In 1882, accompanied by the British Minister Monsey and his family, the Argentine Miguel Cané traveled on mule-back from the lowland town of Honda up the mountains to Bogotá.

He imagined that the rough people he saw along the trail, the porters who carried wooden furniture and the boilers of steam engines on their backs, Quid enable the country to attain a rapid progress as soon as European Industries were implanted on Colombian soil. These hopes for the future of Colombia did not, however, remove a pressing doubt: \"How was it possible for a people -a city, a civilized society -to live there, behind those gigantic mountain ridges, on those peaks that were lost in the clouds?\". Only the passing of a piano on the aching backs of ten panting Indians gave the hope of reaching his goal. A hope that was confirmed within a short time of his arrival:

“After traveling by mule, along primitive mountain trails and sleeping in inns out of the Middle Ages, it is very strange to reach a city of refined literary taste, a exquisite social civility, where the latest advances of science are discussed as though one were in the heart of a European academy”.

A little more than a century has passed since Cané faced up to the challenge of visiting what he called \"the region of the candor\", sufficient time to change the aspect of Bogotá.

That refined literary and social culture which surprised the 19th century so much won for this city the title of the \"South American Athens\", a term which is recalled today with incredulity. Nowadays it is a city of seven million inhabitants, in a country, torn by wars and infernal disputes, which is far removed from our 19th century dream of making ourselves into a real nation. Even so, if señor Cané were to repeat his visit today, he would doubtless find himself at home in the historic center of Bogotá, the last redoubt that is conserved of the city of that time and, paradoxically, a good example of the city of today.