ts of the peons through
thickets of heated shrubbery.

Whenever the country became more wooded in its character, the
bark-hunters, whose quest obliged them to stray in short flights
around the wings of the column, redoubled their mazes. The careless
air of these Bolivian retrievers, their voluntary doublings through
the most difficult jungles, and their easy way of walking over
everything with their noses in the air, proved well their indifference
to the obstacles which were almost insurmountable to the rest.

[Illustration: THE CONES OF PATABAMBA.]

Nothing could be more singular and interesting than to see them
consulting one by one the indications scattered around them, and
deciding on their probabilities or promises. Where the height and
thickness of the foliage prevented them from seeing the sky, or
even the shade of the surrounding green, they walked bent toward the
ground, stirring up the rubbish, and choosing among the dead foliage
certain leaves, of which they carefully examined the two sides and the
stem. When by accident they found themselves near enough to speak to
each other--a rare chance, for each peon undertook a separate line of
search--they asked their friends, showing the leaves they had found,
whether their discoveries appertained to the neighboring trees or
whether the wind had brought the pieces from a distance. This kind
of investigation, pursued by men who had prowled through forests
all their lives, might seem slightly puerile if the reader does
not understand that it is often difficult, or even impossible, to
recognize the growing tree by its bark, covered as it is from base
to branches with parasitic vegetation of every sort. In those forests
whatever has a stout stem is used without scruple by the bignonias and
air-plants, which race over the trunk, plant their root-claws in the
cracks, leap over the whole tree at a single jet, or strangle it with
multiplied knots, all the while adorning it with a superb mantle of
leaves and blossoms. This is a difficulty which the most experienced
_cascarilleros_ are not able to overcome. As an instance, the history
is cited of a _practico_ or speculator who led an exploration for
these trees in the valley of Apolobamba. After having caused to be
felled, barked, measured, dried and trimmed all the cinchonas of one
of those natural thickets called _manchas_--an operation which had
occupied four months--he was about to abandon the spot and pursue
the explo