COLUMBIA SINCE THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY.

Otago Witness, Issue 1892, 15 May 1890, Page 35

COLUMBIA SINCE THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY.

BARBANQUILLA.

Although distant from New York scarcely 2000 miles, this northernmost republic of the Southern Continent is less known to the world than the heart of Africa, and its three-hundred-year-old capital is almost as difficult of access. Barranquilla is by all odds the most modern town in Columbia — unless it may be Aspinwall — having many handsome houses and a considerable foreign colony. Some of the principal merchants of the Republic live here, most of them Germans, who maintain considerable style and entertain with generous hospitality, although living iB uncommonly high. Commanding as it does the only outlet from the interior, this New York of the Caribbean Coast is of no small consequence from a military as well as from a commercial standpoint, and a considerable garrison is maintained here.

THE GREAT VALLEY of the Magdalena, extending from the Caribbean Coast to the equator, varies in width from 100 to 150 miles, narrowing to a point as it nears the confines of Ecuador. It embraces a region of inexhaustible resources, much of it overgrown with primeval forests, among whose gigantic growths may be found a 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 mid-winter time of year but a continuous swamp on either side. The river itself, directly at the mouth, is fully a mile and ahalf wide, and its lowei valley is one vast alluvial plain, which, like the Nile region, is subject to periodical overflow. For 300 miles the most magnificent grazing lands stretch away on either side, which are covered 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 fertility, and the overflow might easily be controlled and turned into a blessing by a system of dykes similar to those in use on the Lower Mississippi. Those inclined to emigrate 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.

PLANTATIONS AND THEIR WORKERS.

Years ago there were profitable plantations, worked by negroes, all up and do«rn the middle valley ; but after the emancipation of slavery, which took place, I believe, in 1858, the estates rapidly went to ruin and were finally abandoned by their owners. It seems that the Spaniards and the Indians cannot endure hard, labour in this climate, and.

neither love nor lucre could induce the exslaves to do a stroke of it. To-day the once rich plantations show no traces of former cultivation, being completely overgrown with the riotous vegetation of the tropics, while the negroes themselves have relapsed into a state of semi-barbarism. It is the same old story, disastrously true, of every part of the world where

THE BANANA AND THE BLACK, MAN flourish spontaneously side by side. Since Nature has provided so generously for him and has no ambition to gratify, why should he not emulate the Scriptural example of the lilies, which toil not, neither do they spin ? The negroes of this section are becoming considerably mixed with Indian, Latin, and even Anglo-Saxon blood, so that blue eyes, fair skins, and even red wool is not uncommon among them. They lead a most happy-go-lucky existence, subsisting upon the fruits that grow wild in wonderful profusion and such accommodating fish as will nibble at a bit of bacon on a hook suspended from a branch of a tree, at whose other end lies a sleepy negro, flat on his face in the sun. During the long, slow days of voyaging up the Magdalena passengers may possess their souls in patience as best they can, with nothing to do but fight mosquitoes and keep as cool as circumstances will permit. The male passengers vary the monotony somewhat by pistol and rifle practice, using the alligators, that in some places literally line the banks, for targets. The alligator is by no means a frisky creature, as those who are acquainted with his habits may know, but is not to* be trusted even in his hours of apparent oblivion. With their noses to the river, their small eyes closed and great jaws half open, they seem to be sound asleep until the boat is close upon them, when, in the twinkling of an eye, the jaws shut with the snap of a mammoth rat-trap and they plunge into the water in slow pursuit. The boat is always followed by a school of them, probably in the hope of a meal, each seeming to say in the language of the nursery tale monster :

Fee, fi, fo, fum I I imell the blood of an Englishman, And, dead or alive, I will have Borne.

What a rare field is this for the alligator hunter 1 Considering the value of the skins and the enormous demand for them in the manufacture of shoes, satchels, &c, the wonder grows why some thrifty Yankee has not bethought himself that fortunes lie in the exhaustless crop.

NEGROES AND THEIR DRESS.

Two or three times a day we stop at some little village for freight and fuel, where half-naked negroes come on board, selling strangely carved spoons and bottles made of long-necked gourds, flowers, fruits, chickens, eggs, &c. The women seem to do all the •business in these places and to carry all the burdens, the men being simply ornamental. The universal dress of the latter consists of nothing but a pair of breeches, striped red and white, reaching to the knee, leaving the wearer bare above and below, •while the women perambulate in low-necked, sleeveles, short and scanty gowns of purple calico. Sometimes we get off and enjoy a ramble, always returning laden with strange flowers, rare butterflies, and other curiosities. However lovely these riverside hamlets may appear from afar, their bamboo walls and thatched roofs shaded by cocoa palms and broad-leaved bananas, a nearer approach discloses filth and squalor, in the midst of which black pigs and variously coloured babies roll about together. — Fannie B. Wabd, in the San Francisco Bulletin.