How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #10
In January 1824, Commodore Johann Bernard Elbers, the father of river navigation, had registered the first steamboat to sail the Magdalena River, a primitive old forty-horsepower wreck named Fidelity. More than a century later, one seventh of July at six o'clock in the evening, Dr. Urbino Daza and his wife accompanied Fermina Daza as she boarded the boat that was to carry her on her first river voyage. It was the first vessel built in the local shipyards and had been christened New Fidelity in memory of its glorious ancestor. Fermina Daza could never believe that so significant a name for them both was indeed a historical coincidence and not another conceit born of Florentino Ariza's chronic romanticism. (6.150)
The historic name of the riverboat on which Fermina and Florentino make their voyage is another hint that their faithful romance is somehow connected to the history of the exploration of the river, and of the country.