Up The Orinoco And Down The Magdalena - Livres de poche

POLL O WING THE CONQ UISTADOTfES UP THE ORINOCO AND DOWN THE MAGDALENA BY H. J. MOZANS, A. M., Ph. D. ILLUSTRATED NKW YORK AND LONDON IX APPI. KTON AND COMPANY 1910 TO MY GKNIAL COMIACJNON DR VOYAGE BRAVE LOYAL c. FOREWORD The following pages contain the record of a journey made to islands and lands that border the Caribbean and to the less fre quented parts of Venezuela and Colombia. Thanks to our trade relations with the Antilles, and the number of meritorious books that have been written about them during the last few decades, our knowledge of the West Indies is fairly complete and satisfac tory. The same, however, cannot be said of the two extensive re publics just south of us. Outside of their capitals and a few of their coast towns, they are rarely visited, and as a consequence, the most erroneous ideas prevail regarding them. Vast regions in both republics are now less known than they were three centuries ago, while there are certain sections about which our knowledge is as limited as it is regarding the least explored portions of darkest Africa. This is not the place to account for the prevailing ignorance re garding the parts of the New Hemisphere that first claimed the attention of discoverers and explorers. Suffice it to state that, par adoxical as it may seem, it is, nevertheless, a fact. When we recollect that the lands in question were not only the first discovered but that they were also witnesses of the marvelous achievements of some of the most renowned of the conquistadores, our surprise becomes doubly great that our information respecting them is so meager and confined almost exclusively to those who make a special study of things South American. Never, perhaps, inthe history of our race was the spirit of ad venture so generally diffused as it was at the dawn of the sixteenth century just after the epoch-making discoveries of Columbus and his hardyfollowers. It was like the spirit that animated the Cru saders when they started on their long march to recover the Holy Sepulchre from the possession of the Moslem. It was, indeed, in many of its aspects, a revival of the age of chivalry. The Sea of Darkness had at last been successfully crossed. That ocean of legend and mystery with its enchanted islands inhabited by witches and gnomes and griffins had been explored. And that strange ix island of Satanaxio, the island of the hand of Satan where the Evil One was supposed once a day to thrust forth a gigantic hand from the ocean to grasp a number of the inhabitants was consigned to the limbo of mediaeval superstitions. A new world was revealed to the astonished Spaniards. Every animal, tree, plant seemed new to them and often entirely different from any thing the Old World could show. There was, too, a new race of men, with strange manners and customs men who told them of a Fountain of Youth, of regions of pearls and precious stones, of cities and palaces of gold in the lofty plateau and in the heart of the wilderness. Those who first came to the New World acted as if they were in a land of enchantment and were prepared to believe any tale, how ever preposterous, that appealed to their lust of gold or love of adventure. No enterprise was too difficult for them, no hardship too great. Neither trackless forests, nor miasmatic climates, nor ruthless savages could deter them from their quest of treasure, or quench their thirst for glory and emolument. Hencethose ex traordinary expeditions in search of El Dorado, that El Dorado which Quesada hoped to find in Cundinamarca, his brother in Casa nare, Orsua among the Omaguas on the Amazon, Philipp von Hut ten in the regions of the Meta and the Guaviarc, and Cesar and Belalcazar in the territories drained by the Cauca and the Mag la lena, in which were combined the extravagant performances of a Don Quixote with the feats of prowess of a Rodrigo Diaz...