94 



DIVISION OF THE PARTY. 



CHAPTER V. 



Division of the party — Acobamba — Plain of Junin — Lake Chinchaycocha — Pres- 

 ervation of potatoes — Cerro Pasco — Drainage of the mines — Boliches. 



Gibbon and I bad long and earnest consultations about tbe propriety 

 of dividing the party; and I now determined to do so, giving to him the 

 task of exploring the Bolivian tributaries, while I took the head-waters 

 and main trunk of the Amazon. It was a bold, almost a rash determi- 

 nation, for the party seemed small enough as it was; and we might 

 readily encounter difficulties on our route which would require our 

 united exertions to overcome. I had many misgivings, and told Gibbon 

 at first that it seemed midsummer madness ; but the prospect of cover- 

 ing such an extent of territory ; of being enabled to give an account of 

 countries and rivers so little known ; and the reflection that I need not 

 abandon routes that I had looked upon with a longing eye, were so 

 tempting that they overrode all objections ; and we set about making 

 our preparations for the separation. 



We divided the equipage, the tocuyo, or cotton cloth, (which we had 

 not yet touched,) the hatchets, the knives, the beads, the mirrors, the 

 arms and ammunition. I gave Gibbon fifteen hundred dollars in money, 

 and all the instruments, except some thermometers and the boiling-point 

 apparatus, because I was to travel a route over which sextants and 

 chronometers had been already carried ; and he might go where these 

 had never been. I directed him to hire a guide in Tarma, and, so soon 

 as Richards (who was still sick) should be able to travel, to start for 

 Cuzco, and search for the head- waters of the "Madre de Dios." 



On the 29th, we dined with General Otero, this being his wife's birth- 

 day and festival of St. Peter. The General, being an Argentine born, 

 gave us the national dish — the celebrated came con cuero, or beef, sea- 

 soned with spices, and roasted under ground in the hide, which is said 

 to preserve its juices, and make it more palatable. I observed that the 

 soups and the stews were colored with " achate." This is the urucu 

 of the Brazilians, of which the dye called annatto is made. It grows 

 wild in great abundance all over the Montana, and is extensively used 

 by the Indians for painting their bodies and dyeing their cotton cloths. 

 It is a bush of eight or ten feet in height, and bears a prickly burr like 



