The cataract of the Tequendama, by which the river Funza joins the Great Magdalena, is the most noted object in the surrounding country. The Funza or Bogota, after receiving the waters of the numerous small rivers which flow through the great plain, is about 140 feet in breadth, a short distance above the fall; approaching the crevice through which it dashes, its breadth is diminished to thirty-five, when, with accumulated force, it rushes down a perpendicular rock at two bounds, to the astonishing depth of 600 feet, into a dark, unfathomable gulf, out of which the river again issues under the name of Rio Meta, and continues its course, by an immense descent, till it joins the great river Magdalena. In the fall of this river may be observed a strange variety of climate. The plain of Bogota is covered with crops of wheat, with oaks, elms, and other productions of a temperate region. At the foot of the fall are seen the palms of the equinoctial low-lands. The face of the rock, which finishes and borders the vast plain of Bogota, near the cataract, is so steep, that it takes three hours to descend from the river Funza to the Rio Meta; and the basin or gulf cannot be approached very close, as the rapidity of the water, the deafening noise of the fall, and dense mass of vapour, render it impossible to get nearer the edges of the abyss than four or five hundred feet. The loneliness of the spot, the dreadful noise, and the beauty of the vegetation, render this situation one of the wildest and most picturesque scenes that are to be observed in the Andes. When Quesada first arrived at Bogota, he discovered that the inhabitants, whom we have spoken of under the name of Muyscas, were rapidly approaching to civilization. The xaque or prince was absolute; his people carried him about in a sort of palanquin, attended by his guards and courtiers; whilst flowers were strewn along the ground over which he was to pass. They never approached him but with an averted countenance, as if they imagined that he was a divinity, in whose face they dared not look. These people subsisted chiefly by agriculture, were clothed in cotton garments, and lived in regular society. Crimes were punished by judges appointed to watch over them, and they possessed, property independent of each other, on which taxes were levied for the support of the government. They had temples, altars, priests and sacrifices, but their religion, which consisted in the adoration of the sun, moon, Bochica, his descendants, and the evil deities, was intermixed with barbarous and bloody ceremonies; they resembled the Mexicans, with whom they had no connection, in a particular point of these immolations; the heart of the living victim was torn out, and supposed to be the most grateful offering to their gods. One of their notions of the power of Bochica, and of the formation of the moon, is singular; and as it relates to the cataract of the Tequendama, we shall give it at length.