284 IN THE WILDS OF SOUTH AMERICA 



tricity for the light and street-car service of Cochabamba. 

 A power-house had been constructed at the bottom of the 

 ravine, and the lines for transmitting the current had been 

 strung across the mountains. 



At Incachaca the river flows through an underground 

 channel; while exploring the forest one day we came sud- 

 denly upon the narrow cleft in the mountainside, scarcely 

 a dozen feet across, and with a great deal of effort were 

 finally able to distinguish the roaring white torrent a hun- 

 dred feet below. The edges of the cleft are so overgrown 

 with ferns that one has no idea of its existence until the 

 very brink is reached. A short distance below, the river 

 emerges from the darkened cavern, and plunging over the 

 face of a precipice, thunders into a pool in a sheer drop of 

 fiftv or sixtv feet. 



We found the upper limit of a subtropical fauna at Inca- 

 chaca. Bird-flocks travelled hurriedly through the trees; 

 they were composed of bright-colored tanagers, finches, 

 and cotingas. Honey-creepers and hummers were plenti- 

 ful in the flowering shrubs. Queer little ducks called mer- 

 ganettas disported in the pool below the falls, and dippers 

 ran nimbly along the edge of the water. In one of the tall 

 trees near the river we discovered the nest of an eagle. We 

 found it impossible to climb the tree, but a German named 

 Ricardo Marquardt, who was in charge of the workmen 

 along the river, succeeded in reaching the huge mass of 

 sticks seventy feet above the ground, and brought down a 

 beautifully spotted egg. To my companion, Mr. Howarth 

 S. Boyle, who accompanied me on the entire trip, belongs 

 the credit of taking the rarest birds from this locality; 

 they were a pair of white-eared thrushes (Entomodestes) , 

 which, so far as I can learn, exist in only two other mu- 

 seums. Among the lower growth lived many ant-thrushes 

 (Grallaria), whose clear call could be heard at all hours of 

 the day. This is one of the hardest of all birds to collect. 

 The long-legged, tailless songsters never leave the thick 

 growth of ferns and brush, and the only way to secure them 



