Whenever the several nations of the earth which have
achieved their deliverance from misrule and tyranny, shall point,
as they each may, to the fair women who have taken active part
in the cause of liberty, and by their smiles and services have
contributed in no measured degree to the great objects of national
defence and deliverance, it will be with a becoming and
just pride only that the Colombians shall point to their virgin
martyr, commonly known among them as La Pola, the Maid of
Bogota. With the history of their struggle for freedom her
story will always be intimately associated; her tragical fate,
due solely to the cause of her country, being linked with all the
touching interest of the most romantic adventure. Her spirit
seemed to be woven of the finest materials. She was gentle,
exquisitively sensitive, and capable of the most true and tender
attachments. Her mind was one of rarest endowments, touched
to the finest issues of eloquence, and gifted with all the powers
of the improvisatrice; while her courage and patriotism seem to
have been cast in those heroic moulds of antiquity from which
came the Cornelias and Deborahs of famous memory. Well
had it been for her country had the glorious model which she
bestowed upon her people been held in becoming homage by
the race with which her destiny was cast — a race masculine
only in exterior, and wanting wholly in that necessary strength
of soul which, rising to the due appreciation of the blessings of
national freedom, is equally prepared to make, for its attainment,
every necessary sacrifice of self. And yet our heroine was but
a child in years — a lovely, tender, feeble creature, scarcely
fifteen years of age. But the soul grows rapidly to maturity in
some countries, and, in the case of women, it is always great in
its youth, if greatness is ever destined to be its possession.

Doña Apolinaria Zalabariata — better known by the name
of La Pola — was a young girl, the daughter of a good family
of Bogota, who was distinguished at an early period, as well for
her great gifts of beauty as of intellect. She was but a child

[figure description] Page 037.[end figure description]

when Bolivar first commenced his struggles with the Spanish
authorities, with the ostensible object of freeing his country from
their oppressive tyrannies. It is not within our province to discuss
the merits of his pretensions as a deliverer, or his courage
and military skill as a hero. The judgment of the world and
of time has fairly set at rest those specious and hypocritical
claims, which, for a season, presumed to place him on the pedestal
with our Washington. We now know that he was not only
a very selfish, but a very ordinary man — not ordinary, perhaps,
in the sense of intellect, for that would be impossible in the case
of one who was so long able to maintain his eminent position,
and to succeed in his capricious progresses, in spite of inferior
means, and a singular deficiency of the heroic faculty. But his
ambition was the vulgar ambition, and, if possible, something
still inferior. It contemplated his personal wants alone; it
lacked all the elevation of purpose which is the great essential
of patriotism, and was wholly wanting in that magnanimity of
soul which delights in the sacrifice of self, whenever such sacrifice
promises the safety of the single great purpose which it
professes to accomplish.

But we are not now to consider Bolivar, the deliverer, as one
whose place in the pantheon has already been determined by
the unerring judgment of posterity. We are to behold him only
with those eyes in which he was seen by the devoted followers
to whom he brought, or appeared to bring, the deliverance for
which they yearned. It is with the eyes of the passionate
young girl, La Pola, the beautiful and gifted child, whose dream
of country perpetually craved the republican condition of ancient
Rome, in the days of its simplicity and virtue; it is with her
fancy and admiration that we are to crown the ideal Bolivar,
till we acknowledge him, as he appears to her, the Washington
of the Colombians, eager only to emulate the patriotism, and to
achieve like successes with his great model of the northern
confederacy.

Her feelings and opinions, with regard to the Liberator, were
those of her family. Her father was a resident of Bogota, a
man of large possessions and considerable intellectual acquirements.
He gradually passed from a secret admiration of Bolivar
to a warm sympathy with his progress, and an active support —

[figure description] Page 038.[end figure description]

so far as he dared, living in a city under immediate and despotic
Spanish rule — of all his objects. He followed with eager eyes
the fortunes of the chief, as they fluctuated between defeat and
victory in other provinces, waiting anxiously the moment when
the success and policy of the struggle should bring deliverance,
in turn, to the gates of Bogota. Without taking up arms himself,
he contributed secretly from his own resources to supplying
the coffers of Bolivar with treasure, even when his operations
were remote — and his daughter was the agent through whose
unsuspected ministry the money was conveyed to the several
emissaries who were commissioned to receive it. The duty was
equally delicate and dangerous, requiring great prudence and
circumspection; and the skill, address, and courage, with which
the child succeeded in the execution of her trusts, would furnish
a frequent lesson for older heads, and the sterner and the bolder
sex.

La Pola was but fourteen years old when she obtained her
first glimpse of the great man in whose cause she had already
been employed, and of whose deeds and distinctions she had
heard so much. By the language of the Spanish tyranny which
swayed with iron authority over her native city, she heard him
denounced and execrated as a rebel and marauder, for whom
an ignominious death was already decreed by the despotic viceroy.
This language, from such lips, was of itself calculated
to raise its object favorably in her enthusiastic sight. By the
patriots, whom she had been accustomed to love and venerate,
she heard the same name breathed always in whispers of hope
and affection, and fondly commended, with tearful blessings, to
the watchful care of Heaven.

She was soon to behold with her own eyes this individual
thus equally distinguished by hate and homage in her hearing.
Bolivar apprized his friends in Bogota that he should visit them
in secret. That province, ruled with a fearfully strong hand by
Zamano, the viceroy, had not yet ventured to declare itself for
the republic. It was necessary to operate with caution; and it
was no small peril which Bolivar necessarily incurred, in penetrating
to its capital, and laying his snares, and fomenting insurrection,
beneath the very hearth-stones of the tyrant. It was
to La Pola's hands that the messenger of the Liberator confided

[figure description] Page 039.[end figure description]

the missives that communicated this important intelligence to
her father. She little knew the contents of the billet which she
carried him in safety, nor did he confide them to the child. He
himself did not dream of the precocious extent of that enthusiasm
which she felt almost equally for the common cause, and for the
person of its great advocate and champion. Her father simply
praised her care and diligence, rewarded her with his fondest
caresses, and then proceeded with all quiet despatch to make his
preparations for the secret reception of the deliverer.

It was at midnight, and while a thunder-storm was raging,
that he entered the city, making his way, agreeably to previous
arrangement, and under select guidance, into the inner apartments
of the house of Zalabariata. A meeting of the conspirators—
for such they were — of head men among the patriots of
Bogota, had been contemplated for his reception. Several of
them were accordingly in attendance when he came. These
were persons whose sentiments were well-known to be friendly
to the cause of liberty, who had suffered by the hands, or were
pursued by the suspicions of Zamano, and who, it was naturally
supposed, would be eagerly alive to every opportunity of shaking
off the rule of the oppressor.

But patriotism, as a philosophic sentiment, to be indulged
after a good dinner, and discussed phlegmatically, if not classically,
over sherry and cigars, is a very different sort of thing
from patriotism as a principle of action, to be prosecuted as a
duty, at every peril, instantly and always, to the death if need
be. Our patriots at Bogota were but too frequently of the contemplative,
the philosophical order. Patriotism with them was
rather a subject for eloquence than use. They could recall
those Utopian histories of Greece and Rome which furnish us
with ideals rather than facts, and sigh for names like those of
Cato, and Brutus, and Aristides. But more than this did not
seem to enter their imaginations as at all necessary to assert
the character which it pleased them to profess, or maintain the
reputation which they had prospectively acquired for the very
commendable virtue which constituted their ordinary theme.
Bolivar found them cold. Accustomed to overthrow and usurpation,
they were now slow to venture property and life upon
the predictions and promises of one who, however perfect in

[figure description] Page 040.[end figure description]

their estimation as a patriot, had yet suffered from most capricious
fortunes. His past history, indeed, except for its patriotism,
offered but very doubtful guarantees in favor of the enterprise
to which they were invoked.

Bolivar was artful and ingenious. He had considerable powers
of eloquence — was specious and persuasive; had an oily, and
bewitching tongue, like Belial; and, if not altogether capable of
making the worse appear the better cause, could at least so shape
the aspects of evil fortune, that, to the unsuspicious nature, they
would seem to be the very results aimed at by the most deliberate
arrangement and resolve.

But Bolivar, on this occasion, was something more than ingenious
and persuasive; he was warmly earnest, and passionately
eloquent. In truth, he was excited much beyond his wont. He
was stung to indignation by a sense of disappointnent. He had
calculated largely on this meeting, and it promised now to be a
failure. He had anticipated the eager enthusiasm of a host of
brave and noble spirits, ready to fling out the banner of freedom
to the winds, and cast the scabbard from the sword for ever.
Instead of this, he found but a little knot of cold, irresolute men,
thinking only of the perils of life which they should incur, and
the forfeiture and loss of property which might accrue from any
hazardous experiments.

Bolivar spoke to them in language less artificial and much
more impassioned than was his wont. He was a man of impulse
rather than of thought or principle, and, once aroused, the intense
fire of a southern sun seemed to burn fiercely in all his
words and actions.

His speech was heard by other ears than those to which it
was addressed. The shrewd mind of La Pola readily conjectured
that the meeting at her father's house, at midnight, and
under peculiar circumstances, contemplated some extraordinary
object. She was aware that a tall, mysterious stranger had
passed through the court, under the immediate conduct of her
father himself. Her instinct divined in this stranger the person
of the deliverer, and her heart would not suffer her to lose the
words, or, if possible to obtain it, to forego the sight of the great
object of its patriotic worship. Besides, she had a right to know

[figure description] Page 041.[end figure description]

and to see. She was of the party, and had done them service.
She was yet to do them more.

Concealed in an adjoining apartment — a sort of oratory, connected
by a gallery with the chamber in which the conspirators
were assembled — she was able to hear the earnest arguments
and passionate remonstrances of the Liberator. They confirmed
all her previous admiration of his genius and character. She
felt with indignation the humiliating position which the men of
Bogota held in his eyes. She heard their pleas and scruples,
and listened with a bitter scorn to the thousand suggestions of
prudence, the thousand calculations of doubt and caution, with
which timidity seeks to avoid precipitating a crisis. She could
listen and endure no longer. The spirit of the improvvisatrice
was upon her. Was it also that of fate and a higher Providence?
She seized the guitar, of which she was the perfect
mistress, and sung even as her soul counselled and the exigency
of the event demanded. Our translation of her lyrical overflow
is necessarily a cold and feeble one.

[figure description] Page 042.[end figure description]

At the first sudden gush of the music from within, the father
of the damsel started to his feet, and, with confusion in his countenance,
was about to leave the apartment. But Bolivar arrested
his footsteps, and in a whisper commanded him to be silent and
remain. The conspirators, startled if not alarmed, were compelled
to listen. Bolivar did so with a pleased attention. He
was passionately fond of music, and this was of a sort at once
to appeal to his objects and his taste. His eye kindled as the
song proceeded. His heart rose with an exulting sentiment.
The moment, indeed, embodied one of his greatest triumphs —
the tribute of a pure, unsophisticated soul, inspired by Heaven

[figure description] Page 043.[end figure description]

with the happiest and highest endowments, and by earth with
the noblest sentiments of pride and country. When the music
ceased, Zalabariata was about to apologize and to explain, but
Bolivar again gently and affectionately arrested his utterance.

“Fear nothing,” said he. “Indeed, why should you fear? I
am in the greater danger here, if there be danger for any; and
I would as soon place my life in the keeping of that noble
damsel, as in the arms of my mother. Let her remain, my
friend; let her hear and see all; and above, do not attempt to
apologize for her. She is my ally. Would that she could make
these men of Bogota feel with herself — feel as she makes even
me to feel.”

The eloquence of the Liberator received a new impulse from
that of the improvisatrice. He renewed his arguments and entreaties
in a different spirit. He denounced, in yet bolder language
than before, that wretched pusillanimity which, quite as
much, he asserted, as the tyranny of the Spaniard, was the
curse under which the liberties of the country groaned and
suffered.

“And now, I ask,” he continued, passionately, “men of Bogota,
if ye really purpose to deny yourselves all share in the
glory and peril of the effort which is for your own emancipation.
Are your brethren of the other provinces to maintain the conflict
in your behalf, while, with folded hands, you submit, doing
nothing for yourselves? Will you not lift the banner also?
Will you not draw sword in your own honor, and the defence
of your firesides and families? Talk not to me of secret contributions.
It is your manhood, not your money, that is needful
for success. And can you withhold yourselves while you profess
to hunger after that liberty for which other men are free to
peril all — manhood, money, life, hope, everything but honor
and the sense of freedom. But why speak of peril in this?
Peril is everywhere. It is the inevitable child of life, natural to
all conditions — to repose as well as action, — to the obscurity
which never goes abroad, as well as to that adventure which
for ever seeks the field. You incur no more peril in openly
braving your tyrant, all together as one man, than you do
thus tamely sitting beneath his footstool, and trembling for ever
lest his capricious will may slay as it enslaves. Be you but

[figure description] Page 044.[end figure description]

true to yourselves — openly true — and the danger disappears
as the night-mists that speed from before the rising sun. There
is little that deserves the name of peril in the issue which lies
before us. We are more than a match — united, and filled with
the proper spirit — for all the forces that Spain can send against
us. It is in our coldness that she warms — in our want of unity
that she finds strength. But even were we not superior to her
in numbers — even were the chances all wholly and decidedly
against us — I still can not see how it is that you hesitate to
draw the sword in so sacred a strife — a strife which consecrates
the effort, and claims Heaven's sanction for success. Are your
souls so subdued by servitude, are you so accustomed to bonds
and tortures, that these no longer irk and vex your daily consciousness?
Are you so wedded to inaction that you cease to
feel? Is it the frequency of the punishment that has made you
callous to the ignominy and the pain? Certainly, your viceroy
gives you frequent occasion to grow reconciled to any degree of
hurt and degradation. Daily you behold, and I hear, of the
exactions of this tyrant — of the cruelties and the murders to
which he accustoms you in Bogota. Hundreds of your friends
and kinsmen, even now, lie rotting in the common prisons, denied
equally your sympathies and every show of justice, perishing
daily under the most cruel privations. Hundreds have perished
by this and other modes of torture, and the gallows and
garote seem never to be unoccupied. Was it not the bleaching
skeleton of the venerable Hermano, whom I well knew for his
wisdom and patriotism, which I beheld, even as I entered, hanging
in chains over the gateway of your city? Was he not the
victim of his wealth and love of country? Who among you is
secure? He dared but to deliver himself as a man — and, as he
was suffered to stand alone, he was destroyed. Had you, when
he spoke, but prepared yourselves to act, flung out the banner
of resistance to the winds, and bared the sword for the last
noble struggle, Hermano had not perished, nor were the glorious
work only now to be begun. But which of you, involved in the
same peril with Hermano, will find the friend, in the moment of
his need, to take the first step for his rescue? Each of you, in
turn, having wealth to tempt the spoiler, will be sure to need
such friendship. It seems you do not look for it among one

[figure description] Page 045.[end figure description]

another — where, then, do you propose to find it? Will you
seek for it among the Cartagenians — among the other provinces—
to Bolivar without? Vain expectation, if you are unwilling
to peril anything for yourselves within! In a tyranny
so suspicious and so reckless as is yours, you must momentarily
tremble lest ye suffer at the hands of your despot. True manhood
rather prefers any peril which puts an end to this state of
anxiety and fear. Thus to tremble with apprehension ever, is
ever to be dying. It is a life of death only which ye live — and
any death or peril that comes quickly at the summons, is to be
preferred before it. If, then, ye have hearts to feel, or hopes
to warm ye — a pride to suffer consciousness of shame, or an
ambition that longs for better things — affections for which to
covet life, or the courage with which to assert and to defend
your affections — ye can not, ye will not hesitate to determine,
with souls of freemen, upon what is needful to be done. Ye
have but one choice as men; and the question which is left for
ye to resolve, is that which determines, not your possessions, not
even your lives, but simply your rank and stature in the world
of humanity and man.”

The Liberator paused, not so much through his own or the
exhaustion of the subject, as that his hearers should in turn be
heard. But, with this latter object, his forbearance was profitless.
There were those among them, indeed, who had their
answers to his exhortations, but these were not of a character to
promise boldly for their patriotism or courage. Their professions,
indeed, were ample, but were confined to unmeaning generalities.
“Now is the time — now!” was the response of
Bolivar to all that was said. But they faltered and hung back
at every utterance of his spasmodically-uttered “now! now!”
He scanned their faces eagerly, with a hope that gradually
yielded to despondency. Their features were blank and inexpressive,
as their answers had been meaningless or evasive.
Several of them were of that class of quiet citizens, unaccustomed
to any enterprises but those of trade, who are always slow
to peril wealth by a direct issue with their despotism. They
felt the truth of Bolivar's assertions. They knew that their
treasures were only so many baits and lures to the cupidity and
exactions of the royal emissaries, but they still relied on their

[figure description] Page 046.[end figure description]

habitual caution and docility to keep terms with the tyranny at
which they yet trembled. When, in the warmth of his enthusiasm,
Bolivar depicted the bloody struggles which must precede
their deliverance, they began, indeed, to wonder among themselves
how they ever came to fall into that mischievous philosophy
of patriotism which had involved them with such a restless
rebel as Bolivar! Others of the company were ancient hidalgos,
who had been men of spirit in their day, but who had survived
the season of enterprise, which is that period only when
the heart swells and overflows with full tides of warm and
impetuous blood.

“Your error,” said he, in a whisper to Señor Don Joachim
de Zalabariata, “was in not bringing young men into your
counsels.”

“We shall have them hereafter,” was the reply, also in a
whisper.

“We shall see,” muttered the Liberator, who continued,
though in silence, to scan the assembly with inquisitive eyes, and
an excitement of soul, which increased duly with his efforts to
subdue it. He had found some allies in the circle — some few
generous spirits, who, responding to his desires, were anxious to
be up and doing. But it was only too apparent that the main
body of the company had been rather disquieted than warmed.
In this condition of hopeless and speechless indecision, the emotions
of the Liberator became scarcely controllable. His whole
frame trembled with the anxiety and indignation of his spirit.
He paced the room hurriedly, passing from group to group,
appealing to individuals now, where hitherto he had spoken collectively,
and suggesting detailed arguments in behalf of hopes
and objects, which it does not need that we should incorporate
with our narrative. But when he found how feeble was the
influence which he exercised, and how cold was the echo to his
appeal, he became impatient, and no longer strove to modify the
expression of that scorn and indignation which he had for some
time felt. The explosion followed in no measured language.

“Men of Bogota, you are not worthy to be free. Your chains
are merited. You deserve your insecurities, and may embrace,
even as ye please, the fates which lie before you. Acquiesce
in the tyranny which offends no longer, but be sure that

[figure description] Page 047.[end figure description]

acquiescence never yet has disarmed the despot when his rapacity
needs a victim. Your lives and possessions — which ye dare not
peril in the cause of freedom — lie equally at his mercy. He
will not pause, as you do, to use them at his pleasure. To save
them from him there is but one way — to employ them against
him. There is no security against power but in power; and to
check the insolence of foreign strength you must oppose to it
your own. This ye have not soul to do, and I leave you to the
destiny you have chosen. This day, this night, it was yours to
resolve. I have perilled all to move you to the proper resolution.
You have denied me, and I leave you. To-morrow — unless
indeed I am betrayed to-night” — looking with a sarcastic
smile around him as he spoke — “I shall unfurl the banner of
the republic even within your own province, in behalf of Bogota,
and seek, even against your own desires, to bestow upon you
those blessings of liberty which ye have not the soul to conquer
for yourselves.”