CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER VIIITHE CORDILLERA OF THE ANDES“To sit on rocks, to muse o’er flood and fall,To slowly trace the forest’s shady scene,Where things that own not man’s dominion dwell,And mortal feet hath ne’er, or rarely been;To climb the trackless mountain all unseen.“This is not solitude; ‘tis but to holdConverse with Nature’s charms, and see her stores unrolled.”—Byron.Villavicencio, the capital of the National Territory of the Meta, is situated at the very foot of the Andes, and is an attractive town of about three thousand inhabitants, many of whom are Indians. Its altitude above sea level, according to our barometer, is slightly less than fifteen hundred feet. It is a little more than ninety-three miles from Bogotá and has an average annual temperature of 83° F. During our sojourn in the place the thermometer never rose above 76° F. in the shade, and it was occasionally several degrees below this point. And, although little more than seventy-five miles north of the equator, it was so cool at night that we always used our blankets.A handsome church is located on one side of the spacious green plaza. Not far distant is a well-conducted convent school in charge of nuns recently expatriated from France, in consequence of the laws enacted against religious orders. The people are never tired sounding the praises of these good sisters and telling the visitor of the wondersthey have accomplished in behalf of their children. Here, as elsewhere, “The stone which the builders rejected; the same shall become the head of the corner.”Villavicencio, like Cabuyaro, and other places in the llanos, is eagerly looking forward to the day when it shall be connected by rail with the national capital and the Meta. For nearly a century and a half a commercial route connecting Bogotá with the Meta and the Orinoco has been talked of but nothing has been done to make it a reality.In 1783 the archbishop of Sante Fe, Monsignor Cabellero y Gongora, then viceroy of New Granada, caused a map to be made of the course of the Meta and the Orinoco to the Atlantic, with a view of developing commerce by that route, but the all-powerful opposition of Santa Marta and Cartagena nullified his efforts. Several times since that date the project has been resumed but each time it had to be abandoned in favor of the Magdalena, owing to the pressure brought to bear on the government by the merchants of Cartagena and Santa Marta. There is no doubt that the routeviathe Meta and the Orinoco would, in some respects, possess many advantages over that of the Magdalena, aside from developing much country now practically neglected.Unlike Venezuela, Colombia favors free navigation of her rivers by all nations, and would welcome foreign craft on the Meta as she does on the Magdalena. Venezuela, however, favors monopolies, and, claiming absolute control of the Orinoco, has closed the Meta and the other affluents of the Orinoco to all steamers except those belonging to the one company which has a monopoly of the trade of the Orinoco and all its tributaries. How detrimental such a monopoly is, not only to Colombia but to Venezuela as well, can be seen at a glance. Some of the greatest resources of both countries are left undeveloped and progress in any direction is quite impossible.This matter was taken up at the International Congress of Mexico in 1901, in connection with a plan to render navigation possible through the interior of the continentof South America from the Orinoco to the River Plate, but so far nothing has been accomplished.The greater part of the eastern portion of Colombia is still isolated from the rest of the world, and will remain so until Venezuela shall recognize the fatuity of its short-sighted policy, or until the great commercial nations shall demand that the navigation of the Orinoco and its tributaries, like that of the Amazon and its affluents, be free to all vessels, no matter under what flag they may sail. And as soon as commerce shall awaken to the fact that an immense field of untold riches is closed to her activities in the forests and plains of the Orinoco basin—and that must be ere long—a demand will be made not only in the interests of South America but also in that of the entire civilized world.As an illustration of how Colombia has been made to suffer by the arbitrary policy of Venezuela regarding waterways, of which both the sister republics should be beneficiaries, a single instance will suffice.Shortly before our arrival in Villavicencio, a company was formed to supply electricity to the city. As there are no roads between Bogotá and Villavicencio, which would permit the transportation of the necessary machinery, the only way available for the introduction of such heavy freight was by the Orinoco and the Meta. It was accordingly planned to have the dynamos and other requisites brought by this route, but, when all was ready for shipment, the projectors of the enterprise learned that the Venezuelan government—that is, President Castro—would refuse to grant the necessary permission for the transportation of the merchandise in question. The idea, then, of lighting the city by electricity had to be abandoned, and the capital of the Meta territory is, as a consequence, forced to remain content with tallow candles and kerosene lamps.The people of Villavicencio, as elsewhere in Colombia, we found to be extremely courteous and hospitable. They were eager to hear about America, and in turn were quitewilling to afford all possible information about their own country, and especially about the llanos and Llaneros. We soon became acquainted with all the leading officials and business men, and recall with pleasure the many delicate attentions they showed us while in their midst. We were invited to visit their country estates and to examine some new industries—yet in their infancy—which gave promise of a bright future.One of these was the rubber industry. Not content with the trees that grow spontaneously in the forests in this part of the country, a certain general—one of many we met here—conceived the idea of cultivating the rubber tree and had, accordingly, during the preceding year, set out no fewer than a half million small trees, and had it in purpose to plant many times this number in the near future. He said all that he had already planted were doing well, and he had no doubt about the success of the enterprise. He was most sanguine about the future of eastern Colombia, and expressed it as his belief that in a few years Colombia would be as favorably known for her rubber as she is now for her cacao, coffee and tobacco.There is no reason why the scientific cultivation of the rubber tree should not be attended with as good results in Colombia as have so signalized its culture in Ceylon and the Malay Peninsula. In view of the destructive system of treating the rubber trees in Brazil and other parts of South America in collecting the latex, and the increasing demand for rubber in our various rapidly expanding industries, it would seem that the rubber plantations, like the one above mentioned, are sure to yield their owners a handsome profit.Nothing better illustrates what may be expected in this direction than the experiment made a few decades ago in India with the cinchona tree. Previously to the introduction of this tree into India, where there are now many extensive plantations under cultivation, the sole source of supply of Peruvian bark was from the tropical slopes ofthe Andes. Now, in consequence of the vigorous competition with India, the cinchona industry in the Andean regions is only a fraction of what it formerly was, and, unless something can be done to arrest its rapid decline, it will soon have lost its importance as an article of export from the Cordilleras.We spent three days in Villavicencio and enjoyed every hour of the stay among its kindly people. We had thus an opportunity of securing much needed repose, and of preparing ourselves for our arduous trip across the cloud-reaching Andes. We might have continued, without interruption, our journey from the plains to Bogotá, but it would have been highly imprudent to make the attempt. A sudden change from the lowlands to Andean heights, and from the heat of the llanos to the frigid blasts of the paramos, is something of which the native has an instinctive dread. He accordingly makes his journey by slow stages, so as to become acclimated on the way. In driving cattle from the llanos to Bogotá several weeks are deemed necessary, as otherwise many of them would expire on the road. They appear to be much more affected than man by rapid changes of altitude and temperature.We had been warned time and again by well-meaning persons about the risk we incurred by so soon attempting to cross the Cordilleras, after spending so much time in the lowlands of the Orinoco and the Meta. “You should,” we were told, “spend several weeks on the road, stopping a few days at each posada on the way. Only in this wise can you become acclimated, and render your system proof against the certain dangers of violent changes of temperature and altitude. As you approach the summit of the Andes you will see the sides of the trail strewn with the bleached bones of cattle and horses that have succumbed to the cold and the rare atmosphere of this elevated region. More than this, you will see hundreds of crosses by the wayside marking the spots where over-venturesome travelers wereemparamados—frozen—by the arctic cold of theparamos, and where they found their last resting place. And so strong is the wind on thecumbre—the summit—of the mountain range that people are sometimes blown into the yawning chasm that adjoins the dreadful pass.”To confirm their statements they reminded us of the fearful losses in men and animals sustained by Bolivar when he led his army from the plains of Varinas to the lofty plateau of Cundinamarca; how hundreds of men and horses perished from the intense cold on the elevated pass through which they vainly tried to force their way, and how the entire army was exposed to extermination by the combined action of arctic cold and hurricane blasts.We made no reply to these well-meant warnings, but we could not help recalling similar words of caution before we started on our journey up the Orinoco and the Meta. Then the dangers to be apprehended were from the climate—from intense heat and a pestiferous atmosphere; from wild animals and wilder men. Now it was danger of an opposite kind—danger from cold, of being frozen, or of contracting pneumonia, which in those great altitudes is certain death.Aside from a few uncomfortable nights—which, with a little care, might have been obviated—caused by the activezancudoand thecoloradito—we had escaped all the predicted dangers of the lowlands, and we now felt reasonably sure that we should be equally fortunate in eluding those that were said to await us in the regions of everlasting snow. We were better equipped for making the trip than the poor, ill-clad natives from the llanos, and we could regulate our vesture to suit the temperature. Snow and frost had then no terrors for us, and as we had been accustomed to sudden changes of altitude, without experiencing any evil effects, we felt we had nothing whatever to apprehend.On the third morning after our arrival in Villavicencio we were ready to start for Bogotá, and expected to make the journey of ninety-three miles in three days. We hadsecured mules that were used to mountain travel. Those that we had in crossing the llanos would never have answered our purpose. Our vaqueano and peons wereserranos—mountaineers—thoroughly familiar with the route we were to take. They all seemed to be good, reliable young men, and we felt that the last stage of our journey, before reaching Bogotá, would be quite as enjoyable as any that we had already completed.After many cordial expressions of good wishes on the part of the crowd assembled to witness our departure, and repeated exclamations on all sides of “Felíz viaje!”—a happy journey—and “Dios les guarde á VV!”—God protect you—we said our last adios to all and turned toward the Andes. “Vamos con Dios,” ejaculated our vaqueano. “Y con la Virgen,” was the response of the peons and the bystanders.From the moment we left the door of our temporary lodging, our road was up grade. As we passed along the street that terminates at the foot of the mountain, it seemed that all the women and children of the place were at the doors to get a last view of thejurungos—foreigners—whose arrival from the eastern sea by the great river had been commented on as a more than ordinary event.As soon as we had passed the last house of the city, there was a sudden marked increase in the grade of our trail, and we then felt, for the first time, that we were in sober earnest beginning the actual ascent of the Andes. In two hours we had reached Buena Vista, a lovely spot, eleven hundred and forty feet above Villavicencio.We had frequently been told in Orocué and elsewhere that we should have a beautiful view of the llanos from Buena Vista, and that we would do well to tarry there for a while to enjoy the panorama that would be visible from this elevated spur of the mountain.When a South American—especially one familiar with the mountains—speaks in terms of praise of any particular bit of scenery, one may be sure that he does not exaggerate.He is so accustomed to splendid exhibitions of tropical beauty and mountain grandeur that he passes unnoticed what we of the North should describe as superb, magnificent, glorious. Such scenes are to him as common as the gorgeousness of the setting sun and the sublimity of the starlit heavens are to us and fail to move him for the same reason that the splendors of sun and sky rarely affect us as they would if but occasionally visible. They are everyday objects and the pleasure they should afford palls accordingly.We were not disappointed in our anticipations regarding the view from Buena Vista. On the contrary, it far exceeded anything we had imagined. The sky, with the exception of a few fleecy clouds flitting athwart it, was clear and the sun was almost in the zenith. Far below us, and extending away—north, east, south—towards the dim and distant horizon, were the llanos, every feature of which was brought out in bright relief by the brilliant noonday sun.In the foreground was the montaña through which we had passed just before reaching Villavicencio. Farther afield was a limitless sea of verdure, interspersed with groups of trees, which offered their grateful shade to the countless herds that reposed beneath their wide-spreading branches. In every direction the green savannas were intersected by caños and rivers which looked like streams of molten silver. It was, indeed, a panorama of surpassing beauty and loveliness—of its kind unique in the wide world. It was the boundless plain in eternal converse with the heavens above. It was the abode of liberty, and the trysting-place of life—life palpitating in the sunshine and beneath the emerald borders of the sliver-like water courses that were all hastening with their tribute from the Andes to the Meta, which, far off in the southeast, seemed like a line of union between earth and sky.We have nothing in our country that can bear comparison with the matchless picture seen from Buena Vista.The view of the delta of the Nile—just before harvest time, with its numberless canals and water courses—from the summit of Cheops, contains some of the elements of soft tropical beauty so conspicuous in the Buena Vista landscape; but it lacks the variety, the sweep, the coloring, the harmonious effects of light and shade, the immensity, and above all the wondrous setting afforded the latter prospect by the Titanic Cordilleras.But the measureless expanse of grassy plain that lies before us is but an insignificant fraction of the llanos. They extend from the southern slopes of the Coast Range of Venezuela to the base of the Parime uplands and the Rio Guaviare; from the Andes to the delta of the Orinoco. They are thus almost conterminous with the Orinoco basin. They, indeed, constitute one of the three immense districts into which the whole of South America is divided. The other two are the Selvas of Brazil and the Pampas of Argentina, separated from each other and from the llanos of the north, by low transverse ridges running east and west from the Atlantic to the Cordilleras.To geologists these vast lowlands have a special interest, as they were at one time the bed of an inland sea more extensive far than the present Mediterranean. Even now, during the rainy season, certain parts of this immense expanse are covered by fresh water lakes thousands of square miles in extent. A subsidence of a few hundred feet would again bring the whole of this illimitable territory down below sea level and cause again the formation of the great tropical sea that existed in prehistoric times.To the student of history a special interest attaches to the llanos of western Venezuela and eastern Colombia. It was across these plains and swamps, under the most trying difficulties, that Bolivar led his half-clad, half-famished army, during his memorable march across the Cordilleras, before achieving the independence of New Granada in the famous battle of Boyacá.But great as was the feat accomplished by Bolivar intraversing the llanos, great as were the difficulties he had to contend with, they pale into insignificance when compared with the hardships and achievements of the earlydescubridores—explorers—of these then unknown wilds. Bolivar and his men traveled through a country that had been long settled, and were among friends and compatriots. The early explorers and conquistadores were, on the contrary, in an unknown land, among murderous, relentless savages armed with poisoned arrows. They were in a region where it was often impossible to procure food, and where several times starvation was imminent. For months at a time they wandered through dark, tangled forests, cutting a road as they went, lured on by the hope of fame and fortune. Then they had to feel their way through deep and treacherous morasses, in which they had to confront even greater dangers than in the obscure woodlands. But notwithstanding dangers and difficulties of every kind, they kept moving forward through woods and swamps, across rivers and mountains, ever in pursuit of gold and precious stones, and of the fabulous riches of the Meta and the treasure city of Manoa.Among these famousdescubridoreswas the German, George Hohermuth, whom the Spaniards called Jorge de Spira. Starting from Coró, on the Caribbean, with three hundred and sixty-one men and eighty horses, he directed his course southwards, where, he was assured, were inexhaustible treasures of every kind. Crossing the llanos of Venezuela and New Granada, he must have passed near the present site of Buena Vista.During our journey we certainly crossed his line of march, which in this latitude was probably near the base of the Cordilleras. Spurred on by an ever-recedingignis fatuus, he continued his march until he reached the Japura, an affluent of the Amazon, and but a short distance from the equator. During this frightful journey he crossed the Arauca, the Apure, the Meta, the Guaviare and other broad and deep rivers. Of the countless difficulties he encounteredin his long and painful march, no one who is unfamiliar with the character of forest and plain in the tropics, particularly during the rainy season, can have the faintest conception. They far transcend anything experienced by Stanley, or Mungo Park, or any other African explorer. After more than three years of unheard-of sufferings, he finally returned to Coró with but a small fraction of the brave men that had originally formed part of his expedition.Hohermuth was followed by Philip von Hutten, in 1541, on a similar expedition, who traveled over almost the same ground as his predecessor. He, too, must have passed near where Buena Vista now stands. His undertaking was quite as fruitless as that of Hohermuth and his losses were greater. He spent more than four years in the llanos and Cordilleras and, before he could return to his starting point, he died at the hands of an assassin.More remarkable still, in some respects, was the expedition of Nicholas Federmann, who, like Hohermuth and Von Hutten, was in the service of the Welsers, concessionaires of a large German colony near Lake Maracaibo. Crossing the llanos, and the numerous rivers that flow through them, he eventually found himself on the banks of the Meta. Thence he proceeded west and crossed the Cordilleras, not, however, without numerous victims—both men and horses—from the intense cold on the mountain summits. He finally reached the fertile plain of Bogotá, where occurred that famous and unexpected meeting of Belalcazar, who had come with another expedition from Quito, and Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada who, a short time previously, had arrived with a third expedition from Santa Marta.It would be interesting to know what was Federmann’s itinerary after leaving the banks of the Meta, and the exact spot where he crossed the Cordilleras. This we can only conjecture, as there is no record of it, but we loved to think, while crossing the Andes on our way to Bogotá, that we were still following the conquistadores, and that ours wasthe same route that had been taken by Federmann and his brave men more than three and a half centuries before.1After leaving Buena Vista, we were exposed to a heavy tropical downpour that lasted the greater part of the day. Fortunately the rain did not affect us in the slightest. Our bayetones and waterproof boots kept us perfectly dry and, as the rain was not chilly, we rather enjoyed the experience.Our path during the greater part of the day lay through forests and along rivers and over mountain torrents. At times it was high up on the mountain side, thousands of feet above the water courses surging and foaming at its base. Again it was along the edge of a dizzy precipice, where a single false step of our mule would have meant instant death to its rider.What gave us grave concern at first was the fact that our mules always persisted in keeping on the side of the track next to the ravine, no matter how deep or threatening it might be. We tried, until we were exhausted, to keep them on the opposite side of the trail, but it was useless. They seemed bent on courting danger, and on seeing how nearthey could keep to the verge of the chasm without plunging into its abysmal depths.Unfortunately for our peace of mind, we did not then know the Andean mule as well as we do now. Had we understood him as well at the beginning of our journey as we did at the end, we should have given him a free rein, and thereby spared ourselves many nerve-racking moments and many futile efforts to correct his persistent aberrations. Why a mule prefers to walk on the brink of a precipice, whenever it has an opportunity of doing so, rather than keep to what we humans should consider the safer side of the path, is a mystery I do not profess to fathom. I simply state the fact. I leave its explanation to experts in mule psychology.The country through which we passed was fairly well populated, and we were never long out of sight of a habitation of some kind. Sometimes the dwellings were of stone, but more frequently they were of bamboo daubed with clay and thatched with palm leaf. The people, usually Indians or half-breeds, were in humble circumstances but we never saw any evidences of actual want or suffering. “Nunca se muere de hambre aqui”—No one ever dies of hunger here—an Indian woman once informed us, when we made inquiry about the subject. If one should happen to have nothing to eat, his friends and neighbors supply him with food. They are ever willing to assist one another, and we were often surprised to see how ready they were to share their limited store with others, whether in want or not.Stopping for Luncheon in the Lower Cordilleras.Stopping for Luncheon in the Lower Cordilleras.A more friendly people we never met than the good people who dwell on the eastern slopes of the Colombian Cordilleras. They always have a kindly greeting for every one they meet. No one, not even the youngest child, will pass you on the road without a cordial “Buenos dias,” “Buenas tardes,” or “Buenas noches”—Good day, Good evening, or Good night—as the case may be. These cheering salutations, that were always forthcoming, whether wemet one or a score, young or old, made us forget that we were in a foreign land, far from home and friends, and quite reconciled us to any little discomforts we might experience along our steep and rugged path. Here among these simple, unspoiled people the brotherhood of man is not an empty rhetorical phrase, or a vain poetical figment, but a living, every-day reality.How often during our journeyings in the savannas and highlands of Colombia did we not recall the beautiful couplet of Castellanos regarding the primitive inhabitants of New Granada!—“Gente llana, fiel, modesta, clara,Leal, humilde, sana y obediente.”2They are the same to-day, especially when removed from the baleful influence of those who, instead of aiding them, would drag them down to the lowest depths of degradation and servitude.But obliging and honest as we always found these people to be, they, nevertheless, invariably failed us in one particular. We could never, except occasionally by accident, get from them a correct or satisfactory answer about the distance from one place to another.Never shall we forget our experience during our first day’s journey in the Cordilleras. Our objective point was San Miguel, where we were told we should find a good lodging house—one of the best on the road, we were assured—and, as the distance was great, it was necessary to make extra good time in order to arrive there before nightfall. The heavy, long-continued rains had made our trail extremelyheavy, and in places almost impassable. The hours passed and we found ourselves advancing much more slowly than was desirable. The lowering clouds were massing on the mountain slopes, and the rain began to fall in torrents. It then began to dawn upon us that we might not be able to reach our destination in the limited time yet remaining of the fast-departing day.Further progress along our dangerous path in the impenetrable gloom, that would immediately follow sunset, we knew to be impossible. We knew or thought we knew, about how far we were still from San Miguel, but we wished to be certain about the distance.It was now about four o’clock in the afternoon, and it was imperative for us to reach our posada by six o’clock, if we were to arrive there at all that day. We accordingly inquired of one of the many peons we met, who were returning to their homes from their day’s labor in the fields, how far it was to San Miguel. “Tres leguas, Señores”—three leagues, Sirs—was the answer to our question.This was disheartening. Our mules were now exhausted, and could not possibly make three leagues in two hours over the terrific track we were traveling. But there was nothing to do but push on. At the end of an hour we asked the same question of another peon. “Quatro leguas, Señores”—four leagues, Sirs, was the reply. This answer was confirmed by several other peons, whom we also questioned. Matters were becoming serious, but we continued on in silence, hoping against hope.About a half hour later we again renewed our query. “Una legua, Señores”—one league, Sirs—said a bright boy, who was driving a heavily-laden donkey. It was now dusk, and as dusk in the tropics lasts but a few minutes, we knew that we should soon be enveloped in total darkness.A little further on, a woman, with a child in her arms, informed us that San Miguel was “cerca”—near. This was too ambiguous for us, as it might mean one league or several leagues. Asking her how near it was, she repliedmuy cerca—very near. This was still unsatisfactory. She then assured us that it was “cerquita,” “cerquitita”—diminutives of cerca—3meaning that the place was extremely near, only a few steps farther. “Dando la vuelta de la esquina”—around the corner there—she said, “is San Miguel, the second house you come to.” Peering into the darkness before us, we could barely discern what appeared a projection from the mountain side. We had to be satisfied with this answer as, try as we would, we could elicit nothing more definite from our informant.The darkness was now so dense that we were unable to see even as far as our mules’ ears. There was then nothing to be done but to give our animals the rein and trust them to carry us to our destination. As if guided by a peculiar instinct, they carefully picked their way through the mud, but we thought they should never get around that corner towards which we had been directed.We were now quite exhausted, as we had eaten nothing since morning, and longed for a place of shelter, where we could find repose. Only once before, in all my travels, did it seem to take so long to get around a mountain spur. Years ago, in the mountains of the Peloponnesus, I had a similar experience, but then the road was good and the moon was shining. Here there was only a wretched, dangerous trail, and it was pitch dark.At the long last, we saw a light glimmering in a hut by the roadside. This was something. The next house, whichwas said to be bard by, should be the long-desired San Miguel.To reassure ourselves, we asked a woman who was standing at the door of the cot, where was San Miguel. She did not know. She had never beard of such a place. It might be at the other side of the mountain, or we might already have passed it; she could not tell.“But is there not a posada near here,” I queried, “or a place where we can remain over night?” “Oh! yes,” the woman replied, “there is a very good posada just across the road—that large building right in front of you. You are looking for la Señora Filomena’s house. That is what we call it here.” And so it was. A few rods away was San Miguel, at last. Only the tired, famished traveler in a strange land can realize how glad we were that the day’s journey was finally at an end.We spent a very uncomfortable night at San Miguel, and were glad when we found ourselves, early the following morning, again in the saddle, bound for Caqueza, the capital of a district near the summit of the Cordilleras. “We must make better time than yesterday,” I said, on starting, to our vaqueano. “Si, Señor.” “We shall arrive at Caqueza by four o’clock, shall we not?” “Es imposible, Señor. It is impossible, Sir.” “Well, then, we shall arrive by five, shall we not?” “No se puede, Señor. It cannot be done, Sir.” “At all events, we must reach Caqueza before dark.” “Tal vez, no—Probably not,” was his final reply, and we had to let it go at that.The scenery along our route between San Miguel and Caqueza was much like that which we had so much admired during the preceding day. The country was, however, much more thickly populated and we met many more people on the way. There was always that same cordial greeting, that had before touched us so deeply, and the same disposition to oblige us in any way possible.At one place on the roadside, we saw a young couple, neither more than eighteen years of age, erecting a littlebamboo cot. They were evidently just entering upon house-keeping, and seemed to be very happy. The labor involved in the construction of their future home was little and the expense was nothing. All would be in readiness for occupancy in a day or two after work begun. Then their little plot of ground, planted with maize, yuca, plantains and bananas, together with a few domestic animals, would supply them with all the food required and enable them to enjoy an idyllic existence far away from the maddening crowd, and quite removed from“The weariness, the fever, and the fretHere, where men sit and hear each other groan.”It was evidently some such Arcadian scene that was before Tennyson’s vision when he, in Locksley Hall, penned the beautiful lines,“Ah, for some retreat,”where“Slides the bird o’er lustrous woodland, swings the trailer from the crag—”“Droops the heavy-blossomed bower, hangs the heavy-fruited tree—”and where are“Breaths of tropic shade and palms in cluster, knots of Paradise.”Further on we met another young couple, radiant with the glow of youth and present happiness, carrying all their householdgoodswith them. These were few and simple. The man carried a machete, and a few rush mats; the woman a few simple culinary utensils consisting mainly of a metal pot and a few calabash cups and dishes. They were evidently looking for a site for a home, and probably, a few hours later had, like the first couple we saw, their simple habitation well under way.Of these good people one can repeat what Peter Martyrsaid of the aborigines shortly after the discovery of America:“A fewe thinges contente them, hauinge no delite in suche superfluites, for the which in other places men take infinite paynes and commit manie vnlawfull actes, yet are neuer satisfied, whereas many haue to muche, and none inowgh. But emonge these simple sowles, a fewe clothes serue the naked; weightes and measures are not needefull to such as cannot kyll of crafte and deceyte and haue not the vse of pestiferous monye, the seede of unnumerable myscheues. So that if we shall not be ashamed to confesse the truthe, they seeme to lyue in that goulden worlde of the whiche owlde wryters speak so much; wherin men lyued simplye and innocentlye without inforcement of lawes, without quarrellinge. Iudges and libelles, contente onely to satisfie nature, without further vexation for knowledge of thinges to come.”4Later on in the day we came across more home-builders, but of quite a different kind from those above mentioned. Toward noon, we noticed some distance ahead of us, what appeared to be a greenish black ribbon, extended along our path. It was about a foot wide and several hundred feet long. We could not imagine what it could be until we were within a few yards of it. It proved to be an army of ants on a foraging expedition. There were millions, if not billions of them. Those on one side were carrying pieces of leaves about the size of a sixpence. They formed the green part of the ribbon that we had seen from a distance. Those on the other side, moving in an opposite direction, constituted the black part. They were all engaged in getting material for thatching their curious dome-like homes, which are often of extraordinary dimensions. Sometimes they are fully thirty or forty feet in diameter.We regretted that time did not permit us to examine the length of their line of march, from their marvelous dwellingsto the trees they were stripping for roofing material. They have been known to go a mile or more for material suited to their purpose and to deprive scores of trees of all their leaves in a single day.To one unfamiliar with the tropics, the depredations committed by these destructive insects appear incredible. Of an unknown number of species, they are among the greatest enemies of man in the equatorial regions. They spare nothing. Gardens and orchards, coffee and sugar, cassava and banana plantations disappear as quickly before them as before blight or frost.In the early part of the sixteenth century, according to Herrera,5their numbers in Española and Puerto Rico were so great and their devastations so extensive and irresistible, that they threatened to depopulate the islands. Various parts of South America have also at different times suffered from the same plague—rivaling the seven plagues of Egypt in the distress and destruction which marked their path. Had we not had here, and elsewhere in the tropics, ocular evidence of their prodigious numbers, and been witnesses of the magnitude of the works due to their united efforts, we should have classed the accounts left us by the early chroniclers of the extent of the ravages of the ant plague among works of fiction rather than records of authentic history.6The scenery along the mountain ascent was an ever-changing panorama of rarest beauty and sublimity, such as no pen could describe or brush portray. It exhibited all the tropical luxuriance of the llanos together with the wild picturesqueness characteristic of Alpine heights.At times we wended our way along the banks of a noiseless river, which, in solitary grandeur, was sweeping through verdant meads and beneath arcades of sylvangreen, carrying its vivifying waves to the broad, expectant plains below. The placid scene, dotted with human habitations, and variegated by bright pastures, the home of contented flocks and herds, offered to the enchanted gaze, in a single picture, all the fabled beauties of the glens of Tempe and the dales of Arcady.As we mounted higher up on our way, our route was along the verge of deep, headlong torrents mantled in the shade of overhanging bamboos, or obscured by the jutting crags and huge beetling rocks of the earthquake rift mountain. Ever and anon, our ears caught the muffled but incessant roar of thunderous waterfalls, which plunged from dizzy precipices high above our heads, both to the right and to the left of our upward path.Scarcely had the deafening notes of these tumultuous floods, which awakened a thousand echoes in the sombre caves and yawning gulfs of the countless windings and abrupt breaks of the mountain ravines, died away, before we found ourselves in presence of some murmuring cascade that might well have adorned the grove around the grotto of Calypso. In the gleaming crystal basin at its foot, embowered in vernal bloom and eternal verdure, which diffused an aromatic breath over the passer-by, was tremulously reflected the plumed crown of the palm tree under which the weary traveler sought a moment’s rest for his weary frame. At every turn in our steep and devious path, our eyes were delighted by some wild, struggling brook, that fretted its way through a labyrinthine gorge, pranked with verdurous gloom, or charmed by some wanton rivulet leaping over rocks or forminglimpidpools, canopied with foliage and flowers of rarest fragrance and brightest hue, that“Forever gaze on their own drooping eyes,Reflected in the crystal calm.”It is not an exaggeration to say, that in our journey from the foot to the summit of the Andes, we passed inrapid review some of earth’s grandest and most entrancing prospects. Sometimes I was reminded of the mountains and valleys of the Alps, at others of the peaks and cañones of the Rocky Mountains. Some cataracts recalled the waterfalls seen leaping from the lofty precipices of Alaska; others, those that add such a charm to the manifold wonders of the Yosemite and the Yellowstone.But the Andean views can always claim a superiority over all northern scenes of a similar character, in the marvelous setting afforded by the ever-verdant and exuberant vegetation of the tropics. How often did we not wish, during this memorable trip, that we could command the brush of a Turner or a Poussin or a Claude Lorrain, in order to bring home with us copies of some of those wonderful pictures that Nature exhibited to our admiring gaze in her great art gallery of the Oriental Cordilleras!The higher we ascended above the lowlands the less dense became the forests and the less luxuriant the vegetation. At times there were extended reaches of land that were quite treeless; at others the surface of the soil was covered with scrubby growths that were in marked contrast with the splendid sylvan exhibitions to which we had been so long accustomed. But although the giants of the forest were no longer visible, there was little diminution of the splendor of the floral display along our path. In one place, particularly, we were surprised beyond measure to find the whole side of a mountain spur covered with a glorious mantle of immaculately white lilies. The scene was not unlike one of the large lily fields of Bermuda, that supply our Easter altars with their choicest decorations.We were greatly delighted to find in the tropics representatives of the feathered tribe that we were familiar with in the far North. Large flocks of them annually leave North America and Europe to spend the winter season in South America and as regularly return to their northern homes the following summer. Some of them come from far-off Alaska and extend their flight as far south asTierra del Fuego. Others spend the summer in southeast Siberia and then, on the approach of winter, migrate by way of North America to South Brazil. Among the most numerous of these marvelous birds of passage are certain species of sandpipers, plovers and lapwings. The bobolink, known along the Chesapeake as the reedbird, and dreaded as the ricebird in the rice fields of the South, extends its migrations as far into South America as southeastern Brazil. Many of our familiar warblers and sparrows are to be seen during the winter months in Venezuela and Colombia, while certain cliff and barn swallows penetrate as far south as Paraguay. On the Orinoco and the Meta, we recognized many species of ducks that were familiar to us in the United States, among which were the pin-tail, bald-pate, golden-eye and blue-winged teal.“The plovers, sandpipers and kindred species,” writes Knowlton, “take migratory journeys often of extraordinary length. Thus the American golden plover,Charadrius dominicus, breeds in arctic America, some venturing a thousand miles north of the Arctic Circle, and migrates through the entire length of North and South America to its winter home in Patagonia, and, curiously, its spring and fall routes are different. After feasting on the crowberry in Labrador, they seek the coast of Nova Scotia, where they strike out to sea, taking a direct course for the easternmost islands of the West Indies, and thence to the northeastern coast of South America. In spring not one returns by this route, but in March they appear in Guatemala and Texas. April finds their long lines trailing the prairies of the Mississippi Valley; the first of May sees them crossing our northern boundary, and by the first week in June they appear in their breeding grounds in the frozen north. The little sanderling, just mentioned, is almost cosmopolitan in distribution, breeding in the arctic and sub-arctic regions and migrating in the New World to Chile and Patagonia, a distance of eight thousand miles, and in the Old World along the shore of Europe, Asia andAfrica. The Bartramian sandpiper,Bartramia longicauda, nests from eastern North America to Nova Scotia and Alaska, and goes south in winter to southern South America. The solitary sandpiper,Totanus solitarius, breeds mainly to the north of the United States, and winters as far south as Brazil and Peru. The buff-breasted sandpiper,Tryngites subruficollis, rears its young in the Yukon district of Alaska and from the interior of British Colombia to the Arctic coast, and journeys in winter well into South America. The turnstone,Arenaria interpres, a little shore bird, about the size of the song thrush of Europe, is also cosmopolitan, breeding in high northern latitudes and at other times of the year found along the coasts of Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America to the Straits of Magellan, Australia and the Atlantic and Pacific islands. It is one of the species mentioned as making the wonderful flight from the islands in Bering Sea to the Hawaiian Islands.”7By what miraculous instinct are they guided in these semi-annual migrations across half the globe? Who bids them, asks Pope,“Columbus-like, exploreHeavens not their own, and worlds unknown before?Who calls the council, states the certain day.Who forms the phalanx, and who points the way?”Have they a special “sense of direction,” or is their “homing” faculty or power of orientation, something that is tantamount to a sixth sense?We now know far more about the migrations of birds than was known only a few decades ago. We are able to locate many of them during the various seasons of the year, and are quite certain that they never, as an ingenious writer of the early seventeenth century maintained, spend the winter in the moon, where they have no occasion for food; but we have yet much to learn regarding the causes oftheir periodic migrations, and the nature of that instinct that enables them to pass, with unerring precision, from the arctic to the antarctic regions, and from the Old World to the New. We are accumulating daily new facts regarding the distant flights of the birds of passage, but, notwithstanding the many theories, some of them more fantastic than scientific, that have been advanced to explain the cause of the migrations of birds; why such migrations were undertaken in the beginning, why they are still continued, and how birds are able to find their way, during their marvelous flights from the arctic to the antarctic—we are still in the dark about many questions connected with those mysterious migrations, which have excited the interest of even the most casual observer since the prophet Jeremiah wrote: “The stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed time; and the turtle and the crane, and the swallows observe the time of their coming.”8Almost before we were aware of it, the sun had begun to paint the crest of the Andes with bright vermeil and soft purple, and we were still far from Caqueza—the goal of our day’s journey. With the exception of the half-hour we had tarried for luncheon at an attractive posada, called Media Luna, we had been in the saddle all day, and had pushed forwards as rapidly as the strength of our animals would permit. We had left our vaqueano and peons in the rear early in the day, and it was not at all likely that they would be able to reach Caqueza before the following forenoon.After a delightful, sunshiny day, the sky, towards sunset, suddenly became overcast with dark, threatening clouds,and presently it began to rain. One thing, however, was in our favor, and that was the trail. It was in a far better condition than that of the preceding day, but it lay along the breast of a precipitous mountain slope, at the foot of which, within ear-shot, coursed an impetuous mountain torrent. The greater part of the way was quite safe, and we could trust our mules, even in the dark, to keep to the path. But here and there were treacherous places—loose ground, and landslides caused by recent rains—which rendered traveling, even in the daytime, sufficiently difficult. In the darkness, that was every moment becoming more dense, locomotion was positively dangerous. There was no house on the way in which we could find shelter for the night. Our tent, with our other baggage, was in the hands of our dilatory peons. The only alternatives, then, were pressing on to Caqueza, despite darkness and danger, or standing still in our trail, where there was not even a shrub to temper the ever-increasing downpour. We elected to trust our lives again to our mules, as we had done the previous night. This seemed to be the lesser of the two evils that confronted us.We then recalled the hesitating answer that our vaqueano had, in the morning, given to our query about reaching Caqueza beforenightfall. His “Tal vez, no”—perhaps not, was a gentle prognostic that it was impossible, at least for the baggage mules. As a matter of fact, they did not arrive until towards noon the next day. Their mules had given out, and the vaqueano and peons had to make shift to spend the night as best they could under an inclement sky.The last objects of interest that we descried in the deepening gloom were a number of peasant cots perched high upon the mountain sides—much like so many cottages in the higher Alps—and the junction of two rivers—the Rio Blanco and the Rio Negro. The rivers specially attracted our attention, as the color of the waters of the one, the Blanco—white—was in such marked contrast with thewaters of the other, the Negro or black river. The one owed its color to the white clay soil through which it passed. The other was rendered black—like the well-known bog-tinctured, “black waters” of Ireland—by the presence of organic material. Even long after the waters of the two tributaries had entered their common channel, they kept quite separate—the black flowing along one bank and the white along the bank opposite.It would take too long to enumerate the many difficulties we encountered, during our long ride in the darkness, before we finally arrived at Caqueza. Suffice to say that it was several long hours after nightfall, and that we were both quite exhausted, both by hunger and fatigue. We never felt time to pass so slowly, as during the last hour of the day’s journey, when there was danger in every step forward from the ever-threatening ravine, along the edge of which our path lay, and we were quite ready to exclaim with Shelley,“How like death-worms the wingless moments crawl.”In the posada where we purposed spending the night, which was recommended as the best in town, we found sufficient to appease the pangs of hunger, but we were soon made to realize that we had another sleepless night before us. In San Miguel our quarters were damp and our blankets wet, owing to some carelessness on the part of our peons. In Caqueza the rooms assigned us—and particularly the beds—could best be described by a single word—insectiferous. They were a veritable insectarium that served no scientific or economic purpose. It is but just, however, to record that this was our first experience of the kind during our journey thus far in the tropics. Under the circumstances, there was nothing left for us to do except resignedly to exclaim with the pious native—Sea por Dios—may it be received by God in atonement for sin.1The reader who is interested in the famous expeditions of Hohermuth, von Hutten and Federmann, about which there is little in English that is satisfactory, is referred to Castellanos,Varones Ilustres de Indias, Partes II and III; Herrera,Historia de las Indias, Dec. VI; Oviedo y Baños,Conquista y Poblacion de Venezuela, Lib I and III; Oviedo y Valdéz.Historia General y Natural de las Indias, Tom. II, Lib. XXV; Ternaux—Compans,Voyages, Rélations et Memoires Originaux pour servir à l’histoire de la découvarte de l’Amérique, Tom. II, Paris, 1840; Klunzinger,Antheil der Deutschen an der Andeckung von Süd-Amerika, Kap. VI, IX and XII, Stuttgart, 1857; Schumacher,Die Unternehmungen der Augsburger Welser in Venezuela, Kap. IV, IX and XII, in Tom. II, of a work published in Hamburg, 1892,Zur Errinnerung an die Endeckung Amerikas; Topf,Deutsche Statthalter und Konquistadoren in Venezuela, pp. 18, 19, 33–42, 48–55; Tom. VI, of theSammlung gemeinverständlicher wissenschaftlicher Vorträge, Hamburg, 1893; Humbert,L’Occupation Allemande du Venezuela au XVI Siècle, Période dite des Welser, 1528–1556, Bordeaux, 1905. The last-named work is illustrated by a valuable map. The subject possesses an added interest from the fact that it refers to the only attempt at colonial occupation ever made by Germans in South America. How different would now be the condition of Venezuela and Colombia if the Welser colony had been permanent and successful!↑2“Plain folk and faithful, modest and frank,Loyal, humble, sane and obedient.”This is particularly true of Indian children. Writing of them, a Dominican missionary, who had lived among them, and knew them well, expresses himself as follows:—“Je nesaisrien d’aimable, de gracieux, de docile et d’intelligent comme le jeune Indien”—“I know nothing so amiable, so kindly, so docile and so intelligent as the young Indian.”—Voyage d’Exploration d’ un Missionaire Dominicain chez les Tribus Sauvages de l’Equateur, p. 310, Paris, 1889.↑3The people of Venezuela and Colombia are very fond of using diminutives, and one must confess that it often gives to their conversation a peculiar charm and expressiveness. Thus fromtodo, all or every, they formtodito,toditico; fromcerca, near, they derivecerquita,cerquititaorcerquitica. Instead ofAdiosthey will sayAdiosito, and instead ofYo voy passando bien, one hearsYo voy passandito bien.I once gave a young mother a medal for a child she was holding on her lap, and she at once said, “Muchisimas gracias, hijito, yo pondre la medallita lueguito al cuellito de la queridita que va andandito asi, no mas.” “Many thanks, little son”—I was old enough to be her grandfather—“I shall immediately put the little medal on the little neck of the little darling, which is in rather delicate health.”↑4Richard Eden, op. cit., p. 71.↑5Historia de las Indias Occidentales, Dec. II, Lib. III, Cap. 14.↑6The town of Santa Rosa, in Ecuador, had to be abandoned because of the swarms of ants that invaded the place. It is now known as Anagollacta—place of ants.↑7Birds of the World, Chap. IV, New York, 1909.↑8So fixed are the periods of migration, and so punctual is the feathered tribe in starting on its semiannual flights, that “The Arabs are said to have been helped in the compilation of their calendars, by noting the times of the arrival and departure of migratory birds; and the Redskin in the far Northwest has received much the same aid from the birds of another continent.”All things considered, Professor Newton was probably right when he declared that the migration of birds is “perhaps the greatest mystery which the whole animal kingdom presents.”↑

CHAPTER VIIITHE CORDILLERA OF THE ANDES“To sit on rocks, to muse o’er flood and fall,To slowly trace the forest’s shady scene,Where things that own not man’s dominion dwell,And mortal feet hath ne’er, or rarely been;To climb the trackless mountain all unseen.“This is not solitude; ‘tis but to holdConverse with Nature’s charms, and see her stores unrolled.”—Byron.Villavicencio, the capital of the National Territory of the Meta, is situated at the very foot of the Andes, and is an attractive town of about three thousand inhabitants, many of whom are Indians. Its altitude above sea level, according to our barometer, is slightly less than fifteen hundred feet. It is a little more than ninety-three miles from Bogotá and has an average annual temperature of 83° F. During our sojourn in the place the thermometer never rose above 76° F. in the shade, and it was occasionally several degrees below this point. And, although little more than seventy-five miles north of the equator, it was so cool at night that we always used our blankets.A handsome church is located on one side of the spacious green plaza. Not far distant is a well-conducted convent school in charge of nuns recently expatriated from France, in consequence of the laws enacted against religious orders. The people are never tired sounding the praises of these good sisters and telling the visitor of the wondersthey have accomplished in behalf of their children. Here, as elsewhere, “The stone which the builders rejected; the same shall become the head of the corner.”Villavicencio, like Cabuyaro, and other places in the llanos, is eagerly looking forward to the day when it shall be connected by rail with the national capital and the Meta. For nearly a century and a half a commercial route connecting Bogotá with the Meta and the Orinoco has been talked of but nothing has been done to make it a reality.In 1783 the archbishop of Sante Fe, Monsignor Cabellero y Gongora, then viceroy of New Granada, caused a map to be made of the course of the Meta and the Orinoco to the Atlantic, with a view of developing commerce by that route, but the all-powerful opposition of Santa Marta and Cartagena nullified his efforts. Several times since that date the project has been resumed but each time it had to be abandoned in favor of the Magdalena, owing to the pressure brought to bear on the government by the merchants of Cartagena and Santa Marta. There is no doubt that the routeviathe Meta and the Orinoco would, in some respects, possess many advantages over that of the Magdalena, aside from developing much country now practically neglected.Unlike Venezuela, Colombia favors free navigation of her rivers by all nations, and would welcome foreign craft on the Meta as she does on the Magdalena. Venezuela, however, favors monopolies, and, claiming absolute control of the Orinoco, has closed the Meta and the other affluents of the Orinoco to all steamers except those belonging to the one company which has a monopoly of the trade of the Orinoco and all its tributaries. How detrimental such a monopoly is, not only to Colombia but to Venezuela as well, can be seen at a glance. Some of the greatest resources of both countries are left undeveloped and progress in any direction is quite impossible.This matter was taken up at the International Congress of Mexico in 1901, in connection with a plan to render navigation possible through the interior of the continentof South America from the Orinoco to the River Plate, but so far nothing has been accomplished.The greater part of the eastern portion of Colombia is still isolated from the rest of the world, and will remain so until Venezuela shall recognize the fatuity of its short-sighted policy, or until the great commercial nations shall demand that the navigation of the Orinoco and its tributaries, like that of the Amazon and its affluents, be free to all vessels, no matter under what flag they may sail. And as soon as commerce shall awaken to the fact that an immense field of untold riches is closed to her activities in the forests and plains of the Orinoco basin—and that must be ere long—a demand will be made not only in the interests of South America but also in that of the entire civilized world.As an illustration of how Colombia has been made to suffer by the arbitrary policy of Venezuela regarding waterways, of which both the sister republics should be beneficiaries, a single instance will suffice.Shortly before our arrival in Villavicencio, a company was formed to supply electricity to the city. As there are no roads between Bogotá and Villavicencio, which would permit the transportation of the necessary machinery, the only way available for the introduction of such heavy freight was by the Orinoco and the Meta. It was accordingly planned to have the dynamos and other requisites brought by this route, but, when all was ready for shipment, the projectors of the enterprise learned that the Venezuelan government—that is, President Castro—would refuse to grant the necessary permission for the transportation of the merchandise in question. The idea, then, of lighting the city by electricity had to be abandoned, and the capital of the Meta territory is, as a consequence, forced to remain content with tallow candles and kerosene lamps.The people of Villavicencio, as elsewhere in Colombia, we found to be extremely courteous and hospitable. They were eager to hear about America, and in turn were quitewilling to afford all possible information about their own country, and especially about the llanos and Llaneros. We soon became acquainted with all the leading officials and business men, and recall with pleasure the many delicate attentions they showed us while in their midst. We were invited to visit their country estates and to examine some new industries—yet in their infancy—which gave promise of a bright future.One of these was the rubber industry. Not content with the trees that grow spontaneously in the forests in this part of the country, a certain general—one of many we met here—conceived the idea of cultivating the rubber tree and had, accordingly, during the preceding year, set out no fewer than a half million small trees, and had it in purpose to plant many times this number in the near future. He said all that he had already planted were doing well, and he had no doubt about the success of the enterprise. He was most sanguine about the future of eastern Colombia, and expressed it as his belief that in a few years Colombia would be as favorably known for her rubber as she is now for her cacao, coffee and tobacco.There is no reason why the scientific cultivation of the rubber tree should not be attended with as good results in Colombia as have so signalized its culture in Ceylon and the Malay Peninsula. In view of the destructive system of treating the rubber trees in Brazil and other parts of South America in collecting the latex, and the increasing demand for rubber in our various rapidly expanding industries, it would seem that the rubber plantations, like the one above mentioned, are sure to yield their owners a handsome profit.Nothing better illustrates what may be expected in this direction than the experiment made a few decades ago in India with the cinchona tree. Previously to the introduction of this tree into India, where there are now many extensive plantations under cultivation, the sole source of supply of Peruvian bark was from the tropical slopes ofthe Andes. Now, in consequence of the vigorous competition with India, the cinchona industry in the Andean regions is only a fraction of what it formerly was, and, unless something can be done to arrest its rapid decline, it will soon have lost its importance as an article of export from the Cordilleras.We spent three days in Villavicencio and enjoyed every hour of the stay among its kindly people. We had thus an opportunity of securing much needed repose, and of preparing ourselves for our arduous trip across the cloud-reaching Andes. We might have continued, without interruption, our journey from the plains to Bogotá, but it would have been highly imprudent to make the attempt. A sudden change from the lowlands to Andean heights, and from the heat of the llanos to the frigid blasts of the paramos, is something of which the native has an instinctive dread. He accordingly makes his journey by slow stages, so as to become acclimated on the way. In driving cattle from the llanos to Bogotá several weeks are deemed necessary, as otherwise many of them would expire on the road. They appear to be much more affected than man by rapid changes of altitude and temperature.We had been warned time and again by well-meaning persons about the risk we incurred by so soon attempting to cross the Cordilleras, after spending so much time in the lowlands of the Orinoco and the Meta. “You should,” we were told, “spend several weeks on the road, stopping a few days at each posada on the way. Only in this wise can you become acclimated, and render your system proof against the certain dangers of violent changes of temperature and altitude. As you approach the summit of the Andes you will see the sides of the trail strewn with the bleached bones of cattle and horses that have succumbed to the cold and the rare atmosphere of this elevated region. More than this, you will see hundreds of crosses by the wayside marking the spots where over-venturesome travelers wereemparamados—frozen—by the arctic cold of theparamos, and where they found their last resting place. And so strong is the wind on thecumbre—the summit—of the mountain range that people are sometimes blown into the yawning chasm that adjoins the dreadful pass.”To confirm their statements they reminded us of the fearful losses in men and animals sustained by Bolivar when he led his army from the plains of Varinas to the lofty plateau of Cundinamarca; how hundreds of men and horses perished from the intense cold on the elevated pass through which they vainly tried to force their way, and how the entire army was exposed to extermination by the combined action of arctic cold and hurricane blasts.We made no reply to these well-meant warnings, but we could not help recalling similar words of caution before we started on our journey up the Orinoco and the Meta. Then the dangers to be apprehended were from the climate—from intense heat and a pestiferous atmosphere; from wild animals and wilder men. Now it was danger of an opposite kind—danger from cold, of being frozen, or of contracting pneumonia, which in those great altitudes is certain death.Aside from a few uncomfortable nights—which, with a little care, might have been obviated—caused by the activezancudoand thecoloradito—we had escaped all the predicted dangers of the lowlands, and we now felt reasonably sure that we should be equally fortunate in eluding those that were said to await us in the regions of everlasting snow. We were better equipped for making the trip than the poor, ill-clad natives from the llanos, and we could regulate our vesture to suit the temperature. Snow and frost had then no terrors for us, and as we had been accustomed to sudden changes of altitude, without experiencing any evil effects, we felt we had nothing whatever to apprehend.On the third morning after our arrival in Villavicencio we were ready to start for Bogotá, and expected to make the journey of ninety-three miles in three days. We hadsecured mules that were used to mountain travel. Those that we had in crossing the llanos would never have answered our purpose. Our vaqueano and peons wereserranos—mountaineers—thoroughly familiar with the route we were to take. They all seemed to be good, reliable young men, and we felt that the last stage of our journey, before reaching Bogotá, would be quite as enjoyable as any that we had already completed.After many cordial expressions of good wishes on the part of the crowd assembled to witness our departure, and repeated exclamations on all sides of “Felíz viaje!”—a happy journey—and “Dios les guarde á VV!”—God protect you—we said our last adios to all and turned toward the Andes. “Vamos con Dios,” ejaculated our vaqueano. “Y con la Virgen,” was the response of the peons and the bystanders.From the moment we left the door of our temporary lodging, our road was up grade. As we passed along the street that terminates at the foot of the mountain, it seemed that all the women and children of the place were at the doors to get a last view of thejurungos—foreigners—whose arrival from the eastern sea by the great river had been commented on as a more than ordinary event.As soon as we had passed the last house of the city, there was a sudden marked increase in the grade of our trail, and we then felt, for the first time, that we were in sober earnest beginning the actual ascent of the Andes. In two hours we had reached Buena Vista, a lovely spot, eleven hundred and forty feet above Villavicencio.We had frequently been told in Orocué and elsewhere that we should have a beautiful view of the llanos from Buena Vista, and that we would do well to tarry there for a while to enjoy the panorama that would be visible from this elevated spur of the mountain.When a South American—especially one familiar with the mountains—speaks in terms of praise of any particular bit of scenery, one may be sure that he does not exaggerate.He is so accustomed to splendid exhibitions of tropical beauty and mountain grandeur that he passes unnoticed what we of the North should describe as superb, magnificent, glorious. Such scenes are to him as common as the gorgeousness of the setting sun and the sublimity of the starlit heavens are to us and fail to move him for the same reason that the splendors of sun and sky rarely affect us as they would if but occasionally visible. They are everyday objects and the pleasure they should afford palls accordingly.We were not disappointed in our anticipations regarding the view from Buena Vista. On the contrary, it far exceeded anything we had imagined. The sky, with the exception of a few fleecy clouds flitting athwart it, was clear and the sun was almost in the zenith. Far below us, and extending away—north, east, south—towards the dim and distant horizon, were the llanos, every feature of which was brought out in bright relief by the brilliant noonday sun.In the foreground was the montaña through which we had passed just before reaching Villavicencio. Farther afield was a limitless sea of verdure, interspersed with groups of trees, which offered their grateful shade to the countless herds that reposed beneath their wide-spreading branches. In every direction the green savannas were intersected by caños and rivers which looked like streams of molten silver. It was, indeed, a panorama of surpassing beauty and loveliness—of its kind unique in the wide world. It was the boundless plain in eternal converse with the heavens above. It was the abode of liberty, and the trysting-place of life—life palpitating in the sunshine and beneath the emerald borders of the sliver-like water courses that were all hastening with their tribute from the Andes to the Meta, which, far off in the southeast, seemed like a line of union between earth and sky.We have nothing in our country that can bear comparison with the matchless picture seen from Buena Vista.The view of the delta of the Nile—just before harvest time, with its numberless canals and water courses—from the summit of Cheops, contains some of the elements of soft tropical beauty so conspicuous in the Buena Vista landscape; but it lacks the variety, the sweep, the coloring, the harmonious effects of light and shade, the immensity, and above all the wondrous setting afforded the latter prospect by the Titanic Cordilleras.But the measureless expanse of grassy plain that lies before us is but an insignificant fraction of the llanos. They extend from the southern slopes of the Coast Range of Venezuela to the base of the Parime uplands and the Rio Guaviare; from the Andes to the delta of the Orinoco. They are thus almost conterminous with the Orinoco basin. They, indeed, constitute one of the three immense districts into which the whole of South America is divided. The other two are the Selvas of Brazil and the Pampas of Argentina, separated from each other and from the llanos of the north, by low transverse ridges running east and west from the Atlantic to the Cordilleras.To geologists these vast lowlands have a special interest, as they were at one time the bed of an inland sea more extensive far than the present Mediterranean. Even now, during the rainy season, certain parts of this immense expanse are covered by fresh water lakes thousands of square miles in extent. A subsidence of a few hundred feet would again bring the whole of this illimitable territory down below sea level and cause again the formation of the great tropical sea that existed in prehistoric times.To the student of history a special interest attaches to the llanos of western Venezuela and eastern Colombia. It was across these plains and swamps, under the most trying difficulties, that Bolivar led his half-clad, half-famished army, during his memorable march across the Cordilleras, before achieving the independence of New Granada in the famous battle of Boyacá.But great as was the feat accomplished by Bolivar intraversing the llanos, great as were the difficulties he had to contend with, they pale into insignificance when compared with the hardships and achievements of the earlydescubridores—explorers—of these then unknown wilds. Bolivar and his men traveled through a country that had been long settled, and were among friends and compatriots. The early explorers and conquistadores were, on the contrary, in an unknown land, among murderous, relentless savages armed with poisoned arrows. They were in a region where it was often impossible to procure food, and where several times starvation was imminent. For months at a time they wandered through dark, tangled forests, cutting a road as they went, lured on by the hope of fame and fortune. Then they had to feel their way through deep and treacherous morasses, in which they had to confront even greater dangers than in the obscure woodlands. But notwithstanding dangers and difficulties of every kind, they kept moving forward through woods and swamps, across rivers and mountains, ever in pursuit of gold and precious stones, and of the fabulous riches of the Meta and the treasure city of Manoa.Among these famousdescubridoreswas the German, George Hohermuth, whom the Spaniards called Jorge de Spira. Starting from Coró, on the Caribbean, with three hundred and sixty-one men and eighty horses, he directed his course southwards, where, he was assured, were inexhaustible treasures of every kind. Crossing the llanos of Venezuela and New Granada, he must have passed near the present site of Buena Vista.During our journey we certainly crossed his line of march, which in this latitude was probably near the base of the Cordilleras. Spurred on by an ever-recedingignis fatuus, he continued his march until he reached the Japura, an affluent of the Amazon, and but a short distance from the equator. During this frightful journey he crossed the Arauca, the Apure, the Meta, the Guaviare and other broad and deep rivers. Of the countless difficulties he encounteredin his long and painful march, no one who is unfamiliar with the character of forest and plain in the tropics, particularly during the rainy season, can have the faintest conception. They far transcend anything experienced by Stanley, or Mungo Park, or any other African explorer. After more than three years of unheard-of sufferings, he finally returned to Coró with but a small fraction of the brave men that had originally formed part of his expedition.Hohermuth was followed by Philip von Hutten, in 1541, on a similar expedition, who traveled over almost the same ground as his predecessor. He, too, must have passed near where Buena Vista now stands. His undertaking was quite as fruitless as that of Hohermuth and his losses were greater. He spent more than four years in the llanos and Cordilleras and, before he could return to his starting point, he died at the hands of an assassin.More remarkable still, in some respects, was the expedition of Nicholas Federmann, who, like Hohermuth and Von Hutten, was in the service of the Welsers, concessionaires of a large German colony near Lake Maracaibo. Crossing the llanos, and the numerous rivers that flow through them, he eventually found himself on the banks of the Meta. Thence he proceeded west and crossed the Cordilleras, not, however, without numerous victims—both men and horses—from the intense cold on the mountain summits. He finally reached the fertile plain of Bogotá, where occurred that famous and unexpected meeting of Belalcazar, who had come with another expedition from Quito, and Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada who, a short time previously, had arrived with a third expedition from Santa Marta.It would be interesting to know what was Federmann’s itinerary after leaving the banks of the Meta, and the exact spot where he crossed the Cordilleras. This we can only conjecture, as there is no record of it, but we loved to think, while crossing the Andes on our way to Bogotá, that we were still following the conquistadores, and that ours wasthe same route that had been taken by Federmann and his brave men more than three and a half centuries before.1After leaving Buena Vista, we were exposed to a heavy tropical downpour that lasted the greater part of the day. Fortunately the rain did not affect us in the slightest. Our bayetones and waterproof boots kept us perfectly dry and, as the rain was not chilly, we rather enjoyed the experience.Our path during the greater part of the day lay through forests and along rivers and over mountain torrents. At times it was high up on the mountain side, thousands of feet above the water courses surging and foaming at its base. Again it was along the edge of a dizzy precipice, where a single false step of our mule would have meant instant death to its rider.What gave us grave concern at first was the fact that our mules always persisted in keeping on the side of the track next to the ravine, no matter how deep or threatening it might be. We tried, until we were exhausted, to keep them on the opposite side of the trail, but it was useless. They seemed bent on courting danger, and on seeing how nearthey could keep to the verge of the chasm without plunging into its abysmal depths.Unfortunately for our peace of mind, we did not then know the Andean mule as well as we do now. Had we understood him as well at the beginning of our journey as we did at the end, we should have given him a free rein, and thereby spared ourselves many nerve-racking moments and many futile efforts to correct his persistent aberrations. Why a mule prefers to walk on the brink of a precipice, whenever it has an opportunity of doing so, rather than keep to what we humans should consider the safer side of the path, is a mystery I do not profess to fathom. I simply state the fact. I leave its explanation to experts in mule psychology.The country through which we passed was fairly well populated, and we were never long out of sight of a habitation of some kind. Sometimes the dwellings were of stone, but more frequently they were of bamboo daubed with clay and thatched with palm leaf. The people, usually Indians or half-breeds, were in humble circumstances but we never saw any evidences of actual want or suffering. “Nunca se muere de hambre aqui”—No one ever dies of hunger here—an Indian woman once informed us, when we made inquiry about the subject. If one should happen to have nothing to eat, his friends and neighbors supply him with food. They are ever willing to assist one another, and we were often surprised to see how ready they were to share their limited store with others, whether in want or not.Stopping for Luncheon in the Lower Cordilleras.Stopping for Luncheon in the Lower Cordilleras.A more friendly people we never met than the good people who dwell on the eastern slopes of the Colombian Cordilleras. They always have a kindly greeting for every one they meet. No one, not even the youngest child, will pass you on the road without a cordial “Buenos dias,” “Buenas tardes,” or “Buenas noches”—Good day, Good evening, or Good night—as the case may be. These cheering salutations, that were always forthcoming, whether wemet one or a score, young or old, made us forget that we were in a foreign land, far from home and friends, and quite reconciled us to any little discomforts we might experience along our steep and rugged path. Here among these simple, unspoiled people the brotherhood of man is not an empty rhetorical phrase, or a vain poetical figment, but a living, every-day reality.How often during our journeyings in the savannas and highlands of Colombia did we not recall the beautiful couplet of Castellanos regarding the primitive inhabitants of New Granada!—“Gente llana, fiel, modesta, clara,Leal, humilde, sana y obediente.”2They are the same to-day, especially when removed from the baleful influence of those who, instead of aiding them, would drag them down to the lowest depths of degradation and servitude.But obliging and honest as we always found these people to be, they, nevertheless, invariably failed us in one particular. We could never, except occasionally by accident, get from them a correct or satisfactory answer about the distance from one place to another.Never shall we forget our experience during our first day’s journey in the Cordilleras. Our objective point was San Miguel, where we were told we should find a good lodging house—one of the best on the road, we were assured—and, as the distance was great, it was necessary to make extra good time in order to arrive there before nightfall. The heavy, long-continued rains had made our trail extremelyheavy, and in places almost impassable. The hours passed and we found ourselves advancing much more slowly than was desirable. The lowering clouds were massing on the mountain slopes, and the rain began to fall in torrents. It then began to dawn upon us that we might not be able to reach our destination in the limited time yet remaining of the fast-departing day.Further progress along our dangerous path in the impenetrable gloom, that would immediately follow sunset, we knew to be impossible. We knew or thought we knew, about how far we were still from San Miguel, but we wished to be certain about the distance.It was now about four o’clock in the afternoon, and it was imperative for us to reach our posada by six o’clock, if we were to arrive there at all that day. We accordingly inquired of one of the many peons we met, who were returning to their homes from their day’s labor in the fields, how far it was to San Miguel. “Tres leguas, Señores”—three leagues, Sirs—was the answer to our question.This was disheartening. Our mules were now exhausted, and could not possibly make three leagues in two hours over the terrific track we were traveling. But there was nothing to do but push on. At the end of an hour we asked the same question of another peon. “Quatro leguas, Señores”—four leagues, Sirs, was the reply. This answer was confirmed by several other peons, whom we also questioned. Matters were becoming serious, but we continued on in silence, hoping against hope.About a half hour later we again renewed our query. “Una legua, Señores”—one league, Sirs—said a bright boy, who was driving a heavily-laden donkey. It was now dusk, and as dusk in the tropics lasts but a few minutes, we knew that we should soon be enveloped in total darkness.A little further on, a woman, with a child in her arms, informed us that San Miguel was “cerca”—near. This was too ambiguous for us, as it might mean one league or several leagues. Asking her how near it was, she repliedmuy cerca—very near. This was still unsatisfactory. She then assured us that it was “cerquita,” “cerquitita”—diminutives of cerca—3meaning that the place was extremely near, only a few steps farther. “Dando la vuelta de la esquina”—around the corner there—she said, “is San Miguel, the second house you come to.” Peering into the darkness before us, we could barely discern what appeared a projection from the mountain side. We had to be satisfied with this answer as, try as we would, we could elicit nothing more definite from our informant.The darkness was now so dense that we were unable to see even as far as our mules’ ears. There was then nothing to be done but to give our animals the rein and trust them to carry us to our destination. As if guided by a peculiar instinct, they carefully picked their way through the mud, but we thought they should never get around that corner towards which we had been directed.We were now quite exhausted, as we had eaten nothing since morning, and longed for a place of shelter, where we could find repose. Only once before, in all my travels, did it seem to take so long to get around a mountain spur. Years ago, in the mountains of the Peloponnesus, I had a similar experience, but then the road was good and the moon was shining. Here there was only a wretched, dangerous trail, and it was pitch dark.At the long last, we saw a light glimmering in a hut by the roadside. This was something. The next house, whichwas said to be bard by, should be the long-desired San Miguel.To reassure ourselves, we asked a woman who was standing at the door of the cot, where was San Miguel. She did not know. She had never beard of such a place. It might be at the other side of the mountain, or we might already have passed it; she could not tell.“But is there not a posada near here,” I queried, “or a place where we can remain over night?” “Oh! yes,” the woman replied, “there is a very good posada just across the road—that large building right in front of you. You are looking for la Señora Filomena’s house. That is what we call it here.” And so it was. A few rods away was San Miguel, at last. Only the tired, famished traveler in a strange land can realize how glad we were that the day’s journey was finally at an end.We spent a very uncomfortable night at San Miguel, and were glad when we found ourselves, early the following morning, again in the saddle, bound for Caqueza, the capital of a district near the summit of the Cordilleras. “We must make better time than yesterday,” I said, on starting, to our vaqueano. “Si, Señor.” “We shall arrive at Caqueza by four o’clock, shall we not?” “Es imposible, Señor. It is impossible, Sir.” “Well, then, we shall arrive by five, shall we not?” “No se puede, Señor. It cannot be done, Sir.” “At all events, we must reach Caqueza before dark.” “Tal vez, no—Probably not,” was his final reply, and we had to let it go at that.The scenery along our route between San Miguel and Caqueza was much like that which we had so much admired during the preceding day. The country was, however, much more thickly populated and we met many more people on the way. There was always that same cordial greeting, that had before touched us so deeply, and the same disposition to oblige us in any way possible.At one place on the roadside, we saw a young couple, neither more than eighteen years of age, erecting a littlebamboo cot. They were evidently just entering upon house-keeping, and seemed to be very happy. The labor involved in the construction of their future home was little and the expense was nothing. All would be in readiness for occupancy in a day or two after work begun. Then their little plot of ground, planted with maize, yuca, plantains and bananas, together with a few domestic animals, would supply them with all the food required and enable them to enjoy an idyllic existence far away from the maddening crowd, and quite removed from“The weariness, the fever, and the fretHere, where men sit and hear each other groan.”It was evidently some such Arcadian scene that was before Tennyson’s vision when he, in Locksley Hall, penned the beautiful lines,“Ah, for some retreat,”where“Slides the bird o’er lustrous woodland, swings the trailer from the crag—”“Droops the heavy-blossomed bower, hangs the heavy-fruited tree—”and where are“Breaths of tropic shade and palms in cluster, knots of Paradise.”Further on we met another young couple, radiant with the glow of youth and present happiness, carrying all their householdgoodswith them. These were few and simple. The man carried a machete, and a few rush mats; the woman a few simple culinary utensils consisting mainly of a metal pot and a few calabash cups and dishes. They were evidently looking for a site for a home, and probably, a few hours later had, like the first couple we saw, their simple habitation well under way.Of these good people one can repeat what Peter Martyrsaid of the aborigines shortly after the discovery of America:“A fewe thinges contente them, hauinge no delite in suche superfluites, for the which in other places men take infinite paynes and commit manie vnlawfull actes, yet are neuer satisfied, whereas many haue to muche, and none inowgh. But emonge these simple sowles, a fewe clothes serue the naked; weightes and measures are not needefull to such as cannot kyll of crafte and deceyte and haue not the vse of pestiferous monye, the seede of unnumerable myscheues. So that if we shall not be ashamed to confesse the truthe, they seeme to lyue in that goulden worlde of the whiche owlde wryters speak so much; wherin men lyued simplye and innocentlye without inforcement of lawes, without quarrellinge. Iudges and libelles, contente onely to satisfie nature, without further vexation for knowledge of thinges to come.”4Later on in the day we came across more home-builders, but of quite a different kind from those above mentioned. Toward noon, we noticed some distance ahead of us, what appeared to be a greenish black ribbon, extended along our path. It was about a foot wide and several hundred feet long. We could not imagine what it could be until we were within a few yards of it. It proved to be an army of ants on a foraging expedition. There were millions, if not billions of them. Those on one side were carrying pieces of leaves about the size of a sixpence. They formed the green part of the ribbon that we had seen from a distance. Those on the other side, moving in an opposite direction, constituted the black part. They were all engaged in getting material for thatching their curious dome-like homes, which are often of extraordinary dimensions. Sometimes they are fully thirty or forty feet in diameter.We regretted that time did not permit us to examine the length of their line of march, from their marvelous dwellingsto the trees they were stripping for roofing material. They have been known to go a mile or more for material suited to their purpose and to deprive scores of trees of all their leaves in a single day.To one unfamiliar with the tropics, the depredations committed by these destructive insects appear incredible. Of an unknown number of species, they are among the greatest enemies of man in the equatorial regions. They spare nothing. Gardens and orchards, coffee and sugar, cassava and banana plantations disappear as quickly before them as before blight or frost.In the early part of the sixteenth century, according to Herrera,5their numbers in Española and Puerto Rico were so great and their devastations so extensive and irresistible, that they threatened to depopulate the islands. Various parts of South America have also at different times suffered from the same plague—rivaling the seven plagues of Egypt in the distress and destruction which marked their path. Had we not had here, and elsewhere in the tropics, ocular evidence of their prodigious numbers, and been witnesses of the magnitude of the works due to their united efforts, we should have classed the accounts left us by the early chroniclers of the extent of the ravages of the ant plague among works of fiction rather than records of authentic history.6The scenery along the mountain ascent was an ever-changing panorama of rarest beauty and sublimity, such as no pen could describe or brush portray. It exhibited all the tropical luxuriance of the llanos together with the wild picturesqueness characteristic of Alpine heights.At times we wended our way along the banks of a noiseless river, which, in solitary grandeur, was sweeping through verdant meads and beneath arcades of sylvangreen, carrying its vivifying waves to the broad, expectant plains below. The placid scene, dotted with human habitations, and variegated by bright pastures, the home of contented flocks and herds, offered to the enchanted gaze, in a single picture, all the fabled beauties of the glens of Tempe and the dales of Arcady.As we mounted higher up on our way, our route was along the verge of deep, headlong torrents mantled in the shade of overhanging bamboos, or obscured by the jutting crags and huge beetling rocks of the earthquake rift mountain. Ever and anon, our ears caught the muffled but incessant roar of thunderous waterfalls, which plunged from dizzy precipices high above our heads, both to the right and to the left of our upward path.Scarcely had the deafening notes of these tumultuous floods, which awakened a thousand echoes in the sombre caves and yawning gulfs of the countless windings and abrupt breaks of the mountain ravines, died away, before we found ourselves in presence of some murmuring cascade that might well have adorned the grove around the grotto of Calypso. In the gleaming crystal basin at its foot, embowered in vernal bloom and eternal verdure, which diffused an aromatic breath over the passer-by, was tremulously reflected the plumed crown of the palm tree under which the weary traveler sought a moment’s rest for his weary frame. At every turn in our steep and devious path, our eyes were delighted by some wild, struggling brook, that fretted its way through a labyrinthine gorge, pranked with verdurous gloom, or charmed by some wanton rivulet leaping over rocks or forminglimpidpools, canopied with foliage and flowers of rarest fragrance and brightest hue, that“Forever gaze on their own drooping eyes,Reflected in the crystal calm.”It is not an exaggeration to say, that in our journey from the foot to the summit of the Andes, we passed inrapid review some of earth’s grandest and most entrancing prospects. Sometimes I was reminded of the mountains and valleys of the Alps, at others of the peaks and cañones of the Rocky Mountains. Some cataracts recalled the waterfalls seen leaping from the lofty precipices of Alaska; others, those that add such a charm to the manifold wonders of the Yosemite and the Yellowstone.But the Andean views can always claim a superiority over all northern scenes of a similar character, in the marvelous setting afforded by the ever-verdant and exuberant vegetation of the tropics. How often did we not wish, during this memorable trip, that we could command the brush of a Turner or a Poussin or a Claude Lorrain, in order to bring home with us copies of some of those wonderful pictures that Nature exhibited to our admiring gaze in her great art gallery of the Oriental Cordilleras!The higher we ascended above the lowlands the less dense became the forests and the less luxuriant the vegetation. At times there were extended reaches of land that were quite treeless; at others the surface of the soil was covered with scrubby growths that were in marked contrast with the splendid sylvan exhibitions to which we had been so long accustomed. But although the giants of the forest were no longer visible, there was little diminution of the splendor of the floral display along our path. In one place, particularly, we were surprised beyond measure to find the whole side of a mountain spur covered with a glorious mantle of immaculately white lilies. The scene was not unlike one of the large lily fields of Bermuda, that supply our Easter altars with their choicest decorations.We were greatly delighted to find in the tropics representatives of the feathered tribe that we were familiar with in the far North. Large flocks of them annually leave North America and Europe to spend the winter season in South America and as regularly return to their northern homes the following summer. Some of them come from far-off Alaska and extend their flight as far south asTierra del Fuego. Others spend the summer in southeast Siberia and then, on the approach of winter, migrate by way of North America to South Brazil. Among the most numerous of these marvelous birds of passage are certain species of sandpipers, plovers and lapwings. The bobolink, known along the Chesapeake as the reedbird, and dreaded as the ricebird in the rice fields of the South, extends its migrations as far into South America as southeastern Brazil. Many of our familiar warblers and sparrows are to be seen during the winter months in Venezuela and Colombia, while certain cliff and barn swallows penetrate as far south as Paraguay. On the Orinoco and the Meta, we recognized many species of ducks that were familiar to us in the United States, among which were the pin-tail, bald-pate, golden-eye and blue-winged teal.“The plovers, sandpipers and kindred species,” writes Knowlton, “take migratory journeys often of extraordinary length. Thus the American golden plover,Charadrius dominicus, breeds in arctic America, some venturing a thousand miles north of the Arctic Circle, and migrates through the entire length of North and South America to its winter home in Patagonia, and, curiously, its spring and fall routes are different. After feasting on the crowberry in Labrador, they seek the coast of Nova Scotia, where they strike out to sea, taking a direct course for the easternmost islands of the West Indies, and thence to the northeastern coast of South America. In spring not one returns by this route, but in March they appear in Guatemala and Texas. April finds their long lines trailing the prairies of the Mississippi Valley; the first of May sees them crossing our northern boundary, and by the first week in June they appear in their breeding grounds in the frozen north. The little sanderling, just mentioned, is almost cosmopolitan in distribution, breeding in the arctic and sub-arctic regions and migrating in the New World to Chile and Patagonia, a distance of eight thousand miles, and in the Old World along the shore of Europe, Asia andAfrica. The Bartramian sandpiper,Bartramia longicauda, nests from eastern North America to Nova Scotia and Alaska, and goes south in winter to southern South America. The solitary sandpiper,Totanus solitarius, breeds mainly to the north of the United States, and winters as far south as Brazil and Peru. The buff-breasted sandpiper,Tryngites subruficollis, rears its young in the Yukon district of Alaska and from the interior of British Colombia to the Arctic coast, and journeys in winter well into South America. The turnstone,Arenaria interpres, a little shore bird, about the size of the song thrush of Europe, is also cosmopolitan, breeding in high northern latitudes and at other times of the year found along the coasts of Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America to the Straits of Magellan, Australia and the Atlantic and Pacific islands. It is one of the species mentioned as making the wonderful flight from the islands in Bering Sea to the Hawaiian Islands.”7By what miraculous instinct are they guided in these semi-annual migrations across half the globe? Who bids them, asks Pope,“Columbus-like, exploreHeavens not their own, and worlds unknown before?Who calls the council, states the certain day.Who forms the phalanx, and who points the way?”Have they a special “sense of direction,” or is their “homing” faculty or power of orientation, something that is tantamount to a sixth sense?We now know far more about the migrations of birds than was known only a few decades ago. We are able to locate many of them during the various seasons of the year, and are quite certain that they never, as an ingenious writer of the early seventeenth century maintained, spend the winter in the moon, where they have no occasion for food; but we have yet much to learn regarding the causes oftheir periodic migrations, and the nature of that instinct that enables them to pass, with unerring precision, from the arctic to the antarctic regions, and from the Old World to the New. We are accumulating daily new facts regarding the distant flights of the birds of passage, but, notwithstanding the many theories, some of them more fantastic than scientific, that have been advanced to explain the cause of the migrations of birds; why such migrations were undertaken in the beginning, why they are still continued, and how birds are able to find their way, during their marvelous flights from the arctic to the antarctic—we are still in the dark about many questions connected with those mysterious migrations, which have excited the interest of even the most casual observer since the prophet Jeremiah wrote: “The stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed time; and the turtle and the crane, and the swallows observe the time of their coming.”8Almost before we were aware of it, the sun had begun to paint the crest of the Andes with bright vermeil and soft purple, and we were still far from Caqueza—the goal of our day’s journey. With the exception of the half-hour we had tarried for luncheon at an attractive posada, called Media Luna, we had been in the saddle all day, and had pushed forwards as rapidly as the strength of our animals would permit. We had left our vaqueano and peons in the rear early in the day, and it was not at all likely that they would be able to reach Caqueza before the following forenoon.After a delightful, sunshiny day, the sky, towards sunset, suddenly became overcast with dark, threatening clouds,and presently it began to rain. One thing, however, was in our favor, and that was the trail. It was in a far better condition than that of the preceding day, but it lay along the breast of a precipitous mountain slope, at the foot of which, within ear-shot, coursed an impetuous mountain torrent. The greater part of the way was quite safe, and we could trust our mules, even in the dark, to keep to the path. But here and there were treacherous places—loose ground, and landslides caused by recent rains—which rendered traveling, even in the daytime, sufficiently difficult. In the darkness, that was every moment becoming more dense, locomotion was positively dangerous. There was no house on the way in which we could find shelter for the night. Our tent, with our other baggage, was in the hands of our dilatory peons. The only alternatives, then, were pressing on to Caqueza, despite darkness and danger, or standing still in our trail, where there was not even a shrub to temper the ever-increasing downpour. We elected to trust our lives again to our mules, as we had done the previous night. This seemed to be the lesser of the two evils that confronted us.We then recalled the hesitating answer that our vaqueano had, in the morning, given to our query about reaching Caqueza beforenightfall. His “Tal vez, no”—perhaps not, was a gentle prognostic that it was impossible, at least for the baggage mules. As a matter of fact, they did not arrive until towards noon the next day. Their mules had given out, and the vaqueano and peons had to make shift to spend the night as best they could under an inclement sky.The last objects of interest that we descried in the deepening gloom were a number of peasant cots perched high upon the mountain sides—much like so many cottages in the higher Alps—and the junction of two rivers—the Rio Blanco and the Rio Negro. The rivers specially attracted our attention, as the color of the waters of the one, the Blanco—white—was in such marked contrast with thewaters of the other, the Negro or black river. The one owed its color to the white clay soil through which it passed. The other was rendered black—like the well-known bog-tinctured, “black waters” of Ireland—by the presence of organic material. Even long after the waters of the two tributaries had entered their common channel, they kept quite separate—the black flowing along one bank and the white along the bank opposite.It would take too long to enumerate the many difficulties we encountered, during our long ride in the darkness, before we finally arrived at Caqueza. Suffice to say that it was several long hours after nightfall, and that we were both quite exhausted, both by hunger and fatigue. We never felt time to pass so slowly, as during the last hour of the day’s journey, when there was danger in every step forward from the ever-threatening ravine, along the edge of which our path lay, and we were quite ready to exclaim with Shelley,“How like death-worms the wingless moments crawl.”In the posada where we purposed spending the night, which was recommended as the best in town, we found sufficient to appease the pangs of hunger, but we were soon made to realize that we had another sleepless night before us. In San Miguel our quarters were damp and our blankets wet, owing to some carelessness on the part of our peons. In Caqueza the rooms assigned us—and particularly the beds—could best be described by a single word—insectiferous. They were a veritable insectarium that served no scientific or economic purpose. It is but just, however, to record that this was our first experience of the kind during our journey thus far in the tropics. Under the circumstances, there was nothing left for us to do except resignedly to exclaim with the pious native—Sea por Dios—may it be received by God in atonement for sin.1The reader who is interested in the famous expeditions of Hohermuth, von Hutten and Federmann, about which there is little in English that is satisfactory, is referred to Castellanos,Varones Ilustres de Indias, Partes II and III; Herrera,Historia de las Indias, Dec. VI; Oviedo y Baños,Conquista y Poblacion de Venezuela, Lib I and III; Oviedo y Valdéz.Historia General y Natural de las Indias, Tom. II, Lib. XXV; Ternaux—Compans,Voyages, Rélations et Memoires Originaux pour servir à l’histoire de la découvarte de l’Amérique, Tom. II, Paris, 1840; Klunzinger,Antheil der Deutschen an der Andeckung von Süd-Amerika, Kap. VI, IX and XII, Stuttgart, 1857; Schumacher,Die Unternehmungen der Augsburger Welser in Venezuela, Kap. IV, IX and XII, in Tom. II, of a work published in Hamburg, 1892,Zur Errinnerung an die Endeckung Amerikas; Topf,Deutsche Statthalter und Konquistadoren in Venezuela, pp. 18, 19, 33–42, 48–55; Tom. VI, of theSammlung gemeinverständlicher wissenschaftlicher Vorträge, Hamburg, 1893; Humbert,L’Occupation Allemande du Venezuela au XVI Siècle, Période dite des Welser, 1528–1556, Bordeaux, 1905. The last-named work is illustrated by a valuable map. The subject possesses an added interest from the fact that it refers to the only attempt at colonial occupation ever made by Germans in South America. How different would now be the condition of Venezuela and Colombia if the Welser colony had been permanent and successful!↑2“Plain folk and faithful, modest and frank,Loyal, humble, sane and obedient.”This is particularly true of Indian children. Writing of them, a Dominican missionary, who had lived among them, and knew them well, expresses himself as follows:—“Je nesaisrien d’aimable, de gracieux, de docile et d’intelligent comme le jeune Indien”—“I know nothing so amiable, so kindly, so docile and so intelligent as the young Indian.”—Voyage d’Exploration d’ un Missionaire Dominicain chez les Tribus Sauvages de l’Equateur, p. 310, Paris, 1889.↑3The people of Venezuela and Colombia are very fond of using diminutives, and one must confess that it often gives to their conversation a peculiar charm and expressiveness. Thus fromtodo, all or every, they formtodito,toditico; fromcerca, near, they derivecerquita,cerquititaorcerquitica. Instead ofAdiosthey will sayAdiosito, and instead ofYo voy passando bien, one hearsYo voy passandito bien.I once gave a young mother a medal for a child she was holding on her lap, and she at once said, “Muchisimas gracias, hijito, yo pondre la medallita lueguito al cuellito de la queridita que va andandito asi, no mas.” “Many thanks, little son”—I was old enough to be her grandfather—“I shall immediately put the little medal on the little neck of the little darling, which is in rather delicate health.”↑4Richard Eden, op. cit., p. 71.↑5Historia de las Indias Occidentales, Dec. II, Lib. III, Cap. 14.↑6The town of Santa Rosa, in Ecuador, had to be abandoned because of the swarms of ants that invaded the place. It is now known as Anagollacta—place of ants.↑7Birds of the World, Chap. IV, New York, 1909.↑8So fixed are the periods of migration, and so punctual is the feathered tribe in starting on its semiannual flights, that “The Arabs are said to have been helped in the compilation of their calendars, by noting the times of the arrival and departure of migratory birds; and the Redskin in the far Northwest has received much the same aid from the birds of another continent.”All things considered, Professor Newton was probably right when he declared that the migration of birds is “perhaps the greatest mystery which the whole animal kingdom presents.”↑

CHAPTER VIIITHE CORDILLERA OF THE ANDES“To sit on rocks, to muse o’er flood and fall,To slowly trace the forest’s shady scene,Where things that own not man’s dominion dwell,And mortal feet hath ne’er, or rarely been;To climb the trackless mountain all unseen.“This is not solitude; ‘tis but to holdConverse with Nature’s charms, and see her stores unrolled.”—Byron.

“To sit on rocks, to muse o’er flood and fall,To slowly trace the forest’s shady scene,Where things that own not man’s dominion dwell,And mortal feet hath ne’er, or rarely been;To climb the trackless mountain all unseen.“This is not solitude; ‘tis but to holdConverse with Nature’s charms, and see her stores unrolled.”—Byron.

“To sit on rocks, to muse o’er flood and fall,To slowly trace the forest’s shady scene,Where things that own not man’s dominion dwell,And mortal feet hath ne’er, or rarely been;To climb the trackless mountain all unseen.“This is not solitude; ‘tis but to holdConverse with Nature’s charms, and see her stores unrolled.”

“To sit on rocks, to muse o’er flood and fall,

To slowly trace the forest’s shady scene,

Where things that own not man’s dominion dwell,

And mortal feet hath ne’er, or rarely been;

To climb the trackless mountain all unseen.

“This is not solitude; ‘tis but to hold

Converse with Nature’s charms, and see her stores unrolled.”

—Byron.

Villavicencio, the capital of the National Territory of the Meta, is situated at the very foot of the Andes, and is an attractive town of about three thousand inhabitants, many of whom are Indians. Its altitude above sea level, according to our barometer, is slightly less than fifteen hundred feet. It is a little more than ninety-three miles from Bogotá and has an average annual temperature of 83° F. During our sojourn in the place the thermometer never rose above 76° F. in the shade, and it was occasionally several degrees below this point. And, although little more than seventy-five miles north of the equator, it was so cool at night that we always used our blankets.A handsome church is located on one side of the spacious green plaza. Not far distant is a well-conducted convent school in charge of nuns recently expatriated from France, in consequence of the laws enacted against religious orders. The people are never tired sounding the praises of these good sisters and telling the visitor of the wondersthey have accomplished in behalf of their children. Here, as elsewhere, “The stone which the builders rejected; the same shall become the head of the corner.”Villavicencio, like Cabuyaro, and other places in the llanos, is eagerly looking forward to the day when it shall be connected by rail with the national capital and the Meta. For nearly a century and a half a commercial route connecting Bogotá with the Meta and the Orinoco has been talked of but nothing has been done to make it a reality.In 1783 the archbishop of Sante Fe, Monsignor Cabellero y Gongora, then viceroy of New Granada, caused a map to be made of the course of the Meta and the Orinoco to the Atlantic, with a view of developing commerce by that route, but the all-powerful opposition of Santa Marta and Cartagena nullified his efforts. Several times since that date the project has been resumed but each time it had to be abandoned in favor of the Magdalena, owing to the pressure brought to bear on the government by the merchants of Cartagena and Santa Marta. There is no doubt that the routeviathe Meta and the Orinoco would, in some respects, possess many advantages over that of the Magdalena, aside from developing much country now practically neglected.Unlike Venezuela, Colombia favors free navigation of her rivers by all nations, and would welcome foreign craft on the Meta as she does on the Magdalena. Venezuela, however, favors monopolies, and, claiming absolute control of the Orinoco, has closed the Meta and the other affluents of the Orinoco to all steamers except those belonging to the one company which has a monopoly of the trade of the Orinoco and all its tributaries. How detrimental such a monopoly is, not only to Colombia but to Venezuela as well, can be seen at a glance. Some of the greatest resources of both countries are left undeveloped and progress in any direction is quite impossible.This matter was taken up at the International Congress of Mexico in 1901, in connection with a plan to render navigation possible through the interior of the continentof South America from the Orinoco to the River Plate, but so far nothing has been accomplished.The greater part of the eastern portion of Colombia is still isolated from the rest of the world, and will remain so until Venezuela shall recognize the fatuity of its short-sighted policy, or until the great commercial nations shall demand that the navigation of the Orinoco and its tributaries, like that of the Amazon and its affluents, be free to all vessels, no matter under what flag they may sail. And as soon as commerce shall awaken to the fact that an immense field of untold riches is closed to her activities in the forests and plains of the Orinoco basin—and that must be ere long—a demand will be made not only in the interests of South America but also in that of the entire civilized world.As an illustration of how Colombia has been made to suffer by the arbitrary policy of Venezuela regarding waterways, of which both the sister republics should be beneficiaries, a single instance will suffice.Shortly before our arrival in Villavicencio, a company was formed to supply electricity to the city. As there are no roads between Bogotá and Villavicencio, which would permit the transportation of the necessary machinery, the only way available for the introduction of such heavy freight was by the Orinoco and the Meta. It was accordingly planned to have the dynamos and other requisites brought by this route, but, when all was ready for shipment, the projectors of the enterprise learned that the Venezuelan government—that is, President Castro—would refuse to grant the necessary permission for the transportation of the merchandise in question. The idea, then, of lighting the city by electricity had to be abandoned, and the capital of the Meta territory is, as a consequence, forced to remain content with tallow candles and kerosene lamps.The people of Villavicencio, as elsewhere in Colombia, we found to be extremely courteous and hospitable. They were eager to hear about America, and in turn were quitewilling to afford all possible information about their own country, and especially about the llanos and Llaneros. We soon became acquainted with all the leading officials and business men, and recall with pleasure the many delicate attentions they showed us while in their midst. We were invited to visit their country estates and to examine some new industries—yet in their infancy—which gave promise of a bright future.One of these was the rubber industry. Not content with the trees that grow spontaneously in the forests in this part of the country, a certain general—one of many we met here—conceived the idea of cultivating the rubber tree and had, accordingly, during the preceding year, set out no fewer than a half million small trees, and had it in purpose to plant many times this number in the near future. He said all that he had already planted were doing well, and he had no doubt about the success of the enterprise. He was most sanguine about the future of eastern Colombia, and expressed it as his belief that in a few years Colombia would be as favorably known for her rubber as she is now for her cacao, coffee and tobacco.There is no reason why the scientific cultivation of the rubber tree should not be attended with as good results in Colombia as have so signalized its culture in Ceylon and the Malay Peninsula. In view of the destructive system of treating the rubber trees in Brazil and other parts of South America in collecting the latex, and the increasing demand for rubber in our various rapidly expanding industries, it would seem that the rubber plantations, like the one above mentioned, are sure to yield their owners a handsome profit.Nothing better illustrates what may be expected in this direction than the experiment made a few decades ago in India with the cinchona tree. Previously to the introduction of this tree into India, where there are now many extensive plantations under cultivation, the sole source of supply of Peruvian bark was from the tropical slopes ofthe Andes. Now, in consequence of the vigorous competition with India, the cinchona industry in the Andean regions is only a fraction of what it formerly was, and, unless something can be done to arrest its rapid decline, it will soon have lost its importance as an article of export from the Cordilleras.We spent three days in Villavicencio and enjoyed every hour of the stay among its kindly people. We had thus an opportunity of securing much needed repose, and of preparing ourselves for our arduous trip across the cloud-reaching Andes. We might have continued, without interruption, our journey from the plains to Bogotá, but it would have been highly imprudent to make the attempt. A sudden change from the lowlands to Andean heights, and from the heat of the llanos to the frigid blasts of the paramos, is something of which the native has an instinctive dread. He accordingly makes his journey by slow stages, so as to become acclimated on the way. In driving cattle from the llanos to Bogotá several weeks are deemed necessary, as otherwise many of them would expire on the road. They appear to be much more affected than man by rapid changes of altitude and temperature.We had been warned time and again by well-meaning persons about the risk we incurred by so soon attempting to cross the Cordilleras, after spending so much time in the lowlands of the Orinoco and the Meta. “You should,” we were told, “spend several weeks on the road, stopping a few days at each posada on the way. Only in this wise can you become acclimated, and render your system proof against the certain dangers of violent changes of temperature and altitude. As you approach the summit of the Andes you will see the sides of the trail strewn with the bleached bones of cattle and horses that have succumbed to the cold and the rare atmosphere of this elevated region. More than this, you will see hundreds of crosses by the wayside marking the spots where over-venturesome travelers wereemparamados—frozen—by the arctic cold of theparamos, and where they found their last resting place. And so strong is the wind on thecumbre—the summit—of the mountain range that people are sometimes blown into the yawning chasm that adjoins the dreadful pass.”To confirm their statements they reminded us of the fearful losses in men and animals sustained by Bolivar when he led his army from the plains of Varinas to the lofty plateau of Cundinamarca; how hundreds of men and horses perished from the intense cold on the elevated pass through which they vainly tried to force their way, and how the entire army was exposed to extermination by the combined action of arctic cold and hurricane blasts.We made no reply to these well-meant warnings, but we could not help recalling similar words of caution before we started on our journey up the Orinoco and the Meta. Then the dangers to be apprehended were from the climate—from intense heat and a pestiferous atmosphere; from wild animals and wilder men. Now it was danger of an opposite kind—danger from cold, of being frozen, or of contracting pneumonia, which in those great altitudes is certain death.Aside from a few uncomfortable nights—which, with a little care, might have been obviated—caused by the activezancudoand thecoloradito—we had escaped all the predicted dangers of the lowlands, and we now felt reasonably sure that we should be equally fortunate in eluding those that were said to await us in the regions of everlasting snow. We were better equipped for making the trip than the poor, ill-clad natives from the llanos, and we could regulate our vesture to suit the temperature. Snow and frost had then no terrors for us, and as we had been accustomed to sudden changes of altitude, without experiencing any evil effects, we felt we had nothing whatever to apprehend.On the third morning after our arrival in Villavicencio we were ready to start for Bogotá, and expected to make the journey of ninety-three miles in three days. We hadsecured mules that were used to mountain travel. Those that we had in crossing the llanos would never have answered our purpose. Our vaqueano and peons wereserranos—mountaineers—thoroughly familiar with the route we were to take. They all seemed to be good, reliable young men, and we felt that the last stage of our journey, before reaching Bogotá, would be quite as enjoyable as any that we had already completed.After many cordial expressions of good wishes on the part of the crowd assembled to witness our departure, and repeated exclamations on all sides of “Felíz viaje!”—a happy journey—and “Dios les guarde á VV!”—God protect you—we said our last adios to all and turned toward the Andes. “Vamos con Dios,” ejaculated our vaqueano. “Y con la Virgen,” was the response of the peons and the bystanders.From the moment we left the door of our temporary lodging, our road was up grade. As we passed along the street that terminates at the foot of the mountain, it seemed that all the women and children of the place were at the doors to get a last view of thejurungos—foreigners—whose arrival from the eastern sea by the great river had been commented on as a more than ordinary event.As soon as we had passed the last house of the city, there was a sudden marked increase in the grade of our trail, and we then felt, for the first time, that we were in sober earnest beginning the actual ascent of the Andes. In two hours we had reached Buena Vista, a lovely spot, eleven hundred and forty feet above Villavicencio.We had frequently been told in Orocué and elsewhere that we should have a beautiful view of the llanos from Buena Vista, and that we would do well to tarry there for a while to enjoy the panorama that would be visible from this elevated spur of the mountain.When a South American—especially one familiar with the mountains—speaks in terms of praise of any particular bit of scenery, one may be sure that he does not exaggerate.He is so accustomed to splendid exhibitions of tropical beauty and mountain grandeur that he passes unnoticed what we of the North should describe as superb, magnificent, glorious. Such scenes are to him as common as the gorgeousness of the setting sun and the sublimity of the starlit heavens are to us and fail to move him for the same reason that the splendors of sun and sky rarely affect us as they would if but occasionally visible. They are everyday objects and the pleasure they should afford palls accordingly.We were not disappointed in our anticipations regarding the view from Buena Vista. On the contrary, it far exceeded anything we had imagined. The sky, with the exception of a few fleecy clouds flitting athwart it, was clear and the sun was almost in the zenith. Far below us, and extending away—north, east, south—towards the dim and distant horizon, were the llanos, every feature of which was brought out in bright relief by the brilliant noonday sun.In the foreground was the montaña through which we had passed just before reaching Villavicencio. Farther afield was a limitless sea of verdure, interspersed with groups of trees, which offered their grateful shade to the countless herds that reposed beneath their wide-spreading branches. In every direction the green savannas were intersected by caños and rivers which looked like streams of molten silver. It was, indeed, a panorama of surpassing beauty and loveliness—of its kind unique in the wide world. It was the boundless plain in eternal converse with the heavens above. It was the abode of liberty, and the trysting-place of life—life palpitating in the sunshine and beneath the emerald borders of the sliver-like water courses that were all hastening with their tribute from the Andes to the Meta, which, far off in the southeast, seemed like a line of union between earth and sky.We have nothing in our country that can bear comparison with the matchless picture seen from Buena Vista.The view of the delta of the Nile—just before harvest time, with its numberless canals and water courses—from the summit of Cheops, contains some of the elements of soft tropical beauty so conspicuous in the Buena Vista landscape; but it lacks the variety, the sweep, the coloring, the harmonious effects of light and shade, the immensity, and above all the wondrous setting afforded the latter prospect by the Titanic Cordilleras.But the measureless expanse of grassy plain that lies before us is but an insignificant fraction of the llanos. They extend from the southern slopes of the Coast Range of Venezuela to the base of the Parime uplands and the Rio Guaviare; from the Andes to the delta of the Orinoco. They are thus almost conterminous with the Orinoco basin. They, indeed, constitute one of the three immense districts into which the whole of South America is divided. The other two are the Selvas of Brazil and the Pampas of Argentina, separated from each other and from the llanos of the north, by low transverse ridges running east and west from the Atlantic to the Cordilleras.To geologists these vast lowlands have a special interest, as they were at one time the bed of an inland sea more extensive far than the present Mediterranean. Even now, during the rainy season, certain parts of this immense expanse are covered by fresh water lakes thousands of square miles in extent. A subsidence of a few hundred feet would again bring the whole of this illimitable territory down below sea level and cause again the formation of the great tropical sea that existed in prehistoric times.To the student of history a special interest attaches to the llanos of western Venezuela and eastern Colombia. It was across these plains and swamps, under the most trying difficulties, that Bolivar led his half-clad, half-famished army, during his memorable march across the Cordilleras, before achieving the independence of New Granada in the famous battle of Boyacá.But great as was the feat accomplished by Bolivar intraversing the llanos, great as were the difficulties he had to contend with, they pale into insignificance when compared with the hardships and achievements of the earlydescubridores—explorers—of these then unknown wilds. Bolivar and his men traveled through a country that had been long settled, and were among friends and compatriots. The early explorers and conquistadores were, on the contrary, in an unknown land, among murderous, relentless savages armed with poisoned arrows. They were in a region where it was often impossible to procure food, and where several times starvation was imminent. For months at a time they wandered through dark, tangled forests, cutting a road as they went, lured on by the hope of fame and fortune. Then they had to feel their way through deep and treacherous morasses, in which they had to confront even greater dangers than in the obscure woodlands. But notwithstanding dangers and difficulties of every kind, they kept moving forward through woods and swamps, across rivers and mountains, ever in pursuit of gold and precious stones, and of the fabulous riches of the Meta and the treasure city of Manoa.Among these famousdescubridoreswas the German, George Hohermuth, whom the Spaniards called Jorge de Spira. Starting from Coró, on the Caribbean, with three hundred and sixty-one men and eighty horses, he directed his course southwards, where, he was assured, were inexhaustible treasures of every kind. Crossing the llanos of Venezuela and New Granada, he must have passed near the present site of Buena Vista.During our journey we certainly crossed his line of march, which in this latitude was probably near the base of the Cordilleras. Spurred on by an ever-recedingignis fatuus, he continued his march until he reached the Japura, an affluent of the Amazon, and but a short distance from the equator. During this frightful journey he crossed the Arauca, the Apure, the Meta, the Guaviare and other broad and deep rivers. Of the countless difficulties he encounteredin his long and painful march, no one who is unfamiliar with the character of forest and plain in the tropics, particularly during the rainy season, can have the faintest conception. They far transcend anything experienced by Stanley, or Mungo Park, or any other African explorer. After more than three years of unheard-of sufferings, he finally returned to Coró with but a small fraction of the brave men that had originally formed part of his expedition.Hohermuth was followed by Philip von Hutten, in 1541, on a similar expedition, who traveled over almost the same ground as his predecessor. He, too, must have passed near where Buena Vista now stands. His undertaking was quite as fruitless as that of Hohermuth and his losses were greater. He spent more than four years in the llanos and Cordilleras and, before he could return to his starting point, he died at the hands of an assassin.More remarkable still, in some respects, was the expedition of Nicholas Federmann, who, like Hohermuth and Von Hutten, was in the service of the Welsers, concessionaires of a large German colony near Lake Maracaibo. Crossing the llanos, and the numerous rivers that flow through them, he eventually found himself on the banks of the Meta. Thence he proceeded west and crossed the Cordilleras, not, however, without numerous victims—both men and horses—from the intense cold on the mountain summits. He finally reached the fertile plain of Bogotá, where occurred that famous and unexpected meeting of Belalcazar, who had come with another expedition from Quito, and Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada who, a short time previously, had arrived with a third expedition from Santa Marta.It would be interesting to know what was Federmann’s itinerary after leaving the banks of the Meta, and the exact spot where he crossed the Cordilleras. This we can only conjecture, as there is no record of it, but we loved to think, while crossing the Andes on our way to Bogotá, that we were still following the conquistadores, and that ours wasthe same route that had been taken by Federmann and his brave men more than three and a half centuries before.1After leaving Buena Vista, we were exposed to a heavy tropical downpour that lasted the greater part of the day. Fortunately the rain did not affect us in the slightest. Our bayetones and waterproof boots kept us perfectly dry and, as the rain was not chilly, we rather enjoyed the experience.Our path during the greater part of the day lay through forests and along rivers and over mountain torrents. At times it was high up on the mountain side, thousands of feet above the water courses surging and foaming at its base. Again it was along the edge of a dizzy precipice, where a single false step of our mule would have meant instant death to its rider.What gave us grave concern at first was the fact that our mules always persisted in keeping on the side of the track next to the ravine, no matter how deep or threatening it might be. We tried, until we were exhausted, to keep them on the opposite side of the trail, but it was useless. They seemed bent on courting danger, and on seeing how nearthey could keep to the verge of the chasm without plunging into its abysmal depths.Unfortunately for our peace of mind, we did not then know the Andean mule as well as we do now. Had we understood him as well at the beginning of our journey as we did at the end, we should have given him a free rein, and thereby spared ourselves many nerve-racking moments and many futile efforts to correct his persistent aberrations. Why a mule prefers to walk on the brink of a precipice, whenever it has an opportunity of doing so, rather than keep to what we humans should consider the safer side of the path, is a mystery I do not profess to fathom. I simply state the fact. I leave its explanation to experts in mule psychology.The country through which we passed was fairly well populated, and we were never long out of sight of a habitation of some kind. Sometimes the dwellings were of stone, but more frequently they were of bamboo daubed with clay and thatched with palm leaf. The people, usually Indians or half-breeds, were in humble circumstances but we never saw any evidences of actual want or suffering. “Nunca se muere de hambre aqui”—No one ever dies of hunger here—an Indian woman once informed us, when we made inquiry about the subject. If one should happen to have nothing to eat, his friends and neighbors supply him with food. They are ever willing to assist one another, and we were often surprised to see how ready they were to share their limited store with others, whether in want or not.Stopping for Luncheon in the Lower Cordilleras.Stopping for Luncheon in the Lower Cordilleras.A more friendly people we never met than the good people who dwell on the eastern slopes of the Colombian Cordilleras. They always have a kindly greeting for every one they meet. No one, not even the youngest child, will pass you on the road without a cordial “Buenos dias,” “Buenas tardes,” or “Buenas noches”—Good day, Good evening, or Good night—as the case may be. These cheering salutations, that were always forthcoming, whether wemet one or a score, young or old, made us forget that we were in a foreign land, far from home and friends, and quite reconciled us to any little discomforts we might experience along our steep and rugged path. Here among these simple, unspoiled people the brotherhood of man is not an empty rhetorical phrase, or a vain poetical figment, but a living, every-day reality.How often during our journeyings in the savannas and highlands of Colombia did we not recall the beautiful couplet of Castellanos regarding the primitive inhabitants of New Granada!—“Gente llana, fiel, modesta, clara,Leal, humilde, sana y obediente.”2They are the same to-day, especially when removed from the baleful influence of those who, instead of aiding them, would drag them down to the lowest depths of degradation and servitude.But obliging and honest as we always found these people to be, they, nevertheless, invariably failed us in one particular. We could never, except occasionally by accident, get from them a correct or satisfactory answer about the distance from one place to another.Never shall we forget our experience during our first day’s journey in the Cordilleras. Our objective point was San Miguel, where we were told we should find a good lodging house—one of the best on the road, we were assured—and, as the distance was great, it was necessary to make extra good time in order to arrive there before nightfall. The heavy, long-continued rains had made our trail extremelyheavy, and in places almost impassable. The hours passed and we found ourselves advancing much more slowly than was desirable. The lowering clouds were massing on the mountain slopes, and the rain began to fall in torrents. It then began to dawn upon us that we might not be able to reach our destination in the limited time yet remaining of the fast-departing day.Further progress along our dangerous path in the impenetrable gloom, that would immediately follow sunset, we knew to be impossible. We knew or thought we knew, about how far we were still from San Miguel, but we wished to be certain about the distance.It was now about four o’clock in the afternoon, and it was imperative for us to reach our posada by six o’clock, if we were to arrive there at all that day. We accordingly inquired of one of the many peons we met, who were returning to their homes from their day’s labor in the fields, how far it was to San Miguel. “Tres leguas, Señores”—three leagues, Sirs—was the answer to our question.This was disheartening. Our mules were now exhausted, and could not possibly make three leagues in two hours over the terrific track we were traveling. But there was nothing to do but push on. At the end of an hour we asked the same question of another peon. “Quatro leguas, Señores”—four leagues, Sirs, was the reply. This answer was confirmed by several other peons, whom we also questioned. Matters were becoming serious, but we continued on in silence, hoping against hope.About a half hour later we again renewed our query. “Una legua, Señores”—one league, Sirs—said a bright boy, who was driving a heavily-laden donkey. It was now dusk, and as dusk in the tropics lasts but a few minutes, we knew that we should soon be enveloped in total darkness.A little further on, a woman, with a child in her arms, informed us that San Miguel was “cerca”—near. This was too ambiguous for us, as it might mean one league or several leagues. Asking her how near it was, she repliedmuy cerca—very near. This was still unsatisfactory. She then assured us that it was “cerquita,” “cerquitita”—diminutives of cerca—3meaning that the place was extremely near, only a few steps farther. “Dando la vuelta de la esquina”—around the corner there—she said, “is San Miguel, the second house you come to.” Peering into the darkness before us, we could barely discern what appeared a projection from the mountain side. We had to be satisfied with this answer as, try as we would, we could elicit nothing more definite from our informant.The darkness was now so dense that we were unable to see even as far as our mules’ ears. There was then nothing to be done but to give our animals the rein and trust them to carry us to our destination. As if guided by a peculiar instinct, they carefully picked their way through the mud, but we thought they should never get around that corner towards which we had been directed.We were now quite exhausted, as we had eaten nothing since morning, and longed for a place of shelter, where we could find repose. Only once before, in all my travels, did it seem to take so long to get around a mountain spur. Years ago, in the mountains of the Peloponnesus, I had a similar experience, but then the road was good and the moon was shining. Here there was only a wretched, dangerous trail, and it was pitch dark.At the long last, we saw a light glimmering in a hut by the roadside. This was something. The next house, whichwas said to be bard by, should be the long-desired San Miguel.To reassure ourselves, we asked a woman who was standing at the door of the cot, where was San Miguel. She did not know. She had never beard of such a place. It might be at the other side of the mountain, or we might already have passed it; she could not tell.“But is there not a posada near here,” I queried, “or a place where we can remain over night?” “Oh! yes,” the woman replied, “there is a very good posada just across the road—that large building right in front of you. You are looking for la Señora Filomena’s house. That is what we call it here.” And so it was. A few rods away was San Miguel, at last. Only the tired, famished traveler in a strange land can realize how glad we were that the day’s journey was finally at an end.We spent a very uncomfortable night at San Miguel, and were glad when we found ourselves, early the following morning, again in the saddle, bound for Caqueza, the capital of a district near the summit of the Cordilleras. “We must make better time than yesterday,” I said, on starting, to our vaqueano. “Si, Señor.” “We shall arrive at Caqueza by four o’clock, shall we not?” “Es imposible, Señor. It is impossible, Sir.” “Well, then, we shall arrive by five, shall we not?” “No se puede, Señor. It cannot be done, Sir.” “At all events, we must reach Caqueza before dark.” “Tal vez, no—Probably not,” was his final reply, and we had to let it go at that.The scenery along our route between San Miguel and Caqueza was much like that which we had so much admired during the preceding day. The country was, however, much more thickly populated and we met many more people on the way. There was always that same cordial greeting, that had before touched us so deeply, and the same disposition to oblige us in any way possible.At one place on the roadside, we saw a young couple, neither more than eighteen years of age, erecting a littlebamboo cot. They were evidently just entering upon house-keeping, and seemed to be very happy. The labor involved in the construction of their future home was little and the expense was nothing. All would be in readiness for occupancy in a day or two after work begun. Then their little plot of ground, planted with maize, yuca, plantains and bananas, together with a few domestic animals, would supply them with all the food required and enable them to enjoy an idyllic existence far away from the maddening crowd, and quite removed from“The weariness, the fever, and the fretHere, where men sit and hear each other groan.”It was evidently some such Arcadian scene that was before Tennyson’s vision when he, in Locksley Hall, penned the beautiful lines,“Ah, for some retreat,”where“Slides the bird o’er lustrous woodland, swings the trailer from the crag—”“Droops the heavy-blossomed bower, hangs the heavy-fruited tree—”and where are“Breaths of tropic shade and palms in cluster, knots of Paradise.”Further on we met another young couple, radiant with the glow of youth and present happiness, carrying all their householdgoodswith them. These were few and simple. The man carried a machete, and a few rush mats; the woman a few simple culinary utensils consisting mainly of a metal pot and a few calabash cups and dishes. They were evidently looking for a site for a home, and probably, a few hours later had, like the first couple we saw, their simple habitation well under way.Of these good people one can repeat what Peter Martyrsaid of the aborigines shortly after the discovery of America:“A fewe thinges contente them, hauinge no delite in suche superfluites, for the which in other places men take infinite paynes and commit manie vnlawfull actes, yet are neuer satisfied, whereas many haue to muche, and none inowgh. But emonge these simple sowles, a fewe clothes serue the naked; weightes and measures are not needefull to such as cannot kyll of crafte and deceyte and haue not the vse of pestiferous monye, the seede of unnumerable myscheues. So that if we shall not be ashamed to confesse the truthe, they seeme to lyue in that goulden worlde of the whiche owlde wryters speak so much; wherin men lyued simplye and innocentlye without inforcement of lawes, without quarrellinge. Iudges and libelles, contente onely to satisfie nature, without further vexation for knowledge of thinges to come.”4Later on in the day we came across more home-builders, but of quite a different kind from those above mentioned. Toward noon, we noticed some distance ahead of us, what appeared to be a greenish black ribbon, extended along our path. It was about a foot wide and several hundred feet long. We could not imagine what it could be until we were within a few yards of it. It proved to be an army of ants on a foraging expedition. There were millions, if not billions of them. Those on one side were carrying pieces of leaves about the size of a sixpence. They formed the green part of the ribbon that we had seen from a distance. Those on the other side, moving in an opposite direction, constituted the black part. They were all engaged in getting material for thatching their curious dome-like homes, which are often of extraordinary dimensions. Sometimes they are fully thirty or forty feet in diameter.We regretted that time did not permit us to examine the length of their line of march, from their marvelous dwellingsto the trees they were stripping for roofing material. They have been known to go a mile or more for material suited to their purpose and to deprive scores of trees of all their leaves in a single day.To one unfamiliar with the tropics, the depredations committed by these destructive insects appear incredible. Of an unknown number of species, they are among the greatest enemies of man in the equatorial regions. They spare nothing. Gardens and orchards, coffee and sugar, cassava and banana plantations disappear as quickly before them as before blight or frost.In the early part of the sixteenth century, according to Herrera,5their numbers in Española and Puerto Rico were so great and their devastations so extensive and irresistible, that they threatened to depopulate the islands. Various parts of South America have also at different times suffered from the same plague—rivaling the seven plagues of Egypt in the distress and destruction which marked their path. Had we not had here, and elsewhere in the tropics, ocular evidence of their prodigious numbers, and been witnesses of the magnitude of the works due to their united efforts, we should have classed the accounts left us by the early chroniclers of the extent of the ravages of the ant plague among works of fiction rather than records of authentic history.6The scenery along the mountain ascent was an ever-changing panorama of rarest beauty and sublimity, such as no pen could describe or brush portray. It exhibited all the tropical luxuriance of the llanos together with the wild picturesqueness characteristic of Alpine heights.At times we wended our way along the banks of a noiseless river, which, in solitary grandeur, was sweeping through verdant meads and beneath arcades of sylvangreen, carrying its vivifying waves to the broad, expectant plains below. The placid scene, dotted with human habitations, and variegated by bright pastures, the home of contented flocks and herds, offered to the enchanted gaze, in a single picture, all the fabled beauties of the glens of Tempe and the dales of Arcady.As we mounted higher up on our way, our route was along the verge of deep, headlong torrents mantled in the shade of overhanging bamboos, or obscured by the jutting crags and huge beetling rocks of the earthquake rift mountain. Ever and anon, our ears caught the muffled but incessant roar of thunderous waterfalls, which plunged from dizzy precipices high above our heads, both to the right and to the left of our upward path.Scarcely had the deafening notes of these tumultuous floods, which awakened a thousand echoes in the sombre caves and yawning gulfs of the countless windings and abrupt breaks of the mountain ravines, died away, before we found ourselves in presence of some murmuring cascade that might well have adorned the grove around the grotto of Calypso. In the gleaming crystal basin at its foot, embowered in vernal bloom and eternal verdure, which diffused an aromatic breath over the passer-by, was tremulously reflected the plumed crown of the palm tree under which the weary traveler sought a moment’s rest for his weary frame. At every turn in our steep and devious path, our eyes were delighted by some wild, struggling brook, that fretted its way through a labyrinthine gorge, pranked with verdurous gloom, or charmed by some wanton rivulet leaping over rocks or forminglimpidpools, canopied with foliage and flowers of rarest fragrance and brightest hue, that“Forever gaze on their own drooping eyes,Reflected in the crystal calm.”It is not an exaggeration to say, that in our journey from the foot to the summit of the Andes, we passed inrapid review some of earth’s grandest and most entrancing prospects. Sometimes I was reminded of the mountains and valleys of the Alps, at others of the peaks and cañones of the Rocky Mountains. Some cataracts recalled the waterfalls seen leaping from the lofty precipices of Alaska; others, those that add such a charm to the manifold wonders of the Yosemite and the Yellowstone.But the Andean views can always claim a superiority over all northern scenes of a similar character, in the marvelous setting afforded by the ever-verdant and exuberant vegetation of the tropics. How often did we not wish, during this memorable trip, that we could command the brush of a Turner or a Poussin or a Claude Lorrain, in order to bring home with us copies of some of those wonderful pictures that Nature exhibited to our admiring gaze in her great art gallery of the Oriental Cordilleras!The higher we ascended above the lowlands the less dense became the forests and the less luxuriant the vegetation. At times there were extended reaches of land that were quite treeless; at others the surface of the soil was covered with scrubby growths that were in marked contrast with the splendid sylvan exhibitions to which we had been so long accustomed. But although the giants of the forest were no longer visible, there was little diminution of the splendor of the floral display along our path. In one place, particularly, we were surprised beyond measure to find the whole side of a mountain spur covered with a glorious mantle of immaculately white lilies. The scene was not unlike one of the large lily fields of Bermuda, that supply our Easter altars with their choicest decorations.We were greatly delighted to find in the tropics representatives of the feathered tribe that we were familiar with in the far North. Large flocks of them annually leave North America and Europe to spend the winter season in South America and as regularly return to their northern homes the following summer. Some of them come from far-off Alaska and extend their flight as far south asTierra del Fuego. Others spend the summer in southeast Siberia and then, on the approach of winter, migrate by way of North America to South Brazil. Among the most numerous of these marvelous birds of passage are certain species of sandpipers, plovers and lapwings. The bobolink, known along the Chesapeake as the reedbird, and dreaded as the ricebird in the rice fields of the South, extends its migrations as far into South America as southeastern Brazil. Many of our familiar warblers and sparrows are to be seen during the winter months in Venezuela and Colombia, while certain cliff and barn swallows penetrate as far south as Paraguay. On the Orinoco and the Meta, we recognized many species of ducks that were familiar to us in the United States, among which were the pin-tail, bald-pate, golden-eye and blue-winged teal.“The plovers, sandpipers and kindred species,” writes Knowlton, “take migratory journeys often of extraordinary length. Thus the American golden plover,Charadrius dominicus, breeds in arctic America, some venturing a thousand miles north of the Arctic Circle, and migrates through the entire length of North and South America to its winter home in Patagonia, and, curiously, its spring and fall routes are different. After feasting on the crowberry in Labrador, they seek the coast of Nova Scotia, where they strike out to sea, taking a direct course for the easternmost islands of the West Indies, and thence to the northeastern coast of South America. In spring not one returns by this route, but in March they appear in Guatemala and Texas. April finds their long lines trailing the prairies of the Mississippi Valley; the first of May sees them crossing our northern boundary, and by the first week in June they appear in their breeding grounds in the frozen north. The little sanderling, just mentioned, is almost cosmopolitan in distribution, breeding in the arctic and sub-arctic regions and migrating in the New World to Chile and Patagonia, a distance of eight thousand miles, and in the Old World along the shore of Europe, Asia andAfrica. The Bartramian sandpiper,Bartramia longicauda, nests from eastern North America to Nova Scotia and Alaska, and goes south in winter to southern South America. The solitary sandpiper,Totanus solitarius, breeds mainly to the north of the United States, and winters as far south as Brazil and Peru. The buff-breasted sandpiper,Tryngites subruficollis, rears its young in the Yukon district of Alaska and from the interior of British Colombia to the Arctic coast, and journeys in winter well into South America. The turnstone,Arenaria interpres, a little shore bird, about the size of the song thrush of Europe, is also cosmopolitan, breeding in high northern latitudes and at other times of the year found along the coasts of Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America to the Straits of Magellan, Australia and the Atlantic and Pacific islands. It is one of the species mentioned as making the wonderful flight from the islands in Bering Sea to the Hawaiian Islands.”7By what miraculous instinct are they guided in these semi-annual migrations across half the globe? Who bids them, asks Pope,“Columbus-like, exploreHeavens not their own, and worlds unknown before?Who calls the council, states the certain day.Who forms the phalanx, and who points the way?”Have they a special “sense of direction,” or is their “homing” faculty or power of orientation, something that is tantamount to a sixth sense?We now know far more about the migrations of birds than was known only a few decades ago. We are able to locate many of them during the various seasons of the year, and are quite certain that they never, as an ingenious writer of the early seventeenth century maintained, spend the winter in the moon, where they have no occasion for food; but we have yet much to learn regarding the causes oftheir periodic migrations, and the nature of that instinct that enables them to pass, with unerring precision, from the arctic to the antarctic regions, and from the Old World to the New. We are accumulating daily new facts regarding the distant flights of the birds of passage, but, notwithstanding the many theories, some of them more fantastic than scientific, that have been advanced to explain the cause of the migrations of birds; why such migrations were undertaken in the beginning, why they are still continued, and how birds are able to find their way, during their marvelous flights from the arctic to the antarctic—we are still in the dark about many questions connected with those mysterious migrations, which have excited the interest of even the most casual observer since the prophet Jeremiah wrote: “The stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed time; and the turtle and the crane, and the swallows observe the time of their coming.”8Almost before we were aware of it, the sun had begun to paint the crest of the Andes with bright vermeil and soft purple, and we were still far from Caqueza—the goal of our day’s journey. With the exception of the half-hour we had tarried for luncheon at an attractive posada, called Media Luna, we had been in the saddle all day, and had pushed forwards as rapidly as the strength of our animals would permit. We had left our vaqueano and peons in the rear early in the day, and it was not at all likely that they would be able to reach Caqueza before the following forenoon.After a delightful, sunshiny day, the sky, towards sunset, suddenly became overcast with dark, threatening clouds,and presently it began to rain. One thing, however, was in our favor, and that was the trail. It was in a far better condition than that of the preceding day, but it lay along the breast of a precipitous mountain slope, at the foot of which, within ear-shot, coursed an impetuous mountain torrent. The greater part of the way was quite safe, and we could trust our mules, even in the dark, to keep to the path. But here and there were treacherous places—loose ground, and landslides caused by recent rains—which rendered traveling, even in the daytime, sufficiently difficult. In the darkness, that was every moment becoming more dense, locomotion was positively dangerous. There was no house on the way in which we could find shelter for the night. Our tent, with our other baggage, was in the hands of our dilatory peons. The only alternatives, then, were pressing on to Caqueza, despite darkness and danger, or standing still in our trail, where there was not even a shrub to temper the ever-increasing downpour. We elected to trust our lives again to our mules, as we had done the previous night. This seemed to be the lesser of the two evils that confronted us.We then recalled the hesitating answer that our vaqueano had, in the morning, given to our query about reaching Caqueza beforenightfall. His “Tal vez, no”—perhaps not, was a gentle prognostic that it was impossible, at least for the baggage mules. As a matter of fact, they did not arrive until towards noon the next day. Their mules had given out, and the vaqueano and peons had to make shift to spend the night as best they could under an inclement sky.The last objects of interest that we descried in the deepening gloom were a number of peasant cots perched high upon the mountain sides—much like so many cottages in the higher Alps—and the junction of two rivers—the Rio Blanco and the Rio Negro. The rivers specially attracted our attention, as the color of the waters of the one, the Blanco—white—was in such marked contrast with thewaters of the other, the Negro or black river. The one owed its color to the white clay soil through which it passed. The other was rendered black—like the well-known bog-tinctured, “black waters” of Ireland—by the presence of organic material. Even long after the waters of the two tributaries had entered their common channel, they kept quite separate—the black flowing along one bank and the white along the bank opposite.It would take too long to enumerate the many difficulties we encountered, during our long ride in the darkness, before we finally arrived at Caqueza. Suffice to say that it was several long hours after nightfall, and that we were both quite exhausted, both by hunger and fatigue. We never felt time to pass so slowly, as during the last hour of the day’s journey, when there was danger in every step forward from the ever-threatening ravine, along the edge of which our path lay, and we were quite ready to exclaim with Shelley,“How like death-worms the wingless moments crawl.”In the posada where we purposed spending the night, which was recommended as the best in town, we found sufficient to appease the pangs of hunger, but we were soon made to realize that we had another sleepless night before us. In San Miguel our quarters were damp and our blankets wet, owing to some carelessness on the part of our peons. In Caqueza the rooms assigned us—and particularly the beds—could best be described by a single word—insectiferous. They were a veritable insectarium that served no scientific or economic purpose. It is but just, however, to record that this was our first experience of the kind during our journey thus far in the tropics. Under the circumstances, there was nothing left for us to do except resignedly to exclaim with the pious native—Sea por Dios—may it be received by God in atonement for sin.

Villavicencio, the capital of the National Territory of the Meta, is situated at the very foot of the Andes, and is an attractive town of about three thousand inhabitants, many of whom are Indians. Its altitude above sea level, according to our barometer, is slightly less than fifteen hundred feet. It is a little more than ninety-three miles from Bogotá and has an average annual temperature of 83° F. During our sojourn in the place the thermometer never rose above 76° F. in the shade, and it was occasionally several degrees below this point. And, although little more than seventy-five miles north of the equator, it was so cool at night that we always used our blankets.

A handsome church is located on one side of the spacious green plaza. Not far distant is a well-conducted convent school in charge of nuns recently expatriated from France, in consequence of the laws enacted against religious orders. The people are never tired sounding the praises of these good sisters and telling the visitor of the wondersthey have accomplished in behalf of their children. Here, as elsewhere, “The stone which the builders rejected; the same shall become the head of the corner.”

Villavicencio, like Cabuyaro, and other places in the llanos, is eagerly looking forward to the day when it shall be connected by rail with the national capital and the Meta. For nearly a century and a half a commercial route connecting Bogotá with the Meta and the Orinoco has been talked of but nothing has been done to make it a reality.

In 1783 the archbishop of Sante Fe, Monsignor Cabellero y Gongora, then viceroy of New Granada, caused a map to be made of the course of the Meta and the Orinoco to the Atlantic, with a view of developing commerce by that route, but the all-powerful opposition of Santa Marta and Cartagena nullified his efforts. Several times since that date the project has been resumed but each time it had to be abandoned in favor of the Magdalena, owing to the pressure brought to bear on the government by the merchants of Cartagena and Santa Marta. There is no doubt that the routeviathe Meta and the Orinoco would, in some respects, possess many advantages over that of the Magdalena, aside from developing much country now practically neglected.

Unlike Venezuela, Colombia favors free navigation of her rivers by all nations, and would welcome foreign craft on the Meta as she does on the Magdalena. Venezuela, however, favors monopolies, and, claiming absolute control of the Orinoco, has closed the Meta and the other affluents of the Orinoco to all steamers except those belonging to the one company which has a monopoly of the trade of the Orinoco and all its tributaries. How detrimental such a monopoly is, not only to Colombia but to Venezuela as well, can be seen at a glance. Some of the greatest resources of both countries are left undeveloped and progress in any direction is quite impossible.

This matter was taken up at the International Congress of Mexico in 1901, in connection with a plan to render navigation possible through the interior of the continentof South America from the Orinoco to the River Plate, but so far nothing has been accomplished.

The greater part of the eastern portion of Colombia is still isolated from the rest of the world, and will remain so until Venezuela shall recognize the fatuity of its short-sighted policy, or until the great commercial nations shall demand that the navigation of the Orinoco and its tributaries, like that of the Amazon and its affluents, be free to all vessels, no matter under what flag they may sail. And as soon as commerce shall awaken to the fact that an immense field of untold riches is closed to her activities in the forests and plains of the Orinoco basin—and that must be ere long—a demand will be made not only in the interests of South America but also in that of the entire civilized world.

As an illustration of how Colombia has been made to suffer by the arbitrary policy of Venezuela regarding waterways, of which both the sister republics should be beneficiaries, a single instance will suffice.

Shortly before our arrival in Villavicencio, a company was formed to supply electricity to the city. As there are no roads between Bogotá and Villavicencio, which would permit the transportation of the necessary machinery, the only way available for the introduction of such heavy freight was by the Orinoco and the Meta. It was accordingly planned to have the dynamos and other requisites brought by this route, but, when all was ready for shipment, the projectors of the enterprise learned that the Venezuelan government—that is, President Castro—would refuse to grant the necessary permission for the transportation of the merchandise in question. The idea, then, of lighting the city by electricity had to be abandoned, and the capital of the Meta territory is, as a consequence, forced to remain content with tallow candles and kerosene lamps.

The people of Villavicencio, as elsewhere in Colombia, we found to be extremely courteous and hospitable. They were eager to hear about America, and in turn were quitewilling to afford all possible information about their own country, and especially about the llanos and Llaneros. We soon became acquainted with all the leading officials and business men, and recall with pleasure the many delicate attentions they showed us while in their midst. We were invited to visit their country estates and to examine some new industries—yet in their infancy—which gave promise of a bright future.

One of these was the rubber industry. Not content with the trees that grow spontaneously in the forests in this part of the country, a certain general—one of many we met here—conceived the idea of cultivating the rubber tree and had, accordingly, during the preceding year, set out no fewer than a half million small trees, and had it in purpose to plant many times this number in the near future. He said all that he had already planted were doing well, and he had no doubt about the success of the enterprise. He was most sanguine about the future of eastern Colombia, and expressed it as his belief that in a few years Colombia would be as favorably known for her rubber as she is now for her cacao, coffee and tobacco.

There is no reason why the scientific cultivation of the rubber tree should not be attended with as good results in Colombia as have so signalized its culture in Ceylon and the Malay Peninsula. In view of the destructive system of treating the rubber trees in Brazil and other parts of South America in collecting the latex, and the increasing demand for rubber in our various rapidly expanding industries, it would seem that the rubber plantations, like the one above mentioned, are sure to yield their owners a handsome profit.

Nothing better illustrates what may be expected in this direction than the experiment made a few decades ago in India with the cinchona tree. Previously to the introduction of this tree into India, where there are now many extensive plantations under cultivation, the sole source of supply of Peruvian bark was from the tropical slopes ofthe Andes. Now, in consequence of the vigorous competition with India, the cinchona industry in the Andean regions is only a fraction of what it formerly was, and, unless something can be done to arrest its rapid decline, it will soon have lost its importance as an article of export from the Cordilleras.

We spent three days in Villavicencio and enjoyed every hour of the stay among its kindly people. We had thus an opportunity of securing much needed repose, and of preparing ourselves for our arduous trip across the cloud-reaching Andes. We might have continued, without interruption, our journey from the plains to Bogotá, but it would have been highly imprudent to make the attempt. A sudden change from the lowlands to Andean heights, and from the heat of the llanos to the frigid blasts of the paramos, is something of which the native has an instinctive dread. He accordingly makes his journey by slow stages, so as to become acclimated on the way. In driving cattle from the llanos to Bogotá several weeks are deemed necessary, as otherwise many of them would expire on the road. They appear to be much more affected than man by rapid changes of altitude and temperature.

We had been warned time and again by well-meaning persons about the risk we incurred by so soon attempting to cross the Cordilleras, after spending so much time in the lowlands of the Orinoco and the Meta. “You should,” we were told, “spend several weeks on the road, stopping a few days at each posada on the way. Only in this wise can you become acclimated, and render your system proof against the certain dangers of violent changes of temperature and altitude. As you approach the summit of the Andes you will see the sides of the trail strewn with the bleached bones of cattle and horses that have succumbed to the cold and the rare atmosphere of this elevated region. More than this, you will see hundreds of crosses by the wayside marking the spots where over-venturesome travelers wereemparamados—frozen—by the arctic cold of theparamos, and where they found their last resting place. And so strong is the wind on thecumbre—the summit—of the mountain range that people are sometimes blown into the yawning chasm that adjoins the dreadful pass.”

To confirm their statements they reminded us of the fearful losses in men and animals sustained by Bolivar when he led his army from the plains of Varinas to the lofty plateau of Cundinamarca; how hundreds of men and horses perished from the intense cold on the elevated pass through which they vainly tried to force their way, and how the entire army was exposed to extermination by the combined action of arctic cold and hurricane blasts.

We made no reply to these well-meant warnings, but we could not help recalling similar words of caution before we started on our journey up the Orinoco and the Meta. Then the dangers to be apprehended were from the climate—from intense heat and a pestiferous atmosphere; from wild animals and wilder men. Now it was danger of an opposite kind—danger from cold, of being frozen, or of contracting pneumonia, which in those great altitudes is certain death.

Aside from a few uncomfortable nights—which, with a little care, might have been obviated—caused by the activezancudoand thecoloradito—we had escaped all the predicted dangers of the lowlands, and we now felt reasonably sure that we should be equally fortunate in eluding those that were said to await us in the regions of everlasting snow. We were better equipped for making the trip than the poor, ill-clad natives from the llanos, and we could regulate our vesture to suit the temperature. Snow and frost had then no terrors for us, and as we had been accustomed to sudden changes of altitude, without experiencing any evil effects, we felt we had nothing whatever to apprehend.

On the third morning after our arrival in Villavicencio we were ready to start for Bogotá, and expected to make the journey of ninety-three miles in three days. We hadsecured mules that were used to mountain travel. Those that we had in crossing the llanos would never have answered our purpose. Our vaqueano and peons wereserranos—mountaineers—thoroughly familiar with the route we were to take. They all seemed to be good, reliable young men, and we felt that the last stage of our journey, before reaching Bogotá, would be quite as enjoyable as any that we had already completed.

After many cordial expressions of good wishes on the part of the crowd assembled to witness our departure, and repeated exclamations on all sides of “Felíz viaje!”—a happy journey—and “Dios les guarde á VV!”—God protect you—we said our last adios to all and turned toward the Andes. “Vamos con Dios,” ejaculated our vaqueano. “Y con la Virgen,” was the response of the peons and the bystanders.

From the moment we left the door of our temporary lodging, our road was up grade. As we passed along the street that terminates at the foot of the mountain, it seemed that all the women and children of the place were at the doors to get a last view of thejurungos—foreigners—whose arrival from the eastern sea by the great river had been commented on as a more than ordinary event.

As soon as we had passed the last house of the city, there was a sudden marked increase in the grade of our trail, and we then felt, for the first time, that we were in sober earnest beginning the actual ascent of the Andes. In two hours we had reached Buena Vista, a lovely spot, eleven hundred and forty feet above Villavicencio.

We had frequently been told in Orocué and elsewhere that we should have a beautiful view of the llanos from Buena Vista, and that we would do well to tarry there for a while to enjoy the panorama that would be visible from this elevated spur of the mountain.

When a South American—especially one familiar with the mountains—speaks in terms of praise of any particular bit of scenery, one may be sure that he does not exaggerate.He is so accustomed to splendid exhibitions of tropical beauty and mountain grandeur that he passes unnoticed what we of the North should describe as superb, magnificent, glorious. Such scenes are to him as common as the gorgeousness of the setting sun and the sublimity of the starlit heavens are to us and fail to move him for the same reason that the splendors of sun and sky rarely affect us as they would if but occasionally visible. They are everyday objects and the pleasure they should afford palls accordingly.

We were not disappointed in our anticipations regarding the view from Buena Vista. On the contrary, it far exceeded anything we had imagined. The sky, with the exception of a few fleecy clouds flitting athwart it, was clear and the sun was almost in the zenith. Far below us, and extending away—north, east, south—towards the dim and distant horizon, were the llanos, every feature of which was brought out in bright relief by the brilliant noonday sun.

In the foreground was the montaña through which we had passed just before reaching Villavicencio. Farther afield was a limitless sea of verdure, interspersed with groups of trees, which offered their grateful shade to the countless herds that reposed beneath their wide-spreading branches. In every direction the green savannas were intersected by caños and rivers which looked like streams of molten silver. It was, indeed, a panorama of surpassing beauty and loveliness—of its kind unique in the wide world. It was the boundless plain in eternal converse with the heavens above. It was the abode of liberty, and the trysting-place of life—life palpitating in the sunshine and beneath the emerald borders of the sliver-like water courses that were all hastening with their tribute from the Andes to the Meta, which, far off in the southeast, seemed like a line of union between earth and sky.

We have nothing in our country that can bear comparison with the matchless picture seen from Buena Vista.The view of the delta of the Nile—just before harvest time, with its numberless canals and water courses—from the summit of Cheops, contains some of the elements of soft tropical beauty so conspicuous in the Buena Vista landscape; but it lacks the variety, the sweep, the coloring, the harmonious effects of light and shade, the immensity, and above all the wondrous setting afforded the latter prospect by the Titanic Cordilleras.

But the measureless expanse of grassy plain that lies before us is but an insignificant fraction of the llanos. They extend from the southern slopes of the Coast Range of Venezuela to the base of the Parime uplands and the Rio Guaviare; from the Andes to the delta of the Orinoco. They are thus almost conterminous with the Orinoco basin. They, indeed, constitute one of the three immense districts into which the whole of South America is divided. The other two are the Selvas of Brazil and the Pampas of Argentina, separated from each other and from the llanos of the north, by low transverse ridges running east and west from the Atlantic to the Cordilleras.

To geologists these vast lowlands have a special interest, as they were at one time the bed of an inland sea more extensive far than the present Mediterranean. Even now, during the rainy season, certain parts of this immense expanse are covered by fresh water lakes thousands of square miles in extent. A subsidence of a few hundred feet would again bring the whole of this illimitable territory down below sea level and cause again the formation of the great tropical sea that existed in prehistoric times.

To the student of history a special interest attaches to the llanos of western Venezuela and eastern Colombia. It was across these plains and swamps, under the most trying difficulties, that Bolivar led his half-clad, half-famished army, during his memorable march across the Cordilleras, before achieving the independence of New Granada in the famous battle of Boyacá.

But great as was the feat accomplished by Bolivar intraversing the llanos, great as were the difficulties he had to contend with, they pale into insignificance when compared with the hardships and achievements of the earlydescubridores—explorers—of these then unknown wilds. Bolivar and his men traveled through a country that had been long settled, and were among friends and compatriots. The early explorers and conquistadores were, on the contrary, in an unknown land, among murderous, relentless savages armed with poisoned arrows. They were in a region where it was often impossible to procure food, and where several times starvation was imminent. For months at a time they wandered through dark, tangled forests, cutting a road as they went, lured on by the hope of fame and fortune. Then they had to feel their way through deep and treacherous morasses, in which they had to confront even greater dangers than in the obscure woodlands. But notwithstanding dangers and difficulties of every kind, they kept moving forward through woods and swamps, across rivers and mountains, ever in pursuit of gold and precious stones, and of the fabulous riches of the Meta and the treasure city of Manoa.

Among these famousdescubridoreswas the German, George Hohermuth, whom the Spaniards called Jorge de Spira. Starting from Coró, on the Caribbean, with three hundred and sixty-one men and eighty horses, he directed his course southwards, where, he was assured, were inexhaustible treasures of every kind. Crossing the llanos of Venezuela and New Granada, he must have passed near the present site of Buena Vista.

During our journey we certainly crossed his line of march, which in this latitude was probably near the base of the Cordilleras. Spurred on by an ever-recedingignis fatuus, he continued his march until he reached the Japura, an affluent of the Amazon, and but a short distance from the equator. During this frightful journey he crossed the Arauca, the Apure, the Meta, the Guaviare and other broad and deep rivers. Of the countless difficulties he encounteredin his long and painful march, no one who is unfamiliar with the character of forest and plain in the tropics, particularly during the rainy season, can have the faintest conception. They far transcend anything experienced by Stanley, or Mungo Park, or any other African explorer. After more than three years of unheard-of sufferings, he finally returned to Coró with but a small fraction of the brave men that had originally formed part of his expedition.

Hohermuth was followed by Philip von Hutten, in 1541, on a similar expedition, who traveled over almost the same ground as his predecessor. He, too, must have passed near where Buena Vista now stands. His undertaking was quite as fruitless as that of Hohermuth and his losses were greater. He spent more than four years in the llanos and Cordilleras and, before he could return to his starting point, he died at the hands of an assassin.

More remarkable still, in some respects, was the expedition of Nicholas Federmann, who, like Hohermuth and Von Hutten, was in the service of the Welsers, concessionaires of a large German colony near Lake Maracaibo. Crossing the llanos, and the numerous rivers that flow through them, he eventually found himself on the banks of the Meta. Thence he proceeded west and crossed the Cordilleras, not, however, without numerous victims—both men and horses—from the intense cold on the mountain summits. He finally reached the fertile plain of Bogotá, where occurred that famous and unexpected meeting of Belalcazar, who had come with another expedition from Quito, and Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada who, a short time previously, had arrived with a third expedition from Santa Marta.

It would be interesting to know what was Federmann’s itinerary after leaving the banks of the Meta, and the exact spot where he crossed the Cordilleras. This we can only conjecture, as there is no record of it, but we loved to think, while crossing the Andes on our way to Bogotá, that we were still following the conquistadores, and that ours wasthe same route that had been taken by Federmann and his brave men more than three and a half centuries before.1

After leaving Buena Vista, we were exposed to a heavy tropical downpour that lasted the greater part of the day. Fortunately the rain did not affect us in the slightest. Our bayetones and waterproof boots kept us perfectly dry and, as the rain was not chilly, we rather enjoyed the experience.

Our path during the greater part of the day lay through forests and along rivers and over mountain torrents. At times it was high up on the mountain side, thousands of feet above the water courses surging and foaming at its base. Again it was along the edge of a dizzy precipice, where a single false step of our mule would have meant instant death to its rider.

What gave us grave concern at first was the fact that our mules always persisted in keeping on the side of the track next to the ravine, no matter how deep or threatening it might be. We tried, until we were exhausted, to keep them on the opposite side of the trail, but it was useless. They seemed bent on courting danger, and on seeing how nearthey could keep to the verge of the chasm without plunging into its abysmal depths.

Unfortunately for our peace of mind, we did not then know the Andean mule as well as we do now. Had we understood him as well at the beginning of our journey as we did at the end, we should have given him a free rein, and thereby spared ourselves many nerve-racking moments and many futile efforts to correct his persistent aberrations. Why a mule prefers to walk on the brink of a precipice, whenever it has an opportunity of doing so, rather than keep to what we humans should consider the safer side of the path, is a mystery I do not profess to fathom. I simply state the fact. I leave its explanation to experts in mule psychology.

The country through which we passed was fairly well populated, and we were never long out of sight of a habitation of some kind. Sometimes the dwellings were of stone, but more frequently they were of bamboo daubed with clay and thatched with palm leaf. The people, usually Indians or half-breeds, were in humble circumstances but we never saw any evidences of actual want or suffering. “Nunca se muere de hambre aqui”—No one ever dies of hunger here—an Indian woman once informed us, when we made inquiry about the subject. If one should happen to have nothing to eat, his friends and neighbors supply him with food. They are ever willing to assist one another, and we were often surprised to see how ready they were to share their limited store with others, whether in want or not.

Stopping for Luncheon in the Lower Cordilleras.Stopping for Luncheon in the Lower Cordilleras.

Stopping for Luncheon in the Lower Cordilleras.

A more friendly people we never met than the good people who dwell on the eastern slopes of the Colombian Cordilleras. They always have a kindly greeting for every one they meet. No one, not even the youngest child, will pass you on the road without a cordial “Buenos dias,” “Buenas tardes,” or “Buenas noches”—Good day, Good evening, or Good night—as the case may be. These cheering salutations, that were always forthcoming, whether wemet one or a score, young or old, made us forget that we were in a foreign land, far from home and friends, and quite reconciled us to any little discomforts we might experience along our steep and rugged path. Here among these simple, unspoiled people the brotherhood of man is not an empty rhetorical phrase, or a vain poetical figment, but a living, every-day reality.

How often during our journeyings in the savannas and highlands of Colombia did we not recall the beautiful couplet of Castellanos regarding the primitive inhabitants of New Granada!—

“Gente llana, fiel, modesta, clara,Leal, humilde, sana y obediente.”2

“Gente llana, fiel, modesta, clara,

Leal, humilde, sana y obediente.”2

They are the same to-day, especially when removed from the baleful influence of those who, instead of aiding them, would drag them down to the lowest depths of degradation and servitude.

But obliging and honest as we always found these people to be, they, nevertheless, invariably failed us in one particular. We could never, except occasionally by accident, get from them a correct or satisfactory answer about the distance from one place to another.

Never shall we forget our experience during our first day’s journey in the Cordilleras. Our objective point was San Miguel, where we were told we should find a good lodging house—one of the best on the road, we were assured—and, as the distance was great, it was necessary to make extra good time in order to arrive there before nightfall. The heavy, long-continued rains had made our trail extremelyheavy, and in places almost impassable. The hours passed and we found ourselves advancing much more slowly than was desirable. The lowering clouds were massing on the mountain slopes, and the rain began to fall in torrents. It then began to dawn upon us that we might not be able to reach our destination in the limited time yet remaining of the fast-departing day.

Further progress along our dangerous path in the impenetrable gloom, that would immediately follow sunset, we knew to be impossible. We knew or thought we knew, about how far we were still from San Miguel, but we wished to be certain about the distance.

It was now about four o’clock in the afternoon, and it was imperative for us to reach our posada by six o’clock, if we were to arrive there at all that day. We accordingly inquired of one of the many peons we met, who were returning to their homes from their day’s labor in the fields, how far it was to San Miguel. “Tres leguas, Señores”—three leagues, Sirs—was the answer to our question.

This was disheartening. Our mules were now exhausted, and could not possibly make three leagues in two hours over the terrific track we were traveling. But there was nothing to do but push on. At the end of an hour we asked the same question of another peon. “Quatro leguas, Señores”—four leagues, Sirs, was the reply. This answer was confirmed by several other peons, whom we also questioned. Matters were becoming serious, but we continued on in silence, hoping against hope.

About a half hour later we again renewed our query. “Una legua, Señores”—one league, Sirs—said a bright boy, who was driving a heavily-laden donkey. It was now dusk, and as dusk in the tropics lasts but a few minutes, we knew that we should soon be enveloped in total darkness.

A little further on, a woman, with a child in her arms, informed us that San Miguel was “cerca”—near. This was too ambiguous for us, as it might mean one league or several leagues. Asking her how near it was, she repliedmuy cerca—very near. This was still unsatisfactory. She then assured us that it was “cerquita,” “cerquitita”—diminutives of cerca—3meaning that the place was extremely near, only a few steps farther. “Dando la vuelta de la esquina”—around the corner there—she said, “is San Miguel, the second house you come to.” Peering into the darkness before us, we could barely discern what appeared a projection from the mountain side. We had to be satisfied with this answer as, try as we would, we could elicit nothing more definite from our informant.

The darkness was now so dense that we were unable to see even as far as our mules’ ears. There was then nothing to be done but to give our animals the rein and trust them to carry us to our destination. As if guided by a peculiar instinct, they carefully picked their way through the mud, but we thought they should never get around that corner towards which we had been directed.

We were now quite exhausted, as we had eaten nothing since morning, and longed for a place of shelter, where we could find repose. Only once before, in all my travels, did it seem to take so long to get around a mountain spur. Years ago, in the mountains of the Peloponnesus, I had a similar experience, but then the road was good and the moon was shining. Here there was only a wretched, dangerous trail, and it was pitch dark.

At the long last, we saw a light glimmering in a hut by the roadside. This was something. The next house, whichwas said to be bard by, should be the long-desired San Miguel.

To reassure ourselves, we asked a woman who was standing at the door of the cot, where was San Miguel. She did not know. She had never beard of such a place. It might be at the other side of the mountain, or we might already have passed it; she could not tell.

“But is there not a posada near here,” I queried, “or a place where we can remain over night?” “Oh! yes,” the woman replied, “there is a very good posada just across the road—that large building right in front of you. You are looking for la Señora Filomena’s house. That is what we call it here.” And so it was. A few rods away was San Miguel, at last. Only the tired, famished traveler in a strange land can realize how glad we were that the day’s journey was finally at an end.

We spent a very uncomfortable night at San Miguel, and were glad when we found ourselves, early the following morning, again in the saddle, bound for Caqueza, the capital of a district near the summit of the Cordilleras. “We must make better time than yesterday,” I said, on starting, to our vaqueano. “Si, Señor.” “We shall arrive at Caqueza by four o’clock, shall we not?” “Es imposible, Señor. It is impossible, Sir.” “Well, then, we shall arrive by five, shall we not?” “No se puede, Señor. It cannot be done, Sir.” “At all events, we must reach Caqueza before dark.” “Tal vez, no—Probably not,” was his final reply, and we had to let it go at that.

The scenery along our route between San Miguel and Caqueza was much like that which we had so much admired during the preceding day. The country was, however, much more thickly populated and we met many more people on the way. There was always that same cordial greeting, that had before touched us so deeply, and the same disposition to oblige us in any way possible.

At one place on the roadside, we saw a young couple, neither more than eighteen years of age, erecting a littlebamboo cot. They were evidently just entering upon house-keeping, and seemed to be very happy. The labor involved in the construction of their future home was little and the expense was nothing. All would be in readiness for occupancy in a day or two after work begun. Then their little plot of ground, planted with maize, yuca, plantains and bananas, together with a few domestic animals, would supply them with all the food required and enable them to enjoy an idyllic existence far away from the maddening crowd, and quite removed from

“The weariness, the fever, and the fretHere, where men sit and hear each other groan.”

“The weariness, the fever, and the fret

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan.”

It was evidently some such Arcadian scene that was before Tennyson’s vision when he, in Locksley Hall, penned the beautiful lines,

“Ah, for some retreat,”

“Ah, for some retreat,”

where

“Slides the bird o’er lustrous woodland, swings the trailer from the crag—”“Droops the heavy-blossomed bower, hangs the heavy-fruited tree—”

“Slides the bird o’er lustrous woodland, swings the trailer from the crag—”

“Droops the heavy-blossomed bower, hangs the heavy-fruited tree—”

and where are

“Breaths of tropic shade and palms in cluster, knots of Paradise.”

“Breaths of tropic shade and palms in cluster, knots of Paradise.”

Further on we met another young couple, radiant with the glow of youth and present happiness, carrying all their householdgoodswith them. These were few and simple. The man carried a machete, and a few rush mats; the woman a few simple culinary utensils consisting mainly of a metal pot and a few calabash cups and dishes. They were evidently looking for a site for a home, and probably, a few hours later had, like the first couple we saw, their simple habitation well under way.

Of these good people one can repeat what Peter Martyrsaid of the aborigines shortly after the discovery of America:

“A fewe thinges contente them, hauinge no delite in suche superfluites, for the which in other places men take infinite paynes and commit manie vnlawfull actes, yet are neuer satisfied, whereas many haue to muche, and none inowgh. But emonge these simple sowles, a fewe clothes serue the naked; weightes and measures are not needefull to such as cannot kyll of crafte and deceyte and haue not the vse of pestiferous monye, the seede of unnumerable myscheues. So that if we shall not be ashamed to confesse the truthe, they seeme to lyue in that goulden worlde of the whiche owlde wryters speak so much; wherin men lyued simplye and innocentlye without inforcement of lawes, without quarrellinge. Iudges and libelles, contente onely to satisfie nature, without further vexation for knowledge of thinges to come.”4

Later on in the day we came across more home-builders, but of quite a different kind from those above mentioned. Toward noon, we noticed some distance ahead of us, what appeared to be a greenish black ribbon, extended along our path. It was about a foot wide and several hundred feet long. We could not imagine what it could be until we were within a few yards of it. It proved to be an army of ants on a foraging expedition. There were millions, if not billions of them. Those on one side were carrying pieces of leaves about the size of a sixpence. They formed the green part of the ribbon that we had seen from a distance. Those on the other side, moving in an opposite direction, constituted the black part. They were all engaged in getting material for thatching their curious dome-like homes, which are often of extraordinary dimensions. Sometimes they are fully thirty or forty feet in diameter.

We regretted that time did not permit us to examine the length of their line of march, from their marvelous dwellingsto the trees they were stripping for roofing material. They have been known to go a mile or more for material suited to their purpose and to deprive scores of trees of all their leaves in a single day.

To one unfamiliar with the tropics, the depredations committed by these destructive insects appear incredible. Of an unknown number of species, they are among the greatest enemies of man in the equatorial regions. They spare nothing. Gardens and orchards, coffee and sugar, cassava and banana plantations disappear as quickly before them as before blight or frost.

In the early part of the sixteenth century, according to Herrera,5their numbers in Española and Puerto Rico were so great and their devastations so extensive and irresistible, that they threatened to depopulate the islands. Various parts of South America have also at different times suffered from the same plague—rivaling the seven plagues of Egypt in the distress and destruction which marked their path. Had we not had here, and elsewhere in the tropics, ocular evidence of their prodigious numbers, and been witnesses of the magnitude of the works due to their united efforts, we should have classed the accounts left us by the early chroniclers of the extent of the ravages of the ant plague among works of fiction rather than records of authentic history.6

The scenery along the mountain ascent was an ever-changing panorama of rarest beauty and sublimity, such as no pen could describe or brush portray. It exhibited all the tropical luxuriance of the llanos together with the wild picturesqueness characteristic of Alpine heights.

At times we wended our way along the banks of a noiseless river, which, in solitary grandeur, was sweeping through verdant meads and beneath arcades of sylvangreen, carrying its vivifying waves to the broad, expectant plains below. The placid scene, dotted with human habitations, and variegated by bright pastures, the home of contented flocks and herds, offered to the enchanted gaze, in a single picture, all the fabled beauties of the glens of Tempe and the dales of Arcady.

As we mounted higher up on our way, our route was along the verge of deep, headlong torrents mantled in the shade of overhanging bamboos, or obscured by the jutting crags and huge beetling rocks of the earthquake rift mountain. Ever and anon, our ears caught the muffled but incessant roar of thunderous waterfalls, which plunged from dizzy precipices high above our heads, both to the right and to the left of our upward path.

Scarcely had the deafening notes of these tumultuous floods, which awakened a thousand echoes in the sombre caves and yawning gulfs of the countless windings and abrupt breaks of the mountain ravines, died away, before we found ourselves in presence of some murmuring cascade that might well have adorned the grove around the grotto of Calypso. In the gleaming crystal basin at its foot, embowered in vernal bloom and eternal verdure, which diffused an aromatic breath over the passer-by, was tremulously reflected the plumed crown of the palm tree under which the weary traveler sought a moment’s rest for his weary frame. At every turn in our steep and devious path, our eyes were delighted by some wild, struggling brook, that fretted its way through a labyrinthine gorge, pranked with verdurous gloom, or charmed by some wanton rivulet leaping over rocks or forminglimpidpools, canopied with foliage and flowers of rarest fragrance and brightest hue, that

“Forever gaze on their own drooping eyes,Reflected in the crystal calm.”

“Forever gaze on their own drooping eyes,

Reflected in the crystal calm.”

It is not an exaggeration to say, that in our journey from the foot to the summit of the Andes, we passed inrapid review some of earth’s grandest and most entrancing prospects. Sometimes I was reminded of the mountains and valleys of the Alps, at others of the peaks and cañones of the Rocky Mountains. Some cataracts recalled the waterfalls seen leaping from the lofty precipices of Alaska; others, those that add such a charm to the manifold wonders of the Yosemite and the Yellowstone.

But the Andean views can always claim a superiority over all northern scenes of a similar character, in the marvelous setting afforded by the ever-verdant and exuberant vegetation of the tropics. How often did we not wish, during this memorable trip, that we could command the brush of a Turner or a Poussin or a Claude Lorrain, in order to bring home with us copies of some of those wonderful pictures that Nature exhibited to our admiring gaze in her great art gallery of the Oriental Cordilleras!

The higher we ascended above the lowlands the less dense became the forests and the less luxuriant the vegetation. At times there were extended reaches of land that were quite treeless; at others the surface of the soil was covered with scrubby growths that were in marked contrast with the splendid sylvan exhibitions to which we had been so long accustomed. But although the giants of the forest were no longer visible, there was little diminution of the splendor of the floral display along our path. In one place, particularly, we were surprised beyond measure to find the whole side of a mountain spur covered with a glorious mantle of immaculately white lilies. The scene was not unlike one of the large lily fields of Bermuda, that supply our Easter altars with their choicest decorations.

We were greatly delighted to find in the tropics representatives of the feathered tribe that we were familiar with in the far North. Large flocks of them annually leave North America and Europe to spend the winter season in South America and as regularly return to their northern homes the following summer. Some of them come from far-off Alaska and extend their flight as far south asTierra del Fuego. Others spend the summer in southeast Siberia and then, on the approach of winter, migrate by way of North America to South Brazil. Among the most numerous of these marvelous birds of passage are certain species of sandpipers, plovers and lapwings. The bobolink, known along the Chesapeake as the reedbird, and dreaded as the ricebird in the rice fields of the South, extends its migrations as far into South America as southeastern Brazil. Many of our familiar warblers and sparrows are to be seen during the winter months in Venezuela and Colombia, while certain cliff and barn swallows penetrate as far south as Paraguay. On the Orinoco and the Meta, we recognized many species of ducks that were familiar to us in the United States, among which were the pin-tail, bald-pate, golden-eye and blue-winged teal.

“The plovers, sandpipers and kindred species,” writes Knowlton, “take migratory journeys often of extraordinary length. Thus the American golden plover,Charadrius dominicus, breeds in arctic America, some venturing a thousand miles north of the Arctic Circle, and migrates through the entire length of North and South America to its winter home in Patagonia, and, curiously, its spring and fall routes are different. After feasting on the crowberry in Labrador, they seek the coast of Nova Scotia, where they strike out to sea, taking a direct course for the easternmost islands of the West Indies, and thence to the northeastern coast of South America. In spring not one returns by this route, but in March they appear in Guatemala and Texas. April finds their long lines trailing the prairies of the Mississippi Valley; the first of May sees them crossing our northern boundary, and by the first week in June they appear in their breeding grounds in the frozen north. The little sanderling, just mentioned, is almost cosmopolitan in distribution, breeding in the arctic and sub-arctic regions and migrating in the New World to Chile and Patagonia, a distance of eight thousand miles, and in the Old World along the shore of Europe, Asia andAfrica. The Bartramian sandpiper,Bartramia longicauda, nests from eastern North America to Nova Scotia and Alaska, and goes south in winter to southern South America. The solitary sandpiper,Totanus solitarius, breeds mainly to the north of the United States, and winters as far south as Brazil and Peru. The buff-breasted sandpiper,Tryngites subruficollis, rears its young in the Yukon district of Alaska and from the interior of British Colombia to the Arctic coast, and journeys in winter well into South America. The turnstone,Arenaria interpres, a little shore bird, about the size of the song thrush of Europe, is also cosmopolitan, breeding in high northern latitudes and at other times of the year found along the coasts of Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America to the Straits of Magellan, Australia and the Atlantic and Pacific islands. It is one of the species mentioned as making the wonderful flight from the islands in Bering Sea to the Hawaiian Islands.”7

By what miraculous instinct are they guided in these semi-annual migrations across half the globe? Who bids them, asks Pope,

“Columbus-like, exploreHeavens not their own, and worlds unknown before?Who calls the council, states the certain day.Who forms the phalanx, and who points the way?”

“Columbus-like, explore

Heavens not their own, and worlds unknown before?

Who calls the council, states the certain day.

Who forms the phalanx, and who points the way?”

Have they a special “sense of direction,” or is their “homing” faculty or power of orientation, something that is tantamount to a sixth sense?

We now know far more about the migrations of birds than was known only a few decades ago. We are able to locate many of them during the various seasons of the year, and are quite certain that they never, as an ingenious writer of the early seventeenth century maintained, spend the winter in the moon, where they have no occasion for food; but we have yet much to learn regarding the causes oftheir periodic migrations, and the nature of that instinct that enables them to pass, with unerring precision, from the arctic to the antarctic regions, and from the Old World to the New. We are accumulating daily new facts regarding the distant flights of the birds of passage, but, notwithstanding the many theories, some of them more fantastic than scientific, that have been advanced to explain the cause of the migrations of birds; why such migrations were undertaken in the beginning, why they are still continued, and how birds are able to find their way, during their marvelous flights from the arctic to the antarctic—we are still in the dark about many questions connected with those mysterious migrations, which have excited the interest of even the most casual observer since the prophet Jeremiah wrote: “The stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed time; and the turtle and the crane, and the swallows observe the time of their coming.”8

Almost before we were aware of it, the sun had begun to paint the crest of the Andes with bright vermeil and soft purple, and we were still far from Caqueza—the goal of our day’s journey. With the exception of the half-hour we had tarried for luncheon at an attractive posada, called Media Luna, we had been in the saddle all day, and had pushed forwards as rapidly as the strength of our animals would permit. We had left our vaqueano and peons in the rear early in the day, and it was not at all likely that they would be able to reach Caqueza before the following forenoon.

After a delightful, sunshiny day, the sky, towards sunset, suddenly became overcast with dark, threatening clouds,and presently it began to rain. One thing, however, was in our favor, and that was the trail. It was in a far better condition than that of the preceding day, but it lay along the breast of a precipitous mountain slope, at the foot of which, within ear-shot, coursed an impetuous mountain torrent. The greater part of the way was quite safe, and we could trust our mules, even in the dark, to keep to the path. But here and there were treacherous places—loose ground, and landslides caused by recent rains—which rendered traveling, even in the daytime, sufficiently difficult. In the darkness, that was every moment becoming more dense, locomotion was positively dangerous. There was no house on the way in which we could find shelter for the night. Our tent, with our other baggage, was in the hands of our dilatory peons. The only alternatives, then, were pressing on to Caqueza, despite darkness and danger, or standing still in our trail, where there was not even a shrub to temper the ever-increasing downpour. We elected to trust our lives again to our mules, as we had done the previous night. This seemed to be the lesser of the two evils that confronted us.

We then recalled the hesitating answer that our vaqueano had, in the morning, given to our query about reaching Caqueza beforenightfall. His “Tal vez, no”—perhaps not, was a gentle prognostic that it was impossible, at least for the baggage mules. As a matter of fact, they did not arrive until towards noon the next day. Their mules had given out, and the vaqueano and peons had to make shift to spend the night as best they could under an inclement sky.

The last objects of interest that we descried in the deepening gloom were a number of peasant cots perched high upon the mountain sides—much like so many cottages in the higher Alps—and the junction of two rivers—the Rio Blanco and the Rio Negro. The rivers specially attracted our attention, as the color of the waters of the one, the Blanco—white—was in such marked contrast with thewaters of the other, the Negro or black river. The one owed its color to the white clay soil through which it passed. The other was rendered black—like the well-known bog-tinctured, “black waters” of Ireland—by the presence of organic material. Even long after the waters of the two tributaries had entered their common channel, they kept quite separate—the black flowing along one bank and the white along the bank opposite.

It would take too long to enumerate the many difficulties we encountered, during our long ride in the darkness, before we finally arrived at Caqueza. Suffice to say that it was several long hours after nightfall, and that we were both quite exhausted, both by hunger and fatigue. We never felt time to pass so slowly, as during the last hour of the day’s journey, when there was danger in every step forward from the ever-threatening ravine, along the edge of which our path lay, and we were quite ready to exclaim with Shelley,

“How like death-worms the wingless moments crawl.”

“How like death-worms the wingless moments crawl.”

In the posada where we purposed spending the night, which was recommended as the best in town, we found sufficient to appease the pangs of hunger, but we were soon made to realize that we had another sleepless night before us. In San Miguel our quarters were damp and our blankets wet, owing to some carelessness on the part of our peons. In Caqueza the rooms assigned us—and particularly the beds—could best be described by a single word—insectiferous. They were a veritable insectarium that served no scientific or economic purpose. It is but just, however, to record that this was our first experience of the kind during our journey thus far in the tropics. Under the circumstances, there was nothing left for us to do except resignedly to exclaim with the pious native—Sea por Dios—may it be received by God in atonement for sin.

1The reader who is interested in the famous expeditions of Hohermuth, von Hutten and Federmann, about which there is little in English that is satisfactory, is referred to Castellanos,Varones Ilustres de Indias, Partes II and III; Herrera,Historia de las Indias, Dec. VI; Oviedo y Baños,Conquista y Poblacion de Venezuela, Lib I and III; Oviedo y Valdéz.Historia General y Natural de las Indias, Tom. II, Lib. XXV; Ternaux—Compans,Voyages, Rélations et Memoires Originaux pour servir à l’histoire de la découvarte de l’Amérique, Tom. II, Paris, 1840; Klunzinger,Antheil der Deutschen an der Andeckung von Süd-Amerika, Kap. VI, IX and XII, Stuttgart, 1857; Schumacher,Die Unternehmungen der Augsburger Welser in Venezuela, Kap. IV, IX and XII, in Tom. II, of a work published in Hamburg, 1892,Zur Errinnerung an die Endeckung Amerikas; Topf,Deutsche Statthalter und Konquistadoren in Venezuela, pp. 18, 19, 33–42, 48–55; Tom. VI, of theSammlung gemeinverständlicher wissenschaftlicher Vorträge, Hamburg, 1893; Humbert,L’Occupation Allemande du Venezuela au XVI Siècle, Période dite des Welser, 1528–1556, Bordeaux, 1905. The last-named work is illustrated by a valuable map. The subject possesses an added interest from the fact that it refers to the only attempt at colonial occupation ever made by Germans in South America. How different would now be the condition of Venezuela and Colombia if the Welser colony had been permanent and successful!↑2“Plain folk and faithful, modest and frank,Loyal, humble, sane and obedient.”This is particularly true of Indian children. Writing of them, a Dominican missionary, who had lived among them, and knew them well, expresses himself as follows:—“Je nesaisrien d’aimable, de gracieux, de docile et d’intelligent comme le jeune Indien”—“I know nothing so amiable, so kindly, so docile and so intelligent as the young Indian.”—Voyage d’Exploration d’ un Missionaire Dominicain chez les Tribus Sauvages de l’Equateur, p. 310, Paris, 1889.↑3The people of Venezuela and Colombia are very fond of using diminutives, and one must confess that it often gives to their conversation a peculiar charm and expressiveness. Thus fromtodo, all or every, they formtodito,toditico; fromcerca, near, they derivecerquita,cerquititaorcerquitica. Instead ofAdiosthey will sayAdiosito, and instead ofYo voy passando bien, one hearsYo voy passandito bien.I once gave a young mother a medal for a child she was holding on her lap, and she at once said, “Muchisimas gracias, hijito, yo pondre la medallita lueguito al cuellito de la queridita que va andandito asi, no mas.” “Many thanks, little son”—I was old enough to be her grandfather—“I shall immediately put the little medal on the little neck of the little darling, which is in rather delicate health.”↑4Richard Eden, op. cit., p. 71.↑5Historia de las Indias Occidentales, Dec. II, Lib. III, Cap. 14.↑6The town of Santa Rosa, in Ecuador, had to be abandoned because of the swarms of ants that invaded the place. It is now known as Anagollacta—place of ants.↑7Birds of the World, Chap. IV, New York, 1909.↑8So fixed are the periods of migration, and so punctual is the feathered tribe in starting on its semiannual flights, that “The Arabs are said to have been helped in the compilation of their calendars, by noting the times of the arrival and departure of migratory birds; and the Redskin in the far Northwest has received much the same aid from the birds of another continent.”All things considered, Professor Newton was probably right when he declared that the migration of birds is “perhaps the greatest mystery which the whole animal kingdom presents.”↑

1The reader who is interested in the famous expeditions of Hohermuth, von Hutten and Federmann, about which there is little in English that is satisfactory, is referred to Castellanos,Varones Ilustres de Indias, Partes II and III; Herrera,Historia de las Indias, Dec. VI; Oviedo y Baños,Conquista y Poblacion de Venezuela, Lib I and III; Oviedo y Valdéz.Historia General y Natural de las Indias, Tom. II, Lib. XXV; Ternaux—Compans,Voyages, Rélations et Memoires Originaux pour servir à l’histoire de la découvarte de l’Amérique, Tom. II, Paris, 1840; Klunzinger,Antheil der Deutschen an der Andeckung von Süd-Amerika, Kap. VI, IX and XII, Stuttgart, 1857; Schumacher,Die Unternehmungen der Augsburger Welser in Venezuela, Kap. IV, IX and XII, in Tom. II, of a work published in Hamburg, 1892,Zur Errinnerung an die Endeckung Amerikas; Topf,Deutsche Statthalter und Konquistadoren in Venezuela, pp. 18, 19, 33–42, 48–55; Tom. VI, of theSammlung gemeinverständlicher wissenschaftlicher Vorträge, Hamburg, 1893; Humbert,L’Occupation Allemande du Venezuela au XVI Siècle, Période dite des Welser, 1528–1556, Bordeaux, 1905. The last-named work is illustrated by a valuable map. The subject possesses an added interest from the fact that it refers to the only attempt at colonial occupation ever made by Germans in South America. How different would now be the condition of Venezuela and Colombia if the Welser colony had been permanent and successful!↑

2

“Plain folk and faithful, modest and frank,Loyal, humble, sane and obedient.”

“Plain folk and faithful, modest and frank,Loyal, humble, sane and obedient.”

“Plain folk and faithful, modest and frank,Loyal, humble, sane and obedient.”

“Plain folk and faithful, modest and frank,Loyal, humble, sane and obedient.”

“Plain folk and faithful, modest and frank,Loyal, humble, sane and obedient.”

“Plain folk and faithful, modest and frank,

Loyal, humble, sane and obedient.”

This is particularly true of Indian children. Writing of them, a Dominican missionary, who had lived among them, and knew them well, expresses himself as follows:—

“Je nesaisrien d’aimable, de gracieux, de docile et d’intelligent comme le jeune Indien”—“I know nothing so amiable, so kindly, so docile and so intelligent as the young Indian.”—Voyage d’Exploration d’ un Missionaire Dominicain chez les Tribus Sauvages de l’Equateur, p. 310, Paris, 1889.↑

3The people of Venezuela and Colombia are very fond of using diminutives, and one must confess that it often gives to their conversation a peculiar charm and expressiveness. Thus fromtodo, all or every, they formtodito,toditico; fromcerca, near, they derivecerquita,cerquititaorcerquitica. Instead ofAdiosthey will sayAdiosito, and instead ofYo voy passando bien, one hearsYo voy passandito bien.

I once gave a young mother a medal for a child she was holding on her lap, and she at once said, “Muchisimas gracias, hijito, yo pondre la medallita lueguito al cuellito de la queridita que va andandito asi, no mas.” “Many thanks, little son”—I was old enough to be her grandfather—“I shall immediately put the little medal on the little neck of the little darling, which is in rather delicate health.”↑

4Richard Eden, op. cit., p. 71.↑

5Historia de las Indias Occidentales, Dec. II, Lib. III, Cap. 14.↑

6The town of Santa Rosa, in Ecuador, had to be abandoned because of the swarms of ants that invaded the place. It is now known as Anagollacta—place of ants.↑

7Birds of the World, Chap. IV, New York, 1909.↑

8So fixed are the periods of migration, and so punctual is the feathered tribe in starting on its semiannual flights, that “The Arabs are said to have been helped in the compilation of their calendars, by noting the times of the arrival and departure of migratory birds; and the Redskin in the far Northwest has received much the same aid from the birds of another continent.”

All things considered, Professor Newton was probably right when he declared that the migration of birds is “perhaps the greatest mystery which the whole animal kingdom presents.”↑

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