its cathedral facing as always the plaza, and over all, roofs of dull red tile.

I knew how hot and drowsy was the air in such a town, how blindingly the sun whitened the white walls of the houses, and how, from time to time the bells in those massive church towers would summon to worship. I seemed to hear those far-off bells, although in reality there was only the ceaseless deafening roar of the plane which penetrated the protecting cotton in my ears. I had often thought that travel was, among many other more important things, living geography. I now realized that flying was geography dramatized, and so impressively dramatized that I was able later to astonish Colombians and myself by my knowledge of the Departamentos into which their country is divided.

I had learned without any conscious effort that, as one flies toward the interior, there is on the right the Departamento of Atlántico, with Barranquilla as its capital: that the Dique leads into the Departamento of Bolívar, whose capital is the historic old walled town of Cartagena, besieged so often by pirates and buccaneers. And I could always visualize on the left bank the great Departamento of Magdalena, with its capital at Santa Marta, in one of the banana centers of the world.

I knew, too, the rivers and the long ranges of mountains, the Cordilleras which run north and south, cutting Colombia into isolated sections. The map had become for me a living thing, of green and blue, of silver and copper. In no other way can the travel author so comprehend the contour of a land.

I considered the impression which I retain after a study of other great rivers. I took, for example, the Yangtse which flows from the western borders of China, across the huge territory of the Celestial Kingdom, three thousand miles to the Yellow Sea. And my memory I found to be made up of details, seen intimately, but without perspective.

I saw the brown fields of winter with everywhere grave-mounds lonely or in friendly clusters, graves brown against a lifeless sky. I saw high cliffs and giant reeds and clumps of green bamboo. And along the way I visited Chinkiang, Nanking, Wuhu, and Kinkiang. I remember the trotting rickshaws, the shops and the soft glow of colored lanterns, globes of warm color. The red-and-gold signs of the shops had charming meanings. "The Shop of Heavenly Peace dealing in silks and embroideries" and the "Shop of Extensive Harmony dealing in carved ivories and silver work." In one of these shops we had bought salt and pepper shakers in the form of little silver pagodas, and the old Chinaman who sold them had a face like a carved netsuke of ivory.

I remember riots and dead Chinamen on the swarming Bund at Hankow under the flaunting flags of then great nations, German and Russian, as well as French and British and American. And there still comes to my ears the mournful chant of toiling coolies.

All this and much more-I found indelibly etched. But I had seen no farther than the banks of the Yangtse. I never knew what manner of China lay beyond my narrow horizon.

In looking out from the air over the vast unrolling panorama of Colombia I suddenly understood that studying a country without the airplane is like examining a human countenance bit by bit: an isolated eye, a detached mouth, an eyebrow; and then by an act of memory adding all together in the effort to see the face as a whole.

I was later to study Colombia intimately, feature by feature, but now in the air I saw in perspective the face of the land. It was like looking upon the broad sweep of an artist's creation as it exists in his mind, seen in the mass with the detail to be developed later.

Flying thus over Colombia, I began to realize that I was to know this country as I knew no other.

And then we made our first descent. At twenty minutes past eight we came down at El Banco to deliver the mail, for the Scadta conducts the largest private mail service in the world, and El Banco in the Departamento of Madgalena is its first port of call. There we took gasoline and the careful mechanic inspected the sparkplugs.

When we rose from El Banco it was to pass through a frothy sea of cloud, soft and thick and white; on up above this to clear air. Through breaks between cloud and cloud I looked over to the perilous and isolated country of the Motilones Indians, reached only by canoe up the César River. But the Motilones are seldom disturbed by adventuring canoes, and when they are, what are poisoned arrows for, if not to provide meat for the tribe?

The rumor of cannibals, and the longest regular hydroplane service in the world! That is perspective indeed. No wonder that flying in Colombia had so captivated my imagination!

As we flew we could see between those intervals of cloud that we were passing

the little river port, Puerto Wilches, from which five days on mules over precipitous mountains, will carry one to the city of Bucaramanga, capital of the Departamento of Santander. From much acquaintance with Spanish-American towns, I knew that there also would be Moorish monasteries, plazas, redtiled roofs and church bells.

Bucaramanga was especially interesting because at that moment the Rockefeller Foundation and the Colombian Government were waging war upon yellow fever, a battle in which yellow fever is forever destined to lose.

Somewhere in the air between El Banco and the next stop at Bárranca Bermeja we ate those two bananas whose aërial transportation had brought their cost up to at least fifty cents apiece in a country where bananas are to be had almost for the asking.

After El Banco I realized that the horizon mountains had imperceptibly drawn closer. They had removed the haze in which they had been enveloped. They were nearer, higher, and more dis

tinct. With their approach the country had become less marshy. We had left behind the grassy fields and orderly rows of bananas.

We flew above forests across which drifted cloud shadows, forests where copper streams cut through deeply green masses of jungle.

In this changing scene from an airplane lies undiscovered country for the illustrator of a travel book. Fantastic problems of composition offer themselves. A new type of artist will be developed. This artist must be as quick as a sportsman who shoots on the wing; since he must, also on the wing, register swift images of color and composition. Here the aerial photographer becomes invaluable, for he and the artist will co-operate in that new form of art which will portray the earth from the air.

As we rose higher filmy clouds blew through us. They seemed to be going somewhere in a hurry. Far below was a lake. It seemed a little lake and it was full of shadows of trees round its margin and of clouds passing over it. The blue shadows on the treetops were deep dark pools with strange outlines. The river lay like a bronze serpent.

We often fell into pockets of airholes in the air and climbed out again, keeping our equilibrium by a continual sideways tipping of our wings. We tipped and veered, and then tipped and yeered again. I felt that we had ceased to be a machine and had become a monster bird with powerful vibrating heart and sensitive wings.

A little later we are descending above Barranca Bermeja, with the houses and offices and tanks of the Tropical Oil Company like mushrooms in hot glaring rows. These buildings grow quickly larger, and all at once a tiny speck on the surface of the river becomes a canoe. There is a child in the canoe. The child becomes immediately a man, and the man has fruit piled on the bottom of the

canoe.

We are turning, banking down to the river; turning sharply down with tre

mendous rush and speed and whirr. We skim above the water. . . low... very low. We strike with a bump; a series of bumps, diminishing until we glide smoothly, like the fastest launch in the world, and finally come skillfully to rest at Barranca Bermeja.

It was very hot at Barranca Bermeja. Our pilot sat on one of the pontoons under the shadow of a wing, while the mechanic took on gas and replaced the used spark plugs with fresh ones.

We waited under the inadequate shade of the projecting roof of a little corrugated iron shed. The heat was breathless. We fell into questioning talk with a group of men who had gathered to see us land.

"Has the Calmar passed yet?"
"No, Señor."
"The Ayacucho?"
"Not that either."
"The Perez Rosa?"
"Nor that."

Boats which had left Barranquilla days before the Cauca had lifted herself into the air to fly for Girardot, six hundred miles into the interior, had not yet passed Barranca Bermeja. We had flown over them, indistinguishable specks on the river, crawling up against the swirling current at the rate of four miles an hour.

Up that same river four centuries ago the Spanish conqueror Quesada had spent terrible and painful months in reaching this port of Barranca Bermeja.

From Barranca the run to Puerto Berrío is short, and there we had also mail to deliver. And there the pilot allowed us a "little half hour" for lunch.

No Arabian night's dream was ever more glamourous than that lunch. The sun was as dazzling as the sun in a fairy tale of the tropics. The palms were as strangely beautiful as palms seen for the first time; or after a long absence, much as a spirit might regard them who had returned from other worlds to look once more upon straight smoothcolumned palms lifting regal heads about a white and balconied hotel; a hotel

A copper river comes flowing into the Magdalena. . . . Lift . . . with the powerful breath of the giant. Lift and soar. . . . Blue haze lies on the mountains. Blue as the sky. . .

In the river we found moored a sister plane, the Santander. Puerto Berrío is the port for Medellin, capital of Antioquia, a district rich in gold mines and coffee plantations. The Santander was waiting for the train from Medellin which was to bring more bank notes to avert the threatened panic in Bogotá.

At Puerto Berrío I am convinced no breath of air ever even faintly stirs. We vainly maneuvered up and down the river. It was impossible to rise. The pilot passed over our two bags to the Santander which was to follow us.

We made another attempt and, relieved of just those few pounds, we skimmed the surface, and so lightly did we touch the water that we left only the merest line on its sheen. We skimmed and suddenly the river dropped. . . . We were up!

The miracle of ascent was by this time sufficiently familiar for me to analyze it. in penciled notes:

Up. . . . We rise as if lifted by great breaths. The breaths come in big puffs as though a giant breathed, refilled his lungs and breathed again. . . . Lift . . . Soar while the giant inhales.

Lift.

.

Soar over broad river. . . . Fall into an air-pocket . . . lift . . . tip ... and

We tip with that slight rocking from side to side. And always we vibrate with the force of the engine's explosions, and always there is the beat, the throbbing, ceaseless throbbing of the exhaust. There is no word to describe that allpervading, deafening sound; for language was made before men flew.

A white sand bank glistens in the middle of the river. We fall into a series of pockets. We climb out. We soar and rock. There are fewer cloudshadows on the land.

Our breeze stiffens. The great throbbing buzz is louder. . . . Pocket. . . Lift. . . . Mountains like blue waves on the right, like waves of surf rolling in.

I am oddly not conscious of speed but only of the lift and fall, the rocking of the wings, and the vibration. But none of these things-not even the violence of the breeze gives me a sense of speed. The ever-changing landscape itself does not move. It simply changes.

There is now a lake which magically becomes a forest and again a lake; a forest turns into a peak and a peak becomes a river of burnished bronze. The mountains have advanced on their march to the river's bank. The valley shrinks before these encroaching Andes on which lie purple shadows, large still shadows.

We lift and rock and soar. We look at the valley through blue haze. In the lap of the hills lie fleecy clouds. We climb to more steady air with a mighty lift which makes me catch my breath.

The Santander passes us bound for Girardot direct with a million and a half in paper money and our two travel-worn suitcases.

Here I felt a greater sense of altitude than earlier in the day, even than when above the clouds beyond El Banco. I look down. We fly through space!

I love to put my head out the window