224 BIDING <>N MEN'S BACKS. 



and loins to travellers. They talked in this country of 

 going on a man's back, as we mention going on horse- 

 back. No humiliating idea was annexed to the trade of 

 porters ; and the men who followed that occupation were 



not Indians, but mulattoes, and sometimes even whites. 



It was curious to hear these men, with scarcely any 

 covering, quarrelling in the midst of a forest, because 

 one had refused the other, who pretended to have a 

 whiter skin, the pompous title of don, or of su merced. 

 The usual load of a porter was six or seven arrobas ; 

 those who were very strong carried as much as nine 

 arrobas. When we reflect on the enormous fatigue to 

 whicn these miserable men were exposed, journeying 

 eight or nine hours a day over a mountainous country ; 

 when we know, that their backs were sometimes as raw 

 as those of beasts of burden ; that travellers had often the 

 cruelty to leave them in the forests when they fell sick ; 

 that they earned by a journey from Ibague to Cartago, 

 only twelve or fourteen piasters in from fifteen to twenty- 

 five days ; we are at a loss to conceive how this employ- 

 ment of a porter was so eagerly embraced by all the 

 robust young men who lived at the foot of the moun- 

 tains. The taste for a wandering life, the idea of a cer- 

 tain independence amid forests, led them to prefer it to 

 the sedentary and monotonous labour of cities. The 

 passage of the mountain of Quindiu was not the only 

 part of South America which was traversed on the backs 

 of men. The whole of the province of Antioquia was 

 surrounded by mountains so difficult to pass, that those 

 who disliked entrusting themselves to the skill of a 

 bearer, and were not strong enough to travel on foot 

 from Santa Fe de Antioquia to Bocca de Nares or Rio 



