124 Travels and Adventures 



agreeable. At this town we are still a distance of 

 seventy-five miles from Bogota, which is three days' 

 journey on horses. After riding all day over a 

 most fertile plain, we stayed for the night at a small 

 village called Ubate, and from here the road is wide 

 and level, and is continually traversed by bullock- 

 waggons on their way to and from the capital. 



The next day's ride brought us to a large and 

 important town called Cipaquira. The houses and 

 plazas here are of the best and most elegant con- 

 struction, but of a style which the Spanish emigrant 

 must have learnt from the Moors. The effect of 

 the peculiar tiling and towers when seen from a 

 distant height is most pleasing and fantastic. This 

 town is built on the edge of the immense salt-mines 

 which supply the whole of this part of Colombia 

 with salt, being literally a huge mountain of that 

 substance, which was known to the earliest Indians. 

 The excavations begin in the side of the hill and 

 run level with the ground, the cavity extending over 

 half a mile, the roof in many places being fifty feet in 

 height — a wall of salt occasionally intermixed with 

 veins of pyrites of iron. The sight presented to the 

 visitor who enters these immense vaults is truly 

 magnificent. Occasional drops of water have covered 

 the roof with myriads of stalactites of every imaginable 

 form of beauty, while the sides dazzle with rock and 



