comfort or convenience, making short curves where curves are quite unnecessary, or going straight over some mountain spur or peak, when the ascent might have been rendered less difficult by easy curves. But, to the observant traveller, the inconveniences and hardships of the journey are, in some measure, compensated by the varied and captivating scenery. He passes through a variety of climates within a few hours’ ride. At one time he is ascending a dizzy steep by a sort of rustic stairway hewn into the rock-ribbed mountain, where the air reminds him of a chilly November morning; a few hours later he is descending to the region of the plantain and the banana, where the summer never ends, and the rank crops of fruits and flowers chase each other in unbroken circle from January to December. On the bleak crests of the paramos he encounters neither tree nor shrub, where a few blades of sedge and the flitting of a few sparrows give the only evidences of vegetable or animal life; while in the deep valley just below, the dense groves of palm and cottonwood are alive with birds of rich and varied plumage, and the air seems loaded with floral perfumes until the senses fairly ache with their sweetness. “This plain is the traditional elysium of the ancient Chibchas, and their imperial capital was near the site of the present capital of Colombia; and perhaps around no one spot on the American continent cluster so many legends of the aborigines, or quite so many improbable stories illustrative of the ancient civilization. Here one can almost imagine himself in the north temperate zone, and in a country inhabited by a race wholly different from the people heretofore seen in the republic. Agriculture and the useful arts seem at least a century ahead of those on the coast and in the torrid valleys of the great rivers. The ox-cart and plantation-wagon have supplanted the traditional pack-mule and ground-sled; the neat iron spade and patent plough have taken the place of wooden shovels and clumsy forked sticks; the enclosures are of substantial stone or adobe, and the spacious farmhouse, or quinta, has an air of palatial elegance compared with the mud and bamboo hut of the Magdalena. The people have a clear, ruddy complexion, at least compared with those heretofore seen in the country, and their dialect is a near approach to the rich and sonorous Castilian, once so liquid and harmonious in poetry and song, so majestic and persuasive on the forum. None of these agricultural implements, and none of these commodious coaches and omnibuses, were manufactured here nor elsewhere in Colombia. They have all been imported from the United States or England. They were brought to Honda by the river steamers, packed in small sections, and thence lugged over the mountains piece by piece.