220 ICONONZO. 



remains of a flight of steps, by which the Indians were 

 accustomed to descend to the water, and a channel by 

 which the Spaniards, after the conquest, had attempted 

 to drain the lake, to recover the treasures which were 

 said to have been concealed there when Quesada and 

 his cavalry appeared on the plains of Cundinamarca. It 

 lay on a plain, surrounded by mountains. Its basin was 

 a sort of half oval, whose stony sloping sides were over 

 grown with bushes and trees. 



Towards the end of September Humboldt and Bon- 

 pland bade Bogota adieu, and started for Quito. Out of 

 two roads which they might have taken, like true natu- 

 ralists thev chose the worst. The road from Bogota to 

 Fusagasuga and thence to Icononzo was one of the most 

 difficult and least frequented in the Cordilleras. "The 

 traveller," Humboldt afterwards wrote, "must feel a 

 passionate enthusiasm for the beauties of nature, who 

 prefers the dangerous descent of the desert of San Fortu- 

 nato, and the mountains of Fusagasuga, leading towards 

 the natural bridges of Icononzo, to the usual road by 

 the Mesa de Juan Diaz, to the banks of the Magdalena." 



Journeying two days in a south-easterly direction they 

 came to Icononzo, a ruined town of the Muvsco Indians. 

 It lay at the southern end of a valley of the same name. 

 The rocks of this valley seemed to have been carved by 

 the hand of man. Their naked and barren summits 

 presented a picturesque contrast with the tufts of trees 

 and shrubs which covered the brinks of a deep crevice 

 in the centre of the valley. Through this valley ran a 

 small torrent called the Rio de la Summa Paz. To this 

 torrent the travellers came, nor could they have crossed 

 it, without great difficulty, had not nature provided two 



