NARRATIVE OF THE EXPEDITIONS 9 
crops. There was a serious shortage of all staples (plantains, beans, yucca, 
rice, ete.) and considerable hardship among the improvident. At no time 
were the sand bars of the Maranon or Amazon exposed. This of course 
affected the fishing industry. Seining was made much more difficult, while 
throw-net fishing was probably increased, due to the concentration of the 
mijanos, schools of shore fish. Much of the time the fish had taken to the 
monte, or thicket, when the overflow of cocha and quebrada reached into the 
forest. While the fish are in the woods, the Loretan abandons his diet of 
fresh fish, and resorts to his supply of the dried. 
Certain fishes are very abundant. But there is an increasing scarcity of 
others. The famed piraructi (paiche of Peru) has undoubtedly been exter- 
Fic. 5. Marketing Orestias, Puno, Lake Titicaca. Each string of fish worth 
five centavos, the whole valued at thirty centavos (about 15¢). Strung on the 
tough blades of a native flag. 
minated from certain regions. In the Chanchomayo dynamiting has greatly 
reduced the river fishes. The government has now found it possible to prevent 
the sale of dynamite to the poor thereabout, but has found no way of curbing 
the practise of dynamiting on the part of the wealthy and influential. | Poison- 
ing streams wholesale by means of the crushed root of the native poison plant 
cube is prohibited by law. But this method continues to prevail wherever 
cube is available, notably in the tributaries of the Huallaga, the smaller of 
which are nearly depopulated of fish. 
Some birds are also rapidly becoming scarce, especially the egrets, whose 
plumes are marketed. Two brothers Hoyle of Contamana have secured 
recently a government monopoly of the plume trade of the Ucayal. They 
are bound by its terms to develop the fisheries of the Ucayali, first as a means 
