Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1890-02-22


well that eternal vigilance is the price of
peace, and that the spirit of revolution,
born in the blood and bred in the bone of
these inconstant people, is not dead, but
sleepeth.
Unlike most South American ports, Bar
ranquilla has an excellent wharf. Several
steamship companies are running vessels
on the Magdalena, two Of them, l believe,
operated by United States capital. The
principal line, however, is German, with
half dozen or more small steamers, vary
ing form 80 to 200 tons. During the
last political upheaval all the river boats
were seized by the insurgents and those not
tied up or destroyed were metamorphosed
into
EFFECTIVE MEN-oF-wAR
By simply covering their sides with CORFU
gated iron, mounting small cannon upon
the decks and filling the cabins with sharp
shooters.
The great river itself is natural curios-
ity, traversing the whole country from
south to north, draining an enormous area
of mountains covered with perpetual snow
and forming the sole outlet for several
Colombian States. Its water is as muddy
as the Missouri and as swift as the Missis-
sippi, which it greatly resembles. So
strong is the yellow tide and SO full of sed-
iment that it will not mix readily with
the salt water of the sea, but can be dis
tinctly traced for many miles. In some
places it is scarcely hundred feet wide,
in others eight or ten miles. Its channel,
having never been well cleared, is full of
snags, sand-bars and floating logs, making
the pilots position by no means sinecure.
The boats are mostly built like those in
use on the Ohio river, with paddle wheel
in the rear, and draw only foot or two of
water even when laden to their utmost
capacity, as otherwise they could never
get over the sand-bars. During the rainy
season the swollen current is so swift and
strong that progress Is necessarily very
slow; but when the moon is bright the
boats are kept in motion both night and
day. At other times they can run only by
daylight and must ''tie up" every night.
They generally run aground few times
during every trip, and then it requires
from two days to week before they can
be pulled off and set in motion again, thus
rendering the date of ones arrival at the
journeys end one of the most uncertain
things in this uncertain world.
If you wish to murder your worst enemy
by the most diabolical form of torture that
the imagination can conceive, just per-
suade him to make trip up the Magda-
lena river at the hight of the mosquito
season sans netting, veil or other protec-
ton The locality is infested with
THE BIGGEST THAT EVER BUZzED,
And passengers must not fail to provide
themselves with everything attainable in
the way of offense and defense against
them. All the officers and deck-hands
wear thick wells over their faces, tied close
around the neck, and long buckskin gloves
both night and day; and yet, somehow,
the enemy seems to come off more or less
victorious. 1t is the fashion hereabouts to
tell mosquito stories of astonishing pro-
portions-much as the people around
Puget Sound brag of their mammoth
CLANS, and the Californians of their fruits,
but | tell you that the tallest tale can
hardly exceed the reality. Always bad
enough, at certain seasons when winds
blow strong from the iungles the mos
quitoes come in clouds that literally OBJ
scure the sky, and the sound of their hum
ming is like the noise of a sawmill.
Neither man nor beast can Withstand their
attacks, unprotected, and it is an actual
fact that cattle and horses are frequently
tormented to death by them. | am told
that not long ago a herd of valuable cat
tie, which were being imported from the
United States to a rancho up the river,
becoming perfectly frantic after week Of
untold agony, broke from their fastenings,
dashed overheard and were all drowned.
The long-nosed fat-bottomed little
steamer upon which we are passengers has
her engine and all the cargo above water,
on the first deck. Above these is the
saloon, with the cabins on either side, and
still above that story is the captains
cabin, surmounted by a steeple-like pilot
house. Directly in front of the saloon
are the tall, black chimneys, taller than
even the watch-tower, and in front OF
them is the flagstaff, from which float the
Colombian colors. All around the upper
deck are rows of benches, and away up
here is the best place to find what little air
may be stirring.
THE GREAT VALLEY
OF the Magdalena, extending from the
Caribbean coast to the equator, varies in
width from 100 to lao miles, narrowing to
a point as it nears the confines of Ecuador.
1t embraces a region of inexhaustible re-
sources, much Of it overgrown with prime
val forests, among whose gigantic growths
may be found great diversity of building
timber, besides the choicest cabinet and
dye woods, and a tropical profusion of gum
producing and medicinal plants
Going up from Barranquilla, for the first
200 miles one sees little, at this time of
year, but a continuous swamp on either
side. The river itself, directly at the
mouth, is fully mile and half wide, and
its lower valley is one vast alluvial plain,
which, like the Nile region, is subject to
periodical overflow. For three hundred
miles the most magnificent grazing lands
stretch away on either side, which are COW
cred with cattle during most of the year,
until Just before the floods that follow the
rainy season, when they are driven up into
the mountains. Wherever the land has
been cultivated it shows surprising fertil-
ity, and the overflow might easily be con-
trolled and turned into blessing, by a
system of dikes similar to those in use on
the lower Mississippi. Those inclined to
emignte need not wrestle for standing
room at Oklahoma among a multitude of
crazy squatters when here are vast tracts
of the richest, land in the world, to be had
for the asking.
Years ago there were profitable planta-
tions, worked by negroes, all up and down
the middle valley; but after the emanci-
patton of slavery, which took place, | be-
iieve in 1858, the estates rapidly went to
ruin and were finally abandoned by their
owners. 1t seems that the Spanirds AID
the Indians cannot endure hard labor in
this climate, and neither love nor lucre
could induce the ex-slaves to do stroke of
it. To-day the once rich plantations show
no traces Of former cultivation, being COM
pletely overgrown with the riotous yegeta-
ton Of the tropics; while the negroes
themselves have relapsed into state of
semi-barbarism. It is the same old story,