RESIDENCE AT TARAPOTO 6i 
a very long one, and when I returned, with heavier 
loads, I found it expedient to divide it into two. It 
would take several pages to describe the savage, 
rocky and wooded gorges, with rugged ascents and 
descents ; and the torrents that traversed them, and 
must be crossed and recrossed, as the cliffs rose 
from the water's edge, first on one side, then on the 
other. A turbid saline stream of considerable 
volume, called Cachi-yacu (Salt River), had to be 
waded through eleven times in the space of half a 
mile. When we reached the grassy rounded summit 
of the pass of the Campana, at about 5000 feet, the 
sun was fast declining, and we had still a long and 
devious descent on the other side of the mountain 
to Lirio-pampa^ (as Chumbi had called his chacra), 
which w^e reached about nightfall. On receiving 
the Padre's missive, Chumbi, with a profound bow, 
begged permission to open it, and when he had read 
it and applied his lips to the signature, he placed 
himself, his house, his wife, and his little ones at 
my entire disposal. 
Lirio-pampa was a nearly level strip of fertile 
land adjacent to a considerable stream (the Alau) 
that ran not into the Mayo, but into the Sisa, the 
next river entering the Huallaga to southward. It 
was all forest, save where Chumbi's colonv had 
made their little plantations of plantains and other 
esculents, including a plot of thriving sugar-cane, of 
which the first crop was expected to be ripe by the 
time the mill they were putting up with wooden 
machinery should be ready to grind it. At a short 
distance a spur of the Campana ran down into the 
1 Lirio-pampa ; lat. 6° 25' vS., long. 76° 50' W., alt. 3335 E. ft. Campana : 
alt. (pass) 5144 E. ft., (mountain-top) 6000 ft. 
