6406 



Natural- Histoi y Collectors. 



view towards the south-west ; they look very magnificent, but no snowy 

 peaks in sight. I saw the " Southern Cross" last night for the first 

 time : why anybody took the trouble to give it so foolish a name I 

 cannot imagine ; the " Southern Rhomboid" would be nearer the mark, 

 besides it is not conspicuous : take the four stars of the square of the 

 Great Bear and diminish their brightness considerably, and you have 

 the constellation so much talked of: the great beauty of the southern 

 heavens lies in the region of the Milky Way, which is a perfect blaze 

 of stars. 



Honda, August 5. — The town is beautifully situated, surrounded by 

 mountains of moderate elevation, with a loud, brawling stream of pure 

 water rushing through it and joining the Magdalena close to the town ; 

 the river is called the Guali, and much resembles the Wharfe ; Ilkley 

 gives a fair idea of Honda in general position, and the architecture has 

 also a certain resemblance, many houses being thatched and others 

 covered with badly-made red tiles. 



August 0. — Rode to the mines of Santa Ana in about five hours; most 

 of the road lies across a grassy plain, bordered by walls of mountains 

 in extraordinary forms, and presenting many splendid views : the heat 

 on these plateaus is very oppressive, but we descended now and then 

 into the " quibrada" or ravine of a torrent, where trees shaded us, and 

 we were refreshed. For the last two hours we were ascending the side 

 of a steep mountain, but our fatigue was repaid by glorious views of 

 the valley below ; the sun set in the valley long before we reached our 

 journey's end, and we thus obtained a very beautiful effect of light and 

 shade, such as I never saw before: rising on the other side of the 

 valley was a cliff some 400 feet high, which, however, from our eleva- 

 tion, and backed by the immense mass of the " Paramo," or range of 

 Bogota, seemed inconsiderable, and only like a great castle com- 

 manding the valley ; when darkness had set in below, a ray of sunshine 

 through the clouds struck on this castellated cliff, lighting it up with 

 red and gold, whilst perpendicularly from its summit rose a broad 

 stripe of rainbow, being the lower arc of a very large one, the rest of 

 which was invisible ; the piece of rainbow appeared nearly straight, 

 and looked like a pillar of coloured fire rising above the illumined 

 castle : even our American was enraptured with the spectacle. The 

 Andes look magnificent from this point : the eastern range, on which 

 is Bogota, stretches, like a mighty wall, beyond the valley, and we can 

 see with a glass the trees and a house where the plateau of Bogota 

 begins, and past which I have to travel ; the height looks prodigious, 

 and the confused mass of mountains between that point and this tells 



