It is probably known to all that New Granada is the most northern of the republics of South America; or it should rather be said that it is the state nearest to the isthmus, of which indeed it comprehends a considerable portion; the territory of the Gulf of Darien and the district of Panamá all being within the limits of New Granada.
It was, however, but the other day that New Granada formed only a part of the republic of Columbia, the republic of which Bolivar was the hero. As the inhabitants of Central America found it necessary to break up their state into different republics, so also did the people of Columbia. The heroes and patriots of Caracas and Quito could not consent to be governed from Bogotá; and therefore three states were formed out of one. They are New Granada, with its capital of Bogotá; Venezuela, with its capital of Caracas, lying exactly to the east of New Granada; and Ecuador—the state, that is, of Equator—lying to the south of New Granada, having its seaport at Guayaquil on the Pacific, with Quito, its chief city, exactly on the line.
The district of Columbia was one of the grandest appanages of the Spanish throne when the appanages of the Spanish throne were grand indeed. The town and port of Cartagena, on the Atlantic, were admirably fortified, as was also Panamá on the Pacific. Its interior cities were populous, flourishing, and, for that age, fairly civilized. Now the whole country has received the boon of Utopian freedom; and the mind loses itself in contemplating to what lowest pitch of human degradation the people will gradually fall.
Civilization here is retrograding. Men are becoming more ignorant than their fathers, are learning to read less, to know less, to have fewer aspirations of a high order; to care less for truth and justice, to have more and more of the contentment of a brute,—that contentment which comes from a full belly and untaxed sinews; or even from an empty belly, so long as the sinews be left idle.
To what this will tend a prophet in these days can hardly see; or rather none less than a prophet can pretend to see. That those lands which the Spaniards have occupied, and to a great extent made Spanish, should have no higher destiny than that which they have already accomplished, I can hardly bring myself to think. That their unlimited fertility and magnificent rivers should be given for nothing; that their power of producing all that man wants should be intended for no use, I cannot believe. At present, however, it would seem that Providence has abandoned it. It is making no progress. Land that was cultivated is receding from cultivation; cities that were populous are falling into ruins; and men are going back into animals, under the influence of unlimited liberty and universal suffrage.
In 1851 emancipation from slavery was finally established in New Granada; and so far, doubtless, a good deed was done. But it was established at the same time that every man, emancipated slave or other, let him be an industrial occupier of land, or idle occupier of nothing, should have an equal vote in electing presidents and members of the Federal Congress, and members of the Congress of the different states; that, in short, all men should be equal for all state purposes. And the result, as may be supposed, is not gratifying. As far as I am able to judge, a negro has not generally those gifts of God which enable one man to exercise rule and masterdom over his fellow-men. I myself should object strongly to be represented, say in the city of London, by any black man that I ever saw. "The unfortunate nigger gone masterless," whom Carlyle so tenderly commiserates, has not strong ideas of the duties even of self-government, much less of the government of others. Universal suffrage in such hands can hardly lead to good results. Let him at any rate have first saved some sixty pounds in a savings-bank, or made himself undoubted owner—an easy thing in New Granada—of a forty-shilling freehold!
Not that pure-blooded negroes are common through the whole of New Granada. At Panamá and the adjacent districts they are so; but in the other parts of the republic they are, I believe, few in number. At Santa Martha, where I first landed, I saw few, if any. And yet the trace of the negroes, the woolly hair and flat nose, were common enough, mixed always with Indian blood, and of course to a great extent with Spanish blood also.
This Santa Martha is a wretched village—a city it is there called—at which we, with intense cruelty, maintain a British Consul, and a British post-office. There is a cathedral there of the old Spanish order, with the choir removed from the altar down towards the western door; and there is, I was informed, a bishop. But neither bishop nor cathedral were in any way remarkable. There is there a governor of the province, some small tradesman, who seemed to exercise very few governing functions. It may almost be said that no trade exists in the place, which seemed indeed to be nearly dead. A few black or nearly black children run about the streets in a state almost of nudity; and there are shops, from the extremities of which, as I was told, crinoline and hats laden with bugles may be extracted.
"Every one of my predecessors here died of fever," said the Consul to me, in a tone of triumph. What could a man say to him on so terribly mortal a subject? "And my wife has been down in fever thirteen times!" Heavens, what a life! That is, as long as it is life.
I rode some four or five miles into the country to visit the house in which Bolivar died. It is a deserted little country villa or chateau, called San Pedro, standing in a farm-yard, and now containing no other furniture than a marble bust of the Dictator, with a few wretchedly coloured French prints with cracked glass plates. The bust is not a bad one, and seems to have a solemn and sad meaning in its melancholy face, standing there in its solitary niche in the very room in which the would-be liberator died.
For Bolivar had grand ideas of freedom, though doubtless he had grand ideas also of personal power and pre-eminence; as has been the case with most of those who have moved or professed to move in the vanguard of liberty. To free mankind from all injurious thraldom is the aspiration of such men; but who ever thought that obedience to himself was a thraldom that could be injurious?
And here in this house, on the 17th December, 1830, Bolivar died, broken-hearted, owing his shelter to charity, and relieved in his last wants by the hands of strangers to his country. When the breath was out of him and he was well dead, so that on such a matter he himself could probably have no strong wish in any direction, they took away his body, of course with all honour, to the district that gave him birth, and that could afford to be proud of him now that he was dead;—into Venezuela and reburied him at Caracas. But dying poverty and funeral honours have been the fate of great men in other countries besides Columbia.
"And why did you come to visit such a region as this?" asked Bolivar, when dying, of a Frenchman to whom in his last days he was indebted for much. "For freedom," said the Frenchman. "For freedom!" said Bolivar. "Then let me tell you that you have missed your mark altogether; you could hardly have turned in a worse direction."
Our ride from Santa Martha to the house had been altogether between bushes, among which we saw but small signs of cultivation. Round the house I saw none. On my return I learnt that the place was the property of a rich man who possessed a large estate in its vicinity. "But will nothing grow there?" I asked. "Grow there! yes; anything would grow there. Some years since the whole district was covered with sugar-canes." But since the emancipation in 1851 it had become impossible to procure labour; men could not be got to work; and so bush had grown up, and the earth gave none of her increase; except indeed where half-caste Indians squatted here and there, and made provision grounds.
I then went on to Cartagena. This is a much better town than Santa Martha, though even this is in its decadence. It was once a flourishing city, great in commerce and strong in war. It was taken by the English, not however without signal reverses on our part, and by the special valour—so the story goes—of certain sailors who dragged a single gun to the summit of a high abrupt hill called the "Papa," which commands the town. If the thermometer stood in those days as high at Cartagena as it does now, pretty nearly through the whole of the year, those sailors ought to have had the Victoria cross. But these deeds were done long years ago, in the time of Drake and his followers; and Victoria crosses were then chiefly kept for the officers.
The harbour at Cartagena is singularly circumstanced. There are two entrances to it, one some ten miles from the city and the other close to it. This nearer aperture was blocked up by the Spaniards, who sank ships across the mouth; and it has never been used or usable since. The present entrance is very strongly fortified. The fortifications are still there, bristling down to the water's edge; or they would bristle, were it not that all the guns have been sold for the value of the brass metal.
Cartagena was hotter even than Santa Martha; but the place is by no means so desolate and death-like. The shops there are open to the streets, as shops are in other towns. Men and women may occasionally be seen about the square; and there is a trade,—in poultry if in nothing else.
There is a cathedral here also, and I presume a bishop. The former is built after the Spanish fashion, and boasts a so-called handsome, large, marble pulpit. That it is large and marble, I confess; but I venture to question its claims to the other epithet. There are pictures also in the cathedral; of spirits in a state of torture certainly; and if I rightly remember of beatified spirits also. But in such pictures the agonies of the damned always excite more attention and a keener remembrance than the ecstasies of the blest. I cannot say that the artist had come up either to the spirit of Fra Angelico, or to the strength of Orcagna.
At Cartagena I encountered a family of native ladies and gentlemen, who were journeying from Bogotá to Peru. Looking at the map, one would say that the route from Bogotá to Buena-ventura on the Pacific was both easy and short. The distance as the crow flies—the condor I should perhaps more properly say—would not be much over two hundred miles. And yet this family, of whom one was an old woman, had come down to Cartagena, having been twenty days on the road, having from thence a long sea journey to the isthmus, thence the passage over it to Panamá, and then the journey down the Pacific! The fact of course is that there are no means of transit in the country except on certain tracks, very few in number; and that even on these all motion is very difficult. Bogotá is about three hundred and seventy miles from Cartagena, and the journey can hardly be made in less than fourteen days.
From Cartagena I went on to the isthmus; the Isthmus of Panamá, as it is called by all the world, though the American town of Aspinwall will gradually become the name best known in connexion with the passage between the two oceans.
This passage is now made by a railway which has been opened by an American company between the town of Aspinwall, or Colon, as it is called in England, and the city of Panamá. Colon is the local name for this place, which also bears the denomination of Navy Bay in the language of sailors. But our friends from Yankee-land like to carry things with a high hand, and to have a nomenclature of their own. Here, as their energy and their money and their habits are undoubtedly in the ascendant, they will probably be successful; and the place will be called Aspinwall in spite of the disgust of the New Granadians, and the propriety of the English, who choose to adhere to the names of the existing government of the country.
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, and Colon or Aspinwall will be equally vile however you may call it. It is a wretched, unhealthy, miserably situated but thriving little American town, created by and for the railway and the passenger traffic which comes here both from Southampton and New York. That from New York is of course immensely the greatest, for this is at present the main route to San Francisco and California.
I visited the place three times, for I passed over the isthmus on my way to Costa Rica, and on my return from that country I went again to Panamá, and of course back to Colon. I can say nothing in its favour. My only dealing there was with a washerwoman, and I wish I could place before my readers a picture of my linen in the condition in which it came back from that artist's hands. I confess that I sat down and shed bitter tears. In these localities there are but two luxuries of life, iced soda-water and clean shirts. And now I was debarred from any true enjoyment of the latter for more than a fortnight.
The Panamá railway is certainly a great fact, as men now-a-days say when anything of importance is accomplished. The necessity of some means of passing the isthmus, and the question as to the best means, has been debated since, I may say, the days of Cortes. Men have foreseen that it would become a necessity to the world that there should be some such transit, and every conceivable point of the isthmus has, at some period or by some nation, been selected as the best for the purpose. This railway is certainly the first that can be regarded as a properly organized means of travelling; and it may be doubted whether it will not remain as the best, if not the only permanent mode of transit.
Very great difficulty was experienced in erecting this line. In the first place, it was necessary that terms should be made with the government of the country through which the line should pass, and to effect this it was expedient to hold out great inducements. Among the chief of these is an understanding that the whole line shall become the absolute property of the New Granadian government when it shall have been opened for forty-nine years. But who can tell what government will prevail in New Granada in forty-nine years? It is not impossible that the whole district may then be an outlying territory belonging to the United States. At any rate, I should imagine that it is very far from the intention of the American company to adhere with rigid strictness to this part of the bargain. Who knows what may occur between this and the end of the century?
And when these terms were made there was great difficulty in obtaining labour. The road had to be cut through one continuous forest, and for the greater part of the way along the course of the Chagres river. Nothing could be more unhealthy than such work, and in consequence the men died very rapidly. The high rate of wages enticed many Irishmen here, but most of them found their graves amidst the works. Chinese were tried, but they were quite inefficacious for such labour, and when distressed had a habit of hanging themselves. The most useful men were to be got from the coast round Cartagena, but they were enticed thither only by very high pay.
The whole road lies through trees and bushes of thick tropical growth, and is in this way pretty and interesting. But there is nothing wonderful in the scenery, unless to one who has never before witnessed tropical forest scenery. The growth here is so quick that the strip of ground closely adjacent to the line, some twenty yards perhaps on each side, has to be cleared of timber and foliage every six months. If left for twelve months the whole would be covered with thick bushes, twelve feet high. At intervals of four and a half miles there are large wooden houses—pretty-looking houses they are, built with much taste,—in each of which a superintendent with a certain number of labourers resides. These men are supplied with provisions and all necessaries by the company. For there are no villages here in which workmen can live, no shops from which they can supply themselves, no labour which can be hired as it may be wanted.
From this it may be imagined that the line is maintained at a great cost. But, nevertheless, it already pays a dividend of twelve and a half per cent. So much at least is acknowledged; but those who pretend to understand the matter declare that the real profit accruing to the shareholders is hardly less than five-and-twenty per cent. The sum charged for the passage is extremely high, being twenty-five dollars, or five pounds for a single ticket. The distance is under fifty miles. And there is no class but the one. Everybody passing over the isthmus, if he pay his fare, must pay twenty-five dollars. Steerage passengers from New York to San Francisco are at present booked through for fifty dollars. This includes their food on the two sea voyages, which are on an average of about eleven days each. And yet out of this fifty dollars twenty-five are paid to the railway for this conveyance over fifty miles! The charge for luggage, too, is commensurately high. The ordinary kit of a travelling Englishman—a portmanteau, bag, desk, and hat-box—would cost two pounds ten shillings over and above his own fare.
But at the same time, nothing can be more liberal than the general management of the line. On passengers journeying from New York to California, or from Southampton to Chili and Peru, their demand no doubt is very high. But to men of all classes, merely travelling from Aspinwall to Panamá for pleasure—or, apparently, on business, if travelling only between those two places,—free tickets are given almost without restriction. One train goes each way daily, and as a rule most of the passengers are carried free, except on those days when packets have arrived at either terminus. On my first passage over I paid my fare, for I went across with other passengers out of the mail packet. But on my return the superintendent not only gave me a ticket, but asked me whether I wanted others for any friends. The line is a single line throughout.
Panamá has doubtless become a place of importance to Englishmen and Americans, and its name is very familiar to our ears. But nevertheless it is a place whose glory has passed away. It was a large Spanish town, strongly fortified, with some thirty thousand inhabitants. Now its fortifications are mostly gone, its churches are tumbling to the ground, its old houses have so tumbled, and its old Spanish population has vanished. It is still the chief city of a State, and a congress sits there. There is a governor and a judge, and there are elections; but were it not for the passengers of the isthmus there would soon be but little left of the city of Panamá.
Here the negro race abounds, and among the common people the negro traits are stronger and more marked than those either of the Indians or Spaniards. Of Spanish blood among the natives of the surrounding country there seems to be but little. The negroes here are of course free, free to vote for their own governors, and make their own laws; and consequently they are often very troublesome, the country people attacking those in the town, and so on. "And is justice ultimately done on the offenders?" I asked. "Well, sir; perhaps not justice. But some notice is taken; and the matter is smoothed over." Such was the answer.
There is a Spanish cathedral here also, in which I heard a very sweet-toned organ, and one magnificent tenor voice. The old church buildings still standing here are not without pretence, and are interesting from the dark tawny colour of the stone, if from no other cause. I should guess them to be some two centuries old. Their style in many respects resembles that which is so generally odious to an Englishman's eye and ear, under the title of Renaissance. It is probably an offshoot of that which is called Plateresque in the south of Spain.
During the whole time that I was at Panamá the thermometer stood at something above ninety. In Calcutta I believe it is often as high as one hundred and ten, so that I have no right to speak of the extreme heat. But, nevertheless, Panamá is supposed to be one of the hottest places in the western world; and I was assured, while there, that weather so continuously hot for the twenty-four hours had not been known during the last nine years. The rainy season should have commenced by this time—the early part of May. But it had not done so; and it appeared that when the rain is late, that is the hottest period of the whole year.
The heat made me uncomfortable, but never made me ill. I lost all pleasure in eating, and indeed in everything else. I used to feel a craving for my food, but no appetite when it came. I was lethargic, as though from repletion, when I did eat, and was always glad when my watch would allow me to go to bed. But yet I was never ill.
The country round the town is pretty, and very well adapted for riding. There are large open savanahs which stretch away for miles and miles, and which are kept as grazing-farms for cattle. These are not flat and plain, but are broken into undulations, and covered here and there with forest bushes. The horses here are taught to pace, that is, move with the two off legs together and then with the two near legs. The motion is exceedingly gentle, and well fitted for this hot climate, in which the rougher work of trotting would be almost too much for the energies of debilitated mankind. The same pace is common in Cuba, Costa Rica, and other Spanish countries in the west.
Off from Panamá, a few miles distant in the western ocean, there are various picturesque islands. On two of these are the dep?ts of two great steam-packet companies, that belonging to the Americans which carries on the trade to California, and an English company whose vessels run down the Pacific to Peru and Chili. I visited Toboga, in which are the head-quarters of the latter. Here I found a small English maritime colony, with a little town of their own, composed of captains, doctors, engineers, officers, artificers, and sailors, living together on the company's wages, and as regards the upper classes, at tables provided by the company. But I saw there no women of any description. I beg therefore to suggest to the company that their servants would probably be much more comfortable if the institution partook less of the monastic order.
If, as is probable, this becomes one of the high-roads to Australia, then another large ship company will have to fix its quarters here.