50 NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
rock, where they issue from the hills. These 
steep narrows are called pongos, and often include 
falls and rapids. They are rich places for ferns, 
but it is both difficult and dangerous getting along 
them, now and then scrambling over large slippery 
rocks which block up the passage, or wading up to 
the middle through dark holes with the water 
below 70°. An exploration of one of these places 
generally costs me a week's suffering in the feet. 
I have at last got into a fern country, and I have 
already gathered more species than in all my 
Brazilian and Venezuelan travels. Mosses also are 
more abundant, and there is a greater proportion of 
large species. 
Among the flowers I believe you will find a good share of 
novelty. I expect I have two new genera of Rubiaceae, both 
very fine things, one of them allied to Calycophyllum but with 
large flowers almost like those of Henriquezia. There are new 
things also in several other tribes. The general character of the 
vegetation is, as might be expected, intermediate between that of 
the valley of the Amazon and of its alpine sources. As evidences 
of an approach to cooler regions, and to a flora more European 
in its affinities, I may mention having met here, for the first time 
in my American travels, a Horsetail, a Poppy, a Bramble, a 
Crosswort, and a Ranunculus (a minute species, trailing over moss 
by mountain streams, and looking quite like a Hydrocotyle). 
The ferns may possibly include some new species, especially 
among the larger ones, which are likely enough to have been 
passed over on account of their bulkiness. The fronds of one of 
these are 22 feet in length, though it never shows more than a 
rudimentary caudex : its affinity seems to be with Cyathea. In 
my collection are a good many species of Grammitis, Meniscium, 
Davallia, Diplazium, Litobrochia, Aneimia, etc., together with 
several pretty Selaginellas and an Adder's -tongue. A small 
species of Grammitis growing on trees in the mountains is very 
odoriferous when dry, and the Indian women put it in their hair, 
calling it Asinima. 
These things have not been got together with- 
out greater trouble than I had calculated on. I 
expected to find roads on which I could take long 
