INTRODUCTORY. 



39 



the cities of Truxillo, Caxamarca, Chachapoyas, Moyobamba, &c. The 

 Andes here break into many chains, sending off spurs in all directions, 

 but none of any great height, so that there is a tolerably good mule 

 road all the way*to Moyobamba; and almost all articles of foreign 

 manufacture — such as cloths and the necessary household articles used 

 in the small towns that border the Huallaga and the Maranon — are 

 supplied by this route. The climate and productions of this country 

 are, on account of its precipitous elevations, and, consequently, deep 

 valleys, very various ; and here the sugar-cane and the pine-apple may 

 be seen growing by a spectator standing in the barley field and the 

 potato patch. 



This route crosses the Amazon, or rather the Maranon, where, ac- 

 cording to Lieut. Maw, it is sixty yards wide, and rushes between mount- 

 ains whose summits are hid in the clouds. This point is about three 

 degrees north of its source, in Lake Lauricocha ; but the river is no- 

 where navigable until Tomependa, in the province of Jaen de Braca 

 Moros, is reached ; whence it may be descended, but with great peril 

 and difficulty, on rafts. There are twenty-seven " pongos," or rapids, to 

 pass, and the water rushes over these with frightful velocity. Four 

 days of such navigation passes the last, called the Pongo de "Manse- 

 riche" near the village of San Borja, and I am satisfied that an un- 

 broken channel, of at least eighteen feet in depth, may be found thence 

 to the Atlantic Ocean. 



That the rains might be entirely over, and the roads on the mend in 

 the Cordillera, I fixed upon the 20th of May as the day of departure, 

 and Mr. Gibbon and I set about making the necessary preparations. I 

 engaged the services of Don Manuel Ijurra, a young Peruvian, who had 

 made the voyage down the Amazon a few years before, as interpreter to 

 the Indians ; and Capt. Gauntt, of the frigate Raritan, then lying in the 

 harbor of Callao, was kind enough to give me a young master's mate 

 from his ship, named Richards; besides supplying me w r ith carbines, 

 pistols, ammunition, and a tent. Capt. Magruder, of the St. Mary's, also 

 offered me anything that the ship could supply, and furnished me with 

 more arms, and fifteen hundred fathoms of the fishing-line now put on 

 board ships for deep-sea soundings. 



Our purchases were four saddle-mules, which, through the agency of 

 Dr. Smith, we were fortunate enough to get young, sound, and well 

 bitted, (indispensable requisites,) out of a drove just in from the 

 mountains. We consulted the learned in such matters on the 

 propriety of having them shod, and found the doctors disagreeing upon 

 this subject very much. As they were from the mountains, and their 



