82 A FLYING TRIP TO THE TROPICS. 



Yeguas, the train first goes up a steep incline, until it gets upon the 

 level terrace, where it runs for some time at a fair rate of speed. 

 This plain is in parts several miles broad, covered with a very rank 

 sort of grass or broom straw ; and scattered here and there are 

 clumps of palms. A great many cattle w^ere feeding about. Along 

 here on the telegraph poles I saw a number of small haw^ks, appar- 

 ently the same as our sparrow-hawk, and some large buzzards, 

 larger, perhaps, than our red-tailed hawk, with dark reddish brown 

 wings {Uetej'ospizias meridionalis ?). 



After going about five miles, we heard a great whistling and 



tooting of the engine, and looking out saw^ 

 that we had just run over a cow. Instead 

 of stopping the train, the engineer tried 

 to pull it over the cow ; so, after she had 

 been dragged several hundred yards, and 

 had rolled from one car to another, until 

 she reached the centre of the train, the 

 rear wheels of a truck were thrown from 

 the track, and we had to stop. By the 

 help of two wedge-like inclined planes of 

 steel, the car was gotten back with but 

 little delay ; but the poor animal was 

 found with her neck wedged between the 

 wdieels of the following car. After trying 

 in vain for fifteen minutes to back or pull 

 the rest of the train over the body, they 

 concluded to take an axe and cut off her 

 head, after which she was pulled out, load- 

 ed up on a flat, and we went ahead. 



A few miles below Honda, the moun- 

 tains, which here are barren, dusty, precipitous, and furrowed with 

 gullies and ravines, close in on the river until it is shut in in a 

 deep gorge. At Honda, there flows into the Magdalena from the 

 west the Guali, a small, swift, and extremely muddy stream of 



