Leaving Quito. 173 



Ceylon aromatic ; but, according to Dr. Taylor, it is cassia. 

 Macas, in the days of Spanish adventure a prosperous city 

 under the name of " Sevilla de Oro," is now a cluster of 

 huts on the banks of the Upano. Its trade is in tobacco, 

 vanilla, canela, wax, and copal. The Spaniards took the 

 trouble to transplant some genuine cinnamon-trees from 

 Ceylon to this locality, and they flourished for a time. 



On the 30th of October we left Quito on our march 

 across the continent, by the way of the Napo wilderness. 

 The preparations for our departure, however, commenced 

 long before that date. To leave Quito in any direction is 

 the work of time. But to plunge into that terra incognita 

 " el Oriente," where for weeks, perhaps months, we should 

 be lost to the civilized world and cut off fi-om all resources, 

 east or west, demanded more calculation and providence 

 than a voyage round the world. 



We were as long preparing for our journey to the Ama- 

 zon as in making it. In the first place, not a man in Quito 

 could give us a single item of information on the most im- 

 portant and dangerous part of our route. Quitonians are 

 not guilty of knowing any thing about trans- Andine affairs 

 or " oriental" geography. From a few petty traders who 

 had, to the amazement of their fellow-citizens, traversed 

 the forest and reached the banks of the Xapo, we gleaned 

 some information which was of service. But on the pas- 

 sage down the Kapo from Santa Rosa to the Maranon, a 

 distance of over five hundred miles, nobody had any thing 

 to say except the delightful intelligence that in all proba- 

 bility, if we escaped the fever, we would be murdered by 

 the savages. The information we received was about as 

 definite and reliable as Herndon obtained respecting any 

 tributary to the Lower Amazon : " It runs a long way up ; 

 it has rapids ; savages live upon its banks ; every thing 

 grows there." From M. Gillette, a Swiss gentleman trad- 



