The human mule train
QUESTION Did porters carry European travellers over the Andes?
The silleros (saddle-men) were Colombian porters who lugged foreign travellers and merchants over treacherous Andean C mo mopuilendt bay inJap ma es sBs le as ck.
They were distinct from cargueros, who carried cargo.
The experience was vividly described by German geographer Alexander Von humboldt. In 1801, he was carried over the Quindio Pass in western central Colombia with botanist Aime Bonpland. They had wanted to walk, but were prevented from doing so by the silleros.
The pass was a narrow river of mud with leg-breaking ditches that required feats of dexterity to cross. Von humboldt wrote that it was ‘like a ladder hung over an abyss at a 30-degree angle’.
he described the ingenious bamboo chair and leather straps across the sillero’s waist and head to distribute the weight of the passenger. Where the path was overgrown with thorny bushes, the silleros used stilts.
Von humboldt admired the ‘fine figures’ of the silleros, but deplored their trade: ‘It is really disgraceful for the human race to be debased by doing the work that ought to be performed by brutes.
‘I have been told that the Spaniards and natives mount these chairmen with as much sang-froid as if they were getting on the backs of mules, and some brutal wretches have not hesitated to spur the flanks of these unfortunate men when they fancied they were not going fast enough.’
It is said that the silleros sometimes took revenge on callous passengers — their rider would mysteriously disappear off the side of a cliff.
Von humboldt gave some practical advice on the difficulties of riding a sillero’s chair. You must ‘remain several hours motionless while leaning back’ and warned inexperienced riders against jumping off in panic if they thought the porter was about to stumble.
Silleros seldom lived beyond 40, ‘being carried off by the bursting of a blood vessel or by pulmonic complaints’.
The practice of using silleros continued until the 1870s, when roads were improved across the country.
PaulWilson,Padstow,Cornwall.
QUESTION Was Algeria once the world’s major wine producer?
In The 1930s, Algeria was the fourth biggest wine producer and the largest wine exporter.
In July 1830, a French expeditionary force conquered the city of Algiers. By 1847, almost all the territory of what is now Algeria had been subdued.
Colonists began to replant ancient Phoenician vineyards in the north of the country. The industry was given a boost in the 1860s when Phylloxera, a pest that feeds on the roots and leaves of grapevines, ravaged France’s vineyards.
Production in France collapsed from a peak of 85million hectolitres of wine in 1875 to only 23.5 million in 1889.
Up to 50,000 French families emigrated to Algeria and took control of 700,000 hectares of what became vineyards. This exodus coincided with the technological innovation of cold fermentation that enabled wine to be made in a warmer climate.
The results were dramatic. In 1885, Algeria produced one million hectolitres of wine; in 1915 ten million; and by 1930 20 million. Only France, Spain and Italy produced more. Almost all the Algerian wine was exported.
A combination of restored French harvests and new Algerian wines led to a dramatic decline in price.
Street protests and violent riots broke out. Producers from the prestigious regions of Bordeaux, Burgundy and Champagne lobbied the government to introduce quality regulations.
events came to a head in the summer of 1905 when the French Governor General of Algeria, Charles Jonnart, working with British merchant James Leakey, offered 50,000 hectolitres of Algerian wine on the London market. They claimed it was French, as ‘Algeria is now an integral part of France’.
French wine producers were enraged. A month later, a law was introduced requiring French wine labels to state their region of origin. Referred to as appellations, they were codified into the AOC system in 1935.
This curtailed the export of Algerian wine, but the death knell came with independence in 1962. The Muslim Algerian government had little interest in producing alcohol. Today, Algeria produces just 600,000 hectolitres of wine.
F.W.Barnes,Tenterden,Kent.
QUESTION Did the Russians offer to sell Kaliningrad to the Germans?
The Kaliningrad Oblast is a small parcel of land that was annexed by Stalin in 1946 to give Russians access to a warm water Baltic port. It doesn’t have a border with Russia, which is 300 miles to the east.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Kaliningrad found itself cut off from Russia by newly independent Belarus, Latvia and Lithuania.
It has been mooted that Soviet general Geli Batenin had suggested to the West German embassy in Moscow that it could acquire Kaliningrad.
This is not implausible, as during the early 1990s Russia made similar informal approaches to Finland regarding a possible sale of Russian-held Karelia.
A Der Spiegel newspaper article states that Joachim von Arnim, head of the political department at the German embassy in Moscow, immediately denied any interest. he was concerned that the offer was an effort to spike the delicate east-West German reunification process.
Germany didn’t need the cost of rebuilding another post-Soviet territory or the political headache of assimilating a non-German population.
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