LOWER NEIGHBORS OF CART AGO 165 



from the last settlement to cut it out for us. We rode on 

 through a boggy potrero with fine trees here and there. 

 Among these were some magnificent fig-trees which instead 

 of growing on other trees had sprouted on the tops of large 

 boulders, sending their roots down around the boulder as 

 constrictor figs do around their hosts and completely embrac- 

 ing it. The effect of such a tree standing so high above the 

 general level of the field was extraordinary. 



The potrero bordered the Rio Macho and gradually be- 

 came more wooded as the valley grew narrower. There 

 were many beautiful flowers; a short distance within the 

 timber we gathered a splendid Columnea draping a big tree. 

 This vine has small fleshy opposite leaves and long, tubular, 

 bright red blossoms. In another place we passed bignonia- 

 ceous trees with large trumpet-shaped flowers, in color 

 creamy white shading gradually to rich lemon yellow and 

 exquisitely perfumed, the delight of bees and humming- 

 birds. Here were large-leaved melastomes with peach-pink 

 blossoms an inch across, there small-leaved melastomes with 

 clusters of delicate waxy rose and white blossoms. On the 

 trees we saw the usual epiphytes and new ones with rosy pink 

 blossoms and strange begonias. Looking at the hillside 

 across the valley, the trees were astonishingly like an early 

 autumn hillside at home, some being dark green, some light 

 green, some yellow and others almost orange, but here the 

 colors other than green were due to the new leaves, not 

 to the dying foliage. Certain yellow trees with well-rounded 

 heads were identified by Mr. Lankester as "tirra," a tree 

 whose botanical relations have not been determined. They 

 are often left standing when other trees of the forest have 

 been cut away because the wood is so hard and tough and 

 difficult to work. 



Through some bars we entered a little strip of close woods 

 arching over a road leading to a brook with an awkward 



