Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía would remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. Macondo was at that time a small village of twenty houses made of mud and reeds, built on the bank of a river with clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, white and enormous like prehistoric eggs. The world was so new that many things had no name yet, and to refer to them you had to point with your finger. Every year, in the month of March, a family of ragged gypsies would set up their tent near the village and, amid a commotion of clay whistles and drums, present their latest inventions. First, they brought the magnet. A burly gypsy, with a mountain man's beard and hands like the paws of a sparrow, who introduced himself as Melquíades, gave a spine-chilling public demonstration of what he himself called the eighth wonder of the learned alchemists of Macedonia. He went from house to house dragging two metal rods, and everyone was amazed to see pots, pans, tongs, and trivets move from their places, the boards creak from the effort of their nails trying to come out, and the screws trying to unscrew themselves, and objects lost for a long time appearing where they had been searched for a thousand times, spinning and tumbling after Melquíades’ magical irons.