But though of good cheer, they were not lacking in piety, nor were they unable to withstand temptation. Their church was beautiful, all full of gilt columns, carved woodwork, niches with statues of saints displaying rich silks and gems and gold embroidery.
And though many of these things had disappeared in my day, and of the monks only a few more vital spirits survived, downcast and forlorn, lamenting the good old times, yet enough remained to give an idea of the happier age.
A proof of the virtue of the monks was visible at the entrance of the church looking on the main street, where the Evil One himself had branded it, so to say, for the greater glory of God and the renown of the convent.
It was whispered that Father Antonio, who combined profane accomplishments with spiritual insight, skilled in playing the guitar, not averse to a song or two, fond of cards for a friendly quiet game with the Father Superior and two or three other plump, kind-hearted brethren, where small sums were staked merely to give zest to the game, discovered to his horror one night that the Evil One, possibly in memory of his namesake (the monk’s, not the Evil One’s), had decided to tempt his virtue, and appeared in his cell in the guise of a beautiful damsel.
Alas! the Evil One had reckoned without his host. Holy water was poured upon him, the cross with the Redeemer nailed on it which lay handy was taken up by Antonio, so that Beelzebub in his fright jumped out of the window with such force that his cloven foot left its imprint upon the granite slab outside the church, and this imprint I saw myself in my very young years. Although many people continue to see it, I have grown so short-sighted that, strive as I may, the stone now appears untouched and like the others. But then these things will happen, and they certainly should not lead us to doubt so pious a tradition.
And so all the old memories of the town kept passing before me. I saw a living panorama, silent, bathed in mysterious light, moving slowly in the background of the mind, large, infinite in its magnitude, with space in it for men and buildings and mountains and rivers and broad plains and leafy forests, and, what is more, with space in it for Time, the boundless Time that contains all and everything.
Schooldays, holidays spent in the neighbouring towns and villages which lie in the warmer valleys, my first voyage to a certain distance, and then across the ocean—life, in fact, with its ebb and flow under various suns and in different continents—all came back; but it were out of place to give my reflections on them here.
Then, pausing for one moment as a bird alights on the mast of a ship before launching forth into mid-ocean, my mind rested for an instant on the old cemetery where so many loved ones slumbered. Alas! when we leave the graves of those whom we have loved, not knowing when we shall again kneel upon the sod that covers them, we feel that death itself has not severed the link that bound us to those who were blood of our blood and bone of our bone.
CHAPTER II
A little geography may not be amiss here. A glance at the map will show that the city of Bogotá is situated upon a vast plateau, at an altitude of about 8,500 feet above sea-level, 4 degrees from the equator, and 75 degrees to the west of Greenwich. Its position in the continent is central. It is perched like a nest high up in the mountains. To reach the ocean, and thus the outer world, the inhabitants of Bogotá are even now still compelled to have recourse to quite primitive methods; true, there are some apologies for railways starting northward, southward and westward, but in some cases their impetus ends as soon as they reach the end of the plain, and in others long before attaining that distance. Once the railway journey finished—which does not exceed two or three hours on any of the lines—the traveller has to content himself with the ancient and slow method of riding, mostly mule riding. The ground is so broken and the roads are so bad that horses could not cross them as safely as that thoughtful, meditative, and much-maligned animal the mule. After covering a distance of some ninety to one hundred miles westward, the traveller reaches the town of Honda, which lies on the Magdalena River. Here steam-boats are to be found, stern-wheeled, shallow-bottomed, drawing no more than from 2½ to 3 feet, in which, within four or five days, he makes the journey down to the sea-coast.