178 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 



points are probably much higher. In a future letter I may perhaps 

 sketch more minutely the geographical and other features of Tara- 

 poto. Good botanizing ground is unfortunately rather distant. The 

 Pampa either is or has been wholly under cultivatiou, with the ex- 

 ception of the precipitous banks of the rivulets, aud it is a long way 

 across it to the foot of the hills. The summits of the hills have most 

 of them never been reached, and they are clad with the same dense 

 forest as the Amazon, showing rarely scattered bald, grassy places, 

 called 'pajonales' or 'pastos.' Where there are no tracks one must 

 ascend by the beds of the streams, all of which, including the Huallaga, 

 have the peculiarity of being, as the Peruvians say, boxed in {enca- 

 jonado) between steep walls of rock, where they issue from the hills. 

 These steep narrows are called ' Pongos,' and often include falls and 

 rapids ; they are rich places for Perns, but it is both difficult and dan- 

 gerous 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 suiFering in the feet. I have at last 

 got into a Pern country, and 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 Rubiacem, both very fine things, one of them 

 allied to CahjcopJiyllum, but with large flowers, almost like those of 



uezia. There are new thincrg also in several other tribes. The 



general character of the vegetation is, as might be expected, interme- 

 diate between that of the valley of the Amazon and of its alpine sources. 

 As evidences of an approach to cooler regions, and to a Plora 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 twenty-two 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 Grawhutk, Mmhclum. Dnvallia. T)!.nla2him. TAtnhrochia, 



