From Honda to Bogota the journey must be made on mule-back, and it requires four days to cover the seventy miles. Recently there has been a line of stagecoaches established between Bogota and the town of Agrialarge, which shortens the time a day, and the distance by saddle thirty miles. In describing the journey Mr. Scruggs, recently United States Minister to Colombia, says: [Illustration: VEGETABLE IVORY PLANT.] “After perfecting all necessary arrangements the day previous, the traveller rises at six, takes a light breakfast of chocolate and bread, and hopes to be on the way by seven. But people here take life easily. Servants and guides and muleteers make no note of time, and it is quite useless to try to hurry them, so that if he gets fairly under way by noon he is fortunate. Just beyond the deep, broad valley of the Magdalena are the snow-capped mountains of Tolima. They seem marvellously near, and yet they are more than one hundred miles distant, so very clear and transparent is the pure ethereal atmosphere of this elevated region. In the opposite direction is the dish-shaped valley of Guaduas, fringed with luxuriant foliage of the coffee plantations and the virgin forests of emerald green. In the centre of this valley reposes the parochial village, with its church steeples reaching upward as if in feeble imitation of the adjacent mountain-peaks. “The valley is watered by the Rio Negro; justly so named, for its waters are as black as ink, so rendered by their passage through the coal and mineral deposits along the foothills of the Sierra. Near by are a noted sulphur spring and the extinct volcano which Humboldt describes as likely, one day, to break out afresh and destroy this beautiful valley. Though quite hot, the atmosphere is singularly dry and sanitary, and the place is often resorted to by invalids from Bogota and the more elevated regions. “Up to this point our journey has been alternating between deep valleys and dizzy mountain-peaks. We cross one only to encounter another. Such is the Camino Real, or ‘Royal Highway,’ the only available route between the Colombian capital and the outside world. Within the past few years it has been much improved, it is true, and at great expense to the Government; but it is still little else than a mere mule trail, not wide enough in many places for two mules to walk abreast, and so tortuous and precipitous as to be impassable except on the backs of animals trained to the road. When we reflect that this is the overland highway of an immense commerce, and that it has been in constant use since the Spanish conquest, we naturally marvel that it is no better. It seems to have been constructed without any previous survey whatever, and without the least regard for [Illustration: EN ROUTE TO BOGOTA.]