Hypolito. Most wonderful!”
In the foreground beneath our feet, was the wooded slope of El Sargento. In the distance, near the mountain’s base, were the picturesque towns of San Juan and Ambalema. Further on, like an immense opalescent band, was the meandering Magdalena. Beyond it were the broad plains of Mariquita, which extended as far as the foothills of the Central Cordillera. Over and above these, veiled in an azure haze, and piercing the clouds, were the snow-crowned mass of Ruiz and the Mesa de Herveo, and slightly to the left, but towering above all the neighboring peaks, was Tolima, the giant of the Colombian Andes.[21]
But it was not merely the physical features just mentioned, that produced the admirable picture that held us spellbound. It was the marvelous combination of light and shade, the position of the sun in the heavens, and the strange optical illusions caused by the bright and fleecy clouds that constantly swept over the landscape. These factors gave rise to an ever-changing perspective, and at times, exaggerated distances and magnitudes in the most extraordinary manner. Each change developed a new picture and each one was, if possible, more beautiful than that which it replaced. It seemed as if the genius of the Andes wished to give us, as we were leaving his domain, a series of dissolving views on a stupendous scale. View succeeded view with kaleidoscopic rapidity, all distinguished by color-schemes of supreme delicacy and splendor. At one time we caught a glimpse of a cloud-grouping that recalled Raphael’s Disputa. Perhaps in his Umbrian home Nature had gladdened the great artist’s soul with a similar view. Perhaps he had caught it from some lofty peak of the Apennines while gazing at the apparition of the morning sun from beneath the blue waters of the Adriatic.
Who can tell? What we do know is that he has reproduced in the exquisite creations of his transcendent genius just such cloud-effects as rejoiced our vision on that memorable day when we bade adieu to the Eastern Cordilleras. Never before had mountain scenery occasioned us keener delight. Only once before had it been my privilege to contemplate a vista at all approaching the one that unfolded itself before us in the picturesque valley of the Magdalena. That was long years ago, as I stood on the summit of Mt. Parnassus. It was a balmy morning in summer. “Rosy-fingered dawn” was just making her appearance beyond the plain where Troy once stood, and was hastening to gladden by her smile the islands of the Ægean and the one-time famous land of Hellas. Then I beheld, spread out before me, the greater part of Greece, together with the countless islands that engirdle it. It was a panorama which I then thought was unequaled in the wide world. But beautiful, sublime, glorious as it undoubtedly was, it has since yielded the palm to the unrivaled vista that greeted us from the summit of El Sargento.
“How Turner and Ruskin,” we exclaimed, “would have reveled in such scenic splendor! How it would have delighted the heart of Claude Lorrain, the painter of idyllic scenes and the master of aerial perspective! What ecstatic joy would not Gaspard and Nicholas Poussin, Ruysdael and Corot, have experienced in the presence of such exuberant vegetation, such sparkling streams and fleece-like clouds, such grandiose mountains with their spotless mantles of eternal snow!”
And how such a spot as El Sargento would have appealed to the esthetic soul of St. Benedict or to such lovers of wild nature as St. Bruno, or St. Francis, the poverello of Assisi! Had they found such a place, it would undoubtedly have been chosen as a site for a temple, like our Lady of the Angels, or a monastic retreat like that of Monte Casino or the Grande Chartreuse.[22]
We were still under the spell of the matchless pictures engraved on our memories long after we had started on our way down the mountain. Before we had realized it, we had passed from the tierra templada to the tierra caliente. We were again in the dense and luxuriant forests of the lowlands—in a region of perpetual summer, like unto that which we had left behind us in the valleys of the Meta and the Orinoco. We had left the habitat of the coffee plant and the oak and were now in the territory of the cacao and the tolu tree, the vanilla vine and the moriche palm. Far above and behind us, on lofty mountain peaks where sunbeams “glide apace with shadows in their train,” were the favorite haunts of the fleet and sporting Oreades. Our path was now through a dense, gloomy forest where Silence and Twilight,
“Twin sisters keep
Their noonday watch, and sail among the shades,
Like vaporous shapes half seen.”[23]