238 NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
him with me in all my subsequent excursions in 
the district. From him I learnt that the Cascarilla 
roja did not commence until another day's journey 
downwards, and that to have a chance of seeing it 
in any quantity (which, he admitted, was at best 
only problematical), it would be necessary to 
penetrate at least three days into the forest. As 
my object for the present was merely to make 
myself acquainted with the plant, and with the 
soil and climate in which it grows, I decided on 
going no farther than until I should meet with it ; 
for the procuring and transporting of provisions 
necessary for a long stay in the forest is both 
difficult and expensive. 
I remained a day at Lucmas to look around. It 
is at an altitude of between 5000 and 6000 feet, 
and produces luxuriant sugar-cane. The small 
banana called Guineo flourishes (as indeed it does 
at Guataxi), but the plantain is near its upper 
limit, and the fruit is small and scanty. There are 
tolerably lofty forest trees in the valleys and on 
the hills, while the steep sides of the latter are 
often covered with grass, more or less intermingled 
with scrub, and often with Bromeliaceae. In 
descending towards Lucmas, I saw on the bushy 
hill-sides a great deal of the small tree called Palo 
del Rosario, a curious, and I believe undescribed, 
Sapindacea, which I had already gathered at Banos 
in the Eastern Cordillera. Its most remarkable 
feature is, that while the layer of wood next the 
bark is quite white, all the internal layers are 
purple-brown with a black outer edge — a colour 
not unlike that of old walnuts ; so that articles 
fabricated of this wood are curiously mottled. 
