The land mail of Cartagena de Indias during the Royal Administration (1768-1810). Itineraries, cartography, a "map in the form of a treatise", GPS and a GIS

Seeking to reconstruct the spatial organization of land mail in the area of the General Administration of Cartagena de Indias, created in 1768, this article is essentially based on two manuscripts, one by Jose Antonio de Pando (ca. 1774) and an anonymous one from 1801 (probably by Antonio de Miranda). Both documents contain valuable information on frequency of routes, transit locations, distances between them and the quality of roads. Using complementary information such as modern roads, GPS data and georeferenced old maps, the routes are reconstructed in a Geographic Information System (GIS) in a process that at the same time allows us to ponder contemporary practices of measuring and expressing distances.