Winslow.] 76 , 



the foot of the Kuute — a high and steep dividing ridge between the 

 Cordilleras — when we took the direction toward Punin, and leaving 

 that town on the right, descended into and crossed an immense ravine. 

 Following up its left bank we at last descended again by a difficult 

 path, and tied our beasts near the bottom of the ravine of Tungshi to 

 a few bushes that grew along its desolate side. We then crossed the 

 stream and climbed up the steep cliff. By clinging to the rocks I could 

 pass round a sharp point, and ascending the precipice two or three 

 hundred feet by sloping zigzag indentations worn out by the rains, I 

 came to a place where the descent was easy to the spot where the 

 bones had been previously found. This was some three hundred yards 

 from the spot where we had tied our mules. 



The bones, either entire or in fragments, laid promiscuously in a 

 very compact hard silt or brown fine gritty mud, and the bottom of the 

 ravine where we could work in excavating them was at least five hun- 

 dred feet from the top of the cliSs which formed the edges of the 

 ravine. The ravine was formed by the action of running water, and 

 the further we ascended the chasm the deeper and narrower it 

 became, and the more perpendicular were its sides ; for it was formed 

 in a steep declivity which ran upward and eastward towards the 

 mountains which in this direction were very lofty, and formed the 

 snowy crests of the eastern Cordillera of Cubillin. The small stream 

 which ran at the bottom of the ravine had cut its way down to hard 

 compact quartzose sandstone. The bed of the stream was filled with 

 boulders of porphyry and other igneous rocks, and I observed several 

 boulders which appeared to be granitic. Upon this hard, flinty sand- 

 stone rested this immense thickness of compact silt or gritty mud which 

 contained bones, mostly in good condition. A stone was only here 

 and there to be seen, and these were small and rounded. But the 

 bones were numerous all the way from the bottom of the ravine to the 

 height of a fourth or fifth part of the altitude of the cliff on both sides, 

 and I observed them even three hundred yards below our excavation 

 and near the spot where we had left our mules. 



Dr. Taylor visited this spot with some travellers five years since, 

 when he saw some very large bones imbedded in the cliffs which he 

 could not reach. He represents one of them to have been the os 

 Innominatum of some gigantic animal, and that the articulating point 

 of the bone was as large as his hat. Afterwards, more than three 

 years since, Garcia Moreno, the present chief magistrate of the Re- 

 public, either visited the place, or hearing of huge and curious bones 

 existing in these deposits, ordered them taken out and removed to 

 Quito. 



We spent some two hours or more in excavating, and I have 

 obtained many whole bones or fragments, and four different forms 



