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We ran close to Akromasi, or One-tree Point, upon whose flat dorsum linger the bush-grown ruins of a fort. It was named Elisa Cartago by its founders, the Portuguese, who were everywhere haunted by memories of the classics. He was misinformed by Colonel Starrenberg, a Dutch officer who canoed three days up the Bosom Prah River, a fact probably unknown to Commodore Commerell.
By the union of the two chains, the basin of the province of Popayan is close on the north of Cartago Viejo; and the river of Cauca, issuing from the plain of Buga, is forced, from the Salto de San Antonio, to La Boca del Espiritu Santo, to open its way across the mountains, along a course of from 40 to 50 leagues.
The Spanish governor had only thirty-six soldiers at his disposal and scarcely any firearms; but he gathered the inhabitants and some Indians, blocked the roads, laid ambuscades, and did all that his pitiful means permitted to hinder the progress of the invaders. The freebooters had designed to visit Cartago, the chief city of the province, and plunder it as they had plundered Granada.
Modyford writes of the exploit merely that "they landed 600 men at Cape Blanco, in the kingdom of Veragua, and marched 90 miles into that country to surprise its chief city, Cartago; but understanding that the inhabitants had carried away their wealth, returned to their ships without being challenged." The capture of Providence Island was Mansfield's last exploit.
General joy was therefore felt at the discovery of a Madonna by a peasant woman at Cartago. She carried it to her hut, but it was dissatisfied and ran away twice three times. The village priest then took it and put it under lock and key in his house. Again it ran away. It was carried to church in procession, and it ran away again.
We were, of course, anxious not to stay an hour longer at Cartago than was necessary; and yet it might seem strange to the inhabitants that an Englishman, travelling for the sake of amusement, should not wish to remain a sufficient time in the town even to form a correct opinion of it. The posada was a wretched one, but there were few people in it.
It contains not only the "Giace Cartago," and the "appena i segni," &c., but the contrast of the pride with the mortality of man, and, above all, the "dying" of the cities, which is the finest thing in the stanza of its imitator. " Passan le signorie, passano i regni;"
The live-stock industry is also a large one, and the animals seen on the high grassy plains are well grown and apparently well bred enough. I visited Cartago, a city which soon afterwards was destroyed by an earthquake. On the railroad trip up to and back from the capital we passed through lovely and romantic scenery, high hills, deep ravines and virgin tropical forest.
Having all my life lived in the high regions of New Granada, I was not prepared for the perfectly tropical scenery I now for the first time beheld. I remember one spot by the side of the Cauca, just before we reached Cartago. The sepos, or rope-like vines, hung from the lofty branches of the trees, and beautifully-coloured parasitical plants were suspended in the air.
MR. BARRAUD. "Along this coast many of the inhabitants subsist as fishermen; and the Indians of Cartago have a singular method of catching wild-fowl, which may here be noticed: They leave calabashes continually floating on the water that the birds may be accustomed to the sight of them.
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