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314 pages, Hardcover
First published April 9, 2013
Bolívar’s army crossed the Arauca River and passed into Casanare, where the rains were torrential, savannas flooded, and creatures adrift as far as the eye could see. His soldiers constructed boats of cowhide to transport the ordinance and keep it as dry as possible. They marched with mud sucking at their feet, or wading through waist-high water, or – when floods rose to their highest point – swimming. If they had families, they used their threadbare blankets to shield women from the cold and damp; if they didn’t, they used them to protect guns and ammunition. Hungry, weary, drenched through to the skin, they traversed a landscape such as they’d never seen. Men on horseback were no better off than those on the ground. Hooves grew soft in the bog and swamp, rendering animals lame. Feet swelled to such tender misshape that riders could no longer use their stirrups. The army carried on anyway, marching for more than a month, lured by trees that floated like promises of dry earth in those vast inland waterways. The frail were soon sick; the rugged, wounded; the unfortunate, at the mercy of tiny, flesh-eating fish that could strip limbs to bone in seconds…