[Napo Peon.]

An Indian will carry three arrobas (seventy-five pounds) besides his own provisions, his provisions for the journey consisting of about twenty-five pounds of roasted corn and barley-meal. The trunk or bundle is bound to his back by withes, which pass across the forehead and chest; a poncho or a handful of leaves protects the bare back from chafing. All our luggage (amounting to nearly fifteen hundred pounds) was divided and packed to suit this method of transportation, so that we required twenty Indians. So many, however, of the right kind—for they must be athletic young men to endure the fatigues of such a journey—could not be furnished by the little village of Papallacta, so we were obliged to wait a few days till more Indians could be summoned from a neighboring town. When these arrived, the little world of Papallacta, men, women, and children, assembled in front of the governor's house, while Don Carlos sat by our side on a raised seat by the doorway. A long parley ensued, resulting in this: that we should pay one hundred Ecuadorian dollars for the transfer of our baggage to Archidona; while Carlos solemnly promised for the young men that they should start the next morning, that they should arrive at Archidona within a stipulated time, and that they should not depend upon us for an ounce of food. The powerful influence of the curate, which we had secured, and the proclamation from the president, which Carlos read aloud in the ears of all the people, together with the authoritative charge of Carlos himself, had the desired effect; not a transportation company in the United States ever kept its engagement more faithfully than did these twenty peons—and this, too, though we paid them in advance, according to the custom of the country. Upon a blanket spread at our feet the money was counted out, and Carlos slowly distributed it with a grave and reverend air, to every Indian five dollars.[112]

Tuesday morning, November 5th, the peons promptly shouldered their burdens, and we, shod with alpargates, and with Alpine staff in hand (more needed here than in Switzerland), followed after, leaving the governor to sleep inside his mansion, and to eat his lice unmolested. On a little grassy knoll just outside the town our train halted for a moment—the Indians to take their fill of chicha, and bid their friends good-by, and we to call the roll and take an inventory. Our leader was Isiro, a bright, intelligent, finely-featured, stalwart Indian. He could speak Spanish, and his comrades acknowledged his superiority with marked deference. Ten women and children followed us for two days, to relieve the men of their burdens. Their assistance was not needed in the latter part of the journey, for our keen appetites rapidly lightened the provision cans. Starting again, we plunged at once into the forest, taking a northeasterly course along the left bank of a tributary to the Coca. The ups and downs of this day's travel of twelve miles were foreshadowings of what might come in our "views afoot" in South America. We encamped at a spot the Indians called Maspa. Herndon says: "The (Peruvian) Indians take no account of time or distance; they stop when they get tired, and arrive when God pleases."[113] But our Napo companions measured distance by hours quite accurately, and they always traveled as far as we were willing to follow. In ten minutes they built us a booth for the night; driving two crotchets into the ground, they joined them with a ridge-pole, against which they inclined a number of sticks for rafters. These they covered with palm-leaves, so adroitly put together that our roof was generally rain-proof. After ablution and an entire change of garments, we built a fire, using for fuel a green tree called sindicaspi (meaning the wood that burns), a special provision in these damp forests where every thing is dripping with moisture. The fall of a full-grown tree under the strokes of a Yankee axe was a marvel in the eyes of our Indians. Our second day's journey was far more difficult than the first, the path winding up steep mountains and down into grand ravines, for we were crossing the outlying spurs of the Eastern Cordillera. Every where the track was slippery with mud, and often we sank two feet into the mire. How devoutly we did wish that the Ecuadorian Congress was compelled to travel this horrid road once a year! At 10 o'clock we reached a lone habitation called Guila, where wooden bowls are made for the Quito market. Here we procured a fresh Indian to take the place of one of our peons who had given out under his burden. We advanced this day sixteen miles in ten hours, sleeping under an old bamboo hut beside a babbling brook bearing the euphonious name of Pachamama.

[CHAPTER XIII.]

Baeza.— The Forest.— Crossing the Cosanga.— Curi-urcu.— Archidona.— Appearance, Customs, and Belief of the Natives.— Napo and Napo River.

Eight hours' hard travel from Pachamama brought us to Baeza. This "Antigua Ciudad," as Villavicencio calls it, was founded in 1552 by Don Egilio Ramirez Dávalos, and named after the quite different spot where Scipio the Younger routed Asdrubal a thousand years before. It consists of two habitations, the residence of two families of Tumbaco Indians, situated in a clearing of the forest on the summit of a high ridge running along the right bank of the Coca. This point, about one hundred miles east of Quito, is important in the little traffic of the Oriente. All Indian trains from the capital to the province pass through Baeza, where the trail divides; one branch passing on easterly to San José, and thence down through Abila and Loreto to Santa Rosa; the other leading to the Napo through Archidona. Here we rested one day, taking possession of one half of the larger hut—a mere stockade with a palm-leaf roof, without chairs, chimney, or fire-place, except any place on the floor. We swung our hammocks, while our Indians stretched themselves on the ground beneath us. The island of Juan Fernandez is not a more isolated spot than Baeza. A dense forest, impenetrable save by the trails, stretches away on every side to the Andes and to the Atlantic, and northerly and southerly along the slope of the entire mountain chain. The forest is such an entangled mass of the living and the fallen, it is difficult to say which is the predominant spirit—life or death. It is the cemetery, as well as the birthplace, of a world of vegetation. The trees are more lofty than on the Lower Amazon, and straight as an arrow, but we saw none of remarkable size. A perpetual mist seems to hang on the branches, and the dense foliage forms dark, lofty vaults, which the sunlight never enters. The soil and air are always cool, and never dry. Every thing is penetrated with dampness. All our watches stopped, and remained immovable till we reached Pará. 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 sipôs, 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 passage with their machetas, and we crept under a low arcade of foliage. This day we enjoyed something unusual in our forest trail—a distant view. The path brought us to the verge of a mountain, whence we could look down on the savage valley of the Cosanga and upward to the dazzling dome of Antisana; it was our farewell view of that glorious volcano. At the distance of twelve miles from Baeza we reached the banks of the Rio Cosanga, camping at a spot called Chiniplaya. This is the river so much dreaded by Indians and whites traversing the Napo wilderness. It is fearfully rapid—a very Tigris from its source to its junction with the Coca. The large, smooth boulders strewn along its bed show its power. Here, sixty miles from its origin in the glaciers of Antisana, it is seventy-five feet wide, but in the wet season it is one hundred yards. The day following we threaded our difficult way, a via dolorosa, fifteen miles up the left bank of the Cosanga, where we crossed and camped on the opposite side. The Indians had thrown a log over the deepest part of the river, and the rest we forded without much danger; but that very night the rain raised the river to such a magnitude that the little bridge was carried off. Had we been one day later, we might have waited a week on the other side of the impassable gulf. Between this point where we forded and Chiniplaya, fifteen miles below, the barometer indicated a fall of five hundred feet. The roar of the rushing waters is like that of the sea. In the beautiful language of Darwin (Journal, p. 316): "The sound spoke eloquently to the geologist; the thousands and thousands of stones, which, striking against each other, made the one dull, uniform sound, were all hurrying in one direction. It was like thinking on time, when the minute that now glides past is irrecoverable. So was it with these stones. The ocean is their eternity, and each note of that wild music told of one more step toward their destiny."

On account of the heavy rain and the sickness of a peon, whom finally we were obliged to leave behind, we rested one day; but on the morrow we traveled fourteen miles, crossing the lofty Guacamayo ridge,[114] fording at much risk the deep Cochachimbamba, and camping at a spot (the Indians have a name for almost any locality in the forest) called Guayusapugaru. The next day we must have advanced twenty miles, besides crossing the furious Hondachi. This river was very much swollen by the rains, and it was only by the aid of a rope that we made the passage. One stout Indian was carried down stream, but soon recovered himself.