Down the Orinoco in a Canoe — Inside the Classic

n the South American Republic of Colombia. We passed into the open road, and turned our horses and our minds northwards.

From south to north, as far as eyes could see, stretched the road, an old Spanish causeway, bordered on either side by low-lying stone fences, in front of which were ditches filled with water and covered with vegetation.

The ground was hard with the consistency of baked clay. As no rain had fallen for weeks, the dust was thick, and the horses’ hoofs rang like hammer-strokes upon muffled or broken brass. We let the reins hang loose, and the horses, knowing their way, started at a brisk canter. Wrapped in thought and in our _ponchos_, we journeyed on.

No sound was audible; we seemed to be travelling through a deserted or dead world; the neighbouring meadows, black beneath the moon, contrasted with the grayish white line of the broad causeway. Now and then the solitary houses, some close to the road, some far back, loomed up with the magic-lantern effects of moonlight, and their white walls seemed like huge tombstones in that lonely cemetery. Sometimes we crossed bridges, under which the water lay motionless, as though enchanted by the universal stillness; only a gentle breeze, causing ripples on the neighbouring pools, made them glitter and revealed their presence. A cow or a stray heifer would poise its head across the stone fence and watch us with wondering moist eyes, whilst two tiny columns of condensed breath rose from its nostrils.

Beyond, black and frowning, misshapen and mysterious, the huge boulders of the Andes raised their vague outlines, forming a sort of irregular circle, in some directions quite close to us, in others lost in the darkness which the moon and the stars were too remote to overcome. Indeed, that other local poet was also right in thinking that under the brilliant moon those mountains looked like huge sepulchres, wherein are stored the ashes of dead worlds upon which judgment had been passed.

And so we journeyed on.

Many travellers have observed that whenever a voyage of a certain nature is undertaken—one that for some reason or other differs from the ordinary transference of one’s self elsewhere, when through circumstances beyond our control we know that the moment of starting necessarily marks an epoch in our lives, even as the beginning of a descent or an ascent from the summit or the foot of a mountain necessarily marks a change in our motions—our thoughts fly backwards, and not only cover the immediate time and space behind us, but, once started, plunge, so to speak, with the rapidity inherent to them, into the deepest recesses of our memory, so that, as our bodies are carried forward, our minds revisit old scenes, we hold converse with old friends, and the old-time world seems to live and throb again within our hearts.

Unheeding the clatter of the horses’ hoofs, which was the only perceptible noise, my mind flew across the few leagues that separated me from my dear quaint old native town, cradled there to the south at the foot of two hills, each crowned by a tiny church. I saw its streets meeting at right angles, its two streams, dubbed rivers, parched with thirst, crawling under the ancient arched Spanish bridges, its low houses, with their enclosing _patios_ planted with roses and flowers that bloom all the year round, with fountains murmuring in the midst, and creepers covering the columns and the ceilings of the open corridors, and then climbing out of sight; the numerous churches, each one with its familiar legend; the convents—solid, spacious—turned into barracks or public offices or colleges; the still old cells desecrated, their dividing walls torn down so as to convert the space into large halls, and, ruthless iconoclasm having carried away the statues of the saints, no other trace of religion left but a stone cross, or a carved saint’s face set too high above ground to be reached by irreverent hands.