PREPAKATIONS FOPw OUR JOURNEY. 253 



their waters to swell the Great River, which ploughs a 

 broad pathway for over three thousand miles through the 

 very heart of the wilderness. 



After spending two months in the valley of Quito, we 

 commenced preparations for our journey down the eastern 

 slope of the Andes, through this forest to the Atlantic. 

 Our intended route was the same as that pursued in 1541, 

 by Francisco de Orellana, the treachei-ous deserter of 

 Gon9alo Pizan-o, the brother of the conqueror of Peru, 

 in his journey of uniiaralleled suffering, through the wil- 

 derness, in search of " El Dorado." He found not the 

 " Gilded King," but discovered wdiat was of infinitely 

 more value to the world — the Amazons.* Knowing that 

 all supplies of provisions might be withheld by the In- 

 dians, we were obliged to take from Quito sufficient to 

 last us until our arrival at one of the frontier Brazilian 

 towns upon the Amazons — a distance of one thousand 

 miles through an unbroken forest. The traveller in those 

 wilds must place but little dependence upon his rifle for 

 food. The fact that where the vegetable kingdom is over- 

 luxuriant the animal is subordinated, is there fully illus- 

 trated ; even the natives, with all their skill, secure only 

 a precarious subsistence. Monkeys and jaguars are there ; 

 but you will probably only hear the howl of the latter, 

 and catch unsatisfactory glimpses of the former, trooping 

 gallantly and safely through the tops of the forests one 

 hundred feet overhead. Moreover, all Ecuadorians were 

 in blissful ignorance of that portion of their country. 

 There was, indeed, in Quito, one delineation of the Orien- 

 tal portions of Ecuador, by Dr. Villavicencio ; but, like 

 Mark Twain's maps, it had been gotten up with more 

 reference to picturesqueness than geographical accuracy. 



* The mouth of the Amazons was discovered as early as 1500, by 

 Vincente Yanez Pinzon ; but Orellana was the first to navigate its waters, 

 and to make known to the world the grand proportions of the river. 



