CROSSING THE EASTERN ANDES 103 



view. It took several days to round them up, but a num- 

 ber were never seen again. 



One day a Franciscan priest stopped at the rancho for a 

 short rest. He was engaged in opening a trail to Mocoa. 

 About twenty peons accompanied him, carrying his outfit. 

 His robe was in tatters and his feet were bare; he had spent 

 months in the jimgles and showed the effects of hard usage. 

 Each of his men carried an animal of some kind on top of 

 his pack. There were monkeys, parrots, macaws, and a 

 curious little creature belonging to the agouti family {Myo- 

 procta) that they called tin-tin. We had seen numbers of 

 the latter along the river-bank, where they hved in bur- 

 rows. The flesh is white and of fine flavor. In spite of 

 the hardships the priest and his party had endured they 

 were in the best of humor, and after an hour's halt shoul- 

 dered their packs and resumed the march. No one will 

 dispute the fact that men of this type have done a great 

 deal toward exploring imknown parts of South America; 

 usually they are the real trail-breakers and lead the way 

 for the pioneer settlers who are to follow. 



The bird-life of the Caquetd is tjrpical of the Amazonian 

 forest, and many of the species are foimd on the lower river 

 two thousand miles away. This is caused by the uniform- 

 ity of topographical conditions, and the lack of a barrier 

 that would interfere with the range of a species. On all of 

 our visits to the headwaters of the Amazon's tributaries, in 

 Colombia, Bolivia, and Brazil, a large proportion of the 

 mammals collected were new to science and differed greatly 

 from those found lower down the river's course. Such 

 large animals as spider-monkeys {Ateleus), "flying" mon- 

 keys (Pithecia), and cats represented forms heretofore un- 

 known to science; the smaller mammals also were new in 

 many instances. Of course, we must not lose sight of the 

 fact that the power of flight gives greater mobility to the 

 birds and accounts for the wider range of some of them, 

 but not for the equally vast distribution of the ground- 

 inhabiting and almost flightless species. 



