420 



APPENDIX. 



Puneuj in the Quechua tongue, signifies a port ; and this name has been given 

 to all the places where the hills, narrowing the beds of the rivers, terminate. In- 

 deed these straits or narrow passages represent a port, which permits the waters to 

 overflow the plains, and which at the same time opens a passage from one world 

 to another altogether difi^erent. Scarcely has the traveller passed the small strait 

 of the Huallaga, when the objects and the ideas undergo an entire change. The 

 eyes accustomed in Peru to observe the superb and lofty mountains whose summits 

 hide themselves in the clouds; — which survey from an eminence the deep valley 

 situated as it were in the centre of the abyss ; and which cannot turn themselves 

 without encountering a massy hill, or a thousand other irregularities of the earth, 

 by which their view is bounded and circumscribed ; are here engaged in the con- 

 templation of objects entirely different. Those we have enumerated above dis- 

 appear by degrees, and are at length so completely annihilated, that not a small 

 stone can be met with to bring to the recoUeftion of the traveller the infinite masses 

 which compose the Cordillera of the Andes*. Immense plains covered by trees, 

 which present no other limit to the view than the sky bounded by the horizon at 

 the distance of some thousands of leagues, contain lakes and seas of fresh water, 

 the islands, roads, and ports of which are inhabited by nations whose customs, 

 usages, and manner of thinking are totally different from ours. 



The Huallaga is one of the rivers which furnish the greatest quantities of water to 

 these bays and lakes. As soon as it frees itself from the shackles which the moun- 

 tains had interposed, it diffuses itself, dilates, and flows with so even a course, that 

 the navigation is not interrupted either by day or by night. Its banks, covered by 

 the loftiest palms, and by rows of trees, planted at regular distances, amid the 



prodigies described by father Kircher in his subterraneous world. It appears to be allegorical of an 

 event which the Indians preserve in their traditions. These traditions relate, that a tribe in the vicinity 

 of Lamas, named Saposon, being subjected to a cruel and tyrannical chief, the inhabitants, at the in- 

 stigation of Aguirre, put him to death. To punish this murder troops were sent from Lima, and at 

 their hands Aguirre perished. It may not be amiss to, illustrate this tradition, by comparing it with an 

 historical fadt In the year 1560 Don Pedro de Ursoa was sent from Lima, to descend by the Huallaga 

 in quest of the fabulous empire of Dorado. He was slain in the Lamas territory by Lope de Aguirre, 

 who made his escape to the island of Trinidad, where he afterwards paid with his life the forfeit due to 

 this crime. 



* Four hundred leagues below the straits the inhabitants have no idea of stones. When their navi- 

 gators arrive at Borja or at Lamas, where they first meet with them, they are filled with admiration, col- 

 ledling and preserving them as if they were diamonds ; until at length, seeing the multitude of them, 

 they become indignant and ashamed of having prized what is so very common. 



thick 



