NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
spondents. At Nauta I collected scarcely anything, 
for fear of adding to my already unwieldy baggage, 
and I could not leave any dried plants there, where 
they would be wasted. The same reasons, added 
to illness, have limited my gatherings at Yuri- 
maguas, for I cannot hope to gather sufficient to 
make it worth while sending a collection from here 
direct to England. Towards the sources of these 
rivers it would be easier to collect in descending 
than in ascending were it practicable to remain a 
few days in the promising localities ; for in coming 
down the size of one's canoe may be as large as one 
chooses, but in going up one must necessarily use 
the smallest canoes, and even then be content to 
get on at a very slow rate. 
• ••••• 
[The letter to Mr. Teasdale now takes up the 
narrative again : — ] 
The banks of both Maranon and Huallaga 
continue flat all the way to Yurimaguas, but at 
about two days below this place / enjoyed my 
first view of the Andes ! It was on the 2nd of May 
— we had had terrible rain from midnight to noon, 
and it still kept dropping until 5 p.m. About half- 
past five the sky cleared to N.W., distinctly revealing 
a line of blue mountains which might be some 4000 
feet higher than the river. They are called the 
Curi-yacu (Mountains of the River of Gold), and 
extend along the western side of the pongos of the 
Huallaga. 
You are, I daresay, aware that the Maranon, the 
Huallaga, and their tributaries have the peculiarity 
of issuing from the mountains into the plains 
through deep narrow rifts called pongos. From 
