The valley of the Cauca abounds with bamboo-cane, which serves a variety of purposes. With the bamboo the inhabitants build their houses, and erect a pretty kind of fence around their farms. The peasantry make with it sweet-sounding flutes; it furnishes them also with drinking-cups, water-buckets, and bird-cages, chairs and baskets, blow-pipes and arrows. With the canes also large rafts are built for carrying cocoa and other produce down the rivers even as far as the ports of embarkation, where the rafts themselves are disposed of to advantage. As cattle abound, ox-hides are made use of for all sorts of domestic purposes. Tables are covered with them, and also sofas, chairs, bedsteads, doors, and trunks. Cut into strips, they form lassoes, greatly in use among the cattle-keepers of the plains. They are formed into bottles, too, for wine and chica; and with them also, stretched on poles, hand-barrows are constructed for carrying earth and rubbish. We met in this region a number of horses and mules without ears, and others with their ears lying flat on their necks. On inquiring the reason, we found that this was occasioned by an insect like a wood-louse getting inside them, and which is as prolific as the chigua in the toes of human beings. These insects gradually devour the nerves of the ear, which then falls off. To prevent this, the muleteers rub the inside of the animal's ears with hog's lard, to which the insect has a decided aversion. Even this paradise was not perfect. We caught sight of several tiger-cats, jaguars, and pumas, which come down and commit depredations on the flocks and herds; and occasionally a huge black bear will descend from his mountain lair and pay a visit to the hog-pen, though he runs a risk of being shot by the watchful owner. Having all my life lived in the high regions of New Granada, I was not prepared for the perfectly tropical scenery I now for the first time beheld. I remember one spot by the side of the Cauca, just before we reached Cartago. The sepos, or rope-like vines, hung from the lofty branches of the trees, and beautifully-coloured parasitical plants were suspended in the air. Gaily-tinted macaws flew across the blue sky, and other birds of the gayest plumage flitted here and there. There were several plants of the cacti species on the borders of the stream, on the shores of which were seen the bamboo-dwellings of the inhabitants, with palms and other graceful trees rising above them; while long-tailed monkeys swung to and fro on the creepers, which seemed arranged specially for their amusement.