Baeza. 187 



CHAPTER XIII. 



Baeza. — The Forest. — Crossing the Cosanga.- — Curi-urcu. — Archidona. — 

 Appearance, Customs, and Belief of the Natives. — Napo andNapo River. 



Eight hours' hard travel from Pachamama brought us 

 to Baeza. This " Antigua Ciudad," as Villavicencio calls 

 it, was founded in 1552 by Don Egilio Ramirez Da- 

 valos, and named after the quite different spot where 

 Scipio the Younger routed Asdrubal a thousand years be- 

 fore. It consists of two habitations, the residence of 

 two families of Tumbaco Indians, situated in a clearing 

 of the forest on the summit of a high ridge running along 

 the right bank of the Coca. This point, about one hun- 

 dred miles east of Quito, is important in the little traffic of 

 the Oriente. All Indian trains from the capital to the 

 province pass through Baeza, where the trail divides ; one 

 branch passing on easterly to San Jose, and thence down 

 through Abila and Loreto to Santa Rosa ; the other lead- 

 ing to the Napo through Archidona. Here we rested one 

 day, taking possession of one half of the larger hut — a mere 

 stockade with a palm-leaf roof, without chairs, chimney, or 

 fire-place, except any place on the floor. We swung our 

 hammocks, while our Indians stretched themselves on the 

 ground beneath us. The island of Juan Fernandez is not 

 a more isolated spot than Baeza. A dense forest, impene- 

 trable save by the trails, stretches away on every side to 

 the Andes and to the Atlantic, and northerly and southerly 

 along the slope of the entire mountain chain. The forest 

 is such an entangled mass of the living and the fallen, it is 

 difficult to say which is the predominant spirit — life or 

 death. It is the cemetery, as well as the birthplace, of a 

 world of vegetation. The trees are more lofty than on the 



