After the agitation had subsided the people erected an altar in the plaza for the celebration of a mass of thanksgiving. Each one brought some trinket—a few paper flowers, a picture, a bit of tinsel, or a candle—with which to embellish the sacred structure. Then they all knelt, with bared heads, and in deepest devotion assisted at the religious service; that is, all but a plump Indian woman who boiled chontaduros, or palm-nuts, in a huge kettle, in back of one of the huts and sold them to the worshippers the moment devotions were over.
It required fully a half-day longer to reach the end of the mule trail, and by that time we had reached an elevation of eight thousand feet.
From this point up the mountains are covered with a dense growth of primeval forest. Below this elevation there are occasional strips of woods and patches of brush interspersed with clearings. Maize grows splendidly up to an altitude of seven thousand feet; this was proven by the few small fields cultivated by the Indians. The slope was also dotted with areas planted in rice.
The ascent of Munchique is very abrupt; there are no streams near the summit, as the top of the mountain is composed of solid rock that sheds rain as soon as it falls. The highest pinnacle is a flat, bare rock, about ten thousand feet above sea-level.
Robert Blake White states that from this spot one may “obtain a view over more than fifteen thousand square miles of country. The whole of the Central Cordillera, from the frontier of Ecuador to the confines of the State of Antioquia, with the valleys of the Cauca and the Patia, were visible to the north, east, and south; whilst, on turning to the westward, the Pacific coast from the bay of Tumaco to the mouth of the San Juan River seemed spread out like a map before us.
“A more gorgeous panorama cannot well be imagined. The belts of bright-colored vegetation, marked by the valleys with their winding rivers and streams, were backed with masses of the Cordillera with their varied tints and snow-capped peaks. On the other hand, the dark-hued vegetation of the virgin forests of the Pacific slopes stretched down to the ocean’s margin, which with its thousand bays and inlets and fringe of foam which was quite visible, looked like an edging of lace. The island of Gorgona could be distinctly seen.
“The Cerro Munchique should be visited in the dry season, for its peculiar prominence makes it a grand lightning conductor, as we clearly saw from the shattered rock on the summit.”
Cerro Munchique.
