Note 207 — Chapter XII

The province of Antioquia, in New Granada, including the lower part of the course of the great river Cauca, is still the least known part of Spanish South America. Even now the account of this region given by Cieza de Leon in this and the following chapters, is the best that has been published. Humboldt was never there, nor is this country described in such modern books of travels as those of Captain Cochrane, Mollien, or Holton. Some of these travellers, as well as General Mosquera in his pamphlet, give accounts of Cartago, Cali, and other places in the upper part of the valley of the Cauca: but none of them visited or described the lower part of the course of that river nor the province of Antioquia. Besides that of Cieza de Leon, I only know of one account of this province, namely that written in 1809 by Don José Manuel Restrepo, the colleague of the illustrious Caldas, which was published in the “Semanario de la Nueva Granada,” pp. 194-228.

Restrepo says that the province of Antioquia, one of the richest and most fertile in New Granada, was entirely unknown to geographers up to the time when he wrote. No astronomical or other observation had ever been taken in it, and its rivers and other features were either not marked at all, or put down in false positions on the maps. The first map of Antioquia, a copy of which is in the map room of the Royal Geographical Society, was made by Restrepo in 1807. He triangulated the whole province, corrected his bearings by sun’s azimuths, took meridian altitudes of stars for his latitudes, and deeply regretted that he had no instruments to enable him to get his longitudes by observing the eclipses of Jupiter’s satellites. In the Semanario Restrepo gives a long and detailed geographical description of the valley of the Cauca.