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Correo Semanal del Dorado

   

This private post company carried mail from Bogota to the Laguna del Siecha where a Colombian-English mining company undertook works and the service had been in operation until 1870.

Since the communication between the two partners Urdaneta and Crowther from the lagoon to Bogota was difficult, they established a private post, the Correo Semanal El Dorado. The legal basis for this was already laid on 27 April 1859, when the Colombian Parliament of the Confederation stated by law that the Postal Service should not be the monopoly of the central government, but that the Colombian governments, businesses and even individuals should be part of it, even in the same postal routes established by the Central Government.

 

Then a cliché was cut (probably made of wood) and the value of postage stamps was set to 1 real (= 10 centavos de peso) printed on various papers, as they were just there. The paper varies from plain white stationery, blue-striped paper, paper with watermarks, and a bluish and greenish paper up to squared notebook paper. The sheet size is not known, but there are some blocks of four - some with tete-beche pairs - horizontal and vertical pairs and single stamps.

 

Block of 4 on white wove paper

 

Printed on squared schoolbook paper with parts on additional stamps 0n the upper margin. The lower stamps are printed upside down, thus forming tete-beche pairs. .

 

 

Only about 10 covers have survived written during the period from March 1870 till 16th. November 1870. The stamps on the cover s are manuscript cancelled with a “G”, most likely this stands for “Guasco”, a village close to the Laguna.

Cover addressed to Enrique Urdaneta in Bogota.

 

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