It was in such a sombre forest as this, we fancied, where, under the influence of a fertile soil, perpetual warmth and humidity, the teeming earth, in later geologic time, fed the countless monsters that depended on her bounty. It was amid such surroundings that they were wont to hold high carnival, or engage in that struggle for existence which resulted in the survival of the fittest, until finally all were swept away by some fatal agency of which we know so little. Had we seen a megatherium or a mylodon or a megalonyx crossing our path, or observed a mastodon pushing his bulky form through the dense underbrush; had we seen a screaming pterodactyl passing over our heads, or beheld a giant iguanodon floundering in the morass by the wayside, or browsing on the succulent crowns of the Mauritia flexuosa, we should have regarded it all as in perfect keeping with our environment.
Our reveries were suddenly disturbed by the soft, dulcet notes of the tiple. Only a short distance ahead of us, reclining against a mango tree, was an amorous young mestizo, who was fondly gazing on his dusky querida, while thrumming his instrument. She, during the serenade[24] of her ardent suitor, sat on the door-sill of a bamboo dwelling with a palm-thatched roof, having seemingly no thought beyond satisfying the cravings of two little nude, paunchy, bananniverous urchins, apparently her brother and sister—Pablo and Julia by name—who, like ebony statuettes, were standing at her knee and clamoring for another banana from a bunch suspended from a rafter above the cabin door.
Farther on was another cabin, from which issued coarser notes of shouts and laughter. It was a chicheria, and the chicha there served was evidently the cause of the good nature and general merriment that prevailed. We then discovered that we were on the outskirts of a small pueblo, just across the river from the goal of our day’s journey. Our long, yet delightful ride across the oriental Andes was at an end. Crossing a steel suspension bridge, the noblest structure of the kind in the republic—which here spans Colombia’s great waterway—we were in Honda, the head of navigation for the lower Magdalena.
[1] Since writing the above the connection has been made. [↑]
[2] Vergara y Velasco, Nueva Geografia de Colombia, p. 253. [↑]
[3] Castellanos, in his Historia del Nuevo Reino de Granada, Tom. II, pp. 61, 62, in referring to the delicacies Don Alonso Luis de Lugo and his half-famished companions found on their reaching the Sabana de Bogotá, after their dreadful journey through the “pluvious, swampy, impassable, dismal” sierras of the Opon, makes mention, among other things, of well-cured hams and capons that were provided for their entertainment.
“Cuantidad de jamones bien curados,
Porque tenian ya buenas manadas
De puercos desque vino Benalcazar