238 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. 



him with me in all my subsequent excursions in 

 the district. From him I learnt that the Cascarilla 

 roja did not commence until another day's journey 

 downwards, and that to have a chance of seeing it 

 in any quantity (which, he admitted, was at best 

 only problematical), it would be necessary to 

 penetrate at least three days into the forest. As 

 my object for the present was merely to make 

 myself acquainted with the plant, and with the 

 soil and climate in which it grows, I decided on 

 going no farther than until I should meet with it ; 

 for the procuring and transporting of provisions 

 necessary for a long stay in the forest is both 

 difficult and expensive. 



I remained a day at Lucmas to look around. It 

 is at an altitude of between 5000 and 6000 feet, 

 and produces luxuriant sugar-cane. The small 

 banana called Guineo flourishes (as indeed it does 

 at Guataxi), but the plantain is near its upper 

 limit, and the fruit is small and scanty. There are 

 tolerably lofty forest trees in the valleys and on 

 the hills, while the steep sides of the latter are 

 often covered with grass, more or less intermingled 

 with scrub, and often with Bromeliacese. In 

 descending towards Lucmas, I saw on the bushy 

 hill-sides a great deal of the small tree called Palo 

 del Rosario, a curious, and I believe undescribed, 

 Sapindacea, which I had already gathered at Banos 

 in the Eastern Cordillera. Its most remarkable 

 feature is, that while the layer of wood next the 

 bark is quite white, all the internal layers are 

 purple-brown with a black outer edge a colour 

 not unlike that of old walnuts ; so that articles 

 fabricated of this wood are curiously mottled. 



