“Terrible, strange, sublime and beauteous shapes,” which, gathering their forces, dashed with the fury of the hurricane against the adamantine crest of the Cordilleras. The tempest lasted but a few minutes, and then all was as bright and serene as before, and, if anything, more radiantly beautiful.
Here, in a region empyreal, far away from the noise and turmoil of our marts of commerce, we breathed an air of purity, and experienced a sense of freedom that are unknown in the dank, foul and malarial atmosphere in which so many struggling millions pass the greater part of their wretched lives. But above all, what most impresses one in these ethereal heights is the sense of the proximity of God. We could almost fancy some one breathing into our ear the words of Tennyson:—
“Speak to Him thou, for He hears, and Spirit can meet—
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.”
Traveling from the foothills to the summit of the Cordilleras is like going from the equator to the arctic circle. One has every variety of climate peculiar to the torrid, temperate and frigid zones, and the fauna and flora vary with the altitude as they change with the climate.
The inhabitants of the Andean regions have long recognized three distinct climates, known as those of the tierra caliente—hot land; the tierra fría—cold land; and the paramo. Men of science have, for the sake of convenience, added a third climate, that of the tierra templada, or temperate land. The altitudes at which these climates are found vary with the latitude and with certain meteorological conditions, but in Colombia and near the equator they are quite fixed and accepted as fair approximations to the truth.
Tierra caliente embraces a zone extending from sea level to a line one thousand meters higher up. It is pre-eminently the land of palms, ceibas and milk trees; of totumos and tamarinds, of the vanilla and ipecacuanha; the algarroba and white cedar; the sarrapia—Dipteryx odorata—and the poisonous curare—strychnos toxifera—from which the Indians make the deadly compound that renders their arrows such certain messengers of death. It is also the favorite zone for many tropical fruits such as plantains, bananas, mameys, nisperos, mangos, zapotes, oranges, lemons, pineapples, and scores of others found only in the lowlands of the equinoctial regions.
The upper limits of the tierra caliente are indicated by the disappearance of the cacao tree and certain plants that do not flourish at an altitude beyond one thousand meters above sea level. The tierra caliente and the tierra templada are connected by such well-known plants and trees as sensitive mimosas, bamboos, cinchonas and tree ferns, although these representatives of the vegetable world do not attain their full importance until higher altitudes are reached.
The tierra templada comprises a zone extending from one thousand to twenty-four hundred meters above sea level. It is in the lower part of this zone that the bamboo, the most delicate and graceful of tropical plants, attains its greatest development and gives its greatest charm to the landscape.
The numerous plants, shrubs and trees of the bean and myrtle families are seen at their best in the lower half of the tierra templada. It is here, too, that one meets with the largest and most beautiful specimens of tree ferns. So gigantic, indeed, are they that at a distance they are easily mistaken for a moriche palm. Only in the islands of the Pacific have I ever seen anything to compare with them in size and luxuriant loveliness.