216 The Andes A2S[d the Amazon. 



ties lay in the niglit, and in pits about two feet deep, which 

 they excavate with their broad, webbed paws. The eggs 

 are about an inch and a half in diameter, having a thin, 

 leathery shell, a very oily yolk, and a white which does not 

 coagulate. The Indians ate them uncooked. "We used 

 them chiefly in making corn griddles. 



Here, as throughout its whole course, the Napo runs be- 

 tween two walls of evergreen verdure. On either hand 

 are low clay banks (no rocks are visible), and from these 

 the forest rises to a uniform height of seventy or eighth- 

 feet. It has a more cheerful aspect than the sombre, 

 silent wilderness of Baeza. Old aristocrats of the woods 

 are overrun by a gay democracy of creepers and climbers, 

 which interlace the entire forest, and, descending to take 

 root again, appear like the shrouds and stays of a line-of- 

 battle ship. Monkeys gambol on this wild rigging, and 

 mingle their chatter with the screams of the pari'ot. Trees 

 as lofty as our oaks are covered with flowers as beautiful 

 as our lilies. Here are orchids of softest tints ;* flower- 

 ing ferns, fifty feet high ; the graceful bamboo and wild 

 banana; while high over all countless species of palm 

 wave their nodding plumes. Art could not arrange these 

 beautiful forms so harmoniously as nature has done. 



Tlie tropics, moreover, are strangers to the uniformitj' of 

 association seen in temperate climes. We have so man}' 

 social plants that we speak of a forest of oaks, and pines, 

 and birches ; but there variety is the law. Individuals of 

 the same species are seldom seen growing together. Every 



* Some orchid is in flower all the year round. The finest species is the 

 odontoglossiim, having long, chocolate-colored petals, margined with yellow. 

 "Such is their number and variety (wrote Humboldt) that the entire life of 

 a painter would be too short to delineate all the magnificent Orchidea3 which 

 adorn the recesses of the deep valleys of the Peruvian Andes." For many 

 curious facts respecting the structure of these flowers, see Darwin's Fertiliza- 

 tion of Orchids. 



