36 NOTES OF A NATURALIST. 



throughout different parts of this vast region, whose 

 nearest allies, however, arc to be found in the original 

 home, Guiana or Brazil. Along with this stock, which 

 mainly occupies the lower country, we find, especially 

 in Venezuela, Columbia, and Ecuador, the modified 

 descendants of vegetable types characteristic of the 

 Andes. Of the Andean flora I shall have something 

 to say in a future page ; but I may express the belief 

 that if we go back to the remote period when most 

 of the characteristic types of the vegetation of South 

 America came into existence, we must seek the 

 ancestors of the Brazilian flora, and to a large extent 

 also those of the Andean flora, in the ancient high 

 mountain ranges of Brazil, where we now see, in the 

 vast extent of arenaceous rocks, and in the surviving 

 pinnacles of granite, the ruins of one of the greatest 

 mountain regions of the earth. 



Early on Easter Sunday morning, April 9, we 

 were off Tumaco, a small place on one of a group of 

 flat islands lying at the northern extremity of the 

 coast of Ecuador.* These islands are of good repute 

 as having the healthiest climate on this coast. 

 Although close to the equator, cattle are said to thrive, 

 and, if one could forget the presence of a fringe of 

 cocos palms along the shore, the island opposite to 

 us, in great part cleared of forest, with spreading 

 lawns of green pasture, might have been taken for a 

 gentleman's park on some flat part of the English 

 coast. We here parted with General Prado, ex- 



* Much cinchona bark, coming from the interior, was formerly 

 shipped at Tumaco ; but between horrible roads and the reckless waste 

 of the forests through mismanagement, but little is now conveyed by 

 this way. 



