TOPICS IN THE TROPICS.
Letter from D. Eugene Smith.
Carthagena, U. S. of Columbia, Feb. 5, 1883.
THE CITY—ITS PEOPLE—THE CARNIVAL.
I could not have selected a more favorable time
for visiting Carthagena than this, for during the past week the Carnival has
joined with the great local fete of La Candelaria, and the city has been
celebrating as only southern Romanist towns can. Every one has laid aside work,
and has enjoyed a prolonged holiday. Carthagena itself, however, aside from its
fetes and social enjoyments, is a curious place.
Although the second port of entry of
Columbia, it has come but little under the influence of the English speaking
world, and so is much more antique, in all its ways, than those cities which
the tourist usually finds. It lies on some low islands which inclose a large
harbor, and as viewed from the mountain near, looks not unlike Venice, so do the
narrow inlets mingle with the walls and buildings. I have heard that Carthagena
is the oldest Spanish city in the new world; but however that maybe, it has a
very interesting history. It has been the scene of many a battle with the buccaneers who have made the “Spanish
Main" renowned. Indeed, so often did these freebooters visit the city, it
became the best fortified lowland town in the world, and the defenses, now mostly
in ruins, form an interesting study. A modern naval squadron could take the
city in a few hours, at most; yet at one time these walls effectually resisted
Drake with all his English fleet.
The
general appearance of the town, after one enters through the formidable gateway,
is decidedly Spanish. It resembles some out-of-the-way place in southern
France, or in Italy, or, of course, on the Spanish peninsula. The streets are
narrow, crooked, overhung with balconies, unpaved, and with seldom a sidewalk.
The houses are uniformly plastered without, whitewashed, and lighted through
the usual heavy green blinds. Why, in the torrid zone, where the streets are
made of dazzling sand, and where all ideas of comfort direct that the sun
should be obscured, the houses should always be, painted a glaring white, which
nearly doubles the heat for the pedestrian, is a question for a philosopher. I
have never been able to solve it.
The
social life of Columbia is repulsive to an American. Every thing is the opposite of what we would have it. The
interior of the houses is quite attractive, in spite of their crudity. The rooms are large
and very cool, being paved with tiles, and having walls of whitewashed stone.
Almost invariably the seats are rocking chairs, placed in two rows facing one
another; the rows extending from the principal balcony entrance towards the
center of the room. Here the women sit all day, and embroider with savage
crudeness, and clean their teeth! It is a fact that the Carthagenian women, even some of the most cultured
of the city, will sit for hours, in the presence of strangers or callers, and chew
what is known as “chew-stick" in Jamaica, which acts as a dentifrice. Save
for its green color, it looks like a lead-pencil in the mouth of a school girl.
The operation is successful, for they have beautiful teeth; but the propriety
of the thing is a question to a foreigner.
They
seem to have nothing whatever to do. There is little of what we call
"society" in Carthagena, and their home employment is meagre. To play
a few Spanish airs and an occasional piece of Gilbert and Sullivan's seems the
height of their accomplishments. Although I was fortunate in being allowed to
visit several representative houses, I saw not a half dozen
books and papers in all. They never read, or, if they do, it is only a translation
of a French novel. Cervantes and Lope de Vega are even less known to them than
Chaucer and Spencer are to Americans. I met a couple of New York women who had
married “wealthy Columbians," and it was a pitiable sight; it was like
visiting a life-state's-prisoner.
The
men are little better. They have no amusements, unless it be drinking rum. They
read no newspapers worth the name. They seem an impolitic, indolent race. As a
gentleman once told me, "What Columbia needs is to be sunk under the ocean
for a half hour; then put some men in it."
A Carthagenian
meal is a memorable experience. The highly spiced viands of France, the rich
food of Germany, the maccaroni of Italy, all are luxuries compared with the
food of Columbia. I speak not of the hotel fare, of which I know little, but of
the "home meals" of which I was allowed to partake. Here is a partial
bill of fare: pepper with a small piece of steak in it, or steak with a whole
pepper cruise on it; cake made of corn, looking like our boiled hominy when
cold, wholly unseasoned; fricasseed hen; rolls that would have made good
sinkers; onions cooked in vinegar, with another pound of pepper; potatoes
boiled and then roasted slightly—a luxury; butter that deserved a chain—-like
all that is shipped here; fried and roasted plantain found everywhere in the
tropics, and very good, if eaten with care; yams; peppery soup; cakes and pudding
made of—(query?). All washed down with rain water several months old, or with
claret that would make old Sts. Estaphe or Julian blush as red as their
beverages.
This
that I have described is a breakfast, taken at about-eleven o'clock. The dinner
is even worse, and is inflicted at five. After the European style, they have
coffee on rising, in place of our breakfast.
During
this, the fete week, the
people give themselves up to a prolonged and childish celebration. The rich open their villas,
some two miles from the city, to their friends, and have balls in the afternoon
and evening, with a grand dinner at the usual hour. The poor play roulette in
the streets, or dance the fandango, which loses much of its poetry when seen,
and (1 should say) all of it when experienced. The “boys" get intoxicated,
and insist on being hospitable, especially to "Un Americano;" but Spanish
invitations are seldom sincere, one finds.
The
great center of the fete is an old monastery on a mountain called
"La Popa," in the chapel of which is kept “Our Lady of the Candles"—Nuestra
Senora del la Candelaria, as they call her. To this shrine all
devout Romanists make a pilgrimage at least once during the week, and on bended
knees light a candle, which they carry in a procession about the court-yard.
Romanism can be very impressive; it does what Protestantism usually ignores—joins
solemnity of sight to solemnity of sound; extreme Protestantism seems to think that
the mind can be influenced to right only by what it hears, and so neglects the
effect of solemn sights, as our barnlike churches witness.
But
while Romish ceremony is often impressive, it also often overleaps the mark, as
on La Popa. I never saw a more ridiculous religious sight than the vesper
processional. Picture a priest, four censer swingers, two musicians, with a
cracked flute and a hemlock violin, a half dozen men
carrying the shrine of "Nuestra Senora," a generalissimo vainly
endeavoring to get the women with the candles in line, a band of discords in
the courtyard— the whole trying to form an impressive procession! It was too much for us, a semi-Catholic
Carthagenian and myself, so, having already examined the monastery, in which
hucksters were selling fruit, beer, cakes and rum, we mounted our mules and
descended the mountain, to witness the evening celebration.
D. E. S.
References:
1) Colombia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colombia
2) Cartagena: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartagena,_Colombia
2) Cartagena: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartagena,_Colombia
3) D. E. and A. P. Smith,
Chapter 15, Smith’s 1885 History of
Cortland County: ”Hon. A. P. Smith was born in East Virgil, April 9th, 1831. He was educated for
the profession of teaching, attending the Homer Academy and graduating from the
State Normal School at Albany in 1853. After teaching about a year in Marathon
he came to Cortland and began the study of law with Hon. Horatio Ballard, with
whom he remained until his admission to the bar. In the fall of that year he
was elected district attorney of the county, having been in the profession but
eight months. During the war Mr. Smith was connected with the 76th New York
Volunteers and subsequently wrote a history of that regiment, which has
attained a wide circulation among the soldiers of the State. In the fall of
1867 he was elected county judge and surrogate, being re-elected in 1871 and
again in 1877. He thus held that office for sixteen consecutive years, having
been at the time of his retirement longer on the county bench than any one in
the State. Judge Smith has had a very extensive law practice, and has now in
partnership with him his son, the firm being A. P. & D. E. Smith.”
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