RESIDENCE AT TARAPOTO 61 



a very long one, and when I returned, with heavier 

 loads, I found it expedient to divide it into two. It 

 would take several pages to describe the savage, 

 rocky and wooded gorges, with rugged ascents and 

 descents ; and the torrents that traversed them, and 

 must be crossed and recrossed, as the cliffs rose 

 from the water's edge, first on one side, then on the 

 other. A turbid saline stream of considerable 

 volume, called Cachi-yacu (Salt River), had to be 

 waded through eleven times in the space of half a 

 mile. When we reached the grassy rounded summit 

 of the pass of the Campana, at about 5000 feet, the 

 sun was fast declining, and we had still a long and 

 devious descent on the other side of the mountain 

 to Lirio-pampa 1 (as Chumbi had called his chacra), 

 which we reached about nightfall. On receiving 

 the Padre's missive, Chumbi, with a profound bow, 

 begged permission to open it, and when he had read 

 it and applied his lips to the signature, he placed 

 himself, his house, his wife, and his little ones at 

 my entire disposal. 



Lirio-pampa was a nearly level strip of fertile 

 land adjacent to a considerable stream (the Alan) 

 that ran not into the Mayo, but into the Sisa, the 

 next river entering the Huallaga to southward. It 

 was all forest, save where Chumbi's colony had 

 made their little plantations of plantains and other 

 esculents, including a plot of thriving sugar-cane, <>! 

 which the first crop was expected to be ripe by the 

 time the mill they were putting up with wooden 

 machinery should be ready in j^nnd it. At a short 

 distance a spur of the Campana ran down into ill 



1 Lirio-pampa: lat. 6 25' S.. [on] 

 alt. (pass) 5144 E. ft., (nmuntain-topi <><* 



