He eyed me with great suspicion, and after examining my passport, demanded my business, and wanted to know why I had taken it into my head to visit Colombia at a time when the country was being convulsed with civil war.
Thinking it best to answer frankly (with one or two reservations), I said that, having heard much of South America while campaigning in Spain, I had made up my mind to voyage thither on the first opportunity.
"What! you have served in Spain, in the army of Lord Wellington!" interposed the commandant with great vivacity.
"Yes; I joined shortly before the battle of Salamanca, where I was wounded.

I was also at Vittoria, and--" "So was I.I commanded a regiment in Murillo's _corps d'armee_, and have come out with him to Colombia.

We are brothers in arms.

We have both bled in the sacred cause of Spanish independence.

Let me embrace you." Whereupon the commandant, springing from his hammock, put his arms round my neck and his head on my shoulders, patted me on the back, and kissed me on both cheeks, a salute which I thought it expedient to return, though his face was not overclean and he smelled abominably of garlic and stale tobacco.
"So you have come to see South America--only to see it!" he said.