332 SEE— THE CAUSE OF EARTHQUAKES. [October 19, 



eight to ten feet, in such dense mass as to be nearly impenetrable. The 

 machetas were found inadequate. It would have taken several weeks' labour 

 of our whole party to have cleared a track over a single mile. The only 

 way of getting through was by continually parting the reeds with the hands 

 (as if swimming), and as they were exceedingly stiff, they sprang back 

 directly we let go, and shut us out of each other's sight. The edges of the 

 leaves cut like razors, and in a short time our hands were streaming with 

 blood, for we were compelled to grasp the stems to prevent ourselves from 

 sinking into the boggy soil. On this day we crossed the divide, and the 

 streams now flowed toward the Atlantic. The zvhole country ivas like a satu- 

 rated sponge. ..." 



Page 243: 



"... everything burnable was dripping with moisture, and the sur- 

 rounding land was so wet that water oozed or even squirted out in jets when 

 it was trodden upon. ..." 



Page 245 : 



"... Rain continued without intermission. No one at Cayambe had 

 -spoken about these incessant rains. From the aspect of the country (so 

 •different from any other part of Ecuador), from the saturation of the hills, 

 the innumerable small pools, streamlets and springs, I am convinced they 

 Lare nearly perpetual. ..." 



In an excellent account of " A New Peruvian Route to the Plain 



of the Amazon," published in the National Geographic Magazine 



for August, 1906, Professor Solon I. Bailey, of Harvard College 



Observatory, describes the route through the Aricoma Pass at an 



altitude of 16,500 feet, and continues (p. 439) : 



"... On reaching the eastern crest of these mountains, if the view 

 is clear, one seems to be standing on the edge of the world. The eye, in- 

 deed, can reach but little of the vast panorama, but just at one's feet the 

 earth drops away into apparently endless and almost bottomless valleys. We 

 may call them valleys, but this does not express the idea; they are gorges, 

 deep ravines in whose gloomy depths rage the torrents which fall from the 

 snowy summits of the Andes down toward the plain. We might hunt the 

 world over for a better example of the power of running water. The 

 whole country is on edge. There all the moisture from the wet air, borne 

 by the trade winds across Brazil from the distant Atlantic, is wrung by the 

 mountain barrier and falls in almost continual rain. 



" Near the summit of the pass only the lowest and scantiest forms of 

 vegetable life are seen. In a single day, however, even by the slow march 

 of weary mules, in many places literally stepping * downstairs ' from stone 

 to stone, we drop 7,000 feet. Here the forest begins, first in stunted growths, 

 and then, a little lower down, in all the wild luxuriance of the tropics, where 

 moisture never fails. The lower eastern foot-hills of the Andes are more 

 heavily watered and more densely overgrown than the great plain farther 



