PREFACE

‘Climas pasé, mudé constelaciones, golfos inavegables, navegando.’—Ercilla:La Araucana.

To read a book to which a friend has asked youto write a preface is an unusual—nay, even apedantic—thing to do. It is customary for apreface-monger to look contemptuously at theunopened bundle of his friend’s proofs, and thento sit down and overflow you his opinions uponthings created, and those which the creator hasleft in chaos. I plead guilty at once to eccentricity,which is worse than the sin of witchcraft,for witchcraft at one time may have exposedone to the chance of the stake; but eccentricityat all times has placed one outside the pale ofall right-thinking men. To wear a different hat,waistcoat, or collar, from those affected by theviApollos who perambulate our streets, to cut yourhair too short, to wear it by the twentieth fractionof an inch too long, is scandalum magnatum, andnot to be endured. So in confessing that I haveread ‘Down the Orinoco in a Canoe,’ not only inthe original Spanish in which it first appeared,but in its English dress, is to condemn myselfout of my own mouth, to be set down a pedant,perhaps a palterer with the truth, and at the besta man so wedded to old customs that I mightalmost be a Socialist.

It is undoubtedly a far cry to Bogotá. Personally,more by good fortune than by anyeffort of my own, I know with some degree ofcertainty where the place is, and that it is notbuilt upon the sea. My grandfather was calledupon to mediate between Bolivar and GeneralPaez, and I believe acquitted himself to thecomplete dissatisfaction of them both. Such isthe mediator’s meed.

The general public, of whom (or which) Iwish to speak with all respect, is generally,I take it, in the position of the AmericanviiSecretary of State to whom an office-seekercame with a request to be appointed the UnitedStates Vice-Consul for the town of Bogotá.The request was duly granted, and as thefuture Consul left the room the Secretaryturned to the author of this book, and said:‘Triany, where in thunder is Bogoter, anyway?’ Still, Bogotá to-day is, without doubt,the greatest literary centre south of Panama.Putting aside the floods of titubating versewhich, like a mental dysentery, afflict all membersof the Spanish-speaking race, in Bogotámore serious literary work is done during amonth than in the rest of the republics in ayear. The President himself, Don José ManuelMarroquin, during the intervals of peace—

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