[19] Even the Colombian writer, Vergara y Velasco, who, like South Americans generally, is slow to grow enthusiastic over natural scenery, refers to the view from El Sargento as a “Sitio pintoresco si los hay”—a picturesque place if there be any. [↑]
[21] According to Karl Fauehaber, the explorer of the Quindio Cordillera, Tolima has an altitude of 20,995 feet. [↑]
[22] “With Francis of Assisi and his Hymn to the Sun,” we are informed by a recent writer, “the love of wild nature became more articulate.” As an illustration of the effect of Nature-love on sensitive souls, we are told that the poet Gay, after visiting the Grande Chartreuse, declared that if he had lived in St. Bruno’s day, he would have been one of his disciples. “It was,” he said, “one of the most solemn, the most romantic and the most astonishing scenes I ever beheld.” [↑]
[23] Shelley’s Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude. [↑]
[24] The negroes of Colombia are often of a highly poetical nature, and, like those of our Southern states, are passionately fond of music, singing and dancing. Their voices are often marvelously elastic, expansive and harmonious. Their favorite air and dance is the bambuco, of African origin, to which Jorge Isaacs refers in his charming Caucan novel, Maria, and of which Vergara y Vergara in his valuable Historia de la Literatura en Nueva Granada (Parte primera, p. 513, Bogotá, 1867) gives us so glowing an account. It is the latter writer that assures us that if a negro were to play a marimba in the forests of the South Coast, he could be certain that wild beasts and serpents would listen to him in silent ecstasy. [↑]
CHAPTER XII
THE VALLEY OF THE MAGDALENA
“Salud, Salud, majestuoso rio!...