ii4 Travels and Adventures 



de los Santos is bounded by immense precipices, 

 some of them over two hundred feet in height. 

 These are the haunts of several birds of prey, most 

 notably the condor, or, as it is called in the Spanish, 

 El Biutre. This gigantic bird has a spread of wing 

 of six feet, and has strength to rise from the ground 

 with a fair-sized calf. I have seen them wheeling 

 around at a considerable height, and they seem to 

 alight on the ground very rarely. The natives' 

 mode of killing them is to slaughter an old horse 

 or other large animal on the edge of a precipice, 

 and the quick-sighted bird is down upon the carcase 

 before life is quite gone ; the natives wait in ambush 

 until the monster bird is gorged with the flesh, so 

 as to be unable to rise quickly into the air. The 

 lurking Indian watches his opportunity, and with the 

 agility of a deer falls upon the condor with spears, 

 and generally comes off victorious. On the ledges 

 of these precipices, where the eagle and the condor 

 make their home, the lovely Cattleya Mendelii has 

 grown in profusion since the memory of man. Even 

 when the first plant -hunter arrived, these dizzy 

 heights offered no obstacle to his determination to 

 plunder. Natives were let down by means of ropes, 

 and by the same ropes the plants were hauled up 

 in thousands, and when I visited the place all that 

 I could see of its former beauty and wealth of plants 



