NOTES OF A NATURALIST 



IN SOUTH AMERICA. 

 CHAPTER I. 



>^Voyage across the Atlantic — Barbadoes — Jamaica — Isthmus of 

 Panama — Buenaventura, tropical forest — Guayaquil and 

 the river Guayas — Payta — The raijiless zone of Peru — 

 Voyage to Callao. 



A VOYAGE across the Atlantic in a large ocean 

 steamer is now as familiar and as little troublesome 

 as the journey from London to Paris. It rarely offers 

 any incident worth recounting, and yet, especially as 

 a first experience, it supplies an abundant variety of 

 sources of curiosity and interest. It is easy for a man 

 to sit down at home and within thei^alls of his own 

 study to find the requisite materials for investigating 

 the still unsolved problems presented by the physics 

 and meteorology of the ocean, or the evidence favour- 

 able or hostile to the important modern doctrine of the 

 permanence of the great ocean valleys ; but in point 

 of fact very few men who stay at home do occupy 

 themselves with these questions, and it is no slight 



B 



