THE MULE ROAD AND GUADUAS. 



89 



passed a dilapidated old locomotive rotting away, with weeds grow- 

 ing over the boiler. This road was to have reached Bogota, but 

 the funds gave out with the first two miles. At the end of this 

 we turned in abruptly to our left and began a steep ascent, zig- 

 za<^2'in<r in and out of the o^ulley-like ravines that ran down to the 

 river. When near the crest of the first ridge, the road ran over 

 a rocky surface which seemed to me impassable. It sloped up at 

 an angle of about forty-five degrees, but the feet of the mules had 

 worn little pocket-like steps in the stone, and our animals went up 

 without a slip. At the top we went through a narrow gorge, then 

 along over comparatively level ground for a short distance, then up 

 and through a second gorge so narrow that my stirrups scraped the 

 sides, and down and across a rough valley several miles wide. This 

 valley was hot and dry, but in the centre we crossed quite a large 

 stream flowing to the south, and on the farther side we followed up 

 the partly dry bed of another watercourse until we struck the foot 

 of the first heavy range. Here the worst part of the road began. 



All travelers in Colombia, from the time of Humboldt to the 

 present day, have commented upon this road from Honda to Bogota, 

 and all agree in calling it superlatively bad ; but none have done 

 it justice. In my limited experience I had been over some of the 

 worst roads in the western part of North Carolina and in West 

 Virginia, and I could not conceive that roads could be worse, but 

 they are pleasant drives compared to this. I am powerless to de- 

 scribe it, and the photographs which I took on my return trip give 

 no idea of the steepness of the road, since I had to point my camera 

 either uphill or downhill, and thus the perspective of the slope 

 was lost. In former times this road had been paved with blocks of 

 stone, some of them as large as pillows. This pavement was in some 

 places intact, but in a great many places it had been destroyed. To 

 get a faint idea of the unpaved portion, conceive the dried-up bed 

 of a rocky stream, filled with stones from the size of a barrel down, 

 placed upon a hillside with a slope as steep as a roof. The paved 

 parts were even worse on account of the slippery foothold that they 



