This place presented rare opportunities for hunting by night. A road had been cut through the forest, dividing it in two clean-cut sections. However, the tips of wide-spreading branches from each side of the clear swath met in several places, forming an aerial connection above the road. These are known as “monkey bridges” because night monkeys and other animals utilize them in crossing from one section of the forest to another. As there was a full moon it was only necessary to sit quietly on a stump near one of the bridges and wait. Before long a rustling sound would come from the tree-top, so slight as to be scarcely audible, and occasionally a deep, low grunt; then silent, shadowy forms emerged from the blackness of concealing foliage and slowly made their way across the springy passage. Kinkajous also used these bridges, and as the natives prized the skins of these animals highly for making chaparejos, they conducted a regular business of hunting them on moonlight nights. After shooting in one spot for several nights in succession, it was necessary to leave it undisturbed for some time, as the animals became wary and sought other bridges.
The town of Valdivia is located on a little ridge four thousand two hundred feet up, about ten miles from Puerto Valdivia, which is on the Cauca River. All the intervening country is wooded.
We reached the port on a Sunday afternoon. The people from a distance of many miles around flocked to the spot on this day for the purpose of having a “good time,” so that there were upward of a hundred natives in and about the one corrugated iron and bamboo building comprising the _puerto_, dancing, drinking, fighting, and trading at the little shop. The owner of the house received us courteously (and where in all Colombia was courtesy wanting?) and we soon made ourselves comfortable in the large wareroom which formed one end of the structure. There was no thought of work that day, for everybody crowded about to have a good look at and welcome the _gringos_, but we made the best of the occasion and secured a good deal of information concerning the surrounding country.
The Cauca, a swift, muddy stream four or five hundred feet wide at this point, is hemmed in on both sides by the steep slopes of the Western and Central Andean Ranges, the forest extending down to the water. It is navigable from here on down to a small settlement called Cáceres, but rafts and canoes only are employed in making this journey, which requires half a day going down and two days coming up. The natives are a careless lot while on the water, and numbers of lives are lost annually. About the first thing we saw was the body of a man floating down the river, with a vulture perched on it. We asked Don José, owner of the place, why he did not send some of his peons in a canoe to recover it. He replied that if he did he would be required to care for the body until a government official from Yarumal came to view it, and then he and every one present would have to go back with the coroner to give their testimony as to the finding of the cadaver. This entailed so much trouble that it was customary not to pay any attention to such occurrences.
