On February 27 we left Popayán on foot, the mule-train following some little distance behind. The route lay through undulating country, rather well cultivated, where there were numerous huts at which we found shelter for the nights. At one of these stopping-places the natives were engaged in thrashing beans. The pods had been heaped upon a straw mat and the family were beating them with heavy flails. Wheat was thrashed in the same manner, but after the grains had been beaten loose from the chaff large pans full were held high above the head and poured out in a thin, steady stream; the wind blew the chaff from the falling column and the wheat dropped upon the mat. At another hut men were manufacturing “cabulla” by stripping off, between two sticks, the fleshy part of the leaves of the yucca-plant. The tough fibres remaining were mixed with horsehair and braided into strong ropes. Food was scarce, the natives subsisting upon the inevitable “sancocho” of boiled green plantains, and cornmeal “jarepas.” However, we managed occasionally to pick up a fowl, some green corn, and once, we succeeded in purchasing a live sheep; this, in addition to the provisions we carried, enabled us to fare passably well. On March 7 we had reached the top of a ridge ten thousand three hundred and fifty feet high, having passed the little villages Timbio, San Miguel, Santa Barbara, and La Vega. La Vega means “fertile plain,” and the surrounding country fully justifies the name. Far as the eye could see the gently sloping mountainsides had been divided into a network of small, irregular plots by rows of high, thick hedges. Wheat, corn, cabbage, and rice flourished under the cultivating hand of the Indian; there were also small flocks of sheep, and occasionally a few head of cattle. Small mud-walled huts, singly and in clusters, dotted the maze of green landscape, and over all breathed an air of quiet and contentment. The trail had gradually led upward, though often descending into gorges and ravines a thousand feet deep. We had passed through patches of barren country, and then entered a wilderness of lovely flowering rhododendrons. The masses of red wild oleanders were beautiful, but the lanes of a species of shrub covered with small waxen blossoms of purest white, mingled with deep-green foliage and the fronds of monstrous subtropical ferns, surpassed any picture that pen can describe or the imagination conjure. From afar we could hear the steady buzz of bees and other insects that swarmed about the flowers, and frequently a humming-bird whirred into the arena, hovered a few moments, and then sped away; myriads of nocturnal insects appeared at night, and great sphinx-moths took the place of the hummers.