118 Mr. C. W. Wyatt on ^6' 



sandflies amongst the mountains. There are other insect plagues 

 besides these, but they are not often met with. 



The road from the river to Ocana crosses a range of moun- 

 tains some 6000 feet in altitude, and is by far the best road 

 or mule-track which we traversed in Columbia. As we zig- 

 zagged up we were constantly looking back upon grand views 

 of the Magdalena valley, and the central range of the Andes 

 beyond it. Here too, for the first time, we saw the primeval 

 forest, as we had often imagined it, in all its magnificence — a 

 forest which, in all probability, had never fallen, save by natural 

 decay, ever since it was said " Let the earth bring forth grass, 

 the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after 

 his kind, whose seed is in itself upon the earth/^ We could 

 look over, and, for a very little way, into it ; but to enter it was 

 an utter impossibility, both from the density of the vegetation 

 and the inequality of the ground. Upon reaching an altitude of 

 4000 or 5000 feet, we looked down upon deep dells of most 

 beautiful vegetation — dells which seemed to have no bottom, 

 and out of which, above a canopy of Bambusacea, sprang 

 graceful tree-ferns. The banks of the road were covered with 

 beautiful ferns and lycopods ; and the trees, though they were 

 not of any great size (they were far too thick for that), wxre 

 draped with hanging mosses, creepers, and parasitical plants to a 

 much greater extent than we ever saw afterwards. This was 

 probably owing to the moisture from the clouds which generally 

 envelope this part of the mountains. But such sights as these 

 are few and far between, and one may travel for weeks without 

 seeing vegetation in such beauty as that which I have been 

 endeavouring, though vainly, to describe. It was not, how- 

 ever, a very good place for us. Not that birds did not exist, but 

 to see and shoot them we found to be difficult; while to get 

 them when shot was impossible, unless they fell from a tree 

 overhanging the path. 

 ■f Soon after crossing the ridge, the beautiful vegetation gives 

 U place to underwood and scrub ; and from the summit we looked 

 down upon a rolling country, range after range of bare, desolate 

 mountains and valleys. A greater contrast than the two sides 

 of this mountain- range presented could hardly be imagined. / 



J 



