The traveler’s descent from the Bogotá _sabana_ to the Magdalena on his departure from the country, will store his memory with vistas of grandeur and beauty that will never be effaced, for the Upper Magdalena valley is one of the most beautiful in the world. By the old mule path to Honda, the head of navigation for big steamers on the Magdalena, by way of La Mesa, Tocaime, and Jirado, one will be traveling over a route that for centuries was the great thoroughfare for _peon_ or viceroy, and is to-day practically unchanged in the scenes that make it interesting. But one can now go by rail from Bogotá to Girardot on the Magdalena, some eighty miles above and south of Honda, thence by small steamer to Arrancapluma, where a short railway trip is made around the Honda Rapids to La Dorada, about twenty miles north of and down the river from the town of Honda. At La Dorada the five hundred mile journey northward down the Magdalena to the Caribbean is made in one of the regular steamers that cover this service. The river trip is full of interest, for the wild stream, nearly as large as the Mississippi, flows with great rapidity throughout its course, and has a most varied aspect. For miles it spreads out in a calm, placid sheet of water several miles in width, then whirls over a series of rapids, or forms into whirlpools, or later races through a narrow mountain gorge; and, in consequence of its eccentricities, the channel is constantly changing, to the great inconvenience of pilots. At Calamar, about seventy-five miles from the mouth, the traveler may exchange the steamer for the railroad to the port of Cartagena, or continue down the Magdalena, now greatly increased in volume by the confluence of the almost equally large river Cauca, to the two important Caribbean ports at the mouth, Barranquilla and Sabanilla. The first part of the trip from Bogotá to Girardot reminds one of the mountain scenery over the Oroya road up into the Andean plateau from Lima. Constantly before him, in the distance, are the lofty frozen peaks of Tolima, San Ruiz, and Herveo, towering above their fellows in the Central Cordillera. On either side of the Magdalena, the slopes of the two ranges in their lower reaches are dotted with coffee plantations; above them, reaching to the altitude of the _paramos_, the mountain sides are thickly overgrown with forests, and down in the river basin, in the hollow of the broad valley, the brilliant green of varied tropical vegetation continues, on past the point where the Central and Western Cordilleras merge in the _llanos_, down to the Caribbean coast plains; here the Magdalena basin spreads out over a vast area of barren waste.