Sunday, April 13, 2014

TOPICS IN THE TROPICS (Part Two)



The Cortland News, Friday, March 16, 1883.
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:


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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