of an Orchid Hunter. 175 



fine a lake, which swarms with fish and myriads of 

 water-fowl. The natives have no need for manual 

 labour, as the lake and the forest provide them with 

 all the necessaries of life. Here I was obliged to 

 obtain men to carry provisions to the woods, as from 

 here to the highest point reached by the expedition 

 of Captain Lopez is nine days' journey on foot, and, 

 except a few provisions to be obtained at the mines 

 now being worked in the mountains, I was told that 

 very little was to be had to eat. The first clay's track 

 ran through a kind of scrub and pasture-land, which 

 form the slopes of the hills, and alon^ the side of the 

 track there are sugar and coffee plantations. The 

 second day was much the same, but the third day we 

 had left all trace of habitation and struck into the 

 thick forest, the principal living things I saw here 

 being some wild turkeys and crowds of toucans. I 

 suppose the track was made through the forest ac- 

 cording to the caprice of the director of the expedition, 

 for, to keep in the track, in about three miles of dis- 

 tance we were obliged to cross a serpentine kind of 

 river nine times, always wading above our knees. On 

 the banks of this river I found many lovely specimens 

 of Oncidium Kramerianum, but I did not stop to 

 collect it, from a desire to know what there was on the 

 higher grounds. At the end of the third day we had 

 ascended something like three thousand feet, and on 



