the Magdalena, and crossing the central chain by the paramo of Guanacas; the other by Ibague and Cartago, and across the mountain of Quindiu, which is partially described by Humboldt. The latter was taken by Captain Cochrane in returning to the

coast.

FROM BOGOTA TO CARTAGO.

On the 11th of December, 1824, Captain Cochrane left the capital, and stopped for the night at the village of Fontabon in the plain. At three hours' distance from that place, the road enters the Boca del Monte, a gap in the parapet of hills, from which a spiral road winds down a deep and romantic glen to the depth of 3,000 feet. The beginning of the descent is formed by slanting steps of stone, ten feet wide, eight feet broad, and from a foot to eighteen inches deep; in which, however, there are many gaps and great irregularities, so that the traveller will deem it prudent to lead his horse. At about 2,000 feet below the plain, the road leads along a ridge of mountains entirely covered with trees bearing the campana, a species of white bell-flower. The climate is here from twelve to fourteen degrees hotter than at Bogota. Although there is much traffic along this route, the roads are so completely cut up, that the baggage-mules frequently stick fast in the ruts. Passing through Tenja, a small village, our Traveller reached in the evening the town of La Mesa. The next day, still descending, he arrived at Anapoyma, where he found the heat extremely oppressive, the thermometer at 85° in the shade. The fourth day he crossed the Bogota twice, and lodged at night at the hacienda of Peñon. The fifth day, he crossed the Fusagasega, and went on to the cottage called Cangreco. The sixth night, he slept at Los Cosanos de la Honda, and early the next morning, crossed the Magdalena, at the

ferry to La Villa de la Nuestra Senhora de Purifficacion, in the province of Neyva, reckoned half-way between Neyva and Tocaima.* About eight hours and a half from Purificacion, the route crosses the Quello (or Cuello), a rapid and strong river, on the banks of which travellers are sometimes detained for days till it is shallow enough to pass. Three hours and a half farther is the city of San Bonifacio de Ibague in Mariquita, an inconsiderable place, with a population of between 2 and 3,000. "About 130 years ago, the plains of Ibague were all corn-lands, and the superiority of their produce was such as to incur the jealousy of the viceroy, who, finding that the corn was preferred to that of his own territory, sent a mandate for the whole to be destroyed, and the mills dismantled." Such is the statement Captain Cochrane received, and he saw many of the mill-stones lying about the plain. Here he prepared for his arduous journey to Cartago across the Quindiu.

"The mountain of Quindiu," says Humboldt, "is considered as the most difficult passage in the Cordilleras of the Andes. It is a thick, uninhabited forest, which, in the finest season, cannot be traversed in less than ten or twelve days. Not even a hut is to be seen, nor can any means of subsistence be found. Travellers, at all times of the year, furnish themselves with a month's provision, since it often happens, that, by the melting of the snows, and the sudden swell of the torrents, they find themselves so circumstanced, that they can descend neither on the side of Cartago, nor that of Ibague. The highest point of the road, the Garilo del Paramo, is 1,450 feet above the level of the sea. As the foot of the mountain, towards the banks of the Cauca, is only 3,140 feet; the climate

From Purificacion, Captain C. made an excursion to the gold mines of Apone, near Coyamo, but found them not worth the trouble of visiting them.

+ In lat 4° 36′ N. long 5° 12′ of Paris.

there is, in general, mild and temperate. The pathway which forms the passage of the cordilleras is only about a foot in breadth, and has the appearance, in several places, of a gallery dug, and left open to the sky. In this part of the Andes, as in almost every other, the rock is covered with a thick stratum of clay. The streamlets which flow down the mountains, have hollowed out gulleys 18 or 20 feet deep. Along these crevices, which are full of mud, the traveller is forced to grope his passage, the darkness of which is increased by the thick vegetation that covers the opening above. The oxen, which are the beasts of burden commonly made use of in this country, can scarcely force their way through these galleries, some of which are 2,000 yards in length; and if perchance the traveller meets them in one of these passages, he finds no means of avoiding them, but by turning back, and climbing the earthen wall which borders the crevice, and keeping himself suspended, by laying hold of the roots which penetrate to this depth from the surface of the ground.

"We traversed the mountains of Quindiu in the month of October 1801, on foot, followed by twelve oxen, which carried our collections and instruments, amidst a deluge of rain, to which we were exposed during the last three or four days in our descent on the western side of the cordilleras. The road passes through a country full of bogs, and covered with bamboos. Our shoes were so torn by the prickles which shoot out from the roots of these gigantic gramina, that we were forced, like all other travellers who dislike being carried on men's backs, to go barefooted. This circumstance, the continued humidity, the length of the passage, the muscular force required to tread in a thick and muddy clay, and the necessity of fording deep torrents of icy water, render this journey extremely fatiguing; but, however painful, it is accompanied by

As

none of those dangers with which the credulity of the people alarms travellers. The road is narrow, but the places where it skirts precipices are very rare. the oxen are accustomed to put their feet in the same tracts, they form small furrows across the road, separated from each other by narrow ridges of earth. In very rainy seasons, these ridges are covered with water, which renders the traveller's step doubly uncertain, since he knows not whether he places his foot on the ridge or in the furrow.

"The usual mode of travelling for persons in easy circumstances is in a chair, strapped to the back of one of the native porters (cargueros), or men of burden, who live by letting out their backs and loins to travellers. They talk in this country of going on a man's back (andar en cargueros) as we mention going on horseback. No humiliating idea is annexed to the trade of cargueros; and the men who follow this occupation are not Indians, but mulattoes, and sometimes even whites. It is often curious to hear these men, with scarcely any covering, and following an employment which we should consider so disgraceful, quarelling in the midst of a forest, because one has refused the other, who pretends to have a whiter skin, the pompous title of don, or of su merced. The usual load of a carguero is six or seven arrobas: those who are very strong carry as much as nine arrobas. When we reflect," continues Humboldt, on the enormous fatigue to which these miserable men are exposed, journeying eight or nine hours a day over a mountainous country; when we know, that their backs are sometimes as raw as those of beasts of burden; that travellers have often the cruelty to leave them in the forests when they fall sick; that they earn by a journey from Ibague to Cartago, only twelve or fourteen piasters in from fifteen to twenty-five days; we are at a loss to conceive how this employment of a car

guero should be eagerly embraced by all the robust young men who live at the foot of the mountains. The taste for a wandering life, the idea of a certain independence amid forests, leads them to prefer it to the sedentary and monotonous labour of cities. The passage of the mountain of Quindiu is not the only part of South America which is traversed on the backs of men. The whole of the province of Antioquia is surrounded by mountains so difficult to pass, that they who dislike entrusting themselves to the skill of a bearer, and are not strong enough to travel on foot from Santa Fe de Antioquia to Bocca de Nares or Rio Samana, must relinquish all thoughts of leaving the country. I was acquainted with an inhabitant of this province so immensely bulky, that he had not met with more than two mulattoes capable of carrying him; and it would have been impossible for him to return home, if these two carriers had died while he was on the banks of the Magdalena, at Monpox or at Honda. The number of young men who undertake the employment of beasts of burden at Choco, Ibague, and Medellin, is so considerable, that we sometimes met a file of fifty or sixty. A few years ago, when a project was formed to make the passage from Naires to Antioquia passable for mules, the cargueros presented formal remonstrances against mending the road, and the government was weak enough to yield to their clamours. The person carried in a chair by a carguero, must remain several hours motionless, and leaning backwards. The least motion is sufficient to throw down the carrier; and his fall would be so much the more dangerous, as the carguero, too confident in his own skill, chooses the most rapid declivities, or crosses a torrent on a narrow and slippery trunk of a tree. These accidents are, however, rare; and those which happen must be attributed to the