One day an inhabitant of Tabacal rushed into our room and begged me to show him the wonderful diamond ring he said I wore while in his village; he had been away at the time, so had not seen it, but tales had reached his ears upon his return of the marvellous brilliancy of the stone which lighted up the whole street as we walked along. At first I wondered from what sort of an hallucination the man was suffering, for neither my companion nor myself carried any diamonds with us; finally I remembered that, in trying to find our way through the street at Tabacal, we had used a small electric flash-light to avoid falling over the pigs or into the mud-wallows; whereupon I demonstrated its mysterious powers to him, and he started back on his two days’ walk a better-informed but nevertheless a most-disappointed man. A stream of clear, cold water flows around one side of the hill upon which Peque stands, and to this we went nightly for a swim. Don Julian could not quite believe us when we told him of the purpose of our nocturnal prowls; so one night he accompanied us to the stream and, wonder of wonders, we actually did go into the water. I invited him to join us, but he said: “No, such a thing is unheard of; and, besides, an Indian is just like a cat; when either one gets wet it dies!” When the half-breed porters who were to carry the equipment finally had their _charque_ and _jarepas_ all ready, they shouldered their packs and started for the mountains. As there was no trail, an additional man was engaged to go in advance and clear an opening with his machete. [Illustration: The porters en route to the Paramillo.] [Illustration: Cuña Indians at Dabeiba.] A three hours’ walk brought us to a point called El Madero, because a few trees had once been cut down there for their lumber, but the clearing was overgrown with blackberry-briars, brush, and guavas. Then we plunged into the unexplored forest. It was our plan to follow along the top of an undulating ridge which one of the men said was the shortest and easiest route to the Paramillo. He knew from experience, having once visited the region some sixteen years before. It was during the course of a revolution; his father was pursued by the opposing forces and fled into the forest, taking his son, who was then a small boy, with him, and eventually reaching the Paramillo, they spent some time there in concealment. At first the forest was fairly penetrable, but soon the moss-draped, liana-garlanded walls closed about us in a compact mass; ferns, palms, and arums sprang up from the ground in a matted jungle to join the heavily laden branches above. Then our trail-cutter was pressed into service, and plied his machete with deadly effect on the vegetation, with the result that a narrow tunnel was opened, through which we walked or crawled as occasion might demand.