September 12 found us wending our way along the Quindio River toward its headwaters. The valley floor is covered with grass that is kept close-cropped by cattle and horses. Low shrubbery grows along the river-bank; the stream--not over one hundred feet wide--is clear and swift and the icy water rushes over a boulder-strewn bed. A scattered growth of tall palms dots the entire valley and extends up the mountainsides to an elevation of about nine thousand five hundred feet. The trail is so indistinct that Allen and I, who were riding in advance of the pack-mules, lost it and spent two hours in a vain endeavor to recover the way; then we saw the cargoes and peons far below, resembling moving black dots, and hurriedly rejoined them just as they were leaving the valley for the abrupt slope. The trail from here onward was steep and rough. Before us stretched a seemingly endless succession of ridges, farallones, tall rocks, and high precipices that reach a climax in the brown paramo of Santa Isabel, backed by walls of gleaming snow. In looking back over the way we had just come we could see the Quindio and the thousands of palms growing in its valley spread before us like a map. The lower slopes were barren, having but recently been burned over; fire was still raging in a number of places and the hissing and popping of burning vegetation could be heard frequently with distinctness. Tall, smouldering stumps were clustered here and there like blackened chimneys from the tops of which wisps and columns of smoke ascended into a hazy sky. The pungent odor of burning green plants was at times almost suffocating. Forest begins at nine thousand five hundred feet. It is at first somewhat open and reminded us of Laguneta. The rich mould of the forest floor was very deep and caused us much anxiety lest some of the pack-animals be lost, for they sank into it to a great depth, and there was constant danger of their floundering and pitching headlong down the mountainside. The arrieros took the utmost precautions, but even then one of the mules became overbalanced and fell off the trail. Fortunately the trees grew close together and one of the packs became wedged between two of them and halted the rolling creature a short distance below. It struggled there with feet in the air until the peons released it and led it back to the trail.