NOTES OF A BOTANIST ON THE AMAZON AND ANDKS MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED I.oMHiN • HOMBAV • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THL MACM1LLAN COMPANY XKW YORK • HOSToN • ( Mil AI ,' ' ATLANTA • sA\ FKANCISCO THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA. LTD. TORONTO NOTES OF A BOTANIST ON THE AMAZON & ANDES BEING RECORDS OF TRAVEL ON THE AMAZON AM) ITS TRIBUTARIES, THE TROMBETAS, RIO NEGRO, UAUPES, CASIQUIARI, PACIMOXI, HTALLAC-A. AND PASTAS A ; AS ALSO TO THE CATAR- ACTS OF THE ORINOCO, ALONG THE EASTERN SIDE OF THE ANDES OF PERU AND ECUADOR, AND THE SHORES OF THE PACIFIC, DURING THE YEARS L849-1864 BY RICHARD SPRUCE, Pn.D. EDITED AND CONDENSED KY ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE, O.M., F.R.S. \\ITH A BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUC II<>.\ PORTRAIT, SEVENTY-ONE ILLUSTRATIONS AND SKVKN M \1'> IN TWO \<>i I MES VOL. II MACMILLAN AND CO., L1MIIID ST. MARTIN'S STRKKT, LONDON ,908 1 .i to the wintry winds the pilot yields His bark careering o'er untrodden fields ; \nvv mi Atlantic waves he rides afar Where Andes, giant of the western star, With meteor standard to the winds unfurl'd, I. 'inks from hi^ ihnme of clouds o'er half the world. CAMPBELL. The sounding Cataract Haunted me like a passion; the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colours and their forms, were then to me An ;>] ipeiilr, a feeling, and a love. \YoHHs\\oK I II. CONTENTS CHAPTER \\ H«'\l l:\KU \ IHI Kin M.i.kii id TARAPOTO, i Voyage up the Solimoes Floating trees Ki\ei Tunis s I'aulo The forest Notes on vegetation Talutin-a l.oreto Novel vegetation Coclnquma Iqnitos Nauta. \\heie detained two \\eeks San l\e-is r.irinaii A Zambo Governor I'rarmas A peccary hunt Filter the Iliialla-a I .a l.a-una First \iewol the Andes Vuri ma-nas described An CM client pi iest The ot'ti. i.iU Industry I 'p the 1 1 ualla-a Hot-water Streams KapiiF ("mi \acn Chasnta Detained two da\s Ditlnull iapu|s Picturesque scenei\ Ne\\ plants^! "hapaja i • I I Filter the Ma\o n\er The ('ninl).isa rivei Juan GuC! the poll l.n larapoto I.eltci to Mi. I Ca ,d.de, a p. i -onal and social a. . omit ol" the \ o\ ag( Ll r to Mi. • Bentham, a tragic incident To Mr, Peasdale, end of the jonrnes CHAPTER \\ 1 RESIDENCl \ i I Al< VPOTO : EXI'Ll >i-: \ rh>\ . \\ he collected mosses on the road — New ferns in abundance —Description of Banos — Grand cone of Tunguragua Paper unobtainable — European genera of plants Letter to Mr. Teasdale —Banos, its hot baths, visitors, and earth- quakes— To Ambato — Its situation and surrounding Manners and customs of the people —Effects of sand storms — To Riobamba- -Dr. James Taylor Views of Chimborazo -- Mountain tra\cl Market-day -Great mountains round it — Great cataract of Guandisagua Society in Ambato — Botanical letter to Mr. Benthain To Sir \V. Hooker, mostly about Kerns —To Mr. I'.cn- tham on probable number of species in the Ama/on v.il -Spruce's grief at passing new plants ungathered To Sir \V. Hooker, about mosses, etc. —To Mr. Benthain. about the Venezuelan collections and its rich rivers un<-\ plored -His great indebtedness to Mr. Benthain T<> Mr. Teasdale about his journeys in the high Anclc^ r.c.uitiful Gentians -Why they cannot be grown in England An escape from a condor Wi>h<-> England p- • tin- Ama/on valley . CHAPTER X\ AMMATO AND I HI. < IM IK >NA FORES! "I \' ' Letter to Mr. Benthain War with I'cru forest of Pallatanga The v.arm fmc^- (.. botanically than the mountain- Lettei to Mr. : viii NOTES OF A BOTANIST I'AGE about Indian-, and Christianity — A severe earthquake— The Cinchona forests of Alausi — Explorations for "Bark" trees and descriptions of the vegetation The Revolution Sanitation in Ecuador 221 CHAPTER XXI THK CINCHONA FORESTS OF \VKSTKKX CH1MKORAZO List of excursions — Report on the " Red Hark :! expedition Journey to the forest On the I'aramo — The Arenal Its curious Alpine vegetation Flower-clad mountain side -At (iuaranda delayed some days Over another ridge of Chimborazo— A dangerous descent Fine Mela- stomacei-c — At Limon saw first "Red Hark" trees- Occupy a trapiche (cane-mill) — A fine forest — The "bark" supposed to be a dye How the bark is collected The Cinchona siiccirubra a most beautiful tree The mammals and birds of the forest Insects Large forest trees — The vegetation of the Red Bark forests — Arrival of Air. Cross — Preparations for gather- ing, drying, and raising seeds and cuttings Difficulties to overcome Troubles from the war — Spruce takes the dried seeds to C.uayaquil — Bark to Aguacatal to build a raft Letter to Mr. Teasdale describing Guayaquil- — Con- struction of raft -Waiting for the young plants -The dangerous raft-journey to C.uayaquil — Success of the pi. mts in India . . . 258' CHAPTER XXII SPRUCE'S I.ASI TI1KKK VKAKS IX SOUTH AMKKKA: < >\ THE -in iRES or i in I'M ii n iM of excursions — Letter to Mr. Bentham Spruce's mode of botanical work — Botanical notes The climate of the (oast The loss of his property — To Mr. Daniel Hanbury -To Mr. John Tr,is,|,ile Journey to Piura The clim.ite and the inhabitants Notes on the vallcvs of CONTEXTS Piura and Chira — Topography and mineralogy — Indig- enous vegetation — To .Mr. Bentham— To Mr. Daniel Hanbury (after his return to England) . 312 CHAPTER XXIII LETTERS AND ARTICLES RELATING TO HIS AMA/OXIAN TKA . Spruce to Hanbury — On the winter sun and leafless trees Spruce's account of Santander — Santander's letter to Spruce — Spruce to Hanbury — Santander to Spruce- Essay on the Characteristics of Amazonian Vegeta- tion— The relations of Plants and Animals — Some cases of insect migration — Migrations of birds and mammals Concluding remarks . ... 343 CHAPTER XXIV «)N ANT- \GENCY IN PLANT-STRUCTURE Introductory remarks — Letter from Darwin Letter from the Secretary of the Linnean Society — The paper — Of Sac- bearing Leaves — Of Inflated Petioles Of Inflated tranches — Of Elongated and Fistulose Stems and Mi am lies < >ther evidence, with some remarks by the Editor . 3X4 CHAPTER XXV ON INJHOENOUS NARCOIKS \NI> STIMI'I HITS, \\llll IM MY I 111- IN I >l \\> Remarkable narcotics of the Aina/on and <>iinoco '1 and effects of caapi Niopo -miff and the mode of usi it Medicine-men and their custom- < >n spirit- demons among the Indian-, A strati its explanation Rarity of < mam e dm Indi- genes Nerve- stimulants used by the Indian- ^uaran;i as a toni* Guay6sa, a tonii n th< I • tern Ande- < 'on< Iu-i<>n x NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAPTER XXVI THE WOMEN-WARRIORS OF THE AMAZON: A HISTORICAL STUDY i A. *• Orellana's report to Charles Y. — Confirmatory statements- Historians agree in their reality — Condamine's testimony -The green Amazon stones — Yelasco's testimony Raleigh's statement — Yan Heuvel — Acuna's conclusion . 456 CHAPTER XXYII THE ENGRAVED ROCKS OF THE RIO NEGRO AND CASIQUIARI Indian picture-writing — The Laja de Capibara — What the figures mean — Figures at the Cario Calipo — The Paa- puri's figures and their history — At Jauarite — Discussion of their origin and purport . . . 474 CHAPTER XXVIII A HIDDEN TREASURE OF THE IXC A- The story of Yalverde and his riches --The "Derrotero"' or Guide to Llanganati — Don Atanasio Guzman, the botanist — His map of Llanganati — Lent to Spruce and he copies it — Description of it — Spruce obtains a copy of the " Derrotero " and translates it — The translation- Spruce's account of the attempts to rind the treasure by means of the '• Guide ;; Their failure — Explanation of the Quichua terms on the map — Editor's Critical Note con- firmatory of the accuracy of Yalverde's "Guide," and -uggesting another expedition .... 489 GI.O—ARY OF NATIVE NAMI - . 519 INDEX . -5-5 ILLUSTRATIONS FIG. 1. Yurimaguas, on the River Huallaga. (R. S.) . 15 2. Tarapoto, from the South- West. (R. S.) 41 3. Lamas, looking North-Eastward. R. S.) ;; 4. Mountains north of Tarapoto. R. S. . 5. Yie\v from Tabalosos, looking across the Mayo. (R. S. 6. Yegetable Ivory Palm . 7. Tunguragua, from the North 8. Ambato, Chimborazo in the distance 9. Chimborazo, from the Paramo of Sanani. 10. Riobamba and* the Eastern Cordillera . i I. Chimborazo and Carguairazo, from near Riobamba 12. Quito, on South-East Slope of Pichincha 13. Plan of a Priest'- House. (R. S.. 14. Indians of Province of Quito four Portraits) 15. Indian Sacred Drum or Trum i 6. Croup of Rock-Picture? on Casiquiari. 17- 18. '9- 20 - - 482 21. xii NOTES OF A BOTANIST MAPS 1. Sketch Map of Tarapoto District To face page 100 2. Map of the Central Andes of Ecuador . ,, ,, 220 3. Map of the Red Bark Forests of Ecuador ,, ,, 310 4. Map of the Mountains of Llanganati . End of Volume CHAPTER XV FIFTEEN HUNDRED MILES UP THE SOLIMOES : FROM MANAOS TO TARAPOTO, PERU (March 1 4 to June 22, 1855) [THIS chapter consists largely of a full and very descriptive Journal, which required comparatively little pruning ; and this is supplemented by letters to Messrs. Teasdale and Bentham, giving to the former vivid sketches of scenery and of the pass- engers on the steamer, and to the latter an account of one of the numerous personal dangers of which Spruce had his full share, though from all of them he escaped with his life.] VOYAGE UP THE SOLDI <>i-:.s (Journal) March 14, 1855. — Embarked on the J/.\i \ Very frequent in clumps is the line 1'ao Mulatto, 50 to 70 feet high, with lead-coloured bark and large umbels of white ll«' 1 [Readers of Bates's Xalnnilist on /•' his farthest station on the river, that lie stayed her.' !i\ than Spruce's visit), and that he speaks of it- luxurum of natural history with the greatest enthusiasm, adi not be sufficient to exhaust its treasures in zoolog) and the numerous pebbly streams, and the ma-nil surpassed anything he had seen during hi- 4 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. thickish Imba-iiba (Cecropia) has the bark mottled with red and white as in the Bread-fruit tree. In some places is an Anonaceous tree, about 30 feet high, with a profusion of flowers in small axillary clusters on the upper side of the long branchlets. The solitary tall Assai palm is very scarce, occurring only towards the mouth of the Coary. A remarkable tree occurs below Coary, 50 feet high, the top spreading, the lanceolate pale green leaves clustered on the ends of slender twigs, the flower-stalks long, descending then ascend- ing, growing on the main branches and trunk nearly to the base, fruits pendent, globular, size of an orange, but said when ripe to be much larger, having a hard shell with four seeds. It is probably a species of Couroupita (Lecythidere). Much wild Cacao is seen on the margins and as far within as the inundation extends — conspicuous from its young red leaves. There is generally much Castanha (Brazil-nut) in the forests. At T.butinga I gathered flowers of a small Composite tree growing 6 to 15 feet high and looking very like a willow. It is the Tessaria legitima, DC., and had been noticed from the mouth of the Japura upwards. A Serjania (Sapindaceae) with large masses of red capsules is now very frequent, and a low Copaifera in flower grows here and there by the water's edge. The Pao Mulatto continues very abundant and our firewood consists wholly of this species. There is no handsomer tree in the gapo. It sometimes reaches near 100 feet high. It is branched from about the middle, and the tup forms a narrow inverted cone. The surface of the trunk and branches is somewhat wavy or corrugated, but the bark is quite smooth and shining. When I went to Manaquiry in June 1851 the trees were shedding their bark, the process being a longitudinal split- ting up in one or more places, and a rolling back from both edges of the rupture. The young bark thus exposed is green, but it speedily assumes a deep bronze or leaden hue, and finally a chestnut colour — hence its name.1 Some small Rubiaceous trees have the same property; for instance, Eicosmia corymbosa and a tree in the forest at Yurimaguas, with leaves resembling those of a Nona- telia, but the bark is greener than that of the Pao Mulatto. With this latter tree, on the Solimoes, frequently grows the Castanheiro <1 > Macaco, with globular brown fruits, probably a species of Couroupita. JOURNAL (continued] March 27. — At 4 P.M. we reached Tabatinga, the frontier town of Brazil, situated on the north 1 [This tixx- \\is, later, collected by Spruce, and 1 icing new was named by Mr. llemliain Enkylisla Sprite ana. It belongs to the Cinchonacece.] FROM MANAOS TO TARAPOTO bank, a miserable place containing scarcely any houses but those of the garrison, though a little to the eastward, across a small valley, is a village of the Tucano Indians. The barracks consist of two small, low ranches, and there is no fort, though I saw two or three pieces of cannon laid on the ground. The soil is clayey and the vegetation luxuriant. Early on the 2Qth we reached Loreto, the first town in Peru and decidedly better than Tabatinga, having some good houses. The white inhabitants, however (even the Governor), are Portuguese. March 30. — Coasting the south bank of the river, the land being somewhat high and settlements more frequent. The vegetation here was more new and striking than any I had seen during the voyage. A little inland grew a very handsome palm (Attalea), resembling the Palma Yagua of the Orinoco, but rather smaller and with pendulous bunches of small hard red fruits. Here I first saw the Bombonaji, a palmate-leaved Carludovica. It grows on steep red banks, and is submersed when the river is at its height. S'-vrral other trees in flower and fruit were quite new to m<-. In the afternoon we reached Cochiquinu on the south bank, inhabited by Mayironas, that is, Indians from the Rio Mayo. At this season tln-n- is small lagoon between it and the river \\huli muk<- it difficult of access. The Indians are num'-mus and apparently very submissive to the Gobernador (the only white inhabitant) and to their Oir.icas or chiefs, who go about with polished \\alking-stic headed with silver. Then- are plentj of pigs fowls. The houses arc kept in better n-j.air anc 6 NOTES OF A BOTANIST the weeds kept down more than in Brazilian villages. About 1000 sticks of firewood were embarked here in two hours. On April i we reached Iquitos, a considerable village on the north bank at the mouth of a small stream of black water. It contains many people of mixed race, besides a great many Iquitos Indians who inhabit the western portion of the village,1 Here I first saw the fruit of a remarkable palm-like Pandanaceae (Phytelephas) allied to the plant that produces the vegetable ivory. On April 2, reached Nauta, on the north bank, a few miles above the mouth of the Ucayali, which enters from the south — a river equal in size to the Maranon itself. Nauta stands on rising ground from 30 to 60 feet above the river. The soil is sandy with some mixture of clay near the river. At the back the ground goes on gently rising for a considerable distance, only interrupted by rivulets. In the second growth on old clearings, the most curious feature is the absence of Selaginella, so constant in such places on the Amazon and Rio Negro. There is, however, a common Adiantum and a low tree-fern. [As the steamer went no farther, Spruce had to wait a fortnight at Nauta before he could hire two canoes with the necessary Indians to take him and his goods up to Yurimaguas on the river Huallaga. In the intervals of this work he collected such 1 I(|iiiui> is Mown town of about 10,000 inhabitants. It is the capital of the Peruvian province of Loreto, and the centre of the rubber trade of the 1 : ! Napo, ;m 1 nil (he higher tributaries of the Amazon. There is a monthly communication with l';ira by river steamers, while at longer intervals steamers make the through journey from Liverpool to this inland port within sight of the lower ranges of the Andes. FROM MAXAOS TO TARAPOTO 7 plants in flower as were new to him, and noted several others, but as he does not seem to have reached the virgin forest these were not very numerous. He notes generally that the river-bank vegetation was here identical in its main features with that of the river below. In a small side- channel near the village he noted a twining Bigno- niacea with long white flowers in axillary clusters resembling those of a Posoqueria ; a sweet-smelling Calyptrion ( Violaceae) ; a Madura laden with pendent catkins, like those of a hazel ; a spreading tree with clusters of winged fruits, apparently one of the Ulmacese, and several others not in llowcr which were quite new to him. The Journal of his voyage (now in canoes) con- tinues :— April 1 6. — Left Nauta at noon. Passed along low shores. Besides the Salix Humboldtian&} two other willow -like trees were noticed for the first time. At 8 P.M. reached four low huts or tambos, where we stopped for supper and for the night. I went back to the canoes, but the zancudos wrere terrible and I got no sleep. Next day the river continued rising, but last year's llood- mark is still 6 feet higher. April 1 8. — At 8 P.M. reached San kr^is, one of the most ancient pueblos (villages) on the river. I slept in the convent, which dates Ironi tin- missionaries. The roof was of very neatly \\<>ven Irapai (a species of Pandanaceae). April 19. — Just before 6 P.M. we reached some dry ground, where among lofty trees a -pace been cleared sufficient to accomm«>dat<- a [Mini- leaf shelters. Under one of these I slung I . :jUt 'I 1 . - / ' • • • • • • • [ • ' H « • • • I '111 III. I' !•'« ' M MAN \< >'' l < > I A l: \ i'( > i < i men pointing his VMM .n them \\> m-i.ill\ Huffi '" pni i In in IM HI- Jii ( in, ( however, -it l'1 • ' iln \ « loHed upon linn .in.l In d.i.i to Utah '"" • 'l 1 1" m \\ M li .1 -,\\ i n 1 1 .ni.| i IP n .1 .inij i upon in'- l" "l\ .ii which i" M i.i , i, 1 1 i m 1 1 1. M i, .n ii, fled II' I " I ' I ni' I 1 1 . 1 1 I 1 1 • 1 1 1 1 1 . 1 1 1 1 1 . 1 1 1 1 . i 1 1 ..ml I'' gis, I'. inn. M i .iii.l I i.nm.p. .in < ,,, mi ; In. It. ll ' 'HI I ..I I .1" Mil. 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I .. ,i p • 1 1 1 in \.INI I. n | I IP h m . i il tin liiln I IP i i lln .' < n. mi. i I.I i II I III I ll' II i H P- III I III ' I I \ i n 1 1 1 1 P • 1 1 i I , 1 1 I ' 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 i I.i I HP • • i P I 1 1 M I l I P IP i | , I ... I I I. H I ' I ... I .1 Mill III I . I I II I .. .1 I. I I .1 I'.i ml M iln I I i in m ' I \ilil' i | • I m' I "ii lln • . i \ in. u v m , In .1 . i . .1 I IP i I. • mi n I. n. |. i i . m . , .I . .m, 6 i' • i hi^'h i rownei I i.ll, ;• III. II l\ III' I . I, • .. l\ | 'I ' I,, n. H h which hun '<. H i null nl M P l him Very rarely I .. ml ilm - 1 1 1. l . i . >i \ . i io NOTES OF A BOTANIST April 25. — Stopped to cook our breakfast this morning on a bit of dry land (inundated only in the highest floods) where the forest was lofty and not much obstructed by twiners. One very fine Pao Mulatto, perhaps not less than 100 feet high, had a mass of broad strips of shed bark at the base. I picked up a piece of this, and while examining it heard a rattling in the place whence I had taken it. Stooping down, I saw that I had uncovered a large rattlesnake, who was raising himself up and poising his head for a spring at my leg, which was not more than two feet off. I retreated with all speed and fetched my gun from the canoe, but on returning the snake had disappeared. On the 26th we reached Urarinas, a small pueblo about the size of San Regis, and already referred to as having a common origin. April 28. — About noon to-day we spied a band of peccaries crossing the river towards our side, and already beyond the middle. With considerable difficulty we secured nine of them by the use of our guns and cutlasses. One of the largest boars, when wounded, was very fierce and tried to climb into the canoe, and had he not been speedily killed might have wounded some of the men seri- ously with his -large keen tusks, of which, as is well known, even the jaguar is afraid. As we did not reach a place where we could prepare and cook them till early the following afternoon, the meat had already become too tainted for salting, but we had a meal of it, and the remainder was all cooked and eaten during the succeeding night by my Indians and the villagers. We had entered the Huallaga river during the FROM MANAOS TO TARAPOTO 1 1 night and the village was La Laguna, so called from a large lake a little behind it, but not visible from the village, which is reached by a very narrow side-channel. There are perhaps a hundred families in fifty houses built irregularly around a square open space. There is a very large church dating from the time of the Jesuits. The walls are of adobe and the roof is supported on pillars formed from large trees. The Cura was absent at Moyo- bamba. May 4. --This day (about 4 P.M.) we passed some rather high land about 12 feet above the highest floods, and the first uninundated land I had seen on the banks of the Huallaga. It had been very wet, but after 5 P.M. it cleared up and I enjoyed my first view of the Andes. The part seen is called the Serra de Curiayacu, and in form and extent reminded me much of Duida as seen from the Casi- quiari, showing a table-like summit with several outlying peaks on the right. Yurimaguas was reached the next day at 10 A.M. \Ve were very kindly received by tin- priest ( Dr. Don Silverio Mori), and as I had decided to wait here until I could get Indians from Chasm. i to take us up the pongo, he installed us in the cuartel, a commodious building of three rooms, In it much infested by rats. Yurimaguas is a small place (about equal to San Regis), but is pleasantly situated on -round rising abruptly but to no great height. It is one ol the most ancient missions in Maynas, and according to information derived from the priest, it founded in 1709 by Spanish Jesuits, panied by a few armed whites, descend 12 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP, xv Amazon as far as Parinari, a little above Ega. Thence they ascended the Yapura river, where they found a tribe of Indians called Yurimaguas, and after a time persuaded these to return with them up the great river and the Huallaga to the present site, where they have remained. They were induced to do so the more readily on account of the constant enmity of a neighbouring more powerful tribe. At present these Indians all use the Inca language, and only a few of the older ones have an imperfect knowledge of their original language. The church here perhaps is the most ancient, and is certainly the best built of any I have seen in Maynas. It is built of adobes in a style very similar to that of churches in Lima, having a very- high -pitched roof. The floor is of tiles. The priest's house seems to be of the same date, arid has been much ornamented within by cornices, etc., painted in various colours — the work of the last priest. Over one of the doors is inscribed in Latin the verse of Proverbs : " Give me neither poverty nor riches." [During Spruce's stay here he made a very care- ful pencil-drawing of the church, with its well- designed entrance of the simplest native materials. The figures on each side of the door are those of St. Peter and St. Paul, executed in coloured earths, while on the left is the belfry with its ladder — the campanile of South Europe reduced to its simplest elements. The figures of an Indian man, woman, and boy, with the priest going to the church, are characteristic ; while the background of forest, with its various forms of trees, completes the picture. I . ! -., ' ^f-*^ s 3 ^-*- j ^ rt CL, CD U < CH.XV FROM MANAOS TO TARAPOTO 15 am indebted to my friend Mr. Young, a good artist, for strengthening the shading, denning the outlines, and putting in the foreground, so as to render the drawing suitable for reproduction to half the original size.] Don Silverio makes an admirable priest for the Indians, as indeed he would for people of any colour. Low in stature and not stout, but firmly knit, with a rather dark but ruddy complexion ; a small well -formed mouth, which even in its most severe expression speedily relaxes into a benevolent smile ; a sonorous and untiring voice ; added to this an irreproachable conduct very unusual in South America, and an untiring vigilance over the moral and physical condition of his parishioners. Every day, both morning and afternoon, he has in his house all the boys, both Indians and Mestizos, whose parents will allow them to be taught, and takes all possible pains to teach them to read ami write, with such success that nearly all can do both intelligibly. Their writing-books are mostly nothing but slips of plantain-leaves, on which when fresh the ink- strokes are very distinct. He is much put about to find them reading- books, in lieu of which old newspapers, letters Irom his friends, and, in fact, any scraps of MSS. or print are made to serve. lie finds it, however, difficult to get them to speak Spanish, as out ol school they speak only Lingua Inca \\ith their families and playmates. Every «-v<-ninjr. except Sundays, all the young girls present tip the corridor of his house, when- tln-y repeat to the " Doctrina " at length. At feast times there is mass every morning 16 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. at other times every Wednesday and Saturday morning. On Saturday evening nearly the whole population assists at vespers — the Litany to the Virgin — when the altars are decked with small vases filled \A*ith flowers of Poinciana pulcherrima (called Uaita-sissa, i.e. swimming flower), and at the conclusion the patron saint, mounted on a stage, is carried in procession round the streets, the Padre and his people chanting as they march. After each mass in the morning, and after the Ave Maria in the evening, the chief officials of the town pre- sent themselves to the Padre to receive his orders, and he is fortunately not trammelled by the presence of any interested white man under the name of Gubernador, this office being filled by an intelligent old Indian.1 His rule is strict without being severe, and I have nowhere seen the Indians so docile. True, they are a rather sluggish race — poor oars- men— and many of them have the skin disfigured by black and red blotches from the leprous disease called purupuru in Brazil. Outside the pueblo is the cemetery, surrounded by an adobe wall, with gates under a porch. It is usual to bury a man in his old canoe, cut up into something like a coffin. The houses at Yurima- guas, as in most other places on the rivers of Maynas, are built of Cana brava — a stout reed- stuck close together in the ground and crossed by others near the top and bottom. The doors are made of the same material. Stages (called barbacoas), on which the inmates The officials nt Yurimaguas, in the order oi their rank, are Curaca, .ui, Alferes Alcaide, 1'mcurudor, Regklor, Algun/il major, and t\\<> Alguaziles minor — in all nine. xv FROM MANAOS TO TARAPOTO sleep, are made of the Tarapoto palm (Iriartea ventricosa] split and flattened out into slabs. These beds are raised about 3 feet from the ground. A mat of one or more layers of Tururi (bark cloth) is laid on the barbacoa, and the whole is enclosed in a quadrilateral bag of Tocuyo (a coarse native cotton cloth), supported on a framework of reeds, to serve as a mosquito curtain. It effectually keeps out insects but is very hot. Benches, both inside and outside the houses, are made in the same way, but the latter sometimes of an old canoe, the bottom form- ing the seat and one side the back, like a settle. The industry of Yurimaguas, besides the salting of fish, which is clone during summer, is chiefly the fabrication of painted ollas and cuyas (pots and calabashes), and numerous old calabash trees scat- tered about the pueblo form one of its most picturesque features. The Padre's house is much better than the rest -built as in Brazil on a framework of rods filled in with clay, and painted white, outside and in, with gypsum. It contains several tables, the tops of which are single slabs, one 4 feet across. The rooms are ceiled with Cana brava, closely laid across the beams and covered above with a thin layer of clay. A peculiar utensil seen hen- and elsewhere in Maynas is a large flat shallow dish, of the form of the tin vessels used by gold-washers ; it is made ol the sapopema of some light- wooded tree, ami I have seen one above 5 feet in diameter. used chiefly for crushing maize with a stone tor the fabrication of chicha (native beer), but is for grinding coffee, etc. VOL. II iS NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. The animal food at Yurimaguas, besides pigs and fowls raised on the spot, is chiefly fish, game being very scarce. In the summer many large fish are obtained, but when the river is full only small ones can be had. About a quarter of a mile below Yurimaguas a deep valley enters on the west side called Parana- pura, which is the route to Balsapuerto and Moyo- bamba, and thence by Chuchapoyas and Truxillo to the coast. The navigation of the river is uncertain and perilous, not on account of rapids, of which there are hardly any, but because of its often rising a great height in a few hours (or even minutes) from the sudden swelling of mountain streams consequent on heavy rains. When in its best state the voyage from Yurimaguas to Balsa- puerto takes six days, but when full the current is very strong, and when low channels have to be dug through sandbanks, so that several weeks are sometimes required. A little way within the Paranapura there is a village a little larger than Yurimaguas called Muniches, which may be reached by a good track through the forest in four hours. This track crosses several elevations and valleys, each of the latter with a stream running in a sandy or pebbly bed. Along this track the land has been almost all formerly cultivated and there are still several fields of Yucas and Plantains. About the same distance above Yurimaguas there is a very similar but smaller stream called Chamusi, which affords a route to Tarapoto and Lamas, occupying usually six days, of which three are by water. But the Chamusi has the same xv FROM MANAOS TO TARAPOTO 19 impediments to navigation as the Paranapura, and the road overland is more elevated and very rough. VOYAGE UP THE HUALLAGA TO CMASUTA, AND THENCE TO JUAN GUERRA AND TARAPOTO On Tuesday, June 12, at 7.30 A.M., we left Yurima- guas for Chasuta, myself and goods occupying two ubadas (large dug-out canoes), one with nine, the other with eight Indians. The river had been sinking for some time, but for four days much rain had fallen and the river had risen again. When we started it was 8 feet below high-water mark. On the next day at 4.30 P.M. we reached the mouth of the Cainaiuche, up which there is a way to Tarapoto when the Huallaga is so full as to render the pongos of Chasuta impassable. As rain seemed coming on, we remained for the night on a sand- bank, where it took us near an hour to erect some twenty tarnbos (shelters) of palm-leaves, under which we hung our mosquito-nets, and so many green tents scattered over the sand had a pretty appearance, the picture being completed 1>\- t\\o fires blazing in the midst, around which croudcd the Indians until rain compelled them to turn in. After the rain a very strong and cold south wind sprang up — more searching than any I h,i\e |elt since I left England. A good many \\atei1o\\l begin to appear on the beaches as the receding waters gradually expose them. Amon^ them we had numbers of Jabirus and (iarnas (cranes and herons), and one day two majestic Tayuyns (th«- 20 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. giant stork Mycteria Americana] were seen, but were too wary to be shot. June 1 5. --The river now reminds me of the Upper Rio Negro — similar banks sloping steeply to the water's edge, inundated in winter and clad with black rootlets. In many places the perpen- dicular cliffs of earth are speedily covered with rudimentary mosses. The little Oxalis also re- appears accompanied by patches of a grass and a small Composite herb. The wind has been very cool these two days, and in the morning actually cold. June 1 6.- -This morning we passed, on the north bank, a line of cliffs about a quarter of a mile long, the upper 12 feet being red earth in scarcely distinguishable horizontal layers, while the remaining 20 feet were in distinct layers in- clined about 30" to the horizon. These were also of red earth, but in two places a few beds of greyish sandstone occurred. A little below the entrance to the pongo we came to a large clearing on the north bank, partially planted with Yucas and Plantains. June 17. — Soon after starting this morning we reached the pongo, where the river is much narrowed and confined in one channel by steep hills on each side. The margins were at first rocky, with large blocks irregularly scattered, soon changing to low walls of thick rock-strata. An hour and a half within this channel we came to streams of hot water, pouring in four or five slender rivulets from a black cliff perhaps 20 feet high and 20 or 30 yards from the river's margin. Each tiowecl in a slight hollow marked by vapour FROM MANAOS TO TARAPOTO 2 1 that constantly rose from it. The cliff itself was draped with a curtain of twiners which I had not time to penetrate. The water was quite clear and destitute of taste or smell, but so hot at 20 feet from the source that I could not bear my finger in it. About noon we entered a long narrow channel between loftier rocks and steeper hills above them, where the currents and whirlpools gave us some trouble. At its upper entrance stands a steep cerro where the rock is only partially clad with vegetation, and is stained in bare places with blotches of red or dull purple. It is called Uamar- uassi or Eagle's house, from having been once the habitation of an immense eagle which guarded the pass, and the purple patches are blood-stains — the blood being of those who were so rash as to attempt the pass in its guardian's despite. The scenery throughout this pongo is beautiful, though the enclosing mountains do not exceed 500 to Soo feet in height. The strata are sometimes almost vertical, and are then partially naked, the seamy vegetation being upheld (as I have noticed in other places) by masses of Bromeliaceous plants. The next mal paso is called "Arpa," because just above it there is a rock supposed to resemble a harp. The current round the rocky point was .so strong that the canoes had to be dragged aloni; by stout creepers. Afterwards we came to LM"(iy friable rock in very thin layers, and this was succeeded by a slaty-looking dark rock, and then the friable grey rock again appeared. are all Triassic, and produce salt. rapids of less importance were passed !><-|ore dark 22 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. 1 8. — We slept in a chacra (shed) just below the worst fall, called Yurac-yacu (white water), because the water here bursts into foam over rocks strewed in the river at a narrow curve. An hour farther there is another similar mal paso (called Curi-yacu), where a stream comes in on the left bank, said to contain gold. Some way below Chasuta we passed, on the left bank, a considerable ravine with still black water called Yanacana-yacu (Ladder River), from its running over steps in its upper part as it comes down from Curi-yacu. This mountain, whenever we came in sight of it, had its summit wrapped in mists and showers, from which it is said to be never free. After passing the rapid of Curi-yacu the river gradually opens out wider, but still in many places runs rapidly over sharp gravel. Mountains appear on every side — Curi-yacu on the right, the low, rounded, acute-edged cerros of Chasuta nearly in front, and the lofty Morillo (yielding only to Curi- yacu in height) in front and rather to the left. On our left, directly across the river, are only lower hills. Alligators, turtles, and pirarucu exist in the Huallaga as far as the rapids of Yurac-yacu. The small alligator is found all the way up to Huanuco, as is also the fresh-water dolphin of the Amazon. Electric eels are frequent in the Huallaga and Ucayali, and still more in the lakes connected with these rivers. June 23. — \Ve reached Chasuta on the evening of the 1 8th. It is a considerable village on the lett bank of the Huallaga, at the mouth of a rather large ravine, and from being situated at the very foot of abrupt rocky hills, while loftier ones appear xv FROM MANAOS TO TARAPOTO O on every side, it .is one of the most picturesque places I have seen. Its population is entirely of Indians, though many show evident traces of white blood, and they are among the tallest and hand- somest I have met with — especially the women. Even the Governor is an Indian — an old man, formerly a soldier, in which profession he learnt his Castilian. The pueblo numbers less than 300 married men, and about 1500 souls. All speak the Inca language, and very few have a smattering of Spanish. Our Indians from Tarapoto were paid to take us up as far as Juan Guerra — a small pueblo at the junction of the Combasa and Mayo rivers above the pongos of the Huallaga. We found it, how- ever, impossible to persuade them to proceed beyond Chasuta, the reason given for deserting us being that the Indians of Chapaja, a pueblo in the pongo, were awaiting their arrival to fall on them unawares and kill them, as there had been a quarrel between them a short time before and serious wounds had been given on both sides. It was plain, however, that they also wanted to escape the labour, as there are three of the worst passes on the Huallaga a little way above Chasuta, when- the whole cargo has to be carried overland among lar^i- blocks of rock for some hundred yards or more, and we had found the Tarapotinos much disincline.! to work hard. There being no authority at Chasuta able to make them fulfil their contract, we had n«> alternative but to engage other Indians at Chasuta for the rest of the voyage. \\'e had already pai-i dollar apiece to our men, and we now had to -f\ cutlass to each man of our new crews. 24 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. Most of them were half tipsy, as they had been preparing rum for the feast of their patron saint on June 29, and it was with some difficulty we got them embarked on the afternoon of the igth. The actual distance from Chasuta to the mouth of the Mayo river could be passed in three or four hours were it not for the rapids, which are at about equal distances apart. The second of these is difficult to pass all the year round, the first is worst when the river is rather full, and the last when it is nearly dry. We found the first the most difficult of approach and ascent, and the last the easiest, but in all of them it is difficult and dangerous work for the Indians who carry the cargo across the rocks. The empty canoes are dragged up with stout creepers, and though they fill with water they suffer no injury. The falls resemble in some respects the first fall of the Uaupes, but with less water and on a rather smaller scale, while the whirlpools below are much less dangerous. The scenery of the falls of the Huallaga is, however, far more pic- turesque, from the steep and lofty mountains which rise on each side of the river, and the dense tapestry of mosses on the moist rocks and inundated branches at the very edge of the water. There is much similarity in the shrubs and trees growing about both, though the species are, I believe, entirely different, and the palm of botanical novelty must perhaps be given to the Uaupes. The most striking difference is perhaps the vast abundance of Neckera disticka (or an allied species), forming a dense beard to branches of trees hanging into the water, as Hydropogon does on the Upper Rio xv FROM MANAOS TO TARAPOTO 25 Negro and Casiquiari, while I only saw in one or two places scraps of a Selaginella — a genus which is represented by several beautiful species growing in great quantity about the falls of the Uaupes. Night came on immediately after we had passed the first fall. We slept on a sandbank shaded by overhanging trees, which did not prevent our feeling the strong and cool south wind which blew all night. Our men worked well in the morning, and by 10 o'clock we had got the cargo carried safely up above the last fall, and we then set on to cook our breakfasts with light hearts. Into all the falls there enters a stream of clear cool water tumbling down among mossy rocks, in the first and last fall from the left, and in the second from the right. In all these falls stones which have 12 feet or more of water over them in tlood are often coated by a black varnish, as in the cataracts of the Orinoco, but those higher up the slope, and there- fore under water for a shorter period, rarely show this peculiarity. Above Estero-yacu (the highest fall), the Huallaga is again broader and stiller, though running rapidly at points; the mountains recede from the river-margin, and the vegetation puts on the same aspect as below the pongo. About an hour more brought us opposite Chapaja, an Indian village of a few scattered huts, whence then- i track leading to Tarapoto, occupying about thn ' hours with mules. Another hour and we entered the mouth of the Mayo, a .omc\ smaller stream than the Huallaga, \vln\h it quite resembled. Here were banks of mud and sometimes covered with pebbles, as on the I I nail,: 26 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. from Yurimaguas to the pongo, and on banks grow abundantly the Gynerium, Enkylista, Lythracea, and other species frequent also on the Maranon and Huallaga. It was a tedious navigation up the winding Mayo to the mouth of the Cumbasa. There were, the Indians said, twelve turns, and we had expected but two or three, and it was accord- ingly near sunset when we got to that river. To our great annoyance we found that it had fallen so much that there was no possibility of our getting our laden canoes up to the pueblo of Juan Guerra, which is nearly a mile within. We slept therefore at the mouth, and the next morning had the cargoes carried overland to the village. [A letter to his friend Teasdale describes the more personal and social aspects of the voyage up the Solimoes, and will supplement the purely geographical and botanical notes in the Journal.] To Mr. John Teasdale TARAPOTO, July 1855. I had a long and wearisome voyage from the Barra to this place, lasting from March 15 to June 21. I was eighteen days in getting up to Nauta- a distance of some 1500 miles -- in the steamer Monarca ; a wonderful difference this from the sixty-three days spent in getting from Santarem to the Barra, a distance scarcely one-fourth so great. When we were going smartly along by day it was really delightful, though the coasts are exceedingly flat — much more so than those of the Amazon below the Barra. I was, however, never tired of admiring xv FROM MANAOS TO TARAPOTO 27 the ever-varying forest-panorama — the broad beaches densely clad with Arrow-reeds growing 20 or 30 feet high, behind which extended beds of slender and graceful willows (Salix Humboldtiana), their yellow -green foliage relieved by the occasional admixture of the broad white leaves of Cecropia peltata (a tree of the Mulberry tribe), while beyond rose abruptly the lofty virgin forest, composed of trees of the most different types growing side by side. Add to this the noble river, the innumerable islands (fixed and floating), the cranes and herons, the never-failing alligators, the fresh-water dolphins chasing one another and turning " summersets," besides numerous other sights and sounds which 1 cannot here enumerate — the whole viewed leisurely and ociosamente (" at one's ease "), free from any tormenting recurrence of mosquitoes, and you will understand that a voyage up the Amazon in a steamer has enjoyments peculiar to itself, although one's nerves may be occasionally shaken by the vessel scraping on a snag, or by the sudden assault of a violent thunderstorm. Oh that these had been. the only troubles ! But as we were only about half the time under way — the other half being spent in embarking firewood, a cargo of mosquitoes always coming on board, uninvited, along with the latt« T (and I think the higher you ascend the Amaxon the more numerous and voracious they become) — you may say that we were half the. voyage in paradise and the other half in purgatory. The Monarca is a small but strongly-built iron steamer, with low-pressure engines <>! ^5 horse- power which occupy so much space as t<> leave little for cargo. The firewood also look up 28 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. of room, and, besides what could be stowed down below, had generally to be piled to an inconvenient height on deck. We used to embark as much as would last us from thirty to thirty-six hours, and we consumed on an average seventy sticks an hour, the sticks being a Portuguese vara (five spans) long and three or four inches thick. Piles of firewood are established at convenient distances all along the banks. The wood which is most largely consumed is that of the Mulatto tree, so called from its shining bark, which is sometimes of a leaden-coloured hue, at others verging on red. It is one of the most abundant and at the same time handsomest trees all along the Amazon, growing often to 100 feet high, and in the spring-time bearing a profusion of white flowers which may be compared to those of the hawthorn for size and odour. The tree, however, belongs to a very different tribe, and is closely allied to the Cascarilla or Peruvian Bark tree. It was un- known to botanists until I sent specimens from Santarem, and Mr. Bentham has called it Enkylista Spruceana. The wood causes a good deal of flame, and burns nearly as well when green as dry. . . . Imagine the cabin passengers of the Monarca stretched in their hammocks under an awning in the poop eagerly listening to one of their number reading from an old black-letter copy of the fabulous history of " Carlos Magno," and amongst those listeners were a Juiz de Direito, a Procurador Publico, two military Commandants going to take charge of garrisons at Ega and at the mouth of the river lea, and an English botanist whom, at least, one would have supposed far in advance of such old-world fooleries. When I reached San Carlos in xv FROM MANAOS TO TARAPOTO 29 Venezuela the only books in the Spanish language existing there were " El Sepulcro, por Anna Rad- cliffe," and a translation of one of the Duchesse d' Abrantes' novels. They are scarcely more numerous at Tarapoto, where one of the most famous books is " Waverley d ahora sesenta anos, por Sir Gualterio Scott." In short, so far as I can judge of South America from having seen only the most thinly-inhabited portions of it, I can truly say that Mrs. Radcliffe, Walter Scott, and Alex- andre Dumas are far more popular there than Cervantes and Camoens. To the credit of the Brazilians, they are far more familiar with the Liisiads than the Spanish Americans are with Don Quixote. . . . Well, we reached Nauta, beyond which the Brazilian steamers do not proceed. Nauta is an Indian village established about twenty years ago just above the mouth of the Ucayali. It is a good way within the frontier of Peru, but is at present the seat of the frontier garrison (of twenty-five men) and also of the government of a department with provisional limits and a provisional name (Dept. del Literal do Loreto), nearly conterminous with the ancient province of Maynas. Two steamers were got out here two years ago from the United States where they had been purchased for two or three times their value. They were intended to navigate the Huallaga and Ucayali; but provec such trashy things— slightly built of pine wood, and containing large, coarsely-made, high-pres engines that were continually shaking the leaky — that the Peruvians could make nothing of them, and they are at this moment lying rotting in 3o NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. the port of Nauta, manned by a crew of rats and mosquitoes. The state of these steamers was a great disappointment to me, as I had calculated on getting up as far as Yurimaguas on the Huallaga in one of them, and I had now no alternative but to continue my voyage in canoes, in the rainy season and with the river full. I got a couple of canoes, and after a fortnight's delay in putting them in order and getting crews of Indians to navigate them, I took my weary way up the Maranon. . . . [Part of a letter to Mr. Bentham carries on the narrative by describing an incident at Nauta that might have had very serious consequences, or even caused the death of the traveller.] To Mr. George Bentham YURIMAGUAS, PERU, May 27, 1855. • •*••• I left the Barra on March 15 in the steamer, and reached Nauta on April 2. Had it not been for the delays in taking in firewood every day or nearly so, the voyage might have been made in half the time. At Nauta I was detained a fortnight getting together Indians and a couple of canoes to continue my voyage. From Nauta to Yurimaguas took me till May 5 — a voyage made sufficiently uncomfort- able from abundance of mosquitoes by day and night, and rendered perilous by frequent falling in of the banks of Maranon and Huallaga, and by the risk of upsetting when the deeply-laden canoe struck on some hidden stump, which happened every day. My repose in the Barra had been of great service to my health, but I reached Yurimaguas FROM MANAOS TO TARAPOTO 31 pretty nearly done up, and on the very day I arrived I was seized with diarrhoea — caused probably by drinking the saline waters of the Huallaga. I had scarcely shaken off this when I was taken with influenza, which still holds me. To these inoppor- tune bodily ailments have been added no small mental trouble. You will perhaps have heard in England of the number of adventurers of all nations, but principally English and Americans, who, misled by a false report of gold on the Upper Maranon, went thither seeking it. Many of these had passed the Barra before I arrived there, but I still met several, and amongst them an English sailor who seemed a very quiet fellow, and whom I engaged to accompany me to Peru, thinking that a stout companion like him would be invaluable to me in a country where, as report truly said, there was no law but that of the strongest, and acts of atrocity were of frequent occurrence. I might, with a little more forethought, have considered that a man who had once become imbued with the idea of acquiring riches by some sudden fortune (for I knew he had been a "digger" in Australia) was never likely to take steadily to any work which brought him in but small, though certain, gains ; but I could not tell beforehand what I know now, that my companion had marked by violence course through Peru, and had been in prison at Lima for murder. When we readied Peru, and had consequently passed the limit of any efficient police, his nature began to show itself, and I had proof that he sought occasion to murder me and decamp with the money I carried with me. On tin- way here from Nauta he ill-treated tin- Indians, and 32 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. being rather deaf and understanding scarcely any- thing of Spanish, he fancied that every one whom he saw laugh was ridiculing him. A few days after we got here an old Indian, who officiates as sacristan to the Padre, was conversing with other Indians in the square, when my man went up to him, seized him by the neck, and with his right fist broke his mouth in. On the following day, when we were at dinner with the Padre, where was also a Portuguese who had travelled along with us nearly all the way from Nauta, the latter was telling some tale about the students at Coimbra which set us a-laughing ; my man thought the laugh was directed against him, got up from table and challenged the Portuguese to fight him with his fists. Attempts at explanation only infuriated him more, and seizing a pickaxe he aimed a blow with it at the Portuguese, which I happily averted by lifting up the handle. The Portuguese then, at the Padre's request, entered an inner room and fastened himself in, the other still attempting to burst open the door in order to wreak his vengeance. It was, of course, quite impossible for me to excuse or palliate such conduct as this to the good Padre, who had treated us most kindly, and as it is equally impossible for me to follow my pursuits without keeping on good terms with all, my separation from such a companion became impera- tive. I do not trouble you with a detail of the reason I had for concluding that he contemplated violence towards myself, and which for several days had induced me to sleep always with a revolver under my pillow. Suffice to say that with much trouble and no small sacrifice on my part we succeeded in getting him sent off. I paid him xv FROM MANAOS TO TARAPOTO three months' wages and the passage from the Barra and back — in all 140 milreis— and on the whole I am some £20 out of pocket by the speculation.1 Many of the gold- seekers marked their way through Peru by violence, and some of them came to violent ends : an Englishman was killed in Chasuta by the Indians, an American was drowned in a stream which enters the Huallaga within sight of Yurimaguas, and many others perished miserably in one way or another. All were known to the natives under the generic name of " Ingleses," who are consequently by no means in good odour. You will perhaps not be surprised to hear, after what I have above stated, that I am inclined to repent having come on this expedition, which is proper only for a person enjoying the best bodily health and strength. I have still considerable expense and risk before me — to get to Tarapoto will cost me fifty dollars, though it is so near in a straight line that I can nearly see it from a little way down the river. But the delays always annoy me more than the expense, especially when I can- not work. The great bulk of my baggage is paper, which it is of the first necessity to bring, as I understand I could not procure any from nearer than Lima, where I have no funds and no corre- 1 In a letter written shortly before he quitted Tarapoto, Spruce gh termination of this man's career as follo\\, : " In my letter from Vui iin;i^uas I spoke of an Kn with me from the Barra, and whom 1 \\:is obliged to conduct. He has lately been cruelly mui< his canoe a little below th.- uih of the I .lyali, much in the Count D' Osery was, some disl -er. Though confession to me, I have no doubt th -asurc him as he had meted to others, I am nol il K 'hat! been set at liberty without punishment." VOL. II 34 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. spondents. At Nauta I collected scarcely anything, for fear of adding to my already unwieldy baggage, and I could not leave any dried plants there, where they would be wasted. The same reasons, added to illness, have limited my gatherings at Yuri- maguas, for I cannot hope to gather sufficient to make it worth while sending a collection from here direct to England. Towards the sources of these rivers it would be easier to collect in descending than in ascending were it practicable to remain a few days in the promising localities ; for in coming down the size of one's canoe may be as large as one chooses, but in going up one must necessarily use the smallest canoes, and even then be content to get on at a very slow rate. [The letter to Mr. Teasdale now takes up the narrative again : — ] The banks of both Maranon and Huallaga continue flat all the way to Yurimaguas, but at about two clays below this place / enjoyed my first view of the Andes \ It was on the 2nd of May -we had had terrible rain from midnight to noon, and it still kept dropping until 5 P.M. About hall- past five the sky cleared to N.W., distinctly revealing a line of blue mountains which might be some 4000 feet higher than the river. They are called the Curi-yacu (Mountains of the River of Gold), and extend along the western side of the pongos of the Huallaga. You are, I daresay, aware that the Maranon, the Huallaga, and their tributaries have the peculiarity of issuing from the mountains into the plains through deep narrow rifts called pongos. From FROM MANAOS TO TARAPOTO 35 the steep perpendicular walls which confine these narrows, the Peruvians say very expressively that the rivers in such places are boxed in ("encajonado"). The pongo of the Huallaga commences a little above Yurimaguas, and it takes two days to ascend it when the river is pretty low — when it is high the pongo is impassable. Above the pongo are three of the worst malos pasos (rapids and falls) in the whole river. . . . The principal inhabitant of Tarapoto is a Spaniard (a native of Mallorca) named Don Ignacio Morey. We had known each other by name some years, and he had signified to me that if I would visit Tarapoto he would assist me as far as lay in his power. From Yurimaguas I had advised him of my approach, and he was kind enough to send a couple of mules to meet me at Juan Guerra. When you consider the amphibious life I had led for six years, during a great part of which period I had not so much as set sight on a horse, and that for several years before leaving England I had discontinued equestrian exercises, you will under- stand that I found the transition from a canoe to a horse rather abrupt. I am, however, too old a traveller to be taken aback by anything, and immediately made choice of one of the two animah sent me — a large white macho, whose stride was as long as that of a racehorse, and whose caparisons were altogether strange to me, especially the large wooden stirrups, in form of a square pyramid, a hole on one side for inserting the foot ; the whole curiously sculptured. An Knglish hors have felt weary with such trappings, but he have stared in dismay at the road, though one 36 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP, xv ' the best in the country. At the commencement it was pretty level, though very muddy in places, and much obstructed by roots of trees and even by fallen trunks stretching across the path ; while overhead the branches and twiners hung so low that I was compelled every now and then to duck my head to avoid a fate similar to that of Absalom. They who opened the road had never calculated that a long fellow like myself would have to traverse it. Farther on were ups and downs strewed with stones and often skirting declivities. We traversed three considerable streams, tributaries of the Cumbasa. The track invariably led straight down to the water without any winding, and the mules partly slid, partly walked down. CHAPTER XVI EXPLORATION OF THE EASTERN ANDES OF PERU : RESIDENCE AT TARAPOTO ( June 22, 1855,^ March 22, 1857) [DURING the period comprised in this chapter Spruce appears to have kept no regular Journal, and though there are many scattered notes referring to his various excursions, they are so imperfect, and sometimes so condensed and enigmatical, that I was at first in despair as to how I should find materials for an account of what was, to himself, one of the most enjoyable and interesting portions of his travels, as well as one of the best districts for a botanical collector which he met with during his fourteen years' residence in the equatorial regions of South America. Fortunately, his letters to Mr. Bentham and to his friend Mr. Teasdale were so full as, to some extent, to supply the place of Journals, while one of his most interesting botanical excursions was described in some detail in an article he contributed to the short-lived periodical the Magazine of July 1^73. With these materials, and by making use of some of the descripti1 mentioned above, and greatly assistec 37 38 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. rough sketch-map of the district which I found among his papers, I have, I hope, succeeded in giving a tolerable idea of this interesting locality, which forms the most important centre of population in North-Eastern Peru, and which seems to be still very little known to European, and certainly to British scientific travellers.] To Mr. John Teasdale (continued] March 23, 1856. On reaching Tarapoto about sunset, Don Ignacio placed his well-furnished table at my disposal, and he had already secured me an unoccupied house in a situation exactly corresponding to my wishes. It is away from any street, in the midst of a garden, and only a dozen yards from the edge of a declivity which barely allows the canes and plantains to take root on it ; at its base the turbulent Shillicaio seeks its course among rude masses of rock, its sparkling waters appearing only here and there, because hemmed in by a dense hedge of low trees and twiners. It much reminds me of the Pyrenean " gaves." There is no other house nearer than fifty paces, and this, though conducing to my more perfect quiet, may be a disadvantage if it should happen that I have come among ill-disposed folk. The garden is planted with sugar-cane, yuca-dulce, cotton, sweet potatoes, frijoles (beans), and calabash trees. There are also several clumps of herbs (in- cluding at least three distinct species of Capsicum), and two or three young trees of Yangu'a tinctoria. Across the stream is the pueblo of Cumbasa- a sort of suburb to Tarapoto, inhabited chiefly by RESIDENCE AT TARAPOTO 39 descendants of two powerful tribes of Indians who occupied the same site when the first whites came from Lamas, about seventy years ago, to found Tara- poto. Looking over the pueblo from my house, I am reminded by the general aspect of an English village in some agricultural district, though the accessories are different. Here and there in the forest (which is mostly low, though there are a few lofty relics of the old primeval woods) are verdant spots whereon pasture various domestic animals : horses, mules, cows, pigs, turkeys and other fowls. On their margins, or from amid the forest, peep out the straw roofs of cottages, often accompanied by plantain gardens and by orange and other fruit trees. Beyond the pueblo stretches a plain towards the S.E. and S., while towards the E. and N.E. the ground gently rises, to fall again into the deep valley of the Aguashiyacu. The plain is bounded by a low ridge of Lamas shales, whereon a red loam predominates and gives to the ridge the appellation of Piica-lama. A broad red road is seen winding over it which leads to the fields and gardens of Aguashiyacu. The track leading to Chasuta passes through the village of Cumbasa in an easterly direction. After crossing the Aguashiyacu it emerge? very wide plain of loose sand, covered chiefly coarse grasses and low scattered trees.1 pajonal (open campo) is not visible from Tarapoto, but it extends nearly to Pura-yucu. Immediate across this stream and a littl<- more than two 1 Among these are Curatcllii <»//< ;•/'.. /;/,/. I 'ina with a strange-looking Tiliacea, and a prickly Xanth"\ abominable odour of bugs when brui CHAP, x 40 NOTES OF A BOTANIST leagues from Tarapoto begin to rise the abrupt ridges of Guayrapurima (" where the wind blows "), which are crossed to reach Chasuta. More to the north is a rather lower ridge whose top, bare of trees, gives to it the name of Cerro- pelado (the bald hill). Over this passes the track leading to a noted fishing stream called Tiracu, whose sources are near those of the Aguashiyacu in the high mountains N.E. of Tarapoto. From this mountain come more storms than from any other quarter. A long day of painful ascents and descents brings fishermen to Tiracu, where they sometimes remain a week, exposed to almost daily rain and barely sheltered at night in a rude rancho of palm-leaves. Some way lower down the Tiracu are cliffs of white salt. The inhabitants of Lamas make frequent visits there, and when I visit the Guayrapurima mountain I never fail to encounter one or more troops of them. [The accompanying view of Tarapoto from the southern entrance shows the straggling suburbs backed on the north-east by the grand mountain of Guayrapurima, to which Spruce made many excur- sions. The conical peak on the left is probably the same as that shown in another drawing (at p. 94) as the singular Cerro Pelado when seen from a different point of view, perhaps from the village of Morales.] The sound of the waters of the Shillicaio generally reaches my ears in a soft murmur, often mingled with the less musical sounds of a cane-mill on its opposite margin ; the squeaking of the cane- crushers ; the shouts of the men who goad along the poor oxen or mules in their painful round ; oo C/3 -/' - ai a O _ O •f CHAP. XVI RESIDENCE AT TARAPOTO 43 the grunting of pigs, which chew the crushed canes as they are thrown out ; and very often the laughter and playful screams of boys and girls bathing in the stream. But when heavy rain falls on the hills to the northward, the swollen stream comes rushing down with a roar which drowns every other sound, bearing along with it logs and trunks of trees, and sometimes tearing loose from its banks a large mass of rock which falls with a thundering crash. At such times all communica- tion is suspended between the town and the village. The poor people who are returning from their farms on the opposite side, with their load of plantains or other vegetables, have then to wait perhaps a couple of hours shivering on the bank ere they can cross. Their natural apathy prevents the people from obviating this inconvenience by- throwing a bridge across the narrow stream, which would be easily done, as the channel is in many places scarcely ten yards across, and the banks are so high that the adjacent ground is never inundated by the highest Hoods, which always subside a few- hours after the rain ceases. A bridge was indeed commenced in 1856, but the foundations were ill-laid that the first flood swept them away. At some seasons, especially during the rains scarcely any colour but green, of various can be discerned in the landscape, save that 'in the morning the lower part of the course of the and Cumbasa are marked by a line of hovering mist, and that a tall column of grey be seen rising in the forest from some ne\ clearing; but a few sunny days after rain < the forest here and then- with the (lowers 44 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. several trees and twiners, and the colours are gayest and most varied in the months of July and August. Then are scattered over the plain, especially where the soil is sandy, dense posies of the " Purple flower," a species of Physocalymma (Lythraceae), and the less conspicuous ones of the " Yellow flower" (Vochysia sp.) ; more sparingly is seen mixed with these a larger mass of the orange flowers of Vochysia ferruginea, and these are every- where set off by white bunches of Myrtles and Melastomas. Near the Shillicaio rise here and there magnificent trees of Ama-sisa (Erythrina amasisa, Sp.), which have been spared by the axe of the first settlers — some of them as much as 80 or 100 feet high, and twice in the year, at intervals of six months, clad with large flame- coloured or vermilion flowers, sometimes with no accompaniment of leaves and sometimes with young leaves of a most delicate green just appearing. I have been delighted to walk by the Shillicaio at sunset and observe the tracery of the crown of the Ama-sisa, with its copious red tassels, projected on the pale blue eastern sky, when the flowers of almost every tree showed a different shade of yellow-red, not, however, paling to yellow on the one hand or deepening to scarlet on the other. It continues in flower nearly two months, and before it has well done flowering the ripened follicular pods splitting up on one side only, and with the two or three seeds still adhering, begin to strew the ground. The trunk is more or less closely beset with shortly conical, sharply cusped prickles.1 1 On this account it is constantly selected by the sagacious troopial (Cassiats iftcronotus] for its long pensile nests ; though, as ,if doubting that this were RESIDENCE AT TARAPOTO 45 On the declivities sloping to the Shillicaio and too steep for cultivation there are other trees of the primeval forest which flower along with the Ama- sisa, especially the Lupuna (Chorisia ventricosa], a Bombaceous tree with prickly trunk swollen above the base, producing abundance of large rose- coloured flowers, and a tree of moderate growth bearing large panicles of rather small white odori- ferous flowers (allied to Loganiaceae or Gentianese). Some two months later a low spreading Bauhinia, abundant on the rocky margin of the stream, appears every morning sprinkled with large white flowers resembling a Prince's feather in form. I know not at what hour they open, but it is certainly before daylight, as I always see them fully expanded at earliest dawn. A Capparis which often grows near it has large white inodorous flowers which begin to open at sunset, and at daybreak the stamens and petals are falling awa\ . It flowers more or less all the year round, and tin- Bauhinia does not go out of flower for full eii;ht months.1 Tarapoto is situated in a large pampa or plain sufficient to render them inaccessible, it hangs them on the very points of tin outermost twigs. All the species of troopial I have seen on the Amazon ami Rio Negro show similar foresight in selecting a place where lo rear their infant colonies; and the robber \\ln>, "I/serving no impediment from 1 ventures to climb to their eyrie finds to his cost that it i large wasps' nest, or \>y hordes »l stinging ants. 1 [It is interesting to note ho\\ often Spruce mentions white flo night-blooming, but these t\\o cases are especially interesting bccausi opens in the evening, the other apparently during the night or 1 da\\n. This accords with the fact, communicated to me by the Tring Museum, thai their moth-colld tor in South Americ besides the species of moths ili.n come to light or to flo principally up to about midnight, lie > spei probably an hour or .so before dawn till n< moths are those which fertili early llo and shrubs observed by Spruce. — A. K. \\ . | 46 NOTES OF A BOTANIST of such dimensions that London might be set down in it entire, and so completely encircled by moun- tains as to form a vast natural amphitheatre. It is about 1500 feet above the sea, while the encircling ridges are 2000 or 3000 feet above the plain, and some of the peaks one or two thousand feet more. The town dates only from some seventy years back, yet according to a census made since my arrival it numbers nearly 12,000 souls, including two small hamlets which form a kind of suburb to it. The dominion of the Incas does not seem to have extended much to the eastward of the central ridge of the Andes, and the Spaniards found this part of the montana occupied by independent Indian tribes, of which considerable remnants still exist, both pure and mixed. The first town estab- lished by the conquerors was Lamas, which stands on the top of a curious conical hill five leagues (seventeen miles) westward of Tarapoto and 1500 feet above the pampa. From my house I can, with the telescope, distinctly see the white houses glistening in the morning sun. I have also visited it, and may have something to tell you of it in a future letter. It numbers now only from 6000 to 7000 inhabitants, but Tarapoto and several villages on the Mayo and Cumbasa rivers are all colonies of Lamas. Moyobamba, more to the westward, among the mountains, has about 20,000 inhabitants ; it is the great centre of the manufacture of those beautiful straw hats sold extensively in Brazil under the name of " Chapeos de Chile," and of which the finest sell for an ounce of gold, or even more. They are made from the same plant as the Panama hats. All these places are inhabited by the same RESIDENCE AT TARAPOTO 47 mixed (and I must say very degenerate) race, who have nothing about them of the European but a whitish skin ; their ideas, modes of life, and language being still entirely Indian. Tarapoto is regularly built, and covers a good deal of ground, as the houses mostly stand in gardens. . . . They are all of a single story with thick walls of adobes and palm-thatch roofs. The climate is much drier than that of the Amazon, but this depends entirely on the peculiar position of the town, for while heavy rains are frequent on the hills, they are very rare at Tara- poto, and we see and hear almost every day violent thunderstorms skirting the pampa, but only occa- sionally giving us a slight taste. Fogs, however, are frequent in the mornings, and no doubt make up for the deficiency of the rains. As to temperature, I have once had the pleasure of seeing the thermometer at Tarapoto down to 6f at daybreak. The sensation of cold was so great that had I been in England I should have looked to see the mist deposited on the trees in the shape of hoar-frost. More commonly at that time of day the thermometer marks from 72 to 75°. At two in the afternoon it gets up to 84° to 87°, and in my house to 95 to 98°- -on one occasion to 100 . On the hills it is much cooler, and even here we have generally a strong northerly breeze from 10 A.M. to sunset, which tempers the heat. In the months of November and December, I spent three weeks on the Cerro de Campana, at three days' journey to the west of this, and two d.. from Moyobamba. Here I got nearly 4000 feet higher than the Pampa of Tarapoto, and the cold 48 NOTES OF A BOTANIST was sometimes sensible enough, but I could not take my thermometer in my excursions to the highest points. . . . I have been much interested to meet here several tribes of plants which I had not seen since leaving England. I have got, for instance, a Poppy, a Horsetail, a Bramble, a Sanicle (exceed- ingly like your common wood Sanicle), some shrubs of the Bilberry tribe with edible fruit similar to that of the English species, a Buttercup (very like the minute Ranunculus hederaceus which grows by Ganthorpe Spring), a Hydrocotyle rather smaller than the Hydrocotyle vulgaris whose round shining leaves you must have noticed in boggy parts of Welburn Moor, a Chaffweed like the minute Centunculus minimus which grows rarely on Stock- ton Common, and some others. In a deep dell on the way to Moyobamba I was delighted to find a few specimens of that rare plant the Chickweed : its seeds had most likely been brought in the dung of mules which travel that way. . . . [The following letter now takes up the narrative from the point of view of the botanical collector : — ] To Mr. George Bent-ham TARAPOTO, PERU, Dec. 25, 1855. ... I did not get away from Yurimaguas till the 1 2th of June, and on the 2ist reached the end of my long voyage. Yurimaguas has the most equable temperature I have anywhere experienced, the thermometer sometimes not varying more than 8° in twenty-four hours, but I have found no place so relaxing, and the addition of a severe attack of RESIDENCE AT TARAPOTO 49 diarrhoea and catarrh had reduced me pretty low when I left. Periodic returns of this diarrhoea, and ulcerated feet caused by walking in the cold waters of mountain streams, are the chief inconveniences I have experienced at Tarapoto. In other respects I am more agreeably placed than anywhere pre- viously in my South American wanderings. I am among magnificent scenery and an interesting vegetation, and there are a few pleasant people with whom to converse. The pampa or plain of Tarapoto is a sort of amphitheatre entirely sur- rounded by hills ; its position is in the lower angle of the confluence of the Mayo and Huallaga, and the town itself is about three leagues (ten miles) from the latter river. The hills are an offshoot from the main ridge of the Andes, and from being watered by the Mayo and its tributaries I must call them, for want of a better name, the Mayensian Andes. The ridges rise to some 3000 feet above the pampa, and some points are probably much higher. Good botanising ground is unfortunately rather distant. The pampa either is or has been wholly under cultivation, with the exception of the pre- cipitous banks of the rivulets, and it is a long way across it to the foot of the hills. The summits ot the hills have most of them never been reachec and they are clad with the same dense forest as the Amazon, showing rarely scattered bald grassy places (called pajonales or pastes), are no tracks one must ascend by the the streams, all of which, including the have the peculiarity of being, as the Peruvians boxed in (" encajonado ") between steep VOL. II 5o NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. rock, where they issue from the hills. These steep narrows are called pongos, and often include falls and rapids. They are rich places for ferns, but it is both difficult and dangerous getting along them, now and then scrambling over large slippery rocks which block up the passage, or wading up to the middle through dark holes with the water below 70°. An exploration of one of these places generally costs me a week's suffering in the feet. I have at last got into a fern country, and I have already gathered more species than in all my Brazilian and Venezuelan travels. Mosses also are more abundant, and there is a greater proportion of large species. Among the flowers I believe you will find a good share of novelty. I expect I have two new genera of Rubiaceae, both very fine things, one of them allied to Calycophyllum but with large flowers almost like those of Henriquezia. There are new things also in several other tribes. The general character of the vegetation is, as might be expected, intermediate between that of the valley of the Amazon and of its alpine sources. As evidences of an approach to cooler regions, and to a flora more European in its affinities, I may mention having met here, for the first time in my American travels, a Horsetail, a Poppy, a Bramble, a Crosswort, and a Ranunculus (a minute species, trailing over moss by mountain streams, and looking quite like a Hydrocotyle). The ferns may possibly include some new species, especially among the larger ones, which are likely enough to have been passed over on account of their bulkiness. The fronds of one of these are 22 feet in length, though it never shows more than a rudimentary caudex : its affinity seems to be with Cyathea. In my collection are a good many species of Grammitis, Meniscium, Davallia, Diplazium, Litobrochia, Aneimia, etc., together with several pretty SeJaginellas and an Adder's -tongue. A small species of Grammitis growing on trees in the mountains is very odoriferous when dry, and the Indian women put it in their hair, calling it Asinima. These things have not been got together with- out greater trouble than I had calculated on. I expected to find roads on which I could take long XVI RESIDENCE AT TARAPOTO journeys with mules, but though there are a few mules there are no roads on which they can be taken with cargoes. Between Moyobamba and the Huallaga all cargoes must be carried on Indians' backs, and indeed throughout the eastern slope of the Cordillera the roads rarely admit of any other mode. The number of Indians is constantly diminishing, and barely suffices for the ordinary traffic of the district. I have ridden a few times across the pampa to the hills, but for longer excur- sions this mode does not suit. The journey alluded to at the opening of my letter was to visit a mountain lying beyond the Mayo, at two days from Moyobamba and three from Tarapoto. It is called the Campana, from some fancied resemblance to a bell, and the road crosses it at about 3500 feet l (by barometer) above the plain of Tarapoto ; but there is a peak to northward of the pass rising a thousand feet higher. It differs notably from the adjacent mountains by being nearly all pasto, only the valleys and ravines towards its base being filled with forest, in which abundance of palms are conspicuous. The only habitation there is a chacra on the side next Moyobamba, at 1500 feet below the pass, and with no other dwelling nearer than ;i day's journey. Here I established myself with a stock of paper, and with provisions for three weeks, which I had taken the necessary precaution <>l carrying with me from Tarapoto. My cargoes loaded five men on the way thither and six on the return. I have reason to be satisfied with my success at the Campana, and 1 should probabl) 1 Perhaps 5000 feet ;I!M>VC tin- sea, I'm I havi below the mouth of the Kin V 52 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. have brought away more specimens had not my host, a few days after my arrival, been severely bitten by a snake, the cure of whom prevented my lea'ving the house for several days. [An exceedingly interesting account of this whole excursion, and of the special incident above referred to, forms part of a lengthy article in the short-lived and long-extinct periodical, the Geographical Magazine. It is unfortunately almost the only portion of his Tarapoto journal that he wrote out in full, and I therefore insert it here.] After exploring the most accessible hills and gorges within a day's journey of Tarapoto, I decided to devote a month to a mountain called La Campana or the Bell, three days' journey away to westward. It was just visible from Tarapoto, and was described to me as abounding in ferns and flowers, and having on its flanks large pajonales or natural pastures, embosomed in virgin forest. As all loads must be carried on men's backs in that region, I had first to get together a sufficient number of cargueros, as they are called, for the transport of my baggage, which included salt beef and fish, as I did not calculate on finding much beside vegetable food on the mountain, and I intended to give up my whole time to plants, and not to waste any of it in hunting game for my dinner, as I had often had to do on the Rio Negro. I started therefore on the 2Oth November (1855), accompanied by my assistant — a young English- man named Charles Nelson 1— and by six Indian 1 ["Nelson" is here mentioned for the first time, and I can find nothing L O more about him except that he \vas English, and stayed with Spruce till he left Tarapoto. — ED.] RESIDENCE AT TARAPOTO 53 cargueros. Our first day's journey, of about 15 miles, brought us to Lamas l — a town of 6000 inhabitants, near the top of a conical hill, that reminded me of similarly situated towns and villages in Valencia, as they are depicted in Cavanilles' History of that province of Old Spain. The Hill of Lamas is plainly volcanic, although there is no evidence of eruptions in the shape of lava, or any obvious crater, unless certain small lakes without inlet or outlet a little below the summit may be considered such. The fertile soil which covers its flanks, and yields abundant crops of every esculent that will bear the climate, espe- cially of the indispensable poroto (a kind of kidney-bean), consists almost entirely of decom- posed shales of divers colours — sulphur-yellow, vermilion, purple, slate-blue, and black. These shales belong to the Triassic series — near Tarapoto I found ammonites of immense size in them — and have apparently been broken up by the protrusion of a columnar jointed trap-rock, which is here and there exposed in the shape of a sloping floor, divided with much regularity into squares, rather less than a foot on the side, and called by the natives ladrillos or bricks. The slope of the floors is always towards the apex of the mountain, and is inclined to the horizon at from 10 to 30. Overlying the shales there has been a soft white sandstone, in thick strata, great part of which has been decomposed and carried into the hollows, and even into the plain below, by the torrential rains leaving only a few scattered blocks of more tena- cious material than the rest. 1 Lamas: lat. 6 5' S. ; alt. (convent) 25(14 I-:, ft., (hill-top) 2849 fl 54 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP.XV, The town occupies a series of terraces, from 200 to 300 feet below the hill-top ; but except in what is called the plaza, where the church, convent, and government house — the last appropriated to the lodging of strangers — occupy three sides of a square, scarcely anywhere is there the semblance of a street or square. The nature of the ground is partly the cause of this, for the rains have worn narrow zigzag ravines, called zanjas, 40 feet or more deep, and with perpendicular sides, that radiate from the convex summit in all directions ; so that two houses only a few paces apart may be separated by an impassable gulf, and even in the daytime it is necessary to take heed to one's steps, while by night the town is actually impass- able for a stranger. It should be added that a bridge, even in the shape of a simple plank, is a luxury unknown in the land of the Motilones. The scanty clothing worn for decency's sake in that warm region is soon dried up by the sun and wind after wading through one of the streams, even up to the neck. The zanjas widen down- wards, and from their sandy bed distils a deliciously cool and clear water, which is made to collect here and there in little wells, covered in with a fiat stone, and is used by the inhabitants for all domestic purposes. [The drawing here reproduced was made by Spruce during his two days' stay here (as stated on p. 60). It shows the plaza from a slight elevation, the irregular houses around it, the two- towered church and convent, with a detached bell-tower at some distance, as at Yurimaguas ; the whole backed by the forest-clad Tarapoto mountains. This was *F -- < -J-. CHAP. XVI RESIDENCE AT TARAPOTO 57 delicately outlined by Spruce and the shading added by Mr. Young under my directions. — A. R. W.] The river Mayo — a broad, shallow stream, whose sources are in the summits of the Eastern Cordillera— runs half round the base of the hill of Lamas, first from north to south, then eastward to unite with the Huallaga. The inhabitants of Lamas are a mixed race, descended partly from Spanish colonists, partly from the ancient Indian inhabitants, of the tribe of Motilones or Shaven Crowns ; so called by the first Europeans who visited them from their custom of cutting off the hair close to the head, with the exception of a fringe left hanging in front to the level of the eyebrows. The custom is still common among the Indians and half- Indians throughout that region ; but nowadays the barber's tools are scissors — anciently they were sharp-edged mussel- shells. In 1541, only a few years after the con- quest of Peru, Felipe de litre (or Von Huten) set out from Coro in Venezuela, in quest of El Dorado and the Omaguas, and after travelling southwards ten years, reached the province of the Motilones in Peru, by way of a large river that flows thence to the Amazon. That large river we now know to be the Huallaga. Some years later (in 1560) the famous expedition headed by Pedro de Ursua, and numbering many hundred men, reached Lamas, described as a small village of Motilones, on the banks of the river Moyobamba, where he delayed to build vessels for navigating the Amazon, his train was the infamous Lope de Aguirre, whose name — synonymous with "traitor1 throughout that region — is still given to one of the malos 58 NOTES OF A BOTANIST pasos in the rapids of the Huallaga, two days' journey below Lamas. It was not there, however, that he assassinated his patron, Ursua, but on the Amazon itself, at some place not well made out, on New Year's Day, 1561. Ursua has not been the only adventurer whose miscarriage dated from Lamas. When I embarked at Liverpool, in June 1849, for the mouth of the Amazon, I was shown by the Messrs. Singlehurst great piles of a spurious Peruvian Bark, which had been found to contain no particle of quinine or ol any cognate alkaloid, and was therefore quite un- saleable. Its history, as I made it out many years afterwards, was as follows : — A certain Don Luis — -, a young Peruvian, of good address and figure, energetic but restless, and sadly deficient in know- ledge and prudence, whilst occupied as intendant of a mine near Cajamarca, had heard reports of the abundance of bark-trees in the lower part of the valley of the Huallaga, and having obtained speci- mens of the leaves and bark, he rashly pronounced them identical with true Cascarilla, such as he had seen at Huanuco. Forthwith he persuaded several other young men — some of them of good family — to join him in an expedition in quest of it. They found it in greatest abundance on the hill ot Lamas, where they collected what they considered would make a shipload of it, embarked it on the Huallaga in rafts, and thus conveyed it all the way down the Amazon — some 2000 miles — to the port of Para. In all the towns on their route their bold venture created a great sensation. At the city of Barra (now Manaos), at the mouth of the Rio Negro, they delayed long enough for Don Luis to RESIDENCE AT TARAPOTO 59 win the heart of and actually marry the daughter of the oldest Portuguese colonist, Senhor Brandao, who (as he himself has told me) considered him- self of the same race as our ancient Dukes of Suffolk. Arrived at Para, the resident merchants and druggists, deceived by the appearance of the bark, and probably at that epoch unable to test it chemically, offered to buy the whole cargo at a price that would have amply remunerated the adventurers, who, however, now thoroughly per- suaded of the genuineness of their bark, and be- lieving they could obtain a far higher price for it in England, determined to proceed with it to Liver- pool. They accordingly freighted a vessel of Singlehurst's, partly on borrowed money and partly on credit of the proceeds of the sale they hoped to effect. It must have been a sorrowful moment for them when their bark, having been analysed at Liverpool by competent judges, was pronounced to be utterly worthless, and not Peru- vian Bark at all. When ulterior analysis only confirmed the sentence, nothing was left for them but to abandon their hoped-for source of wealth and return to their own country, which they were only enabled to do by the beneficence of the mer- chants of Liverpool. Mr. Singlehurst had the unsaleable bark left on his hands, in lieu of ^400 due to him on freight from Para, and for expense- incurred in England. At Lamas I was shown the spurious bark-tree, still growing in tolerable abundance, and recognised it as one I had gathered in llower and fruit on hill sides at Tarapoto. It is the Condaniinc bosa of Decandolle, and belongs to the same family 60 NOTES OF A BOTANIST as the Cinchonas, some of which it sufficiently resembles in both leaves and flowers, but differs generically in the seeds being wingless ; and the bark, although slightly bitter, has none of the febri- fugal and antiperiodic properties of the Cinchonas. There had not been wanting people on the spot who warned Don Luis of his mistake ; but he was too opinionated to listen to them, and persevered to his disastrous overthrow. My host at Lamas was the venerable vicar, Padre Antonio Reategui, and he must needs have me stay all the following day with him ; but the time was not lost to me, for I botanised the whole hill-top, made a sketch of the curious town, and on the two evenings of my stay profited by the intelli- gent conversation of the Padre. It was from him I got the first trustworthy account of the mountain I was bent on visiting. A small colony had recently been established on the flanks of the Campana, con- sisting of an Indian named Chumbi and his family, and of his two sisters, their husbands and young children. To Chumbi the Padre gave me a letter of recommendation, and assured me I should find in his hut at least good shelter, and store of plantains to eat along with my charqui. Having lingered so long at Lamas, I must hasten over the remainder of the journey. On the 22nd we reached Tabalosos, a small Indian village on the opposite side of the deep valley of the Mayo, and at about the same distance from Lamas as Tarapoto. At Tabalosos I passed the night in the house of some relations of Chumbi, my bed being merely a hide spread on the earthen floor, like those of the other inmates. The next day's journey was RESIDENCE AT TARAPOTO 61 a very long one, and when I returned, with heavier loads, I found it expedient to divide it into two. It would take several pages to describe the savage, rocky and wooded gorges, with rugged ascents and descents ; and the torrents that traversed them, and must be crossed and recrossed, as the cliffs rose from the water's edge, first on one side, then on the other. A turbid saline stream of considerable volume, called Cachi-yacu (Salt River), had to be waded through eleven times in the space of half a mile. When we reached the grassy rounded summit of the pass of the Campana, at about 5000 feet, the sun was fast declining, and we had still a long and devious descent on the other side of the mountain to Lirio-pampa1 (as Chumbi had called his chacra), which we reached about nightfall. On receiving the Padre's missive, Chumbi, with a profound bow, begged permission to open it, and when he had read it and applied his lips to the signature, he placed himself, his house, his wife, and his little ones at my entire disposal. Lirio-pampa was a nearly level strip of fertile land adjacent to a considerable stream (the Alan) that ran not into the Mayo, but into the Sisa, the next river entering the Huallaga to southward. It was all forest, save where Chumbi's colony had made their little plantations of plantains and other esculents, including a plot of thriving sugar-cane, <>! which the first crop was expected to be ripe by the time the mill they were putting up with wooden machinery should be ready in j^nnd it. At a short distance a spur of the Campana ran down into ill 1 Lirio-pampa: lat. 6 25' S.. [on] alt. (pass) 5144 E. ft., (nmuntain-topi <><«*• 62 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. valley, partly bare of wood but clad with natural meadow, where Chumbi had placed a few young cattle. The dwelling-house, being at a little more than a thousand metres above the sea, was in a very pleasant climate. The temperature at sunrise was usually from 64 to 68 J-- once down to 6i^°- and the maximum rarely exceeded 81°, though it once rose to 87°. The weather was fine and dry during the three weeks of our stay, except one day of heavy rain with thunder. When we had been there a few days, incessantly occupied from earliest dawn till nightfall in collecting and preserving specimens of the beautiful plants that everywhere abounded, I began to grow tired of the salt beef and fish which, with plantains and yucas, were our only fare ; and as Chumbi told me there was plenty of game in the woods, I sent him out one morning before daybreak to shoot paujiles (curassows or wood-turkeys). At 5.30 A.M. Nelson and I had our coffee, and then set off to herborize. Fortu- nately I indicated to Chumbi's wife the direction we should take, and we had been gone but a little while when her son came running after us to beg that we would return instantly, as his father had been stung by something in the wood and had reached home in a dying state. We hurried back, and on arriving at the house found Chumbi sitting on a log, looking deadly pale, and moaning from the pain of a snake-bite in the wrist of the right arm. He told us in a few broken words that he was creeping silently through the bush to get within shot of a turkey, when, on pushing gently aside an overhanging branch, he felt himself seized by the wrist, and was immediately attacked with so RESIDENCE AT TARAPOTO 63 terrible a pain that he ran off in the direction of his house as fast as he could. He judged an hour might have elapsed since he was bitten, and the hand and arm as far as the elbow were already dreadfully swollen and livid, while the pulse even in the left arm was scarcely sensible. We bandaged the arm above the elbow, and as Mr. Nelson averred that his mouth was perfectly sound I allowed him to suck the wound, which was merely two fine punctures in the wrist on a line with the little finger ; but the time was evidently past for either suction or bandaging, for Chumbi declared he felt excruciating pain in every part of his body. I also made him swallow three wine-glasses of camphorated rum, and we bathed the arm with the same spirit. Then we got him on his feet, and, one of us holding him on each side, we walked him up and down by the house. After a few turns he declared he could walk no more, and begged us to let him sit down ; but after sitting a few minutes the pain returned with redoubled violence, and the pulse, which had beat a little stronger with the stimulant and the exercise, again became imperceptible. So we forced him up again, and made him walk as long as we could ; then wrapped up the wrist in cotton soaked with spirit, and every now and then gave him a glass of the same, into which I threw a quantity of quinine. At short intervals we also gave him strong coffee, which evidently enlivened him. Still, with all we could do, and although we con- trived to keep up the circulation, the gained on us, and by night the whole arm up to the shoulder was so much swollen and discolourec as more to resemble the branch of a tree than 64 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. anything human, and the hand was most like a turtle's fin. Whilst this was going on, the relatives of the poor man kept up a continual wailing, as though he had been already dead ; and he himself, although he submitted patiently to our efforts to procure him relief, had lost all hope of living. He indicated the spot where he wished to be buried, and gave what he considered his last directions to his wife about his children and property. He also sent off a messenger to his mother and brothers at Tabalosos, telling them that he was dying, and offering them his last adieux. Towards evening, although the pain was still intense, the beating of the heart had become fuller and more regular, so that I felt sure the progress of the poison had been arrested, and I was now only afraid of mortification supervening in the c.rm. I therefore set Chumbi's wife and daughter to grind a quantity of rice, and enveloped the hand and wrist in a thick poultice, and had the rest of the arm fomented with an infusion of aromatic herbs at short intervals throughout the night. When the poultice was taken off in the morning, it was satur- ated with blood and putrid matter from the wounds, which had become much enlarged. The swelling was sensibly diminished, and the arm had become covered with pustules containing bloody serum, which we evacuated by puncturing them. A ready- made rice-poultice replaced the one taken off, and we kept up the fomentation and the poulticing until, at the end of forty-eight hours, the swelling had entirely subsided. The blood, besides break- ing out at the skin, had also got mixed with the RESIDENCE AT TARAPOTO 65 excretions. To remedy this, I prepared a decoction of an aromatic pepper (a species of Artanthe) that I had seen growing close by, and knew to be a powerful diuretic, and made him drink largely of it. In twelve hours the skin and the excretions were restored to their normal state. On the second day he could take a little broth, and on the third he again ate heartily. For a month afterwards he had occasional acute pains in the arm and about the region of the heart, but at the end of two months he was quite restored, and avowed that his arm was as strong as it had ever been. Chumbi had caught a glimpse of the snake, and recognised it as the Urrito-machacui or Parrot snake, so called from being coloured like the com- mon green parrot, and thus rendered scarcely dis- tinguishable from the foliage among which it lurks. It grows to a yard or more long, and its bite is con- sidered incurable. Several fatal cases had occurred in the country adjacent to the river Mayo. It may well be imagined that until Chumbi was fairly out of danger I felt no small anxiety, and it was not lessened by gathering from the whispers of his relatives that they considered me responsible for the accident that had befallen him. him into the forest, and had wished that the might bite him. If he had died, my life been in imminent danger. Nelson and I could probably have defended ourselves against any open attack of the few inhabitants of Lirio-pampa, we could hardly have made head against Chumb numerous relatives at Tabalosos. When I reached Lamas on my way back, VOL. II 66 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. warmly received by the worthy Padre, who had heard of what he considered the wonderful cure of the snake-bite ; but when I told him all the circum- stances, and especially that Chumbi had been bitten when on my errand, he looked very grave. "If Chumbi had died," said he, " I should never have seen you more. Chumbi's relatives would have poisoned you. I in vain preach to them," he con- tinued, " of what the Bible tells us about the entrance of sin and death into the world, and appeal to their reason to note how the body wears out wich age, and how it is constantly exposed to accidents which may suddenly bring its machinery to a dead stop ; they still in their inmost hearts believe — as their pagan ancestors believed — that death is in every case the work of an enemy." Chumbi himself was very grateful to me, and during the remainder of my stay at Tarapoto often sent me little presents, especially of cakes of chancaca or uncrystallised sugar, the produce of his chacra ; and he told to all the passers-by the story of his narrow escape from death by a snake- bite, through the skill (as he was pleased to say) of an Englishman. Venomous snakes become rarer in the Equatorial Andes when we ascend beyond 3000 feet, and at about 6000 feet disappear altogether — at least I never saw or heard of one above that height. The natives believe the snakes of the sierra to be just as venomous as those of the plains, and that it is the cold that renders them bobas (stupid) - - of course a mistaken notion, like most other popular beliefs. The superstition that it is unlucky for a woman RESIDENCE AT TARAPOTO 67 to kill a snake I have found among the native races all the way across South America, but nowhere so strong as in the roots of the Andes. A woman must never kill a snake when she can get a man or boy to do it for her. In some places it must not only be killed but buried. When among the wild Jibaro and Zaparo Indians in the Forest of Canelos, I have sometimes had to kill two or three snakes a day for the women. How is it that the woman and the serpent are in mysterious relation in the early traditions of many civilised nations, and in the actual customs of savage nations even at the present day ? [It may be as well to continue here Spruce's experience of the results of the bites and stings of venomous insects, especially as they include one during his residence at Tarapoto which had results as bad as those of his Indian host above described.] After snakes, the venomous animals most to be dreaded are the large hairy spiders, especially the species of Mygale, of whose bird-hunting propen- sities Mr. Bates and others have told us. I never saw a case of their sting, and all I ever heard of proved fatal except one, and that was of a woman at San Carlos, who was bitten in the heel and im- mediately dropped, with a shriek, as if shot, lay at the point of death for ten days, but finally recovered. I have been bitten by spiders, but never seriously. At Tarapoto a smallish green spider abounded in the bushes, and would times be lurking among my fresh specimens bit furiously when molested, with an effect al> equal to the sting of a bee. At the cockroaches were a great pest in the 68 NOTES OF A BOTANIST bored holes in the wall, which looked as if some one had amused himself by thrusting his finger into the adobes while still fresh and soft. They had a great enemy in the large house-spider, which springs on its prey from concealment, but spins no web. I had a tame spider for above a year, which used to come every evening for its supper of cockroaches. When I lighted my lamp, it would be waiting behind and upon the open door for the cock- roach, which — dazzled by the glare- - I had no difficulty in catching with my forceps. Sometimes, after an hour or two, it would come back for a second cockroach. Once, as I offered it the cock- roach, I suddenly substituted my finger, which it seized, but immediately released without wounding, although this spider can bite severely when irritated. Next to snakes and spiders come the ants, which are so numerous, and so ubiquitous, that no one escapes them. Their stings are of all degrees of virulence, but rarely prove fatal. Many ants bite fiercely, but not venomously. I could fill many pages with my experiences of these pugnacious and patriotic marauders, and of the nearly-related wasps. I once sent an Indian up a tall laurel, a hundred feet high, to gather the flowers. At half-way up was the first branch, and a large paper wasps' nest in the fork, hidden from view by the ample leaves of an Arad. As he passed it, the angry insects swarmed out, but he gained the top of the tree without a sting, broke off some flowering branches and threw them down. Unfortunately, there was no friendly liana by which he could slide down or pass to a neighbouring tree, and he must needs descend the way he ascended. He did so, through RESIDENCE AT TARAPOTO 69 a perfect cloud of wasps, and got horribly stung. When we had got away from the foot of the tree, and had beaten off the wasps that followed him, I saw that his face and his naked back and shoulders were covered with knobs from the stings. He staggered and looked wild, and was evidently in great pain. I took out my flask, and was about to pour some spirit into my hand to bathe the stings, when he said, " If it's all the same to you, patron, I'd rather have it inside." I gave him the flask, and he took a good pull. No doubt he preferred the remedy that way because he liked the taste of it. Anyhow, it was the right way, and he went on through a long hard day without a word or gesture of disquiet, and when we reached home declared himself quite well again. I have been stung by wasps I suppose hundreds of times — once very badly, having above twenty stings in my head and face alone. Yet I have always admired their beauty, ingenuity, and heroic ferocity ; and I have twice in my life lived on good terms with them for months together. At Carlos I had several little colonies of the large brown house-wasps, which hung their nests- inverted goblet-glasses — from the rafters, and out- side the house under the eaves. They never once stung me, not even when they had so multipl to become troublesome, and 1 poked down ami swept out several of their nests. They seemed t<> recognise me as the real owner of the house;, where they existed only on sufferance, who should imprudently linger in the would be sure to be attacked by them, in his Expedition to Surinam, gives ;o NOTES OF A BOTANIST account of an impertinent intruder on his dormitory who was ignominiously tumbled down the ladder by his house-wasps. They serve to keep down the pest of large flies and cockroaches, and it is amus- ing to watch them at work, both as butchers and as builders. On the Casiquiari, when we were one day hook- ing along my piragoa against the rapid current, one of the hooks caught a branch on which was a large wasps' nest. The wasps sallied out in thousands, and the men threw down their hooks and leaped into the river. I \vas at work in the cabin, and had just time to throw myself flat on my face, when the fierce little animals came buzzing in, and settled on me in numbers, but not one of them stung me. The boat drifted down the stream, and in a few minutes all the wasps had left it, when the men clambered on board and pulled across to the opposite bank. Another day I had got on the top of the cabin to gather the flowers of a tree over- head, and the first thing I hooked down was a wasps' nest, which I kicked into the river, and then went on gathering my specimens — battling all the while with the wasps and getting severely stung- for I saw the tree was new (it is Hirtella Casi- qniarensis, n. sp. hb. 3196), and was determined not to leave it ungathered. Scorpions and centipedes are formidable and repulsive enough to look at — I have seen the latter ii inches long- -but their sting or bite is rarely fatal. When it is so, the last stage of suffering is always lockjaw ; and it is the same in death from ant and wasp stings. I have been a few times stung by scorpions, but only once badly, in a finger which RESIDENCE AT TARAPOTO 71 was benumbed for a week afterwards. That was at Guayaquil, where the scorpions are of different species from those of the Amazon, and more virulent. It is a common thing there for a person stung by a scorpion to have the tongue paralysed for some hours. This property suggests a new version of The Taming of the Shrew, much to be commended to Guayaquilian Petruchios. The stinging properties of the large hairy tropical caterpillars are well known. The venom resides in the long fascicled hairs, and the pain of the sting is so like that of a nettle — although often far more acute, and extending far beyond the surface stung -that it is presumable the hairs are hollow, with a poison-bag at the base, like the stinging hairs of nettles. But an hour's careful examination of the hairs in the live animal would settle this question, so that it is useless to theorise about it. I have had rather too much experience of mere mechanical stinging by vegetable hairs, which are usually minute or scabrous bristles, closely set on the leaves, pods, or other parts of a plant, and deciduous that a touch brings them off. The pocli of Mucunas (i.e. Co witches), the spathes of some palms, the spathe-like bracts and stipules Cecropias and some other Artocarps with this sort of pubescence, and I hav considerably punished in collecting and preparing the specimens. In all these the bristle:- least their points, remain sticking in the it is this that causes the. irritation ; but alt sting of a caterpillar nothing is visible beyond the inllained surface. Leguminous trees are peculiarly 72 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. infested with stinging caterpillars. Children who play under the Tamarind trees at Guayaquil often get badly stung by hairy caterpillars that drop on them. I had always made light of caterpillars' stings until one evening at Tarapoto, in gathering specimens of an Inga tree, I got badly stung on the right wrist, at the base of the thumb ; and when the pain and irritation at the end of half an hour went on increasing, I applied solution of ammonia pretty freely, and it proved so strong as to produce excoriation. The next morning the wound (for such it had become) was inflamed and very painful, but I tied a rag over it and started for the forest, accompanied by three men. We were out twelve hours, and had cold rain from the sierras all day ; and when I reached home again my right hand was swollen to twice its normal size, and the swelling extended far up the arm. That was the beginning of a time of the most intense suffering I ever endured. After three days of fever and sleepless nights, ulcers broke out all over the back of the hand and the wrist — they were thirty-five in all, and I shall carry the scars to my grave. For five weeks I was condemned to lie most of the time on a long settle, with my arm (in a sling) resting on the back, that being the easiest position I could find. From the first I applied poultices of rice and linseed, but for all that the ulceration ran its course. At one time the case looked so bad that mortification seemed imminent, and I speculated on the possibility of instructing my rude neighbours how to cut off my hand, as the only means of saving my life. I attributed my sufferings almost entirely to the RESIDENCE AT TARAPOTO / O ammonia — or rather to my abuse of it --and to the subsequent chill from exposure to wet ; for had I not ibeen impatient of the pain of the sting, I have little doubt it might soon have subsided of itself. [A few more passages from the letter to Mr. Bentham, illustrating the difficulties a collector has to encounter, are now given. It is probable that the same condition of things still exists there.] TARAPOTO, Dec. 1855. I have been most put about here for materials of which to make boxes, as such things as boards are not to be had. The only use the inhabitants have for a board is to make a door, and this is either cut out of some old canoe or they cut down a tree in the forest, roughly carve out a door from it on the spot, and bring it home on their backs. For other purposes, such as benches, shelves, bedsteads, etc., the never- failing Cana brava (Gync- nuiu saccharoides] is all they require. After trying in vain to buy boards, I went to two ports on the Huallaga and in each of them bought an old canoe. I had then to go again with a carpenter to cut them up into pieces of convenient size, which had to be conveyed to Tarapoto on Indians' backs, and afterwards laboriously adxed down into something like boards. All this, with the trouble of looking up Indians, the making of two boxes and prepar- ing boards for other two, left me little leisure for anything else for the space of near a month. I propose extending my stay at Tarapoto little over the twelvemonth say to some in 74 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. August. I shall thus be able to gather a few things which illness and fatigue obliged me to leave at the time of my arrival. I have been on the top of three mountains, and their vegetation is so nearly identical, that I should hardly find work at Tarapoto for a second year. . . . [The next letter from Tarapoto to Mr. Bentham, dated April 7, 1856, is chiefly personal and botanical gossip relating to his work and future travels. After describing how a box from England was damaged and nearly lost by the boat being wrecked in the rapids of the Huallaga, he adds : " The diffi- culty, risk, and expense of getting plants from here all the way down to the mouth of the Amazon are so great, that I see my Tarapoto collections are not likely to repay more than the expense of collecting." The letter concludes with a reference to the news he had just received of the ravages of yellow fever at the Barra, and then gives a short bio- graphical note about a bird- collector, whose name and specimens must be well known to most English ornithologists. I therefore give it.] " I am sorry to say that Hauxwell is about per- cliclo (lost) as far as natural history is concerned, which is a pity, as no one has come here who puts up birds so beautifully as he does. He has got an Indian squaw and a child, and is turned ' merchant.' I am surprised he writes English (with a small taste of 'Yorkshire') so well as he does. His parents removed from Hull (where he was born) to Oporto when he was a little boy ; thence he came out to the coast of Brazil as merchant's clerk, and anon turned naturalist." RESIDENCE AT TARAPOTO 75 [The next letters to Mr. Bentham are nearly a year later, and from these I give a few more extracts of general or botanical interest.] To Mr. George Bentham TARAPOTO, PERU, March 10, 1857. I am still a prisoner here, what with revolutions on the one hand which render the Sierra very unsafe to pass, and with the swollen rivers on the other ; as soon as the latter abate we hope to be off. ... I cannot collect more, because excursions to be profitable would be long and expensive, and I want to save my money for my Ecuadorean expedition ; so I am ruminating on dried herbs, and working off arrears in my Journal. To Mr. George Bentham TARAPOTO, PERU, March 14, 1857. I believe I told you some time ago of my inten- tion of proceeding to Guayaquil in company with two Spaniards (Don Ignacio Morey and Don Victori- ano Marrieta), who are going thither to purchase hats. . . . We had made our arrangements going overland, but the revolution which has come almost general throughout Peru, and which nobody thinks can be closed in less than six months, renders the roads impassable. We have therefore reverted to our original project of proceeding up the Pastasa. . . . The advantage of thi.1- that one thus avoids the yellow fever of the of Peru and Ecuador, and its disadvantages ;6 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. chance of being killed and eaten by the " Infieles ' on the Pastasa, or of being prostrated by ague. I think that on the whole my Maynensian col- lection may contain as many new genera as that of the Uaupes, but proportionately fewer new species. I have been much interested in it, because to many plants of Amazonian type it unites a good many characteristic Peruvian. Such are Weinmannia, the ivy -like Cornidia (three species), an arbor- escent Boccinia, the curious Proteaceous genus Embothrium (one or two species), and several others. [The " revolution " just mentioned in the letter to Mr. Bentham is more fully described in the following letter to Mr. Teasdale written a few days later. This letter also contains an account of some of the industries of Tarapoto, and serves to com- plete the rather meagre narrative of Spruce's residence at this place. There are, however, a considerable number of "notes" on various aspects of the town and its inhabitants, and there is even a list of headings for chapters, showing that he had the idea of some day writing a very complete account of the district which was at that time the most easterly outlier of civilisation in Northern Peru, and one of the places least known — as it still seems to be — to European, or at all events to English travellers.] To Mr. John Teasdale TARAPOTO, PERU, March 16, 1857. I have been waiting here to proceed to Quito since November last. Money which I had been RESIDENCE AT TARAPOTO 77 expecting for months from Para did not come till the end of the year, and by that time nearly all Peru was in a state of revolution. The first wave of insurgency rose in this very province, but was soon stilled. The Governor (Colonel Ortiz) was on his way from Tarapoto, where he had been so- journing a while, to Nauta, his usual place of abode. He went by way of the river Ucayali, and ere he could reach Nauta, the garrison of that place had deserted, and set off for Tarapoto by way of the iluallaga. From Nauta he pursued them, but they reached Tarapoto before him and took it without resistance. They got here by night, made the Commandant prisoner in his bed, and the small garrison left here by Colonel Ortiz deserted to the insurgents. It was festival time at Tarapoto, and the town was full of people. As day broke they were preparing to resume the festivities — for the insurrection had been accomplished so quietly that few but the actors knew of it — when all at once the cry arose " Viene el reclntamicnto \ The horror of that word to a Peruvian may be compre- hended when I add that " recruiting ' in Peru is something like what the pressgang used to be in England, only much more barbarous. Somebody had caught sight of the soldiers' uniforms once concluded it to 1)" a recruiting party, mediately all was panic and confusion, and in 1<- than an hour nearly the whole population lull Might. As I sat with my door open, (jtiii.-tl; working at in}' plants, I could see a continu* stream across the pampa «l people laden ' household gods, as it emigrating; and the drum fiddles, and guitars which had been ;8 NOTES OF A BOTANIST three previous days were all silent. Two men ran by my house to hide in the sugar-canes on the hill- side, but so terrified were they that they could not reply a word to my inquiries. I got my breakfast, and about noon walked into the town to see if I could make out what had happened. The hot sun beat down into the streets, in which no living thing was to be seen save a few lazy dogs and pigs lying under the projecting eaves, and the houses were all closed as if some inmate had died. I walked on and on till I came to the house of Don Ignacio Morey, who I knew had gone down to the Amazon some weeks previously ; but I found his wife and trembling children, naturally full of anxiety. From them, however, I learnt that it was probably no recruiting force, but a revolutionary one, that had arrived. I returned to my house, and shortly after- wards news was brought me that the insurgents had sacked the Commandant's house, not leaving therein so much as a cup, and that they were pre- paring to sack other houses. I loaded my six- shooter and my double-barrelled "Nock," and prepared to defend my house ; but at this junc- ture a report reached the insurgents that a mes- senger had arrived from Colonel Ortiz, to warn the local authorities of what had occurred ; and, armed with bayonets, they proceeded to search the houses where they supposed he might be hidden, but with- out finding him. Then, fearing on the one hand the arrival of Colonel Ortiz in their pursuit, and on the other that news of their uprising should reach Moyobamba before them, they began to prepare for departing, and at nightfall started for Moyo- bamba—five days' journey away at the least — where RESIDENCE AT TARAPOTO 79 they calculated their numbers would be swelled by all who were disaffected towards the Government. But as soon as they were gone the loyal people of Tarapoto sent off a courier who passed them on the road, unseen, that very night, and reached Moyobamba long before them ; so that the sub- prefect of that city, warned of their approach, placed an ambush in the way, which poured in a deadly fire on the insurgents, killing or wounding all the leaders. The rest fled into the forest, but after several days' chase were all captured. Among the slain was a young lieutenant, Don Domaso Castaiion, who had been my particular friend at Tarapoto — a man of some talent, but of an ardent, impatient spirit. I had lent him two numbers of the Illus- trated London News, and when he left Tarapoto in hot haste, he still found time to make a roll of them and write on it, " Esto es de Don Ricardo " -the last words he wrote in this world, poor fellow ! Thus ended this ill-concerted attempt at revolu- tion. Its originators proposed to place < .cneral Vivanco in the presidency, in the room of the actual president General Castilla ; and they e> pectecl that in all the towns on their route to the capital they would be joined by numbers who desire a change of government, so that by the time they reached Lima their forces would exceed anything Castilla could bring against them. After this, there was an uprising throughout ill south of Peru with the same object in vie this moment it has become nearly general in country. Those who adhere to Yivancc numerous that it is thought Castilla must ultimate 8o NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. fall, although no one expects the struggle will be over in less than six months. [No ! Castilla proved too strong for them.] Meantime, an innocent traveller, who may be supposed to possess any- thing worth robbing, runs the risk of being accused as a partisan, either of Vivanco or of Castilla, according to the colour of the revolutionary band he falls in with ; so that even Peruvians, who have anything to lose, put off their journeys to an inde- finite date. I had lately a dispute with the present Commandant of Tarapoto — a presumptuous, ignorant young fellow — wherein he propounded the doctrine " En tiempo de revolucion todos los bienes sou comunes \ ' I told him the intent of such revolu- tions was simply indiscriminate plunder. On the last day of the carnival (Shrove Tuesday) we had an uprising of the Indians, and there was a struggle between them and the soldiery in the square. Several Indians received bayonet-wounds, and one died of his wounds the second day. A few days ago a tiger 1 was killed within forty paces of my house. I was sitting in the doorway at daybreak, sipping my chocolate, when I heard a multitude of people running down the valley and uttering the most infernal cries, among which I at length distinguished the word "puma" many times repeated. I seized my pistol and ran to the edge of the barranco, where I saw the puma coming straight for my door ; but he missed the narrow track among the canes — the only practicable ascent —and got to the foot of the barranco, where it rose in a perpendicular wall 30 feet high. There he was 1 [This term seems to be applied to both the puma and the jaguars — very distinct animals. — ED.] XVI RESIDENCE AT TARAPOTO 81 speedily dispatched with bullets and lances. He made indeed no sign of resistance, and seemed stupefied by the savage shrieks and cries of his pur- suers, who must have been near upon a thousand. They then carried him out to a piece of open ground, skinned, roasted, and ate him. This un- fortunate tiger had been surprised while quietly breakfasting on a fat turkey. Tiger-skins— both of the red puma and the spotted jaguar — may be bought here for the merest trifle — a knife or a handkerchief. They serve me for cushions and mats, and my dog's bed is usually a tiger's skin- stretched across the doorway by night, for I generally sleep with the door wide open on account of the heat. The dog amuses himself by gnawing at them, and in this way has eaten me up three tigers' skins. In a box of plants I am dispatching to Mr. Bentham I have enclosed a small parcel for you containing two " monteras," which are broad- brimmed cloth hats of many colours, worn by all the women of Tarapoto in out-of-door work. It they reach you safely, will you keep one of them for Mrs. Teasdale and keep the other for my sister Lizzie. Although they may never be worn, they will serve as memorials of the usages of a strange land, and of a friend whom you may never again. They will probably seem to you out- rageously gaudy and harlequin-like, but somehow they harmonise excellently hen- with everything around them. They arc worn by the chiefly when spinning cotton yarn in the or in the open grounds near the town, of spinning is this. A little child VOL. II 82 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. projecting roof of the house, or anywhere in the shade, turning a wheel with one hand ; and as he turns he gaily sings, or now and then munches at a truncheon of inguire (boiled green plantain) he holds in his other hand. An upright piece attached to the frame of the wheel carries one or several spindles, and from each spindle a woman spins away in a right line, all she has to do being to draw out the cotton (which she carries in little rolls in her girdle) to a uniform thickness. Here and there forked sticks, 6 or 7 feet long, are stuck up, over which the lengthening thread is passed, so that pigs and other animals running about may not get entangled in it. The work of spinning begins at daybreak, and as the morning mist rolls away hundreds of spinners are to be seen on the pampa —each crowned with her gay montera — drawing out their long gossamer lines. As the sun rises higher, and even the broad montera cannot wholly shade the spinner's face from the intense heat of his rays, the task is laid aside, to be resumed towards evening, and sometimes, when there is a bright moon, continued till a late hour. Cotton-spinning is the principal industry of the women of Tarapoto. The thread is remarkably strong, and is woven by the men into a coarse cloth called " tocuyo," which used formerly to be much exported to Brazil ; but latterly English and American unbleached cottons (called " tocuyo Inglez") have come hither so cheap that the native manufacture has greatly fallen off. RESIDENCE AT TARAPOTO 83 A SKETCH OF SPRUCE'S BOTANICAL EXCURSIONS WHILE RESIDING AT TARAPOTO (Bv THE EDITOR) [Among Spruce's MSS. are a number of loose sheets (about sixty or seventy) in a stiff paper cover, inscribed " Notes for Description of Tarapoto, in the Andes of Maynas or Eastern Peru." These are grouped under twenty - five headings, including topography and geology ; the inhabitants, their industries, customs, amusements, etc. ; the climate and natural history of the surrounding country ; languages, government, etc. etc., evidently showing that he intended writing a full account of the interesting and little known district. But the " Notes " themselves are very fragmentary, and quite unfitted for any one but a person with full local knowledge to make any use of. Some are mere headings of subjects to be treated, others are very brief memoranda of facts or figures, while wherever there is any consecutive description this has been often utilised for some of the letters or extracts already given. Besides these loose memoranda, there is small " Note-book " already referred to, ' a list of all his more important botanical e> generally a mere bald statement that such a < or mountain was visited on such a day, month, with, very rarely, a note added ol special feature of the excursion. a suppl to this, we have a few scattered "notes" of some of the more interesting*, but these, too, are quite fra^mrntury and 84 NOTES OF A BOTANIST break off in the middle, and appear never to have been finished. I have also a rude sketch-map of the plain of Tarapoto, and of the chief villages, streams, and mountains around it, drawn from his own compass- bearings taken from various elevated spots and mountains, and by a few latitudes and longitudes from his own astronomical observations. This I have endeavoured to fill up from the notes and descriptions so as to include all the chief places he visited during his explorations. This will, I hope, enable the reader to follow more easily the references to places in his letters, and the short sketch I may be able to give of his botanical work in this very rich and then almost unknown district. Among the notes for his account of Tarapoto there is a rather full description of the roads, where there were any, along which he had to pass to and fro in various directions. This is not only instruc- tive and interesting in itself, but is essential to a proper comprehension of the difficulties under which his collections were made, even in this outlying portion of the Andes, where the mountains were very little higher than those in our own country. I will therefore give it in full.] THE ROADS COMMUNICATING WITH TARAPOTO The roads between the towns mostly occupy ancient Indian tracks, and it is easy to see how they were originally made out. Some bare grassy summit which will admit of a view being taken ahead, and which is nearly in the direction of the RESIDENCE AT TARAPOTO 85 place to be reached, has been sought to be obtained by following a ridge separating two streams. The summit attained, another similar one has been picked out and reached in a similar manner, often no doubt with much trouble, and after considerable entanglement in the valleys. Thus the roads here, like the first-made roads in all parts of the world, go straight over the tops of hills, instead of winding around their base. The dense forest makes the finding of a way among hills infinitely more difficult when no compass is used, and though it would seem more feasible to have sought out a passage along the watercourses, a very little practice shows the impossibility of this. Besides that the vegetation is much ranker .near water, the course of the streams -not merely their bed, but the whole of the narrow valley in which they run — is so obstructed by large masses of rock and stones as to be all but impass- able, and completely so when the valley narrows to a gorge with perpendicular sides which merely admits the passage of the stream in an alternation ot cascades and deep still pools. To avoid a pongo — as these gorges are called — one must climb a mountain-side and then go down again, and perhaps steep cliffs render descent impossible for a long distance. Hence it may be seen how, seeking out the sharp ridge of a mountain, when not too steep, we really avoid invincible obstructions, although we have to ascend and descend great heights. It is true that a little previous survr\ and a little good engineering would smooth down most of the difficulties that offer themselves, and have no doubt that good winding mule-road.* slight inclination, might !><• made in any part i 86 NOTES OF A BOTANIST mountains I have yet seen ; but here, where not even spade or pickaxe are used, much less has it ever been attempted to move a rock by gunpowder, what can be expected ? All that is generally done is to clear away the forest with axe and cutlass, and that often imperfectly, stumps of trees being often left some inches above the ground, while the branches and twiners overhead are cut away only to such a height as may be reached by an Indian, so that a tall horseman has to look out continually to save his head from entanglement. Rarely is any attempt made to level the road with a rude hoe, and the tropical rains are left to smooth or furrow it according to the locality. In steep hollow ascents logs are sometimes laid across, against which sand accumulates with the rains, and thus'a sort of stair is formed. The idea of a cutting along the face of a declivity, or even the rudest bridge over the streams, never occurs to any one. No one is charged with the repair of the highways, and it is only once a year that the inhabitants of the pueblos clear the portions allotted to them, cutting away the brush that has accumulated. When a tree has fallen across the track, those who next pass that way make a fresh track through the forest around the fallen mass as best they may, for they rarely carry with them axes, or have time to spend an hour or two in clearing the road. Those who follow enlarge the track with their cutlasses, and thus one is continually coming on narrow and difficult turns. The principal road in Maynas is that leading from Tarapoto to Moyobamba,. and thence to Chachapoyas. As far as Moyobamba it is just practicable for horsemen, who, however, have to RESIDENCE AT TARAPOTO pass some dangerous places on foot, but laden beasts cannot traverse it. From Moyobamba to Chachapoyas it is said to offer still greater natural obstacles, but to be kept in better order, so that mules can be used if carrying a single burden of five arrobas (160 pounds). Thence to the coast there is a good broad road on wKich mules can pass carrying ten arrobas, divided into two equal portions one on each side. From Tarapoto to Tabalosos — two short days' journey — the road is good enough to allow mules to pass, and the latter part of it (from Lamas to Tabalosos) is especially well kept, which is due to the Cura of Lamas having often to traverse it, and as the people hold him in great respect they take care that he shall find everything as smooth as possible. All the brush is kept down and no stumps are left sticking out. But from the first stream beyond Tabalosos the road is in a deplorable state, and the natural obstruc- tions are very great. To avoid a ravine on the Cachi-yacu, a steep ridge (the Andarra) has to be crossed, in many parts by climbing high natural steps which are very dangerous on horsebacl the other side of the Andarra the channel ot the Cachi-yacu has been followed for about an hour, sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other, here and there a cliff has to be scaled by the aid ol roots spreading over it. The crossings ol tin- river are the worst, for the water is always turbid, runs rapidly .over and amongst slippery that on stepping into the water one rarel one is going to tread on. The water is knee-deep, and sometimes more ; indeed, 88 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. stream be swollen it is quite impassable, and travellers have to wait till it abates. The whole number of these crossings is twelve, and after leaving it a tributary stream of scarcely less size has to be crossed thrice in ten minutes. Many attempts have been made to find a way which shall avoid the gorge of the Cachi-yacu, but hitherto without success. Beyond this there is a long painful ascent to a spring of clear water called Potrero, where the traveller begins to emerge on the grassy plateaux and declivities of the Campana. In imitation of the tambos or houses of rest and refreshment placed by the Incas along their great roads, the modern Peruvians have erected sleeping- places wherever the pueblos are at too great a distance to be reached in one day. To these also they give the name of tambos, but they are as inferior to the ancient ones as are the modern roads to the solid structures of the Incas. They consist of a roof supported on four bare poles, without walls, but when large and well-made such shelters answer their purpose tolerably well. Of course they have no permanent occupants, and the only thing a traveller can calculate on finding when he reaches a tambo is fire, which is rarely allowed to become extinguished, as it is the custom for those who have last occupied it to leave their fire well heaped up with rotten logs. A slight channel is made round the tambo to carry off rain-water, and the soil taken out serves to heighten the floor- ing, which, being spread with palm-leaves or with fern, the traveller extends thereon his mattress or his blanket, and wrapped up in his poncho and another blanket, may calculate on passing the night RESIDENCE AT TARAPOTO 89 without suffering from mosquitoes, though a snake may creep to his side for warmth, or he may be disturbed by the invasion of a jaguar, especially if he has allowed his fire to get low. Tambos are always placed near good water, and as every traveller carries his coffee-pot and provisions, he has it in his power to enjoy one of the greatest of earthly pleasures — a cup of good coffee after a long and fatiguing walk or ride. Pans for cooking can rarely be carried, but meat and plantains can easily be roasted. The inhabitants of Tarapoto have often good broad roads to their farms and cane-mills, especially when several of these lie in the same direction. A great obstacle to the use of these, and indeed of all other roads, is in the swelling of streams and the improvidence of the people in making no bridges ; and though the waters generally fall as rapidly as they have risen, several hours must sometimes be passed on the banks, at great inconvenience or loss, awaiting their abatement. [Besides this main western route to Moyobambu, two other roads or mule-tracks lead out of Tarapoto to the south and east. That to Juan Guerra has been referred to in Spruce's letter to Teasi describing his journey to Tarapoto. Another goe nearly due east till, after crossing the rivers Shillicaio and Aguashiyacu, with their intervening hill ridges, it sends a branch south-westwards, and then again eastward to Chapaja on the Huallaga river, while the main route continues over a high : of Mount Guayrapurima to Chasuta, at th entrance of the pongo of that river, these roads Spruce collected assiduous! 90 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. also made numerous expeditions to the mountains which surround Tarapoto, especially on the north, east, and west, as well as along the banks, up the valleys, and through the gorges of the numerous streams and rivers that issue from them into the pampa of Tarapoto. If the difficulties along the beaten tracks \vere often great, it may be imagined what they were when he had to penetrate these almost untrodden mountains and valleys, densely covered with virgin forest, and for the most .part rarely or never visited by any of the inhabitants oi the surrounding country. Owing to the almost complete absence of any account of these various journeys, I can only give a bare enumeration of them, with a few scattered notes on some of their features where such exist. During the first month of his residence (June to July 1855) we have only the note --" Collecting near Tarapoto." This no doubt means within the limits of a day's walk, which would take him over nearly the whole surface of the pampa. From various notes and scattered remarks we learn that although this pampa had been more or less completely cleared of its original virgin forest, and cultivated for more than a hundred years, yet strips and patches of the original vegetation remained along the steep banks of the numerous rivers and a few other precipitous or rocky portions, while con- siderable tracts had reverted to second - growth woods, mostly of shrubs and low trees, thus furnish- ing work for the plant-collector at the flowering seasons of the various kinds of plants. We accord- ingly find a similar note for the month of Sep- tember, then in January 1856, again in July and RESIDENCE AT TARAPOTO 91 in September 1856, and in November of the same year.1 After the first month he began the more difficult excursions — to the pongo of the Shillicaio, to the river Aguashiyacu, and to Mount Guayrapurima. This latter mountain he visited twice afterwards- in January and in June 1856, staying some days, or perhaps even weeks, each time. Of the second of these excursions there are a few notes. This mountain, whose highest summits lie about 12 to 15 miles due east of Tarapoto, sends out spurs to the Huallaga, while to the north-west it extends till it mingles with the more prominent mountains north of the town. It consists of many steep ridges, which from some aspects give it a serrated appearance, while from Tarapoto it has a pyramidal outline with much-broken sides. It is penetrated by deep and almost impassable ravines and valleys. The meaning of the name is " Where the wind blows," and Spruce says that on the high ridges (over one of which the road to Chasuta passes) the wind seems to be almost constant, and strong as in precipitous parts of the track to be dangerous. They blow always from the north, and where Spruce slept, a few hundred feet below the 1 [Among the miscellaneous " notes " on Un- interesting remark : "doing out of Tarapoto in different direc the soil may be the same, there is much difference in the accounts for the large amount of time he devoted to this pampa instructive as showing that differences of conditions quiU determine the presence or ab^-ncx- of certain species at no doubt in some cases their absolute extinction or preservr the same phenomenon occurs everywhere around us, as but they sometimes forget what a striking proof such of the struggle for existence, even undei what appear t favourable conditions, and the rigidity of the mines the result. — Ki>. 1 92 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP.™ ridge on the eastern side, he heard it blowing all night. On the top of the narrow ridge of crum- bling sandstone covered with a dwarf herbaceous and shrubby vegetation, it is hardly possible to walk on account of its violence. Spruce here remarks : " The descent on the east side of this col, towards Chasuta, is very abrupt ; the trees are mostly low; they, like the rocks and the ground, are densely clad with Hepaticae (especially Mastigobryum, Lepidozia, and Plagiochila), among which grew several ferns, especially some inter- esting arborescent species of small size. In places where the road has been cut or worn down, so as to form deep hollows, the walls (red sandy clay) are clad with mosses and ferns, especially a pretty little Lindsaea and three species of Tricho- manes." Later, in the Journal of his voyage from Tarapoto to Ecuador, he speaks of this descent from the ridge of Guayrapurima to a clear stream called Carana, as being " the richest bit of fern ground I had seen in the world " ; while, after another hour's journey and a steep descent, he reached the Yacu-catina, which he describes as "a most picturesque rivulet with a magnificent fern and forest vegetation." His next expedition was to Chapaja, on the banks of the Huallaga, in October 1855 ; but of this there are no notes. Early in November he took a two days' expedi- tion " to the head of the Cumbasa river and Mount Canela-uesha, on the way to the stream Cainarache, down which canoes pass to Yurimaguas." In November and December 1855, he took his ' Jritf> PfA*; Hi ' * kTT Vw I "X 318? f ^> •lEf ; Vi tfl X o o o o o o v/1 c o H o z < z D \ CHAP, xvi RESIDENCE AT TARAPOTO 95 first expedition to the Campana Mountain and Lirio-pampa, already described at some length. In February 1856, he made an excursion to the head of the Puca-yacu, on the western slopes of Mount Guayrapurima. In March he went to the Upper gorges of the Shillicaio river. In May he went to the top of Cerro Pelado, and to the upper gorges of the Aguashiyacu, Uchulla- yacu, etc. There are a few notes on Mount Pelado, which consists of bare sharp ridges running about S.E. and N.W., the N.E. side being very pre- cipitous but sloping more gradually towards the plain of Tarapoto. The rocks are covered with lichens, a few ferns, some rigid-leaved Liliacea?, and a few dwarf shrubs. From the S.E. the ridges dip abruptly to deep ravines, which form the sources of the streams of the pampa, as well as of some tributaries of the Huallaga. Lower down the slopes are clad with low forest which is densely mossy. The summit of all the ridges is a white, friable, coarse-grained sandstone, in thin layers, inclined at a very high angle. The Cumbasa rises to the north of this group of mountains, and many of the deep ravines above mentioned are some <>t its tributaries. (The accompanying beautiful drawing ol mountains north of Tarapoto is the only one of large size which was carefully shaded by Spruce himself. With the one exception of the immediate rough bit of foreground, it has been photograpl from the drawing as he left it fitly years curiously ridged mountain to the right exactl; responds to his description of it above gn 96 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP.™ we can well understand the difficulties of the ascent of such a mountain through many miles of tropical forest, among deep ravines and impassable gorges, along a track used only by Indians crossing the mountains to a good fishing stream which Hows directly into the Huallaga, as described at p. 40.) In July 1856, Spruce went for a month to Lamas and Tabalosos, making the latter place his head- quarters for the exploration of the eastern slopes of the Campana Mountains, where, at about 4000 feet elevation, is a natural pasture called Potrelo, " around which is low forest with many interesting flowering plants, palms, tree - ferns, ferns, and mosses." The position of Tabalosos is picturesque, being situated in the midst of mountains. On the opposite side of the Mayo (to the N. and N.E.) there is a very bold and lofty peak, at no great distance, whose rocky slope seems to be nearly perpendicular. Those who go from Yurimaguas to Moyobamba by way of Balsapuerto have this peak on their left. The inhabitants are nearly all Indians, with very few half-breeds. Hardly any speak Spanish. They grow large quantities of vegetables, and are much employed as carriers on the route from Tarapoto to Moyobamba. (The drawing here given of the rude clock-tower of Tabalosos shows this remarkable mountain im- mediately to the left of it, and nearly in the centre of the picture, while the Indian ringing the two very small bells gives life and character to the scene.) From the summit of the Pingulla mountain there is a splendid view of the whole lower course of the Mayo, with Lamas, Tarapoto, and all its surrounding mountains, to Chapaja on the Huallaga river. *:F . ir X , i4 - w i -'t 1 1 7\ — •f |rt :-- V -'J si i ..i T a - . • VOL. II 97 11 CHAP, xvi RESIDENCE AT TARAPOTO 99 The ridges and peaks are of white sandstone, as are those of the Andarra farther up the river. Both are very bare of vegetation, being burnt almost every year and overrun with the common fern Pteris caudata. The ascent to Potrela up the rocky valley of the Cuchi-yacu is, however, through luxuriant forest especially rich in ferns and mosses. To conclude this sketch of the Tarapoto district investigated by Spruce, I will give a few passages translated from his "Precis d'un Voyage" pub- lished in the Revue Bryologique for 1886 :— " The first thing that strikes the eye of the botanist at Tarapoto is the abundance of ferns. These plants are by preference, as we know, either maritime or subalpine. On the hills of Brazil a tolerably large number of species are found, but in the interior of the continent and in the great plain of the Amazon valley, although ferns are not wanting, yet the species are never numerous and several of them repeat themselves at every step even up to the roots of the Andes. One may therefore judge of the riches of the Eastern Cordillera of Peru in ferns by the fact that there, within a circle less than fifty miles in diameter, the author found 250 species of ferns allies, of which many were new, especiall the tree-ferns." Among the most interesting plants in this region, next to the ferns, may Rubiace:e, of which Spruce collected 98 specie small number of these were already known throu the researches of Ruiz and Pavon, Poeppig Matthews, but the majority " Precis " then continues : ioo NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. ' Some genera of mosses, absent in the plains, began to appear in the lower forest zone of the Andes. For example, those splendid mosses of the genera Phyllogonium, Rhacophilum, and Hypo- pterygium, all of which, by their primary leaves arranged in double rows, and in the latter- named genera accompanied by stipulated folioles, appeared at first sight to be Hepaticse rather than true mosses. Among other mosses which are met with in the Andes of Peru, but which are never found in the plain, are Helicophyllum, Disticophyllum, Cryphaea, Pterobryum, Entodon, Fabronia, etc. The Tortulse, represented along the banks of the Amazon, but very rarely, by the single T. agraria, begin to be less scarce ; also the genus Bryum, of which the B. coronatitin and a barren form of B. argenteum are the only species found on the Amazon. "With regard to the Hepaticse, while the Lejeuneae are almost as abundant as upon the banks of the Amazon, and still show the same preference for the living leaves of trees, the Frullanise, of the sub- genus Thyopsiella (which are related to our F. tamarisci\ appear there for the first time. Among other genera of the Eastern Andes which are never seen in the plains may be named Porella, Herberta, Mytilopsis, Adelanthus, Leioscyphus, Jungermannia, Scalia, Marchantia, Dendroceros, and Anthoceros. Lepidozia, which is represented in the plain by a microscopic species (and that found only once !), is met with in the mountains of Tarapoto in the form of large and elegant species." On examining Spruce's descriptive catalogue of the plants which he collected, and which are numbered consecutively, I find that there are RESIDENCE AT TARAPOTO 101 1094 species of flowering plants and ferns, to which must be added several hundred species of mosses and Hepaticae — his favourite groups— which here for the first time formed an important part of the vegetation. It must be remembered that this by no means affords any near approach to the whole flora of the Maynensian Andes (as he termed the district of which Tarapoto formed the centre), because, both by inclination and necessity, he limited his collections as much as possible to species which he had not met with before, and especially to such as he believed to be unknown to European botanists. We know from his Journals that often he could not possibly collect all he saw, especially among the forest trees, and that he was accustomed often to leave ungathered many new species in favour of others which he believed to constitute new genera. These Tarapoto plants were the result of about eighteen months' collecting ; for, although he resided there a year and three-quarters, at least three months were lost by illness and in the preparations for his journey to the Ecuadorean Andes.] CHAPTER XVII IN SMALL CANOES FROM TARAPOTO TO CANELOS : 5OO MILES ON THE HUALLAGA, MARANON, PASTASA, AND BOMBONASA RIVERS (March 23 to June 14, 1857) [THIS journey up the little-known Pastasa and Bombonasa rivers in small canoes for a distance of perhaps 500 miles, following the curves of the rivers, was a very painful and tedious one, owing to the whole country being almost depopulated, and provisions not to be obtained. It occupied nearly three months, of which Spruce kept a very full account in his Journal, and as the whole route is almost unknown to English naturalists, I have selected all the more interesting portions (about one-half) for presentation here. It is full of details which may be useful to future travellers, and contains a good deal of curious information as well as several rather strange occurrences. Some German botanists who descended the rivers from Canelos in 1894 found the villages rather better peopled on account of the increasing rubber-trade, but otherwise just as Spruce described them.] 102 CHAP, xvii TARAPOTO TO CANELOS ABSTRACT OF JOURNAL (Bv THE EDITOR) [As stated in the letter to Mr. Bentham of March 14, Spruce arranged to make the difficult and costly as well as dangerous journey from Tarapoto to Banos in Ecuador in the company of two merchants of the former place, Don Ignacio Morey and Don Victoriano Marrieta. Each party had its own canoe with a crew of seven Indians, and Spruce was accompanied by a youth of twenty years, named Hermogenes Arrebalo, probably an Indian, as his servant. I cannot find either in the letters or journals any further reference to his assistant at Tarapoto, the young Englishman, Charles Nelson, and we are left in darkness as to where Spruce first met with him or why Nelson did not accompany him to Ecuador. On this journey the travellers first went over- land to Chasuta, occupying two days, and the latter portion of this route was so full of obstructions and mud-holes, the weather being continually wet and stormy, that in order not to lose shoes Spruce was obliged to walk barefoot and arrived at Chasuta both lamed and suffering from fever. The canoes in which they descended the river were entirely open, in order to pass the tall safely, and the travellers were therefore expos< the rains, which were almost continuous, 1 passage of the cataracts was difficult, and the narrowly escaped being s\vump«-je< -ting ubout half an inch. About four in the afternoon the penitents began to promenade the streets, giving themselves smart blows on the n iked shoulders with thongs thick skin of cow-fish, that the blood Mil-lit flow more fre< application of scarifies, which was done by thcmsi manner when all assembled in .1 house, they sallied forth to the church, \\ulking by tw one mass of gore and their \\hite trousers (their only soaked and dripping with blood. I h.i\e never io6 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. horrible sight. They unceasingly applied the cow -skin straps, making the blood spurt in all directions and sprinkling my clothes, though I took care to keep at a respectful distance. In the church a little below the altar was extended a mat, and on the mat a crucifix laid on a cushion, with a cup by its side to receive contributions of penitents. As the latter advanced in their turn they knelt down and kissed the crucifix, beating them- selves with redoubled energy. At the same moment their wives or mothers, who walked by their side, dropped each an egg into the cup. Whilst this was doing, the Sacristan chanted a Miserere. Each Indian, after kissing the crucifix, walked out of the church, in the order he entered, nor suspended the flagellation until reaching his own house. The value of an act of penitence like this may be estimated by the fact that every one of the penitents was intoxicated. They believed, however, that it would ensure their safe return from the perilous voyage, or, at any rate, should they be killed by the Infidels, their souls would be immediately received into glory. Many white men would have kept their beds for a month after such a punishment, but our penitents sat down to their oars before noon on Monday (the next day but one) without showing any inconvenience from their wounds. They have an idea that the beating after the application of the scarifiers drives out the coagulated blood from the wounds and prevents any formation of pus. [On April 6 they left La Laguna, and on the 7th entered the Marafion, and though the distance up that river to the mouth of the Pastasa is only about 25 miles, they did not reach the latter till the iith. On the afternoon of the /th they came upon a small village of six huts, where the remnant of the pueblo of Santander on the Pastasa had established themselves. Here they learnt that five men of San Antonio (a village just above the mouth of the Pastasa) went into the forest to cut palm-leaves, and never returned, but remnants of their clothes had been found, showing that they had been murdered by the savage Huambisas. On the morning of the Qth the travellers came to the deserted pueblo of Shiruri, half a day below the mouth of the Pastasa. There were about a TARAPOTO TO CANE LOS 10; dozen cane houses standing on level ground scarce a foot above the highest floods. Spruce thus describes what he found : — ] The exodus appears to have been very hasty, for pans and tinajos of all sizes are left scattered about, and even several arrobas of rice in pots and baskets. The neat beds made of stems of bamboo opened out into sheets and laid side by side are mostly in their places, but the termites are everywhere and will speedily complete the destruction of everything vegetable. The ground is fertile, and the colonists had made their plantations of plantain, sugar-cane, yucas, etc., not omitting several sorts of the necessary Capsicum and the flowers used by women for adorning their hair (cockscombs, African marigolds, etc.), nor the verbena which is a panacea for every disease. A few Crescentias had been planted and in another year would have begun to yield cuyas. What a picture of disappointed hopes is suggested by the view of such desolation ! With what lamentation must the poor women have deserted the spot where they had just com- pleted preparations for rearing their young families, and had calculated on growing old amidst plenty and tranquillity ! [Thenceforward when sleeping on shore Spruce and his companions took turns to keep watch during the night, allowing the Indians to sleep. The latter, however, usually stuck their lances and bows and arrows at the head of their mosquito nets, so as to be ready in case of an attack. Journal continues : — ] Just above the point where we got into the main' channel were three houses in the midst o! large platanales on the left bank, probably remains of the new pueblo of Santander, though our Indians refused to tell us. It is impossible to get from them any information about places and distances, as the) are afraid we should want to go ashore at the desert r pueblos, where the Infieles mi^ht be in ambush fall on them. Even when- we have cut plantains in deserted chacras (which are frequent along shores, though generally hidden by a loS NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. forest and not reaching the river margin as on the Maranon), it has been necessary to go ashore ourselves first with our firearms. A little before sunset we reached the upper point of an island, clad with a willow-like Composite, and rapidly becoming covered with water. Here we made fast, intending to pass the night, but shortly the Indians took alarm at seeing how easily an enemy could approach our encampment concealed by bushes which, although growing pretty close, admitted an easy passage ; so we moved off to the middle of the river, here very broad and shallow, with several prostrate dead trees sticking out which the rising waters had not yet liberated, though they were beginning to move them. I was not sorry for the change, for zancudos were very numerous and fierce on the island, though not entirely wanting on the river. The nocturnal zancudo is a small slender gnat with spotted wings — rest of body a uniform black. It is called birotillo (the little dart) because its puncture is so cruel, often leaving pain and swelling. When the days are dull we have them in the canoes at all hours, and the small mosquitoes are as abundant as on the Maranon. My skin has been in a very sensitive state since the journey from Tarapoto to Chasuta, and some of the mosquito wounds are beginning to ulcerate. In the woods I have made acquaintance with a minute and very active tick, which sucks a little here and there, and does not, like the other species, hang on to one place till it gets full ; its bites cause an intolerable itching, and if one scratches, ulcers ensue. April 12- Don Victoriano's dog, which had TARAPOTO TO CANELOS 109 been ill for several days, was now unable to stand, and excessively bloated. . . . We took it on shore where we made our break- fast this morning, and, as it was evidently in a dying state, before we re-embarked its master put an end to its sufferings by a couple of pistol-shots. Thus our two handsome dogs, on whose services as sentinels we had so much calculated, had been left as food for beasts and birds of prey — my poor " Sultan " in the forests of the Huallaga, and Don Victoriano's " Muchacho " in those of the Pastasa ! At sunset we reached the ancient pueblo of Santander on the left shore. Standing on a steep bank of red earth, it reminds me, by its position, of Barraroa on the river Negro. I invited our Indians to go there to sleep, but they shook their heads and could not even be induced to take that side of the river. There are still two large houses standing — possibly church and convent. [During the next fortnight the journey was wearisome and monotonous, with almost continuous rains, rarely any dry land to sleep on, and not a single village or settlement of any kind. The only break to the monotony of the succeeding days i an occasional success in procuring game, such as curassows or wild clucks, once an armadillo, and once by great good fortune a tapir. Only once the met a solitary canoe with a young Indian man and woman who said they came from Andoas, reaching that place they learnt that the man the son of the chief, and that he was running a\\ with the girl to somewhere; on the Maranon. On the evening of th<- 251!!, to delight, they saw a fire on shore, and fount no NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. farm where three men and two women were cutting palm -.leaves and preparing the fibre to make hammocks for the Governor of Andoas. The Journal now continues :— April 26 (Sunday]. - - Starting at four this morn- ing, about seven we reached a playa where we found three families of inhabitants of Pinches encamped. We bought of them part of a very large tapir they had killed the previous night, and some pieces of baked agouti in very fine condition. Here we breakfasted, and then proceeded ; but our men were completely at a loss in the broad shallow river, and were continually running us aground, so that we did not reach the village till 3^ P.M. Pinches Nuevo stands on the left bank on a barranco 20 feet above high -water mark. It is reached by rude steps cut in the cliff, which is of tenacious red earth, without the least mixture of stones or gravel. There are but some ten houses, including church and cabilclo (guests' house), all of Caiia brava, or of strips of palm-stems, roofed with palm-thatch. Very few inhabitants were present, and we had some difficulty in procuring five heads of plantains and a basket of yucas, especially as their chacras are new and they still bring the greater part of their plantains from the site of the old pueblo. The inhabitants are ill-looking, and some are affected with caracha (leprosy). They are the remnant of a nation of Pinches Indians, and still speak a peculiar language, though all understand the Ouichua. April 2.7. — Navigation now gets more difficult, hardly anywhere is there sufficient water to float our canoes. Beaches appear in different places from last year, and our guides can hardly pick their way. TARAPOTO TO CANELOS in Several times the men have had to leap into the water and drag the canoes by hand a good distance over the shallow bed before finding again sufficient water to float us. . . . [Early on April 29 they reached the much- desired Andoas, situated on the left bank of the Pastasa, where they had to engage fresh crews to take them up the Bombonasa river to Canelos. The village stands on a low ridge, on each side of which is a little stream, the mouths of which are about a quarter of a mile apart. The soil is loamy and very fertile. Spruce was only able to take one short walk in the forest during his five days' stay here, and noted that while the trees seemed mostly familiar to him, the shrubby and herbaceous plants were nearly all new. The following rather char- acteristic incident is noted in the Journal :- At Andoas it was necessary that some one should sleep in the canoes, to take care of their cargoes, and I and Don Ignacio, as being most interested, undertook to do it, although we must thus deny ourselves the pleasure of sleeping under a roof, which the rest of our party took advantage of. Our salt fish was stowed in the fore-part of the canoe and covered over with palm-leaves, on which were laid logs of wood, so that the fish coulc easily be got at by the dogs who visited the canoe: every night in a troop. Nevertheless, they found out some part not so well secured as the rest they one night introduced their muzzles and gna\\ at the fish, and on the following night I lay until I heard them at work, and then seizec and rushed out of the cabin ; but the) quickly for me and disappeared over the top ii2 NOTES OF A BOTANIST steeply-sloping bank. One dog, however, turned round when he reached the top and barked at me. I fired (with shot) at his legs, intending only to wound him, but his shattered legs failing him, he rolled howling down the bank into the river and was drowned. His body was retained in an eddy a little lower down, and there it was found by the women when they went to fetch water at daybreak. The Governor had told me to shoot those pilfering dogs, for they were vagabonds who had no owners ; but this one chanced to belong to an old woman, who made an outcry about it, and the Governor told me that if I did not succeed in pacifying her we might have some difficulty in getting our com- plement of mariners, so I sent for her and asked her how much she wanted for her dog. She said ten needles ! I was glad to give her an entire packet of the best I had, with which she went away content, having therewith enough to buy three dogs such as the one she had lost. Andoas differs from Pinches only in size, as it contains some twenty houses and about sixty married couples, but the aspect is equally miserable. The walls of the houses are of wild cane or palm, while the church is of bamboo stems opened out into boards, and in a very dilapidated state. The church divides the town into two nearly equal portions or partidos, that to the south or down the river being inhabited by Indians of the Andoas nation, and that to the north by Indians of the Shimigai tribe. ... In external appearance the two tribes inhabiting the village of Andoas show no difference. The men are of lowish stature, not robust, mouth wride, but lips not disproportionately TARAPOTO TO CANELOS 113 thick, nose straight or slightly Roman, forehead lowish, rather receding, and with the bump of locality universally strikingly developed. Their hair is cut off straight just over the eyes, and allowed to hang down long behind, usually reach- ing the middle of the back. They streak their faces daily with anatto, and sometimes pour the juice of jagua over their bodies, but this is not done (as by the inhabitants of Tarapoto) to hide spotted skins, as they are quite free from caracha. The characteristic dress is a sort of poncho called a cueshma, which is a long narrow rectangular piece of cloth (coarse cotton, the manufacture of Anito or Tarapoto) with a slit in the middle through which the head is passed ; as it is narrow it covers the body before and behind to below the knees, but not at the sides, so that the arms are free. The legs are encased in breeches of the same material, tight, but not fastened at the knees. ... A few of them who have been down to the Amazon wear shirt and trousers. The women are none of them pretty, though there are some countenances not unpleasing. They cut their hair like the men, and as the latter are of slender make the two sexes can scarcely be distinguished at a distance. Generally a pollena constituted the article of dress of the women, the body from the waist upwards being naked, but they hang a profusion of beads (white, red, ami round their necks, and sometimes use armlets ot the same. . . . The forests on the opposite side ot the river abound in animals, and those who go in search of the tapir rarely fail in killing one. and I paid two men — to one three yards of VOL. II ii4 NOTES OF A BOTANIST calico, to the other a Rondin — to seek us each a tapir. They brought us two fine animals with quite as much flesh on them as a Tarapoto cow, and we had charqui (dried meat) made of them for the voyage. The weapon used in chasing tapir is a lance with large well-tempered iron head, brought from Quito or Riobamba. The dogs used in tracking the animal are a small breed with little triangular heads and curled bushy tails — colour usually iron-grey or fawn colour. One of our hunters went alone with his dogs ; the other took two companions. . . . Like most Indians who have been brought to " Christianity," they have no manu- factures of any kind. Their canoes, hammocks, blowing-canes, matiris, etc., are all bought from the " Infieles"! The present Governor of Andoas is Don Benito Sumaita, a native of Moyobamba, who treated us as kindly as his means would allow, and aided us much in procuring men and food for the voyage. He is subject to the recently-created and probably not very permanent Prefectura del Alto Marafion. The head-quarters of the Prefect are at Jeberos or Xeberos, on the Aipena river which enters the Huallaga near its mouth, which, though much larger than Andoas, is quite as miserable a place. Don Benito has been two years in this banishment alone amongst the Indians save his son, a little boy of ten years ; and he told us he slept more securely the few nights we were there than he had ever done before in Andoas, for he knew not on what night the Infieles might break into the village and murder him in his bed. He was almost in despair, poor fellow, for he has no salary from the Government, TARAPOTO TO CANELOS 115 and has not even received pay for cargoes of wax and other products of the country which he had taken or remitted to his superiors in Jeberos at their request. May 5 (Tuesday).- -This day at noon we got off from Andoas. Our crews were eight men to each canoe. Eighteen bunches of plantains were embarked in each, for we calculated on fourteen days to Sara-yacu (about 100 miles farther up the Bombonasa), and the existence of plantains on the route was uncertain. Besides plantains, we took a great store of yucas, sweet potatoes, and pine- apples ; and the Indians so filled the canoe with their pots of masuto (fermented yucas), beds, etc., that they had not room to work. . . . May 6 ( Wednesday).- - ... This morning at three we got off and shortly afterwards entered the mouth of the Bombonasa, which was about 60 yards wide, winding, muddy because nearly full, with vegeta- tion exactly the same as on the Pastasa, where the shore was fiat — grasses (Panicum aniplcx, etc., Gynerium, and other genera and species with Cecropias, Ingas, etc.). On the steep loamy bank there were ferns, especially a Mertensia, and the forest trees of Pastasa, with Iriartca vc and a stout tall palm near the CEnocarpus P In some respects it reminds me of the Casiquiari towards the upper mouth. The muddy, shallow water — winding considerably — the dense, intricate vegetation of the shores where low — are the but the Bombonasa is much smaller. May 7 (Thursday).- -The river went down ncarl; i j- feet in the night. n6 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP Several small streams of black water were passed to-day. There was no perceptible current in them, and when the river is fuller it evidently enters some way up them. . . . The river winds much, and reminds me of the Upper Pacimoni. This morning we passed one reach due S. (i.e. where the course of the river is N.), and towards evening we made much easting. May 9. — When our Indians have been an hour or two on their way in the morning they proceed to take their chicha. From the mass of crushed and fermented yucas which they keep in a monstrous jar in the prow, they take out handfuls and mix with water to a drinkable consistency. The drink- ing-vessels used are wide shallow basins varnished and painted, whose use is general amongst the Indians of Maynas. Each Indian will drink one of these full twice or thrice — equivalent to about half a gallon. In the process they occupy at least half an hour, and are as merry and noisy (but not so quarrelsome) as a lot of navvies over their beer. At the same time they make their toilet, which consists in carefully combing out their hair with cane combs of their own manufacture, then tucking up the back hair with a liana passed round the head, while the narrow strip of long hair at the sides is allowed to hang down over the ears, and that on the forehead has been cut short, as already mentioned. After this comes the painting. Each man carries in his bag a slender bamboo tube, a little larger than one's finger, filled with anatto or chica ; from this he extracts a portion with a small TARAPOTO TO CANELOS 117 stick, and with the point of his forefinger makes three broad red streaks from ear to ear, one below the eyes, another along the base of the nose, and the third below the mouth. This done he no doubt considers himself dressed for the day, and holds his head a full inch higher. May ii (Monday). — After a gloomy but dry night, we got under way this morning at 3 o'clock, the river having abated 4 feet. The history of to-day varies little from that of preceding days. The same winding turbid river — in no place more than 80 yards wide, and sometimes narrowing to 40 yards, when the current is stemmed with difficulty. May 14. --The banks now begin to be pictur- esque : cliffs clad with ferns and mosses, a Helicomia with distichous leaves and pendent scarlet and yellowish spikes; a Calliandra like that at the Pongo of the Huallaga, etc. ; tiny cascades falling over the cliffs. We breakfasted at the mouth of the Puca-yacu, the most considerable stream we had seen entering the Bombonasa. It comes in on the left bank with a strong current --water muddy, reddish, the mouth of this the water of the Bombonasa is sensibly clearer, depositing very little earthy matter when allowed to stand ; it is whitish, like the Upper Orinoco. May 15.- Yesterday at 5! P.M. we reachc Palisada-Zipishko, and remained all night on an island, where there was the broadest beach we seen on the Bombonasa. Pebbles begin to nS NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. and more numerous ; they are chiefly quartz and a compact blue stone. . . . Coasting along a low shore, our men spied a small white alligator basking in the sun by the margin, and ' killed him with their lances. His stomach was distended by some food he had taken, and on piercing it, a snake's tail protruded. I laid hold on it and drew out the snake, which was closely coiled up ; it was still alive (!), though so much crushed below the head as to be unable to move away. It was a terrestrial species, not venomous — yellow with black spots on the back. The body thick, passing abruptly into a short slender tail — full 3 feet long, and its destroyer no more. Thus we go on preying on each other to the end of the chapter. This poor snake, while watching for frogs among the moist stones and roots, little dreamt he was about to serve for an alligator's meal ; nor the alligator, while devouring it, that he himself would soon be eaten up by Indians. May 1 6 (Saturday].- . . . The aspect of the river is unchanged, save that there is more rarely any low shore. We have passed some strong currents to-day, but the water is fortunately low. Beaches are now covered with large pebbles, and where we breakfasted it was like a mosaic pavement, stones of so many colours formed our seats and table. May 17 (Sunday}. — Near 8 o'clock A.M. we spied a tapir a little ahead, making his way up-stream. On perceiving our approach he took to shore, where from a narrow margin rose a steep barranco, which he was unable to ascend ; he therefore again TARAPOTO TO CANELOS 119 entered the water and attempted to pass down- stream. At this moment we poured in shots upon him from musket and pistol, which, however, did not disable him, and he dived out of sight, but on coming up near one of the canoes, an Indian planted a lance in his breast. Several Indians then leaped into the water, which was scarcely breast- high, and speedily dispatched him. When swim- ming he had only his head above water, and his mouth wide open displayed a formidable set of teeth. At the first reach we went ashore and cut him up ; he was a fat, well-grown male ; few of the shots had gone much beyond his thick skin. The finest pieces were salted down and the rest partly consumed on the spot and partly roasted for the morrow. May 19 (Tuesday].- ... We stopped to break- fast at io|- A.M., in the mouth of a stream called Sara-yacu, which enters on the left bank. It is of considerable size, with clear water and pebbly bed. Here was a house and chacra with several people. ... In the canoes moored here I saw several bateas (wooden dishes) for gold-washing; they were made of some light wood, and about I.1,- feet in diameter — either in the form ol a meniscus or of a very low cone-— and two projecting pieces had been left on the margin for handles The gold found here is only in small quantity and in very minute fragments. My companions two or three pans of gravel, and in each three or four grains of gold ; but it wouk necessary to go to a considerable depth to with any chance of success, for the grav 120 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. loose and wet, so that the fragments of gold sink into it by their weight. At 4^ P.M. we reached the pueblo of Sara-yacu, on the left bank. It stands on a steep ridge 15 feet above the high-water mark of the river and distant perhaps 200 yards. On each side of it and at a short distance is a deep ravine with a rivulet ; at the mouth the streams are barely 30 yards apart, but the space between them widens higher up. The track leading up to the pueblo has in one place a steep slope on each side, with barely room for one person to pass another. A barricade across this strait would render it defensible by two men against a hundred. This position has no doubt been selected for the pueblo with an eye to its defence from attacks of Infieles, and it is far stronger than that of Andoas, though there is some similarity. May 20 (Wednesday]. — Our Indians from Andoas should have returned home from Sara-yacu, but as we found there neither Governor nor Curaca, we persuaded them to go on with us to Puca-yacu, where the Governor was at present residing, and so paid then each 2 varas of Tocuyo for the additional labour — all save two who could not be persuaded to go farther. This day was passed dully enough in the port of Sara-yacu, waiting till the Indians should stuff themselves with masuto; enlivened only by disputes about the payment to Puca-yacu, such as are unavoidable in all traffic with Indians. May 21 (Thursday].- . . . We left at an early hour, and the slight rise of the waters gave us more depth in the rapids, so that we got on TARAPOTO TO CANELOS 121 capitally, and at 4 P.M. reached the port of Puca- yacu. Here we found that the village was nearly a mile from the river and elevated 250 feet above it, the ascent being very steep and slippery.1 We climbed up to pay our respects to the Governor, and then returned to sleep in the port, I and Don Ignacio in our canoes, and the rest on a narrow beach scarcely elevated 2 feet above the water. The beach was margined by a bank of earth 6 feet high, densely clad with overhanging trees and bamboos, and then after a narrow strip of nearly level ground rose a gentle acclivity. As we supped at sundown, thunder was heard at no great distance, and the heavens gradually became entirely obscured by a dense mantle of clouds. The Indians, who had gone up to the pueblo to take chica, now- rejoined us and also prepared to pass the night on the beach. We had scarcely resigned ourselves to sleep, at about 9 o'clock, when the storm burst over us, and the river almost simultaneously began to rise ; speedily the beach was overflowed, the Indians leaped into the canoes ; the waters con- tinued to rise with great rapidity, coming in on us every few minutes in a roaring surge which broke under the canoes in whirlpools, and dashed them against each other. The lianas by which the canoes were tied had to be moved every now then higher up the trees, and finally broke. Indians held on by the branches, and fortunately found two contiguous lianas of Bignonia, which having cut below, they fastened to the prow of eac canoe, their upper part being securely entv 1 [By baroinctriiMl observation, Spi I tin village to be 425 metres = 1394 feet. I 122 NOTES OF A BOTANIST in the branches overhead. Here we held on, the Indians using all their efforts to prevent the canoes from being smashed by blows from each other or from the floating trees which now began to career past us like mad bulls. So dense was the gloom that we could see nothing, while we were deafened by the pelting rain, the roaring flood, and the crashing of the branches of the floating trees, as they rolled over or dashed against each other ; but each lightning-flash revealed to us all the horrors of our position. Assuredly I had slight hopes of living to see the day, and I shall for ever feel grateful to those Indians who, without any orders from us, stood through all the rain and storm of that fearful night, relaxing not a moment in their efforts to save our canoes from being carried away by the flood, or dashed to pieces by swinging against each other, or against the floating timber. As the waters rose higher, the stern of my canoe got entangled in overhanging prickly bamboos, which threatened to swamp it, and which we with some difficulty cut away. Every hour thus passed seemed an age, and the coming of day scarcely ameliorated our position, for the flood did not abate until 10 o'clock. About an hour before this, the river began to fall a little, and as soon as the rain passed we got the cargoes out and carried up to the Governor's house. It was past noon ere we got breakfast — wearied to death, and myself in a high fever, which happily passed off in the following night. The river is only 40 yards broad in that place (indeed Lbefore the flood there had not been more than 25 yards of water, nowhere 3 feet deep), and the rise during the night had been 18 feet. I TARAPOTO TO CAXELOS 12 have not yet mentioned that our companion Don Victoriano and the two muchachos, when the rising waters drove them from the beach, thinking that it was merely a brief thunder-shower which had caught us, gathered up their beds and climbed the barranco, where they set up two palm mats belong- ing to the canoe, and sheltered themselves under them as well as they could ; but scarcely had they accommodated themselves here when the llood reached them and burst on them so unexpectedly that several articles which were loose, trousers, handkerchiefs, etc., were swept away. They retired in all haste, and in the dense gloom, ignorant of whither they were going, the only guide to their position being the roar of the river. They wished to enter the canoes, and called out at the top oi their voices, which were drowned by the conflict of the elements, and the cries of the Indians in the canoes were all unheard by them, they wandered about all night, the flood continually obliging them to retreat farther inland, and when day broke it found them half dead with cold, and their clothes and bodies torn and wounded prickly bamboos and palms. To reach the canoe they had to wade with the water to their waists As we were unloading the canoes, the barranco which we had at first been moored fell into the river with several large trees on it ; another peril which we happily escaped by having had to move lower down. Puca-yacu consists of but eight house* the convent and church ; they are in the as those of Ancloas, and there is near them, though most have an od 124 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. Wingo, another of Anatto, and some roots of the twining Bignonia (Carajaru) planted by the door. The Governor resides in the convent, which is remarkable for having an upper story, the flooring of which is of bamboo planks resting on rafters of Tarapoto palm. The ground floor is scarcely made any use of, for the kitchen is a low shed standing a few yards apart ; but the upper story is divided along the middle by a bamboo partition, the northern half being open at the sides, so as to form a wide veranda, where the family pass the day ; and the southern half is divided into two dormi- tories, where they keep their household gods and pass the night. The whole is very light and cleanly, with superabundance of ventilation ; but we have not yet experienced any high winds, the force of the squalls being broken by higher ground across a valley to north and north-east. We live with the Governor, who has given up one of the dormi- tories to us. From the village there is a track in a northerly direction which continues all the way to the river Napo. At half an hour from the village it crosses a stream called Baha-yacu, whose mouth is a very little below the port ; there are a few chacras on it, and the gold-washings are said to be the best of any of Bombonasa. The banks are steep and fall in with every flood. The water runs over beds of indurated clay, such as most of the rock on the Bombonasa ; though easily broken by the foot, it resists remarkably the action of water. Pebbles of quartz and blocks of compact blue stone are evidently alluvial deposits. In something under half a day the track brings TARAPOTO TO CANELOS 125 us to the head of the river Rutuno, a considerable stream whose mouth we had seen below Sara-yacu. All the way along it there are tambos of inhabitants of Sara-yacu, Puca-yacu, and Canelos, who go there to wash gold. After the Rutuno the head of the river Tigre is passed ; this river holds its course nearly midway between Pastasa and Napo, and falls into the Maranon. A large stream, the Villano, is next passed ; this runs into the river Curaray, whose junction with the Napo is not far from the mouth of the latter. From the Villano we come to its tributary, the Giguino, on which there is a largish pueblo of Zaparos. Next to this is another tributary of the Yillano- Callana-yacu, and then we come to Ananga-yacu, which runs direct into the Curaray. The Curaray itself is now reached. On this also are several Zaparos. The Noshiiro, to which we now come, has a pueblo of Zaparos ; it runs direct into the Napo, as does also the Washka-yacu. Passing these, we reach the Napo, at a small pueblo called Aguana, not far from Santa Rosa ; whence there is a route over the Cordillera to Quito which is impassable from June to September on account of the streams being swollen by the melting of the snows on Cotopaxi, as also by the depth <>l snow on the highest point of the pass. The Governor, Don Gabriel Cordena, is elderly man of about fifty, with quiet and devout manners. He has been twelve years 126 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP, the Bombonasa, but his native place is Quito. Canelos, Puca-yacu, and Sara-yacu are all under his rule, and he divides his residence equally among them. It should be observed that his title is Lieutenant -Governor, the Curaca of each pueblo being considered its real governor. The labour of the Indians is entirely voluntary, nor is there any tariff of prices strictly adhered to. In conse- quence, the Indians are sufficiently impertinent and difficult to treat with. The pueblo of Puca- yacu contains some nine men accustomed to carry cargoes to the Sierra ; and after more than a week's delay, Don Ignacio and Don Victoriano have with much difficulty persuaded five of these to accompany them ; the rest excuse themselves from pretended sickness or some other motive, so that I, who need seven cargueros, am still waiting to see if I can induce the Indians of Sara-yacu to accompany me, as they are much more numerous than those of Puca-yacu. The Indians of Canelos are away at their tambos on the Rutuno, etc., with licence of absence for three months, which does not expire till June 20. Don Gabicho (as he is familiarly called) presented himself to us with shirt outside trousers (Amazon fashion), so that it stood for jacket as well, and his head adorned with a broad-brimmed hat of tamshe, similar to those woven by the Indians of Maynas of the same material ; well ventilated but affording no protection against rain ; so, to render it water- proof, he had stuck it all over with the feathers of small birds, the points all directed to the brim. I have rarely seen a gayer or stranger head-gear. TARAPOTO TO CANELOS 127 Puca-yacu is a colony of the still considerable pueblo of Canelos. It contains also four or five Jibaros, who are married to women of Canelos. The Governor has in his house a Jibaro girl whose history is singular. It seems that among those Indians when a man of note dies it is the custom to put his wives to death, in order that their spirits may accompany him, as they did while in the body. An old chief died two years ago, leaving four wives, whereof one was scarcely nine years of age. This poor creature, knowing that they would seek to kill her, fled into the woods, and though pursued, succeeded in reaching Sara - yacu, where the Governor then was, and placed herself under his protection. Her "friends" have since reclaimed her, but the Governor refuses to give her up, and she still remains with him, and is an excellent servant to his wife. She has been baptized by the name of Magdalena, the Governor and his wife standing sponsors. She looks little like a widow, with her slender, girlish figure and smart chitty face. The Jibaro Indians still abound on the Pastasa (above the mouth of Bombonasa) and on its upper tributaries. There is a settlement of them, commonly called the Jibaria, at three days from Canelos, near the river Pindu, on the route to Banos. . . . There is a magnificent view looking west from the plateau of Puca-yacu, but I saw it only once, for about a couple of hours, in all its entirety, takes in an angle of about 60 , bounded left and right by forest on adjacent elevations. feet stretched the valley of the I'.ombonasa, taking upwards a north-westerly direction, its waters not 128 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. visible, and audible only when swollen by rains. Beyond the Bombonasa stretched the same sort of boldly undulating plain I had remarked from Andoas upwards, till reaching one long low ridge, perhaps a little higher than Puca-yacu, of remark- ably equable height and direction (north to south) ; this is the water-shed between the Bombonasa and Pastasa, and the latter river flows along its western foot ; a little north of west from Puca-yacu, the course of the Pastasa is indicated by a deep gorge stretching west from behind the riclge. This gorge has on each side lofty rugged mountains (5000 to 6000 feet), spurs of the Cordillera ; one of those on the right is called Abitagua, and the track from Canelos to Banos passes over its summit. All this was frequently visible, but it was only when the mist rolled away from the plain a little after sun- rise that the lofty Cordillera beyond lay in cloud- less majesty. To the extreme left (south), at no very great distance, rose Sangahy (or the Volcan of Macas, as it is often called), remarkable for its exactly conical outline, for the snow lying on it in longish stripes, and for the cloud of smoke almost constantly hovering over it. A good way to the right is the much loftier mountain called Los Altares, its truncated summit jagged with eight peaks of nearly equal elevation and clad with an unbroken covering of snow, which glittered like crystal in the sun's rays, and made me think how pure must be the offering on " altars " to whose height no mortal must hope to attain. Not far to the right of Los Altares, and of equal altitude, is Tunguragua, a bluff irregular peak with rounded apex capped with snow, which also descends in TARAPOTO TO CANELOS 129 streaks far down its sides. To the right of Tungu- ragua, and over the summit of Mount Abitagua, appeared lofty blue hills, here and there painted with white ; till on the extreme right was dimly visible a snowy cone of exactly the same form as Sangahy but much more distant and loftier ; this was Cotopaxi, perhaps the most formidable volcano on the surface of our globe. Far behind Tungu- ragua, and peeping over its left shoulder, was distinctly visible, though in the far distance, a paraboloidal mass of unbroken snow ; this was the summit of Chimborazo, so long considered the monarch of the Andes, and though latterly certain peaks in Bolivia have dethroned it, for ever im- mortalised by its connection in men's memory with such names as Humboldt and La Condamine. Thus to right and left of the view I had a volcano. Cotopaxi I never saw clearly but once, but Sangahy was often visible when the rest of the Cordillera was veiled in clouds, and on clear nights we could distinctly see it vomiting forth flame every few minutes. The first night I passed at Puca-yacu I was startled by an explosion like that of distant cannon, and not to be mistaken for thunder. It came from Sangahy, and scarcely a clay passed afterwards without my hearing the same sound once or oftener ; my ignorance of its origin at first amused the people of Puca-yacu, to whom it was a familiar sound. [During his twenty days' delay at I'uca-yacu, besides making notes on the in-m-i-al botanical features of the district and collecting all the nc Mosses and Hepatics he could find, Spruce also made, as he states in his /'/rV/\ d'nn Voyage, VOL. II K 130 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. collection of the beautiful Coleoptera (beetles) which were to be found there in great abundance." No doubt these were obtained in some of the newly-cleared plantations of the natives on the road to the Napo river, which he explored for some distance.] June 10 ( Wednesday].- -This day at 8 A.M. I got off from Puca-yacu, where I had been waiting three weeks. My companions had started on the last day of May, and after their departure the Governor went to Sara-yacu and with much trouble found cargueros for me, as they had been frightened at the large size of my trunks when I passed up. I again lightened them as much as I could by selling and giving to Don Gabriel and his family every- thing not absolutely necessary, and for one trunk in which I had deposited my drugs, barometer, and some other valuables I paid two cargueros. The pay to each was 3 D. 2 Rs., with three varas of bretana (English calico), and to one who carried a long but not heavy trunk I paid 4 D. and a red handkerchief. They arrived at Puca-yacu on Monday, but Tuesday being very rainy we could not get off; the canoes, however, were put in readi- ness for the following morning. There were four of them, one lent me by the Governor and the rest furnished by the Indians themselves, and intended to be left in Canelos till their return. We started, sixteen in number, for each of the seven cargueros took with him a boy or young woman to carry his food. The canoes are small, light, flat-bottomed, not capable of carrying more than two of my trunks. . . . [ June 1 2. — Reaching Canelos in the morning, xvn TARAPOTO TO CANELOS 131 Spruce found there only two Indians, from whom he was able to buy some fowls and other provisions to complete what was needful for the long journey through the forests. Here all the elaborate pack- ing of the baggage by the Indian carriers had to be done, and the straps carefully arranged in a peculiar manner, so as to be suitable for a route where they are liable to be entangled by creepers overhead and other difficulties. Then there was food for the whole party of sixteen persons to be carried by the boys and girls brought by the Indians themselves, so that they were not ready till late the next day. Then a heavy storm came on which caused the actual start to be put off till the morning of the i4th, at which date the Journal continues the story in the next chapter. The region described by Spruce in the last three chapters is characterised by the presence of the singular plant usually called the Vegetable Ivory palm, but which is now considered to form a distinct natural order intermediate between true palms and Cycads. Its very hard albuminous seeds, nearly the size of hen's eggs, are contained in compound fruits as large as a man's head, which are concealed among the leaves close to the ground. These seeds are largely exported and used to make buttons, umbrella handles, and other small objects. The plants occur thinly scattered from the mouth of the Napo to Tarapoto and the Forest of Canelos on the lower slopes of the mountains up to about 2500 feet, and on the river-banks. Spruce only once collected ripe fruits, and then unfortunately lost them, as he describes in his 132 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP, xvn Memoir on the Equatorial American Palms. I here quote the incident :- " On my voyage up the Huallaga in May 1855, I gathered one morning some fully formed fruits of Yarina, and as they were infested by stinging ants, I laid them near the fire, where our breakfast was being cooked, to disperse the ants, and then plunged into the forest in quest of other objects. During my absence the Indians, not knowing I wanted to preserve the fruits, struck their cutlasses into them, and finding the seeds still tender enough to be eaten, munched them all up and thus destroyed my specimens. I never again saw the Yarina in good condition, except when I and my attendants were already laden with specimens of other plants." Two species very closely allied (Pkytelep/ias macrocarpa and P. microcarpa) are spread over the Eastern Andes, and Spruce described another species (P. equatorialis] from the Western Andes of Ecuador, which differs in having a trunk some- times reaching 20 feet high. The leaves, of a fine deep green colour, are from 30 to 40 feet long. The plate here given is from a photograph taken on the river Ucayali.] CHAPTER XVIII THROUGH THE MONTANA OF CANELOS TO BANGS (June 14 to July i, 1857) [THE Journal of this portion of Spruce's travels is so full and interesting, and the district passed through is in many respects so remarkable, that I have no hesitation in printing the account of it almost entire. In the half-century that has elapsed since it was written no other English traveller has, I believe, passed over it. Two German botanists made the return journey from Banos to Canelos in April 1894, when they had better weather than Spruce ; but they describe the forest between the Topo and Canelos as being quite uninhabited, and the track so seldom traversed and so ill -defined that even the guides lose their way !] CANELOS TO BANGS ( fonrnat) finic 14, 1857. — It was about 8 A.M. when we got off. We had a steep slippery descent to the Bombonasa, which was crossed with difficulty and risk, as the turbid, swollen waters careered violently among and over rocks and stones. We crossed near where it is joined by a large stream (Tinguisa), 135 136 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP, by the side of which our course lay for above an hour, sometimes crossing it, sometimes plodding among stones and mud on its margin. At length we turned away to the right and began to ascend to a ridge, which gradually runs higher and sharper, like many such in the Andes, whence they are called cuchillas (knives). It separates the valley of the Tinguisa from that of the Bombonasa. As we ascended it, we had often on our left a steep bare barranco of sand -rock and pebbly alluvium, quite like what I had remarked along the Bom- bonasa. At 2 r.M. we had come out on high ground, nearly level, but still with steep declivities left and right — where a cool wind was blowing. Though so early, our men declared that there we must pass the night, because it was the accustomed stopping- place on the first day from Canelos, and they set to work to clear the ground and to collect materials for ranches. Here, as in most other places on the way, we occupied four ranches, one for myself and my servant, and the other three for the cargueros, who generally chose a site a little retired — say, thirty paces or more from our rancho. The ranchos were merely a fall-to roof, resting on the ground, and were erected in this way. Two stout sticks about 9 feet long were stuck sloping into the ground, about 4 to 6 feet apart ; across these were tied palm -fronds, after the fashion of large tiles, till the roof had reached the required width, and it was then secured at an angle of about 45° by a forked stick stuck in front of each of the two whereon the roof was framed. The palm-fronds used were those of two species of Iriartea and of Wettinia Maynensis. Of the Iriartea, the fronds xvin CANELOS TO BANGS 137 were split along the middle and the two halves placed alongside, with the point of one to the base of the other ; but of the Wettinia, the pinnae of one side were doubled over so as to fall between those of the other side, and as they are remarkably canaliculate -concave, a series of alternate convex and concave surface was thus obtained, resembling remarkably well the tiled roof of a house. Several entire fronds with their pinnae in the natural posi- tion were fastened along the top of the roof, so as to throw the rain both ways. On the ground beneath other palm-leaves were extended, and on these were placed our beds and boxes. The fire was made midway, under the ridge of the roof. A stick set up on each side, to sustain a cord stretching across the fire, was essential for hanging up our wet garments through the night to dry and smoke. Two of the cargueros were considered my personal attendants on the way, viz. the one who carried my bed, the necessary changes of linen, and other things likely to be needed, in a waterproof bag ; and the one who carried the provisions in a saparo, a nearly cylindrical basket 3 feet long and 2 feet in diameter, covered by a lid made of an outer and an inner framework woven of the liana Tamshe, with two or three layers of leaves of Vijao securely packed between them so that no rain could enter. The duty of these men was to erect my rancho, and collect me firewood sufficient to burn through the night. When we had got our house set up and the necessary fuel and water brought to it, my first care was to prepare coffee -the greatest consolation a traveller can have after a day's work in the wet forest. After coffee a salt 138 NOTES OF A BOTANIST fowl was boiled and plantains roasted for supper. Then, wrapped in my blanket and stretched on my mattress, with my feet near to a good fire, I pre- pared to pass the night, and I may say that how- ever much I might have suffered through the day, 1 generally slept tolerably well and rarely suffered from cold. June 15. — We had heavy thunder-showers from 2 to 4 A.M., and wet dripped from the roof on to the foot of my bed. The day was cold and drizzling throughout. Our course was still mostly along the top of the ridge, gradually ascending, rarely descend- ing a little to pass slight rivulets. About noon we reached the highest part at a place called the " Ventanas " (windows), where the track ran along the edge of a steep barranco to the right, down which we looked into a tremendously deep valley, whose bottom was obscured by rolling mist, though we distinctly heard the murmuring of the nascent Bombonasa along it. Travellers and cargoes arrived pretty well soaked at the end of this day's journey, and the same was the case through nearly all the rest of the way. The ground to-day was mostly gravelly. June 1 6. — Again heavy showers before daylight which left the forest soaking wet for our journey. There was a little sun till 9 o'clock, then came on showers, which, with very short intervals, lasted till 4 P.M. Our cargueros were accustomed to breakfast at daybreak, I and my muchacho at the same hour made our coffee and cooked a fowl to be eaten on the way by some stream of cool water, whenever hunger should invite us. On reaching the first stream from our sleeping-place, the women CANELOS TO BANGS 139 prepared large draughts of masato for the men, as they said, to give them force, and the process was repeated once or twice during the day. They had also generally their marked resting-places, where they made long halts after carrying their loads an hour or an hour and a half together. On reaching one of these, the women used to cut palm-leaves and spread them on the ground, and the men, after depositing their loads, threw themselves on the leaves at full length. This day they had made very long halts, so that although we went along very slowly, and I often delayed to pluck a moss from the branches, we had got far ahead of them. The day was wearing away, and the clouds and rain made the forest so gloomy that night seemed nearer than it actually was. We waited a good while at a place that seemed convenient for the ranchos, till I began to shiver with cold, and I actually turned back to see what had become of them. The Indians from the first had been com- plaining, more suo, of the heavy cargoes, then of the rain and the wet forest, and of the long dis- tance they had to go. They might at any instant leave their cargoes and return to Canelos, without giving us a hint. Such a thing had happened many and many a time. Even these very Indians on their last journey towards the Sierra — conducting the Padre and his cargoes — left him and his goods at the Rio Verde, a day's journey from Barios. The night is generally chosen for these elopements, and when day breaks the unfortunate traveller finds himself alone. Fortunately, my misgivings in this instance were without foundation, and after I had gone back a good distance I heard the voices of 140 NOTES OF A BOTANIST my people advancing, and conducted them to the site I had chosen for our resting-place. The road had been gently descending for most of the day and was not so gravelly as yesterday, while much sloppy ground had to be passed. June 1 7. — A shower at 3 A.M. At daybreak rain again came on and continued without intermission till near noon, when we set off. We had gone for scarcely two hours when we reached the large stream called Piiyu, a tributary of the Pastasa, and found it so swollen that there was no hope of crossing it ; we must therefore again set to and construct ranchos, and there await the river subsiding. My chagrin at this delay was somewhat lessened by the circumstance of finding myself in the most mossy place I had yet seen anywhere. Even the topmost twigs and the very leaves were shaggy with mosses, and from the branches overhanging the river de- pended festoons of several feet in length, composed chiefly of Bryopterides and Phyllogium fulgens, in beautiful fruit. Throughout the journey, whenever rains, swollen streams, and grumbling Indians combined to overwhelm me with chagrin, I found reason to thank heaven which had enabled me to forget for the moment ail my troubles in the con- templation of a simple moss. We had hoped to reach the Jibaros settlement this day. The chacras were said to be near, and two of our men swam across the river Puyu and before nightfall returned with plantains. June 1 8. — Slight showers before daybreak, but the river had sufficiently abated to allow of our passing it, and at 6 A.M. \ve started. On the opposite side we were not long in coming on large CANELOS TO BAftOS 141 plantations of yucas, plantains, yams, etc., and about nine we reached a house where we found an old man and several women. Here we remained an hour, and I bought a cock of the old man, though I must needs shoot it with my gun, as it was wild and would not allow itself to be caught, he said. After a short chase among the wet yucas, I brought it down and we bore it off in triumph. It took us two hours more to reach the centre of the settlement, where are the Curaca's and two other houses. The way was very muddy, and in that short distance traversed by above twenty streams, with steep slippery descents to them. It was noon as we reached the Curaca's house. We had had drizzling rain for some time this morning, which with the heavy rain of yester- day and the soft muddy nature of the earth had put the track in very bad order and we reached our halting-place in pitiable plight. A good many years ago, it seems, some missionary had induced these Jibaros to become Christians, and to erect a church and convent, after the fashion of those of Canelos and Puca-yacu, but they have long ago renounced Christianity and the church has fallen to decay. The convent was still tenantable and we took possession of it — that is, I and my servants, for the Indians installed themselves in the Curaca's house. The Curaca was absent in the forest and did not return till evening, when I bought a couple of fowls and some plantains of him. His name is Hueleca — a young man of middle stature, slender in body, but with remarkably muscular arms and legs. Compared with our " Christian ' Indians from Sara-yacu, we found him a person of gentlemanly 142 NOTES OF A BOTANIST manners and with none of the craving selfishness of those people. I had therefore quite a pleasure in offering him such little presents as I had kept in store for that purpose. His wife was a tall young woman with pleasing features, and they had four small children, all ill of catarrhal fever. The Curaca and every one about him were complaining of illness, especially of rheumatic pains, which was not to be wondered at from the wet and mud among which they live at this season.1 In dry weather the site must be rather pleasant ; the ground is highish, rising from the Puyu, which furnishes water, though it is a good ten minutes' walk to the river and back. When the sky is clear, Mount Tunguragua, with its cope of snow, and the lower wooded ridges in front of it are seen very distinctly. The afternoon of the day we arrived was nearly fair, though cloudy and cool ; but at two of the following morning it came on to rain heavily and continued without intermission till midnight. Next day (2Oth) drizzling rain from sunrise till nightfall. The sloppy ground, the soaked forest, and the unceasing rain kept us close prisoners. My Indians had been occupied in preparing chicha for the remainder of the journey ; this task was completed, but the weather and the road were so dreadful that we could not think of starting. They declared they were quite out of heart, and they 1 Shortly after I passed by the Jibaria, Hueleca removed with his family U> Sara-yacu, to consult some noted medicine-man ; there his wife and one of his children died, and I have since learnt that he has burnt down his house and the convent, and that he has removed to some other part of the forest where the whites never pass, for to their contamination he believes that he owes his. bereavement. CANELOS TO BANGS 143 absolutely refused to stir a step further unless I would lighten my cargoes. They had received their pay beforehand and I was therefore com- pletely in their hands. I had brought from Tara- poto a boxful of drying paper, and on our way up the rivers I had dried a sprig or two of everything accessible, and especially of Cryptogami, by placing them in paper under my mattress in the canoe. At Puca-yacu, fearful of increasing the weight of my cargoes, I limited my collections to mosses. The only way of lightening my cargoes was to throw away all the paper not occupied by plants, and then divide the remainder of the effects nearly equally among my five boxes. This I did — with a heavy heart — for I knew I should have much difficulty in replacing the paper when I got out into the Sierra. The savages made a bonfire of my precious drying- paper and danced round it ! Sunday the 21.57'.- -The sun shone out in the morning, and we were gratified by the day holding out dry and hot. We waited, however, till the following morning to give time for the forest to dry a little. Early on the 22nd we resumed our journey. I had gathered small quantities of many interesting mosses in the Jibaria, chiefly on logs in the platanal by the convent, and on trees in the forest by the Piiyu ; of these I made small bundles, putting alternate layers of Mosses and Hepaticae so that there might be no confusion of fallen lids and calyptras, and dried them in the sun and by the fire. The same plan I followed through the remainder of the journey, depositing such mosses as I could snatch from the branches in a bag hung at my side, when we halted for the night tying them up in i44 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. bundles, and then hanging them up through the night to smoke along with our soaked garments. Monday was also happily a sunny day. The way was mostly along level ground, often through beds of tall prickly bamboos, and lodales (muddy places), the mud being, as might be supposed, con- genial to the bamboos, and often hiding fallen prickly branches of the latter which wounded our feet. I wore throughout the journey a pair of india-rubber shoes which I had fortunately bought off the feet of a wandering German I met in La Laguna. They were slippery in the descents, where I required to step cautiously in them, and they were easily pierced by thorns and stumps, but they were uninjured by mud and wet, and so long as I kept in movement my feet were never cold in them, even when they filled with water. In fording the streams I kept them on my feet ; on reaching the opposite bank I slipped them off and poured the water out, then in an instant slipped them on again and resumed my march without experiencing the least inconvenience. We had got off about seven, and it was near ten o'clock when we reached another Jibaro hut, and the last of the pueblo of Pindo. Here we rested awhile, and my Indians partook of chicha which was offered them. I con- sidered myself fortunate in buying a couple of fowls and the leg of a tapir. Shortly after we crossed the Pindo, a considerable stream with a broad white beach strewn with blocks and much resembling the Cumbasa below Tarapoto. This stream receives the Piiyu (which also we crossed this day, quite near the Jibaria), and the two united are navigable for small canoes to the CANELOS TO BANGS 145 Pastasa, which is at no great distance. We were gradually approaching the Pastasa, and we slept at night on a plain where the rushing of its waters was distinctly audible. June 23. — About 10 A.M. we reached Allpa-yacu, a stream of clear cool water about the size of the Pindo. This also was low and we got across it without accident. There were steep cliffs of gravel on the east bank just above the ford. Our way to-day was almost entirely across a plain, bounded on the left by a very steep alluvial cliff (which gives the name of Barrancas to the site), at whose foot ran the Pastasa. There is a great contrast between the aspect of this river here — leaping and foaming over 'rocks with a din which throughout the rest of our journey we heard more or less distinctly- and in the lower part of its course, where it spreads out into a broad placid river. The track in places ran along the very edge of the cliff, and the pro- jecting bushes menaced thrusting us over. At about 2 P.M., on the top of a low hill, we came to a rancho, but as our Indians were still disposed to proceed we determined to sleep at a more advanced post. From this place we descended into a deep ravine, and crossed a narrow clear stream with some peril, as the ford was over slippery stones on a steep declivity. To our right the water came down from a lofty hill in a cascade. To climb out of the ravine we had to use hands as well as feet, but a winding path might be easily made, for the soft sandstone admits of being cut by a spade. We slept about half-way down the descent of the other side of the mountain, but were wetted by a shower ere we could get our nmchos put up. VOL. II L 146 NOTES OF A BOTANIST June 24.- -This morning in less than an hour we reached a narrow but rather deep rocky stream, remarkably like so many others in the Montana of Canelos for its crystalline water. We crossed it near its junction with the Pastasa, on the banks of which and above its mouth rise lofty cliffs from the river's edge, to avoid which it is necessary to climb over the most formidable mountain on the whole route, named Abitagua, and perhaps 6000 feet high. It was near midday when we reached the summit. At something more than half-way up is a puesto (resting-place) called Masato, whence there is a view down the valley of the Pastasa, extending, it is said, in clear weather even to the Maranon. I could distinguish the water of the river Pastasa apparently a little below Andoas, but beyond this the sky was too hazy to make out anything. From Masato upwards the ascent is painful — steep, rugged bits alternating with flats of mud, sometimes over the knees. On the top is a long narrow plain, where the intervals between the trees are occupied by loose mud. At the western extremity of the plain is a small open dryish space where a cross has been erected. From this site the heights of Patati and Guay- rapata in the Sierra are visible, as are also the much nearer ridges running from Llanganati between the Topo and the Shuna. From the cross there is a steep short descent, and then another long muddy level, about midway of which, and a little to the right of the track, there is a hollow filled with clear cold water — in fact, it may be called a lagoon, though there are mounds here and there on it with trees, true Vaccinia, etc., on CANELOS TO BANGS 147 them. Perhaps never a day passes without rain on this mountain, and its summit is nearly always enveloped in mist, which looks as if it were per- manently hung up in the trees. The trunks and branches of the latter, and often even the upper- most leaves, are densely enveloped in mosses. Various species of Plagiochila, Mastigobryum, Phyl- logonium, Bryopteris, etc., hang from the branches to the length of i to 3 feet, and in such thick bunches that when saturated with rain they often break off even green branches by their weight. I have been told by the cargueros of Bafios that when they pass with cargoes through the most mossy parts of the Montana after much rain has fallen they step with constant dread of being crushed by some ruptured branch. I examined hastily such mossy branches as had fallen across our path, and often found on them a Holomitrium and a Bryum, which I never got in any other situation. We had fortunately fine weather until reaching the cross of Abitagua ; after passing this we had smart rain all the way down. The descent was long and rugged and took us two hours and a half. At the base was a stream of beautiful water quite like that on the eastern side. On a hill of small elevation, called Casha-urcu (" Prickly Hill," because of the ground being strewed with thorny twigs of bamboos), rising from the opposite bank of the stream, we drew up for the night. June 25. — We had heavy rain from midnight ; when day broke we prepared for the journey, hoping that the rain would pass, but in vain, tor it abated not till two in the afternoon, when it was 148 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. too late to start. This was a most dismal day, and filled us with anxious thoughts for the passage of the Shuna and Topo, which rivers the Indians began to predict would be swollen. They, how- ever, were consoled by meeting near our ranchos a band of large monkeys, several of which they brought down with their blowing-canes. June 26. — Rain again from midnight, but about nine in the morning it abated so much as to allow us to get under way. Road dreadful, what with mud, fallen trees, and dangerous passes, of which two in particular, along declivities where in places there was nothing to get hold of, are not to be thought of without a shudder. In three hours we reached the Shuna, a larger stream than any we had pre- viously passed ; it comes from the north-east in a steep rocky course, and can only be forded after long-continued dry weather, and even then with danger. Now we found it much swollen, but as the tops of the rocks on which it is customary to rest the bridge were out of water, though we had to wade in 3 feet of water to get to them, we set to work to get materials for the bridge. These were merely three long poles, not of the straightest, laid from rock to rock and lashed together with lianas. An Indian posted on each rock held up the opposite ends of a fourth pole to a convenient height to serve for a hand-rail, by means of which one could cross the narrow slippery bridge with some degree of security. We all got safely across the Shuna, but it had again come on to rain, and we bent our steps towards the Topo with mis- givings that we should find it altogether impass- able. On the west side of the Shuna there is a CANELOS TO BANGS 149 steep cliff, perhaps 150 feet high, of dangerous ascent. In some parts of it on projecting ledges poles are set up with notches cut in them wherein to step, but they were very slippery, and in clam- bering up them I trusted more to my hands than to my feet. Beyond this the ground is nearly level to the Topo, \vhich we reached in an hour more. Here our worst fears were realised. The Topo, as far as wre could see up it, and downwards to its junction with the Pastasa, was one mass of foam, and the thunder of its waters against the rocks made the very ground shake to some distance from the bank. The Topo is perhaps the largest tributary of the Pastasa on the north side ; its course is much shorter than that of the Bombonasa, but more water seems to come down it. Its source is in the snowy mountain Llanganati — the fabulous El Dorado of the Ouitensians. . . . This mountain and its offshoots occupy nearly all the space between the head of the Napo and the Rio de Patate, both which rivers rise in Cotopaxi. . . . The Topo is never low enough to be fordable on foot, and though numerous explorations of its •banks have been made for some leagues up, no place has been found practicable for a bridge save the accustomed one, which is about 200 yards above its junction with the Pastasa. Here, on each side of the river, which is perhaps TOO feet wide, stands a large rock, nearly flat-topped, and rising some 12 feet above high water; they arc rather difficult of access, but can be clambered up. ... In the middle of the river, and in a line with these two rocks, is a smaller one of equal height, 150 NOTES OF A BOTANIST to which bridges could be thrown, and a third short bridge to the right bank of the river (where is a narrow channel, sometimes dry), between the large rock and the actual margin, rendered the crossing of the river complete. Ordinary floods did not reach these bridges, but after long and heavy rains they were carried away, the rocks supporting them being laid deep under water. Yet they sometimes lasted so many months that the bamboos began to decay, and have given way under people who incautiously attempted to pass them. In one of these high floods, some eight years ago, the intermediate rock was toppled over, and as it now lies it is so much lower than the others that it no longer serves to support the bridges. From this cause, the Topo has now to be passed by four bridges, thrown from the sides to three rocks in the water, about 20 yards higher up than the ancient site. These rocks are all smallish and uneven-topped, and the middle one is so low that a very slight flood suffices to render it inaccessible. When we reached the margin, this rock was barely visible at long intervals, and then came surging waves which laid it i to 2 feet under water, and would have swept away instantly the poles attempted to be laid on it. The Indians declared that until this stone should be left un- covered there was no hope of getting across ; we therefore cast about to make the preparations neces- sary for passing the night in this place. So many travellers have been detained here by the swollen Topo, that the narrow isthmus between the Topo and the Shuna has been ransacked of everything available for food or shelter. Not a palmito is now CANELOS TO BANGS 151 to be met with, nor even a palm-leaf wherewith to thatch a rancho. Our Indians therefore made the roofs by tying long slender sticks across each other, so as to form small squares, and then overlaying them with such large leaves of terrestrial and epiphytal Aroideae (chiefly species of Anthurium) as they could meet with. Roofs so constructed are not proof against heavy rains, and the leaves soon begin to shrivel and rot. Our huts being put up, we cooked our humble supper and lay down to sleep. At 9 r.M. heavy rain came on and continued without intermission till daybreak (5 A.M.) of the 27th. When we looked out in the morning we saw that the river had risen still higher, and there was no hope of getting across this day. Our pro- visions began to run low. The Indians had drank their last chicha, and they had all along kept robbing me of such eatable things as I could not keep under lock and key, so that my stock of salt fowls was reduced to three, and I had only besides a few dried plantains in a tin secured by a padlock ; with their usual carelessness for the morrow, they had already eaten up the large monkeys killed at Casha-urcu, and all their provision consisted ol a few baked plantains. The day continued gloomy, but no more rain fell. I sallied forth along the river-bank to see if I could meet with anything eatable. Rude granite blocks, often with quartz veins, and here and there small masses of pure quartz, were so heaped up as not to be passed without difficulty and clanger. Among them grew scattered plants of a small Cardamine, of which I gathered all I could find to eat as salad. I then struck into the forest and 152 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. anxiously scrutinised all the trees and the ground beneath them, in the hope of meeting some edible fruit ; but it was not the proper season, and I could only find a single tree of a Miconia (Melastomacese) about 20 feet high, with small insipid black berries about the size of swan-shot. This I decided to cut down the following day, should we be unable to get away, and boil up the berries with about a handful of sugar which I had still left. Neither I with my gun nor the Indians with their blowing-canes could meet a single living thing save toads. At about four in the afternoon the sun shone out among the clouds, and though the river fell not, there seemed some chance of its abating before morning ; so, that all might be in readiness for this desirable contingency, I set the Indians to work to get out the bamboos and lianas required for the bridges. About a quarter of a mile back from our ranchos, and on moist rising ground, are large beds of bamboos affording abundant materials for bridging the Topo. The old stems are so inwoven to one another and to adjacent trees, by means of their arched thorny branches, that, though cut off below, it is impossible to get them down. On this account, stems of a year's growth are chosen ; these are as tall as the older ones, but have no branches, only 'spiniform pungent branch-buds at each joint, which must be lopped off, or they would wound the hands and feet. About 40 feet of the stems is available for the bridges ; above this height they are generally so much thinner as to be easily broken off. When cut down and trimmed, each man drags one to the river's brink, which is no easy task over ground where there are so many obstructions ; and in the CANELOS TO BANGS 153 bamboo- flats so many dead thorny branches are strewed that the feet do not fail to be sorely wounded. When a dozen bamboos had been dragged out the Indians fell tired and could not be induced to fetch the four more which were needed to make the bridges sufficiently strong, so we had but three instead of four for each bridge. At nightfall the river seemed to be falling slightly, and we retired to rest not without hope of seeing it passable when day broke ; but after mid- night heavy showers came on and continued till near 5 A.M. (June 28), so that the morning light showed us the river as much swollen as ever. The sun looked out on the wet forest for a brief interval and then was hidden by clouds, which speedily overspread the whole heaven, so that we could not doubt more rain was coming. The Indians had had long consultations amongst themselves the previous day, the purport of which I could not doubt was the expediency of deserting me and returning to their homes. I also had proposed to them that two or three of their party should return to the Jibaria, and from thence bring plantains for the rest, as I had been tolcl by the Governor of Canelos that such a thing was sometimes done. But they shook their heads and said that if one went they must all go, that they were weary and famished, and that the women would die if they returned not soon to their own country ; so that I plainly perceived if 1 once sent them away I should see their faces no more. On the 28th, however, they began to talk openly of the necessity of returning, seeing, as they said, that before the river could abate we must all perish of hunger. And in truth our state seemed 154 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. desperate, our provisions altogether would not suffice for more than a couple of meals, say to keep body and soul together for two days. Of the painful thoughts that passed through my mind at this critical juncture my rough notes contain no record, and writing now, after six months have elapsed, I shrink from recalling them. The conclusion of my cogitations was to remain by my effects till death or help should arrive ; and my lad, who promised not to desert me, was of the same opinion. We calculated that we should be able to keep alive for a week, and in that time perhaps some trader might come from the Sierra on his way to Canelos. The Indians also were loath to turn back for this reason that they had received their pay in money, with which they hoped to buy great store of calico in the Sierra, where it would cost them but a real the vara, whereas if they took the money back to Sara-yacu they must give four reals the vara for the same sort of calico to some trader who should by a rare chance go thither. I called a council by the river-side, in order to consult on the possibility of throwing the second bridge to a rock a few yards higher up the stream than the one that was under water, but so much higher out of the water than the first stone that the bridge resting on it must necessarily slope considerably, and so far apart that it was doubtful if the bamboos would span the distance. I had pro- posed the same thing to them yesterday, when they had declared it impossible, but now they seemed to think that if the bamboos would only reach the upper rock the plan was feasible. There was no time to be lost, for heavy rain was coming, and it was probable the river would speedily rise, so to CANELOS TO BANGS 155 work at once we went. Though the crossing these frail bridges is a ticklish operation, it may well be supposed that the fixing them is far more perilous. A bamboo was placed resting towards the base on a stone by the margin ; its point was then elevated considerably by two or three men weighing down the end by their united force ; in this position it was swung round till it hung over the rock on which it was intended to rest, when the point was gradually lowered till the bamboo lay as it was required. By the same process a second bamboo was placed alongside the first, and then a man at the imminent risk of his life crawls along them till reaching the rock whereon they rest. He carries a liana rope attached to the root - end of a third bamboo, which he now, with some help from those on shore, draws after him and places alongside the other two ; the bridge is thus stronger than if all the points were laid the same way. Finally, the bamboos were lashed tightly together by lianas at about every 2 feet, and stones laid on them at each end to keep them firmer. So deafening was the roar of the waters that all these operations were carried on through the medium of signs. A move- ment by the hand to imitate chopping was the signal that a knife or cutlass was wanted, and the hands twirled round one another asked for a roll of liana. The first bridge was short and completed without difficulty, but when they came to throw the bamboos to the second rock, which, as I have said, was much more distant and higher out of the water, it was found that their points merely reached the sloping side of the rock and not to its summit, and that the surging waves every now and then washed 156 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. -over them. Four bamboos were laid side by side before any of the Indians would venture to pass to the other extremity, though one of them was after- wards drawn away to enter into the composition of the third bridge. They were at length securely lashed together, and then the third bridge was completed with more facility, being somewhat shorter though sloping from a high to a low rock. The fourth and last bridge was short and speedily constructed. It was near noon when the bridges were ready for crossing. It had been raining heavily for some time, and the river already began to show signs of a further rise ; our safety depended therefore on getting over as speedily as possible. And now became evident what I had all along feared, namely, that the second bridge was so long and so weak, and bent so much when a man went over it, that a very little addition to his weight would plainly either cause it to break or the farther end to slip off the rock whereon it rested but too insecurely. To get across my heavy boxes would be plainly impossible; the Indians indeed flatly refused to risk themselves on the bridge under the weight of any one of my boxes. It was doubtful if an additional bamboo would make the bridge strong enough, and there was now no time to get one out. I had therefore no alter- native but to leave my goods where they were, and trust to be able to send from Banos to fetch them away. With some difficulty I got across my bed and a change of linen and what little money I had, and left my boxes as well protected as I could from the moisture both above and beneath. We were a good while in all getting across, for CANELOS TO BANGS 157 we must pass one by one with slow and cautious steps, where one slip might be fatal. Though the bamboos were scarcely so thick as one's leg and completely wetted, the natural asperity of their cuticle rendered passing along them less insecure than I had feared ; but the longest bridge bent so low when we reached the middle that beyond this it was like climbing a hill, and in this part a surging wave wetted me to the knees, but I stood firm and allowed it to pass. The river was obviously rising and our bridge must soon be swept away. Those who have escaped from death by hunger or drowning may understand what a load was taken off my heart when we had all got safely across the Topo, although I had been obliged to abandon so many things which to me were more valuable than money. On the following clay we might hope to reach the Rio Verde, where is a hacienda for the fabrication of cane-brandy, and the first habitation on the skirts of the Montana. The rain came down heavier than ever, and the forest was like a marsh, but we dashed on as quickly as we could. The track lay mostly along nearly level ground, with a high cliff to our left, and the Pastasa roaring along its base. In one part we had to wade for nearly a mile though fetid mud in which grew beds of gigantic horse-tails 18 feet high, and nearly as thick as the wrist at the base. At length we came to where we had to descend to the beach of the Pastasa, or " Arenal" as it is called. Here it might truly be said " C'est le premier pas qui coute," for the descent began by a ladder — merely a notched pole down a rock which overhung the very Pastasa at a height of 1 50 feet above it ; and. 158 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. it may well be supposed how each as he descended the pole clung to it like grim death. We all got safely down to the beach, where we could get along more pleasantly. When the two Spaniards left me at Puca-yacu I sent by them a tin box asking them to return it full of bread from the Sierra, when they should send back their cargueros. I had hoped to meet the bread about the Jibaria, but I afterwards learnt that my companions had had a long disastrous journey through the Montana, and that the swollen Topo kept them waiting three days. However, when we got down to the Arenal, we saw some Indians advancing and recognised them for our friends of Puca-yacu. They brought my bread, which thus came very opportunely, and I immediately shared out a loaf to each of my hungry companions, reserving enough for other two rations. The Indians of Puca-yacu, on learning the state of the Topo, did not delay a minute, but started off at the top of their speed. I afterwards learnt that when they reached the Topo the bridges were beginning to move, that they crossed with some peril, and that immediately afterwards the longest bridge was carried away. We continued along the margin of the Pastasa till the sun began to get low, indeed the rain did not clear away so as to allow us to see his face until 2 o'clock, and at about 4 P.M. came on a rancho thatched with leaves of Arrow- reed, where we drew up to pass the night. We were still a good way from the end of the Arenal. Whilst my supper was preparing I had leisure to examine it a little. The gorge of the Pastasa, though still bounded on the north side by CANELOS TO BANGS 159 the same high cliff as we had seen from Barrancos upwards, opens out here to a considerable width, and here and there the river forms islands. The broad sandy beach, strewed in some parts with gravel and in others with angular blocks, bears marks of having been at some epoch permanently under water, but much of it lies now above the limit of the highest floods, and is in some parts covered by a dense but not intricate vegetation, among which the Laurel is the most conspicuous plant. I was also much struck by a Diosmeous shrub with sarmentose pinnate branches, and small flowers of which the petals persist after flowering and become distended by a purple-black fluid which I afterwards found to be the universal substitute for ink at Banos. On the sand grew a pink-flowered Polygala 9 inches high, and some other herbs, but especially Melilotus officinalis, which must have been brought down from the mountains ; and amongst the under- shrubs a bushy digitate -leaved Lupin was very frequent. These plants were all new to me, but along with them, and especially in places which the floods still reach, grew abundance of Gynerium sac char ilium with the same tall Gymnogramme and the same Composite tree as were so abundant on the beaches of the Mayo and Cumbasa near Tarapoto. They were accompanied by an Equi- setum, resembling E, ftuviatilc, and distinct from the tall species mentioned above. June 29. --The night was fortunately dry, and at daybreak I had our last fowl cooked and the remainder of the plantains distributed among the Indians, besides a loaf of bread to each. At sunrise we got off, and about the same hour rain came on, 160 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. and continued till noon. Though not very heavy, it had the accustomed effect of putting the forest in weeping plight. The track, instead of improving as we approached the residences of civilised people, was this day decidedly worse than ever, and the natural obstructions were multiplied almost tenfold. At 8 o'clock we reached the terminus of the beach, above which the Pastasa ran close to the barranco, so that we could no longer follow its banks. And now commenced a series of ascents and descents, of which I counted eight from Mapoto to Rio Verde. Of these, the first two ridges were the highest and most fatiguing. Beyond these was a narrow sloppy plain at whose further side we had to pass a long puddle -hole called Runa-cocha, in which are laid slender poles from one projecting stone or tree-stump to another, and as they were now covered by water it was difficult to step on them. I had, in fact, the pleasure of slipping off them into the water nearly up to my waist. As the Indians travelled now without cargo, they got much ahead of me, and I know not how long they had been at the Rio Verde when I came out there, at 3 P.M., very much wayworn. What a pleasure it was to see again a white man's habitation, with plots of cultivated land ! The hacienda has only been recently established, and the dwelling-house, which has an upper story, was unfinished ; but there was a cane -mill worked by water-power, and from twenty to thirty people at work cutting cane in the adjacent cane-piece, distilling brandy, etc. The Rio Verde is very little less than the Topo, and, like it, is unfordable. We crossed it by two stout poles laid from rock to rock at a part where XVIII CANELOS TO BAftOS 161 the river was confined to a narrow gorge. Immedi- ately below, it opened out into a deep basin where the wrater was so clear and green that one sees the name of " Verde " has not been given to the river without reason. Its course is down a steep valley from north to south, and at its mouth it falls over the barranco of the Pastasa in an unbroken cascade of perhaps 200 feet high. We had obviously been ascending all day, and when we came out on the open ground of the Rio Verde, a cold, penetrating wind was blowing. Here we found that the common plantain would no longer bear the climate, though the small species called Guineo was still flourishing. Oranges and sugar- cane did not attain the size they did on the Amazon. On the other hand, productions of cooler climates began to make their appearance, such as potatoes and zanahovias, which seem a sort of parsnip. These are planted in far too small quantity to suffice for the consumption of the people employed in the hacienda, who being from the Sierra, their food consists chiefly of potatoes, pea- meal, and barley-meal. I was therefore disappointed in my expectation of finding materials for a plentiful re- fection for all my party, and with much difficulty bought a few potatoes and zanahovias, and a small quantity of barley-meal, besides a couple of bottles of aguardiente for the Indians, who esteemed it much more than the food. /it nc 30. — Although at the Rio Verde I slept under the shelter of a good roof, I suffered more from cold than I had done in the forest, for a ml