THE BOCIgUA. 
303 
Soon after sunrise we began to return, but not 
before I had taken many bulbs of a Pancratium with 
ovate leaves growing near the house where we had 
slept. It was not in flower; but the blossom was 
said to be fragrant. We returned by a different route, 
skirting the summits of the Liguanea mountains, and 
passing through smiling plantations, in order to de- 
scend into the romantic parish of St. Thomas in the 
Vale. After a while, we crossed and recrossed, many 
times, the winding Rio D’Oro, and at length entered 
the magnificent gorge called the Bog-walk (i. e. 
Eocagua, a sluice), through which runs the Cobre, 
formed by the union of the Negro and the D’Oro. 
The road lay for four miles through this deep gorge^ 
by the side of the river, and afforded at every turn 
fresh scenes of surpassing wildness, grandeur, and 
beauty. The rock often rose to a great height on 
each side, leaving only room for the rushing stream, 
which seemed to have cleft its course, and the narrow 
pathway at its side. Sometimes, across the river, the 
side of the ravine receded in the form of a very steep 
but sloping mountain, covered with a forest of large 
timber, and so clear of underwood, that the eye could 
peer far up into its gloomy recesses. Here and there 
the course of the river was dammed up by islets ; 
some of them mere masses of dark rock, others 
adorned with the elegant waving plumes of the grace- 
ful Bamboo. But the most remarkable object was 
the immense rock called Gibraltar, which rises on the 
opposite bank of the river, from the water’s edge, 
absolutely perpendicular, to the height of five or six 
hundred feet; a broad mass of limestone, twice as 
