Aspects of the Valley. 51 



-the flower of the broom. At this season the up- 

 lands along the valley have a strangely gay ap- 

 pearance. Again, there is yellow in the autumn 

 the deeper yellow of xanthophyl when the leaves of 

 the red willows growing on the banks of the river 

 change their colour before falling. This willow 

 (Salix humboldtiana) is the only large wild tree in 

 the country ; but whether it grew here prior to the 

 advent of the Spanish or not, I do not know. 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 grey 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 1 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 



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