The following pages contain the record of a journey made to islands and lands that border the Caribbean and to the less frequented 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 satisfactory. The same, however, cannot be said of the two extensive republics 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 regarding the parts of the New Hemisphere that first claimed the attention of discoverers and explorers. Suffice it to state that, paradoxical 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, in the history of our race was the spirit of adventure so generally diffused as it was at the dawn of the sixteenth century—just after the epoch-making discoveries of Columbus and his hardy followers. It was like the spirit that animated the Crusaders 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 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 mediÆval superstitions. A new world was revealed to the astonished Spaniards. Every animal, tree, plant seemed new to them and often entirely different from anything 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, however 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. Hence those extraordinary expeditions in search of El Dorado,—that El Dorado which Quesada hoped to find in Cundinamarca, his brother in Casanare, Orsua among the Omaguas on the Amazon, Philipp von Hutten in the regions of the Meta and the Guaviare, and Cesar and Belalcazar in the territories drained by the Cauca and the Magdalena,—in which were combined the extravagant performances of a Don Quixote with the feats of prowess of a Rodrigo Diaz. The spirit of knight-errantry seemed to revive and to bring with it an age of romance that for hardihood of enterprise and variety of incident surpassed any period that had preceded it. The feats of individual prowess were as brilliant as the success of Spanish arms was pronounced and far-reaching. It was an age of epics, of poetry in action.

Lord Macaulay, in his essay on Lord Clive, writes, “We have always thought it strange that, while the history of the Spanish empire in America is familiarly known to all the nations of Europe, the great actions of our countrymen in the East should, even among ourselves, excite little interest.”

One reason for the difference noted was the absence, in the English conquest of India, of those romantic and picturesque elements that so distinguished the achievements of the conquistadores in the New World, and which so fascinated Leo X, that he sat up all night to read the Decades of Peter Martyr. “The picturesque descriptions,” declares Theodore Irving, in his Conquest of Florida, “of steel-clad cavaliers with lance and helmet and prancing steed, glittering through the wildernesses of Florida, Georgia, Alabama and the prairies of the Far West, would seem to us fictions of romance, did they not come to us recorded in matter-of-fact narratives of contemporaries, and corroborated by minute and daily memoranda of eye-witnesses.”

The same can be said with even more truth of the conquistadores of the Spanish Main and of the daring adventurers who first penetrated the trackless forests and scaled the lofty mountains of Venezuela and New Granada. “Their minds,” as Fiske well observes, “were in a state like that of the heroes of the Arabian Nights who, if they only wander far enough through the dark forest or across the burning desert, are sure at length to come upon some enchanted palace whereof they may fairly hope, with the aid of some gracious Jinni, to become masters.” Thus it was that Cortes, unaided, however, by a gracious Jinni, became the master of the capital of the Aztecs, as Quesada and Pizarro became the masters of the lands and the treasures of the Muiscas and the Incas.

It is impossible for the student of early American history to cruise along the Spanish Main, or sail on the broad waters of the Orinoco, the Meta and the Magdalena, without harking back at every turn to the achievements of some of the early discoverers or conquistadores. Every island, every promontory, every river has been visited by them and, if endowed with speech, they could tell thrilling stories of daring adventure and brilliant exploit unsurpassed in the annals of chivalry and crusading valor. Every place he goes, he will find that he has been preceded by the Spaniard by three or four centuries, for everywhere he will find traces or traditions of his passage.

It matters not that the Spaniards were lured on by such ever-receding chimeras as Manoa, El Dorado and Lake Parime, that many other objects of their quest were as mythical as that of the Argonauts or as unattainable as the golden apples of the Hesperides. Their expeditions were not for these reasons wholly fruitless. Every one of them, whether for the purpose of exploration or conquest or colonization, contributed to our knowledge of the lands visited and of the tribes inhabiting them, many of whom have long since disappeared. And everywhere one finds towns founded by them, or places, mountains and rivers that still bear the names that were given them at the time of their discovery.

It was always our pleasure, during our wanderings in the tropics, to recall what the first explorers thought of the new lands visited by them while they were still under the spell of the novel and marvelous things that were ever claiming their rapt attention whithersoever they went. We loved to look upon the countries we visited as their first explorers had looked upon them. This we were able to do, for thanks to the old chroniclers, the wonderment of the discovery of the New World has been preserved, as in amber, in all its freshness, and that, too, for all time to come.

Comparatively few people realize how extensive is the literature, especially in Spanish, that relates to the period of the conquest and that immediately following it. And still fewer are aware of its intense interest and importance. In addition to the well-known classic works of Peter Martyr, Las Casas, Herrera, Oviedo, Garcilaso de la Vega, Cieza de Leon, Gomara, Acosta, and others scarcely less valuable, there are scores of similar annals that have for centuries lain in the archives of Spain and of the various countries of Latin-America which have but recently been published. Many of these—beyond price for the historian—were absolutely unknown until a few years ago, and are still awaiting the artistic pen of a Prescott or an Irving to transmute their contents in masterpieces of literature. It is safe to say that nowhere else will the man of letters find a more fertile and a less cultivated field to engage his talent.

Then there are the works, equally precious, of the early missionaries. Many of them are veritable mines of information respecting the manners and customs of the native inhabitants of the tropics, while not a few of them are the only sources extant of knowledge respecting many interesting Indian tribes that have long since become extinct. Among these deserving of special notice are the works of Simon, Gilli, Caulin, Rivero, Cassani, Gumilla and Piedrahita—not to mention others of lesser note—that treat specially of Venezuela and New Granada, and afford us the truest picture of the condition of these countries during their existence under Spanish domination. Humboldt frequently quotes them in his instructive Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, and usually with the generous approval and commendation which they so well deserve. To the humble and intelligent and often erudite missionaries of the tropics the illustrious German savant was indebted for much of the success that attended his explorations in the basin of the Orinoco and along the plateau of the Cordilleras.

Worthy of mention, too, in traversing countries where the traveler has not the benefit of a Murray or a Baedeker, are the numerous works of those explorers—German, English, French, American—who have followed in the footsteps of Humboldt and his compagnon de voyage, Bonpland, and who have cast a flood of light upon the fauna and flora of the countries visited, and supplemented the works of the early historians and missionaries by describing the condition of their inhabitants as it obtains to-day.

In the following pages the author has endeavored to give not only his own impressions of the lands he has visited but also, when the narrative permitted or required it, the impressions of others—conquistadores, missionaries and men of science—who have gone over the same grounds or discussed the same topics as constitute the subject-matter of this volume. The rapidly increasing interest of our people in all matters pertaining to South America, and the eagerness now manifested to see closer trade-relations established between the United States and the various republics of Latin America, seemed to justify this course. For the student, as well as for the general reader, it seemed to be desirable, if not necessary, to indicate, at least cursorily, by citations and footnotes, the character and extent of that large class of works, historical and scientific, that occupy so important a position in the annals of discovery and of material and intellectual progress.

In the words of Pliny, quoted on the title page, it has been the aim of the author “to give newness to old things, authority to new things, beauty to things out of use, fame to the obscure, favor to the hateful, credit to the doubtful, nature to all and all to nature.” A difficult task truly; how difficult no one can more fully recognize than the author himself. If he has failed in many of the things proposed, he cherishes the hope that the reader’s verdict will incline to that contained in the last sentence of the paragraph cited: “To such neverthelesse as can not attayne to all these, it is greatly commendable and magnificall to have attempted the same.”

The present book will be followed by a volume to be entitled: “Along the Andes and Down the Amazon.”

The Author.