224 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. 



will have learnt from a letter I wrote to Mr. 

 Saunders that I found the vegetation there (in 

 October 1858) consisted of so very few species 

 that I judged it expedient to return to the Sierra, 

 where I found the people in great alarm more 

 at the devastating progress of their own armies 

 than at the threatened invasion of the Peruvians- 

 and ready to desert the towns should hostilities 

 actually commence. So the risk of losing all my 

 goods has kept me from leaving them far, during 

 the remainder of the dry season. But for this, I 

 should, after leaving Pallatanga, have plunged into 

 some other forest, for I find that the woody slopes 

 on both sides of the Andes must be in future my 

 principal field for collecting, the really Alpine 

 plants having been already gathered to a great 

 extent, and having most of them a very wide 

 range. 



I am now packing my flowers and ferns, which 

 (especially the former) comprise many interesting 

 things, gathered under disadvantageous circum- 

 stances. The difficulties of travelling anywhere 

 out of the central plain of the Ecuadorean Andes 

 is immense. Roads there are none what go by 

 that name are deep slippery gullies and narrow 

 ledges along steep declivities, where far more lives 

 are annually lost than in navigating the rivers of 

 the plain. . . . 



To Mr. George Bcnthaiu 



AMBATO, April 13, 1859. 



. . . The collection now sent is not of the class 

 I could have liked, but the unsettled state of the 



