34 



NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. 



spondents. At Nauta I collected scarcely anything, 

 for fear of adding to my already unwieldy baggage, 

 and I could not leave any dried plants there, where 

 they would be wasted. The same reasons, added 

 to illness, have limited my gatherings at Yuri- 

 maguas, for I cannot hope to gather sufficient to 

 make it worth while sending a collection from here 

 direct to England. Towards the sources of these 

 rivers it would be easier to collect in descending 

 than in ascending were it practicable to remain a 

 few days in the promising localities ; for in coming 

 down the size of one's canoe may be as large as one 

 chooses, but in going up one must necessarily use 

 the smallest canoes, and even then be content to 

 get on at a very slow rate. 



[The letter to Mr. Teasdale now takes up the 

 narrative again : ] 



The banks of both Maranon and Huallaga 

 continue flat all the way to Yurimaguas, but at 

 about two clays below this place / enjoyed my 

 first view of the Andes \ It was on the 2nd of May 

 -we had had terrible rain from midnight to noon, 

 and it still kept dropping until 5 P.M. About hall- 

 past five the sky cleared to N.W., distinctly revealing 

 a line of blue mountains which might be some 4000 

 feet higher than the river. They are called the 

 Curi-yacu (Mountains of the River of Gold), and 

 extend along the western side of the pongos of the 

 Huallaga. 



You are, I daresay, aware that the Maranon, the 

 Huallaga, and their tributaries have the peculiarity 

 of issuing from the mountains into the plains 

 through deep narrow rifts called pongos. From 



