IN THE ECUADOREAN ANDES 177 



Banos awaiting the fate of my goods. After so 

 long a voyage I was much fallen in flesh, and my 

 thin face nearly hidden by a beard of three months' 

 growth. The cold at Banos I found almost in- 

 sufferable - - thermometer sometimes as low as 

 48^ at daybreak, and at its maximum not passing 

 64"- -rains still continuing. I was attacked by 

 catarrh, with a cough so violent as often to bring 

 up blood from both nose and mouth. Perhaps I 

 should never see again my books, journals, instru- 

 ments, my Peruvian mosses, and other things 

 which no money could replace all perhaps rotting 

 on the shores of the Topo. There was not a book 

 in all Banos, save breviaries and "doctrinas." 

 The weather scarcely allowed me to get out, or 

 I might have put off sad thoughts by the sight of 

 new plants. I had no dry ing -paper, but I found 

 some coarse calico, and with this began to dry the 

 mosses and ferns I found on the dilapidated walls 

 of my garden. I had also to lay out the mosses 

 I had snatched up as we came along trom Canelos, 

 and which by chance had been brought along with 

 my bed, and this occupation diverted my thoughts 

 from my painful situation. The Cryptogamic vege- 

 tation of some parts of the Montana of Canelos is 

 wonderful. There is one mountain, called Abitagua, 

 which though not more perhaps than 5000 feet 

 high, is continually enveloped in mists and rains. 

 The trees on it, even to the topmost leaves, are 

 so thickly encased in mosses that a recognisable 

 specimen of them would be scarcely procurable, it 

 indeed they ever flower, which must be very 

 rarely. I gathered a tuft ol everything I saw in 

 fruit and stowed it in a pouch by my side. In the 



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