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 
E 2 
