The Audubon Societies 217 



world will still have their Yellow Warblers. If nothing has happened to us 

 we just drive them on as fast as they come and make them find suitable 

 places for themselves. You know it takes a great many insects to feed a 

 family, and I don't want any other Yellow Warblers close by, catching my 

 kind of insects. Other birds take somewhat different bugs and I don't mind 

 them so much. Then, too, you know I always like things my own way in 

 my family and like to have Mrs. Yellow satisfied with my songs without 

 hearing any others just like them. 



But I am digressing too far from the question you asked. Where have 

 I been? Well, I will tell you. I spent the winter near Popayan; do you 

 know where that is? Get out your geography and look up the country 

 called Colombia in the northwestern corner of South America. Do you 

 find a river called the Cauca River that flows into the Magdalena from 

 the west? Together they flow due north into the Caribbean Sea. Well, 

 follow up the Cauca River until you come nearly to the boundary of 

 Ecuador, within three degree of the Equator, and there you will find 

 Popayan. Hot? Well not as hot as you would think considering that it is 

 so near the Equator, for it is about 6,000 feet above the sea and each 1,000 

 feet means about three degrees less temperature. In fact, I suffered more 

 from the cold than from the heat. On the whole, its climate wasn't so very 

 different from what you have right here in New York State in summer, 

 except that the nights were colder. Do you know, Popayan is one of the 

 few places in the Tropics where I have seen any glass used in the windows. 

 I suppose it keeps the houses warmer at night. The one-story houses are 

 made mostly of mud, whitewashed within and without, and the roofs are 

 of red tile. 



"What do the people do around Popayan? Well, you must know that 

 in spite of the fact that they are industrious, there are no large industries 

 for there are no railroads or canals or navigable rivers leading to it, and all 

 transportation has to be done by horses, mules, or oxen. It seems curious 

 to see the long Hues of pack animals winding down the trails, each with 

 his load of coffee or cacao or hides. You see it doesn't pay to ship many 

 things out of this part of Colombia for it takes ten days to get to the nearest 

 port of Buenaventura. Can you find that on your map? But cattle and 

 coffee and cacao, from which chocolate is made, can be raised with little 

 expense in the fertile Cauca Valley and on the mountain sides so that they 

 are the only things that are raised on a large scale. So the mountain sides 

 and the roUing foothills about Popayan are divided into small farms and 

 you would smile to see the crude way in which the ground is cultivated. 

 Heavy steel plows have not yet been brought in and most of the Indian 

 farmers still plow with the old-fashioned wooden plows drawn by oxen. 

 The most interesting thing I saw the people doing was weaving Panama 

 hats. They didn't call them Panama hats there, of course, and they didn't 



