Honda

Honda, or San Bartolomeo de Honda, a town of the department of Tolima, Colombia, on the W. bank of the Magdalena river, 580 m. above its mouth. In 1906 Mr F. Loraine Petre estimated the population at 7000. It is about 650 ft. above sea-level and stands at the entrance to a narrow valley formed by spurs of the Central Cordillera, through which a picturesque little stream, called the Guali, flows into the Magdalena. The town overlooks the rapids of the Magdalena, and is shut in closely by spurs of the Eastern and Central Cordilleras. The climate is hot and damp and the temperature frequently rises to 102° F. in the shade. Honda dates back to the beginning of the 17th century, and has been one of the important centres of traffic in South America for three hundred years. Within the city there is an iron bridge across the Guali, and there is a suspension bridge across the Magdalena at the head of the rapids. A railway 18 m. long connects with the landing place of La Dorada, or Las Yeguas, where the steamers of the lower Magdalena discharge and receive their cargoes (the old landing at Carocali nearer the rapids having been abandoned), and with Arrancaplumas, 1½ m. above, where navigation of the upper river begins. Up to 1908 the greater part of the traffic for Bogotá crossed the river at this point, and was carried on mule-back over the old camino real, which was at best only a rough bridlepath over which transportation to Bogotá (67 m. distant) was laborious and highly expensive; now the transshipment is made to smaller steamboats on the upper river for carriage to Girardot, 93 m. distant, from which place a railway runs to the Bogotá plateau. Honda was nearly destroyed by an earthquake in 1808.

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