A striking aspect to Duane’s
journey is the relatively comfortable conditions he enjoyed
while undertaking it. Generally he followed the Caminos
Reales road system that had been developed by the
Spaniards centuries earlier. He had prepared well for the
trip, and brought with him a large number of letters of
introduction to people he was to meet along the route. His
record of support for the independence struggle opened many
doors and ensured that his venture went off without the major
disasters one might have feared in such an arduous undertaking
in South America during the 1820s. He encounters no major
difficulties until page 240 of the book, and even then it is
not a critical problem, merely an uncooperative alcalde
(mayor) who had to be coaxed into providing food and shelter
for the Duane party. On the matter of food, on no occasion
during his trip did Duane go hungry, as he tells it, and very
often he was provided with lavish cuisine:
A spacious table was soon covered
with a fine damask cloth, and salvers of the most delicious
fruit, light wines and a service of chocolate with hot rolls
of as good a quality and as well made and baked as we could
have had in Philadelphia. Eggs and butter and sweetmeats and a
handsome case of liqueurs covered the board [...] our
appetites were good, and our host and hostess perfectly
delightful, and appeared to enjoy our familiarity without
reserve.
Similarly sumptuous preparations
were made for the following day’s trek:
We took the opportunity to lay up
in some baskets, arepa bread, rice, sweet bananas, some
raspadura or cakes of sugar, bottles of fresh milk, a small
basket of limes, plenty of young onions, a dozen live fowls,
and closing our evening with chocolate and arepas we were in
our hammocks before nine o’clock.
In Bogotá Duane met John Devereux,
the organiser and rear commander of the Irish Legion that
fought with Bolívar. Devereux introduced Duane to one of the
monks in Bogotá’s Franciscan monastery. Duane was 'not a little
surprised to be accosted in the English language, ornamented
with a very genteel brogue.' He met with this 'Irish
friar' on a number of occasions; a somewhat unlikely pair. The
principal topic of their conversations appears to have been
the monk’s lamenting of the bad effects on society and morals
of the recent revolution.
In Valencia, Venezuela Duane fell
down a staircase and was attended to by an Irish doctor,
William Murphy of Sligo, a Surgeon in the Republican Army. In
Duane’s words: 'as a
Catholic and a man of talents, his own country was the last in
which he could expect to prosper. Colombia presented to him a
field where his qualifications and virtues promised to place
him on equal terms with other men of virtue and worth.'
Dr. Murphy is mentioned in the work of Eric Lambert,
notwithstanding that he gives his first name as Richard.
According to Lambert, Murphy stayed on in Puerto Cabello,
Venezuela, where he offered his services to the city's poor
and had a statue erected in his honour at the Hospital de la
Caridad. [4] Incidentally, Murphy was not the only Irish
doctor whom Duane encountered; he mentions another Sligo
native, Dr. Mullery.
At a place called Serinza Duane
came across Colonel Lyster, who, like John Devereux, was from
County Wexford:
We had not advanced quite to the
town when we recognized some officers in the Colombian
uniform, dashing towards us in the desperate style of riding
so common in Colombia. It was Colonel Lyster and five other
officers of the Irish Legion, on their way to join the army
under Urdaneta [...Lyster ] had served in the British Army in
Spain, and with the experience of that war had acquired the
fluent use of the Castilian language. [...] I was gratified at
meeting him in the bosom of the Andes, as if we had both been
on the banks of the Barrow.
Duane was not a particularly
astute or subtle student of human nature, but there are
occasional fine descriptive vignettes, such as his portrait of
an old man selling milk in the mountains, or an extended
depiction of the tragic figure of a widow whose husband had
died in the Revolution. As has been noted in the case of his
enjoyment of fine food, Duane was something of a bon viveur.
At the time of his journey he was approaching his mid-sixties,
yet he maintained an eye for the many good-looking women he
encountered along his route. For example at Santa Rosa, a
place of 'industry,
activity and opulence', he came across a group of young
women by a stream:
The neatness of their silk shoes,
and the saucy breeze ascending from the adjacent river
displaying more of their silk stockings than they seemed to
intend, could not but attract the eye of the traveller
sauntering along, and he must be a stoic who could not afford
a smile on passing the pleasant disorder of the pretty
señoritas. And it would be a miracle if the young ladies did
not laugh too on seeing, by the stranger’s significant leer,
that their confusion was understood and noted.
There are few records of Duane
after his return to the United States, though we know that he
was appointed prothonotary (First Officer) of the Supreme
Court of Pennsylvania for the eastern district, an office
which he retained until his death in 1835. He remained loyal
to the country of his youth and family. In 1827, he was
involved in collecting money for a Robert Emmet memorial in
New York City and delivered the eulogy of the patriot. It is
worth mentioning that his stepson, Richard Bache, also seized
the opportunity to write about the trip, publishing his
account in 1827 (Bache 1827).
Conclusion
Despite the fact that Irish people
travelled and emigrated to the Americas in their millions,
travel writing by the Irish in the Western Hemisphere is
scanty. Travellers such as Theobald Wolfe Tone and Lord Edward
Fitzgerald left some - often acerbic - observations on what
they saw, while in the Irish language there is Mici
MacGabhann’s Rotha Mór an tSaoil, (The Big Wheel of
Life) set in the Western States and the Klondyke. In Hispanic
America, Pedro Alonso O'Crowley’s Idea compendiosa del
Reyno de Nueva España, published in the 1770s, is a
fascinating if fanciful description of Mexico, while one could
perhaps list William Bulfin’s Tales of the Pampas as
possessing elements of the travel literature genre. There are
undoubtedly a number of others, but to this small canon should
definitely be added William Duane’s Visit to Colombia.
Notes
[1] In addition to Nigel Little's
dissertation, see below the standard biography of Duane by Kim
Tousley Phillips.
[2] I am grateful to Prof. Kevin
Whelan for this information.
[3] See the full title below.
[4] The late Brian McGinn shared
my interest in Duane and provided me with these details on Dr.
Murphy. Que Descanse en Paz.
References
- Little, Nigel, Transoceanic
Radical: The Many Identities of William Duane. PhD thesis,
2003. Murdoch University, Australia.
- Phillips, Kim Tousley,
William Duane, Radical Journalist in the Age of Jefferson
(New York: Garland, 1989). See also Tousley's PhD thesis
William Duane, Revolutionary Editor, 1968. University of
California, Berkeley.
- Rosenfeld, Richard, American
Aurora: a democratic-republican returns: the suppressed
history of our nation’s beginnings and the heroic newspaper
that tried to report it (New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1997).
- O’Conway, Matthias James,
Hispano-Anglo grammar, containing the definitions, structure,
inflections, reference, arrangement, concord, government and
combination of the various classes of words in the Spanish
language (Philadelphia: Printed for Thomas Dobson, 1810).
- Duane, William, A Visit to
Colombia, in the Years 1822 & 1823, by Laguayra and Caracas,
over the Cordillera to Bogota, and Thence by the Magdalena to
Cartagena, by Col. Wm. Duane, of Philadelphia, printed by
Thomas H. Palmer, for the Author, 1826.
- Bache, Richard, Notes on
Colombia (Philadelphia: Carey & Lea, 1827).
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