XXVIII 
HIDDEN TREASURE 
509 
The mines of Llanganati, after having been 
neglected for half a century, are now being sought 
out again with the intention of working them ; but 
there is no single person at the present day able to 
employ the labour and capital required for success- 
fully working a silver mine, and mutual confidence 
is at so low an ebb in this country that companies 
never hold together long. Besides this, the gold of 
the Incas never ceases to haunt people's memories ; 
and at this moment I am informed that a party of 
explorers who started from Tacunga imagine they 
have found the identical Green Lake of Llanganati, 
and are preparing to drain it dry. If we admit the 
truth of the tradition that the ancients smelted gold 
in Llanganati, it is equally certain that they extracted 
the precious metal in the immediate neighbourhood ; 
and if the Socabon of Valverde cannot at this day 
be discovered, it is known to every one that gold 
exists at a short distance, and possibly in consider- 
able quantity, if the Ecuadoreans would only take 
the trouble to search for it and not leave that task 
to the wild Indians, who are content if, by scooping 
up the gravel with their hands, they can get together 
enough gold to fill the quill which the white man 
has given them as the measure of the value of the 
axes and lance-heads he has supplied to them on 
trust. 
The gold region of Canelos begins on the 
extreme east of the map of Guzman, in streams rising 
in the roots of Llanganati and flowing to the Pastasa 
and Curaray,^ the principal of which are the Bom- 
bonasa and Villano. These rivers and their smaller 
tributaries have the upper part of their course in 
^ The name Curaray itself may be derived from " curi," gold. 
