132 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
no white man has ever passed; through this unknown region flow two rivers— 
the Beni and the Madre de Dios—of the size of the Mississippi and Missouri. 
To a scientific traveler who had already seen so much of South America as had 
Prof. Orton, this unexplored country was of peculiar interest. After four years 
of careful preparation he sailed for the west coast of South America from New 
York, in Oct., 1876, to explore the Beni River and country—and the brief story 
of this expedition is the subject of this address. 
Steaming out of Guayaquil Bay, latitude 2° south, the ship passes Tumbez, 
where Pizzaro effected his first landing for the conquest of Peru, and then out of 
the tropical heats, out of the great forests, out of the rains to the pleasant lands of 
the Children of the Sun. Now enjoy a temperate climate, cool breezes and 
fall clothing. From the ship’s deck one can see at the same time the wet forests 
of Equador and dry, rainless Peru. 
The officers of the English steamers which run along the South Pacific coast 
are very social and delight in making passengers their guests, from the very mo- 
ment of stepping on board to the hearty ‘‘good bye.’’ Captain Hall, of the 
Oroya, adroitly finds out what one knows of Peru; and, if itis the first voyage, 
kindly warns the ladies not to step upon the grass and the gentlemen from picking 
flowers, or stems off the trees if they go on shore at Payta. He assures them 
of speedy arrest by the police. The captain’s joke is quickly understood when 
they see not a shrub, not a leaf, not a blade of grass—the paved street of a great 
city is not more dry and barren than the country about Payta. Even the water 
they drink is brought seventeen miles by rail. 
Although the country at first sight so barren and uninteresting, the coast 
cities are the sea ports of interior valleys of surprising fertility, and even the 
desert pampas of the Peruvian coast have some time been cultivated, are to-day 
very fertile, and only need water to produce abundant harvests. Sugar, cotton, 
hides, sheep and alpaca wool, tobacco, Peruvian bark, freight many a ship. 
From the coast and plains below, lightning and fierce storms may be seen up in 
the mountains. A multitude of streams running down from the rains and snows 
of the Cordillera, supply water for irrigation. 
Frequently divided by mountain spurs, the rainless portion of Peru, Boliv- 
ia, and part of Chile, consists of long narrow plains more than zooo miles in 
length and twenty to sixty in breadth, beginning with a perpendicular ascent of 
eighty feet from the surf of the ocean and gradually rising up to the mountains. 
The explanation of the present rainless condition of this Pacific coast seems to be 
the strong trade winds and cold ocean current coming from the ice fields of the 
Antarctic Ocean, compressed against the lofty Andean chain of mountains into a 
chute or arch of moving cold, in which are wanting the atmospheric conditions 
for condensing of moisture and consequent rain fall. In Brazil, in eastern Peru 
and Bolivia, and upon the summits of the mountains, the rain fall is abundant. 
Many thousands of years ago, the atmospheric conditions of this Pacific coast 
were probably quite different—a fact indicated by numerous grooves and chan- 
