60 Travels and Adventures 



The Magdalena is navigable in the whole length 

 — about nine hundred miles — and at a considerable 

 distance from the sea is still a magnificent stream, 

 with a depth which has already swallowed up some of 

 the large steamboats until not even a vestige of the 

 funnels are left in sight. However, in the months of 

 January, February, and March the continued dry 

 season reduces the quantity of water considerably and 

 lays bare miles of sandbanks, sometimes rendering 

 navigation very difficult and dangerous, except to those 

 pilots who, by their great practice, can tell where the 

 deepest channel is with no other aid than their careful 

 observations, which requires no small skill, seeing that 

 in a single flood a running body of water, thirty feet 

 deep, will shift from one side of the river-bed to the 

 other, leaving not more than two feet of water where 

 there was formerly thirty. 



When the Magdalena is full of water the steam- 

 boats from Barranquilla invariably run the first three 

 nights when making the ascent. After that navigation 



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becomes extremely dangerous, on account of the many 

 large trunks of trees half-hidden in the water. 



Late in the evening we arrived at a large village 

 called Remolino, which contains about 2,000 inhabit- 

 ants, mostly of a dusky copper colour and evidently of 

 negro origin. The houses are of a miserable class, all 

 made of mud or wild cane ; I did not see a single stone 



