| Flour | 100 | lbs. | Sugar | 90 | lbs. | Soda | 1 | lbs. |
| Corn meal | 27 | " | Chocolate | 25 | " | Tea | 2 | " |
| Pea flour | 30 | " | Dried meat [108] | 47 | " | Ham | 10 | " |
| Mashka | 47 | " | Salt | 10 | " | Tamarinds | 9 | " |
| Crackers | 100 | " | Lard | 10 | " | Eggs | 170. | |
| Rice | 50 | " | Cream tartar | 1½ | " | Anisado pts. | 5. |
To this we added by purchase from the Indians a few chickens and eggs, five gallons of sirup, and a peck of rice; and on the river we helped ourselves to a little wild game, as fish, peccari, deer, and turtles' eggs. But these made only a drop in the commissary bucket; had we depended upon finding provisions on the road, we must have perished from sheer hunger. Game, in the dry season, is exceedingly scarce. Our provisions were packed in kerosene cans, a part of which were soldered up to keep out moisture (for the Valley of the Napo is a steaming vapor-bath) and to keep out the hands of Indians. More than once have these treacherous yet indispensable guides robbed the white man of his food, and then left him to his fate; we lost not a pound by theft. A four-gallon keg of aguardiente,[109] from which we dealt out half a gill daily to each man, kept our Indians in good humor.
As we must ascend to the cold altitude of fifteen thousand feet, and then descend to the hot Valley of the Amazon, we were obliged to carry both woolen and cotton garments, besides rubber ponchos to shield them from the rain by day, and to form the first substratum of our bed at night. Two suits were needed in our long travel afoot through the forest; one kept dry for the nightly bivouac, the other for day service. At the close of each day's journey we doffed every thread of our wearing apparel, and donned the reserved suit, for we were daily drenched either from the heavens above or by crossing swollen rivers and seas of mud. Then, too, as boots would not answer for such kind of travel, we must take alpargates, a native sandal made of the aloe fibre, and of these not a few, for a pair would hardly hold together two days. Two bales of lienzo, besides knives, fish-hooks, thread, beads, looking-glasses, and other trinkets, were also needed; for the Napo Indians must be paid in such currency. There lienzo, not gold and silver, is the cry. On this we made a small but lawful profit, paying in Quito eighteen cents per yard, and charging on the river twenty-five.
An extensive culinary apparatus, guns and ammunition, taxidermal and medicinal chests, physical instruments, including a photographic establishment, rope, macheta, axe, saw, nails, candles, matches, and a thousand et cætera, completed our outfit. Among the essential et cætera were generous passports and mandatory letters from the President of Ecuador and the Peruvian Chargé d'Affaires, addressed to all authorities on the Napo and the Marañon. They were obligingly procured for us by Señor Hurtado, the Chilian minister (then acting for the United States), through the influence of a communication from our own government, and were of great value to the expedition.[110]
[CHAPTER XII.]
Departure from Quito.— Itulcachi.— A Night in a Bread-tray.— Crossing the Cordillera.— Guamani.—Papallacta.— Domiciled at the Governor's.— An Indian Aristides.— Our Peon Train.— In the Wilderness.
Forty miles east-southeast of Quito, on the eastern slope of the Eastern Cordillera, and on the western edge of the great forest, is the Indian village of Papallacta. From the capital to this point there is a path just passable for horses; but thence to the Napo travelers must take to their feet. Through the intervention of the curate of Papallacta, who has great influence over his wild people, but who has wit enough to reside in Quito instead of his parish, we engaged the Indian governor to send over thirteen beasts and three peons to carry our party and baggage to Papallacta. Wednesday morning the quadrupeds were at the door of our hotel, five of them bestias de silla. These horses, judging by size, color, shape, and bony prominences, were of five different species. The saddles, likewise, differed from one another, and from any thing we had ever seen or desired to see. One of them was so narrow and deep none of us could get into it; so, filling up the cavity with blankets, we took turns in riding on the summit. By noon, October 30th, we had seen our Andean collections in the hands of arrieros bound for Guayaquil, whence they were to be shipped by way of Panama to Washington, and our baggage train for Napo headed toward the rising sun. So, mounting our jades, we defiled across the Grand Plaza and through the street of St. Augustine, and down the Carniceria to the Alameda, amid the vivas and adeos of our Quitian friends, who turned out to see the largest expedition that ever left the city for the wild Napo country since the days of Pizarro. Few there were who expected to hear of our safe arrival on the shores of the Atlantic.
Crossing the magnificent plain of Iñaquito, we reached in an hour the romantic village of Guápulo. Here is an elegant stone church dedicated to the Virgin of Guadaloupe, to which the faithful make an annual pilgrimage. Thence the road led us through the valley of the Guaillabamba (a tributary to the Esmeraldas), here and there blessed with signs of intelligent life—a mud hut, and little green fields of cane and alfalfa, and dotted with trees of wild cherry and myrtle, but having that air of sadness and death-like repose so inseparable from a Quitonian landscape. The greater part of this day's ride was over a rolling country so barren and dreary it was almost repulsive. What a pity the sun shines on so much useless territory!