ASPECTS OF THE VALLEY 49 



But its existence is now doomed as a large tree of 

 a century's majestic growth, forming a suitable 

 perch and lookout for the harpy and gray eagles, 

 common in the valley, and the still more common 

 vultures and Polybori, and of the high-roosting, 

 noble black-faced ibis; a home and house, too, of 

 the Magellanic eagle-owl and the spotted wild cat 

 (Felis geoffroyi) ; and where even the puma could 

 lie at ease on a horizontal branch thirty or forty 

 feet above the earth. Being of soft wood, it can 

 be cut down very easily; and when felled and 

 lashed in rafts on the river, it is floated down 

 stream to supply the inhabitants with a cheap 

 wood for fuel, building, and other purposes. 



At the highest point I reached in my rambles 

 along the valley, about a hundred and twenty 

 miles from the coast, there was a very extensive 

 grove or wood of this willow, many of the trees 

 very large, and some dead from age. I visited this 

 spot with an English friend, who resided some 

 twenty miles lower down, and spent a day and a 

 half wading about waist-deep through the tall, 

 coarse grasses and rushes under the gaunt, leafless 

 trees, for the season was midwinter. The weather 

 was the worst I had experienced in the country, 

 being piercingly cold, with a violent wind and 

 frequent storms of rain and sleet. The rough, wet 

 boles of the trees rose up tall and straight like 

 black pillars from the rank herbage beneath, and 

 on the higher branches innumerable black vultures 

 (Cathartes atratus) were perched, waiting all the 



