The natural beauties of the mountains absorbed us so completely that we did not notice we were becoming a weight on our good and hospitable padres. Their provisions of wine and wheat bread were small, and both are considered real luxuries in these lands, so it inhibited us to think that our hosts deprived themselves on our account. Our ration of bread had been reduced to one quarter, yet the cruel rains delayed our departure for two days. How long that delay seemed; we dreaded the bell that called us for a meal!

Our stay in Turbaco was extremely agreeable, and useful for our botanical collection. Even today those bamboo forests, the wild fertility of the land, the orchids carpeting the old ocotea and Indian fig-tree trunks, the majestic view of the snowy mountains, the light mist covering the valleys at sunrise, bunches of gigantic trees like green islands above a sea of mist, all return incessantly to my imagination. Our life at Turbaco was simple and hard-working; we were young, linked by similar tastes and characters, always full of hope in the future, on the eve of a journey that would take us to the highest Andean peaks, and volcanoes on fire in a country where earthquakes are common. We felt happier than at any other moment in our expedition. The years that have passed since then, not without bitterness and hardships, have added to the charms of these impressions; I would like to think that in his exile in the Southern hemisphere, in the isolation of Paraguay, my unfortunate friend Bonpland (145) might still recall our delightful herborizings. As Bonpland's health had cruelly suffered during our journey on the Orinoco and Casiquiare we decided to follow the advice of the locals and supply ourselves with all the comforts possible on our trip up the Magdalena. Instead of sleeping in hammocks or lying on the ground on skins, exposed to the nightly torment of mosquitoes, we did what was done in the country, and got hold of a mattress, a country-bed that was easy to unfold, as well as a toldo, a cotton sheet, which could fold under the mattress and make a kind of closed-off tent that no insects could penetrate. Two of these beds, rolled into cylinders of thick leather, were packed on to a mule. I could not praise this system more; it is far superior to the mosquito net.