CARGUEROES, OR MAN-CARRIERS OF QUINDIU.

The mountain of Quindiu is considered as the most difficult passage in the Cordilleras of the Andes.

It is a thick uninhabited forest, which, in the finest season, cannot be traversed in less than ten or twelve days.

Not even a hut is to be seen, nor can any means of subsistence be found.

Travellers, at all times of the year, furnish themselves with a month's provision, since it often happens, that by the melting of the snows, and the sudden swell of the torrents, they find themselves so circumstanced, that they can descend neither on the side of Carthago, nor on that of Ibague.

The highest point of the road, the Garito del Paramo, is three thousand five hundred and five metres (eleven thousand, and five hundred feet) above the level of the sea.

As the foot of the mountain, towards the banks of the Cauca, is only nine hundred and sixty metres, (three thousand, one hundred and fifty feet high,) the climate there is in general mild and temperate.

The pathway, which forms the passage of the Cordilleras, is only three or four decimetres in breadth, (from a foot, to a foot and a half;) and has the appearance, in several places, of a gallery dug, and left open to the sky.

In this part of the Andes, as almost in every other, the rock is covered with a thick stratum of clay.

The streamlets, which flow down the mountains, have hollowed out gullies, six or seven metres deep, (from twenty, to twenty-three feet.) Along these crevices, which are full of mud, the traveller is forced to grope his passage, the darkness of which is increased by the thick vegetation that covers the opening above.

The oxen, which are the beasts of burden commonly made use of in this country, can scarcely force their way through these galleries, some of which are two thousand metres (two thousand, two hundred yards) in length; and if, perchance, the traveller meets them in one of these passages, he finds no means of avoiding them but by turning back, and climbing the earthen wall which borders the crevice, and keeping himself suspended, by laying hold of the roots which penetrate to this depth from the surface of the ground.

We traversed the mountain of Quindiu, in the month of October, 1801, on foot, followed by twelve oxen, which carried our collections and instruments, midst a deluge of rain, to which we were exposed, during the last three or four days, in our descent on the western side of the Cordilleras.

The road passes through a country full of bogs, and covered with bamboos.

Our shoes were so torn by the prickles, which shoot out from the roots of these gigantick gramina, that we were forced, like all other travellers who dislike being carried on men's backs, to go barefooted.

This circumstance, the continual humidity, the length of the passage, the muscular force required to tread in a thick and muddy clay, the necessity of fording deep torrents of icy water, render this journey extremely fatiguing; but however painful, it is accompanied, by none of those dangers with which the credulity of the people alarm travellers.

The road is narrow, but the places where it skirts precipices, are very rare.

As the oxen are accustomed to put their feet in the same tracks, they form small furrows, across the road, separated from each other, by narrow ridges of earth.

In very rainy seasons, these ridges are covered with water, which renders the traveller's step doubly uncertain, since he knows not whether he places his foot on the ridge, or in the furrow.

As few persons, in easy circumstances, travel on foot in these climates, through roads so difficult, during fifteen or twenty days together, they are carried by men in a chair tied to their back; for, in the present state of the passage of Quindiu, it would be impossible to go on mules.

They talk in this country, of going on a man's back, (andar en carguero,) as we mention going on horseback; no humiliating idea is annexed to the trade of the cargueroes; and the men who follow this occupation, are not Indians, but Mulattoes, and sometimes even whites.

It is often curious to hear these men, with scarcely any covering, and following a profession which we should consider so disgraceful, quarrelling in the midst of the forest, because one has refused the other, who pretends to have a whiter skin, the pompous title of don, or of su merced.

The usual load of a carguero, is six or seven arrobas, (about one hundred and eighty pounds;) those who are very strong, carry as much as nine arrobas, (about two hundred and fifty pounds.)

When we reflect on the enormous fatigue to which these miserable men are exposed, journeying eight or nine hours a day, over a mountainous country; when we know that their backs are sometimes as raw as those of beasts of burden, and that travellers have often the cruelty to leave them in the forest, when they are sick; that they earn by a journey from Ibague to Carthago, only twelve or fourteen piastres, (a sum equal in amount to as many dollars,) in a space of fifteen, and sometimes even twenty-five or thirty days; we are at a loss, to conceive how this employment of a carguero, one of the most painful which can be undertaken by man, is eagerly embraced by all the robust young men, who live at the foot of the mountains.

The taste for a wandering and vagabond life, the idea of a certain independence amidst forests, leads them to prefer this employment to the sedentary and monotonous labour of cities.

The passage of the mountain of Quindiu is not the only part of South America, which is traversed on the backs of men.

The whole of the province of Antioquia is surrounded by mountains so difficult to pass, that they who dislike intrusting themselves to the skill of a carrier, and who are not strong enough to travel on foot from Santa Fe de Antioquia to Bocca de Nares or Rio Samana, must relinquish all thoughts of leaving the country.

I was acquainted with an inhabitant of this province, so immensely bulky, that he had not met with more than two Mulattoes capable of carrying him; and it would have been impossible for him to return home, if these two carriers had died, while he was on the banks of the Magdalena, at Mompox or Honda.

The number of young men who undertake the employment of beasts of burden at Chaco, Ibague, and Medellin, is so considerable, that we sometimes met a file of fifty or sixty.

A few years ago, when a project was formed to make the passage from Nares to Antiquia passable for mules, the cargueroes presented formal remonstrances against mending the road, and the government was weak enough to yield to their clamours.

We may here observe, that a class of men near the mines of Mexico, have no other employment than that of carrying other men on their backs.

In these climates, the indolence of the whites is so great, that every director of a mine, has one or two Indians at his service, who are called his horses, (cavallitoes,) because, they are saddled every morning, and supported by a small cane, and bending forward, they carry their master from one part of the mine to another.

Among the cavallitoes or cargueroes, those who have a sure foot and step easy, are known and recommended to travellers.

It is distressing, to hear the qualities of man spoken of in terms, by which we are accustomed to denote the gait of mules and horses.

The persons who are carried in a chair by a carguero, must remain several hours motionless, and leaning backward; the least motion is sufficient to throw down the carrier; and his fall would be so much the more dangerous, as the carguero, too confident in his skill, chooses the most rapid declivities, or crosses a torrent on a narrow and slippery trunk of a tree.

These accidents are, however, rare, and those which happen, must be attributed to the imprudence of travellers, who frightened at a false step of the carguero, leap down from their chairs.

When the cargueroes reach Ibague, and prepare for their journey, they pluck in the neighbouring mountains, several hundred leaves of the vijao, a plant of the family of the bananas, which forms a genus approaching the thalia, and which must not be confounded with the heliconia bihai.

These leaves, which are membraneous and silky, like those of the Musa, are of an oval form, fifty-four centimetres (twenty inches) in length.

Their lower surface is a silvery white, and covered with a farinaceous substance, which falls off in scales.

This peculiar varnish enables them to resist the rain, during a long time.

In gathering these leaves, an incision is made in the middle rib, which is the continuation of the footstalk, and this serves as a hook, to suspend them when the moveable roof is formed.

On taking it down, they are spread out, and carefully rolled up in a cylindrical bundle.

It requires about a hundred weight of leaves (fifty killogrammes) to cover a hut, large enough to hold six or eight persons.

When the travellers reach a spot in the midst of the forest, where the ground is dry, and where they propose to pass the night, the cargueroes lop a few branches from the trees, with which they make a tent.

In a few minutes, the slight timber-work is divided by the stalks of some climbing plant, or threads of the agave, placed in parallel lines, three or four decimetres from each other.

The vijao leaves meanwhile have been unrolled, and are now spread over the above work, so as to cover each other, like tiles of a house.

These huts thus hastily built, are cool and commodious.

If, during the night the traveller feels the rain, he points out the spot where it enters, and a single leaf is sufficient to obviate the inconvenience.

We passed several days in the valley of Boquia under one of these leafy tents, which was perfectly dry amidst violent and incessant rains.

The mountain of Quindiu, is one of the richest spots in useful and interesting plants.

Here we found the palm-tree, (Ceroxylon andicola,) the trunk of which is covered with a vegetable wax, the Passiflora in trees, and the majestick Mutisia grandiflora, with flowers of a scarlet colour, sixteen centimetres, or six inches long.

Humboldt.