This road winds into the picturesque gorge between the two moun-
tains back of Bogota. At the entrance to the gorge the road passes
a spring to which the city water-carriers come daily with their red
earthenware jars to get drinking water. The sparkling stream that



BOGOTA



243



flows through the gorge into the city is fouled b}' the washing of
clothes, which is done by scores of women on its banks. Just beyond
the spring is a gristmill, while a thousand feet above, on the tops of
the mountains, the white walls of two monasteries glisten in the sun-
light.
At the base of one of the mountains is a primitive coal mine.
The miners put the coal
in sacks, sew up the
sacks, carry them on their
backs to the surface of
the ground, place them
on an exceedingly primi-
tive little car that will
hold five or six bags, and
push the car painfully
over a diminuti\'e rail-
way, with wooden rails,
until it reaches the end
of the hne, sixty feet from
the mouth of the mine.
Here the car is unloaded,
the bags are carefully
opened and their sooty
contents dumped over a
primitive separator
which divides the coal
into three sizes. Thence
it is shovelled into mule
carts and taken down the hill to be sold in the city.
