XVIII 
PROFOUND RA FINDS 
435 
wild bananas, liliaceous plants, and other luxuriant productions 
of the tropics. The Tahitians, by climbing amongst these 
ledges, searching for fruit, had discovered a track by which the 
whole precipice could be scaled. The first ascent from the 
valley was very dangerous ; for it was necessary to pass a 
steeply-inclined face of naked rock by the aid of ropes which 
we brought with us. How any person discovered that this 
formidable spot was the only point where the side of the 
mountain was practicable, I cannot imagine. We then 
cautiously walked along one of the ledges till we came to one 
of the three streams. This ledge formed a flat spot, above 
which a beautiful cascade, some hundred feet in height, poured 
down its waters, and beneath, another high cascade fell into 
the main stream in the valley below. From this cool and 
shady recess we made a circuit to avoid the overhanging 
waterfall. As before, we followed little projecting ledges, the 
danger being partly concealed by the thickness of the 
vegetation. In passing from one of the ledges to another, 
there was a vertical wall of rock. One of the Tahitians, a fine 
active man, placed the trunk of a tree against this, climbed 
up it, and then by the aid of crevices reached the summit. 
He fixed the ropes to a projecting point, and lowered them for 
our dog and luggage, and then we clambered up ourselves. 
Beneath the ledge on which the dead tree was placed, the 
precipice must have been five or six hundred feet deep ; and if 
the abyss had not been partly concealed by the overhanging 
ferns and lilies, my head would have turned giddy, and nothing 
should have induced me to have attempted it. We continued 
to ascend, sometimes along ledges, and sometimes along knife- 
edged ridges, having on each hand profound ravines. In the 
Cordillera I have seen mountains on a far grander scale, but 
for abruptness, nothing at all comparable with this. In the 
evening we reached a flat little spot on the banks of the same 
stream which we had continued to follow, and which descends 
in a chain of waterfalls ; here we bivouacked for the night. 
On each side of the ravine there were great beds of the 
mountain-banana, covered with ripe fruit. Many of these 
plants were from twenty to twenty-five feet high, and from 
three to four in circumference. By the aid of strips of bark 
for rope, the stems of bamboos for rafters, and the large leaf of 
