20 THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU 



at one point no more than fifty feet apart. Here are concentrated 

 the worst rapids of the lower Urubamba. For nearly fifteen 

 miles the river is an unbroken succession of rapids, and once 

 within its walls the Pongo offers small chance of escape. At some 

 points we were fortunate enough to secure a foothold along the 

 edge of the river and to let our canoe down by ropes. At others 

 we were obliged to take chances with the current, though the great 

 depth of water in most of the Pongo rapids makes them really less 

 formidable in some respects than the shallow rapids up stream. 

 The chief danger here lies in the rotary motion of the water at the 

 sharpest bends. The effect at some places is extraordinary. A 

 floating object is carried across stream like a feather and driven 

 at express-train speed against a solid cliff. In trying to avoid one 

 of these cross-currents our canoe became turned midstream, we 

 were thrown this way and that, and at last shot through three 

 standing waves that half filled the canoe. 



Below the worst rapids the Pongo exhibits a swift succession 

 of natural wonders. Fern-clad cliffs border it, a bush resembling 

 the juniper reaches its dainty finger-like stems far out over the 

 river, and the banks are heavily clad with mosses. The great 

 woods, silent, impenetrable, mantle the high slopes and stretch up 

 to the limits of vision. Cascades tumble from the cliff summits 

 or go rippling down the long inclines of the slate beds set almost 

 on edge. Finally appear the white pinnacles of limestone that hem 

 in the narrow lower entrance or outlet of the Pongo. Beyond this 

 passage one suddenly comes out upon the edge of a rolling forest- 

 clad region, the rubber territory, the country of the great woods. 

 Here the Andean realm ends and Amazonia begins. 



From the summits of the white cliffs 4,000 feet above the river 

 we were in a few days to have one of the most extensive views in 

 South America. The break between the Andean Cordillera and the 

 hill-dotted plains of the lower Urubamba valley is almost as sharp 

 as a shoreline. The rolling plains are covered with leagues upon 

 leagues of dense, shadowy, fever-haunted jungle. The great river 

 winds through in a series of splendid meanders, and with so broad 

 a channel as to make it visible almost to the horizon. Down river 



