize and linseed, second to
Russia in the export of wheat, and among the leaders in corn, a soil
that can grow still greater quantities of sugar, tobacco, rice, alfalfa,
grapes, fruits, _yerba maté_ (Paraguay tea), olives, corn, barley, and
oats, besides medicinal, textile, and tinctorial plants, enabling her to
export more foodstuffs, including meats and grains, than any other
nation on the globe—a productiveness so great that farms are measured in
some sections by the square league, instead of by the paltry acre, as
with us, and grains are sold by the metric ton of 2205 pounds, instead
of by the bushel. Its mountains contain profitably workable deposits of
gold, silver, and copper, and oil has been found in paying quantities.
It has a metropolis and seaport (its capital, Buenos Aires) reckoned as
the second Latin city in the world, possessing a population of over a
million and a quarter, and adorned with buildings, parks, surface
improvements, and evidences of wealth and culture that stamp it as one
of the finest cities of the Western Hemisphere.
It has a stable and enlightened government, constituted on the same
general plan as our own, and advancing rapidly to a near approximation
to our own in efficiency. It has a history rich, in its later years, in
traditions of statesmanship and patriotism, bearing on its roll of honor
the names of such statesmen, soldiers, educators, and executives as
Belgrano, San Martín, Alvear, Puyrredón, Rivadavia, Mitré, and
Sarmiento, names worthy of special reverence among a people familiar
with the standards set by Washington and Lincoln. In a word, with all
this material greatness, and such a record of energetic and enlightened
adaptation to world progress, Argentina may, in the not distant future,
turn the jest against its northern perpetrators; for a country with a
population of seven millions, which could feed two hundred million
people and give lodging to half that number, is a competitor to be
reckoned with seriously in the struggle for commercial supremacy.
Such, then, is the country of superlatives that opens up before the
visitor who enters at its gateway, Buenos Aires, and breathes in the
wholesome, equable breezes from the pampas—the vast green plains that
stretch away for hundreds of miles in three directions; he agrees at
once that the City of Good Airs was well named by Pedro de Mendoza when
he planted his ill-fated settlement on its site in 1535.
It is to be regretted that this wide-awake, rapidly growing community
buys so much more largely in the European markets than ours. In 1910, of
the total amount they paid for imports ($351,770,056), our share was
only $48,418,892. But then, as they point out, they are our competitors
in the markets of Europe. Their cereals and beef and hides and wool have
no place in the United States, a country that produces and exports the
same things, and they manufacture no articles that we want; so it is
only fair that they should deal with those who buy of them. When it came
to a question of who should build their last two big battleships,
however, they did favor our shipyards with the contracts. Both of these
are of the super-dreadnought type and have already been launched.
The Parisian is pleased to say, “Paris is France”; with even greater
significance may the Buenos Airean say that Buenos Aires is Argentina.
Out of his pride in his great city, the _Porteño_ will tell one that
Argentina really has but two parts, as a matter of fact: the one, Buenos
Aires; the other—all the rest of the country—called _El Campo_ (the
Camp), regardless that he includes in this sweeping assertion such other
railroad centers and ports as Rosario, La Plata, Paraná, Tucumán,
Córdoba, or Bahia Blanca—all of them cities exceeding fifty thousand in
population and one of them, Rosario, exceeding one hundred thousand.
And, indeed, the Bonarenses may well be proud of their metropolis.
One-fifth of the country’s inhabitants is absorbed into its teeming life
of industry and luxury; it is the crystallization of all that this
modernized young giant stands for in the world of commerce; it is the
greatest Spanish-speaking city in the world.
Its dominant position was not achieved, however, without years of
contention with other centers of industry in the country. During the
three hundred years of Spain’s stifling economic policies in this, once
the agricultural unit of her golden empire, Argentina made small
progress. The settlements founded in Santiago (1553), in Tucumán (1565),
and in Córdoba and Santa Fé (1573), by the immigration of Spaniards from
Peru, Chile, and the early settlement of Buenos Aires, all led an
isolated and neglected existence during the colonial period up to the
year 1776, when Spain, awakened from her dream of endless mineral riches
in South America to a realization of the importance of the fertile
country of La Plata, and erected it into a separate viceroyalty,
independent of the Viceroyalty of Peru. The viceroys, freed from the
poisoning influence of Andean gold lust, did much to develop a sense of
nationalism among the scattered agricultural centers. With the growth of
this nationalism, the protests against Spain’s repression increased
until 1810, when the people asserted their right to an unrestricted,
independent national life. May twenty-fifth of that year is their Fourth
of July, and is perpetuated to-day in the name of the superb Avenida de
Mayo in their capital city.
During the formative period that followed, Argentine politics revolved
chiefly about the question of Unitarianism or Federalism—whether the
rich and progressive province at the gateway of the nation (Buenos
Aires) should form a separate unit of government, or remain part of a
confederation and be accorded the leading rôle in national affairs that
its importance merited. In 1862 federalism prevailed and the integrity
of the Argentine Republic was assured, under the presidency of General
Mitré. The capital was later removed from Santa Fé to Buenos Aires and
the latter city erected into a federal district (of some seventy square
miles) somewhat similar to our own District of Columbia. The capital of
the Province of Buenos Aires, however, is La Plata, a few miles distant
from the national capital, on the shores of the great river.
This period marks the beginning of the real history of the Argentine
nation. Under the enlightened statesmanship of Bartolomé Mitré and
Sarmiento, the two chief figures in Argentina’s rapid development from
this point, the great influx of British and German capital began.
Immigration was encouraged for the working of the fields; a solid
foundation was given to educational development; railroads were
constructed, and the machinery of government made adequate to the
vigorous strides of the solidified nation. In the short space of time
that has passed since 1881, over two billions of dollars of British and
German gold have been invested; some eighteen thousand miles of
well-equipped railways have been constructed, almost wholly by English
capital; immigration has doubled the population of the country so that
now half its present inhabitants are foreign-born—during the last ten
years alone two millions have come in—and a thorough system of education
has been perfected, embracing, among all sorts of primary, military, and
industrial institutions, three great universities, one of which, at
Buenos Aires, graduated over five thousand young men last year and, with
the University of Córdoba (founded in 1613), ranks with Harvard and
Yale. In 1910 they celebrated the centennial anniversary of their
independence with a superb industrial exposition that was a revelation
even to themselves, and festivities that are said to have cost
$20,000,000.
The city of Buenos Aires has not the picturesque environment that adds
so much to the natural beauty of the cities of Rio de Janeiro and
Mexico, nor the harbor capacity of New York; nor are its culture and
civic personality, perhaps, as deep-rooted as in Boston; it makes little
pretension to the aristocracy of blood boasted by the still essentially
Spanish Lima; nor has it yet attained such distinction as a national
center of art, literature, and music as has the Brazilian capital. It
may be best compared with Chicago, for it is conspicuously modern, its
present development having been begun and achieved within the last
quarter of a century, although the city itself is nearly four hundred
years old, and is the industrial complement of an agricultural and
pastoral activity even greater than that of our Middle West. Indeed, its
banks and clearing houses are said to transact quite as much business as
those of Chicago.
The docks of Buenos Aires, like those of our great lake city, are most
impressive; they represent an outlay of $50,000,000. Only fifteen years
ago the visitor was bundled ashore in a rowboat and deposited on a
marshy beach. Now his vessel enters one of the numerous basins of the
vast dock system and confronts row upon row of massive masonry and
cement wharves, behind which spreads a network of railway lines. In the
background are public gardens with flowering bushes and statuary to
beautify the approach to the city. For mile after mile, flanked by a
seemingly endless procession of great trans-Atlantic ships and up-river
produce boats, these docks stretch their length, not in a series of
slips, as along the congested waterfront in New York, but so arranged
that the vessels can moor broadside to them and have their cargoes
loaded or unloaded by enormous traveling cranes; and, without, lying at
anchor in the river awaiting their turn for a berth, are many more—for
this giant enterprise, with towering grain elevators and a veritable
forest of powerful cranes, already fails entirely to satisfy present
needs. They are not only to be extended but so enlarged that they will
accommodate vessels of the heaviest draft.
Not even the New York wharves with their vast commerce give such a
picture of vivid bustle. The big German “Cap” boats—_Cap Ortegal_, _Cap
Frio_, and the rest; French, Spanish, and Italian liners with champagne,
aperitives, opera companies, automobiles and immigrants—always
immigrants; Newcastle freighters unloading bolted sections of steel
bridges; up-river boats laden with _yerba maté_ or fragrant oranges from
Paraguay, and the aristocrats of these seas, the Royal Mails from
England—all contribute to the pell-mell, reminding one of the blurred
babel of tongues that whispers across the decks of the world’s ships in
the drowsy passage through the Suez Canal.
And, parenthetically, a most telling commentary on our indifference to
Argentine possibilities lies in the fact that of the many thousand
vessels that transferred cargoes at these docks in 1910, only four bore
the stars and stripes; whereas, prior to our Civil War (which, of
course, absorbed our merchant marine)—in 1852—there were in the harbor
of Buenos Aires six hundred vessels flying our flag, or more than double
the number from all other nations combined. In those days the influence
of our people over the commerce of the southern half of South America
was predominant. A Pennsylvanian, William Wheelright, was looked upon as
its father.
On leaving the docks and driving up into the city, the visitor is at
once impressed with the fact that Buenos Aires is not so wholly wrapped
up in the purely material as is our commercial center on Lake Michigan.
It has broadened along more æsthetic lines and is cultivating the
graces, not alone the sordid features, of cosmopolitanism. In the newer
parts, particularly in the fashionable suburb of Belgrano, the buildings
and shaded boulevards and beautifully landscaped parks resemble rather
those of Paris; although it is not behind our own big cities in public
utilities. Even in the business district there are no skyscrapers or
elevated railroads to disturb the harmony of the architectural scheme;
not even the usual promiscuous, blatant advertising posters are
permitted to be displayed until they have been censored by the proper
official, and when approved they are affixed to ornamentally tinted and
paneled billboards, erected for the purpose. So keen, indeed, are the
Bonarenses to enhance the beauty of their city that a prize is offered
each year for the handsomest structure to be erected. And yet there is
much that is possessed of the charm of antiquity. The occasional
glimpses of blossoms and foliage one gets through doorways opening into
the courtyards, or _patios_, of the old Spanish houses is most
refreshing in the midst of so much that is modern.
It is from Paris, too, that they have acquired their culture, and their
taste in dress and amusements and in literature and art. They buy their
clothes in Paris and sip their French liqueurs in the cafés in true
Parisian style, and they are entertained by opera and comedy companies
from the best Parisian theaters. They have absorbed into their city life
an Italian colony that exceeds in numbers the population of Genoa, and
more Spaniards than could be crowded into Toledo, besides a multitude of
British and Germans and a goodly sprinkling from the rest of Europe, and
even Asia. Having taken so much from France and Italy, and being Spanish
in descent and in speech, the overtone of the city is distinctly Latin,
while their industrial and governmental institutions bear the mark of
the Anglo-Saxon. Next to the Italian and Spanish, the British colony is
the largest. Then follow the German and the French. The North Americans
are small in number; less than three hundred responded to a recent
effort to organize a North American Society.
The Bonarenses, however, like the denizens of the Camp, are intensely
patriotic and passionately insist upon a recognition of their own
distinct personalities. They are the _Porteños_ of the great Argentine
nation. Nor do they and their compatriots throughout the country welcome
the inference that they are Spanish; they are Argentine. One asks a
child of the streets whether he speaks Spanish or Italian. He answers
haughtily (in the former language): “At home we all talk Argentine.”
Strangely enough, their jingoism is not offensive; it is displayed with
an amiable candor that is quite disarming. Not satisfied with being
Argentine from top to toe, they seek to Argentinize even the transient
guest. The rabid Argentinism of the _Porteño_, and his success in
amalgamating the kaleidoscopic horde of Europeans and Asiatics living in
his city, is illustrated by the answer of another youthful immigrant
who, unable to deny that he was born in Genoa, murmured apologetically,
“I was so little.”
[Illustration: COLÓN THEATER, BUENOS AIRES.]
[Illustration: FEDERAL CAPITOL, BUENOS AIRES.]
One of their leading daily newspapers, _La Prensa_, which has the
handsomest newspaper building in existence, displays its patriotism by
devoting a large part of its home to public uses. At its own expense it
provides physicians and a consulting room, where the poor can have
medical attention free, a law office where those who cannot afford to
pay for it can have legal advice, an excellent museum of the
manufactures and products of the country, a free technical library for
the use of students, a large hall for public meetings, a charming _salon
des fêtes_, in which literary, scientific, and charitable entertainments
are given. This paper has a circulation of more than 150,000. So have
_La Nación_ and _La Argentina_, the two other big morning dailies. There
are 225 periodicals published in the capital all together.
In this most cosmopolitan of cities the foreigners foregather in little
worlds of their own. Most are represented by newspapers published in
their own languages, most have clubhouses, more or less pretentious. On
the same evening one season recently “The Merry Widow” was produced in
Spanish, French, and Italian in as many different theaters; and there
are all sorts of places of amusement where foreigners can enjoy
themselves, each after his own fashion—from an immense artificial ice
skating rink (a very fashionable resort, by the way) to a tropical
coffee house, from a golf or race course to a pool room or bowling
alley, from the most attractive and elegantly equipped of modern cafés
to a little French domino parlor or German beer saloon, from a
magnificent opera house to a cheap vaudeville or moving-picture theater.
It is said that the foremost European artists are as likely to visit
Argentina as the United States, and often do, and that many, of all but
the first rank in their own countries and who do not come to North
America at all, visit Buenos Aires regularly and present European
successes long before they are seen in New York.
Their great opera house, the Colón, that cost $10,000,000 and occupies a
whole square, is one of the most beautiful in the world. There is none
in New York or Chicago, or any of our cities, to compare with it. It is
of French design and built of stone, and the interior is finished in
white marble, gold-bronze ornamentations and rich red drapery and
upholstery. It is not quite as large as the Metropolitan in New York,
but, as in the Metropolitan, the two lower tiers of boxes are occupied
by the families of the “Four Hundred,” for their _grand_ opera down
there is just as much of a social function with them as it is with the
smart set in our greatest city; and, as their season is in July and
August—winter months with them—not a few of the singers that are heard
at the Metropolitan later on are heard there in their season. Above the
boxes are two balconies and a gallery where the gods congregate and howl
for _encores_ for all the world like our own. It appears that they are
not very fond of Wagner and the German music, these Bonarenses, but are
keen for the Italian and French; so, aside from _the_ opera, competent
French and Italian companies are brought over every year for long
engagements at other theaters. Also there are French opera comique,
Italian farce, and English musical comedy companies, French _café
chantant_, English music hall and our own vaudeville entertainers
without end, and dramas, even Shakespearean occasionally, and the other
classes of performances, following each other at the many theaters
continually.
Club life is one of the most attractive features. The Britishers (the
heaviest investors of foreign capital), of course, have their inevitable
cricket, polo, and races—at Hurlingham, near the city—and have erected a
substantial country clubhouse, devoted largely to the ritualistic five
o’clock tea. The scene on the broad verandas and well-kept lawns is
brilliant in the afternoon, with the white lace gowns of the women and
the white flannel and broadside panamas of the men. As the guest looks
on at the leisurely game of cricket and tea—for these rites are
solemnized together by the comfortable Briton—he can easily imagine
himself at Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, or Cape Town, where the same
function is taking place at the same hour of the day, on club grounds
almost identically the same, and to the accompaniment of the same
elaborate conversation: “Well played, old chap.” The Germans, Italians,
and Spanish also have luxurious clubhouses, and for the transient
visitor the _Club de Residentes Estranjeros_ affords a delightful
retreat. There is even a big, handsome building for the Y.M.C.A.
Among the fifty or more social organizations in Buenos Aires, the Jockey
Club is the Argentine _cercle par excellence_. Its home on Calle Florida
is of a splendor unsurpassed in clubdom. The guest who is fortunate
enough to enjoy its courtesies will be impressed by the perfect taste
and sumptuousness of its appointments; the superb marble stairway, the
banquet hall, and the famous pictures and sculptures are equaled in but
few of the palaces of Europe. Its wealth, derived from an initiation fee
of $4000 and annual dues of $1500 for each member, and a “rake-off” of
ten per cent. of the amounts wagered at its racetrack, together with
gate receipts, accumulate so rapidly that it is a source of genuine
embarrassment to the governing board.
A short time ago the club voted to devote its surplus to the purchase of
a dozen blocks in the heart of the city, the idea being to transform the
tract into a beautiful boulevard. It would have cost nearly $14,000,000
in our money. The project was abandoned, not because of the cost, but on
the ground of impracticability. During the racing season, held under the
auspices of the Club at Palermo Park, the _Porteño_ is seen at his best.
Paris gowns and picture hats are displayed in profusion in the
grandstand, lawns, and luxurious victorias and automobiles that line the
course, and with the correct dress and animation of the men, and the
prodigality everywhere in evidence (last season $25,000,000 was placed
on the horses), the scene takes on an aspect truly Parisian.
As might be expected in such a vigorously modern city, the severest of
the restrictions on social intercourse familiar in Latin capitals are
here impatiently thrust aside. In the five o’clock parade of the
fashionables that wends its way toward the beautiful Palermo Park on
Sundays, there are no closed carriages or dark mantillas to conceal the
allurements of the señoritas, although many may still huddle demurely at
the sides of their dueñas while they distribute the most decorous of
smiles among their eager acquaintances of the opposite sex. Here
palm-bordered Sarmiento Avenue is crowded with carriages and motor cars
six, often eight, rows deep, two stationary in the center and two moving
on either side, in which ride as smartly gowned women as may be seen
anywhere in America. In the same throng glimpses may be caught of
reigning music-hall favorites, at whose sides are usually to be found
care-free horsemen just in from the Camp, mounted on superb stallions
heavy with silver trappings, and generally with an air of somewhat less
sophisticated enjoyment of the event.
[Illustration: JOCKEY CLUB’S GRANDSTAND AT THE RACE TRACK.]
There is a prodigality about the _Porteño_ in his pleasures that
staggers the visitor from the North. Backed by an almost limitless
wealth from cattle ranch or plantation, he scatters his _pesos_ with a
princely hand. And, of course, there is the obverse of the picture.
There is the under world here, peopled largely by immigration from the
centers of European unrest, in which there is to be found an extreme of
destitution. This is the breeding place of anarchistic ideas, that
frequently find expression in violence and that are surely becoming one
of the city’s most serious problems.
The zest for amusement among all classes finds many outlets. Strolling
along the Calle Florida, or the Calles Cangallo, Esmeralda, Cuyo, Maipó,
and other well-paved, brilliantly illuminated streets of the theater
district, after the fever of the business day has subsided, one drops in
at the “English Bar,” the “Bierhalle,” “Confiteria,” or “Café Parisien,”
and is sure to find a compatriot to join him in the refreshment of his
predilection. Or, for the more solid enjoyment of dinner, the visitor,
whether French, North American, Briton, or Turk, can find his favorite
national dishes excellently served—at the Restaurant Charpentier, where
an orchestra, really good, will for the moment take the homesick
Parisian back to his native boulevards; or at the “Sportsman,” where the
North American is beguiled from his nostalgia by Sousa’s marches,
perhaps, or by biograph pictures of steeple-chasers and Oriental
dancers; or at Monsch’s Restaurant, which specializes in the Briton’s
needs—where, with a look of acute understanding, the head waiter will
permit the guest to select his own English mutton chop or steak from the
glass-doored ice chest.
The outdoor café life is not as well known, so narrow are the streets;
even Calle Florida, which is the essentially fashionable shopping street
of the central town, is lamentably narrow. With the exception of the
Avenida de Mayo, which runs from the plaza containing the Cathedral and
President’s palace to the new chambers of Congress, and divides the city
into its northern and southern sections, and the Avenida Alvear, which
leads from the main part of the city to Palermo Park, flanked with
costly homes and interspersed with gardens and plazas that lend a wealth
of verdure and flowers to the broad avenue, the streets are so narrow
that in the business section vehicles are required by city ordinances to
move in the same direction, down one street and up the next. But in this
splendid, stately Avenida de Mayo of hers, which, except in appearance,
has the characteristics of the business part of New York’s Fifth Avenue
from Madison Square to the Park, Buenos Aires has a thoroughfare that
rivals Rio’s Avenida Central in beauty, and, with its finer hotels and
cafés and French architecture, possesses even more of the attractions of
a Parisian boulevard.
Buenos Aires is not a city that calls for the usual precautions taken by
travelers. All the creature comforts may be had here, although, it must
be confessed, at a cost greatly in excess of prices familiar to North
Americans. There are good physicians and dentists, and no less than
sixteen hospitals—one of which, the British Hospital, is a magnificently
equipped institution, and the one patronized by the American colony.
There are electric street cars (which carried 125,000,000 passengers
last year), splendid trains that carry passengers in thoroughly modern
and well-served coaches to almost every part of the settled country,
first-class carriages, taxicabs, hotels, department stores, and shops of
every description.
II
Leaving the capital for a general tour through Argentina, the visitor
will soon come to appreciate the _Porteño’s_ division of the republic
into the two parts: Buenos Aires and _El Campo_. For the greater part,
the Camp is a vast plain, covering five hundred million acres of flat,
fertile soil, with scarcely a natural hillock higher than those thrown
up by the ants, and no depression more marked than those which the
cartwheels have plowed—stretching from horizon to horizon, north, west,
and south—vast, silent, and awe-inspiring in the majesty of its enormous
extent and productiveness—the calm, inexhaustible bosom which suckles
the prodigious infant on the Plata.
These pampas are the homes of the _estancieros_, the name given to the
masters of the great breeding ranches and plantations. Some possess
_estancias_ that are really feudal in extent; one, in Patagonia, is as
large as the State of Rhode Island. Their homes and outbuildings are
about the only objects that give a human touch to the mile upon mile of
cattle ranges, of green maize and golden wheat, of purple alfalfa and
vivid blue linseed flower, unless one comes upon the black mud hut of
the _colono_, or small farmer who works the field on shares. An
occasional clump of man-planted trees may also be met with, and on the
fringe of the pampas are a few widely scattered Indian settlements; but
there is little to modify the metaphor of the ocean so universally used
to describe these almost limitless plains. Even the seagulls sweep
inland for hundreds of miles to add to its effectiveness. When the very
heart of the country is reached, the traveler may scan the horizon from
every point of the compass and know that in every direction what lies
beyond is exactly the same.
The seasons, which are much like our own, although exactly the reverse
in their occurrence, bring their appropriate activities. During the busy
harvest period the Camp takes on an aspect of bustle which convinces the
traveler that this great business republic has cast the word “_mañana_”
(to-morrow) forever from its “bright lexicon of youth.” Harvesting
machines cutting a swath, not four or six, but fourteen feet in width
through the wheat fields, threshers with powerful blasts that pile the
straw in great stacks, and on the ranches the great armies of horned
cattle add the convincing touch to the scene of prosperity.
“A recent census,” says the Bulletin of the Pan American Union (July,
1911), “shows that in Argentina there are over 29,000,000 bovine cattle,
7,500,000 horses, about 500,000 mules and 300,000 asses, over 67,000,000
sheep, almost 4,000,000 goats and 1,403,591 pigs, with a total value of
about $700,000,000, gold.... It is an interesting fact that all the
animal food so abundantly supplied by this country is the result of
stocking this incomparably rich land with animals introduced from
European sources. In pre-Columbian times the only domestic animals
possessed by the natives were the alpaca and llama. The alpaca was grown
for its flesh and its fleece, while the llama was used as a beast of
burden. In 1535 the Spaniards brought in horses and asses, and, shortly
afterward, bovine cattle were taken to Asunción (Paraguay) by a
Portuguese. In 1569 four thousand head were distributed along the
regions of the Rio de la Plata. Sheep came later. At one time, when the
natives were exceedingly hostile, a few horses and asses were abandoned
on the pampas, and from that stock have descended the innumerable herds
which to-day cover the almost limitless plains; ... but during recent
years Argentina has imported the best animals obtainable and has bred
with the direct intention of improving the stock as much as possible.”
[Illustration: PRIZE WINNERS FROM “THE CAMP.”]
With the cattle rides the _gaucho_, the cowboy of the pampas. Dressed in
smart _poncho_ (a sort of cape, with a hole for the head to go through),
and bright-hued _zombachos_, or wide Turkish trousers, tight-fitting
boots, and _sombrero_, and sitting astride his saddle, richly ornamented
with silver, he presents a sight worth seeing. To the _gaucho_ the Camp
is indebted for its only romance and picturesqueness; he has given to it
its songs and tales of adventure, its tragedies and the brightness of
its life. Lithe and graceful, he is a consummate horseman and rivals his
Texan counterpart in feats of horsemanship and skill with the lasso. He
is proud, simple-minded, and faithful in his friendships, but when
aroused to anger by a slight or by deceit, he is as elemental in his
vengefulness—for there is a strain of the old fierce Tupi-Guarany in the
blood of most of them—as the early types of his race who ranged the
pampas during the so-called mediæval period of Argentine history.
Needless to say, he has contributed his quota in the wars of the
republic and has furnished the inspiration for many a stirring drama in
the literature of the country.
The story of the pampas and the life and habits of their workers and of
the denizens nature has sent to share in their richness, has been told
by many writers of our day, notably by W. H. Koebel, an Englishman, in
his recently published “Modern Argentina.” It is the story of a great
country and a great business enterprise that is fast spreading its
activity farther and farther north, west, and south—to the north, toward
the still savage Chaco country and the mountainous provinces of Jujuy,
Salta, and Catamarca; to the west, toward the Andean uplands, and
southward to the federal territories in the region that was once
referred to on the maps as Patagonia. Gradually the cattle ranch is
being pushed farther afield to give way to agriculture, while the
ranchmen in their turn are penetrating the field of the timber industry.
There is practically no village life in Argentina; there is no middle
class between the lordly _estanciero_ and the laborer. The very
necessary element of the small farmer, working his own independent
property, is gradually being introduced, as the owners of the great
estates are beginning to subdivide their holdings. When this new element
shall have been thoroughly absorbed into the commonwealth, and the
nation shall have acquired a “_volk_,” the prosperity of Argentina will
be assured for all time. The development of the country is still in its
infancy; for years to come there will be room for an increasing influx
of capital and men who can take part in the most modern and greatest
wealth-producing enterprise on the globe. So far the English and Germans
are the chief among the foreign capitalists who have sought out this
present-day Eldorado. The better acquaintance with Argentina and the
other countries to the south of us, so intelligently and industriously
fostered by the Pan American Union at Washington, will, it is to be
hoped, induce a North American financial invasion of Argentina, an
invasion that will be more than welcomed by the “_Yankis_” of the South.
The traveler who takes the seven-hundred-mile journey westward through
the Camp, luxuriously housed in the coaches of the Great Western
Railroad, comes upon a different scene and a different life when he
reaches the ancient city of Mendoza in the foothills of the Andes. Here
it was that San Martín recruited and organized his Army of Liberation,
the army with which, emerging suddenly from its isolated hiding place,
he startled the world by his crossing of the Andes to fall upon the
unsuspecting Spanish. Mendoza is now the center of the wine and fruit
industry. It is a thriving, well-supplied little city, with a population
of between thirty and forty thousand, comfortable hotels, a theater, and
a broad boulevard of its own, overhung with trees and named for the
great revolutionary leader, where they have their band concerts and
afternoon carriage parade just as they do in Buenos Aires. Only here, in
their rather more dusky complexions, lots of the raven-haired,
black-eyed occupants of the carriages show traces of Indian descent.
The development of the wine trade is in keeping with the phenomenal
progress of the rest of the country. Although the great bulk of the
product is not of the highest quality, the presses turn out each year
enormous quantities that bear the labels of Bordeaux, Burgundy, Moselle,
and Muscatel, produced from the very best imported vines. Other fruits
have been found to grow equally well in this section: peaches, pears,
and plums reach a high state of culture, while apples, quinces, and
cherries do very well. It is the boast of the Argentino that his country
is capable of producing every conceivable kind of fruit, and it is not
an idle boast.
At this point—Mendoza—a change of car is made to the less comfortable
narrow-gauge road that takes the traveler through the fastnesses of the
Andes. The route leads first through the peach orchards and vineyards,
with the snow peaks easily distinguishable in the background. The
Mendoza River, fed by the melting snows on the mountain tops, tumbles
along its way and is crossed and re-crossed many times en route. Distant
about one hundred miles, one comes to the Puente del Inca, the famous
natural bridge spanning a chasm one hundred and fifty feet in width,
about which are many native legends of Incarial times, for the bridge
formed part of the great system of roads built by the Incas. A little
farther on, mounting to a still higher altitude, the station of Las
Cuevas is reached, the last stop in Argentine territory, and the
entrance to the tunnel through the mountain, half a mile below the
Uspallata Pass—an engineering feat deserving of a chapter by itself. The
elevation here is in excess of ten thousand feet, and the scene one of
impressive grandeur, fascinating in the kaleidoscope of color that
floods the gorges and the giant peaks.
[Illustration: THE USPALLATA PASS.]
Above, at the Cumbre, as the pass at the top is called, if one forsakes
the comforts of the passenger coach for mule-back, he can view the now
world-famous “Christ of the Andes,” a bronze figure of the Prince of
Peace rising to a height of twenty-six feet above its massive granite
pedestal. It was erected to commemorate the peace treaty that brought to
an end the long-continued differences between Chile and Argentina.
Growing out of the boundary dispute, this controversy had become more
and more acute as the long-neglected Patagonian territory increased in
promise. The boundary, finally fixed in 1902, by Sir Thomas Holdich’s
commission, runs along the summit of the Andean ridge. On the base of
the monument a tablet bears the words: “Sooner shall these mountains
crumble to dust than the people of Argentina and Chile break the peace
to which they have pledged themselves at the feet of Christ the
Redeemer.”
From Carácoles, the Chilean terminus of the tunnel, the
Transandino-Chileno carries the traveler to the station of Los Andes.
From here to the port city of Valparaiso, Chile, the route is over the
Chilean State Railroad, which is of standard gauge and passes through
some rich and fertile valleys on its way toward the Pacific.
III
To the east of the Cordilleras, and south of the river Negro, stretches
the territory long known as Patagonia, first in swelling plateaux and
then flattening out into a continuation of the upper level pampas. This
is now the scene of Argentina’s advancing sheep industry. For Patagonia,
east of the Andean summits, and the east half of Tierra del Fuego were
awarded to Argentina by the boundary arbitrator, King Edward VII,
following the report of Sir Thomas Holdich’s commission, and is now
divided into the Federal Territories of Rio Negro, Chubut, and Santa
Cruz. The land of Patagonia, so named by the early explorers from the
big feet (_pata goas_) of the Tehuelche Indians, is now reached by
steamer to Punta Arenas in Magellan Strait, the southernmost city on the
globe, for the railways of Argentina have not yet penetrated this
country to any considerable extent. In climate it ranges from the
temperate to extreme cold, like that of northern Michigan in the winter
months. From the time of Darwin, who first took the country out of the
category of _terras incognitas_, Patagonia has lost most of its mystery
and is now being settled by the diverted immigration from Buenos Aires.
The Scots, English, and Germans have taken up large allotments of land,
and many New Zealand sheep men have come over to add their skill to the
leading industry. There are also colonies of Boers and Jews.
The Fuegian Archipelago, at the southern extremity of South America,
covers a territory as large as Nebraska. A tortuous, wind-swept
labyrinth of waterways separates the hundreds of islands that constitute
this group. The largest is Tierra del Fuego, half as large as Illinois.
It is divided longitudinally between Chile and Argentina, by far the
larger and more valuable portion having been awarded to the former by
the Royal Arbitrator. The name was given to the archipelago by Magellan,
when he saw the trails of smoke from the signal fires of the natives who
followed his epoch-making course through the strait that now bears his
name. Very little of the Fuegian country is under cultivation, although
thousands of sheep graze over its rich valleys and verdant plains. The
southernmost point, Cape Horn (in Chilean territory), is a monster rock,
bleak and forbidding, against which the antarctic storms beat with such
terrific force that, in the old days of sailing vessels, it was called
the headstone of the mariners’ most populous graveyard.
A vastly different scene awaits the traveler who penetrates into the
tropical wilds of the northern territories of Argentina. Going aboard
one of the fine steamers of Nicholas Mihanovitch—the kings of the
river traffic—at Buenos Aires, the traveler follows the course of the
Paraná, which is the main water highway of Argentina. The trip will
take him through the richest provinces of the Camp, past the busy
miniature Buenos Aires, the city of Rosario, which is the port of
shipment for the grain of this region, and up into the tropical
scenery and mystery of the Chaco and Misiones territories, opening up
vistas of prodigious natural growths and riotous beauty, differing in
every way from the somber majesty of the Fuegian country. The Chaco
and the territory of Formosa, adjoining it on the north, are still
almost wholly occupied by uncivilized Indians. Up to the present time
this region has been exploited chiefly for the wood of the _quebracho_
(_qui-bra-hacha_—axe-breaker) tree, which yields the best quality of
tannin and timber for railroad ties; it is richer in the former
product than any other tree yet discovered.
[Illustration: IGUAZÚ FALLS, WHERE BRAZIL, PARAGUAY, AND ARGENTINA
MEET.]
The picturesqueness of the Paraná River scenery along its upper courses
has excited enthusiastic descriptions from all the travelers who have
penetrated this marvelous country. A thousand miles up the river, in
Misiones, near the point where Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil meet, are
located the famous Iguazú Falls. The great cascade, fifty feet higher
and with a lateral extent 1250 feet greater than Niagara, lies in the
midst of a primeval forest. The enormous volume of water bursts through
a series of thickly wooded islands with a roar that is all the more
impressive to the spectator because of the solitude that reigns
throughout this scantily populated region. The hand of man has done
nothing here—no attempt has been made to harness the mighty power;
nature has been left alone to revel in utter abandon.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
IV
URUGUAY
One of the first inquiries that engages the mind of the visitor to
Uruguay and Argentina is why the great body of water that separates the
two countries—apparently an arm of the sea—should not be called the
_Gulf_ of La Plata. After a brief stay in this region of great cities,
great productiveness, and great opportunities, it will probably occur to
him that dwellers among such great things could be satisfied with
nothing less than an estuary of the broad Atlantic to serve as a river
for their capitals. If the Paraná and Uruguay—mighty rivers which rank
in size immediately behind the Mississippi—had joined their floods some
miles above Buenos Aires, instead of flowing separately into La Plata, a
stream of unquestionable status might have satisfied their demands; but
the God of Waters willed otherwise, evidently not anticipating the
greatness of these people and their illimitable ambition.
The exact point at which La Plata River merges with the Atlantic is also
a matter of speculation among geographers. For all practical purposes,
however, Montevideo, the capital, metropolis, and chief port of Uruguay,
lies just beside this phenomenon. One can say, therefore, that the
eastern side of the little peninsula on which the main city is built
faces the ocean, while the southern and western fronts, bordering the
bay of the actual port, look upon the river Plata.
Taking the night boat at Buenos Aires, one arrives in Montevideo in the
early morning after a pleasant ride of just a hundred miles diagonally
across the river, and is immediately impressed with the picturesqueness
of El Cerro, an ancient fortress that still poses as the guardian of the
entrance of the river. Much more important to-day, however, is the
lighthouse that rises from this height. Entering the port the visitor
comes upon a modern city of almost four hundred thousand inhabitants,
possessed of all the attributes of the present-day metropolis; an
adequate and up-to-date system of docks, fine business blocks, public
buildings, plazas, boulevards, and broad streets laid out on the
checkerboard scheme, sewer, water, and lighting systems, and extensive
and well-managed electric tramway lines.
To the Buenos Airean, naturally enough, Montevideo is a second Brooklyn,
for the “ferry” trip of a hundred miles is not incongruous where people
think in superlatives. Here the Buenos Airean may come, after a period
of consuming activity in his own more closely built city, for rest and
soul expansion among the leisurely and dignified Montevideans, and, at
the expense of his neighbor, even permit himself a bit of friendly chaff
in which he might venture to use the word “soporific.” The Montevidean
by no means resents the imputation. There is no resentment because,
although a restful atmosphere does pervade the city, there is not the
slightest taint of stagnation. The Montevidean is conscious that his
sturdy, vigorous, and even bellicose race has built up a nation unique
in South America in its promise of material prosperity; that his country
is among the richest in the quality and varied productiveness of its
soil of any on the continent, and that his city, housing a third of the
country’s population, is the pivot of the nation’s astonishing
commercial activity and one of the most healthful and delightful
residence cities in the world.
Montevideo was founded in 1726, but remained a comparatively unimportant
way station until some thirty years ago, when it began to imbibe the
modernism of its big rivals in Brazil and Argentina. To-day it is almost
as cosmopolitan as Buenos Aires, the Italian element predominating among
the foreigners, with the British preëminent as investors of capital, as
in the latter city. To the superb Solis Theater come all the European
companies that appear in Buenos Aires; club life is best represented in
the Club Uruguay and the English Club, situated on opposite sides of the
Plaza Matriz; and afternoon tea has come to be an important feature of
the social life, several tea houses being now distributed over the
leisure sections of the city.
The pride of the Montevidean is Prado Park. He has made of it one of the
fairest gardens imaginable—its lakes and rolling lawns and great variety
of trees and flowering bushes, its intersecting avenues of towering
eucalyptus trees rivaling Japan’s famous avenue of cryptomerias, on the
road to Nikko, all give pleasure to the city’s thousands, who, like
Parisians, seek the country scenes for their holiday amusements. Driving
along Agraciado Road and other plane-tree-shaded avenues, the visitor
reaches either of the pleasure suburbs of Colón or Pocítos.
In these excursions he has an excellent opportunity to note the varied
styles of architecture coming into vogue in the more progressive cities
of South America; they range from the comfortable bungalow of the
British residents, to that strange development of the old Spanish home
(the _quinta_) in which the wealthy Spanish-Americans love to house
themselves on the outskirts of the cities. Until recent years the
Spanish house in town and country was bare and unlovely on the outside;
its beauty and richness were confined to the interior surroundings of
the _patio_; where, in feudal privacy, the family secluded itself.
To-day, in the new era of civic pride and the freer association of
society in the modern boulevard and café life, the adornment is extended
to the outside, and the effort made, by the addition of pinnacles and
towers and much delicate tinting, to add to the attractiveness of the
“city beautiful.” In the business sections, of course, the modern
architecture corresponds for the most part with the type seen in the
great cities of Europe and North America.
[Illustration: SOLIS THEATER, MONTEVIDEO.]
[Illustration: CAGANCHA PLAZA, MONTEVIDEO.]
In October, when the summer comes into these latitudes south of the
Equator, the _quintas_ assume a most entrancing aspect. Some of them,
set in the midst of gardens many acres in extent, are veritable haunts
of delight. Toll has been levied upon every resource to add to their
charm. The gardens are inclosed within hedges that blaze with the color
of the hedge-rose, honeysuckle, bougainvillea, wistaria, and other
creeping vines. Inside, forming a background, may be seen a goodly
growth of ivy-covered oaks or chestnut trees. Within, nearer the
fairy-like home, and in the random of artistic disorder, are many
flowering bushes and trees—lilacs mingling their scent with magnolia,
orange, myrtle, and mimosa—while the lawns are carpeted with a brilliant
profusion of periwinkles, pansies, marigolds, arum lilies, and
carnations, the whole yielding up the delights of its ever changing
fragrance as the wondering guest wanders about in company with his
courtly host and hostess.
In entire harmony with this perfection of nature is the beauty of the
women. They are justly famous. To the far-famed grace and natural
Spanish stateliness of her sisters throughout South America, the
Uruguayan señorita adds a freshness of complexion and sprightliness of
temperament that go to make a most bewitching consummation of feminine
charm. Her praises are sung by all visitors; not less appreciative, her
own kith and kin liken her, in their poetic way, to all pleasant things
from a dove to the moon.
It is with genuine regret that the traveler leaves the hospitable
capital for a trip through the country; but he will soon discover that
the delightful climate (like that of Tennessee, but without the snows of
winter) is characteristic of Uruguay as a whole. From the capital
radiate some fifteen hundred miles of good railways penetrating Brazil
at several points, and also tapping the commerce along the Uruguay
River.
The country he will see is one great rolling pasture as large as all New
England, and with occasional ridges of mountains. None of these,
however, exceeds two thousand feet in height. Until recently Uruguay was
given over almost entirely to the raising of cattle and sheep; now it
promises great strides in products of the soil. Indeed, it is the boast
of the Uruguayan that not an acre of his country’s 72,000 square miles
of territory is unproductive. Here can be seen growing corn, wheat, and
potatoes, and a great impetus has of late been given to viticulture—and
there is no fear of either drought or frost. So far, however, only about
three per cent. of the territory is under cultivation in foodstuffs. In
1909 Montevideo handled imports to the value of $35,000,000 and exports
amounting to $32,000,000, while the ports of Rocha, Maldonado, and
Colonia, on the south coast, and Salto, Paysandú, Fray Bentos, Mercédes,
and others on the Uruguay, handled three millions more of imports and
exports. Her production in cattle in that year amounted to 6,827,428, in
sheep 16,608,717, and in pigs, horses, mules, and goats 700,000.
At Fray Bentos, on the Uruguay River, the Liebig Company has located a
great plant, slaughters over three hundred thousand head of cattle a
year, and does an enormous business in extract of beef, canned meats,
hides, tallow, hair, horn, and other by-products. A day’s sojourn in the
prosperous, if soup-laden, atmosphere will give one a proper
appreciation of the rest of the country, for nowhere has Nature been
more lavish with her favors, nowhere has she distributed more favorable
conditions for life and national prosperity—everything man needs for
food or clothing is here capable of being raised. Every section is
reached by navigable rivers, which also furnish abundant water for
irrigation and mechanical purposes. The country being on a gold basis,
its credit in the European money markets is excellent.
Uruguay, as one historian expresses it, has always been the cockpit of
the southern half of the continent. From the time of the appearance of
the first whites in the Plata region—Diaz de Solis in 1515, and ten
years later Sebastien Cabot—down to the period of Hernando Arias and
Garay, who, in about 1580, permanently established the power of Spain on
the river Plata, the Spanish and Portuguese settlements on the Plata and
Uruguay had to contend with the incessant hostilities of a race of
Indians—the Charrúas, who, next to the Araucanians of Chile, had the
distinction of offering the most vigorous and successful opposition to
the dominion of the Europeans in South America.
Throughout the colonial régime, Uruguay constituted the eastern border
province (_Banda Oriental_) of Spain’s La Plata colony, and was the
storm center of the Spanish and Portuguese strife for territorial
control. Following this period came the abortive invasion of the English
in 1806, and, a few years later, the wars of independence. When Spanish
rule came to an end in the Plata country, the _Banda Oriental_ became
the bone of contention between Brazil and the newly born state that is
now Argentina—a veritable new-world Flanders and the theater of many
fierce battles. Brazil held the province from 1817 to 1829, and called
it her Cis-platine Province. Finally, on May 1, 1829, Uruguay achieved
her independence and set up a government of her own under the style of
the Oriental Republic of Uruguay.
There is good reason, then, why the Uruguayans should have emerged from
these three hundred years of turbulent character building into
independence with a bellicose personality exactly suited to the
Montague-and-Capulet existence that prevails in her politics between the
_Blancos_, or reactionists, and the _Colorados_, who now hold the
political power and stand for progress. The forcefulness of the nation
is now finding its expression in industrial and commercial enterprises
and has made of her chief port a powerful commercial rival of the busy
mart across the Plata.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
V
PARAGUAY
Paraguay is in the longitudinal center of South America, and, with the
exception of Bolivia, is the only country on the continent that does not
border on the sea. Next to Uruguay it is the smallest of the South
American republics, possessing a territory of 196,000 square miles.
Until the break with Spain, in 1813, it was, like Uruguay, part and
parcel of La Plata colony, under the jurisdiction of the Viceroy of
Buenos Aires, and was known as the Province of Paraguay. As will be
observed from a glance at the map, it is hedged in by Bolivia, Brazil,
and Argentina, and is separated from its twin sister, Uruguay, by an arm
of the mother country (Misiones Territory) that reaches up into Brazil
between the Paraná and Uruguay rivers.
For a proper acquaintance with the country it must be conceived as a
dual personality, for it is divided longitudinally by the river Paraguay
into western Paraguay, or the Chaco, and eastern Paraguay, or Paraguay
proper. It is in the latter region that the republic has its being and
in which the visitor’s interest is naturally centered. El Chaco is a
vast, thickly wooded, and, for the most part, savage and unexplored
section that was awarded to Paraguay by our President Hayes as
arbitrator of its boundary dispute with Argentina; in gratitude the
government named the chief settlement in the territory Villa Hayes. The
region is now given over almost wholly to the immigrant Swiss, German,
Italian and other communities that have been started on the west bank of
the river, and to nomadic bands of still uncivilized Indians.
With a climate similar to that of southern California, Paraguay,
throughout its entire extent, is blessed with abundant rain the year
round. It is well watered and quite thickly wooded, and thus protected
from the intense heat usual in low-lying countries.
Eastern Paraguay resembles Uruguay in its rolling, fertile areas, but is
more mountainous. On the northern frontier is the range known as the
Quinze Puntas. Inclosing the country on the east are the Cordilleras of
Amambay and Mbaracayú, while down the center, from north to south, run a
broken series of lesser sierras and the range called Caaguazú, forming a
ridge or backbone that subdivides this half of Paraguay into the two
great basins drained by the Paraná River on the east and the Paraguay on
the west.
Almost the whole of Paraguay proper has forests of valuable woods with
occasional clear places, where settlers have made serviceable the
marvelous fertility and luxuriance of the soil. For centuries this
region has been the barrier between the two distinct phases of Spanish
civilization in South America—the golden empire of Peru and the
agricultural colonies on the Plata and its tributaries—just as Uruguay
has been the buffer state between the Portuguese and Spanish peoples.
These phases have merged but little and to-day present a most
interesting contrast.
From the time of Cabot’s fortified settlement of Asunción (now the
capital of Paraguay) at the junction of the Paraguay and Pilcomayo
rivers, in 1536, whence his lieutenant, Domingo Irala, made his vain
attempt to penetrate into Peru, down to the present, Paraguay has been
isolated to a considerable degree from the march of progress. The six
hundred adventurers who followed the fortunes of Irala stayed on the
land, intermarried with the Guarany Indians and bred the mixed race that
was the foundation of the nation of to-day; and the Indians developed,
along with the mestizos, to a status unique in South America. Evading
the abject slavery that decimated the aboriginal races throughout the
Andean region, the Guaranies were taught the arts of the soil and war by
the Jesuits, and, during the hundred and fifty years of the latter’s
sway, achieved a stage of development corresponding to that of the
peasantry of France.
[Illustration: GOVERNMENT PALACE, ASUNCIÓN.]
[Illustration: VIEW OF ASUNCIÓN AND RIVER PARAGUAY FROM ROOF OF THE
CENTRAL RAILROAD STATION.]
The story of the Jesuit missions which occupied the Paraná basin, is an
important and thrilling chapter in Latin-American history. Early in its
life, the Society turned its attention to the evangelization of South
America; it was the genius of its founder, Ignatius Loyola, that
perfected the organization to accomplish this. In 1550 the Jesuit
Fathers began their work on the Brazilian coast settlements, but were
driven farther and farther inland by the Portuguese as it became
apparent that their policy of education and uplift would put an end to
the enslavement of the natives which was the basis of the economic
scheme of the colonists. Eventually, some time about 1586, the Jesuits
entered the Paraguay region, won the confidence of the Guaranies and
purposed to “reduce” the tribes of the whole Plata country. They met
with the same opposition from the Spanish colonists and their stronghold
became restricted to the secluded and isolated region mentioned—the
Paraná basin and Misiones territory of Argentina.
Here, for over a hundred years, under the protection of the official
sanction won from the Spanish King, Philip III, they worked among their
proselytes. They learned and perfected the native dialects; taught the
men to cultivate the soil, and the women to spin and weave cotton;
induced them to clear the forests and to build and live in towns, and
even organized them into an effective militia, which more than once
enabled them to preserve the integrity of the remarkable state—a state
unique in a way, since it was virtually under the direct control of the
General of the Order, although within the territorial sovereignty of
Spain. This “republic” lasted until 1769, when the famous decree of the
King of Spain banished the Jesuits from all his dominions; but the
effects of their presence are still noticeable throughout Paraguay and
Misiones.
It is a matter of wonder to this day how the Jesuit Fathers, even taking
into consideration their unquenchable zeal and marvelous energy and
determination, ever succeeded in reaching so isolated a territory and in
traversing it in every direction, as they did, in pursuit of their
campaign. Even to-day it is well-nigh impossible to reach the heart of
the region—the great cataract of Guayra, which, hundreds of miles from
the habitations of man, isolated by jagged mountains, fiercely swirling
waters and the wild tangle of underbrush that make headway through the
awesome tropical forest very difficult, constitutes one of the most
majestic of nature’s wonder-works in South America. Situated about a
hundred miles up the Paraná River from the better known Iguazú Falls,
the Guayra cataract lies on the frontier with Brazil. A volume of water
twice as large as that which thunders over Niagara is forced through a
gorge two hundred feet wide from a stream two and a half miles in width.
The roar of its plunge of fifty-six feet to the lower levels, adds the
essential note to this tremendous symphony of primeval nature. Outside
the Arctic regions, one explorer declares, no part of the world is less
accessible than the Paraná above the Great Cataract.
After the expulsion of the Jesuits the Paraná basin reverted to forest
and the nation pursued its checkered career in the section drained by
the Paraguay. This river intersects the republic from north to south and
is navigable through its entire course by ocean steamers, which pass up
from Buenos Aires through the Paraná, and past Corrientes, where the two
great streams join forces.
On the left bank of the Paraguay, at the point of its confluence with
the equally great Pilcomayo, the traveler comes to the ancient city of
Asunción, the capital of the country. Here was the seat of the colonial
authority over Plata settlements until Buenos Aires grew into
importance. It has a population of 52,000, and is now thriving and
prosperous, rapidly taking on the cosmopolitanism that characterizes the
other ports of South America. The capital, and indeed the whole country
has but recently entered into a new life, a life as sharply contrasted
with its period of political storm and stress as the transition was
sudden.
For, during the first sixty years after the country had attained its
freedom from Spain, Paraguay’s progress was stifled by a succession of
tyrants—remarkable men, all three of them, but men who, as a result of
their rule, well-nigh cost her her national existence. The first of
these, Dr. José Rodríguez Gaspar Francia, had been the dominating figure
in the revolutionary junta, and afterward, with his confrère, General
Yegros, had been appointed Consul and invested with the supreme power.
“He was a lawyer,” Dawson tells us, “who had become a sort of demigod to
the lower classes by his fearless advocacy of their rights, and inspired
almost superstitious reverence by his reputation for learning and
disinterestedness.” A year later, the historian continues—
“He forced Yegros out, and, with general consent, assumed the
position of sole executive, and, in 1816, was formally declared
supreme and perpetual dictator. For the next twenty-five years
he was the government of Paraguay. History does not record
another instance in which a single man so dominated and
controlled a people. A solitary, mysterious figure, of whose
thoughts, purposes, and real character little is known, the
worst acts of his life were the most picturesque and alone have
been recorded. Although the great Carlyle includes him among the
heroes whose memory mankind should worship, the opinion of his
detractors is likely to triumph. Francia will go down to history
as a bloody-minded, implacable despot, whose influences and
purposes were wholly evil. After reading all that has been
written about this singular character, my mind inclines more to
the judgment of Carlyle. I feel that the vivid imagination of
the great Scotchman has pierced the clouds which enshrouded the
spirit of a great and lonely man, and has seen the soul of
Francia as he was. Cruel, suspicious, ruthless, heartless as he
undeniably became, his acts will not bear the interpretation
that his purposes were selfish or that he was animated by mere
vulgar ambition....
“He absorbed in his own person all the functions of government;
he had no confidants and no assistants; he allowed no Paraguayan
to approach him on terms of equality. When he died, a careful
search failed to reveal any records of the immense amount of
governmental business he had transacted during thirty years. The
orders for executions were simply messages signed by him and
returned to be destroyed as soon as they had been carried out.
The longer he lived, the more completely did he apply his system
of absolutism, the more confident he became that he alone could
govern the people for their good. He adopted a policy of
commercial isolation, and intercourse with the outside world was
absolutely forbidden. He neither sent nor received consuls nor
ministers to foreign nations. Foreign vessels were excluded from
the Paraguay River and allowed to visit only one port in the
southeastern corner of the country. He was the sole foreign
merchant. The communistic system inherited from the Jesuits was
developed and extended to the secular parts of the country....
Dreading interference by Spain, Brazil, or Buenos Aires, he
improved the military forces and began the organization of the
whole population into a militia. His policy, however, was
peaceful....
“As he grew older he became more solitary and ferocious. Always
a gloomy and peculiar man, absorbed in his studies and making no
account of the ordinary pleasures and interests of mankind, he
had reached the age of fifty-five and assumed supreme power
without marrying.... His severities against the educated classes
increased; he ordered wholesale executions and seven hundred
political prisoners filled the jails when he died. He feared
assassination and occupied several houses, letting no one know
where he was going to sleep from one night to another, and, when
walking the streets, kept his guards at a distance before and
behind him. Woe to the enemy or suspect who attracted his
attention! Such was the terror inspired by this dreadful old man
that the news that he was out would clear the streets. A white
Paraguayan literally dared not utter his name. During his
lifetime he was ‘_El Supremo_,’ and, after he was dead, for
generations he was referred to simply as ‘_El Defunto_.’... He
did not rise by any sycophantic arts. Indeed, he never veiled
the contempt he felt for the party schemers and officials around
him. When he had supreme power in his hands, he used it for no
selfish indulgences. His life was austere and abstemious; but,
though parsimonious for himself, he was lavish for the
public.... In his manners and life, he was absolutely modest; he
received any one who chose to see him. If he was terrible, it
was to the wealthy and powerful; the humblest Indian received a
hearing and justice. During his reign Paraguay remained
undisturbed, wrapped in a profound peace; the population rapidly
increased, and, though commerce and manufactures did not
flourish, nor the new ideas that were transforming the face of
the civilized world penetrate, food and clothing were plentiful
and cheap and the Paraguayans prospered in their own humble
fashion.”
Following the reign of Francia came a long period of open intercourse
with the neighboring states and foreign countries under the dictatorship
of Carlos Antonio Lopez, and some measure of progress was made, but
still there was no development of republican institutions. His death
made room for his son Francisco, who was a man of thirty-five at the
time of his accession, and, having spent some time in Europe, had
returned permeated with the vices of the great capitals and a consuming
ambition for military renown. A very different character of man morally,
he is said to have been, from the first of his line. He is described as
vain, licentious, gluttonous, and unscrupulous to the last degree,
though good-looking and an eloquent speaker. “He began his reign like a
Mohammedan sultan,” says Dawson, “ridding himself of his father’s most
trusted counselors, imprisoning and executing the most intelligent and
powerful citizens.... He ordered his best friends to execution; he
tortured his mother and sisters and murdered his brothers. The only
natural affection he ever evinced was a fondness for a woman he had
picked up in Paris, and for her children. He seems to have treated her
well to the last, but his numerous other mistresses and their children
he heartlessly abandoned.”
He soon raised an army of more than eighty thousand, the largest that
had ever been assembled since the conquest, and, by assuming the
aggressive in certain boundary disputes with Brazil and Argentina and
interfering in civil disturbances that were going on in Uruguay,
involved the country in war with these three powers, which, alarmed at
his Napoleonic aspirations, promptly formed an alliance for the purpose
of resisting him. This war lasted five years and for Paraguay was one
long succession of appalling disasters. Before the first battle was
fought her population numbered more than 1,300,000; when Lopez was
finally defeated and killed in 1870, but 221,079 remained, of whom only
28,746 were men. “No modern nation has ever come so near to complete
annihilation,” says Dawson. “Not less than 225,000 Paraguayan men—the
fathers and bread-winners, the farmers and laborers—had perished in
battle, by disease or exposure or starvation. One hundred thousand adult
women had died of hardship and hunger, and there were less than 90,000
children under fifteen in the country. The surviving women outnumbered
the men five to one; ... but the integrity of Paraguay and her
continuance as an independent power had been mutually guaranteed by
Brazil and Argentina when they began the war against Lopez, and neither
of them could afford to let the other take possession of her territory,
so the country was left substantially intact.”
Asunción shows on its face the two phases—the modern business houses,
residences and public service improvements of the new era, and the
ruined districts and wrecks such as those of cathedral, presidential
palace and old public buildings that emphasize the lessons of the old.
To-day the visitor looks with a shudder at the ruins of the uncompleted
mausoleum in which the last tyrant expected his remains to rest and at
the two-million-dollar palace where, in rooms hung with rare laces and
crimson satin, his unspeakable orgies were held; he turns with relief
toward the modernism now beginning to be apparent which proves the
substantial worth of a people which can arise from such a past and
prosper. The survivors of the old régime have been severely tested for
fitness to enjoy the fruits of their well-favored country.
The republic—no longer such in name only—is governed under an
enlightened constitution modeled after our own. The present
administration has opened wide the doors to immigration and foreign
capital, and the artificial barrier erected by her political system of
the nineteenth century no longer exists as the complement to the natural
barriers that have stood for four centuries between the northern and
southern countries of South America.
Those who may be so fortunate as to obtain control of Paraguay’s
highways, the Paraguay and Pilcomayo, and supplement them by extending
its 155 miles of railway into a system that will develop the vast
agricultural and mineral empire of central and southern Brazil and
Bolivia, and carry the produce to the Argentine seaboard, will gain a
prize unequaled in the railroad world, and make of Paraguay a country of
first importance on the continent.
Throughout the country the forests are being cleared to make room for
_potreros_ (cattle ranches) and the growing agricultural industries.
_Yerbales_ are coming more and more under the scientific culture which
greatly enhances the value of the country’s leading product, _yerba
maté_, or Paraguay tea.
Paraguay is the namesake and chief producer of the famous _yerba maté_
or Paraguay tea, which is the national drink—the cup of ceremony and
popular tipple throughout the central part of South America below the
coffee belt; that is, on the Argentine _Campo_, in Uruguay, Paraguay,
the lower part of Brazil, Bolivia and Chile. So well adapted is the
beverage to the climate that the German colonists forsake their beer and
the European-Latins their sweet cordials for the stimulating and
non-alcoholic native product.
The _yerba_ leaf is prepared by steeping in boiling water, as in the
case of the tea with which the rest of the world is familiar. The _maté_
is the dried gourd in which the tea is brewed. Into the aperture left by
removing the stem, a tube (the _bombilla_), made of reed or bone, is
inserted and through this the drinker sucks the refreshing brew.
Whenever the occasion offers “_Toma usted maté?_” is almost a form of
greeting in the _yerba maté_ countries, so universal is its popularity.
Among the rich the _maté_ and _bombilla_ are fashioned in costly metals,
but elsewhere the gourd and reed serve their purpose with equal, if not
greater, satisfaction.
The _ilex paraguayensis_, to give the herb its botanical name, is an
evergreen tree or shrub from twelve to twenty-five feet high, with
bright green leaves clustered in a bushy mass that cause it from a
distance to resemble the orange tree. Although much of the _yerba maté_
is still obtained from the immense natural forests, the ever-increasing
demand has made cultivation a necessity. Many plantations have been
successfully laid out, and crops of leaves have recently been gathered
with commercially profitable results. The scientific methods now being
adopted in the _yerbales_ (_yerba_ plantations) of Paraguay to supplant
the destructive system of the past will insure for this growing industry
a rich return to the owners.
The drink is taken without the addition of condiment and for the most
part hot, like the Japanese _sake_. It is stimulating and sustaining,
and soothes instead of irritating the nervous system. Unlike the
concoctions made from the coca leaf (cocaine), sugar cane (rum), pulque,
sake, vodka and other stimulants stumbled upon by native peoples and
become destructive habits, _yerba maté_ has no deleterious effects
either immediate or after prolonged use.
Dr. Lenglet, President of the International League of Pure Food, says of
it:
“The noteworthy point of the effect of _maté_ on the system is
its stimulating action on the cerebro-spinal organs. Taken with
sugar the first thing in the morning it is very wholesome. It
gives great capacity to undergo fatigue and invigorates the
brain, and although it prevents feeling hungry, one does not
enjoy one’s meals any the less. It does not appear to affect the
intestinal organs; the nervous system is, nevertheless,
insensible to the organic losses caused by the want of
nourishment which are made known by hunger.
“In _maté_ is found one of the most important means to obtain a
maximum of strength and energy. It can be compared to a
reservoir of vitality.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
VI
BOLIVIA
In the heart of the continent a vast table of land as large as all our
Middle States has been crowded up into the air by some titanic
convulsion to a height of more than two miles, or fourteen thousand
feet. The surface in many places is deeply encrusted with salt,
suggesting the upheaval of a great mediterranean sea and a spilling of
its waters over the succession of terraced slopes that finally break off
abruptly and merge in the summer valleys of Brazil and Paraguay; for
from these heights innumerable streams shimmer off toward the distant
Amazon.
The plateau is hemmed in by the _Cordillera de la Costa_ (the coast
range) and the _Cordillera Real_, the main range, on the east, and is
intersected in various directions by cross-sections, the whole producing
a topography of a grandeur that makes all attempts at description
pitifully inadequate. The majestic snow-clad peaks of Guallatiri and
Miniquis in the coast range, and Illampú (Sorata), Illimani,
Chachacomani, and Karkaake in the _Cordillera Real_ rise to a height of
over 22,000 feet. A dozen more in both ranges exceed 20,000. On the
northwestern border along the Peruvian frontier, lies Lake Titicaca,
unique also in that it is the highest navigated body of water on the
globe. It is 160 miles long by thirty wide and is fed by the melting
Andean snows.
This plateau is the center of Bolivia’s life to-day, as it was the
cradle of successive aboriginal civilizations that finally culminated
many centuries ago in the Inca empire. It is the highest inhabited land
on the face of the earth, with the possible exception of Tibet. The
evidence at every hand of nature’s tremendous activities must have left
its impress on the races that formerly had their being here. The
gigantic relics which are now the enduring monuments of these peoples
are proof of the bigness of their point of view. They saw largely and
the range of their vision embraced great distances, great altitudes, and
great depths. There is evidence also that the newly awakened present
race will prove worthy of its surroundings.
The people now inhabiting this great Andean _Massif_ have in their veins
the blood of both the intrepid Conquistadores and the hardy Aymara and
Inca stock, and it is in the nature of things that the present-day
Bolivian, now that his republicanism is established after a century of
turbulent assimilation, will make great strides in industrial progress
in justification of the spirit that is his birthright. In this altitude,
so high that at first most foreigners suffer from its effects, the
Bolivians have built their capital and chief cities. Here the first blow
was struck against the oppression of Spain, and in the mountain defiles
of the Peruvian Andes leading down to the Pacific coast the last shot
was fired that drove the viceregal army to its transports. With the
departure of the Spanish came the establishment, in 1825, of the
Republic of Bolivia, the name given to the old Buenos Airean province of
Alto-Peru by its first president, Bolívar’s famous lieutenant, General
Sucré, in honor of his chief.
Bolivia is fourth in size among the South American republics. It covers
708,195 square miles, and could include within its limits the combined
areas of California, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Arizona, Oregon, and
Washington. The republic lies wholly within the torrid zone, but the
gradation of its topography extends from the _yungas_ (“hot valleys”) at
the border of the Amazon basin to the _punas_, or high table-lands,
ranging from four to fourteen thousand feet, so that animal and
vegetable life of every clime is represented—from the brilliantly
colored flamingo and butterfly of the Amazon plains to the dread condor
of the Andes; from the rubber tree, through all stages of arborial and
plant life, to the little yellow bitter potato, grown near the point at
which vegetation vanishes in the Arctic cold of the higher peaks.
Of course, the shortest and most direct route to Bolivia’s capital and
chief cities is by rail from either of the Pacific ports of Mollendo, in
Peru, or Arica or Antofagasta, in Chile. The quick change of view from
the arid coast to the grandeur of Andean mountain scenery, and the
familiar comforts of railway travel incline most visitors to the
approach from one of those points. But, as the greater part of Bolivia’s
territory is that which falls away from the plateau, like a lady’s
train, northward and eastward to the frontiers of Brazil and Paraguay, a
more comprehensive and impressive acquaintance with the country can be
had by entering either from the north, via the Amazon and Maderia rivers
to Villa Bella on the Brazilian frontier, and thence over a thousand
miles on horseback to La Paz, or from the east, starting from our last
resting place at Asunción in Paraguay. From Asunción one travels up the
Paraguay River to Corumbá in Brazil, thence, by a small affluent to
Puerto Suárez, eighty-one miles distant on the frontier, thence by a
zigzag course of eight hundred miles up the rising elevation to Santa
Cruz, a thriving city of 20,000 population, and thence to Cochabamba,
still larger and 8000 feet in altitude. From here there is a stage line
over one hundred and ten miles of mountainous country to Oruro, where
connection is made with the Antofagasta-La Paz railway to the capital.
Or one may go by railroad from Buenos Aires via Rosario, Cordoba and
Tucumán to La Quiaca on the frontier and then north for only two hundred
miles by stage-coach to Uyuni, through which the Antofagasta-La Paz line
passes on its way to the capital. But, in any event, the approach from
the east or north richly repays the visitor for the time consumed and
discomfort he may have to undergo on the way. The noted naturalist,
D’Aubigny, says of the _yungas_ region, through which one must first
make his way on leaving the Paraguay: “If tradition has lost the records
of the place where Paradise is situated, the traveler who visits these
regions of Bolivia feels at once the impulse to exclaim, ‘Here is the
lost Eden.’”
Leaving the dense and weirdly impressive tropical forests of the
hinterland, the rolling areas of the _yungas_ ascend toward the
plateau—a succession of vast gardens delicately scented and brilliant
with color. As the country is coming more under cultivation each year
the traveler’s eye rests frequently upon plantations of coffee, cacao,
and coca, the plant from which we get cocaine. The coca leaf is highly
prized by the native as a stimulant; he chews it as a Northerner would
chew tobacco but with a better excuse, since by its use he can perform
great feats of endurance and go many hours without food. With his pouch
filled with coca leaves and a small supply of parched Indian corn, he
can run fifty miles a day, for these fleet-footed Indians constitute the
telegraph system of this region. The output of the _cocales_, or coca
plantations, was nearly nine million pounds last year.
This is also the home of the highly nutritious if impossibly named
_jamacch’ppeke_ plant, which, when dried and powdered and mixed with
water, produces a delicately flavored milk much used in hospitals and
even for babies. Higher up in the _valle_ zone wheat and corn fields may
be seen as well as the famous _chincona_ tree, so named because, in
1638, the Condesa de Chinchon (wife of the Peruvian Viceroy) wrote of
her wonderful cure from malaria by an Indian draught prepared from the
bark of this tree. It has been known since as chincona or Peruvian bark,
but it was not until 1820 that the French chemist, Pelletier, extracted
from the tree the calisaya or quinine with which we are now familiar,
and which, by the way, is said to be one of the two or three natural
specifics ever yet discovered for disease.
On these slopes also grows the new substitute for wheat, _quinua_, a
grain more nutritious and more cheaply produced than its northern
prototype, also the delicious _camote_, a delicately flavored type of
sweet potato, the _palta_, known in Cuba and Mexico as the _aguacate_
and in Florida as the alligator pear, which makes the rich salad, and
all variations of the sweet, pulpy fruits like the pomegranate,
_granadilla_, _capote_, etc. This is also one of the homes of the
nutmeg, olive, and castor bean, and of sugar, cotton, oranges, cinnamon,
vanilla, saffron, indigo, and ginger; also of a remarkable variety of
medicinal plants: for instance, those from which are derived aconite,
arnica, absinthe, belladonna, camphor, quassia, cocaine, digitalis,
gentian, ginger, ipecaque, jalap, opium, sarsaparilla, tamarind, tolu
and valerian. The Indians of this belt are the most artistic leather
workers in the world, and their beautiful _ponchos_ (a sort of circular
cape the mountaineers wear, with a hole in the center for the head to go
through), woven from native silk, are eagerly sought by all visitors.
Leaving this richly endowed agricultural region for the still richer
location of Bolivia’s mineral wealth, the traveler ascends to the great
plateau on which the capital and important cities are built. At Potosí
one is in the heart of the great silver country. From one mountain here,
the Cerro de Potosí itself, over three billion dollars’ worth of silver
has been taken since its discovery in 1545. The luxury and almost
unbelievable extravagance told of in the annals of this city have given
it a world-wide fame. Its principal building, the mint, cost the then
unprecedented sum of two million dollars, an expenditure that brought
many qualms to the miserly ascetic, Philip II, who would have preferred
to pour the flood of wealth into the coffers of the church. The author
of “Don Quixote” refers to Potosí as the synonym for fabulous wealth,
and there is hardly a writer of the early days of the colony who did not
mention the silver mountain to illustrate the idea of lavish abundance.
In those days silver was regarded as equally valuable with gold.
Bolivia’s marvelous wealth in tin is unexcelled even in the Malay
Peninsula. Already one of the chief centers of the tin industry, this
metal promises to bring to the twentieth-century Bolivia as much
commercial fame as the gold mines brought Alto-Peru in the sixteenth
century. Copper, iron, lead and bismuth, as well as topazes, emeralds,
opals, jasper, and marble, are also present in large quantities
throughout the plateau.
After descending from Potosí, which is at an altitude of 15,380 feet,
one should visit the white city of Sucré before proceeding to the
present seat of government, La Paz. In Bolivia the name of Sucré is as
omnipresent as Bolívar’s in Venezuela and Colombia, and most naturally
when the new republic was formed the name of its chief city, Charcas,
was changed to Sucré to honor the hero of Ayacucho—Antonio José de
Sucré—when this “right hand” of Bolívar became its first president. The
city is ancient, kindly, and romantically beautiful in its setting on
the eastern slope of the royal range, and once, under a law enacted some
eighty years ago, it was the capital.
[Illustration: SHRINE OF OUR LADY OF CAPACABANA, ON BOLIVIAN SHORE OF
LAKE TITICACA.]
[Illustration: TOWN AND MOUNTAIN OF POTOSÍ, BOLIVIA.]
Its extreme altitude, however, made impossible the cosmopolitanism that
must pertain to a capital city—the foreign diplomats in most cases
refused to reside there because of the severity of the _siroche_, or
mountain sickness, that nearly always assails the newcomer to these
altitudes. So the seat of government was removed to La Paz, and now it
is the tribunal of the Supreme Court and Archiepiscopal see only. Here
also are located the University of San Francisco Xavier and the homes of
many of Bolivia’s most aristocratic families. Thus far, modernism has
had a beneficial influence on the city in many respects, but has not
changed its appearance. Its public works have made it healthful and
comfortable, but its stately old dwellings and public buildings preserve
their peculiar charm unaltered to suit the modern architectural taste.
Farther north, and not yet connected by rail with Sucré, lies the
present capital, La Paz, the actual seat of government. There for many
years have resided the president, the congress, and the representatives
of the foreign governments, so that the _Paceño_ is justified in looking
upon his city as the metropolis. Like its predecessor in this
distinction, it was rechristened when the Spanish régime came to an end.
When the Conquistadores exterminated the Indians resident on its site
and built the present city, for some occult reason they named it _La
Ciudad de Nuestra Señora de la Paz_! Our Lady of Peace clung to the
name, no doubt, with grim humor during the turbulent times that
followed, until the decisive battle of Ayacucho brought to the nation a
more effective peace from Spanish oppression, and to-day _La Paz de
Ayacucho_ is the official name of the seat of government.
La Paz, Quito, Bogotá, Caracas, and Mexico are the five highest capitals
in the world, but the first-named is loftier by half a mile than any of
its rivals. The visitor is always surprised at the location of La Paz.
Having been told of its great elevation—12,300 feet above the sea level,
he naturally expects to see a city perched on a high mountain; in fact,
it is at the bottom of a deep canyon, backed, however, by the giant peak
Illimani, which towers above, to a height of 22,500 feet. Its startling
location results in daily variations in temperature that greatly
incommode the stranger; frequently the thermometer drops from 80° F. at
noon to below zero at night, although generally these extremes vary but
little during the year.
Winding cautiously down the canyon to a depth of some 1500 feet, the
train comes to a terrace overlooking the city and then unfolds before
the traveler one of the most remarkable and picturesque scenes in South
America. The reds of the roofs of the flat, two-story houses and the
softer tints of the walls that make Caracas so alluring are here given a
more brilliant and positive tone. The Oriental atmosphere is tempered by
the rugged surroundings and the crisper, clearer air of the higher
altitude. Everywhere the bright, elemental colors—red, green, and
yellow—worn by the Indians, add to the brilliant scenes of outdoor life.
The streets of the city are a series of steep ascents, admirable for
drainage, no doubt, but affording little pleasure to the visitor who is
fond of walking, for to the newcomer the rarified atmosphere makes
exercise a trial. Surpassing Rome in one respect, La Paz seems to be
built upon at least fifty hills, but many level areas are laid off in
beautiful parks, a dozen or more in number, and here the _Paceño_ brings
his guests for the delightful social intercourse—perfected here for long
centuries for want of many of the other amusements—that makes his city
memorable to the visitor.
One of the most attractive parks, the Plaza Murillo, is named to
commemorate the inspiring genius of the revolution against Spain: Pedro
Domingo Murillo. The Alameda is a broad driveway of five parallel
avenues that run for over half a mile through rows of fine shade trees.
At night it is lighted with electricity and makes a delightful pleasure
ground for the people. An extension of this boulevard, the Avenida Doce
de Deciembre, leads to Obrajes, about three miles distant.
The most notable building in the city is the great cathedral. For more
than seventy years it has been in course of construction and when
completed will be the largest and most impressive church erected in
Latin America since the war of independence. In style it is Greco-Roman,
with a central cupola 150 feet high and two towers that rise to a height
of 200 feet. The interior work is of exceptional magnificence. Like many
of the old cathedrals of Spanish origin, its altar is of wonderfully
carved wood. Besides the cathedral, La Paz can boast more than a dozen
places of worship that compare favorably with the churches of other
South American capitals.
Only a short distance from La Paz by railroad are the prehistoric ruins
of Tiahuanaco, which Squier tells us
“Have been regarded by all students of American antiquities as
in many respects the most interesting, important and at the same
time the most enigmatical, of any on the continent. They have
excited the wonder and admiration alike of the earliest and
latest travelers, most of whom, vanquished in their attempts to
penetrate the mystery of their origin, have been content to
assign them an antiquity beyond that of the other monuments of
America and to regard them as the solitary remains of a
civilization that disappeared before that of the Incas began,
and contemporaneous with that of Egypt and the East....
Tradition, which mumbles more or less intelligibly of the origin
of many other American monuments, is dumb concerning these.”
They are on a broad, arid plain, overlooking Lake Titicaca, about twelve
miles from the shore, and occupy about a square mile. In his description
of them Mozans says: “In addition to a number of shapeless mounds, of
earth, there are remarkable traces of five different stone structures,
which writers, for the purpose of classification” (and because of their
resemblance to plans of such buildings elsewhere), “have agreed to call
the fortress, the palace, the temple, the sanctuary, and the hall of
justice.”
“The materials used in their construction,” he goes on,
“Are trachyte, basalt, and red sandstone. The fortress, to judge
from its present condition, originally resembled a Mexican
_teocalli_, or the pyramid of Sakkarah in Egypt, and must, when
first erected, have presented a very imposing appearance. It is
a great, terraced mound of earth, supported by stone walls, is
50 feet high, 620 feet long, and 450 in width. It is, however,
in a very dilapidated condition, owing to the depredations of
treasure-seekers and to its having been for centuries used as a
quarry whence material was obtained for buildings in the
neighboring towns, for the railroad and for structures in La
Paz. The temple is in the form of a rectangle, 388 by 445 feet.
It has been very appropriately called the American Stonehenge,
to which, at least in some of its monoliths, it bears a striking
resemblance.
“The other three edifices, especially at the hall of justice,
are likewise remarkable for the area they occupy and for the
cyclopean masses of stone that still remain to attest the
extraordinary character of their construction. It is these
wonderful megaliths, rivaling anything found in Italy, Greece,
or Asia Minor, that have excited the astonishment of travelers
since the time of the conquest. The platform, for instance, in
the hall of justice, is paved with immense slabs, some of which
are 25 feet long, 14 feet broad, and nearly 7 feet thick. But
the most remarkable feature in these cyclopean structures is the
great monolithic gateway, of very hard trachyte, ornamented with
numerous well-executed sculptures, apparently of a symbolical
character. This is more than 13 feet long, 7 feet above ground,
and 18 inches thick. Some of the stones are in a rough, unhewn
condition, but most of them are cut and fashioned in a most
remarkable manner. Squier, in referring to this feature of these
extraordinary ruins, writes: ‘Remove the superstructures of the
best-built edifices of our cities, and few, if any, would expose
foundations laid with equal care and none of them stones cut
with such accuracy.’”
[Illustration: CHURCH OF THE CONSERVIDAS, LA PAZ.]
[Illustration: OLD SPANISH RESIDENCE, LA PAZ.]
In a short time the new home of the president and national congress will
be finished and occupied, and the stately old palace where the president
now resides will be devoted to other uses. The city is well endowed with
public service conveniences, electricity, telephones, and handsome
public buildings, and its hotels are among the best to be found anywhere
on the continent outside of Buenos Aires, Rio and Valparaiso.
Of the 80,000 inhabitants, but one thousand are foreigners. As soon as
the railways now projected to radiate from this center are completed,
the city will be thrown open to all the bustle of cosmopolitanism, and
much of the charm given it by the old Spanish characteristics will be
swept away. But the nation will profit vastly by the change. The
development of its agricultural and mineral resources should multiply
its population of 2,500,000 by ten, and make of the country a Mecca for
the capitalist from the North as well as the tourist in search of
nature’s wonders and beauties.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
VII
CHILE
I
“Chile,” which, by a curious coincidence, had about the same
significance in the Inca language that our word “chilly” has in English,
is the name that was originally given by the Incas to that part of the
Pacific slope of the Andes which lies beyond the river Maule, the
southern boundary of their great empire. At the time of the Spanish
conquest, the first Governor, Pedro de Valdivia, dubbed it “Nueva
Estremadura,” after his native province in Spain, and so called it in
his official communications, yet not only did the Inca name cling to the
country south of the Maule but soon it was popularly applied to that in
the north as well, as far up as Peru. And so when, some years afterward
(says the historian Rosales), the Emperor Charles V of Germany, who was
also King of Spain, was negotiating the marriage of his son Philip with
Mary, Queen of England, and was told that, being a sovereign in her own
right, she would enter into such an alliance only with a reigning
monarch, he caused Philip to be crowned King of Chile and Naples, and
thus incidentally, in distinguishing the province above his other
American possessions, confirmed its original name, and Chile it has been
called ever since.
The territory of the present republic consists of a strip of land of
most extraordinary conformation lying between the main Cordillera of the
Andes and the sea. It has an average width of less than a hundred miles,
yet stretches for nearly three thousand miles from a point in the
tropics considerably above the center of the continent, clear down to
Cape Horn, crossing thirty-eight degrees of latitude and embracing an
area of nearly 291,500 square miles. A strip of the same length in North
America would reach from Key West to northern Labrador, or, if measured
along the Rocky Mountains, from Mexico to the Yukon in Alaska. Reckoned
in square miles, it is larger than any country in Europe except Russia,
though it has a population, according to the last census (1907), of only
3,254,451—less than that of the city and suburbs of Paris or of New
York. In foreign commerce Chile ranks third among the South American
republics. In 1910 it amounted in value to $228,604,198.64. The
principal exports are silver, copper, nitrates, borax, sulphur,
vegetable products, wines and liquors. Her exchange of commerce with the
United States amounted to $38,050,652.
On ordinary maps this narrow Chilean half of the Andean region looks
like a mere strip of coast traversed by a single range. As a
consequence, it is not generally understood by those who have not
visited the country that there is really here, as in Bolivia, Peru and
Ecuador, a double formation, connected by transverse ridges in places,
but perfectly distinct, known as the Andes proper, or main Cordillera,
and the coast range, or western Cordillera. Between the two systems is a
vast plateau, called the central valley, which begins in the northern
Province of Atacama, and, gradually decreasing in height, extends south
for seven hundred miles, with an average width of from fifty to sixty
miles, through the Province of Llanquihue, about two-thirds of the way
down the coast, where it disappears, with the coast range itself, in the
long series of groups of islands into which the shore line is broken up.
From its culminating point back of Santiago, the main Cordillera also
decreases in height toward the south, but, instead of disappearing with
the coast range, extends throughout the whole length of the country,
from Peru to the southernmost islands of the Fuegian archipelago,
forming the most magnificent background imaginable to the view from the
sea.
In the northern section, between the Bolivian frontier and Coquimbo,
there are more than thirty extinct or dormant volcanoes of great
altitude—Toroni (21,340 feet, or about four miles, high), Pular (21,325
feet high), Iquima (20,275 feet), Aucasquilucha (20,260 feet),
Llulaillaco (20,253 feet), San José (20,020 feet), Socompa (19,940
feet), and many others over 17,000 feet. Imagine these in contrast with
Etna (10,875 feet) and Vesuvius, which is only 3800 feet, not as high as
the cones of some of them alone. South of the Province of Copaibo, the
main range itself develops a plateau formation that is crossed by
several relatively low passes, such as the Portezuelo de Come Caballo
(14,530 feet), Los Patos (11,700 feet), and, farther south, on a line
with Valparaiso, the Uspallata Cumbre (12,795 feet). Although little
used even now because of its extremely rugged character, Los Patos is
associated with perhaps the most memorable event in the war of
independence. It was there that, in the execution of that strategic
movement which South American historians say excelled that of Hannibal
in the Pyrenees and Napoleon’s crossing of the Alps, the Liberator San
Martín safely made his way through with his whole army in
1817—artillery, impedimenta, and all—and, within five days, joined
forces with the Chilean hero, O’Higgins, surprised the Royalist army
awaiting him on the plain opposite the Cumbre below, fought the great
battle of Chacabuco, and entered Santiago in triumph.
But this lower Uspallata Pass, which has always been the principal means
of land communication with Argentina, was destined to become famous in
another way, because (as already mentioned in the chapter on Argentina),
it was the place chosen as the most suitable for the route of the
Chilean-Argentine transcontinental railroad, connection between the
eastern and western sections of which was established in April, 1910, by
completion of a tunnel through the mountain two miles long and half a
mile beneath the Cumbre—a work of the utmost importance, for, aside from
the matter of comfort and saving of time, it has made it possible to go
from one country to the other by the land route in winter, when the pass
above is covered with drifts and the deadly winds and snowstorms are so
likely to whirl down on the traveler at any moment that few except the
hardy mail-carriers ever dared attempt it.
In this neighborhood the mountains attain their greatest altitude. A few
miles to the north and visible a little distance from the Cumbre is the
“Monarch of the Andes,” Aconcagua, which, according to the record at the
Harvard University Observatory in Arequipa (Peru), is 24,760 feet (more
than four miles and a half) high—the highest in the world, it is now
regarded, next to Mt. Everest in the Himalayas. In his interesting story
of the ascent of Aconcagua, Sir Martin Conway, one of the very few who
ever succeeded in accomplishing it, gives a good idea of the region,
viewed from a point near the lesser of the two summits. “At last I heard
a shout and looked up and saw Maquignaz a yard or two above my head,” he
says,
“Standing on the crest of the bed of snow that crowned the
_arête_. In a moment I was beside him and Argentina lay at our
feet. The southern snow face, delusively precipitous though
actually as steep as snow can lie, dropped in a single fall to
the glacier two miles below. To the right and left for over a
mile there stretched, like the fine edge of an incurved blade,
the sharp snow _arête_ that reaches from the slightly lower
southern summit to the northern. It forms the top edge of the
great snow slope down which we were looking, and is only visible
from the Horcones valley side as a delicate silver crest, edging
the rocks. At many points it overhung in big cornices, like
frozen waves about to break. The day had thus far been fine, but
clouds were now gathering in the east. Fearful lest the view
might soon be blotted out, I took a few photographs before
moving on. The view abroad from this point differed little from
that which we finally obtained. To the south was Tupungato
(22,408 feet), a majestic pile of snow, over which even more
majestic clouds were presently to mount aloft. To the north was
the still grander Mercedario (22,315 feet), beheld around the
flank of the final rocks. In the west were the hills, dropping
lower and lower to the Chilean shore, and then the purple ocean.
To the northeast, like another ocean, lay the flat surface of
the Argentine pampas. Elsewhere the Cordillera, in long parallel
ridges running roughly north and south, stretched its great
length along, crowding together into an inextricable tangle the
distant peaks, partly hidden by the near summits, which alone
interrupted the completeness of the panorama.”
All the high peaks are said to be of volcanic origin. Those from
Mercedario to Tupungato are precipitous and craggy and decked with great
glaciers. The sky line is jagged, like the walls of a ruined castle.
Below the snow, the rocks are richly colored. There are vast palisades
of dark reds and browns, slopes of purple streaked with yellow, and all
sorts of other gorgeous combinations, and, down in the lower valleys,
brilliant greens. The streams of melting snow pouring down the sides
seem to take on tints that correspond. In some places they flow red, as
with blood from the breast of a giant; in others, with the sun gleaming
on them, they look like molten gold. The main branch of the Rio Mendoza,
for instance, above Cuevas on the Argentine side, seems pink at first,
and, lower down, after mixing with the waters of its tributaries,
changes to a golden brown. It is one of those scenes that artists are
always accused of exaggerating and adding fanciful touches to when they
attempt the poor reproductions that the greatest only can give, so far
are they beyond human skill to portray—one of those scenes that few
mortals are gifted enough to comprehend the unutterable majesty and
magnificence of even when they have an opportunity to view the
originals. Even Burton Holmes, the great globe-trotter and lecturer, in
relating his impression in a recent article, confesses that he could not
appreciate it at first.
“Naturally, we were eager at least to see this monarch
mountain—Aconcagua, the King of the Cordillera,” he says.
“Accordingly, we organized a little expedition, and, under the
guidance of the capable young Britisher who is in charge of the
livestock of the camp at Puente del Inca, and his Chilean
‘_Capitaz_,’ or chief man, we rode away up a lateral valley
toward a well-known point of view, whence Aconcagua could be
clearly seen. A snow-clad mountain looms up at the end of that
barren valley. ‘That’s a rather fine peak,’ I remarked. ‘Well,
rather,’ replied the Englishman. ‘That’s the one you have come
to see; that’s Aconcagua.’ We were astounded, for the mountain
seemed no huger than the Jungfrau, as viewed from Interlaken. In
fact, it greatly resembles the Jungfrau in form and outline, and
its setting, from this point of view, is similar. We had
expected to be overwhelmed at sight of some sharp, tremendous,
towering shape—some magnified Matterhorn. What we beheld was
like a section of a snowy range—a culminating section of that
range, perhaps—but not a sharply defined peak. Yet we were
looking at the highest crest of the Western Hemisphere.
Everything about us was on a scale so vast that even Aconcagua
was dwarfed by the tremendous setting.”
The next great division of the range is defined on the north by the
Maipo Pass and by Las Demas Pass on the south. Its principal heights are
between 16,000 and 17,000 feet. From Las Demas on, few are over 10,000
feet, and, beyond Copahue, near the source of the Bio-bio River, the
average is about 9000. Beyond the volcano Tronador (the Thunderer), in
the latitude of Lake Llanquihue, and as far as Lake Buenos Aires, it
consists of a series of Swisslike mountains, still decreasing in height,
but with an occasional high peak, such as San Valentín (12,720 feet),
and glaciers growing ever larger and more numerous. San Valentín towers
in the midst of an elevated ice field eighty miles long and thirty wide
and sends down two great glacial streams, one to the south and the other
into the San Rafael Lake, where the ice glides along the bottom until it
breaks into fragments that drift away in the channel of Morelada. All
these places can now be reached by railroad or steamer.
No conception of the Chilean country as a whole can be formed, however,
unless it is understood that it is naturally divided into zones, as
characteristically dissimilar as are the various grand divisions of the
United States. For instance, there is the Magellan and Fuegian region,
where, to the east of the mountain ranges, the great Argentine pampa
extends clear down through Tierra del Fuego, and where, as the climate
is too rigorous to invite agricultural pursuits, the principal industry,
and the only important one, aside from a small amount of lumbering and
gold mining, is the raising of herds of sheep and cattle. With the
exception of the ranchers and the ten or twelve thousand people of Punta
Arenas—which is the only port of call in these parts, and is, therefore,
the distributing and shipping point for all the enormous expanse of
country round about, including the southern section of Argentine
Patagonia—the inhabitants are of the lower order of Indians and live in
the forests, supporting themselves by hunting and fishing, just as they
did before they ever saw or heard of a white man.
Then there is the island, lake, and forest region between Smyth Channel,
say, and Valdivia. In the southern part, the principal industries are
lumbering and fishing, but in the north, especially in the Province of
Chiloé (both the island and mainland) and in Llanquihue, there are also
wheat and barley fields, and the fruit, dairy, and cattle-raising
industries rank ahead of the timber and fishing, though in Chiloé this
last is among the most important. The inhabitants are mostly immigrants,
_mestizos_, and Indians, though of a better and far more amenable class
than the races farther south. Most of them are descendants of those
famous Araucanians, whom it took nearly four hundred years to subdue.
Here, throughout nearly the whole of the country, in the uplands as well
as near the coast, is the towering _alerce_ (the Chilean pine), often
two hundred feet high, sometimes two hundred and fifty, which has a
superb white trunk, varying from ten to fifteen feet in diameter,
according to height—the rival of the California giant redwoods—and here
is the _dingue_, that resembles the mighty German oak, and supplies wood
for railroad cars, carriages, casks, and ship-building, of wonderful
toughness and durability. There are cypress, walnut, cedar, ash, beech,
and others excellent for general building and cabinet purposes, too, and
other species of value for their barks.
Then, from Valdivia north through the Province of Coquimbo, comes the
great central valley, which is excelled by few, if any, of the temperate
agricultural regions of the world. It is here, of course, that the
principal centers of population are located—Valparaiso, the most
important seaport south of San Francisco, and Santiago, the capital, and
the ports of Concepción and La Serena, or Coquimbo. In this region all
the cereals, fruits, and vegetables are produced in abundance. There are
immense vineyards and sugar-beet and tobacco plantations, stock and
dairy farms, copper, silver, and coal mines, and factories of almost
every description.
North of Coquimbo are the desert provinces of Atacama, Antofagasta,
Tarapacá, and Tacna, where the rain so seldom falls that no useful
vegetation can thrive except in a few places where irrigation is
possible, yet which are the chief source of Chile’s revenue and wealth.
These constitute the fourth, or almost exclusively mineral zone, and,
aside from their gold and silver and copper, contain the famous nitrate
of soda beds, the only known extensive deposit of the kind in the world,
though here they are found thickly scattered over a strip four hundred
and sixty miles long, averaging about three miles in width. Every year
more than 2,000,000 tons (in 1910 it was 2,367,000 tons, worth
$86,018,000) are exported to fertilize the fields and make the gunpowder
of Europe and the United States, to say nothing of the iodine and other
by-products extracted in the process of preparation. “Plants make use of
nitrogen only when it is present in the soil in the form of nitrates,”
says the _Pan American Bulletin_ (Review Number, August, 1911)—
“And nitrate of soda is the only fertilizer that contains this
food in a suitable and available form. The manner of using it,
once it is applied, is the subject of technical, agricultural
chemistry, but every year it is better understood and results
are more satisfactory. On the first discovery of the value of
nitrate, it was scattered promiscuously in the soil in its crude
form, just as it was taken from the beds in Chile. As the
industry advanced, it was found that it was more economical to
export a purer mineral, and that, also, the purer the mineral,
the more plant nourishment it offered, provided that the need of
the plant was carefully investigated. The results have been a
more highly developed agriculture and the saving of certain
by-products, of which iodine is one, the profit from which aids
the manufacture. Another use for nitrate is in the manufacture
of nitric acid, and, ultimately, of many kinds of explosives....
“Saltpeter, or nitrate of soda, is found mixed with other
substances. The beds contain four layers of material, the next
lowest being that of the nitrate itself. Above this are the
_chuca_, on the surface, which is nothing more than the
accumulation of ages; the _costra_ beneath, a harder and older
mass, but still a somewhat worthless débris; the _caliche_, the
real nitrate of soda, and, finally, the stratum of bed rock
called _gova_. To obtain the nitrate, a shaft is sunk to the
_gova_, on which powder is placed and exploded; the overlying
mass is thrown up and the _caliche_ containing the nitrate
scattered over the ground. This is then collected and taken to
the refining works for preparation into refined or almost pure
nitrate of soda, ready for export. In the _oficinas_” (refining
works) “machinery of the most economical and effective pattern
is used, and the methods of refining the salt are according to
the best researches of industrial chemistry. The same is true of
the facilities for transportation to the steamer. Many small but
well-equipped railways are in operation in the fields, and they
carry the product to the coast towns, from which they are
finally shipped abroad.... Great Britain takes about forty per
cent., Germany and the United States each about twenty per
cent., France about ten per cent., and the remainder goes to
such far-away places as Egypt, Japan, the Hawaiian Islands, and
Australia. _In fact, without nitrate the great agricultural
producers cannot advance._”
And it is well for Chile that these nitrate deposits have proven of such
great value—they were acquired only at the cost of a long and expensive
war. Formerly the Province of Antofagasta belonged to Bolivia and the
Provinces of Tarapacá and Tacna to Peru. The dividing line between Chile
and Bolivia, it appears, had always been a bone of contention, and, in
1866, while these republics were allied in a war with Spain, a treaty
had been entered into between them, fixing a boundary and agreeing that
the citizens of either should have the right to engage in mining
operations in the territory of the other, and export the products free
of all taxation, within a certain limited area. It appears also that in
1870 Bolivia, for a money consideration, granted to a company composed
of Chileans and Englishmen the right to work the nitrate beds both in
and north of the treaty area, also to construct a mole at the port of
Antofagasta and a road to Carácoles, where rich silver mines had been
discovered. The mole was constructed and not only a road but a railroad,
and the company is said to have invested heavily in various plants for
the preparation of the nitrate and the reduction of the silver ore. As a
result, as it was contended, it was Chilean and British capital, and
principally Chilean energy and labor that developed the wealth of the
region.
It further appears that, in 1873, Bolivia and Peru had entered into a
secret alliance, by the terms of which each was to protect the others
independence and territorial integrity from foreign aggression, and that
in 1874 another treaty between Chile and Bolivia was negotiated, having
in view the settlement of certain differences, but which the Bolivian
Congress had refused to ratify except on condition that an export duty
on nitrates should thereafter be paid. Chile remonstrated, contending
that such a tax would be in violation of the treaty of 1866. Bolivia, it
was charged, sought to impose it nevertheless and seized the property of
the Chileno-British company on default in payment. The situation having
thus become acute, Chile sent a fleet to protect the interests of her
citizens and blockaded the port of Antofagasta. At this stage Peru,
doubly concerned because of her secret alliance and because Chileans had
acquired rights in her own nitrate fields in Tarapacá, offered her
services as mediator, but no agreement could be reached and she became
involved in the dispute herself, and, because of her more accessible
situation, it fell to her lot to bear the chief burden of the defence in
the war that followed.
In spite of the heroic sacrifices of her officers and the desperate
courage with which her soldiers fought, especially toward the last, in
nearly every battle, on both land and sea, the Chileans were successful,
and at last, when they had taken Lima itself and made their victory
complete, the provinces in question were ceded to her provisionally and
have been developed to their present importance under her protection.
The half-breed descendants of the Aymaras and Incas, of which the rank
and file of the Peruvian and Bolivian armies were composed, were no
match for the virile _roto_, in whose veins flowed the fiery blood of
the Basque and Biscayan pioneers, mingled with that of the spirited,
warlike aborigines of Chile.
If, in making the grand tour of the continent one goes first to Bolivia
and visits Chile by way of the railroad from La Paz instead of going
directly from Argentina over the transandean road or by steamer through
the Strait of Magellan, one comes to the end of the trip at this very
port of Antofagasta, which lies basking in the tropical sun on a strip
of coast at the foot of a low table-land, seven hundred miles north of
Valparaiso, in the heart of the rainless desert. It is very different,
this region, from the bleak plateau up the twelve-thousand-foot slope,
with its llama trains and poncho-clad natives. Antofagasta has a
population of about 20,000, good broad streets, and a very businesslike
appearance. It is a city that looks like one of our Western mining
towns, and impresses one at first glance with its evidences of a more
vigorous and ambitious civilization. There is a large _oficina_ for the
preparation of nitrate, steam tramcar lines, smelters for the treatment
of copper and silver ores, long rows of barracks for the housing of the
laborers, corrugated iron warehouses, crowds of ships in the offing
taking on cargoes of nitrate and metals or unloading supplies; yet there
are a plaza and promenade and hotels, and most of the residences of the
officers of the companies are decidedly attractive.
For, in addition to being a nitrate and mining port, this is one of the
principal gateways through which Bolivia’s commodities still come and
her own products are sent out, and is the distributing center for the
Chilean province besides, where the land is so barren that the
inhabitants are dependent on the outside world for almost everything.
There was a time when even water had to be imported into the city
itself—it used to be said that they drank champagne because water was
too expensive—but not long ago a conduit was constructed and now it is
piped from the mountains, 250 miles away; and they have even brought
soil from the south with which to make gardens to adorn their plaza and
promenade and the grounds near the club where the Britishers have their
tennis courts and five o’clock teas. It is said that of the $127,000,000
invested in the hundred or more _oficinas_ generally throughout the
region, $53,500,000 are English, $52,500,000 Chilean, and the rest
German; so here, of course, as in the greater port of Iquique in the
Province of Tarapacá, a large proportion of the people, other than the
laboring class, is English, and certain it is that the brisk, clean-cut
Anglo-Saxon is very much in evidence, both in town and out along the
plants lining the railroad.
II
As Antofagasta is not connected with Valparaiso by railroad, the only
practicable way of getting there is by steamer. This is rather
unfortunate for the tourist, because, although the accommodations are
comfortable enough, the progress is slower and what is to be seen along
the coast is nowhere near as interesting and attractive as in the
central valley. Except at widely separated intervals, where the hills
part at the mouths of the few shallow rivers or about the bays, the
shore all the way down is dominated by steep, rocky cliffs, so high,
when the ship’s course is near the coast, as to conceal the country
behind. The only signs of life are where little ports, usually mere
clusters of tin-roofed huts, are huddled on the beach, sometimes with a
railroad climbing up the cliffs and back into the mining country beyond.
Occasionally there is a city, such as La Serena; but, unless one has
plenty of time to spare, these do not repay a stopover until the next
boat.
Valparaiso (Vale of Paradise) is built at the foot of a mountain ridge,
divided by deep ravines into nineteen separate _cerros_, or hills, that
slope down to a wide bay, opening into the sea on the north. Encircling
the beach is an embankment of masonry, called the Malecon, which
considerably broadens the water front and serves as a protection—though
there have been occasions when it has not proven a very effective
one—from the heavy seas that are driven in by the “northers” during the
two stormy winter months. The principal streets run parallel with the
embankment and increase in number in the sections where the _cerros_
recede, diminishing again where they extend almost to the water’s edge.
In one section, away around near the end, there is scarcely room enough
for the tracks of the railroad that connects the city with its
beautiful, fashionable suburb, Viña del Mar. Many have their homes on
the terraced sides and tops of the _cerros_, which are connected one
with another by handsome bridges and made accessible from the streets
below by inclined railways and elevators, so that, viewed from the
entrance to the bay, the city has the appearance of a huge amphitheater.
The city has a population of nearly 250,000, but, as some one else has
remarked, “As the principal port of the west coast, and, in a way, the
‘downtown’ for the capital and the rest of Chile, Valparaiso seems more
important than its mere population would indicate, and, although the
newspapers and street signs are in Spanish and Spanish is the language
generally spoken, it has little of the look of the old Spanish-American
town.” A large element of the population is foreign. The Germans are
said to have the largest colony and the Italians and French to come next
in order. These are mostly retail merchants of the better class; but it
is here also that the men live who design and control the vast nitrate
and mining enterprises in the north and the capitalists who finance the
big industrial projects and railway development, the exporters and
importers, bankers, brokers, and insurance men, and among these the ten
or twelve thousand English in the city predominate. The better-educated
class of Chileans speak English as well as Spanish and French. The
French have almost a monopoly of the retail trade having to do with
fashionable apparel and luxuries, for Paris has always been the Mecca of
the smart set here and in Santiago, just as it has in Rio de Janeiro and
Buenos Aires.
Although there are parts of the city that still retain something of the
old-world aspect, the buildings generally are modern—many of them new,
since it had to be largely rebuilt after the great earthquake in 1906,
which was relatively as disastrous there as the one in San Francisco of
the same year was to our principal Pacific port. There are few tall
buildings and no skyscrapers, yet the main business street, the Calle
Victoria, which parallels the Malecon almost the entire length, presents
an array of government buildings, banks, hotels, theaters, cafés, retail
shops, and office buildings larger and more substantial and elaborate
than can be seen almost anywhere in cities of that size. The shops are
of good size, and leave nothing to be desired in the way of assortment
and quality of their stocks. Probably the most attractive of all the
streets is the Avenida Brazil, which is at once a shaded boulevard,
business thoroughfare, and fashionable promenade. There are trolley
cars—with women conductors—and arc lights, libraries, first-class
educational institutions, beautiful parks and plazas where they have
public band concerts in the evenings, attractive residence districts,
and near by, at Viña del Mar, there are sea bathing, tennis, racing,
football, golf, country clubs, and a first-class hotel for those who are
not so fortunate as to have their own houses. Only about sixty miles
away (though it is farther by the railroad, which has to make a détour
to get through the coast range) is the capital, Santiago, the real
metropolis of the country.
“Santiago, the Andean city of the snow white crown,” as Marie Robinson
Wright was moved to describe it—
“Is unique in the charm of her unconventional beauty and the
rugged splendor of her surroundings. Like a queen in the giant
castle that nature has given her, with walls of the imperishable
granites of the Cordilleras and towers reaching to the skies,
she seems created for the homage of those who gaze upon her. Her
face is toward the sunset, as if in expectation of the high
destiny that awaits this land of promise in the golden west of
South America; and, from the snowy peaks behind her, marked
clear against the blue sky, to the farthest limit westward,
bordered by the boundless Pacific, there is no alien territory
to limit the prospect of her fair domain. Her jewels, rare and
resplendent, are the rich emerald of the Andean valleys, the
matchless sapphire of Andean skies, the pure diamonds of Andean
streams. Her royal robes are woven of the marvelous purple and
gold of Andean sunsets, unrivaled in brilliancy, and imparting
to her gracious beauty the glow of infinite loveliness, as they
envelop her utterly, catching even the snowy peaks of her
sovereign diadem in their magic folds.”
Nor is this in the least overdrawn. No city could be more delightfully
situated. It lies in the great central valley, on a plateau forty miles
long and about twenty wide, nearly two thousand feet above the level of
the sea, where the climate is as perfect as that in the Pyrenees, and is
almost completely enclosed by a magnificent border of mountains. Luzerne
and other show places in Switzerland are mere miniatures compared with
it. The level portion of the ground is highly cultivated with all sorts
of fruits and crops that grow in the temperate zone and is divided into
large _haciendas_ or plantations, nearly all with fine cattle and
horse-breeding farms attached, and princely mansions as of feudal lords,
and there are splendid avenues of giant eucalyptus along the roads and
separating the fields. In the heart of the city itself is a hill called
El Cerro de Santa Lucia, that rises to a height of three hundred feet
and is half as big around as Central Park in New York, a spot which such
a connoisseur as William E. Curtis declared he had “long held to be the
prettiest place in the world.” The summit is reached by a number of
winding driveways and walks, lined with trees, flowering shrubs and
overhanging vines and flanked by battlemented walls and towers,
picturesque beyond description; there are terraces ornamented with
flower beds and fountains, and grottos, balconies, and rustic seats; all
along, at intervals, are kiosks for music and refreshments; half way up
is a theater where light opera and vaudeville performances are given
both afternoons and evenings; a little farther on is a restaurant that
is a favorite resort for breakfasting and dining out, and, best of all,
from the summit there is a glorious view of the whole country around.
Across the city from Santa Lucia to the Central Railroad depot, an
avenue called the Alameda de las Delicias extends for a distance of
three miles. It is three hundred and fifty feet wide and all down the
center is a beautiful park containing statues and monuments to Chile’s
heroes. It is her hall of fame, not shut in by four walls, but placed in
the midst of this most frequented of her promenades, among the trees and
flowers and the fountains and lakes, where “the stories told in marble
and bronze may inspire the multitude to patriotism and courage;” and,
facing the driveways along the sides, are many of the handsomest of the
residences. The old center of the city is marked by the famous Plaza de
Armas, with a marble monument representing South America receiving her
baptism of fire in the war of independence. On one side are the
Cathedral and Bishop’s Palace, on another the splendid Municipal and
Intendencia Buildings, low and massive, and Government Telegraph Office;
on another, two long series of shops opening out on fine arcades that
extend the whole length of the sidewalks from corner to corner.
Opposite the Plaza O’Higgins, a few blocks away, is the Congressional
Palace, which occupies the whole square and is one of the largest and
handsomest buildings in South America. In architectural design it looks
somewhat like the Senate and House wings of our Capitol at Washington,
only of course it is much larger than either mere wing; and in the same
district is the Casa de Moneda (the Mint), in which the President and
Cabinet have their offices, a massive structure as big as our Washington
Treasury, and the beautiful Palace of Fine Arts.
It is around the plaza that society takes its customary stroll in the
evenings and the dusky-eyed, black-haired _señoritas_, according to the
Latin custom, flirt as much as they dare with the young exquisites, who
frankly and boldly admire with glances more eloquent than words. Writing
of this custom, which would not be tolerated in our cities, Arthur Ruhl
says that—
“They are dapper and very confident young men” (these
oglers), “combining in their demeanor the gallantry of their
Spanish inheritance with a certain bumptiousness rather
characteristically Chilean. They stare at those who
pass—some in _mantos_, some in French dresses with Paris
hats—and in Spanish murmur, half audibly, such observations
as, ‘I like the blonde best,’ or ‘Give me the little one.’
And, as they still retain some of that simplicity which in
the interior causes a stranger to be watched as though he
were a camel or a calliope, they will stare even at the
_gringo_, comment on the cut of his clothes or facetiously
compare his blunt walking boots with their long, thin ones.
They are rather irritating sometimes, especially the young
officers in their smart German uniforms, and one dreams of
home and a Broadway policeman marching down upon them
leisurely with a night-stick and fanning them away.”
Though why he should have mentioned a “blonde” in illustrating their
comments, one must wonder. Maybe it was because there are so few. As a
rule their hair and eyes, if not black, are a dark, rich brown, and
their complexion of the clear, cream-tinted, brunette type. “But,” he
continues—
“The young women do not mind it at all.... And you will not make
yourself at all popular by sympathizing, for they would only
laugh and say: ‘Oh, they’re all right. That’s only their way of
beginning. They’re quite sensible and nice when you come to know
them.’ There are ways and ways, and in South America a girl who
may not receive a formal call from a man without having her
mother and half the family in the room at the same time may
blandly listen to repartee that would make our maidens gasp for
breath.... It is at dusk, particularly if the band is playing,
or if it is Sunday, that the promenade begins round the Plaza—a
row of spectators on the inside benches, on the outside young
idlers and officers two or three deep—between two shuffling
concentric circles, in one of which are the men, in the other
the shrinking _señoritas_, two by two, or hanging on the arm of
a protector. Every man who can sport a top-hat and a pair of
saffron gloves, if it is Sunday, and all the women except the
very austere ones, gather here and circle round in that armed
neutrality of the sexes which is the tradition of their blood.”
In general style Santiago is not as modern as Valparaiso, though it is
far more interesting and attractive, and is not behind in public
utilities, educational facilities, and energy—or in the attractiveness
of their street-car service, for here, too, the conductors are neatly
uniformed women, lots of them young and good-looking. Many of the more
pretentious residences are old family mansions of the Moorish,
characteristically Spanish colonial type and, therefore, charming to a
stranger from the north. Most of them are like those described in the
chapter on Uruguay—built around a large square central court or _patio_,
filled with flower-beds and palms and with galleries around the sides
onto which the rooms of the upper stories open. These galleries serve
the same purpose as our interior hallways. They are usually supported by
substantial but graceful stone arches and piers, and are reached by
handsome stairways, also of stone, leading up from the court. Very often
there is a fountain and sometimes statuary, and through the big gateways
when the ponderous iron-studded doors happen to be open, delicious
glimpses may be caught in passing. The windows opening on the streets
are usually heavily barred, and the outer walls are in many cases
frescoed and tinted and ornamented with wreaths and vases of stucco.
Some few of the great houses are massive stone affairs of modern
construction that resemble the mansions on the fashionable residence
streets of our principal northern cities.
Like all the greater South American towns, Santiago has her museums,
libraries, magnificent municipal theater and places of popular
amusement; and she has her clubs and racecourse and public gatherings of
the fashionables, who are as elegantly dressed and smart-looking as
those of Buenos Aires—though she still has her religious processions too
on the great feast days, and all the ladies still wear their black,
shroudlike _mantos_ to church. Disfiguring and funereal as it is, this
is an observance that is still insisted on by the priests. In short,
though differing from our capitals in many respects, this greatest city
in Chile is obviously a metropolis and offers opportunities for
sightseeing and amusements of every description that few cities in the
world can surpass. And, as in Lima, there is an aristocracy here,
descended directly from the old Conquistadore stock, that has retained
its wealth and power in the land through all the vicissitudes of both
the colonial and republican régimes.
III
The long series of groups of islands beginning with Chiloé, about
two-thirds of the way down the coast, is said to be nothing more than a
partly submerged section of the Western Cordillera. Above the surface of
the water, for a distance of about eighty miles, they still have an
average elevation of about two thousand feet. Embraced in the Chonos
Archipelago, between Chiloé and the Taytao Peninsula, are more than a
thousand small islands, rocks, and reefs, and then come the large
islands of Wellington, Madre de Dios, Chatham, Hanover, Queen Adelaide,
King William’s Land, etc., each fringed by groups of little ones and all
following the mainland in a graceful curve and separated from it by the
Messier, Sarmiento, and Smyth Channels, which, together, extend for
three hundred and sixty miles, from the Penas Gulf to the Strait of
Magellan. As the steamer glides through, at times so straight are they
and such is the uniformity of the shore line on either side, one fancies
one’s self in a wide river in the interior of the continent; at others,
when openings among the islands appear and the water stretches for miles
toward the sea or far into the recesses of the Cordillera, it seems more
like a great lake.
The fjordlike formations recall the more celebrated channel off the
coast of Norway leading to the North Cape. Indeed, it is generally
agreed by those who have seen both that there is little to choose
between them, for, in both, the indentations and mountains of the coast
and islands are similar in character; if there is less variety in the
Chilean one, if the rainstorms are more frequent, to compensate for it
there is a much greater and more attractive wealth of vegetation. From
the water’s edge to a height of fourteen or fifteen hundred feet, the
slopes, and even the smaller islands, are covered with an unbroken
mantle of beautiful, dense, green forest that presents an astonishing
contrast, in this inhospitable region, to the bleak, gray rocks and
bluish-tinted ice sheets above and the pure white snow caps on the
summits beyond.
In the country from Valdivia south to Smyth Channel, many of the trees,
particularly in the ravines and sheltered places, are tall and shapely
and their trunks and lower branches are incrusted with mosses and
entwined with flowering creepers and vines, many with a sort of
mistletoe that has clusters of dark-red blossoms; one of the creepers,
called angel’s hair, is delicate and filmy and hangs from the branches
like threads of lace, and there is an undergrowth of ferns and shrubs
and bamboo. These last often shoot up as far as the tops of the trees
and seem to mat them together so that they form arbors over the pathways
between. Farther south and in the region of the Strait, these woods lose
something of their mysterious beauty; here they are composed principally
of antarctic beech, gnarled and bent by the winds, and the thicketlike
undergrowth is somber and forbidding.
Emerging from the channel, for the first time the steamer encounters
heavy rollers, which come dashing in through the broad gateway to the
Pacific, not far to the west. Here, even in summer, it is seldom that
there is neither storm nor fog, but, when it is clear enough, one can
see the tempest-torn promontory of Cape Pillar, at the end of Desolation
Island, the southwestern portal of the Strait. Eastward the conditions
improve; the water grows smooth again and the clouds are usually lifted
above the lower mountain tops; the scenery grows still more impressive
than in the channel—only it is solemnly impressive now—at least, so it
strikes most travelers. The Strait is much wider; the steamer is far
enough away from the shore to enable one to see above the shoulders of
the mountains to their summits, yet not so far that the distance renders
them too indistinct; the water is steel gray, the bases and buttresses
of the mountains take on a shade of purple, the summits seem whiter than
ever, and over all, except during the comparatively rare intervals when
the sun shines, are leaden clouds. In the center of the Strait, where
the continent proper comes to a wedge-shaped point known as Cape
Froward, and up to the eastern arm, only a few miles away, lies Punta
Arenas, the southernmost city in the world.
In the jumble of ranges forming the transmagellan continuation of the
great Cordillera of the Andes, the most important is that named after
the scientist, Charles Darwin, who was the first to explore it, on the
long western arm of the Island of Tierra del Fuego. The highest and most
conspicuous happens to be the nearest to this remarkable port, and, as
no better idea of the region in general could be conveyed, it seems to
me, I quote from the story of a visit to Mt. Sarmiento, made by Sir
Martin Conway the same summer he climbed Aconcagua, rather than attempt
a description myself. He says:
“The sun was shining quite hotly and the ice was almost
dazzlingly brilliant. After scrambling with difficulty onto the
glacier and wandering about the moraine area, we returned toward
the shore, finding an exit through the forest at a much narrower
place. The air was cool, the sun bright; there were little puffs
of breeze; it was the very perfection of a day for active
open-air life. Yet the clouds still hung stationary on the
summit of Sarmiento. We lay awhile on the shore beside the
rippling waters; then rowed away in hopes of seeing our
mountain’s misty veil lifted if only for a moment. The long,
late midsummer sunset was at hand. A tender pink light, far
fainter than the rich radiance of the Alpine glow, lay upon the
surface of the glacier and empurpled its crevasses; it permeated
the mist aloft. The cruel rocks, incrusted with ice, and the
roof of the final precipice, with its steep ridges and icy
_couloirs_, were all that could be seen. The graceful,
ice-rounded foundation rocks of this and all the other mountains
around slope up to the cliff and jagged _arêtes_ above and make
each peak beautiful with contrasted forms, massive, yet suave of
outline beneath, splintered and aspiring above. In one direction
we looked along the channel of our approach, in another, for
twenty miles or so, along Cockburn Channel, with a fine range of
snowy peaks beside it, prolonging Sarmiento’s western range.
“The water was absolutely still; we floated with oars drawn in.
Looking once more aloft, I found the mist grown thinner. The
pink light crept higher and higher as the cloud dissolved.
Suddenly—so suddenly that all who saw it cried out—far above
this cloud, surprisingly, incredibly high, appeared a point of
light like a glowing coal drawn from a furnace. The fiery glow
crept down and down as though driving the mist away, till there
stood before us, as it were, a mighty pillar of fire, with a
wreath of mist around the base, and, down through all the
wonderful pink wall and cataract of ice to the black forest and
reflecting water. We had seen the final peak now—a tower of
ice-crusted rock, utterly inaccessible from the western side. A
little while later, the fair _couloir_ had faded away, mists had
gathered and night was coming on apace. We rowed away for the
steamer, but had not gone very far before a faint silver point
appeared above the mist where the glowing tower had stood. The
cloud curtain rolled slowly down again and all the summit crest
was revealed, cold and pure. Then the southwest ridge appeared,
and finally the entire mountain, like a pale ghost, illuminated
by some unearthly light. A moment later the clouds rolled
together once more and solid night came on; we hastened to the
steamer for warmth, food, and sleep.”
[Illustration: PUNTA ARENAS, THE SOUTHERNMOST CITY ON THE GLOBE.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
VIII
PERU
Northward bound from Valparaiso to Callao, the traveler leaves behind
him the last of those south temperate zone Latins who contend for the
title of “Yankees of South America.” (And there is flattery in that
pretension if they but knew it, for in the old strongholds of our
vaunted Yankeeism much of the feverish progressiveness has subsided; in
these days the title “Argentino” or “Chileno” would confer a real
distinction on some of us of the North.) In Chile one leaves triumphant
modernism and now enters the realm of antiquity and romance, the home of
Spanish tradition and old-world stateliness. Not even on the Peninsula
have the Spanish tongue, the Spanish dignity and the old Castilian
ideals been preserved in their pristine charm and perfection as they
have in Lima, and the three ancient seats of colonial splendor hidden
away in the fastnesses of the northern Andes—Quito, Bogotá and Caracas,
the capitals of the countries next in order.
Not that romance and antiquity are all that Peru and her sister
republics to the north stand for to-day. If Argentina, Uruguay, and
Paraguay, which constitute the agricultural empire spurned by Spain in
her days of prosperity, are, as John Barrett says in the _Independent_
for March 11, 1909, destined, with Brazil, “to become deciding factors
in the food supply of mankind,” Peru and the other Andean republics have
also their part to play in furnishing elements necessary for the growing
commerce of the twentieth century. “The complicated social and financial
life of the world,” Mr. Barrett goes on, “must have something besides
food and drink. Gold and silver as a medium of exchange, and, in the
arts, copper and tin as essentials in so many phases of industrial
development, the other metals useful in a thousand ways in applied
science, the nitrate salts for prime necessities in both peace and
war—all these and much more are to-day supplied in high proportion from
this part of South America.” Deprive the world of the nitrate of Chile,
the copper, gold, and guano of Peru, and the silver and tin of Bolivia,
and “there would occur a disturbance in our business machinery which
might have very serious consequences.”
In preference to the more direct German line, the visitor should by all
means make the trip northward by a “west coaster,” that cross between an
Atlantic liner and a river steamboat which meanders leisurely in and out
among the Pacific ports and carries a conglomerate of all types of the
genus Latin American, and of all the products of his infinitely varied
soil. As one writer whimsically describes it, it has all the
characteristics of a house-boat, freight carrier, village gossip and
market gardener. With no cause to fear rain or rough weather, the ocean
here being truly “pacific,” the builders of these boats have placed all
cabins on deck, and even thus they seem superfluous except as lockers
for luggage, for the heat keeps one always in the open.
Here the newcomer to these shores talks politics or crops or railroad
concessions with the substantial _hacendado_ returning to his
plantation, or haggles interminably with the _cholo_ woman who offers
for sale woven hats of _jipi-japa_ straw (known commercially as
Panamas), little golden images unearthed from Inca ruins, or imitations
of them fashioned from vegetable ivory, great white-pulped, juicy
pineapples, leather belts of exquisite workmanship, brilliantly colored
ponchos, and the inevitable convent embroideries and laces. These women
spend much of their lives on board, traveling back and forth between
Valparaiso and Panamá, and in their allotted corners sell everything
from candied sugar cane wrapped in banana leaves to emerald necklaces.
It is said that one old woman on a recent trip actually had hoisted
aboard a live cow, which she would have sold piecemeal, in steaks, if
the long-suffering captain had not protested that his ship was no
slaughter-house.
And, besides the surfeit of “local color” one gets on the ship, the
traveler has an excellent opportunity to study that vague institution
known as international trade, at a familiarly close range. The terms
“exports” and “imports” mean little to him until he sees huge cases of
sewing machines marked “Hamburg—fragile,” or sections of milling
machinery from Chicago, or something of the sort, swung over the side
into the lighters, and later sees other lighters towed from shore laden
with curious little bales of Panama hats, or cotton, or casks of rum,
and all the, to him, exotic products of a different world.
Always wonderful, the mighty ramparts of the Andes rise tier upon tier
from the reddish strip of desert shore, first in solid black, then in
slaten pallor to the misty heights of inland distance where the peaks
are ill-defined against the sky, except when the sun burns through the
haze and makes brilliant for a moment some snow-capped summit floating
apparently in mid-air four miles above. Ever northward the lazy coaster
dozes on her course, dropping in at Iquique, parched and stifling, or
Arica where the sun-baked nitrate lies piled for shipment in such
quantities as fairly to blister the imagination, or Mollendo, the other
open door to Bolivia’s wealth; and, finally, after a fortnight of such
coasting, one enters Callao, the port of Lima, which is only nine miles
away, up the valley. Situated in the center of Peru’s coast line, Callao
is the busy exchange for the bulk of the country’s commerce. Its
population is about 35,000. Most of its business men, however, live in
Lima and look upon the port city as the Chileans do on Valparaiso,
merely as the “down town” district of the capital.
Arriving in port the traveler’s thoughts instinctively turn back through
the four centuries of white dominion over the country; and he pictures
in his mind the stirring tragedies of Spanish conquest and the colonial
régime in this dazzling colonial empire won from the Incas. Until 1717
the Viceroy of Peru held sway over the whole of South America except the
then Portuguese Colony of Brazil. On that date the Viceroyalty of Santa
Fé or New Granada (embracing what is now Colombia and Ecuador) and the
Captaincy-General of Venezuela were created and severed from his
jurisdiction; and in 1776 it was reduced to the dimensions occupied by
the present Republic, by the creation of the Viceroyalty of Buenos
Aires, which included territory now occupied by Argentina, Uruguay,
Paraguay, and Bolivia (then known as the Province of Alto Peru). The
Captaincy-General of Chile had always enjoyed a high degree of autonomy
and retained it until complete independence was gained by the
revolution.
Although mightily shrunken from its former imperial estate, Peru is
still a magnificent domain. Its area of 680,000 square miles is equal to
the combined areas of Texas, Nevada, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico; its
coast-line of 1500 miles is as extensive as our Atlantic coast from
Maine to Georgia. The country is divided longitudinally into three
distinct regions: the coast, the cordillera, and the so-called Montaña,
or wooded slopes, the latter stretching away into the Amazon valley.
Along the Pacific coast is a ribbon of dry, tropical lowland, varying in
width from twenty to eighty miles, and reaching up to the foothills of
the coast range. On these foothills, and increasing gradually in number,
through the extension of the irrigating systems toward the sea, lie
extensive plantations of cotton and sugar, which form a large part of
Peru’s exports. But the coastal stretches are, for the most part, still
unreclaimed desert, for, as in the nitrate region of Chile, the rain
falls so seldom that, without irrigation, nothing can grow. The
explanation given by the scientists is that the moisture from the
Atlantic, swept across the continent by the African trade winds, lodges
finally in the Andes and flows back over the continental valleys in the
great rivers confluent with the Amazon, while that from the Pacific is
diverted in some other direction. It has been demonstrated by
experiment, however, that these arid parts need only irrigation to make
them luxuriantly fertile.
Back of the coast the country is cast in a mold of heroic dimensions.
Here the Andes spread out into separate cordilleras which are joined at
intervals by transverse ranges, forming great _nudos_ (knots), with high
plateaux between, surrounded by lofty snow-covered peaks. This
mountainous area approximates three hundred miles in width. In these
heights lay the wealth that made of Peru a fabulous treasure land, and
in the lower valleys the cereals and fruits of the temperate zone, as
well as cattle, provide in great abundance for the Peruvian of to-day.
In her extensive guano deposits, too, Peru has another great source of
wealth.
Descending the eastern slopes of the Cordillera, the Montaña region
stretches away gradually into the Amazon valley, covering an immense
area. This Montaña country comprises more than two-thirds of the total
area, and lies wholly within the Torrid Zone. Watered by mighty rivers
that have their source in the Andean snows, and graded in elevation, its
varied productiveness and fertility are phenomenal. It is in the
Peruvian Andes that the Amazon begins its long course to the Atlantic;
the river, however, goes by the name of Marañon throughout its length in
Peru. In the beginning it is augmented by the Huallaga, Ucayali, and
Yavarí and a dozen more mighty streams having their sources in the same
heights or in the foothills on the eastern slopes, and, while still
within Peruvian territory, becomes a river of such immense depth that
ocean liners steam clear across the continent to Iquitos, thus giving to
Peru a port accessible from the Atlantic for her shipments of rubber and
other tropical products.
The disposition of the country’s population of 4,500,000 inhabitants is
significant of the history of the nation’s development and suggestive of
the prosperity that awaits her when the Andean barriers shall have been
gridironed with the railroads that will open up the Amazon region to
colonization some day. The coast areas now support a fourth of the total
population, the cordilleras two-thirds, while the rich forests and
fertile plains of the Montaña—the country of Peru’s present-day
opportunity—support but half a million. The bulk of these inhabitants
are of Indian and mixed Indian and Spanish descent. But little
impression has yet been made by European immigration, as in the
established agricultural republics of the Atlantic seaboard. It is
confidently expected that the birth of the New Peru—the Peru of
railroads, colonization, and great agricultural and mining activity—will
reverse this disparity in distribution and increase the population to
many times its present numbers, for now it is less than that of Holland,
although Peru is three times the size of France.
The New Peru, which is heralded by all recent visitors to the west coast
republics, is building an industrial and commercial nation on the long
smoldering ruins of Spain’s golden empire, and it will be a worthier and
more lasting structure than that with which Pizarro remorselessly
smothered the unique civilization of the Incas. The war with Chile
seemed to awaken her to the necessity of keeping pace with the times,
not only in military but in commercial affairs. Since then she has made
great strides.
A short distance up the coast near Ecuador’s port of Guayaquil lies the
little town of Tumbéz, where Pizarro landed with his troop of two
hundred men and planted the banner of Castile in the Inca’s domain. One
of his first acts after establishing the power of Spain in the Inca
country was to found a new capital nearer the coast than Cuzco, where,
in the midst of the Andes, the Incas had for centuries had their seat of
government. He chose the site of a pre-Incaic oracle on the Rimac River
(the “river that speaks”) where the legendary predecessors of the Incas
came to make their vows. For nearly three hundred years this city, which
is now called Lima, but which he christened the City of the Kings,
enjoyed the distinction of being the “second metropolis” of the great
Spanish Empire on two continents and the center of a viceregal court,
the splendor of which rivaled that of royalty itself. Stately palaces
and churches were soon erected; wide avenues and beautiful plazas were
laid out and substantial walls constructed for defense, and here came in
the viceroy’s train the proudest nobility of Spain.
Lima is reached by both railroad and trolley line from Callao, and lies
on a broad, fertile plain on the left bank of the river. Fifty miles
back of the city the great chain of the Andes passes; but spurs from the
majestic range stretch down and enclose it as within an amphitheater.
Lima is only five hundred feet above sea-level, and in the summer season
unquestionably hot, although the cool breezes from the Pacific temper
the climate to a certain extent. In general appearance the early writers
likened it to Seville; to-day, as the capital of a progressive republic,
it has broadened out and become more active than its dreamy Andalusian
prototype. As in Santiago and the old parts of Buenos Aires, the
business and poorer residence streets generally are narrow and paved
with cobble-stones, and most of the buildings are two or three stories
high. In the better residence sections the visitor is agreeably
surprised to find the charm of other days still remaining in the massive
wooden street doors studded with brass, barred windows and Moorish
balconies, or _miradores_, of heavily carved mahogany, and beautiful
_patios_. The famous old Torre-Tagle mansion, where so many of the
viceroys lived, is still standing to perpetuate this interesting type,
as in the older tropical Spanish cities. _Portales_, or arcades, extend
along the sides of the plazas in front of the shops to afford shelter
from the sun.
The great cathedral and the government palace of the same period flank
two sides of the Plaza Mayor. On the third side stands the city hall,
above which are the balconies of the principal social clubs. Near by is
the old Inquisition building. In the high-domed and mahogany-paneled
room in which the Holy Office sat, the Senate now holds its sessions and
signs the laws of the republic on the very table whence in the old days
were issued warrants for _autos da fé_, and the legislators now hang
their hats in the former torture chamber, in fine disregard of the
horrors it once witnessed. There is a venerableness attached to the old
churches and convents abounding in Lima which makes one hope that the
exigencies of modernism may not demand the destruction of these splendid
relics of colonial architecture.
[Illustration: PLAZA MAYOR, LIMA.]
The Plaza Mayor was the very heart of the brilliant colonial régime. The
courtly Dons of these days, many of whom are descendants of the
principal courtiers of that period, still are delighted to tell of the
brilliance of the viceregal court under the Marquis de Cañete or the
Duke de Palata, or the dilettante Prince de Esquilache—a court that was
the talk of two continents. In the gorgeous salons of the old palace the
gayety reached its height in the days of the Viceroy Amat. It is not
surprising to learn that the deposed Ferdinand VII would gladly have
followed the example of the Portuguese king and moved with his court to
his new-world capital had he been able to escape from the grasp of
Napoleon. At one corner is the site of the house in which Pizarro fought
in vain with his assassins. His skeleton now lies in a glass case in the
cathedral, exposed to the visitor’s astonished gaze. In the center of
the Plaza a beautiful bronze fountain has stood for three hundred years,
untouched by the strife that surged about it as each new period of
Peru’s stormy career was ushered in.
In the Plaza de la Exposición, on the Paseo Colón and in other parks and
boulevards are erected the statues of the nation’s heroes, and other men
who have made Peru’s history—Christopher Columbus, the two Liberators,
San Martín and Bolívar, Colonel Bolognesi, who fell in the war with
Chile, refusing to surrender “until we have burned our last cartridge,”
and many others. The Paseo Colón runs through the fashionable residence
section. It is one hundred and fifty feet wide and connects the Plazas
Bolognesi and Exposición. Through the center runs a garden bordered with
superb trees and artistically laid out flower-beds and flowering bushes,
and interspersed at intervals with monuments, pillars, and fountains.
The present day parade of the _gente decente_ gives the visitor a
picture of beautiful women and well-groomed equipages that measures up
to the best traditions of Peru’s social eminence. In the heart of the
city is the great bull ring, where once society gathered for other
purposes than merely to take the air.
Excellent electric car service is a feature of Lima’s modern
improvements. Trolley lines extend to the many seaside resorts for which
society deserts the capital in the hottest months—Chorillos, the Newport
of Peru, just south of Callao, or Miraflores, Barranco, Ancón and the
numerous imitations of Coney Island.
Too much cannot be said of the charm of Lima’s culture and refinement.
If the _Limeños_ have inherited from their ancestors too much of the
aristocratic pride and military arrogance that distinguish the
_Peninsulare_, they have also fallen heir to the courtly grace and
_savoir faire_ that made the Knights of Alcántara famous among the first
gentlemen in Europe four centuries ago. From the Lima home of to-day the
visitor will take away with him recollections of hospitality, kindness
and old-world dignity, lightened by a pronounced keenness of wit. They
have the reputation of being generous and hospitable, if inclined to
extravagance, and of forming warm and lasting friendships. Ardent
imaginations and brilliant intellects lend a charm to conversation with
the men, only less than that which the world-famed beauty, intelligence
and kindly courtesy of the women lend to theirs. Very reserved when on
their way to church in their black mantos or promenading the Alameda in
their handsome toilettes, these ladies exert themselves to make their
homes agreeable to their guests. The behavior of the young girls on the
Alameda is more like that of their Chilean sisters.
At the head of Peru’s educational system stands the fine old University
of San Marcos, in Lima, founded in 1551—nearly a hundred years before
Harvard received its charter. It has now many additions and covers all
branches of learning, and its courses are thrown open to every class.
[Illustration: SCENE ON THE OROYA RAILWAY.]
Peru’s railroads cover but fifteen hundred miles, but they are pushing
forward rapidly to fill in its section of the long-promised Pan-American
railway from Panamá to Patagonia. One of these, the Oroya road, which
ascends from Lima up into the plateau country, is altogether the most
impressive piece of railroad engineering in the world; it is not only
the highest, but there is no other that lifts its wondering passengers
to any such altitude in such an appallingly short space of time. For an
hour or more the train winds through a wide, irrigated valley, green and
prosperous-looking with plantations of sugar cane. Farther up, the
valley narrows and is closed in by naked rocks. Twenty-five miles from
Lima a station is reached twenty-eight hundred feet above the sea;
twelve miles farther the altitude is five thousand feet. At Casapalca,
the town of smelters, thirteen thousand six hundred feet is achieved by
the puffing, vibrating engine; at fourteen thousand feet the chimneys of
Casapalca’s smelters look like pins stuck in the green carpet below, and
finally, the passenger descends from the train, very uncertain on his
feet, at the unprecedented height of 15,665 feet, and stands on the
cold, wind-swept Andean roof. On every hand are peaks and hoods of snow.
Beyond the station the rechristened Mount Meiggs rises another two
thousand feet, as a monument to the indefatigable Yankee promoter and
soldier of fortune who conceived and built the road—Henry Meiggs.
Turning to the west, one looks back over the long, infinitely varied
descent; to the east lie the plateaus and the Andean treasure land. The
northern branch of the road continues along almost equally high levels,
past the historic plains of Junín on which Bolívar dealt his crushing
blow to the viceroy’s army in 1824, to Cerro de Pasco, where the
American mining syndicate is preparing to get rich.
II
A still more extensive railroad and one which gives the traveler a more
varied view of the Andes, is that ascending from the port city of
Mollendo, near the Chilean frontier. This line is the outlet for much of
the commerce of Bolivia, and was built by the same gifted Yankee who
fathered the Oroya road. Leaving Mollendo, the train speeds over the
desert for a few miles and then begins its steady climb upward. All day
it labors along the tortuous ascent through echoing walls of rock, bare,
repellent, and awe-inspiring in their cold majesty. Suddenly, around a
jagged precipice, the passengers look down upon a lovely valley—an oasis
of green. In its midst lies the quaint, picturesque old city of
Arequipa, which Pizarro, who founded it, was wont to call _la villa
hermosa_—the city beautiful. Seen from the heights, it somewhat
resembles La Paz, a group of low, white and blue walled, red roofed
buildings, arranged in squares, with a large plaza in the center, the
general flatness relieved by many church spires, and its spacious patios
a mass of foliage and trees.
Thus far the penetration of the railroad into this quiet retreat has
produced but little change in its old-world aspect. It has long been
famous for its delightful climate and location, and as Mozans truly says
of it, “If it is not the most beautiful place in South America, as its
admirers claim, it is certainly the most restful. It is such a place as
one would like to retire to after the stress and storms of a busy
career, to pass one’s days in quiet and a congenial environment. The
people who retain all the light-heartedness and cordiality and culture
of old Spain, are worthy denizens of their charming city, and the better
one knows them, the more he admires and loves them.”
Overlooking the city are the buildings of a branch of the Harvard
Observatory. It is said that, because of the remarkable clearness of the
atmosphere and the great number of cloudless nights, this observatory is
probably more favorably located than any other in the world, and that,
as a consequence, the astronomers stationed there have achieved results
of the greatest value to science, especially in photographing the
southern skies. Also they are doing valuable work in measuring the
heights of the Andean peaks and charting the general topography, as well
as in keeping open house to their fellow-countrymen who hunger for the
sound of their native tongue after many weeks of effort to comprehend
the idioms of the Castilian speech and the patois of the ever-present
_cholo_. The verandas and trim green lawns and tennis courts are a
reminder of Cambridge, indeed.
Above the observatory, snow-capped Misti rises sheer from the valley
some 21,000 feet, like a perfect cone. Its appearance is so distinct, so
impressive in its constancy and brooding grandeur, that it possesses a
personality almost human. One feels impelled to address it with the
prefix “_Señor_,” after the manner of the Japanese with their Fuji-san,
which, by the way, greatly resembles Misti in shape and location.
Continuing upward through the mountain desert, the Mollendo road ascends
to a height of 14,666 feet in the short latitudinal distance of less
than two hundred miles, and across the divide to Juliaca, a town near
the northern shore of Lake Titicaca, where it separates, one branch
extending south to Puno, the center of the gold mining district, thence
around the great lake to La Paz, the other extending northwest for about
two hundred miles, down the sloping plateau to the valley of Cuzco, at
the head of which is the ancient imperial capital of the Incas.
Plantations and pastures begin to appear as the train descends from the
high ridges into the plain, and, great as is the altitude even here, on
an island in this very lake, according to tradition, the remarkable
native dynasty had its birth. The legend, as Mozans quotes it from the
works of Garcilaso de la Vega, the historian of the conquest, and who
was himself, through his mother, a descendant of the royal Inca line, is
that—
“Our Father, the Sun, seeing the human race in the condition I
have described: living like wild beasts, without religion or
government, or town or houses, without cultivating the land or
clothing their bodies, for they knew not how to weave cotton or
wool to make clothes; living in caves or clefts in the rocks, or
in caverns under the ground; eating the herbs of the field and
roots and fruit, like wild animals, and also human flesh—had
compassion on them and sent down from heaven to the earth a son
and a daughter to instruct them in the knowledge of our Father,
the Sun, that they might adore him and adopt him as their God,
also to give them precepts and laws by which to live as
reasonable and civilized men and to teach them to live in houses
and towns, to cultivate maize and other crops, to breed flocks,
to use the fruits of the earth like rational beings instead of
living like wild beasts. With these commands and intentions, our
Father, the Sun, placed his two children in the Lake of
Titicaca, which is eighty leagues from here” (Cuzco); “and he
said to them that they might go where they pleased, and that, at
every place where they stopped to eat or sleep, they were to
thrust a scepter of gold into the ground, which was half a yard
long and two fingers in thickness. He gave them this staff as a
sign and token that in the place where, by one blow on the
earth, it should sink down and disappear, there it was the
desire of our Father, the Sun, that they should remain and
establish their court.”
In this region the table-land is of vast expanse, and in many respects
the panorama is more impressive even than that in the vicinity of
Aconcagua. In the center is the enormous sheet of water, turquoise blue
in the sunlight, stretching for a hundred and ten miles off to the
south, with an average width of thirty miles and an average depth of a
hundred fathoms, and, 12,500 feet high as it is, bordered on either side
by superb ranges towering many thousands of feet higher, their clean-cut
peaks glittering with mantles of snow and ice. Around the shore and on
the islands of Titicaca and Koati are picturesque towns and small
clusters of adobe houses surrounded by hills, their sides terraced and
covered with farms, the water fringed with fields of reeds, and feeding
in them countless birds and herds of cattle. It is no wonder that these
“Children of the Sun” should have worshiped as their God and Goddess the
great luminous orbs in a region where, thanks to the unwonted splendor
of the moon and stars, which enable one to distinguish all the salient
features of lake and Cordillera with the greatest ease, the nights, as
Mozans says, are glorious beyond words; but where, “however fair the
views presented to the enraptured gaze in the subdued light of the moon
and her attendant handmaidens, no one can be insensible to the gorgeous
vistas that burst upon the vision during the daytime.” It is then, he
continues—
“Especially at the hours of dawn and twilight that the
snow-crested range of the lofty Cordillera Real is visible in
all its transcendent beauty and majesty. For then, as if by
magic, various colored fires seem to blaze from the immense
glaciers and snow fields and to convert the sparkling expanse
into glowing rubies, sapphires, and emeralds, while the lofty
peaks of the Sorata range are transformed into gleaming
pinnacles of burnished gold. Then in fullest perfection and
palpable form is realized that vision of mountain loveliness,
that crowning splendor of earth and sky, set forth in Ruskin’s
noble lines: ‘Wait yet for one hour, until the east again
becomes purple and the heaving mountains, rolling against it in
the darkness like waves of a wild sea, are drowned one by one in
the glory of its burning. Watch the white glaciers blaze in
their winding paths about the mountains, like mighty serpents
with scales of fire; watch the columnar peaks of solitary snow,
kindling downwards, chasm by chasm, each in itself a new
morning—their long avalanches cast down in keen streams brighter
than the lightning, sending each its tribute of driven snow,
like altar-smoke, up to the heaven, the rose-light of their
silent domes flushing that heaven about them and above them,
piercing with purer light through its purple lines of lifted
cloud, casting a new glory on every wreath as it passes by,
until the whole heaven, one scarlet canopy, is interwoven with a
roof of waving flame, and tossing, vault beyond vault, as with
the drifted wings of many companies of angels.’”
The railroad has been built along the very route that the first Inca and
his sister-wife are said to have chosen when they started out to found
their capital. Passing between two giant peaks, it descends the
gradually sloping two-hundred-mile-long plateau which became the most
populous section of the great empire, as it is still of modern Peru. On
either side are torrential rivers that rush down through the deep
defiles of the mountains to the Amazon. Every foot of the region is
associated with legendary and historic events; scattered about
everywhere, from the islands of Titicaca on, are wonderful ruins—ruins
of towns, bridges, fortresses, temples, burial towers, some Incaic, some
thought to be as old as the pyramids of Egypt. There is a lake in which,
at the coming of the Spaniards, the Indians are said to have thrown the
colossal gold chain that was forged at the birth of Huascar, a chain so
heavy, according to the chroniclers, that it was all that two hundred
men could do to carry it.
The climate is delightful. All along the road is a succession of wild,
gorgeous scenery, quaint towns and villages and big haciendas, with
fields green with growing crops and herds of cattle and alpaca ranging
about, often tended by pretty copper-colored _chola_ (mixed breed) or
Indian girls, as picturesquely dressed as those of La Paz, only here in
Peru, instead of the great number of voluminous many-colored skirts the
Bolivian women wear—sometimes as many as twelve or fifteen, which makes
them appear as though they had on the hoops once worn by our
grandmothers—they wear a single, short woolen skirt over the usual
cotton ones, and, instead of the peculiar headdress of the Aymaras,
broad-brimmed, gaily beribboned hats, though, like the Aymaras, they
wear brilliantly colored mantles, fastened around the shoulders by a pin
with a spoon-shaped head (which they also use as a spoon), and the men,
like the Bolivian mountaineers, wear ponchos that vie with the mantles
of the women in color. Ponchos and mantles like those worn to-day, but
many centuries old, have been found in the tombs, so ancient is the
fashion.
It is in this country between La Paz and Cuzco that the llama is seen in
greatest numbers—that remarkable animal which Mozans aptly describes as
a creature with the legs of a deer, the body of a sheep, and the head
and neck of a camel. They are larger than sheep, however, and far more
docile and ornamental than the ugly, ungainly camel. Their coats are of
several shades: white, brown, black or parti-colored; their wool is long
and thick, and they are noted for their beautiful big, wistfully
inquiring eyes. From time immemorial the natives had used them as
burden-bearers, and the Spaniards, when they came, found them
surer-footed and more enduring than mules or burros, proof against cold
and acclimated in the rarefied atmosphere of the high table-lands, and
able to go as long as a camel without food and water, and to maintain
themselves by grazing along the waysides in parts of the country in
which no other animal could live. It was on their backs that all the
material that entered into the construction of the steamers on Lake
Titicaca was hauled, and most of the mining machinery, and the caravans
still compete with the railroads in carrying ores and coca to the coast
and bringing back supplies for the mountain towns.
In these days only the males are used for such purposes. It is said of
them that when they are loaded with more than they feel that they can
comfortably carry (about a hundred pounds), they lie right down in their
tracks and refuse to budge for all the cajoling or in spite of the kicks
and curses their tenders can bestow. The females are kept in pasture for
breeding purposes and for their wool and milk, and in that region rank
with cattle as a source of food supply, for their flesh resembles mutton
and is quite as palatable and good to eat. It is much used in the native
dish called _chupe_, a sort of thick soup which is made of the peculiar
mountain potatoes grown in those parts, first frozen and dried, and then
put into a pot and boiled with any other vegetables at hand and
fragments of meat and fish, and seasoned with salt and red pepper. This,
to the people of the mountains, is what rice is to the Chinese and
macaroni to the Italians. Sometimes it is the only fare the traveler can
get at the little _tambos_ or inns remote from the railroad; but even
so, when properly prepared, as it usually is, with plenty of nourishing
ingredients, it leaves little to be desired after a hard day’s climb.
The valley of Cuzco—a pocketlike depression about ten miles long and
varying in width from two to three miles, covered with fields of barley
and maize, dotted with many attractive-looking gardens and country
mansions of the old Spanish colonial type, and hedged in on either side
by ranges of mountains towering high above—is at the northwestern
extremity of the plateau. The city, which is at the head of the valley,
is a little more than a mile and a half in breadth, from the foot of the
mountain range on the east to that of the range on the west, and about a
mile in length. To the north, the famous hill of Sacsahuaman rises
abruptly over it and is separated from the mountains on either side by
deep ravines, through one of which flows the little river Huatanay and
through the other the Rodadero. The Huatanay tumbles noisily past the
moss-grown walls of an old convent, under the houses forming the west
side of the great square, thence through the center of a broad street,
where it is confined between banks faced with masonry and crossed by
numerous bridges, and on beyond until it unites with the Rodadero, which
separates the city from the suburb of San Blas.
The most important section of the ancient city was built between the two
little rivers, with the great square in the center, and this site, said
to have been chosen for it by the first Inca and his sister-wife, is
declared by many to be the most wildly, majestically beautiful of all
the beautiful mountain city sites in South America—even Santiago, La
Paz, Arequipa, Cajamarca, Quito, Bogotá, and Caracas. Respecting the
ancient city itself, Prescott tells us that the Spaniards were
astonished “by the beauty of its edifices, the length and regularity of
its streets, and the good order and appearance of comfort, even luxury,
visible in its numerous population. It far surpassed all they had seen
in the New World.... It” (the great square), he continues, “was
surrounded by low piles of buildings, among which were several palaces
of the Incas. One of these, erected by Huayana Capac, was surmounted by
a tower, while the ground floor was occupied by one or more immense
halls, like those described in Cajamarca, where the Peruvian nobles held
their _fêtes_ in stormy weather. The population of the city,” he goes
on—
“Is computed by one of the conquerors at two hundred thousand
inhabitants and that of the suburbs at as many more. This
account is not confirmed, as far as I have seen, by any other
writer. But, however it may be exaggerated, it is certain that
Cuzco was the metropolis of a great empire, the residence of the
court and the chief nobility, frequented by the most skillful
mechanics and artisans of every description, who found a demand
for their ingenuity in the royal precincts, while the place was
garrisoned by a numerous soldiery, and was the resort, finally,
of emigrants from the most distant provinces. The quarters
whence this motley population came were indicated by their
peculiar dress, and especially their head-gear, so rarely found
at all on the American Indian, which, with its variegated
colors, gave a picturesque effect to the groups and masses in
the streets....
“The edifices of the better sort—and they were very
numerous—were of stone, or faced with stone. Among the principal
were the royal residences, as each sovereign built a new palace
for himself, covering, though low, a large extent of ground. The
walls were stained or painted with gaudy tints, and the gates,
we are assured, were sometimes of colored marble. ‘In the
delicacy of the stonework,’ says another of the conquerors, ‘the
natives far excelled the Spaniards, though the roofs of their
dwellings, instead of tiles, were only of thatch, but put
together with the nicest art.’ The sunny climate of Cuzco did
not require a very substantial material for defense against the
weather.... The streets were long and narrow. They were arranged
with perfect regularity, crossing one another at right angles;
from the great square diverged four principal streets connecting
with the highroads of the empire. The square itself, and many
parts of the city, were paved with fine pebble. Through the
heart of the capital ran a river of pure water, if it might not
be rather termed a canal, the banks or sides of which, for a
distance of twenty leagues, were faced with stone. Across this
stream, bridges, constructed of similar broad flags, were thrown
at intervals, so as to afford an easy communication between the
different quarters.
“The most sumptuous edifice in Cuzco in the times of the Incas
was undoubtedly the great temple dedicated to the sun, which,
studded with gold plates, as already noticed, was surrounded by
convents and dormitories for the priests, with their gardens and
broad parterres sparkling with gold. The exterior ornaments had
been already removed by the conquerors—all but the frieze of
gold, which, imbedded in the stones, still encircled the
principal building.... The fortress was raised to a height rare
in Peruvian architecture, and from the summit of the tower the
eye of the spectator ranged over a magnificent prospect, in
which the wild features of the mountain scenery—rocks, woods,
and waterfalls—were mingled with the rich verdure of the valley
and the shining city filling up the foreground, all blended in
sweet harmony under the deep azure of a tropical sky.”
The ruins of the palace of the first Inca, on the hill above the city,
and those of the immense fortress on the summit—which is admitted by all
to have been constructed with a degree of skill equaled nowhere else in
the world prior to the use of artillery—are thus described by Sir
Clements R. Markham:
“On a terrace, built of stones of every conceivable size and
shape, fitting exactly one into the other, eighty-four paces
long and eight feet high, is a wall with eight recesses,
resembling those of the Inca palace at Lima-tambo, and, in the
center of the lower wall, a mermaid or siren, much defaced by
time, is carved in relief on a square slab. In one of the
recesses a steep stone staircase leads up to a field of lucerne,
on a level with the upper part of the wall, which is twelve feet
high, and this forms a second terrace. On either side of the
field are ruins of the same character, traces of a very
extensive building or range of buildings. They consist of a
thick stone wall, sixteen paces long and ten feet six inches
wide, containing a door and windows. The masonry is most
perfect. The stones are cut in parallelograms, all of equal
height but varying in length, with corners so sharp and fine
that they appear as if they had just been cut—and without any
kind of cement, fitting so exactly that the finest needle could
not be introduced between them. The doorposts, of ample height,
support a stone lintel seven feet ten inches in length, while
another stone, six feet long, forms the foot.... Behind these
remains are three terraces, built in the rougher style of the
masonry used in the first walls and planted in alders and fruit
trees, ... where he” (the first Inca, Manco Capac) “is said to
have chosen the site of his residence, the more readily to
overlook the building of his city and the labors of his
disciples....
“On the east end of Sacsahuaman, crowning a steep cliff
immediately above the palace of Manco Capac, there are three
terraces, one above the other, built of a light-colored stone.
The first wall, fourteen feet high, extends in a semicircular
form around the hill for one hundred and eighty paces, and
between the first and second terraces there is a space eight
feet wide. The second wall is twelve feet high and the third is
ninety paces around its whole extent.... This was the citadel of
the fortress, and in its palmy days was crowned by three towers
connected by subterranean passages, now quite demolished....
From the citadel to its eastern extremity the length of the
table-land of Sacsahuaman is three hundred and fifty-three paces
and its breadth in the broadest part one hundred and thirty
paces. On the south side the position is so strong and
impregnable that it required no artificial defense. The position
is defended on part of its north side by a steep ravine through
which flows the river Rodadero and which extends for one hundred
and seventy-four paces from the citadel in a westerly direction.
Here, therefore, the position required only a single breastwork,
which is still in a good state of preservation; but from this
point to the western extremity of the table-land, a distance of
four hundred paces, nature has left it entirely undefended, a
small plain extending in front of it to the rocky heights of the
Rodadero.
“From this point, therefore, the Incas constructed a cyclopean
line of fortifications, a work which fills the mind with
astonishment at the grandeur of the conception and the perfect
manner of its execution. It consists of three walls, the first
averaging a height of eighteen feet, the second of sixteen and
the third of fourteen, the first terrace being ten feet broad
and the second eight. The walls are built with salient and
retiring angles, twenty-one in number and corresponding with
each other in each wall, so that no one point could be attacked
without being commanded by others.... But the most marvelous
part of this fortification is the huge masses of rock of which
it is constructed (one of them being sixteen feet in height and
several more varying from ten to twelve feet), yet made to fit
exactly one into the other and forming a piece of masonry almost
unparalleled in solidity, beauty, and peculiarity of its
construction in any other part of the world. The immense masses
at Stonehenge, the great block in the tomb of Agamemnon at
Argos, and those in the cyclopean walls of Volterra and
Agrigentum are wonderful monuments of the perseverance and
knowledge of the people who raised them, but they fall
immeasurably short in beauty of execution of the fortress of
Cuzco.”
The railroad and electric lights and the telegraph and telephone have
come to Cuzco now, but in other respects the city is not much
modernized. It is still distinctly reminiscent of the royal Inca régime,
and even more of the régime of the Spanish viceroys. For many years
after the conquest it was superior in importance to Lima. Notaries were
required under severe penalties, Mozans says, “to write at the head of
all public documents, ‘_En la gran ciudad del Cuzco, cabeza de estos
reinos y provincias del Perú en las Indias_’—In the great city of Cuzco,
head of these kingdoms and provinces of Peru in the Indies. Even so late
as the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,” he continues, “it was,
next to Lima, the city of the greatest social importance in the
viceroyalty.” And so now, although there are the same long vistas of
low, massive buildings through the narrow streets, the view from the
hill presents a panorama of red-tiled roofs instead of thatches, of many
tall church towers, and of a great square divided into three.
On the first stories of the old Indian homes Spanish superstructures
have been built; on the foundation walls of the ancient temple of
Voricancha, the largest and richest of the sanctuaries devoted to the
worship of the Sun, has been erected the convent of Santo Domingo; the
devotees in the convent of Santa Catalina occupy cells that were once
used by the Virgins of the Sun; walls that were retained in the building
of the Church of San Lazaro are ornamented with bodies of birds having
women’s heads that were carved by the bronze chisels of the artisans of
the Incas. The grand old renaissance cathedral, which, with its massive
stone walls and pillars and vaulted roof, cost so much to build that one
of the viceroys said it would have been cheaper to build it of silver,
is one of the most imposing specimens of church architecture in America;
the pulpit in San Blas is famed as one of the most beautiful in the
world, and many of the interiors and cloisters, particularly of La
Merced, where the remains of Almagro and two of Pizarro’s brothers lie,
and the patio of the university, are perfectly superb.
[Illustration: CHURCH OF LA MERCED, LIMA—TYPE OF RELIGIOUS ARCHITECTURE
OF SPANISH COLONIAL PERIOD.]
Of course, like La Paz, Quito, Bogotá and many of the other old mountain
cities, which until very recently were isolated so far as the outside
world was concerned because of their inaccessible locations, Cuzco is
still behind the times in sanitary arrangements. Since there is surface
drainage, there are odors, but one need have little fear of any ill
effects in such a climate as theirs. Thanks to it, the cities are as
healthful as most; and to the archæologist and the lover of art and the
beauties of nature in her sublimest aspect, there is no more fascinating
city in South America than Cuzco.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
IX
ECUADOR
Ecuador, “the Switzerland of America,” is one of the smallest of our
sister republics in the South, yet her area, of 116,000 square miles, is
equal to that of our States of Missouri and Arkansas combined, and, if
certain pending boundary disputes should be determined in her favor, her
territory would be more than doubled. Her population is now about
1,500,000, an average of a little over twelve to the square mile.
Politically, the republic is divided into sixteen provinces, not
including the Galápagos Islands. Five are maritime, occupying the strip
of coast between the Western Cordillera and the sea, ten are
interandine, and then there is the Oriente, so called, which consists of
all the country embraced in the slope between the Eastern Cordillera and
the Brazilian frontier, in the valley of the Amazon. There are two
fluvial systems, both rising in the mountains; one flowing west to the
sea and the other down the eastern slope. In all they are composed of
ninety-one rivers. Those tributary to the Guayas, flowing westward to
the sea, and many of which are of considerable size, are now of the
greater commercial importance because the country of the Oriente,
through which those tributary to the Amazon flow, is still a wilderness,
only sparsely inhabited even by what are left of the aborigines—and this
although it is the richest of all in vegetation and fertility of soil,
like the adjoining Montaña district of Peru.
Thus, ranging as it does from the sea-level of the coast on one side and
the valley of the Amazon on the other to the high interandine plateau,
and from thence to the great cloud-piercing peaks of the cordilleras,
crowned with perpetual snow, this country directly beneath the Equator,
from which it derives its very name, is possessed, as are Peru, Bolivia,
and Colombia, of every variety of climate within the sphere of a few
hours’ journey—in the lowlands, the eternal summer of the tropics; on
the high table-lands, eternal spring, and, in the glacial regions of the
mountain summits, winter without end. As the late Professor Orton so
aptly put it: “As the Ecuadorian sees all the constellations of the
firmament, so nature surrounds him with representatives of every family
of plants. Tropical, temperate and arctic fruits and flowers are here
found in profusion, or could be successfully cultivated. There are
places where the eye can embrace an entire zone, for it may look up to a
wheat or barley field or potato patch and down to the sugar cane and
pineapple.”
And, in addition to the familiar products, in many places the slopes of
the mountains between twelve and fifteen thousand feet are clothed with
a shrub peculiar to the high altitudes of the Andes, called
_chuquiragua_, the twigs of which are used for fuel and the yellow buds
as a febrifuge. In the valleys between the cordilleras a very useful and
valuable, as well as the most ordinary, plant is the American aloe, or
century plant, which under cultivation, however, blooms oftener than
once in a hundred years. It is the largest of all the herbs, and, with
its tall stem rising from a cluster of long, thick, gracefully curved
leaves, looks like a great chandelier. Most of the roads are fenced with
hedges of them. Nearly every part is said to serve some practical
purpose. The broad leaves are used for thatching huts and by the poorer
classes as a substitute for paper in writing; a sirup flows from them
when tapped; as they contain much alkali, a soap that lathers in salt
water as well as fresh is manufactured from them; the fiber of the
leaves and roots is woven into sandals and sacks; the flowers make
excellent pickles, the stock is used in building, the pith of the stem
is used by barbers for sharpening razors and the spines as needles. A
species of _yucca_, resembling the aloe, yields the hemp of Ecuador.
In the lowlands, cacao and sugar cane, coffee, tobacco, rice, cotton,
and bananas and other tropical fruits are grown. The forests contain
rubber and numerous species of useful trees, among them the tree that
yields what is known as the _taque_ nut, or vegetable ivory, from which
buttons are made, the grasses and _toquilla_ palm used in the
manufacture of the coarser grades of Panamá hats, the _chincona_ from
the bark of which quinine is obtained, the mangrove cultivated for
tanning purposes as well as its fruit, and the silk-cotton tree that
yields the valuable commercial product known as _kapok_. A considerable
portion of the Oriente is verdured with a part of that immense forest
which extends in an unbroken mass from the grassy _llanos_ of Venezuela
to the _pampas_ of Argentina. In other sections of the country are gold,
silver, copper, iron, coal, petroleum, asphalt and other minerals,
though since the colonial régime there has been little activity in
mining. Only a few years ago work was resumed in the famous mines of
Zaruma, formerly the source of much revenue to the Spaniards.
Ecuador has a treasury of wealth in her vast cacao groves. The cacao
tree, which grows wild in the forests, is from sixteen to forty feet
high and bears a fruit in which the beans lie buried in a
cucumber-shaped pod five to ten inches long and three or four inches
thick. The bean itself in its raw state resembles a thick almond. When
ripe, the pods are cut from the tree by means of a knife with a curved
blade, set on the end of a long pole, an implement specially designed to
remove them without injury. The pods are then gathered in heaps and left
on the ground to dry for a day or two before the beans are removed and
cured. From cacao comes cocoa. The name “cacao” signifies the raw, and
“cocoa” the finished product. There is still another name—coca—which is
often confused with these, but coca is nothing like cacao. Coca is the
Peruvian plant from the leaves of which cocaine is extracted. The cacao
bean contains the cocoa we drink at our breakfast tables, and our
chocolate.
On the skill employed in the curing, which is an extremely delicate
process, to a great extent depends the quality of the output and its
flavor and color. When ready for the market, the bean is dark red
outside and chocolate tinted within. Analyses show that it is rich in
fats, albuminoids, caffeine and theobromine, which last is what imparts
to it its principal characteristics. What we know as chocolate differs
from cocoa in that, in the former compound, the cocoa butter is not
extracted; from the latter it is. Cocoa is really a factory product. The
cured bean is treated differently in the various countries to suit the
taste of the public, and chocolate also is prepared in different ways
for the various uses. American and French chocolates are sold all over
the world.
The tobacco grown in the Province of Esmeraldas on the coast is claimed
to be comparable with that produced in Cuba. And this reminds me that,
unless tradition is at fault, the town of Atacames, from around which
some of the best of it comes, has quite a unique history of its own. In
1623, so the story goes, a vessel laden with seven hundred African
slaves was on its way from Panamá to Peru, where they were to be worked
in the mines. When near the mouth of the Esmeralda River, they mutinied,
massacred the officers and sailors of the ship, and, landing at
Atacames, took possession of the town and killed or drove away every man
in the neighborhood, Indian or Spanish, but spared the women, whom they
kept as wives. Afterward, however, instead of indulging in further
depredations, they kept within the territory they had conquered, and,
mixing with the Cayapas, who had attained an unusual state of
civilization for lowland Indians before the invasion, became miners and
agriculturists on their own account. These African mutineers, therefore,
protected by the reputation for ferocity they had acquired in their
stroke for freedom, were thus the founders of what afterward became an
intelligent and industrious community. The women, particularly, are
famous for their skill in making Panamá hats.
Indeed, aside from agriculture, the most important industry in all the
coast provinces is the making of these hats. Guayaquil long since
supplanted Panamá as the principal market for them. Those of the finest
texture, the ones that are so soft and delicately woven that they can be
folded and put in a coat pocket like a handkerchief and will last a
lifetime, are made of a peculiar grass called _jipi-japa_, for which the
town in the Province of Manavi is named, and, in the weaving of them,
considerable time and great skill is required. These we seldom, if ever,
see in this country. Many go to Paris, Italy, and Spain; more are taken
by the planters along the coast, and in Cuba, who are willing to pay as
much as $80 to $100 for them. They are woven by the women by hand, and
only in the moonlight, these best grades, because the sun would harden
the material, artificial light would attract insects, and the dampness
that comes with sunset is necessary to give the flexibility so essential
to their beauty. The coarser grades, such as we see here, are woven in
the daytime, but under water, in tubs.
Guayaquil, a city of about 50,000 inhabitants, is Ecuador’s principal
seaport, and, next to Valparaiso and Callao, the busiest and most
important on the Pacific side of the continent. All the way up from
Callao the steamer hugs the shore as closely as safety will permit.
There is little change in the view. The same arid strip of low-lying
coast land, dotted with rocky promontories, fringed here and there with
cliffs and crossed with occasional stretches of green where the rivers
flow through to the sea, continues day after day—the same background of
mountains rising tier on tier for thousands and thousands of feet, in
the morning partly obscured by heavy banks of clouds that later melt
away and leave the rugged contour sharply silhouetted against the bright
blue, are bathed in the evening, as the sun sinks toward the horizon, in
the purple haze that becomes them best. Yet there are also the same calm
sea and rainless sky and the same cool, aromatic breezes that make the
lazy hours on deck a continual delight.
And so it is with mixed feelings of regret and relief that one enters
the Gulf of Guayaquil—relief, for here, as we steam past the island of
Puna, where Pizarro camped for months awaiting reinforcements before
beginning the conquest of Peru, the aspect of the shore line changes and
we see foliage as fresh and green and as wildly luxuriant as any in the
basins of the interior. Passing the island, we come to the mouth of the
Guayas, the greatest of South American rivers emptying into the Pacific.
The city is sixty miles beyond at the head of the estuary. The first
glimpse we catch is of a street, called El Malecon, that extends along
the water front for two miles or more from a shipyard to a hill crowned
by a fortress. This is at once the principal shopping, café, and
amusement place, the favorite promenade, the warehouse district, and the
quay where the lighters that ply between it and the vessels anchored out
in the river take on and unload their cargoes. It is faced with what
from the deck appear to be long rows of white stone and marble buildings
of beautiful and graceful architectural design, for the most part of the
usual Moorish type. Long series of arcades in front of the shops remind
one of those of the Rue de Rivoli in Paris; above are pretty balconies
sheltered by blinds and awnings of gaily colored canvas, screening
groups of ladies who like to sit in them and watch the lively scene
below as they sip their coffee and chat.
But picturesque as it all is, one finds on going ashore, that the walls
of these imposing-looking edifices are merely shells of split bamboo,
plastered with cement, ornamented with stucco and painted to resemble
marble and stone, which sad experience has taught the people of the city
will not resist earthquakes as well as this more elastic imitation they
have been compelled to substitute. The residences of the well-to-do are
constructed of the same materials and with wide verandas from ground to
roof, enclosed with Venetian blinds. Few are elaborately furnished. In
that climate it is thought better, for the sake of spaciousness and
comfort, to forego evidences of wealth in the form of carpets, hangings,
and upholstery, which keep out air and retain the heat. The poor of the
suburbs have thatched bamboo or adobe huts with floors of hardened
earth. As in Canton, China, many of them live on the water on rafts made
from _balsa_, a species of timber nearly as buoyant as cork, or else of
hollow trunks of bamboo. A number of logs, forty or fifty feet long, are
lashed together in such a way that they can be propelled by either oars
or sails, and a bamboo hut is built in the center. These often serve as
the homes of whole families for generations, and are so substantial that
they are used in the coasting as well as the river trade for bringing
produce to market.
[Illustration: STREET SCENE IN GUAYAQUIL.]
[Illustration: CONDOR OF THE ANDES.]
In June, 1908, a long-desired and much needed railroad was completed
between Guayaquil and the capital, Quito, way up in the interandine
table-land, 9350 feet above the level of the sea, and now the trip of
nearly three hundred miles, that formerly took from twelve to fifteen
days on mule-back, and often more by foot, may be made in two days, in a
comfortably equipped passenger train. The scenery _en route_ is
gorgeous. The train speeds through forests of stately trees like those
of the Amazon—walnut, mahogany, rubber, cacao, cottonwood, with vines
entwined around their trunks and hanging from their branches, and beds
of mosses and ferns at their feet, slender bamboos shooting up straight
as an arrow, and tall, graceful palms, tipped with feathery tufts—the
whole mass aglow with scarlet passion flowers and orchids, and blossoms
of every hue. Then come broad fields covered with prickly pineapple
plants, sugar cane, coffee and snowy cotton plantations and groves of
cocoanut palms, oranges, lemons, and limes saturating the air with their
delicious fragrance, splendid mango trees with their golden fruit and
dense foliage that makes them the best of all shade trees in the
tropics, and groves of banana trees, tossing out glossy green leaves
eight feet long from their sheathlike stalks, and many bearing bunches
of this bread of the poor and delicacy of the rich that weigh from sixty
to seventy pounds. Von Humboldt calculated that “thirty-three pounds of
wheat and ninety-nine pounds of potatoes require as much space of ground
as will produce four thousand pounds of bananas.” They bear fruit but
once and die, but the roots are perennial and every year bring forth new
plants.
Then, when the traveler has crossed the coast strip, he comes to the
foothills and begins the steep, tortuous ascent. On either side of this
highland but ever green series of plateaux, crossed by _nudos_ and
ascending like steps to the one in which the capital lies, tower
mountains, the crests of forty-two of which are more than ten thousand
feet high. Twenty of them are higher than Pike’s Peak in Colorado;
fourteen are higher than the Alpine giant, Mont Blanc. It was in this
vast, magnificent “Avenue of Volcanoes” that the celebrated artist,
Frederick E. Church, painted his wonderful picture, “The Heart of the
Andes.” Here, he declared, is the grandest mountain scenery in the
world.
The most majestic of them all is snow-covered Chimborazo, near the
center of the Western Cordillera, and fortunately almost constantly in
view, for it is along its spurs that the road between Guayaquil and
Quito ascends. One would not imagine its summit so very hard to reach,
as it appears from the mountain pass at an elevation of fourteen
thousand feet; yet many explorers, from Von Humboldt down, strove for
the honor, only to fail until Edward Whymper, an Englishman, finally
achieved it in 1879. For years, with its known altitude of 21,420 feet,
it was famed as the highest point in America; now the mighty Aconcagua
in Argentina, which is recorded at the Harvard Observatory at Arequipa
as measuring 24,760 feet, has been awarded the palm. It is from
shipboard on the Pacific, though, on a clear day, rather than from the
plateau, that Chimborazo is to be seen in all the majesty of its
complete proportions, particularly when the evening shadow’s mellowing
tint creeps upward to the summit—a vision of gold, vermilion, purple,
followed by the glory of the brief tropical sunset—in the few minutes
before darkness covers the earth and “the haste of stars, trembling with
excess of light, bursts suddenly into view over the peaks,” when the
waters of the sea become so impregnated with phosphorescent flashes that
each wave seems tipped with silver and the foam that follows in the
vessel’s wake is like a stream of fire.
Conspicuous among the crests of the eastern range are Tunguragua, with
its perfect cone and great cataract tumbling down fifteen hundred feet
from the snow line to the valley beneath; fierce, Plutonic Sangai, the
most active volcano in the world; and the beautiful Altar, as it was
called by the Spaniards, which is said to have been higher than
Chimborazo a few years before the Conquest, but has since collapsed. Now
its summit presents the appearance of a superb crown, pointed with eight
jagged peaks; its snowy mantle is relieved by rents or fissures in the
rock that seem to be colored dark blue in contrast with the white.
And then there is the still more superb Cotopaxi, 19,613 feet, without a
rival in height or symmetry among the active volcanoes of the old world.
Some faint idea of its grandeur may be conceived by those who have seen
Vesuvius, for instance, when it is realized that it is more than fifteen
thousand feet—nearly three miles—higher, and that, when in eruption, it
vomits forth its fires, with ominous rumblings that can be heard for a
hundred miles, from a cone which itself is higher than Vesuvius. Mr.
Whymper, who also succeeded here in making the perilous ascent where Von
Humboldt and others had failed, described the crater as an enormous
amphitheater with a rugged crest surrounded by overhanging cliffs, some
snow-clad, others encrusted with sulphur.
“Cavernous recesses,” he says, “belched forth smoke; the sides of the
cracks and chasms shone with ruddy light. At the bottom, probably twelve
thousand feet below us, there was a ruddy circular spot about one-tenth
the diameter of the crater; it was the pipe of the volcano, its channel
of communication with the lower regions, and was filled with
incandescent if not molten lava, glowing and burning, lighted by tongues
of flame that issued from cracks in the surrounding slopes.” On the side
of the mountain is a huge rock called the “Inca’s Head.” Tradition has
it that this was the original summit, hurled down by an eruption on the
very day that Pizarro caused Atahualpa to be strangled. The great
eruption of 1859 was succeeded by an earthquake that wrought terrible
destruction and loss of life, and by a tidal wave, which in its
devastating course carried a United States warship a mile inland, over
the roofs of the houses of a town on the coast of Peru and left it high
and dry on a sandy plain. Just now the volcano is in a state of “solemn
and thoughtful suspense”; only thin clouds of smoke escape from its
crater.
At the base of Pichincha, the crater of which the astronomer, La
Condamine, likened to the “chaos of the poets,” and Orton describes as
“a frightful abyss nearly a mile in width and a half mile deep from
which a cloud of sulphurous vapors comes rolling up,” lies the city of
Quito. Its origin is shrouded in mystery, but we know that at the time
of the Conquest it was the northern stronghold of the great Inca empire,
and the place where Atahualpa resided. On this lofty site, which in the
Alps would be buried in an avalanche of snow, but in the tropics enjoys
an eternal spring, palaces more beautiful than the Alhambra are said to
have been built, glittering with the gold and emeralds of the region.
But all this passed away with the scepter of Atahualpa. Where the
pavilion of the Inca stood is now a gloomy convent; a wheat field takes
the place of the Temple of the Sun. Even the Spanish structures that
supplanted the original ones seem dilapidated enough. The population is
said to number about sixty-five thousand, but there is little of the
modern and still less in the way of opportunity for amusement, though it
is all most interesting simply because it is so old and because there is
much of romance in its history.
The train emerges from the pass on to the plain of Riobamba, the scene
of many notable events in the history of the country. Here it was that
the great Inca conqueror Tupac Yupanqui routed the Shiri of the Caras
and began the conquest of his possessions; it was here that Atahualpa’s
great general, Quizquiz, defeated the army of the Inca Huascar and
proceeded to the invasion of Peru; it was here that the daring
Conquistador Sebastian de Benalcázar defeated the victors and brought
the Kingdom of Quito under the sway of Pizarro. The city of Riobamba,
which is the first of importance on the line, is also said to have been
the birthplace of the eminent historian Juan de Velasco and several
others of South America’s most distinguished sons. It has a population
of only twelve or fifteen thousand, but, thanks to the demand created by
commercial travelers and the employees of the railroad, it serves as an
excellent resting place, for there are two or three very tolerable
hotels. From this point on to Quito, there are parts of the plain that
are arid and desolate. This is attributed partly to the fact that so
much of the country was long ago denuded of its trees and partly to
volcanic eruptions of a peculiar kind.
Describing one of them, Mozans says:
“But, destructive as are the eruptions of the volcano when it
belches forth ashes, cinders, and lava, it is even more so when
its terrific operations are followed by deluges of water and
avalanches of mud, carrying along with them immense blocks of
ice and rock to great distances, causing death and devastation
all along their course. Such an eruption took place in 1877,
and, so great was the velocity of the angry flood, that it swept
the plain with the momentum of an express train, carrying before
it bridges, buildings, and everything that stood in its path.
The very day of the eruption the irresistible torrent reached
the mouth of the Esmeralda River, nearly three hundred miles
distant. The catastrophe had been announced the preceding
evening by an enormous column of black ashes, which the roaring
mountain projected more than three miles above the crater, and
which an east wind carried far out over the Pacific. Vessels
going from Guayaquil to Panamá were suddenly enveloped in a
cloud of dust and transmitted to Europe and the United States
the first news of the disaster. After this eruption of ash,
there was a welling of molten lava over the rim of the crater
which melted the ice and snow and transformed them at once into
tremendous avalanches of mud. At the same time immense blocks of
ice were transported across the plain of Latacunga to a distance
of thirty miles, where they remained several months before they
were entirely melted. The foregoing is only one of many similar
eruptions that occurred during the last century.”
“But why, it will be asked, do people live in a land in which they are
constantly exposed to such sudden and awful disasters?” he
continues—“where thousands of victims are sacrificed in a single moment?
Why do people cling around the rich flanks of Kilauea and Mauna Loa and
huddle around the treacherous slopes of vine-clad Etna and Vesuvius, or
pitch their tents on quaking, incandescent Stromboli? Let philosophers
reply.” But, in the neighborhood of Quito itself no more of these arid
stretches are to be seen. “Notwithstanding the ever-menacing volcano
towering above it, Quito,” he tells us, “was always to the Ecuadorian of
the interior one of the world’s most favored cities. It was what
Damascus and Bagdad in their halcyon days were to the Arabs, what
Cordova and Granada were to the Moors. It was ‘_Quito bonito_’—charming
Quito—the city above the clouds, ‘the navel of the world, the home of
the _continua primavera_—perpetual spring—evergreen, magnificent Quito.’
It was like Heaven—_Como de Cielo_—where there is neither heat nor cold.
It was the Paradise of delights. Had Columbus discovered the beautiful
valley which it overlooks, he would, we are assured, have pronounced it
the site of the Garden of Eden.”
After Lima and Santiago, the suburbs strike one as rather squalid and
dilapidated. In the city proper, however, the houses improve in size and
finish and continue to improve until the Grand Plaza is reached in the
center. The more pretentious are of two stories, a few three, and of
massive construction, with adobe walls two or three feet thick and tiled
roofs, and are built around a square courtyard, or _patio_, in the old
Spanish style, often with a fountain or flower plot in the center. Here,
too, around the _patios_ are pillared arches supporting galleries used
as the passage way to rooms in the upper tier; the floors are paved with
large, square, red bricks. The public buildings, some of them dating
back to Philip II, are clustered about the three plazas. The most
imposing, the capitol, a low building adorned with a splendid colonnade,
faces the Grand Plaza. With its long rows of columns it looks a little
like the Fifteenth Street side of the Treasury Building in Washington.
To the right of it is an ancient but beautiful cathedral; on the other
side is the palace of the Papal Nuncio. All are fine specimens of the
architecture of the periods in which they were built.
The scene in the shopping district and around the market has quite an
Egyptian flavor. The shops are very small and exposed; groups in gay
ponchos stand chatting and smoking in front of them or lean idly against
the walls, enjoying the sunlight; soldiers saunter to and fro; Indians,
in every variety of costume, are scattered about guarding heaps of
vegetables they have brought in from the surrounding country for sale;
bronze-complexioned women in many-colored gowns peddle oranges and
alligator pears from baskets carried on their heads; purchasers, mostly
men and in more conventional attire, wander from store to store, for it
is not here so much as in the vicinity of the churches that one is
favored with a glimpse of the ladies of the upper class. They do little
shopping themselves, these _señoras_ and _señoritas_, yet they are very
devout, and it is their custom to wrap themselves in their black
mantillas and attend mass every day.
[Illustration: ROOM IN THE OLD PALACE AT QUITO, IN WHICH THE DECLARATION
OF INDEPENDENCE WAS SIGNED, AUGUST 16, 1809.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
X
COLOMBIA
Journeying overland into Colombia from Ecuador, there opens before the
traveler the vast mountainous country that was once the ancient kingdom
of the Chibchas—the contemporary of the Inca empire, and, later the
pivotal state of Bolívar’s great confederation. Colombia occupies the
extreme northwestern corner of the continent. With its 465,714 square
miles of territory, it is as large as Texas, Kansas, Arkansas and
Louisiana, and has a population of 4,320,000.
In this corner of the continent the Andes come to an end in a great
splurge of deep-cut ridges presenting an aspect very different from the
formations to the south. Here three clearly defined ranges diverge from
the Ecuadorian frontier and spread northward like the ribs of a fan; the
Western and Central Cordilleras merge before reaching the Caribbean Sea,
and slope off into foothills and plains near the coast, and the Eastern
Cordillera continues in an almost unbroken line until, as the Sierra de
Parija, it plunges into the sea at the end of the bleak, forbidding
peninsula (Goajira) west of the Gulf of Maracaibo. Rising from the
Pacific, on the west, is an almost entirely distinct range, separated
from the Andean terminals by the great basin of the Atrato River, and
running along the Isthmus of Panamá into Central America. Just north of
the Ecuadorian frontier lies the so-called “_Massif_,” from which branch
off the three Cordilleras just mentioned and in which the four important
Colombian river systems have their source; the Patia flowing westward to
the Pacific; the Caquetá, eastward, through the Amazon, into the
Atlantic, and the Cauca and Magdalena, the great highways of the
country, flowing northward to the Caribbean on either side of the
Central Cordillera, and joining their floods about one hundred and fifty
miles from the sea in the hot, marshy plains of the Magdalena basin.
The Eastern Cordillera slopes off into the Orinoco and Amazon
plains—over a territory constituting two-thirds of the republic’s
area—and thus gives to Colombia the same astonishing range of
productiveness that distinguishes her southern neighbors along the
Andean chain. Gold is scattered literally all over the Andean ridges and
is picked up along the streams that flow into the lower levels. Silver,
iron and lead are almost as universally present; the platinum deposits
are surpassed only in Russia; the emerald mines of Muzo, seventy-five
miles from Bogotá, have been famous ever since the brilliant stones were
torn from the turban crowns of the Indian kings by the Conquistadores,
and are the principal source of the world’s supply; the salt mines and
pearl fisheries add largely to the republic’s revenue.
The Review Number of the _Pan American Bulletin_ (August, 1911) says of
the emerald industry:
“All, or very nearly all, the emeralds mined to-day come from
Colombia. And, in spite of the supposed higher value of
diamonds, the emerald is the most precious of gems. Carat for
carat, a flawless emerald would bring perhaps three times the
price of a flawless diamond in the jewelry market. India, the
storehouse of precious stones, is credited with producing the
first emeralds, but the oriental emerald is not identical with
the modern gem, as it is a variety of the ruby, of a green
color, and extremely rare. The stone that adorned Aaron’s armor,
described in the writings of Moses, if it was a real emerald and
not a carbuncle, may have come from the mines of Coptos in
Egypt, which furnished the ancients with the precious green
gems. Certain of these old mines are known as ‘Cleopatra’s
Mines,’ because that remarkable Egyptian queen is supposed to
have obtained her jewels from that source. Nero wore an emerald
monocle at the gladiatorial combats that came perhaps from the
mines of Ethiopia. The Museum of Naples contains fine emeralds
taken from the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum, some of which
are carved, and the history of this gem shows that it was highly
treasured from the earliest recorded times....
“Mexico, Peru, and Ecuador were ravished of their mineral
wealth; so wonderful emeralds, as part of the spoil, found their
way into the treasury of the Spanish kings. Pizarro and Cortés
sent the first emeralds from the New World to Spain, where they
acquired the name ‘Spanish emeralds.’ Tradition has it that an
Aztec gem appropriated by Cortés was valued at forty thousand
ducats. Another wonderful stone, the size of an ostrich egg, was
found in the Manka Valley, Peru, where the Indians worshiped it
as the Goddess of Emeralds. The Spanish conquerors opened up the
mines in Colombia in 1540, enslaving the Indians to work them.
The richest mineral areas were those of Muzo and Cosquez, about
75 miles north of Bogotá, at an elevation of about 6500 feet
above sea-level. A curious fact in the history of these latter
mines is that they were closed and lost to the world in an
enveloping forest of jungle for over a hundred years, and only
rediscovered some fourteen years ago. The Government of Colombia
controls the exploitation, leasing the mining districts to the
working companies.
“The Muzo group, from which the finest emeralds come, has an
estimated yearly output of 262,548 carats of the first class,
467,690 of the second, 22,700 of the third, and 16,000 of the
fourth class. The Coscuez group, named for an Indian princess,
which produced a variety of emerald called canutillo, one of the
most valuable stones, is now in the category of lost mines. The
Samandoco or Chivor group, not now being worked, is supposed to
possess a matrix that would yield half a million dollars worth
of emeralds a year.... It was” (in the Muzo group) “that the
most valuable single emerald in the world was found. It belongs
to the Duke of Devonshire and is a perfect, six-sided crystal
that weighs 8 ounces 18 pennyweights, is two inches in length
and measures across its three thicknesses 2-1/2, 2-1/5, and
1-7/8 inches. Another fine stone is the Hope emerald, weighing 6
ounces, which was also found in Colombia. There can be no doubt
that this source of wealth will be greatly augmented in the
future, when improved transportation facilities shall make it
possible.”
A wealth of agricultural products, typical of nearly every clime, lies
in the great river basins and on the eastern slopes and plains in the
Orinoco and Amazon regions. In the river basins and part of the way up
the mountain sides are great forests, so dense as to be almost
impenetrable, but abounding in nearly every species of cabinet and dye
woods and nearly every medicinal plant known to science. In altitudes of
from two to four thousand feet the coffee plant thrives; the berries
from the celebrated Chimbi estates are said to produce the most
delicately flavored coffee in the world. But little of it ever reaches
the United States. In the _tierras calientes_, or “hot lands,” the
fragrant tonka beans, that have the sweet odor of new-mown hay and are
used in some blends of tobacco to give it a bouquet and in the
manufacture of soaps and perfumes, and cacao, bananas, yuccas, arracha,
sugar, indigo, tobacco, vanilla and rice are among the staple products.
The soil of this region is of a rich, black, deep-lying loam, well
watered and capable of a greater productiveness than the plains of
Louisiana or Texas. In the intermediate areas the culture includes
wheat, barley, oats, potatoes and other cereals and vegetables common to
the temperate zone. Along the Sinu River is a great cattle belt. This is
also the source of the cedar and mahogany, of which Colombia is one of
the chief exporters.
It follows naturally that, as in Ecuador, the diversity in altitude that
accounts for this varied productiveness gives to Colombia—a wholly
tropical country—a range in climate that makes it one of the world’s
most attractive abiding places. Von Humboldt is quoted as saying that
the traveler here needs but “a thermometer and a mule to find any
climate desired within the compass of a few leagues.” When one tires of
the torrid heat of the valleys, the frozen sierras are just in sight.
When the perpetual spring of the table-land palls upon him, he can by a
few hours’ ride find autumn on the steppes above or summer in the plains
below. If he is a sportsman, he can find his game among many species of
the fauna of three zones: the jaguar, sloth, armadillo, tapir, the red
deer, black bear, and panther, and in the jungles of the Amazon region,
the tiger.
The overland route to Bogotá from Quito lies over a well-built highway
which, in the not distant future, will be paralleled by Colombia’s and
Ecuador’s contributions to the long-heralded Pan-American railway from
New York to Buenos Aires. Up to the present time Colombia has had but
six hundred miles of railways: the little system radiating from the
capital and connecting it with the Magdalena River, and, through that
natural highway, with the Caribbean ports, and the short lines that run
inland from the ports of both oceans; for Colombia is the only country
in South America that borders on both the Pacific and the Atlantic.
The traveler who enters the country in the saddle over the route
mentioned will profit more than by sailing up the Pacific coast from
Guayaquil and entering through the port of Buenaventura. The journey
along the lofty heights and down through the lovely green valleys will
not only give him much more of the inspiring Andean scenery, but will
make him acquainted with the country and village life which he could not
see at close range otherwise. But he will have to sacrifice many
familiar comforts on the altar of education. The _posadas_, or village
inns, at which he must stop are mere adobe huts with dirt floors, and
none but rawhide cots are offered for his rest. The few dishes served at
these primitive hostelries are plentifully seasoned with garlic,
saffron, and _morones_, or red peppers. The early hours of the journey
will bring the traveler in conflict also with the all-pervading
philosophy of _mañana_ (to-morrow), and his progress will be slow.
However, the unfailing good humor of his muleteer will do much to dispel
his exasperation at delays, and he will find himself more and more
repaid for his discomforts by the splendor and beauty and strangeness
through which he is making his way.
Passing over the bleak, frozen _paramos_, or mountain deserts, wrapped
in awful stillness by the great peaks rising above them, the scene
suddenly changes as the road descends along the heavily wooded slopes
and the country becomes alive with verdure and the sounds of birds.
Below, in a still more summery clime, lies, perhaps, a beautiful little
lozenge-shaped valley fringed about up the sides of the mountains with
coffee plantations and groves of bamboo, or some other scene even more
picturesque—and then, over equally sudden changes and different pictures
of native life, the traveler goes on until there begin to appear
extensive plantations with well-built houses and farm machinery, and,
finally reaches the railway, which takes him, not unregretfully, from
his guide and carries him up into the lofty _sabana_—the great altaplain
on which Bogotá, the capital, is located. This plateau is a level plain,
about seventy miles long by about thirty in width, containing some two
thousand square miles of cleared, arable land. It lies 8700 feet above
the sea in the very heart of the Eastern Cordillera, just below the
fifth degree of north latitude, and ranges in temperature from
fifty-nine to sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit the year around. From this
plateau the descendants of the Spanish conquerors have administered the
country since 1538. The _sabana_ is now covered with prosperous
plantations belonging to rich Bogotaños.
Bogotá lies on the eastern border. When Quesada, its founder, set foot
on the _sabana_, he was struck by its resemblance to the broad plain of
Santa Fé, in his native Granada, on which the armies of Ferdinand and
Isabella encamped during the siege that was to put an end to the power
of the Moors in Spain. He therefore called the new capital _Santa Fé de
Bogotá_, and New Granada became the name of the northern viceroyalty
which was carved out of the Viceroyalty of Peru in 1717. Both names have
disappeared. The capital has reverted to its ancient Indian name of
Bogotá, and the name of Granada, perpetuated until 1861 in the name of
the Republic of New Granada, was succeeded in that year by that of the
present Republic of Colombia.
The site of the present city, some twelve miles southeast of the ancient
Chibcha capital, was the location of the little Indian village of
Tensaquilla, the pleasure resort of the Zipas, nestling, like the
Spanish city of Granada, at the foot of two mountains—Monserrate and
Guadelupe. Down these mountains tumble the little streams that make up
the near-by Funza River, which spreads out over the plain and then
plunges down into the upper waters of the Magdalena. On the far side of
this great river runs the Central Cordillera, some ninety miles west of
the capital, and on clear days the giant white-topped volcano, Tolima,
18,400 feet high, and the Mesa de Herveo, but sixty feet
lower—constituting the culminating points in Colombia—are plainly
visible.
The traveler’s first impressions of Bogotá are those of surprise and
admiration—surprise at finding so large a city (150,000 in population)
perched high up in the Andes, fully “six hundred miles from anywhere;”
and admiration of the surpassing natural beauty of its locality. His
next impression is that it is one of the most conservative, quiet and
restful places on earth—conditions greatly to be appreciated after his
long, eventful journey. The discovery is soon made that Bogotá possesses
a climate that is simply perfect, and a highly educated and accomplished
society, that boasts for the capital the appellation of “the Boston of
South America.” Like Quito, Bogotá is old, and being so far inland and
inaccessible, its Tibet-like seclusion for centuries has bred within its
higher circles an aristocratic caste, somewhat arrogant but always
suave, kindly, and hospitable. In this eddied fragment of the old-world
Spain, the old ceremonious forms of address—“Your servant who kisses
your hand,” and that hospitable assurance, “_Aqui tiene su casa_,” with
which even the chance acquaintance is made to feel at home, as in his
“own house”—do not seem incongruous, as they would in Spanish cities in
closer contact with the outer world.
[Illustration: OVERLOOKING BOGOTÁ.]
The streets of the city run eastward up the slopes of a wide avenue cut
along the sides of the mountain, and are crossed at right angles by
others running north and south. The blocks thus formed rise one above
another like the benches of a great amphitheater, overshadowed by the
peaks of Monserrate and Guadelupe. On the crests of these peaks stand
two massive cathedrals. One wonders why great temples were built in such
inaccessible locations, and why, with over thirty more cathedrals and
churches in the city, they were needed at all. They can be reached only
by pedestrians, and then only after some three hours of hard climbing;
no one ever lived near them, and the bleak, icy _paramo_ beyond is
uninhabitable. Like the cross, however, their presence is objectively
effective in this very religious community.
The city is now well lighted by gas and electricity and is beautified by
three large plazas and many smaller parks, in nearly all of which the
Bogotaños have erected handsome bronze statues to the soldiers and
statesmen of the republic. The great central plaza bears the name of
Bolívar, and on a high pedestal in its center stands a bronze figure of
the Great Liberator, his sad, thoughtful face turned as if in mute
reproach toward the old executive mansion, where, for a brief reign, he
ruled the destinies of Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador, then united in
his ill-starred Colombian confederation. From a window in that mansion
he once leaped, at midnight, to escape the hand of an assassin, raised
against him because the people distrusted his rule and permitted
themselves to forget his inestimable services to the country.
On the north side of the plaza stands the new capitol building, a plain
but well-proportioned structure of white granite; on the east is the
fine old metropolitan cathedral, and adjoining it, on the same side, is
the ancient palace of the Spanish viceroys, now, however, used for shops
and offices. Near the western outskirts of the city is the extensive
Plaza de los Martiros, so named in commemoration of the patriots
executed on its site by the royalist general, Morillo. Although
beautifully laid out and made into an attractive pleasure ground, it has
always been shunned by the people, for it was a veritable Golgotha
during the revolution, and was used as the execution ground until the
early sixties, when capital punishment was abolished in Colombia. Not a
great way from the tragic spot is another noted place now called
_Ninguna Parte_ (literally “Nowhere”). It is rather a disreputable part
of the city in these days, but, when General William Henry Harrison
resided there as United States Minister, in 1827, it was a fashionable
district. The old house in which he lived is still pointed out, as is
the still older, and, if possible, still more dilapidated, house
occupied by Baron von Humboldt during his year’s sojourn in Bogotá. On
the northern side of the little Plaza de las Nieves stands the city’s
oldest landmark—the house built by Quesada.
It would be idle to attempt to enumerate the grand old monasteries and
convents of the city. Many of them occupy entire squares. Since the
political upheaval of 1860, generally known as the “Mosquera Rebellion,”
these edifices have ceased to be church property. Some are now used as
schools or hospitals, others as hotels, armories, and barracks; many are
now occupied as government offices—the National Mint, the National
Military Academy, the Post Office, the War and Navy Departments, and the
noted Rosario College.
The traveler’s descent from the Bogotá _sabana_ to the Magdalena on his
departure from the country, will store his memory with vistas of
grandeur and beauty that will never be effaced, for the Upper Magdalena
valley is one of the most beautiful in the world. By the old mule path
to Honda, the head of navigation for big steamers on the Magdalena, by
way of La Mesa, Tocaime, and Jirado, one will be traveling over a route
that for centuries was the great thoroughfare for _peon_ or viceroy, and
is to-day practically unchanged in the scenes that make it interesting.
But one can now go by rail from Bogotá to Girardot on the Magdalena,
some eighty miles above and south of Honda, thence by small steamer to
Arrancapluma, where a short railway trip is made around the Honda Rapids
to La Dorada, about twenty miles north of and down the river from the
town of Honda. At La Dorada the five hundred mile journey northward down
the Magdalena to the Caribbean is made in one of the regular steamers
that cover this service. The river trip is full of interest, for the
wild stream, nearly as large as the Mississippi, flows with great
rapidity throughout its course, and has a most varied aspect. For miles
it spreads out in a calm, placid sheet of water several miles in width,
then whirls over a series of rapids, or forms into whirlpools, or later
races through a narrow mountain gorge; and, in consequence of its
eccentricities, the channel is constantly changing, to the great
inconvenience of pilots.
At Calamar, about seventy-five miles from the mouth, the traveler may
exchange the steamer for the railroad to the port of Cartagena, or
continue down the Magdalena, now greatly increased in volume by the
confluence of the almost equally large river Cauca, to the two important
Caribbean ports at the mouth, Barranquilla and Sabanilla. The first part
of the trip from Bogotá to Girardot reminds one of the mountain scenery
over the Oroya road up into the Andean plateau from Lima. Constantly
before him, in the distance, are the lofty frozen peaks of Tolima, San
Ruiz, and Herveo, towering above their fellows in the Central
Cordillera. On either side of the Magdalena, the slopes of the two
ranges in their lower reaches are dotted with coffee plantations; above
them, reaching to the altitude of the _paramos_, the mountain sides are
thickly overgrown with forests, and down in the river basin, in the
hollow of the broad valley, the brilliant green of varied tropical
vegetation continues, on past the point where the Central and Western
Cordilleras merge in the _llanos_, down to the Caribbean coast plains;
here the Magdalena basin spreads out over a vast area of barren waste.
Barranquilla, Sabanilla, and Cartagena are the important commercial
centers of the republic on the Caribbean, the last-named being one of
the oldest and most interesting of the historic old ports. Founded in
1533 by Don Pedro de Heredia, this port was the most glorious monument
to Spain’s military genius in the new world, and was properly looked
upon as the key to her great treasure house. Spain spent over
$60,000,000 on its fortifications, a fabulous sum in those days, but an
expenditure which for over two hundred years secured to her the mastery
of the Indies. To-day these fortifications—the citadel within the
landlocked harbor, the two castles dominating the narrow entrance, the
tremendous walls and ramparts—stand without question as the most
picturesque and characteristic survival of Spain’s colonial splendor.
Not even the perfectly preserved walls of Manila are more impressive.
The visitor who walks to-day through the narrow, Moorish streets comes
with memories of the fabulous wealth and the violent scenes of siege and
bloodshed culled from romances of the days of the buccaneers that
“sailed the Spanish Main.” He will, however, search in vain for the
evidences of the rich traffic once centered here that gave to Francisco
Pizarro the inspiration for his conquest of Peru.
[Illustration: A POSADA, OR COUNTRY INN, ON THE ROAD TO BOGOTÁ.]
[Illustration: BATTLEMENTED WALL, CARTAGENA.]
Cartagena, “The Heroic City,” from its very beginning was the objective
of every expedition undertaken to wrest from Spain her rich domain in
the Indies; its fortifications stood as a perpetual challenge to the
freebooters who pillaged the Spanish Main in the days of the galleons.
This challenge was accepted more than once to Cartagena’s heavy cost.
Sir Henry Morgan, Robert Vaal, Martin Cote, Du Casse, Sieur des Pointes,
and Sir Francis Drake sacked the town, and later it was the object of
the most important attack made against Spain in the new world prior to
the nineteenth century, when, in 1741, the English Admiral Vernon
undertook his memorable campaign on the Caribbean. He assembled at
Jamaica 29 ships of the line and nearly 100 transports, carrying a total
force of 27,000 soldiers and sailors. His siege of Cartagena began on
the 4th of March and lasted two months, and was attended by enormous
losses. The event is peculiarly interesting to North Americans because
of the fact that the land forces, under General Wentworth, contained a
contingent drawn from the thirteen English colonies in North America,
and that the commander of this contingent was Colonel Lawrence
Washington, elder brother of the immortal George. It was through
admiration for Admiral Vernon’s brilliant but unsuccessful action that
Washington gave to his Virginia estate the name of Mount Vernon.
“Cartagena de Indias,” as the old kings of Spain loved to call their
“very royal and loyal city,” ranks third in point of age in the new
world, and still retains more of its early characteristics than any of
the others. Its antiquity is everywhere in evidence. Like the
battlements and castles at its entrance, the city seems to have been
built of the yellow-white coral laid in concrete, which seems to be
indestructible. If one could fly over it in an airship, and look down
upon its closely massed, red-tiled houses, and, beyond, upon the deep
green of the country-side, with the exquisite blue effects of the
Caribbean and the tropic sky, the city would seem gemlike in its
romantic beauty. The narrow streets of rough stone are overhung at
frequent intervals with the protruding windows and balconies familiar to
visitors in Lima and others of the older Spanish cities, yet there is an
individuality about the houses here that is far more fascinating, and
facing the parks are many fine examples of the old churches and convents
which constitute the distinctive architecture of the colonial régime.
Surrounding these buildings are luxuriant gardens, presenting a riot of
color, in which the peculiarly refreshing green of the hot countries
predominates.
Among the many substantial dwellings occupied by the wealthy is one that
was the seat of the terrible Inquisition which sat here from 1610 until
1821. San Felipe de Barajas, an old castle and fort lying on a low hill
overlooking the city, is full of interesting underground passages, as
are many of the fortifications, and although utterly abandoned and
falling into decay, is still a forceful and grim reminder of the
mediæval period of storm and stress. On the top of another hill, called
“La Popa,” lying back of the town, still stands the ancient convent of
Santa Candelaria, serving as a landmark to mariners passing that way,
its white or light yellow buildings being visible for many miles out at
sea. Here the visitor is shown where a buccaneer amused himself on the
occasion of one of the raids by hurling the nuns over the edge of the
perpendicular cliff on which the convent stands.
Cartagena in the old days surpassed Mexico, Lima, Panamá, and Havana in
importance, and stood forth as the commercial giant of Spain in America;
it represented, as did no other American city, the pomp and magnificence
of her sixteenth and seventeenth century imperialism. Now all this is
past; even as the natural gateway for Colombia’s productiveness, she has
lost her position, the North American-built railroad connecting the port
with the Magdalena River, at Calamar, having proved powerless to restore
even a small measure of her prestige against the rising commercial
importance of Puerto Colombia and Barranquilla. The latter port has now
become the _entrepôt_ of commerce with the interior by the great
waterway of the Magdalena.
On the desolate stretch of Colombia’s Pacific coast there is but one
city of importance, Buenaventura. This is the busy exchange that taps
the fertile region of the upper Atrato basin, and when the Panamá Canal
shall have been opened should spring into greater importance along with
the other ports of the West Coast. In the interior Colombia possesses
many cities of considerable size, ranging from thirty to sixty thousand
inhabitants, which are centers for the mining and agricultural
districts—Pamplona in the mountains near the Venezuela frontier,
Bucarmanga, a little to the west, Mompóz, near the confluence of the
Cauca and Magdalena, once a port on the latter river but now, owing to
the erratic wanderings of that stream, twenty miles east of it,
Medellín, in the Cauca valley; Popayán and Pasto near the head waters of
that river, and La Plata on the other side of the Central Cordillera.
The Hon. John Barrett and Hon. William L. Scruggs, both former Ministers
of the United States at Bogotá, have written extensively of Colombia’s
commercial possibilities and predict great strides for the hermit
republic. “Colombia,” writes Mr. Barrett, “is a wonderland of
opportunity. Measured by the standards of other countries it can be said
without exaggeration that the Republic of Colombia, in proportion to
area and population, is the richest of all in the variety and extent of
undeveloped resources, fullest in promise for future growth and reward
to mankind.” “Colombia,” he continues, “is at our very doors; it is
nearer to the principal ports of the United States than any other South
American country, and yet we have done little to study her internal
wealth or to take part in her foreign commerce.” The country is only
nine hundred and fifty miles away from us; from Cartagena to Tampa,
Florida, the distance is less than from New York to St. Louis. The
foreign trade of Colombia last year amounted to $26,000,000, in which
the United States participated to the extent of only $11,000,000.
Mr. Scruggs says in closing his interesting work on Colombia: “Such is
the country as nature has made it—picturesque, beautiful, and
exceedingly rich and varied in undeveloped resources. As yet man has
done very little for it, the greater part being still unbroken
wilderness.... The commercial possibilities of the country are almost
incalculable; and the time is probably not very remote when the fact
will be more fully realized by the great commercial powers of the
world.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
XI
VENEZUELA
At the end of his “swing around the circle” of South American countries
(having begun with Brazil), the traveler comes to Venezuela—the huge
republic that bulges out into the northernmost nub of the continent,
where the terminal ranges of the Andes turn eastward to meet the great
Guiana Highlands and form those high-flung ramparts that protect the
fertile, low-lying Amazon plains from the Atlantic. This black,
mountainous front runs along the Caribbean coast line for some fifteen
hundred miles, broken at intervals, however, where the lovely blue of
the tropical sea sweeps inland to meet the bright green of some great
river basin.
Southward, Venezuela spreads down over an irregularly shaped territory
extending from twelve degrees north latitude to the equator. Her varied
topography, too, produces almost every change of climate, from the cold
of the mountains—some of whose peaks reach high enough to earn the title
of _nevada_—down through the temperate zone of the _llanos_, or rolling
plains that slope off into the great Orinoco basins, where wheat, corn,
and cattle abound, and the country’s great staples, coffee, cotton, and
tobacco are grown, to the hot Orinoco jungles that trail off to the
south, where rubber and cacao trees luxuriate without cultivation, and
sugar cane, oranges, fruits, and pineapples thrive in the clearings.
More than half of Venezuela’s territory may be ignored from the
commercial standpoint of to-day, for it is either Alaskan or Amazonian
in character and can be reserved for later needs of the human family if,
as Humboldt prophesied, the Amazon valley should become the feeding
ground of mankind.
No description has ever done justice to the beauties of Venezuela’s
landscape of mountain and valley and mighty rivers, of warm green
pastures and blue skies, and the mystic shimmering white of an
occasional snow-capped peak. The country that so appeals to the
traveler’s interest is nearly six hundred thousand square miles in area,
and could include within its confines the States of Iowa, Wisconsin,
Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio. Its mountainous coast saw the
beginning of the European invasion of the new world. Columbus, Vespucci,
and Ojeda touched here. Ojeda gave the country its name. When, on his
way west from the Orinoco, he rounded Cape San Roman and turned into the
Gulf of Maracaibo, he saw Indian villages composed of houses built on
piles in the water along the shores, which suggested something of a
resemblance to Venice, and he called the place Venezuela (Little
Venice); and soon the whole coast, and eventually the country beyond,
became so known—a region larger than all Italy and Spain combined. This
coast and the white-walled cities nestling in the heights among the
magnificent trees formed the storied Spanish Main.
Cumaná, in the middle east, is the oldest European settlement in South
America; it was in its old church that Las Casas preached—the saintly
priest who was the Indian’s ablest champion in the early days of Spanish
devastation, but who, with regret be it said, is reputed also to have
been the father of African slavery in the new world, for it was he, so
the chroniclers say, who suggested that negroes be imported to labor in
the fields and mines and relieve the Indians of a burden they were both
temperamentally and physically unfitted to bear. Venezuela was the
birthplace of the resistance to Spain’s oppression of her colonies, and
of Miranda, Bolívar, Sucré, and the fiery young patriot, Yáñez—the men
who led the van of that resistance. Through her land flows one of the
world’s greatest rivers, the Orinoco, with its four thousand miles of
navigable waters. The vast productiveness of the country and its stores
of mineral wealth are sufficient to sustain twenty times its present
population of two millions and a half. And, finally, Venezuela is nearer
to us than any other country in South America.
A most agreeable route for the traveler leaving Colombian ports for
Venezuela is by the steamers which zigzag around the Caribbean Sea for
ten days or more on the way to Europe, and touch at many of the once
famous old ports before reaching La Guayra, the sea gateway to Caracas.
Immediately after leaving Colombian waters and rounding the Guajira
peninsula, the ship enters the great Gulf of Maracaibo, one hundred and
fifty miles in extent from east to west, and sixty miles from north to
south. Passing along in through a narrow strait, the almost equally
large Lake of Maracaibo swells out before the traveler. This great body
of water drains an extensive basin lying between two terminal spurs of
the Andes—the Sierra de Parija and the Sierra Mérida—and into it flow
many rivers having their source in the surrounding mountains. Inside, on
the east bank of the strait, lies the city of Maracaibo, now one of the
most important centers on the north coast, for here is shipped the
produce of the vast fertile region of western Venezuela—coffee, cacao,
tobacco, castor beans, hardwood timber, and dyewoods. Much of the
produce of the eastern slope of Colombia also finds its way to Europe
and the States through this port; fully half of what is known in our
markets as “Maracaibo coffee” is really a Colombian product.
[Illustration: VIEW OF MARACAIBO LOOKING WEST FROM THE CATHEDRAL.]
The tropical scenery of the plains sloping down to the lake, and the
mountains, with their suggestion of snowy freshness, make the setting of
this port one of the most interesting on the continent. A dozen or more
of the peaks in the Mérida range are snow-capped, and two of them—Concha
and Coluna—rise to a height of over fifteen thousand feet. Years ago a
passing visitor to Maracaibo, mistaking the discomforts of the humidity
and heat for general dissolution, pronounced the place “the graveyard of
Europeans.” Such hasty judgment is a great injustice, for the rate of
mortality here is less than in many of the other tropical ports.
Rounding the eastern enclosure of the Gulf, the Paraguana peninsula, the
traveler comes upon the quaint old town of Coro, founded in 1527, and
one of the very first of the European settlements. It was this town that
the governor, sent out by the Germans to whom the King of Spain at first
leased the country, made his capital, and from which he undertook his
disastrous expeditions in search of El Dorado. Afterward, until 1576, it
was the seat of Spain’s government of the colony, and is now the capital
of the State of Falcón. Here, also, Miranda made his first resistance to
Spanish misrule at the beginning of the revolutionary war. Coro is but a
few miles south of the Dutch Island of Curaçao, that most picturesque
fragment of Amsterdam perched on a coral rock.
Sweeping out eastward over the sea, as if in continuation of the
Mérida range, is the Cordillera de la Silla (the “Saddle Range”),
which terminates abruptly at Cape Codera. Midway between this cape and
Coro, lies the important seaboard city of Puerto Cabello. Its
environment is not only remarkably attractive—like an oasis to the
traveler who has sailed along the bleak coast range for many hours—but
it is to-day one of the finest harbors in the world, as it was in the
days of the early navigators, who said of it that “a vessel is safe
here, anchored by a single hair (_cabello_).” The city is connected by
rail, over the Silla Cordillera, with the prosperous little city of
Valencia, some fifty miles distant, and thence, by waters of Lake
Valencia, with Cura and other important inland towns which are
commercial centers of a large part of the region that slopes inland
from the coast range. Puerto Cabello is, therefore, the export depot
of the States of Carabobo, Lara, and Zamora, three of the most
productive commonwealths of the Venezuelan federal union. It was once
a rendezvous of the buccaneers and, later, the scene of General Páez’s
astonishing night attack on the Royalist forces during the revolution,
when, with his small command, he forced the surrender of General
Calzada’s entire army. To-day the city has a population of about ten
thousand, and many modern improvements—electricity, water supply,
well-paved streets, and a number of attractive new buildings, that
harmonize, however, with the fine old plazas and colonial residences.
Eastward, some sixty-five miles toward Cape Codera, and halfway the
length of the Silla range, the traveler sights the great peak of Picacho
rising from the water’s edge to a height of over seven thousand feet.
Along this promontory, on a narrow strip of beach, are scattered groups
of sixteenth century houses, white and red-topped for the most part;
some of them nestle inland in coves of the mountains or look over the
blue Caribbean from shelves of the cliffs above. This is La Guayra, the
seaport of the republic’s capital. High above, overhanging the business
center of the town, stands the ancient and picturesque Spanish fortress
of early colonial days, and just below, on another bench of rock, is the
old bull ring. Overlooking all, on a high bluff, are the ruins of the
old castle which was the residence of the Captain-General during the
Spanish régime. To those who have enjoyed Kingsley’s great historical
novel, “Westward Ho!” the old ruins will have a romantic interest, for
it was from the walls of this fortress-castle that Amyas Leigh escaped
after his vain attempt to rescue the Rose of Devon.
Baron von Humboldt said that there is but one place in the world that
can rival La Guayra in the splendor of its setting—Santa Cruz de
Teneriffe, which points one of the Canary Islands off the Moroccan
coast. La Guayra is now all business, but not business of the feverish,
bustling kind, as the visitor will find, after an entire morning spent
in passing from one leisurely official to another in the effort to enter
the country. The port usually serves the traveler merely as a landing
place on his way to Caracas. If for any reason, however, he should
prefer to delay his visit to the capital, he would do well to run up the
coast some three miles east of the port city, to the pleasant little
watering place, Macuto, the resort of the leisure class of the near-by
capital.
Caracas is but seven miles inland from the port as the crow flies, but
the actual distance by rail is twenty-two miles. The steep, winding road
was started by American enterprise, and at a cost of over $100,000 per
mile. It is now controlled by Englishmen, and so great is the traffic,
that the little line never fails to be busy. For two hours the train
zigzags up the perilous ascent to a height of three thousand feet before
it turns sharply around a dizzy precipice and enters the beautiful
valley of Caracas. Until this turn is made the traveler is rarely ever
shut off from the gorgeous blue of the Caribbean. So superb is the
constantly changing view, that he will feel more than repaid for the
sensations of giddiness that may assail him as the train swings around
the many curves on the route, and the yawning chasms overlooked from the
car windows are but added beauties to the scene, instead of death traps,
for so excellent is the construction and so efficient the management
that there has never been an accident along the entire length.
Caracas is usually much on the visitor’s mind during the days of his
approach. His mental picture doubtless will have been colored from some
newspaper cut of a dirty, tatterdemalion crew, entitled “The President’s
Body Guard,” or by some equally deceptive idea of chaotic civic affairs.
But he will by this time have learned, from his visits to other
Venezuelan centers, that this charming and progressive country has been
greatly maligned by our North American press. He will be entirely
reassured the instant the train comes to a stop and he descends at the
clean, pleasant little station and, in cab or trolley car, enters the
fine old Spanish metropolis, rich in creature comforts, dignity,
history, and civic pride. The population of the city now exceeds 70,000,
in which there is but a very small percentage of citizens of foreign
birth.
Unquestionably Caracas is one of the most delightful places of residence
in the world. It lies in a valley three thousand feet up from the sea,
on either side of which towers a range of mountains, one about seven,
the other nine thousand feet. The tropical heat is tempered to a
springlike mildness by the high altitude, and the luxuriant fertility
resulting from the misty rains wafted down from the mountains, make of
the city and its environs a garden of astonishing beauty. One old
gentleman, retired from the British diplomatic service after many years
in Caracas, preferred to end his days here, where, he said, it was “but
a step to Paradise.”
The city is laid out in the usual Spanish colonial scheme—in streets
running at right angles to each other, forming blocks of nearly uniform
size. Prior to the liberation from Spain, the streets bore names
expressive of the dominant influence of religion—names that seem strange
to us now: _Encarnación del Hijo de Dios_ (Incarnation of the Son of
God), _Dulce Nombre de Jesus_ (Sweet Name of Jesus), _Presentación del
Niño Jesus en el Templo_ (Presentation of the Child Jesus in the
Temple), _Huido á Egypto_ (Flight to Egypt), and many others of like
import—a custom prevalent in most of the ancient cities of Spain and her
colonies, and one which still prevails in Cuba. Fronting on the narrow,
paveless streets are the plastered, red-tiled houses found in all North
Andean cities; behind the bars the pretty Venezuelan girls look out from
their cloistered seclusion with the same wistfulness that is noted in
Bogotá and Lima.
The House of Congress is on the road to everywhere; inside it the
decorations and frescoes are exceptionally fine, and perpetuate many of
the principal events in the life of the nation. Miraflores, the
appropriately named home of Venezuela’s president, is open to visitors
at certain hours. In the Pantéon, to the north of the city, repose the
remains of Bolívar in a superb tomb of Parian marble. Upon it stands a
statue of the Liberator, wrapped in his military cloak—a noble and
dignified figure. In front of the cathedral is the broad Plaza Bolívar,
in the center of which, amidst a profusion of tropical plants, rises the
equestrian statue of the nation’s hero. Another may be seen in Bolívar
Park, on which front several federal buildings; the coins bear Bolívar’s
name, and the largest state of the Union, as well as its capital, Ciudad
Bolívar, is similarly honored—everywhere throughout the republic his
name is revered as is Washington’s with us. In the museum of the
University, in a room kept sacred as the “Holiest of Holies,” are
displayed the Liberator’s clothing, saddle, boots, and spurs, and many
relics intimately connected with his brilliant career. Among them is a
portrait of Washington, sent him by Custis, bearing the inscription,
“This picture of the Liberator of North America is sent by his adopted
son to him who acquired equal glory in South America.”
The white group of buildings of the Vargas Hospital, on the heights near
the city, presents a beautiful picture against the mountains in the
background. This is one of the most extensive and best equipped in
America—either North or South. In the Academía de Bellas Artes are
displayed the works of Michelena, a son of Caracas, whose paintings have
obtained an international reputation, and many other pictures by native
artists from which one may get a good idea of the great scenic beauty of
Venezuela.
Although there are no active volcanoes in Venezuela, the country has
been subject to many destructive earthquakes, notably in 1812, when
Caracas was nearly destroyed at a cost of some twelve thousand lives. As
a consequence of the constant presence of this menace, the buildings of
the capital are almost uniformly of one story. From the Monte Calvario,
on the outskirts of the city, the general aspect is flat and monotonous,
but a walk through the broader avenues and the fifteen or more parks and
plazas, gives to the visitor vistas of foliage and flowers that leave on
his mind the impression of a lovely garden.
The capital is connected by railway with Puerto Cabello, via Lake
Valencia. This is the attractive scenic route that is made a part of the
Caribbean excursions offered by the steamship lines each winter. The
road passes through indescribably beautiful mountains and
_llanos_—alternating wooded slopes and meadows, and richly productive
fields of maize and wheat. Frequent stops are made at the stations of
important plantations or the busy centers of this great agricultural
region: La Victoria, San Mateo, and Valencia, the last-named a
modernized city of forty thousand inhabitants and the capital of the
State of Carabobo, one hundred and thirty-seven miles from Caracas.
[Illustration: A COFFEE PLANTATION, VENEZUELA—DRYING THE BEAN.]
Turning back along the coast, eastward, and passing the last of the
coast ranges, the Carib mountains, which taper off to the sharp point of
the Paria peninsula, the traveler comes to the Island of Trinidad, which
helps to enclose the Gulf of Paria. This island is now a British
possession and is famous for its asphalt lakes; it is also the point at
which Columbus stopped on his third voyage and met the fresh waters from
the Orinoco delta, thus becoming convinced that he was confronted by a
great continent. He gave the island its name when he observed from his
masthead the three high peaks on its northern coast.
The deltaic region of the Orinoco River basin extends for about four
hundred and fifty miles in a southeasterly direction from the mountain
ridge on the Paria peninsula to the British Guiana highlands, and covers
an area of seven thousand square miles. Here the traveler enters a
country of wild, tropical forests, mangrove swamps and mazelike
waterways, teeming with strange bird and animal life—practically the
same now as when it was a primeval land of mystery that terrified the
first navigators.
The delta is made up of fifty or more channels emptying into the
Atlantic north of the main stream of the Orinoco. The region is entered
by the Royal Mail through the central channel, or Macareo River. The
service of ocean steamers, however, extends as yet only as far as Ciudad
Bolívar, about six hundred miles from the mouth, although the river is
navigable for smaller vessels as far as Apures rapids—over a thousand
miles up its course on the Colombian frontier. For fifteen hundred miles
the wonderful stream extends into the continent, draining a territory of
three hundred and sixty-four thousand square miles. With its numerous
affluents, the Orinoco affords four thousand three hundred miles of
navigable waters for the service of this vast region. The main river
rises in the Parima Mountains, which, with the Pacarima range, form the
frontier with Brazil. Near its source it is tapped by the Casiquiare,
the remarkable river, which flows in two directions and connects the
Orinoco with the Rio Negro, an affluent to the Amazon.
The traveler entering the Orinoco from the sea never forgets his first
impressions. There is a weird grandeur about the forests that cannot be
described—the magnificent trees, closely grouped and undergrown with
tropical jungle plants that create a dense shadow land of mystery that
is made ever more awe-inspiring to the uninitiated by the startling
cries of the jaguar and puma and the queer howling of the monkeys. The
leaves are thick and moist, and tinted a deep rich green, but glisten
brightly in the high lights; the foliage never loses that freshness and
brilliance which is assumed in our northern woodlands only in the lovely
season of early spring. Hence the darker tones blending with the
flitting shafts of sunlight develop a play of color effects of
never-ending delight to the lover of nature. Countless creepers, decked
with gorgeously colored blossoms along the water sides and where the
sun’s rays penetrate, twine themselves around the great tree trunks. In
many places natural bowers are thrown up, that display a beauty and
symmetry which could not be surpassed by the most consummate art.
Flame-colored flamingoes, chattering parrots and myriads of strange
birds of brilliant plumage, enhance the beauty of the scene and add a
welcome touch of life, yet serve to confirm the stranger’s impression
that he has wandered into some enchanted realm.
South of the Orinoco there is a gradual rise to the Guiana Highlands,
which are as yet sparsely populated and but little given over to
cultivation; this hilly country, constituting about half of the
republic’s area, ascends in uneven ridges to the higher altitudes of the
Brazilian frontier ranges. North of the river the rolling plains, or
_llanos_, sweep inland from the Atlantic between the Guiana highlands
and the coast ranges like a great green arm of the sea—past the Mérida
sierra and the western escarpment of the highlands, to merge in the hot
plains of the Amazon region. These _llanos_ do not correspond exactly
with the Argentine _pampas_; they undulate and ascend gradually from the
river bottoms to an elevation of over three hundred feet, whence they
continue up into the foothills. They are thus known as _llanos altos_,
or upper plains, and _llanos bajos_, or lower plains. The _llanos_
present a diversified aspect, with much broken ground and heavily wooded
tracts near the upper courses of the Orinoco affluents, and clothed, in
some of the lower stretches, with rich tropical vegetation.
In this fertile agricultural and grazing country lies a great source of
future wealth of the nation, for although coal and iron have been
discovered within its boundaries in practicable quantities, Venezuela’s
production, aside from asphalt, is chiefly confined to coffee, cacao,
tonka beans, sugar, cotton, indigo, rubber, cereals, cattle, hides,
aigrette plumes, sarsaparilla and other medicinal plants, cabinet woods,
and fruits. Gold has been mined since the earliest colonial times.
Venezuela also possesses several of the world’s most important asphalt
deposits. “While the ‘pitch lake’ of Trinidad, a surface a mile and a
half across of pure asphaltum,” says the _Pan American Bulletin_ (of
July, 1911), “is perhaps the most remarkable occurrence of this mineral
in nature, the lake of Bermudez, which covers a thousand acres in the
old state of Bermudez, Venezuela, is fast equaling the first in
commercial importance. Asphalt is also found in the Perdanales district
as well as on the shores of Lake Maracaibo, and as an indication of the
value of Venezuelan bitumen, we have the fact that this special variety
is used to protect the tunnels of the New York Subway.” The foreign
trade of Venezuela in 1910 was valued at $30,336,122, the great bulk of
which was with Europe. Her purchases from us amounted to but $3,788,539.
The population of Venezuela is made up of Indians, _mestizos_, and
unmixed descendants of the Spanish; but few North Americans are settled
in the country thus far, in spite of its nearness to the United States.
A better acquaintance between our people and the Venezuelan land of
promise should result from the opening of the Panamá Canal. This most
desirable consummation will operate to the benefit of both peoples, for,
being but six days from New York and four from Charleston, the flow of
the country’s trade should turn our way with increasing volume as our
merchants become familiar with the ports of the Spanish Main en route to
the canal. So far Venezuela is almost wholly unknown to us. Less than
ten years ago, a bill was introduced in our Congress to consolidate the
diplomatic missions to the republics of Venezuela and Guatemala, under
the impression that the countries were adjacent! and during the debate
one member arose and asked in all seriousness, “Where is Venezuela,
anyhow?”
Like Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico, Venezuela is a federation of states.
In this respect it differs from the other Latin American republics,
except Brazil. Its government is modeled closely on our own, although
more centralized, the governors of the states being appointed by the
federal executive. The country is on a gold basis; its national debt is
not excessive; its administration of the postal, telegraph, and customs
services is efficient and progressive, and, underlying the whole
structure, is the sure guarantee of inexhaustible wealth. With each new
crisis in her history, Venezuela has advanced to a higher plane, and has
maintained her footing. The men who have lifted her up the steps of her
career—Bolívar, Páez, Vargas, Guzmán Blanco, Crespo, and the little
Andean general who has recently come again into international notice
after a brief eclipse, Cipriano Castro—have been honest in their purpose
and patriots first, whatever they may have been in their private lives.
Many other names may be written on her roll of fame: the romantic, but
visionary, Miranda, the fiery young patriot Yáñez, and the Venezuelan of
all others who survived the revolution without question or
reproach—Bolívar’s great lieutenant, Sucré, who became the first
president of Bolivia.
Of all her latter day sons, Guzmán Blanco accomplished most for his
country. After serving in the diplomatic corps in Europe, he returned in
1870 able to assume the supreme authority with an understanding of the
needs of his disordered country and the knowledge and forcefulness with
which to supply them. During his practical dictatorship of eighteen
years, he ruled with a rod of iron; he enriched himself and his
favorites, and stamped his personality ineradicably on the country, it
may be—but he made Venezuela a thriving country. He beautified and
practically rebuilt the capital, subsidized and fostered the railroads,
opened the door to foreign capital and traders who learned to believe in
his stable government, and improved the ports. Under his energetic
administration the production of coffee reached phenomenal proportions;
shipping made rapid progress; the population increased in normal ratio,
and the homes of the people improved in every way. The work he did
lasted.
Castro, also, worked hard to build up a spirit of nationalism with which
to withstand the impositions of foreign governments, whose citizens in
many instances had sought by fraudulent claims to enrich themselves. He,
too, won a good fight and in some respects advanced Venezuela to a
higher place in the family of nations. His patriotism has been made
grotesque in our public press, but those who know him well have no doubt
that it was sincere. He is well born and able and has shown many of the
elements of statesmanship. Venezuela unquestionably has suffered
injustice at the hands of European governments, and of our own, in the
demands they have sought to enforce on behalf of adventurers who have
attempted to exploit the country to their own advantage and without
regard to her interests—notably in the cases of her dispute with Great
Britain over the boundary with British Guiana, and the French cable
company.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
XII
THE GUIANAS
On the northeastern shoulder of the continent lies a huge block of
territory as large as France and Spain combined. It is in reality an
island, since it is bounded on the north and east by the Caribbean Sea
and Atlantic Ocean, on the south by the Amazon River, and on the
northwest and west by the continuous waterway formed by the Orinoco, the
Casiquiare and the Negro rivers, the last named an affluent of the
Amazon. Like the north Andean republics, the Guiana country is made up
of mountains, highlands, and low-lying plains, and lies wholly in the
tropics; its productiveness thus embraces nearly every cereal and
vegetable found in the three great zones of the earth.
Guiana was discovered, named, and first occupied by the Spanish in the
very beginning of things in South America. It acquired fame in the
latter part of the sixteenth century as one of the regions in which the
home of El Dorado was supposed to be located—the fateful
will-o’-the-wisp that was chased by the early fortune hunters all over
the region from the mountain fastnesses about Bogotá, in Colombia, to
the Paraná, in southern Brazil, the lure which brought disaster even to
such men of intelligence and practical common sense as Sir Walter
Raleigh and Sir Francis Drake. The long-sought Lake Guatavita (now known
to be located near Bogotá), in whose sacred waters El Dorado bathed his
gilded body, was once supposed to lie near the source of the Orinoco in
the Parima Mountains, and, indeed, geologists now contend that such a
lake did exist ages ago in these mountainous heights, and it is
unquestionably true that on the line northward from this point runs a
vein of gold richer than any in the known world, and that this vein had
been worked by the Indians from time immemorial.
The lure of the gold, purged, however, of its myth, has survived to our
own day, for we all remember Great Britain’s effort, in her boundary
dispute with Venezuela, to extend her Guiana boundary over the rich gold
fields south of the Orinoco delta.
Until 1624, the Spanish succeeded in holding Guiana against all comers;
but in that year the Dutch West India Company gained a foothold at the
head of the Essequibo delta, and was confirmed in its possession by the
treaty of Münster in 1648, at the close of the war between Spain and the
Netherlands. After this opening, other nations made haste to share in a
partition of the rich territory. The French established a colony at
Cayenne; the English made a settlement and called it Surreyham, after
the Earl of Surrey—whence the present name of Surinam—and eventually the
country was partitioned among the five nations: Brazil became the owner
of that portion trailing off southward to the Amazon which Portugal had
wrested from Spain, and which is now sometimes called Brazilian Guiana,
although it is an integral part of the United States of Brazil; France
still retains Cayenne, now known as French Guiana; the Dutch are now
installed in the Surinam colony, which came into their possession at the
time of the British occupation of New York, and is now called Dutch
Guiana; Great Britain owns the three settlements at Demerara, Berbice,
and Essequibo, captured in 1803 from the Dutch and afterward ceded to
her by the treaty of 1814, and which now constitute British Guiana, and,
lastly, Venezuela, as successor to the title of Spain, owns the rest of
the highlands, south of Parima and Pacarima, the territory formerly
known as Spanish Guiana until the revolution of the Venezuelan
colonists.
British Guiana is 109,000 square miles in area—larger than the United
Kingdom—and has a population of about 300,000, made up of 150,000
negroes, 100,000 East Indians, 15,000 Portuguese, 10,000 British and
Europeans, and the balance of _mestizos_. It is divided into three
counties, which correspond to the old settlements—Demerara, Berbice, and
Essequibo. Georgetown, the capital, is on the right bank of the Demerara
River at its mouth. It is an attractive port city of about 60,000
inhabitants, heavily shaded with tropical trees, and presents the
substantial appearance of most British colonial centers. Just now its
interests are being rather neglected, but, as the shipping point of a
sugar area productive enough to supply the mother country, it could be
developed into one of the great ports of the Caribbean.
The area of Dutch Guiana is 46,060 square miles, and its population
numbers about 70,000. The capital, Paramaribo, is a city of some 30,000
inhabitants, located at the junction of the Surinam and Commewine
rivers, about ten miles from the sea. The colony’s trade in coffee,
cacao, rubber, timber, and gold has not yet been developed to such
proportions as to make it self-supporting; it is still subsidized by the
mother country.
French Guiana is known to us principally as a penal settlement. Since
the days of the French Revolution, Devil’s Island, off the coast, has
been used by the French government as a penal establishment, and in
recent years the world has become familiar with its supposed terrors by
reading the account of Captain Dreyfus’s sufferings. Nevertheless,
French Guiana has all the capabilities of the other Guianas, and could
be made richly productive. Its area is 31,000 square miles and its
population about 25,000; that of its capital, the city of St. Louis, on
the Island of Cayenne, now numbers slightly over 15,000.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BIBLIOGRAPHY
GENERAL
ALONG THE ANDES. _A. Petrocokino_
ALONG THE ANDES AND DOWN THE AMAZON. _H. J. Mozans_
ANCIENT AMERICA. _John D. Baldwin_
ANDES AND THE AMAZON, THE. _James Orton_
ANDES AND THE AMAZON, THE. _Reginald C. Enock_
AROUND THE CARIBBEAN AND ACROSS PANAMA. _Francis C. Nicholas_
BETWEEN THE ANDES AND THE OCEAN. _William Eleroy Curtis_
CAPITALS OF SOUTH AMERICA, THE. _William Eleroy Curtis_
COMMERCIAL TRAVELER IN SOUTH AMERICA. _Frank Wiborg_
CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY, THE. _Francis E. Clark_
DISCOVERY OF AMERICA, THE. _John Fiske_
DISCOVERY AND CONQUEST OF AMERICA, A
COLLECTION OF RARE DOCUMENTS CONCERNING. _E. George Squier_
EXPLORATION OF THE VALLEY OF THE AMAZON. _William Lewis Herndon_
GREAT STATES OF SOUTH AMERICA, THE. _Charles W. Domville-Fife_
LAND OF TO-MORROW, THE. (Pamphlet.) _John Barrett_
LATIN AMERICA OF TO-DAY AND ITS RELATIONS TO
THE UNITED STATES. (Pamphlet.) _John Barrett_
LATIN AMERICA, A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO. _Albert Hale_
NORTHERN REPUBLICS OF SOUTH AMERICA, THE.
(Pamphlet.) _John Barrett_
ORINOCO, UP THE, AND DOWN THE MAGDALENA. _H. J. Mozans_
OTHER AMERICANS, THE. _Arthur Ruhl_
PANAMA TO PATAGONIA. _Charles M. Pepper_
SOUTH AMERICA. (Translated.) _Antonio D. Ulloa_
SOUTH AMERICA. _A. H. Keane_
SOUTH AMERICA, HISTORY OF. _Adnah D. Jones_
SOUTH AMERICA, HISTORY OF. _Charles E. Akers_
SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS, THE. _Thomas C. Dawson_
SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS, THE INDEPENDENCE
OF. _Francis L. Paxson_
SOUTH AMERICANS, THE. _Albert Hale_
SPANISH AMERICA. _Julian Hawthorne_
SPANISH CONQUEST IN AMERICA, THE. _Sir Arthur Helps_
BY COUNTRIES
ACONCAGUA AND TIERRA DEL FUEGO. _Sir Martin Conway_
ARGENTINA. _W. A. Hirst_
ARGENTINA AND HER PEOPLE OF TO-DAY. _Nevin O. Winter_
ARGENTINA, MODERN. _W. H. Koebel_
ARGENTINA, THE REPUBLIC OF. _A. Stuart Pennington_
BOLIVIA. _Marie Robinson Wright_
BOLIVIA, A HANDBOOK ISSUED BY. _The Pan American Union_
BOLIVIAN ANDES, THE. _Sir Martin Conway_
BRAZIL AND THE BRAZILIANS. _James C. Fletcher and D. P.
Kidder_
BRAZIL, A JOURNEY IN. _Louis Agassiz_
BRAZIL, THE NEW. _Marie Robinson Wright_
BRAZIL OF TO-DAY. (Translated.) _Arthur Dias_
CHILE, HISTORY OF. _Anson Uriel Hancock_
CHILE, ITS HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT. _G. F. Scott Elliot_
CHILE, THE REPUBLIC OF. _Marie Robinson Wright_
CHILE OF TO-DAY. (By the Chilean
Consul-General in New York.) _Adolfo Ortuzar_
COLOMBIA. (Pamphlet.) _John Barrett_
COLOMBIA, JOURNAL OF EXPEDITION ACROSS
VENEZUELA AND. _Hiram Bingham_
COLOMBIA, THE REPUBLIC OF. _F. Loraine Petre_
COLOMBIAN AND VENEZUELAN REPUBLICS, THE. _William E. Scruggs_
COUNTRIES OF THE KING’S AWARD, THE. _Sir Thomas H. Holdich_
CUZCO AND LIMA. _Sir Clements R. Markham_
ECUADOR, A HANDBOOK ISSUED BY. _The Pan American Union_
INCAS OF PERU, THE. _Sir Clements R. Markham_
INCAS, ROYAL COMMENTARIES ON. (Translated.) _Garcilaso de la Vega_
ISLANDS OF TITICACA AND KOATI. _Adolf F. Bandelier_
PARAGUAY. (Translated.) _E. de Bourgade la Dardye_
PARAGUAY, A HANDBOOK ISSUED BY. _The Pan American Union_
PARAGUAY, HISTORY OF. _Charles A. Washburn_
PERU, CHRONICLES OF. (Translated.) _Pedro de Cieza de Leon_
PERU, HISTORY OF. _Sir Clements R. Markham_
PERU, HISTORIA GENERAL. (Translated.) _Garcilaso de la Vega_
PERU, HISTORY OF THE CONQUEST OF. _William H. Prescott_
PERU: INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL IN THE LAND OF THE
INCAS. _E. George Squier_
PERU, THE OLD AND THE NEW. _Marie Robinson Wright_
PURPLE LAND THAT ENGLAND LOST, THE. _W. H. Hudson_
TRAVELS AMONGST THE GREAT ANDES OF THE
EQUATOR. _Sir Edward Whymper_
TRAVELS IN THE WILDS OF ECUADOR. _Alfred Simpson_
URUGUAY. _W. H. Koebel_
URUGUAY, A HANDBOOK ISSUED BY. _The Pan American Union_
VENEZUELA. _William Eleroy Curtis_
VENEZUELAN REPUBLICS, THE COLOMBIAN AND. _William L. Scruggs_
VENEZUELA AND COLOMBIA, JOURNAL OF AN
EXPEDITION ACROSS. _Hiram Bingham_
WILDERNESS, OUR SEARCH FOR A. _Mary Blair and W. C. Beebe_
------------------------------------------------------------------------
INDEX
Aconcagua, Mt., 280-282, 283-284, 366.
Agassiz, Louis, exploration of Amazon by, 139-140.
Agriculture, in Brazil, 136;
in Argentina, 191-192;
in Uruguay, 235;
in Bolivia, 262-264;
in Ecuador, 355-359;
in Colombia, 379-380;
in Venezuela, 418-419.
Alcantara, Francisco, 42, 84.
Almagro, Diego de, 38, 41, 42, 43, 68, 75-76;
leads expedition into Chile, 76;
disappointed and repulsed in Chile, returns to Peru and wars against
the Pizarro brothers, 79-81;
death of, 81;
followers of, assassinate Pizarro, 83-85.
Alpaca, the, in Peru, 47;
in Argentina, 216.
Altar, El, volcano, Ecuador, 367.
Alvarado, Alonso de, 82.
Alvarado, Pedro de, 75-76.
Amambay Mountains, 241.
Amazon River, discovery of, 81;
description of, 137 ff.;
sources of, in Peruvian Andes, 322.
Andes Mountains, nature of, in Chile, 277-288;
railway through the, 280;
in Peru, 321;
in Colombia, 375-376.
Animals of Amazon country, 141.
Antofagasta, city of, 292, 293-295.
Antofagasta, Province of, 287, 290.
Antofagasta-La Paz railway, 261.
_Araucana_ of Ercilla, 102-103.
Araucanian Indians, 101 ff.;
wars of the Spanish with, 102-103;
customs, religion, and dress, 104-105;
Valdivia’s war with, 106-109;
treaties between Spanish and, 110-111.
Architecture, styles of, in South American cities, 232-233.
Arequipa, city of, 82, 332-333;
Harvard Observatory at, 333-334.
Argentina, Spanish conquest of northern areas of, 112-113;
area and coast-line, 190;
natural resources, 191-192;
government, 192-193;
population, 193;
volume of trade with Europe as compared with that with United States,
194;
division into Buenos Aires and “the Camp,” 194-195;
political history, 195-197;
rapid advance of, since 1862, 197-198;
railways, immigration, and education in, 198;
conditions of life in Buenos Aires, 198-213;
“the Camp,” 214 ff.;
cattle, horses, sheep, goats, etc., of, 216-217;
gradual introduction of small landholders into, 219;
territory known as Patagonia, 223-225;
Tierra del Fuego, 225;
tropical wilds of the north, 226-227.
Asphalt deposits, 415, 419.
Asses, in Argentina, 216.
Asunción, Paraguay, 241;
population and character, 245-246, 251-252.
Atacama, Province of, 277, 287.
Atacames, Ecuador, 358.
Atahualpa, defeat of Huascar by and accession to Inca throne, 59-61;
made a prisoner by Pizarro, 61-65;
ransom paid by, 66;
Pizarro’s treachery toward and murder of, 66-68.
Atrato River, 376.
Aucasquilucha, Mt., 278.
Ayacucho, battle of, 132.
Aymara Indians, 48.
Bahia, State of, black diamonds in, 189.
Bahia Blanca, city of, 195.
Balboa, Vasco Nuñez de, 22-25, 35, 36.
_Balsa_ rafts, Guayaquil, 363.
_Balsas_, reed boats on Lake Titicaca, 57.
Banana trees, Ecuador, 364.
Barranquilla, 391, 392, 396-397.
Barrett, John, _Independent_ article by, quoted, 315;
on Colombia’s commercial possibilities, 397.
Belém, city of, 137, 139, 146-153.
Belgrano, Manuel, 123.
Belgrano, suburb of Buenos Aires, 202.
Bello Horizonte, city of, 186-187.
Benalcázar, Sebastian de, 76, 92, 95, 96, 370.
Bermudez, asphalt lake of, 419.
Bio-bio River, 101, 102, 105, 106, 108, 111.
Bitumen from Venezuela, 419.
Black diamonds, 189.
Blanco, Guzmán, 422.
_Blancos_, Uruguayan political faction, 238.
Boers in Patagonia, 225.
Bogotá, 95, 383, 384, 385-389.
Bolívar, Simon, 123, 129;
San Martín’s retirement in favor of, 129-130;
career of, 130-133;
Bolivia named for, 259;
period of residence in Bogotá, 387-388;
tomb of, Caracas, 412;
relics of, at Caracas, 412-413.
Bolivia, Pizarro’s expedition into, 82;
position, 257-258;
people, 259;
area and climate, 259-260;
scenery, 261-262;
agricultural productions, 262-264;
mineral wealth, 264-266;
cities and ruins in, 266-274.
Bolognesi, Colonel, 328.
Bomfim, Senhor, quoted, 175.
Botafogo Bay, 163, 167.
Botanical garden, at Belém, 150;
at Rio de Janeiro, 168-169.
Boyacá, battle of, 131.
Brandão, Frei Caetano, statue of, Belém, 150-151.
Brazil, discovery of, 18;
exploration of, by Vespucci, 18-19;
secures independence, 133;
area and population of present republic, 134-135;
international commerce, 135-136;
the Amazon country, 137-153;
railways, 153-154;
cities of coast, 154-160.
Brazil wood, 19, 33.
British, capital of, invested in Argentine railways, 197-198;
residing in Buenos Aires, 203;
club life of, Buenos Aires, 207-208;
investments of, in Argentine land, 219;
in Patagonia, 224;
as investors in Montevideo, 231.
British Guiana, 426, 427-428.
Bucarmanga, Colombia, 397.
Buenaventura, Colombia, 397.
Buenos Aires, first settlement on site of, 113;
pride of citizens of, in their city, 194-195;
in character similar to Chicago, 198-199;
impressive dock system of, 199-200;
commerce of, 200-201;
the æsthetic side of, 201-202;
influence of Paris on the culture, dress, and customs of, 202-203;
foreign colonies in, 203;
patriotism of citizens of, 203-204;
newspapers of, 204-205;
places of amusement, opera, cafés, etc., of, 205-206;
club life in, 207-210;
the Jockey Club, 208-210;
contrasts of prodigality and destitution in, 211;
narrowness of streets, 212-213;
expense of living in, 213;
a well-appointed city in all respects, 213-214.
Buenos Aires, Province of, 197.
Buenos Aires, University of, 198.
Buenos Aires, Viceroyalty of, 116.
Bull, papal, dividing New World between Spain and Portugal, 14, 17.
Caaguazú Mountains, 241.
Cabot, Sebastian, 31-32.
Cabral, Pedro Alvarez, 18.
Cacao trees, Ecuador, 356-357.
Cafés, at Belém, 152-153;
at Rio de Janeiro, 171;
Buenos Aires, 211-212.
Callao, description of, 318-319.
Cape Horn, 225-226.
Caquetá River, 376.
Carabobo, State of, 406.
Caracas, Venezuela, 409-414.
Carriage parade, Buenos Aires, 210.
Cartagena, Colombia, 90, 392-396.
Cartier, Jacques, 22.
Casapalca, town of, 331.
Casas, Bartolomé de las, 86, 402-403.
Castro, Cipriano, 421, 422-423.
Castro, Vaca de, 83, 86.
Cattle-raising, in Rio Grande do Sul, 186;
in Argentina, 191, 216;
in Uruguay, 235.
Cauca River, 376, 391.
Cauchi tribe of Indians, 47.
Caupolican, Araucanian chief, 102-103, 106, 107, 108.
Cayenne, Island of, 428.
Cedar from Colombia, 380.
Century plant in Ecuador, 354.
Chacabuco, battle of, 125, 279.
Chachacomani, Mt., 258.
Chaco region, 218, 226, 240.
Charrúa Indians, 237.
Chaves, Francisco, 84.
Chibcha Indians, 94-95.
Chicago, comparison of Buenos Aires and, 199, 201-202.
Chile, Almagro leads a force into, 76;
Valdivia undertakes conquest of, 82;
Spanish wars in attempts to conquer native tribes of, 97-112;
War of Independence in, 124-126;
proclamation of independence of, 126;
the matter of a name for, 275-276;
shape, location, and area, 276-277;
commerce, 277;
mountains, passes, and other surface features, 278-288;
nitrate of soda deposits, 288-292;
cities, 293-307;
war between Peru and, 297;
islands of southern, 307 ff.;
mountain ranges along Strait of Magellan, 310-313.
Chiloé, Island of, 286, 307.
Chiloé, Province of, 286.
Chimborazo, Mt., 365-366.
Chincona trees, 263.
Chonos Archipelago, 307.
Christ of the Andes, the, 222-223.
Chubut, Territory of, 224.
Church, F. E., “Heart of the Andes,” by, 365.
Cigars, Brazilian, 159.
Cipango, island of (Japan), 9, 14.
Ciudad Bolívar, 412, 416.
Club life in Buenos Aires, 207-210.
Coast Range, Brazilian, 163-164.
Coati, island of, 57, 336.
Coca, 357.
Coca leaf, chewing of the, 262-263.
Cochabamba, 261.
Cochrane, Lord, 127.
Cocoa, 357-358.
Coelho, Duarte, 34.
Coffee, production of, in Brazil, 136;
in State of São Paulo, 176;
exportation of, from Santos, 182-183;
beginnings and increase in growth of, in Brazil, 183-184;
description of plantations, 184-185;
production of, in Colombia, 380;
in Venezuela, 401;
Maracaibo coffee, 404.
Colleges, at São Paulo, 179.
Colocolo, Araucanian chief, 106.
Colombia, early exploration of, 90-97;
formation of Republic of, 131;
location and area, 375;
mountains and river systems, 375-376;
mineral wealth, 376-379;
agricultural products, 379-380;
range in climate, 380-381;
railways, 381-382;
mountain scenery, 382-384;
trip down the Magdalena River, 389-392;
cities and seaports, 392-396;
commercial possibilities of, 397-399.
Colonial system, Spanish, in South America, 113-120.
Colón Opera House, Buenos Aires, 206-207.
_Colorados_, Uruguayan political faction, 238.
Columbus, Bartholomew, 7, 10, 15.
Columbus, Christopher, 7-11;
personal appearance, 11;
historic voyage of, 11-13;
second voyage of, 15-16;
later voyages and death, 16-17.
Columbus, Diego, 15.
Coluna, Mt., 405.
Commerce, of Argentina, 191-192;
at Buenos Aires, 200-201;
of Uruguay, 235;
of Chile, 277;
possibilities for, in Colombia, 397-399;
of Venezuela, 419;
of the Guianas, 427-428.
Compilation of Laws of the Kingdoms of the Indies, code known as, 113,
114.
Concepción, Chile, 105, 287.
Concha, Mt., 405.
Conway, Sir Martin, quoted, 280-282, 311-313.
Copper, in Bolivia, 266. _See_ Mineral resources.
Coquimbo, Chile, 100, 101.
Coquimbo, Province of, 287.
Córdoba, city of, 195.
Córdoba, University of, 198.
Coro, Venezuela, 405-406.
Corrientes, 245.
Cortés, Hernando, 30-31, 81.
Cosmas, Egyptian monk, 2-3.
Cotopaxi, Mt., 367.
Council of the Indies, 35, 117.
Cucutá, battle of, 131.
Cumaná, Venezuela, 402.
Curaçao, Island of, 406.
Curtis, W. E., quoted, 164-165, 301.
Cuzco, founding of, in 12th century, 48;
appearance of, at time of the Incas, 52;
Pizarro’s march on and occupation of, 68-70;
description of, 342-344, 349-351;
ruins at, 343-349.
Darwin, Mt., 311.
D’Aubigny, quoted, 262.
Davila, Pedrarias, 36.
Dawson, T. C., quoted, 6, 23, 37, 41, 83-85, 88-89, 100-101, 111,
158-159, 246-249, 250-251.
Desiderato, Cape, 28.
Desolation Island, 310.
De Soto, Hernando, 43-44, 68.
Devil’s Island, French Guiana, 428.
Diamantina, town of, 189.
Diamonds, Brazilian, 189;
black, mined in State of Bahia, 189.
Dias, Arthur, quoted, 140.
Dias, Bartholomew, 7.
Docks, of Buenos Aires, 199-200;
of Montevideo, 229.
Dutch Guiana, 426-427, 428.
Earthquake, of 1859 in Ecuador, 368;
of 1877, 371-372.
Earthquakes, in Venezuela, 413.
Ecuador, invasion of, by a lieutenant of Pizarro’s, 76;
area, population, and political divisions, 352;
river systems, 352-353;
climate, 353-354;
plants, shrubs, and trees, 354-358;
voyage along coast of, 360-361;
mountains, 365-372.
Eden, Richard, 27.
Education, in Brazil, 178-180;
in Argentina, 198.
El Dorado, legend of, 91-96, 425.
Emeralds of Colombia, 35, 377-379.
_Encomiendas_, system of, 86, 87.
England, commerce between Brazil and, 136;
capital from, invested in Argentine railways, 197-198.
English, in Valparaiso, 297. _See_ British.
Episcopal seminary, São Paulo, 179.
Ercilla, Alonso de, 102-103.
Esmeraldas, Province of, 358.
Essequibo, 426, 427.
Estates or ranches of Argentina, 214-219.
Eucalyptus trees, Montevideo, 232.
Exposition of 1910 at Buenos Aires, 198.
Federmann, Nicolaus, 95, 96.
Fiske, John, quoted, 15, 17, 80-81.
Forests, of Brazil, 136;
of Paraguay, 241;
of southern Chile, 286-287, 308-310;
of Ecuador, 356, 363-364.
Formosa, territory of, in Argentina, 226.
Fortaleza, city of, 154.
Fletcher, James C., quoted, 161-162.
Francia, José Rodríguez Gaspar, 246-249.
Fray Bentos, Liebig Company plant at, 235-236.
French, in Buenos Aires, 203;
in Valparaiso, 297, 298.
French Guiana, 426, 428.
Froward, Cape, 311.
Fruit-raising at Mendoza, 221.
Fuegian Archipelago, 225-226.
Funza River, 385.
Gallo, Island of, 39.
Gama, Vasco da, 7, 16-17.
Garcilaso, de la Vega. _See_ Vega.
Gasca, Pedro de la, 89-90.
_Gaucho_, Argentine cowboy, 217-218.
Georgetown, British Guiana, 427.
Germans, steamships of, at Buenos Aires, 200;
resident at Buenos Aires, 203;
investments of, in Argentine land, 219;
in Patagonia, 224;
in Valparaiso, 297.
Gilded Man, legend of the, 91, 425.
Goats, in Argentina, 216;
in Uruguay, 235.
Gold, of the Incas, 54, 58, 73-74;
mining of, in State of Minas Geraes, 187-189;
in Venezuela, 419;
in the Guianas, 425.
_See also_ Mineral resources.
Gomara, Francisco Lopez de, quoted, 54.
Grains, production of, in Argentina, 192.
Gran Chaco, 218, 226, 240.
Great Western Railroad, Argentina, 220.
Guadelupe, Mt., 385, 387.
Guallatiri, Mt., 257.
Guano deposits, Peru, 321.
Guarany Indians, 242.
Guatavita, Lake, 425.
Guayaquil, founding of, 76;
manufacture of Panamá hats at, 359-360;
description of city, 360-363.
Guayas River, 76, 353, 361.
Guayra, cataract of, 244-245.
Guiana Highlands, 417-418.
Guianas, location and topography, 424;
discovery, naming, and occupation by the Spanish, 424-425;
Dutch, English, and other nations in, 426-427;
area, population, and productions, 427-428.
Hancock, A. U., “History of Chile” by, cited, 103.
Harvard Observatory, Arequipa, 333-334.
Hawthorne, Julian, quoted, 5, 13-14, 22, 27-28, 46-49, 68, 80-81, 89-90,
93, 104-105, 106-109, 110-111, 112.
Helps, Sir Arthur, quoted, 81.
Heredia, Pedro de, 90, 91, 392.
Herndon, W. H., exploration of Amazon by, 139, 140, 141, 144-145.
Herveo, Mesa de, 385, 391.
Holmes, Burton, quoted, 161, 172-173, 283-284.
Honda, Colombia, 390.
Hope emerald, the, 379.
Horse-raising, in Argentina, 191, 216;
in Uruguay, 235.
Hospitals, Buenos Aires, 213.
Houses, in Santiago, 305-306;
of Guayaquil, 361-362;
of Quito, 373.
Huallaga River, 322.
Huarina, battle of, 89.
Huascar, Inca sovereign, 59-61, 65.
Huatanay River, 343.
Huayna Capac, 45, 59.
Humboldt, Baron von, exploration of Amazon by, 138;
quoted, 364, 381;
house occupied by, in Bogotá, 389.
Iguazú Falls, 227.
Illampú, Mt., 258.
Illimani, Mt., 258.
Immigration, to Argentina, 198.
Imperial, Chile, 105.
Inca’s Head, the, 368.
Incas, extent of empire, 44;
question of origin, 44-49;
lack of written records among, 46;
peoples who antedated, 46-47;
history of, previous to conquest by Spanish, 47-49;
highways of the, 49;
worship of sun and moon by, 50, 57-58, 335;
marriage of sovereigns, 50;
trade carried on by water only, 51;
irrigation of land practiced under the, 51;
common ownership of land, 51-52;
temple and palaces of, at Cuzco, 52-54;
different type of people from Peruvian Indians of to-day, 55-56;
dress, 56-57;
birthplace and legend of birth, 335-336.
Indians, of northern Argentina, 226;
in El Chaco, 240;
work of Jesuits among Paraguayan, 242-245;
natives of Tierra del Fuego, 285-286.
Iquima, Mt., 278.
Iquique, city of, 294.
Irala, Domingo, 113, 242.
Irrigation, practiced by Incas, 51;
possibilities of, in Peru, 321.
Islands of southern Chile, 307-308.
Italians, as laborers in State of São Paulo, 184;
resident in Buenos Aires, 203;
in Montevideo, 231;
in Valparaiso, 297.
Jamacchppeke plant, 263.
Jamaica, discovery of, 16.
Jaques, Christovão, 32.
Jesuit missions in the Parana basin, 242-245.
Jews, in Patagonia, 225.
Jockey Club, Buenos Aires, 208-210.
Juliaca, town of, 334.
Junín, battle of, 132.
Jurujuba Bay, 163.
Karkaake, Mt., 258.
Koati, Island of, 57, 336.
Koebel, W. H., “Modern Argentina” by, 218.
La Condamine, explorer of Amazon, 138.
Ladrone Islands, discovery of, by Magellan, 28.
Lage, Fort, 163.
La Guayra, Venezuela, 407-408.
Landed estates of Spanish conquerors, 77, 82.
La Paz, naming of, 267-268;
altitude and location, 268;
description of, 268-270, 273-274.
La Plata, city of, 195, 197.
Lara, State of, 406.
Largo da Polvora, Belém, 151-152.
Las Cuevas, station of, 222.
La Serena, Chile, 287.
Lautero, Araucanian hero, 103, 107, 108;
death of, 108-109.
Lenglet, Dr., quoted, 255-256.
Leon, Cieza de, quoted, 55.
Liebig Company’s plant, Fray Bentos, 235-236.
Lima, founding of, by Pizarro, 74-75, 324;
attracts other Spanish adventurers, 75-76;
description of modern, 325-330.
Linseed, production of, in Argentina, 191.
Llamas, in Peru, 47, 340-342;
in Argentina, 216.
_Llanos_ of Venezuela, 418.
Llanquihue, Province of, 278.
Llulaillaco, Mt., 278.
Los Patos Pass, 279.
Lopez, Carlos Antonio, 249.
Lopez, Francisco, 249-251.
Luque, Hernando de, 38.
Macareo River, 416.
Mackenzie College, São Paulo, 179.
Magdalena River, 376;
scenery in valley of, 389-392.
Magellan, Ferdinand, voyage and discoveries of, 25-29.
Magellan, Strait of, 27-28, 225, 310-311.
Mahogany, from Colombia, 380.
Maize, production of, in Argentina, 191.
Manãos, city of, 144-146.
Manco Capac, 45, 69.
Manco Capac II, 69-70.
Mapocho River, 99.
Maracaibo, city of, 404-405.
Maracaibo, Gulf of, 404.
Maracaibo, Lake, 404;
asphalt on shores of, 419.
Maracaibo coffee, 404.
Markham, Sir Clements, quoted, 53-54, 55, 346-349.
Maule River, 97, 101.
Maypú, battle of, 126.
Mbaracayú Mountains, 241.
Medellín, Colombia, 397.
Meiggs, Henry, 331.
Meiggs, Mt., 331.
Mendoza, Pedro de, 113.
Mendoza, city of, 220-221.
Mendoza, Province of, 105.
Mendoza River, 221-222.
Mercedario, Mt., 281.
Mérida range, Venezuela, 404, 405.
Mexico, Cortés in, 30-31.
Michelena, Venezuelan artist, 413.
Minas Geraes, State of, 186-189.
Mineral resources, of Chile, 288;
of Peru, 315;
of Ecuador, 356;
of Colombia, 377-379.
Mining, in Brazil, 136;
in State of Minas Geraes, 187-189.
Miniquis, Mt., 257.
Miranda, Francisco, 130, 421.
Misiones territory of Argentina, 226, 227.
Misti, volcano, Peru, 334.
Mitré, Bartolomé, 197.
Mollendo, city of, 332.
Mompóz, Colombia, 397.
Monserrate, Mt., 385, 387.
Montaña region of Peru, 320, 321-322.
Monteagudo, Bernardo, 129.
Montesino, _Anales del Perú_ by, quoted, 40.
Montevideo, 229 ff.;
comparison with Buenos Aires, 230;
material prosperity of, 230-231;
foreigners, theaters, and club life of, 231;
the Prado Park, 231-232;
houses, gardens, and social life of, 232-234.
Montezuma, Señor, 31.
Moon, worship of, by Peruvian Indians, 50, 57-58, 335-336, 337.
Mosquera Rebellion, 389.
Mountain sickness, 266.
Mozans, H. J., quoted, 23-25, 45, 57, 70, 74-75, 140-141, 271-273, 333,
335-338, 349, 371-372.
Mules, in Argentina, 216;
in Uruguay, 235.
Muzo, emerald mines of, 377, 378, 379.
Nabuco, Joahim, 175.
Negro River, 144, 223.
New Granada, Viceroyalty of, 116, 384-385.
New Spain, Viceroyalty of, 114.
Newspapers of Buenos Aires, 204-205.
Nictheroy, city of, 163.
Nitrate of soda beds, Chile, 288-292.
Nombre de Dios, 118.
North Americans, small number of, in Buenos Aires, 203.
Obydos, city of, 146.
O’Higgins, Bernardo, 124, 125, 126, 279.
Oil, production of, in Argentina, 192.
Ojeda, Alonso de, 20, 37;
Venezuela named by, 402.
Olinda, suburb of Recife, 158.
Opera in Buenos Aires, 206.
Orellana, Francisco de, discovers and explores the Amazon, 82, 138.
Organ Mountains, 162.
Orgoñez, Rodrigo de, 81.
Oriente River system, 353.
Orinoco River, 401, 403;
delta of the, 415-416;
entrance upon, from the sea, 416-417.
Oroya Railroad, 330-331.
Orton, James, quoted, 354, 369.
Ossorio, General, 124-125.
Pacific Ocean, Balboa’s discovery of, 22-25;
named by Magellan, 28.
Paillamachu, Araucanian chief, 109-110.
Pampas of Argentina, 214 ff.
Pamplona, Colombia, 397.
Panamá Canal, importance of, to relations between the two Americas,
xv-xvii;
influence on trade between Venezuela and United States, 420.
Panamá hats, manufacture of, 359-360.
_Pan American Bulletin_, quoted, 288-290, 377-379, 419.
Pan American Union, vii-xi;
publications of, ix-x;
library of, x.
Pará (Belém), city of, 146-153.
Pará River, 137, 147-148.
Paraguay, situation and area, 239-240;
climate and surface features, 240-241;
forests, 241;
Indians and mestizos in, 242;
Jesuit missions in, 242-244;
character of interior, 244-245;
stormy political history of, 246-251;
great commercial possibilities of, 253.
Paraguay River, 245.
Paraguay tea, 185-186, 192, 253-256.
Paramaribo, Dutch Guiana, 428.
Paraná, city of, 195.
Paraná, River, Cabot’s exploration of, 32;
trip on the, 226-227;
picturesqueness of, 227;
Great Cataract of, 244-245.
Patagonia, 215, 218-219, 223-225.
Patia River, 376.
Pearl fisheries of Colombia, 35, 377.
Pedro II of Brazil, 174.
Pernambuco, city of, 154, 156-157.
Pernambuco, colony of, 34.
Peru, the ancient civilization of, 46-47 (_see under_ Incas);
War of Independence in, 126-128;
war with Chile over nitrate provinces, 292;
products of, in the world’s commerce, 315-316;
voyage along coast of, 316-318;
area, surface features, and rainfall, 320-322;
population and its disposition, 322-323;
railways, 330-332;
ruins of the Incas and their predecessors in, 339, 343-349.
Peru, Viceroyalty of, 114-116.
Peruvian bark, 263.
Petropolis, city of, 169-170.
Pezuela, Joaquín de la, 126-127.
Picacho, Mt., 407.
Pichincha, battle of, 131.
Pichincha, Mt., 369.
Pigs, in Argentina, 216;
in Uruguay, 235.
Pilcomayo River, 245.
Pillar, Cape, 310.
Pizarro, Francisco, early history of, 37;
first expedition of, to Peru, 38-42;
ennobled by the King of Spain, 42;
treacherous dealings of, with Atahualpa, 61-68;
murder of Atahualpa by, 68;
advances to and occupies Cuzco, 68-70;
takes possession of government, 72-73;
founds city of Lima as his capital, 74-75;
holds his new empire against Almagro, 80-81;
assassination of, by adherents of Almagro, 83-85;
tribute to great qualities of, 85;
relics of, in modern Lima, 327.
Pizarro, Gonzalo, 42, 78, 80, 81, 87-88, 90.
Pizarro, Hernando, 42, 75, 78, 80, 81.
Pizarro, Juan, 42, 78.
Plata River, 26, 191, 228-229.
Platinum deposits, Colombia, 377.
Pororoca, the, 147-148.
Portezuelo de Come Caballo, 279.
Porto Alegre, 153, 186.
Portuguese, as discoverers, 5-7;
lands granted to, in division of New World by papal bull, 14-15;
attempt to colonize Brazil, 32-34.
Potato, discovery of the, in Peru, 47.
Potatoes as a food among Peruvians, 342.
Potosí, silver mines of, 82, 88, 265, 266.
Prado Park, Montevideo, 231-232.
Precious stones, mining of, in Brazil, 189;
in Bolivia, 266;
in Colombia, 377-379.
_Prensa_ newspaper, building of, Buenos Aires, 204-205.
Prescott, W. H., quoted, 40-41, 69, 73-74, 343-346.
Promaucian Indians, 101.
Puente del Inca, 222.
Puerto Cabello, Venezuela, 406, 414.
Puerto Colombia, 396.
Pular, Mt., 278.
Puna, island of, 43.
Punta Arenas, city of, 224, 285, 311.
Quebracho tree, the, 226-227.
Quesada, Gonzalo Jiminez de, 92-96.
Quichua Indians, 47.
Quinine, production of, 263.
Quinsay, city of (Pekin), 9, 12, 15.
_Quintas_, in Montevideo, 232, 233.
Quinze Puntas range, 241.
Quito, 48, 363, 369, 372-374.
Quizquiz, Atahualpa’s general, 67, 70.
Rada, Juan de la, 83.
Railways, Brazilian, 153-154;
Argentine, 191, 220;
English capital invested in Argentina, 197-198;
trans-Andine, 222-223, 280;
of Uruguay, 234;
Bolivian, 261;
Peruvian, 330-332;
of Ecuador, 363;
of Colombia, 381-382;
of Venezuela, 409.
Ramalho, João, 33.
Ranches, Argentine, 214-219.
Recife, city of, 153, 157-158.
_Repartimientos_ of the Spanish conquerors, 82, 86.
Revolutions, outgrowing of, xiii.
Ringmann, Mathias, 21.
Riobamba, city of, 370.
Rio Branco, Baron, 174-175.
Rio de Janeiro, 153;
the approach to, 160-164;
scenic wonders of bay of, 160-164;
description of city, 164 ff.
Rio Grande do Sul, production of _yerba maté_ in, 185-186.
Rio Negro, Territory of, 224.
Rodadero River, 343.
Rojas, Diego de, 112.
Root, Elihu, quoted, 177.
Rosario, city of, 195, 226.
Rosario College, Bogotá, 389.
Rubber, production of, in Brazil, 136-137.
Rubber estate, description of a, 149-150.
Rubber trees, 143.
Ruhl, Arthur, quoted, 169, 173-176, 303-305.
Ruins, prehistoric, 46;
of Tiahuanaco, 48, 271-273;
about Lake Titicaca, 338-339;
of Sacsahuaman, 343, 346-349.
Sabanilla, 391, 392.
Sacsahuaman, ruins of, 52, 78, 343, 346-349.
St. Julian, harbor of, 26.
St. Louis, French Guiana, 428.
Salt mines of Colombia, 377.
Salta, battle of, 123.
San Francisco Xavier, University of, 267.
Sangai, Mt., 366.
San José, Mt., 278.
San Lazaro, Church of, in Cuzco, 350.
San Marcos, University of, 330.
San Martín, General José de, 123-124;
crossing of the Andes by, 125-126, 279;
defeats Royalist army in Chile, 126;
liberates Peru from Spanish rule, 127-128;
voluntary retirement of, 129-130;
tomb of, in Buenos Aires, 130.
San Miguel, Gulf of, 23.
San Rafael Lake, 285.
San Ruiz, Mt., 391.
San Salvador, Island of, 12.
Santa Candelaria, convent of, Cartagena, 396.
Santa Catalina, convent of, in Cuzco, 350.
Santa Cruz, Bolivia, 261.
Santa Cruz, Fort, 163.
Santa Cruz, Territory of, 224.
Santa Lucia, hill and fortress of, 99-100, 301.
Santa Marta, Colombia, 90.
Santarem, city of, 146.
Santiago, Chile, founding of, by Valdivia, 99-100;
mentioned, 287;
description of, 299-307.
Santo Domingo, convent of, in Cuzco, 350.
Santos, city of, 153, 176, 181-182.
San Valentín, Mt., 284.
São João, Fort, 163.
São Leopoldo, city of, 186.
São Luiz de Maranhão, 154, 155.
São Paulo, city of, 176-181.
São Salvador da Bahia, 34, 153, 154, 159-160.
São Vicente, colony of, 33.
Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino, 197.
Sarmiento, Mt., 311-313.
Scots, in Patagonia, 224.
Scruggs, William L., on Colombia’s commercial possibilities, 398-399.
Sheep-raising, Rio Grande do Sul, 186;
in Argentina, 191, 216;
in Patagonia, 224-225;
in Uruguay, 235.
Silla, Cordillera de la, 406.
Silver, from Mt. Potosí, 265.
_See_ Mineral resources.
Sinu River, 380.
Slavery, reduction of Peruvian Indians to, by the Spanish, 77;
introduction of negro, 403.
Socompa, Mt., 278.
Solis, Juan Diaz de, 22, 113, 236.
Solis Theater, Montevideo, 231.
Sorata, Mt., 258.
Souza, Martim Affonso da, 33.
Spain, mistaken colonial policy of, in South America, 113-120;
revolt of South American countries against, 120-121.
Spaniards, numbers of, in Buenos Aires, 203.
Spanish Main, the, 402.
Squier, E. G., quoted, 271.
Steamships, German, at Buenos Aires, 200;
on Paraná River, 226.
Sucré, Antonio José de, 131, 132, 259, 266.
Sucré, city of, 266-267.
Sugar, beginnings of production of, in Brazil, 34.
Sugar Loaf, peak of, bay of Rio de Janeiro, 162.
Sun, worship of, by Peruvian Indians, 50, 57-58, 335-336, 337.
Surinam, 426.
Tabatinga, Brazilian port, 138.
Tacna, Province of, 287, 290.
Talca, truce of, 124.
Tapajos River, 146.
Tarapacá, Province of, 287, 290.
Tehuelche Indians, 224.
Temple of the Incas at Cuzco, 52-53.
Tensaquilla, village of, 385.
Theater, the Amazonas, at Manãos, 145-146;
the Municipal, Rio de Janeiro, 166;
at São Paulo, 180;
the Solis, in Montevideo, 231.
Theaters, at Belém, 152;
in Buenos Aires, 206, 207.
Tiahuanaco, ruins of, 48, 272-273.
Tierra del Fuego, 225, 285, 311.
Tin, wealth of Bolivia in, 265.
Titicaca, Island of, 57, 336.
Titicaca, Lake, 45, 57, 258, 335-338.
Tobacco from Province of Esmeraldas, Ecuador, 358.
Tolima, volcano, Colombia, 385, 391.
Tonka beans, Colombia, 380.
Toparca Capac, 69.
Tordesillas, treaty of, 15.
Toroni, Mt., 278.
Torre Tagle, Marquis of, 129.
Toscanelli, letters of, quoted, 8-9.
Trade, restrictions placed on South American, by Spain, 118-120;
of United States of Brazil, 135-136;
of Argentina, 191-192.
_See also_ Commerce.
Trans-Andean railway, 222, 280.
Trees, of Brazil, 142, 143;
in Montevideo parks, 231-232;
of southern Chile, 286-287, 309-310;
of Ecuador, 355-356, 363-364.
Trinidad, Island of, 16, 415, 419.
Trombetas River, 146.
Tronador, Mt., 284.
Tucapel, Araucanian chief, 103, 106.
Tucumán, battle of, 123.
Tucumán, city of, 195.
Tumbéz, Peru, 39, 41, 324.
Tunguragua, Mt., 366.
Tupungato, Mt., 281.
Ucayali River, 322.
United States, trade between Brazil and, 136;
smallness of commerce of, with Argentina, 201;
fewness of people from, in Buenos Aires, 203;
commerce between Chile and, 277;
trade of, with Colombia, 398;
trade with Venezuela, 419.
Universities in Argentina, 198.
University, San Francisco Xavier, Sucré, 267;
San Marcos, 330.
Uruguay, 228 ff.;
life in Montevideo, 229-234;
nature of the country, 234-235;
commerce of, 235;
favorable conditions of, for national prosperity, 236;
turbulent political history of, 236-237;
bellicose personality and present-day outlets for, 237-238;
political factions in, 238.
Uruguay River, 32, 228, 234, 235.
Uspallata Pass, 222, 279-280.
Valdivia, Pedro de, conquest of Chile undertaken by, 82, 97-107;
put to death by Araucanians, 107.
Valdivia, town of, 109.
Valencia, city and lake of, 406, 414.
Valera, Father Blas, cited, 58.
Valle, Marquis del, 31.
Valparaiso, 101, 287, 296-299.
Valverde, Friar Vincente de, 64.
Vargas Hospital, Caracas, 413.
Vega, Garcilaso de la, quoted, 52-53, 58, 61, 335.
Vela, Blasco Nuñez, 87.
Velasco, Juan de, 370.
Venezuela, location and topography, 400-401;
area, 401-402;
naming of, 402;
coastwise approach to, 403-404;
towns and cities, 405-413;
earthquakes in, 413;
the Orinoco delta and river, 415-417;
the _llanos_, 418;
agricultural products, 418-419;
commerce of, 419;
government, 420-421;
statesmen and rulers of, 421-423.
Vernon, Admiral, siege of Cartagena by, 393-394.
Vespucci, Amerigo, voyages of, 18-19;
the _Mundus Novus_ of, 20;
the naming of the New World for, 20-21;
later explorations by, 22.
Viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru, 114-116.
Victoria, city of, 154.
Vilcapujio, battle of, 123.
Villagran, Francisco de, 107-108.
Villa Hayes, 240.
Villegagnon, settlement at, 168.
Viña del Mar, 296, 299.
Virgins, Cape, 27.
Virgins of the Sun, 52, 57;
palace of, at Cajamarca, 65.
Volcanoes, of Chile, 278;
of Colombia, 385;
of Ecuador, 365-372.
Waldseemüller map, 21.
Washington, Col. Lawrence, 394.
Watling’s Island, 12.
“Westward Ho!” reminders of, 408.
Wheat, production of, in Argentina, 192;
harvesting of, in Argentina, 216;
production in Uruguay, 235.
Wheelwright, William, 201.
Whymper, Edward, ascent of Ecuadorian peaks by, 365, 367;
quoted on the crater of Cotopaxi, 368.
Wine industry, Mendoza, 221.
Women, Brazilian, 171-173;
of Buenos Aires, 210;
of Mendoza, 221;
of Montevideo, 234;
of Santiago, 303, 304;
of Lima, 328, 329.
Wright, Marie Robinson, quoted, 187, 188, 299-300.
Yavarí River, 322.
Yegros, General, 246, 247.
_Yerba maté_, production of, in Rio Grande do Sul, 185-186;
in Argentina, 192;
in Paraguay, 253-256;
cultivation of, 254-255;
beneficial results from, 255-256.
Ypiranga, building in São Paulo, 178.
Yupanqui, Inca ruler, 45, 48.
Zamora, State of, Venezuela, 406.
Zaruma, mines of, 356.
Zenufana, region called, 91.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transcriber’s note:
Front matter, comma inserted after ‘Postage,’ “Postage, 20 cents.”
Front matter, ‘O’HIGGINSS’ changed to ‘O’HIGGINS’S,’ “OF O’HIGGINS’S
CAVALRY LEAPED”
Page 87, ‘Conquisitadores’ changed to ‘Conquistadores,’ “in trouble with
the Conquistadores,”
Page 192, ‘mate’ changed to ‘maté,’ “grapes, fruits, yerba maté
(Paraguay”
Page 383, ‘well built’ changed to ‘well-built,’ “with well-built houses
and farm”
Page 391, ‘Giradot’ changed to ‘Girardot,’ “from Bogotá to Girardot”
Page 394, ‘corral’ changed to ‘coral,’ “yellow-white coral laid in”
Page 398, double quote inserted before ‘is,’ “he continues, “is at our
very doors”
Index M, ‘Medellén’ changed to ‘Medellín,’ “Medellín, Colombia, 397.”
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Through South America" ***
Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.