ACROSS THE ANTIOQUIAN GOLD-FIELDS 107 



yards below the landing. It contains about a hundred 

 low buildings, many of which are utilized for shops where 

 merchandise and, more important at least to transients, 

 a great variety of fruit may be had. All the buildings are 

 low — some constructed of adobe with red tile roofs, others 

 of nothing more substantial than bamboo, and grass or 

 palm-leaves. 



Beyond the town is a low, rambling shed used as a slaugh- 

 ter-house. When one tires of watching the blue tanagers, 

 orioles, and yellow warblers quarrel in the cocoanut-palms 

 near the hotel, he may tempt his aesthetic taste by walking 

 to the pavilion of bovine death, and look upon the hun- 

 dreds of black vultures sitting on the roof, strutting and 

 hopping over the ground, or tearing at the hides that have 

 been stretched out to dry. These birds are so typical a 

 part of most towns and villages of tropical Colombia that 

 one soon learns to accept them as a matter of course. They 

 act as scavengers. Without them the settlements would 

 reek with foulness. 



Puerto Berrio marks the beginning of a narrow-gauge 

 railway, and each morning at six a passenger-train leaves 

 the station for Cisneros, covering the first stage of the 

 journey to Medellin. Almost immediately after leaving 

 the port, the road plunges into the finest type of Magda- 

 lena Valley forest. We therefore debarked at the first set- 

 tlement, called Malena, only fifteen minutes after leaving 

 the starting-point. My assistant on this expedition was 

 Mr. Howarth S. Boyle, of Elmhurst, Long Island. 



At Malena the tropical forest reaches the height of its 

 development. There is a clearing large enough only to 

 provide room for the village of some twenty houses, and 

 the stately living wall of trees hems it in on all sides. The 

 people are most obliging, and while there is no posada, or 

 inn, of any kind, a Mestizo family volunteered to permit us 

 the use of part of their dwelling. 



A short tour of inspection confirmed our first impression 

 of the region; it was a naturalist's paradise. One had only 



