Bogota, 1st March, 1825.[1]
My last letter to you was written from Popayan on the 1st of January. I informed you at that time of some of the circumstances that occurred to me in the way, and gave you some account of the peculiar situation of the country from Guayaquil to Quito. I shall now resume this description, which I was obliged to break off abruptly in my last. I remained about three weeks in Quito, experiencing the kindest attentions from many friends. The remembrance of my short stay in that place will always be agreeable. Thanks be to God for providing me friends in every quarter, and may they all be fully rewarded for all their kindness. I had several very interesting conversations with the Rector, and with some of the Professors of the College in that city, upon religious subjects; and one of the Professors who understands English begged me to let him have, at any price, two works I carried with me. These were Jones's Biblical Cyclopedia and Stewart's Philosophy of the Human Mind. He said that if I could not spare both works, he particularly wished for the first, as being in the line of his profession as a clergyman, and because he wished to examine the subject of religion, not merely from their own writers, but from ours also. I let him have both of them, with which he was much gratified. These gentlemen belonging to the College, whom I have just referred to, manifested an excellent and liberal spirit in regard to the improvements necessary in their mode of education in the seminary to which they belong. There are about 300 students in this college.
Nothing very material occurred in the journey from Quito until arriving at the province of Pastos. This province has been for a long time past in a very unsettled state. It has repeatedly raised the standard of rebellion against the existing Government, and has as often been reduced to subjection by the force of arms. At each time it has suffered severely, and at present it resembles a deserted country; the finest fields and pastures are met with, without a single head of cattle. This province is still but ill at rest, and may be said to be subdued and reduced, rather than tranquillized. A proof of that is to be found in the banditti which exist in it. At the time we passed, there were three or four of these parties in different places, and one of them consisted of one hundred men.
On arriving at Tulcan, which is about three days journey from the city of Pasto, the capital of the province, we had to take with us a guard of ten men. We passed from Tulcan to Pasto, without meeting with any enemy. But from what we heard afterwards, we may consider ourselves as having made a providential escape, as there was a party of 16 men seen in these quarters, a few days after we passed. In the city of Pasto, there is constantly kept a body of about a thousand men; some of these are employed in searching out and in persecuting these banditti; and some of them are employed in escorting the mail and travellers from that to the province of Popayan. The Governor of Pasto gave us an escort of forty men, and which was judged necessary from the general state of the province, and from a recent occurrence. This occurrence was the assault and murder of a merchant travelling from Popayan to Pasto, notwithstanding his having an escort of twelve men with him. The soldiers we brought with us behaved very well; we kept a good look out, and mounted our centinels every night, particularly in that spot where the murder was committed, and where we passed the night. Had we fallen in with any of these parties we would have been hardly put to it, and had we been worsted, we should certainly not have escaped with life. From this, however, and from every other danger on the journey, the Lord delivered us. For all these mercies, I feel my heart stirred up with gratitude and thanksgiving, and I feel a desire more than ever to devote my whole life to the service of God, and to the service of mankind.
I have already stated to you the unquiet state of the Province of Pastos, and its desolateness in consequence. The City of Pasto, the capital, affords also a melancholy proof of this desolation. Its population has been reduced from 15,000, to, perhaps, not more, than 4000, and in every street you meet with numbers of houses waste and uninhabited, with all the wood of the doors and windows torn out, and which was used by the military for firewood. You are not to consider this revolutionary spirit as extending throughout the country, but as confined exclusively to that province.
Upon my arriving at Popayan, I found there an English medical gentleman, of the name of Wallis, who has been upwards of twenty years in the country. Dr. Wallis showed me much kindness; he was very friendly to the circulation of the Scriptures, and aided me therein as much as he could. The number sold there was very small, considering the size of the place, on account of some little opposition from the Bishop, of which I have spoken in one of my letters to Mr. B. The topography of Popayan is worth noticing. It is situated in a very large plain, called the valley of Cauca. It is by far the largest plain in those quarters, the Cordilleras separating farther from each other there than in any other part, and the space between them, is, in general, even, or nearly so. It is watered by a beautiful river, called Cauca. The population in the whole valley is exceedingly small, considering its size and fertility. There is little doubt, I think, but it will one day become a place of great population and importance. Its climate is healthy and delightful, with an everlasting summer, and its productions, taking one part with another, include every thing, from wheat to the sugar-cane. There is no part of Colombia which I have yet seen, nor, perhaps, of America, in which I could wish to live in preference to Popayan.
No part of South America, I believe, has felt more severely the effects of the revolutionary war than the city of Popayan and its neighbourhood. The city was taken and retaken, I believe, fourteen times, and there is scarcely an individual in it who has not a long tale of woes to relate, either of himself or of his friends. It has now enjoyed peace for some time, and is beginning to regain its former state, but years of tranquility are necessary to restore it fully. There is a mint here, which coins annually about one million of dollars, of the gold of Choco, and from the mines of the province of Popayan. There is also coined there twenty thousand dollars of silver. The Director of the Mint is a gentleman of the name of Pombo, a literary man, and who has published two or three elementary works for schools, of considerable value.
From Popayan to Bogota there are two roads across the cordillera, but the one to the south is the best. This is called the Pass of Guanacos, and lies nearly east of Popayan; the other is called Quindiu, and lies to the north. The cold on the top of the mountain is generally pretty keen. The ascent from Popayan is gradual, but the descent on the other side is rapid, and you pass quickly from a very cold climate to a hot one. It is a frightful road in some places. You have frequently to ascend and descend very steep places on this side of the mountain, from the many deep glens made by the rivers which you pass. You may be said to be riding up stairs and down stairs in these places, and in several of them it is literally so. The mules are wonderfully steady, being accustomed to these roads, so that they very seldom slip. Some years ago an Italian doctor, passing that way, was so frightened with the going down these stairs, that he mounted his mule the reverse way, with his face backwards, and then leaned him down flat upon the mule. This attitude, together with his three-cocked hat and queue, afforded no little diversion to the muleteers who conducted him. This kind of road continues till you come to the town of La Plata, and after that you have a much better road, the greater part of which is in the great valley of the river Magdalena, and one of its contributaries.
The usual stages or places where you hire mules, on the way between Popayan and Bogota are La Plata, Neiva, and La Mesa. In most places the mules are scarce, on account of the great number of these animals destroyed by the war. At proper distances on the road there are houses called Tambos, which are the inns of the place. These houses consist of a roof erected upon poles, and without any walls, so that they afford shelter from the rain, but not from the wind and the cold. The town of La Plata is pleasantly situated on the banks of a river of the same name, on the first lowlands after getting out from the great mountains. There is a great deal of fertile land about the place, affording a great variety of productions, including the sugar-cane, but these fertile lands are almost all lying waste. The river La Plata, about ten miles below the town, joins the river Paez, a river on the banks of which we travelled a good deal, and across which we passed repeatedly.
The La Plata and the Paez are nearly of the same size, and make a fine stream when united. When these two streams unite, the whole goes by the name of Paez. After travelling two days on the banks of the Paez, we saw it fall into the Magdalena, and lose its name there.— From the town of La Plata the heat begins, and when you reach the Magdalena it is very great, and continues so all along the banks of the river. This is decidedly the hottest place I ever was in. The thermometer every day rose to 97f, and remained there two or three hours together. I was in a constant state of perspiration during the 24 hours, except, perhaps, from 2 o'clock in the morning till 8. This was the only respite, if respite it might be called. At Neiva we left the road and the mules, and took to the river, down which we went for some days. From Neiva to Honda the river is navigable in what are called balsas. The balsa consists of long poles or trunks of trees laid close to each other, with others laid over them cross-wise, and again, above this row, or above an additional one, is a kind of flooring, made of the bamboo flattened, out. The wood of which these balsas are made is exceedingly light, and very well adapted for the use.
In this vessel there is not a single nail used, nor a single rope. The poles are tied together with what are called bejucos, which is a species of plant that grows abundantly in these quarters, and resembles a rope in length and thickness. With these, which are of all sizes, the whole work of nails arid ropes is performed. Over the balsa is raised a roof, thatched with what the wood affords. This protects the luggage as well as the passengers from the rain. In this rude vessel we passed some days and some nights, sailing when we had light, and at night fastened by one of these ropes to a tree. The river was very shallow at the time we passed, so that we frequently got aground in the middle of the stream, at which time our boatmen, or bogas as they are called, had to jump into the water and push us along. There was another evil of a worse kind which we had to encounter, namely, the trunks of trees sunk deep in the bottom of the river, sometimes appearing above the water, and sometimes not. It requires a good deal of dexterity to steer among these at times, as the current perhaps draws you straight to them. Against one of these sunken trees we drove one day, and fortunately broke it with the blow. The shock pitched our bogas into the river in a moment, but they were immediately again on board. This blow, however, broke some of our wooden ropes, and we were under the necessity of fastening ourselves to a tree till we got repaired. The bogas got into the wood, and got, quite at hand, other ropes of a similar kind, cut them down, repaired the bark, and in an hour's time we were again at sea.
The general landing place for travellers for Bogota, is not so far down as Honda, but at a place called Fusagasuga. Here you leave the river, and begin to ascend the hills, and afterwards the mountains, and sensibly to change your climate from extreme heat to temperature, but a temperature which, under these circumstances, feels quite cold. On the last day's travel to this place, we began early in the morning to ascend the mountain by a steep and rugged road, closely wooded on both sides. We kept ascending till about noon, when we reached the top, and the wood disappeared. Here I expected we would have had, as usual, to descend again, but quite otherwise. On the top of this mountain is a large beautiful plain, and at the farther end of it stands the city of Bogota.
[1] See Popayan letter--1 January 1825. This letter was sent to the same person as the letter from Popayan. Letters on the Moral and Religious State of South America. London: James Nisbet, 1827, pp. 243-252. (BM)