ol, and
never dry. Every thing is penetrated with dampness. All our watches
stopped, and remained immovable till we reached Para. It is this
constant and excessive humidity which renders it so difficult to
transport provisions or prepare an herbarium. The pending branches of
moss are so saturated with moisture that sometimes the branches are
broken off to the peril of the passing traveler. Yet the climate is
healthy. The stillness and gloom are almost painful; the firing of a gun
wakes a dull echo, and any unlooked-for noise is startling. Scarce a
bird or a flower is to be seen in these sombre shades. Nearly the only
signs of animal life visible thus far were insects, mostly butterflies,
fire-flies, and beetles. The only quadruped seen on our journey to the
Napo was a long-tailed marten caught by the Indians. The silence is
almost perfect; its chief interruption is the crashing fall of some old
patriarch of the forest, overcome by the embrace of loving parasites
that twine themselves about the trunk or sit upon the branches. The most
striking singularity in these tropical woods is the host of lianas or
air-roots of epiphytous plants, which hang down from the lofty boughs,
straight as plumb-lines, some singly, others in clusters; some reaching
half way to the ground, others touching it and striking their rootlets
into the earth. We found lianas over one hundred feet long. Sometimes a
toppling tree is caught in the graceful arms of looping _sipos_, and
held for years by this natural cable. It is these dead trunks, standing
like skeletons, which give a character of solemnity to these primeval
woods. The wildest disorder is seen along the mountain torrents, where
the trees, prostrated by the undermining current, lie mingled with huge
stones brought down by the force of the water. In many places the crowns
of stately monarchs standing on the bank interlock and form a sylvan
arch over the river.

We left Baeza by the southerly trail for Archidona. From Papallacta we
had traveled east, or parallel to the streams which flow down from the
mountains. We were now to cross them (and their name is legion), as also
the intervening ridges; so that our previous journey was nothing to that
which followed. Sometimes we were climbing up an almost vertical ascent,
then descending into a deep, dark ravine, to ford a furious river; while
on the lowlands the path seemed lost in a jungle of bamboos, till our
Indian "bushwhackers" opened a pass