A porter, also called a bearer, is a person who carries objects or cargo for others. The range of services conducted by porters is extensive, from shuttling luggage aboard a train to bearing heavy burdens at altitude in inclement weather on multi-month mountaineering expeditions. They can carry items on their backs (backpack) or on their heads. The word "porter" derives from the Latin portare.
"Men laden with 'Brick Tea' for Thibet" from the personal notations of Ernest Henry Wilson in 1908
Sherpa porter carrying wood in the Himalaya, near Mount Everest
A porter's gear is typically simple but effective. In this example, the load goes into an oversized basket, or doko, which rests against the back. A strap runs underneath the doko and over the crown of the head, which bears most of the weight. Each porter in this region also carries a T-shaped walking stick called a tokma to take some of the strain off the back.
A porter in China wearing a dǒulì
The silleros, cargueros or silleteros were the porters used to carry people and their belongings through routes impossible by horse carriage. A famous example is the use of silleros by colonial officials to be carried across the Quindio pass in the Colombian Andes.
"The Ascent of Agony" Engraving by Maillard published in 1879 after a sketch by Edouard Andre depicting the crossing of the Quindio pass by silleros using tumplines
The artist carried in a sillero over the Chiapas from Palenque to Ocosingo, Mexico, by Jean-Frédéric Waldeck, c. 1833
Image of travellers being carried across the mountains by silleros, taken from the 1884 work "Viajes por el interior de las provincias de Colombia" by John Potter Hamilton
Alexander von Humboldt's depiction of the Quindio pass and the silleros, drawn in 1801
