Chapter XIV: The Rich Coast (4)

[248] The exact altitudes of the points named are as follows:--Cumbre Pass, between Chile and Argentina, 12,505 feet; Crucero Alto, between Arequipa and Lake Titicaca, 14,666 feet; Galera Tunnel, 15,665 feet. At Urbina, on the recently-completed railroad between Guayaquil and Quito, the height above sea level is 11,841 feet.

[249] In Colombia, the white race, composed of the descendants of the conquistadores, most of whom have intermarried with the indigenous tribes, constitutes fifty per cent of the population. The negroes compose thirty-five and the Indians fifteen per cent. In Venezuela the descendants of Europeans are in the minority, while in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia the indigenes make up nearly two-thirds of the inhabitants. La Republique de Colombie, p. 44, par Ricardo Nuñez et Henry Jalahay, Bruxelles, 1898.

[250] Albert Millican, Travels and Adventures of an Orchid Hunter, p. 118, London, 1891.

[251] The noted English botanist, Spruce, expresses a similar idea when he writes, "I like to look on plants as sentient beings, which live and enjoy their lives--which beautify the earth during life, and after death may adorn my herbarium."--Notes of a Botanist, and the Amazon and Andes, Chap. XXXIX, by Richard Spruce, London, 1908.

[252] The route followed by Quesada from the Magdalena to the plateau of Bogotá has remained impassable for horses since the time of the conquest. To one familiar with the difficulties of the way, it seems impossible that so small a body of soldiers should ever have been able to take sixty horses with them and bring them all, with a single exception, in safety to the plains above. It may be safely doubted if such a feat could be accomplished now. But "there were giants in those days."

[253] The fact that the Spaniards found potatoes here on their arrival, and the further fact that there was never any communication, so far as known, between New Granada and Chile before the conquest, would seem to indicate that the Solanum tuberosum may have been, contrary to the opinion of Humboldt and De Candolle, indigenous to Colombia.

[254] Op. cit., Dec. I, Book X.

[255] Quesada's infantry received as their share of the spoil, which had been secured, the equivalent of about $1,000. The cavalry received twice this amount.

[256] In the province of Sinu the amount of treasure in gold and jewels secured in one day amounted to $300,000. Not without reason, then, was this part of the New World designated by the early geographers, Castilla del Oro--Golden Castile.

[257] The Republic of Colombia, p. 59, London, 1906.

Nothing is farther from my mind than to call in question the veracity of distinguished naturalists and travelers regarding any statements they may have made concerning the vast numbers of animals and birds seen by them in the equinoctial regions of South America. But my experience proves at least one thing and that is that one may travel a long time in the very heart of the tropics, and see very little of its fauna, even in those parts in which it is generally supposed that there are always representatives of many kinds and that, too, in great numbers.

[258] The following sentence affords an interesting commentary on the occasional rarity of certain animals which are usually supposed to be always visible in large numbers, especially in the Magdalena.

"I have read much of the number of alligators on the Magdalena, but have not seen one."--The Journal of an Expedition Across Venezuela and Colombia, p. 264, 1906-7, by Hiram Bingham, New Haven. 1909.

Raleigh says he saw in Guiana thousands of these "vglie serpants" called Lagartos.

[259] Mr. R. L. Ditmars, Curator of Reptiles in the New York Zoological Park, in his interesting work, The Reptile Book, writes as follows of the crocodile: "The sight of a child will send a twelve-foot specimen rushing from its basking place for the water, and a man may even bathe in safety in rivers frequented by the species. The dangerous 'man-eating' crocodiles inhabit India and Africa." P. 91. Compare Schomburgk, in Raleigh's Discovery of Guiana, p. 57.

[260] If the slaughter of the alligator in the Gulf States continues for a few years longer, at the rate which has prevailed during the past few decades, the reptile will be exterminated. According to the Bulletin of the U. S. Fish Commission, XI, 1891, p. 343, it is estimated that 2,500,000 were killed in Florida between 1880 and 1894.

[261] Dec. II, Book 9.

[262] Dec. I, Book 9.

[263] The Ceroxylon andicola and the Kunthia montana grow at altitudes of from 6,000 to 9,000 feet, and, according to Humboldt, palms are found in the Paramo de Guanucos, 13,000 feet above sea level.

[264] Historia Naturalis Palmarum, Tom. I, p. 156, Lipsiæ. 1850.

[265] The countries here mentioned, especially Palestine, are now comparatively bare of palms.

[266] According to a legend, this was the first date-palm seen in Spain, and was planted by the calif himself, in front of his palace, as a souvenir of his early home.

[267] Quesada and his companions made their celebrated voyage from Guatiqui to the mouth of the river, a distance of nearly seven hundred miles, in twelve days. Considering that they had only rudely-constructed brigantines and dugouts, their trip, compared with ours made in a steamboat under the most favorable conditions in but little less than half the time, was truly remarkable.

[268] Paradiso, Canto XIII, 130 et 136-138.

[269] The amount of loot and tribute obtained by de Pointis was, according to some estimates, no less than forty million livres--an enormous sum for that period.

[270] W. Robertson, The History of America, Vol. II, p. 514, Philadelphia, 1812.

[271] History of the New World, pp. 124, 125, printed for the Hakluyt Society, London, 1857.

[272] Writings of Christopher Columbus, p. 202, edited by P. L. Ford, New York, 1892.

[273] The Discovery of America, Vol. II, p. 370.

[274] John Boyd Thacher declares that Las Casas was "the grandest figure, next to Columbus, appearing in the Drama of the New World. Against the purity of his life, no voice among all his enemies ever whispered a suggestion. If the Apostle Peter was a much better man, the story is told elsewhere than in his acts. If the Apostle Paul was braver, more zealous, more consecrated to the cause of humanity, which alone can ask for Apostleship, Las Casas was a consistent imitator. The Church has never passed a saint through the degree of canonization more worthy of this signal and everlasting honor than Bartolomé de las Casas, the Apostle of the Indies."--Christopher Columbus, His Life, His Work, His Remains, Vol. I, pp. 158 and 159, New York, 1903.

[275] The line here referred to is not the equator, but the tropical line. The phrase practically signified that European treaties did not bind within the tropics; that, although Spain might be at peace in the Old World, there could be no peace for her in the New.

[276] The History of the Buccaneers of America, Vol. I, p. 22, fourth edition, London, 1741.

Esquemeling, as the reader will observe, does not apply to his associates the euphemious term Buccaneers, but calls them "the Pyrates of America, which sort of men are not authorized by any sovereign prince. For the Kings of Spain having on several occasions sent their ambassadors to the Kings of England and France to complain of the molestations and troubles those pyrates often caused on the coasts of America, even in the calm of peace, it hath always been answered that such men did not commit those acts of hostility and pyracy as subjects to their Majesties, and therefore his Catholick Majesty might proceed against them as he should think fit. The King of France added that he had no fortress nor castle upon Hispaniola, neither did he receive a farthing of tribute from thence. And the King of England adjoined that he had never given any commission to those of Jamaica to commit hostilities against the subjects of his Catholick Majesty." Op. cit., p. 58, Vol. I.

[277] Here, says Sir Frederick Treves, in his charming work. The Cradle of the Deep, "In defiance of the ban of Spain, a strange company began to collect.... They came across the seas in obedience to no call; in ones and twos they came. Frenchmen, British, and Dutch, and, led by some herding instinct, they foregathered at this wild trysting-place. Some were mere dare-devil adventurers, others were wily seekers after fortune; the few were in flight from the grip of justice, the many had roamed away from the old sober world in search of freedom.

"There was a common tie that banded them together, the call of the wild and the hate of Spain. They formed no colony, nor settlement, but simply joined themselves together in a kind of jungle brotherhood. They found a leader as a pack of wolves finds theirs, not by choosing one to lead but by following the one who led." P. 250, London, 1908.

[278] For awhile the term Buccaneer was applied to the English, who had nothing to do with the bucan, as well as to the French adventurers. Subsequently the French sea-rovers became known as flibustiers, the French sailors' pronunciation of the word freebooter, while the English corsairs appropriated the name Buccaneers. As their occupations were the same--making war on the Spaniard--the two terms came eventually to be regarded as synonymous. All the freebooters, whether English, French, or Dutch, as an indication of their being banded against a common enemy, the Spaniards, assumed the name Brethren of the Coast. The members of this brotherhood must not be confounded with such cutthroats as Kidd, Bonnet, Avery and Thatch, who was known as Blackbeard and, for a while, terrorized the Atlantic Coast from the West Indies to New England.

[279] Thus, the French Flibustier, Pierre le Grand, with only a small boat and a crew of but twenty-eight men, surprised and captured the ship of the vice-admiral of the Spanish galleons as she was homeward bound with a rich cargo.

[280] When John Watling, the successor of the deposed Captain Edmund Cook, began his captaincy, he ordered all his crew to keep holy the Sabbath day. "With Edmund Cook down on the ballust in irons," writes Masefield, and William Cook talking of salvation in the galley, and old John Watling expounding the Gospel in the cabin, the galleon, 'The most Holy Trinity,' must have seemed a foretaste of the New Jerusalem. The fiddler ceased such prophane strophes as 'Abel Brown,' 'The Red-haired Man's Wife,' and 'Valentinian.' He tuned his devout strings to songs of Zion. Nay, the very boatswain could not pipe the cutter up but to a phrase of the Psalms." (On the Spanish Main, p. 263, London, 1906.)

[281] History of the Buccaneers of America, Chap. V.

[282] Op. cit., Vol. I, p. 115.

[283] Ibid., p. 117.

[284] Referring to this matter, George W. Thornsburg writes:--

"Anomalous beings, hunters by land and sea, scaring whole fleets with a few canoes, sacking cities with a few grenadiers, devastating every coast from California to Cape Horn, they needed only a common principle of union to have founded an aggressive republic as wealthy as Venice and as warlike as Carthage. One great mind and the New World had been their own."--The Monarchs of the Main, or Adventures of the Buccaneers, preface, p. 10, London, 1855.

[285] Thus Esquemeling tells us that Morgan's fleet, before his raid on Maracaibo, was, by order of the governor of Jamaica, strengthened by the addition of an English vessel of thirty-six guns. This was done to give the ruthless Buccaneer "greater courage to attempt mighty things." Op. cit., p. 147.

[286] The Spaniards accused Queen Elizabeth of aiding Drake, and it is known that she lent John Hawkins one of her ships. "The great Queen," as Mowbray Morris observes, "had a most convenient way of publically deprecating the riotous acts of her subjects, when she found it expedient to do so, and roundly encouraging them in private. She was fond of money, too, and ... had found a share in these ventures uncommonly remunerative. Unqueenly tricks, as they seem to us, and apt to confuse the law of nations, they were, as things went then, extremely useful to England."--Tales of the Spanish Main, p. 131, London, 1901.

Père Labat cleverly hits off the policy of France and England towards the Buccaneers in a single sentence, "On laissoit faire des Avanturiers, qu on pouvoit toujours desavouer, mais dont les succes pouvoient être utiles"--they connived at the actions of the Adventurers, which could always be disavowed, but whose successes might be of service.

[287] By-Ways of War, The Story of the Filibusters, p. 251, Boston, 1901.

[288] Hakluyt's Early Voyages, Vol. III, p. 594, London, 1810.

[289] The origin of the name Costa Rica is uncertain. It appears for the first time in an account of an expedition made by Martin Estete to the river San Juan in 1529, twenty-seven years after the discovery of the country by Columbus. It occurs subsequently in a document signed by the King of Spain, dated May 14, 1541. It is probable that the name was given in consequence of the rich mines that had been discovered near the town of Estrella, in Talamanca--from which it was inferred that all the interior of the country was equally rich in the precious metals--and not on account of the luxuriant vegetation that abounds, as is sometimes supposed. Cf. Diccionario Geografico de Costa Rica, p. 47, por Felix F. Noriega, San José, Costa Rica, 1904.

[290] "Alli vide una sepultura en el monte, grande como una casa y labrada."--Relaciones y Cartas de Colon, p. 375, Madrid, 1892.

[291] In his Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, Book IV, Chap. IX, he asserts that for a given area of land "The produce of bananas is to that of wheat as 133:1, and to that of potatoes as 44:1." These proportions, however, refer to the weights and not to the nutritive values of the products compared. The ratio of the nutritive value of bananas and wheat is, according to Humboldt, twenty-five to one in favor of bananas. Hence, he writes, "a European, newly arrived in the torrid zone is struck with nothing so much as the extreme smallness of the spots under cultivation round a cabin which contains a numerous family of Indians."

[292] Stanley, in In Darkest Africa, writes: "If only the virtues of banana flour were publicly known, it is not to be doubted but it would be largely consumed in Europe. For infants, persons of delicate digestion, dyspeptics, and those suffering from temporary derangement of the stomach, the flour properly prepared would be of universal demand. During my two attacks of gastritis a light gruel of this, mixed with milk, was the only matter that could be digested." Vol. II, pp. 261, 262, New York, 1890.

[293] Two Years in the French West Indies, p. 38, New York, 1890.

[294] Op. cit., pp. 140, 141.

[295] "Al famoso Matina
que a los hombres acoquina,
Y a las mulas desatina."

[296] According to observations made with the pluviometer, the amount of precipitation sometimes reaches nearly two and a half inches an hour.

[297] "La Banane," says Père Labat, "que les Espagnols appelent Plantain ... renferme une substance jaunatre de la consistence d'un fromage bien gras, sans aucune graines, mais seulment quelques fibres assez grosses qui semblent representer une espece de crucifix mal formé quand le fruit est coupé par son transvers. Les Espagnols du moins ceux a qui j'ai parlé, pretendent que c'est la le fruit defendu et que le premier homme vit en le mangeant le mystère de sa réparation par la croix. Il n'y a rien d'impossible la dedans; Adam pouvoit avoir meilleure vue que nous, ou la croix de ces bananes etoit mieux formée: quoiqu'il en soit il est certain que ce fruit ne se trouve seulement dans l'Amérique, mais encore dans l'Afrique, dans l'Asie, et sur tout aux environs de l'Eufrate ou on did qu'etoit le Paradis terrestre." Op. cit., Tom. I, Part II, p. 219.

[298] Andres Bello, the Venezuelan poet, beautifully expresses these facts in the following verses:--

"Y para ti el banano,
Desmaya el peso de su dulce carga.
El banano, primero
De cuantos concedio bellos presentes
Providencia a las gentes
Del Ecuador feliz con mano larga;
No ya de humanas artes obligado
El premio rinde opimo;
No es á la podera, no al arado,
Deudor de su racemo.
Escasa industria bastale cual puede
Robar á sus fatigas mano esclara;
Crece veloz, y cuando exhausta acaba,
Adulta prole en torno le sucede.
Silva a la Agricultura en la Zona Torrida."

[299] Jerusalem Delivered, Canto XVI.

[300] Josefinos--feminine Josefinas--is the name given the denizens of San José. In Central America, Costaricans generally are known as Ticos, while the people of Nicaragua are called Nicos or Pinolios, and those of Guatemala and Honduras Chopines and Guanacos respectively.

[301] Compare this with the peculiar belief of the South American Indians, alluded to in Chap. IX, regarding the cry of a lost soul.

[302] Veragua has a special interest for Americans, as "the only thread of glory still held in the hands of the family of Columbus" leads back to this narrow strip of territory on the western shores of the Caribbean. The present representative of this name in Spain is Don Cristobal Colon, Duke of Veragua. His full title is Duke of Veragua and Vega, Marquis of Jamaica, Admiral and High Steward of the Indies. The grandson of the discoverer of America, Don Luis Colon, was the third Admiral and Viceroy of the Indies, the last of which titles he relinquished for that of first Duke of Veragua and Vega.

[303] "Whatever he may have thought, or said he thought, when he was at Cuba, on the second voyage; whatever he thought, or said he thought, when in a half-crazed condition in the island of Jamaica, he now knew he really had discovered continental land, and that it was separated from Catigara, or the land of the east, by a goodly stretch of another sea."

"And it is pleasant to think that such a view is consistent with the nautical, geographical and astronomical knowledge of the great Discoverer."--Thatcher, Christopher Columbus, Vol. II. pp. 593 and 621.