Note 24 — Chapter XI · THE MUISCA TRAIL
Reading edition
Our reveries were suddenly disturbed by the soft, dulcet notes of the tiple. Only a short distance ahead of us, reclining against a mango tree, was an amorous young mestizo, who was fondly gazing on his dusky querida, while thrumming his instrument. She, during the serenade24 of her ardent suitor, sat on the door-sill of a bamboo dwelling with a palm-thatched roof, having seemingly no thought beyond satisfying the cravings of two little nude, paunchy, bananniverous urchins, apparently her brother and sister—Pablo and Julia by name—who, like ebony statuettes, were standing at her knee and clamoring for another banana from a bunch suspended from a rafter above the cabin door.