When there is sunshine, these pajonales form a very pleasant landscape: the broad expanse of grass, dotted over with a graceful milk-white flower called sayri-sayri, is intersected by dense thickets, some in the gullies and watercourses, and others in clumps, like those in an English park, the palms and tree-ferns raising their graceful heads above the rest of the trees. Here and there a black pool of sweet water is met with at the edge of the thicket, with chinchona and huaturu-trees drooping over it. Everywhere there is an abrupt boundary to the foreground in the profound forest-covered ravines, with splendid views of mountain ranges in the distance.
The vegetation of the thickets in these pajonales consists of palms, tree-ferns, Melastomaceæ (Lasiandra fontanesiana) with bright showy flowers, exceedingly pretty Ericaceæ (Gaultheriæ), Vacciniæ, the huaturu or incense-tree in great quantities, and Chinchonæ, chiefly consisting of C. Caravayensis (Wedd.), with a few plants of Calisaya Josephiana, but the latter are much more rare here than in the neighbourhood of Paccay-samana. The C. Caravayensis, a worthless species, has panicles of beautiful deep roseate flowers, large coarse hairy capsules, and lanceolate leaves, above smooth with purple veins, and hairy on the under side. It can probably bear greater cold than any other chinchona.[327]
The afternoon was passed in searching for plants of the shrubby Calisaya, but with little success. During our examination of the thickets we found a single specimen, evidently belonging to the Calisaya species, but in the form of a tree, and not of a shrub. Its height was eighteen feet six inches; its girth, two feet from the ground, eight and a half inches; and the position in which it was growing was 5680 feet above the level of the sea. I was uncertain whether it belonged to the tree variety (Calisaya vera, Wedd.), or to the shrub (Calisaga Josephiana); for Dr. Weddell only gives the height of the latter at eight or ten feet.
Near the banks of one of the black pools, overhung by spreading branches, we found a shed, a roof of coarse grass raised on four sticks four and a half feet high, and here we encamped for the night. It had been made by some party of incense-collectors from Bolivia, who wander through these wilds. Towards sunset it began to pour with rain, and continued through the night.
From this point to the Tambopata valley the road was unknown to my Indians, and had not been traversed since the time of the bark-trade, which came to an end fifteen years ago. It was supposed that any path which might once have existed would be entirely choked up by the forest, and I therefore started early in the morning, with Andres Vilca, to reconnoitre. The backbone of the ridge along which we travelled was not level, but up and down like a saw, and very rough work. After walking for a league the ridge ended where a transverse range of hills, at a lower elevation, connects the mountains on the further sides of the rivers of San Lorenzo and Laccani, and, closing up the ravines, contains their sources. This range, at right angles with the one over which we had journeyed, is called the Marun-kunka, and is covered with dense forests. It was necessary to force our way through this formidable obstruction, and we plunged into it at once. Our progress was vigorously opposed by closely matted fallen bamboos for the first few hundred yards, and afterwards we followed the course of a torrent, deeply cut in the rock, and forming a passage four to six feet deep, and about three feet across, with masses of ferns and the roots of enormous forest-trees interlacing across overhead, and two feet of exceedingly tenacious yellow mud underfoot. In many places it was almost dark at midday, while in others the rays of the sun succeeded in forcing their way through the ferns, and throwing a pale light across the otherwise gloomy passage. It was a weird unearthly scene. After several hours of very laborious travelling we at length forced our way across the Marun-kunka, and came out upon another pajonal, on the eastern side, whence there was a grand view of the forest scenery towards Tambopata, and the snowy peaks of the cordillera above Quiaca and Sina to the right.
The afternoon was again devoted to searching for plants of Calisaya Josephiana in the thickets; where the C. Caravayensis was very plentiful, together with several plants of the shrubby Calisaya, and four or five trees of the normal tree Calisaya, from 20 to 30 feet high. The elevation of this place was 5600 feet above the sea. Later in the day the journey was continued over a most difficult country, sometimes over grassy pajonales, and at others painfully struggling through forests like those on the Marun-kunka. In one of these forests I came upon a Calisaya-tree, 38 feet high, and 1 foot 3 inches in girth at a distance of 3 feet from the ground, which was several feet deep in dead leaves, chiefly the smooth leathery leaf of the huaturu-tree. At length we commenced the descent into the valley of Tambopata, 1200 feet down slippery rocks and grass, then through a belt of forest, until we suddenly emerged on an open space on the banks of the large rapid river, where there was a bamboo hut. A little coca and sugar-cane was planted, but the occupant was absent. With touching confidence he had left his door open, so my Indians established themselves comfortably, while Weir and I pitched the tent.
The river of Tambopata, descending from the farm of Saqui near the frontier of Bolivia, here flows in a northerly direction. Up the stream I could see a few little clearings, but looking down nothing appeared but the virgin forest. A most magnificent range of mountains, with a fine growth of forest trees, rises up on either side, and the rapid swollen river rushed through the centre of the ravine. The rock of all the ranges of hills between the Huari-huari and Tambopata rivers is a yellow clay-slate, with masses of white quartz cropping out on the pajonales.
Early in the morning we continued our journey down the valley, through a forest of grand timber, passing the little hut of Tambopata which Dr. Weddell had mentioned to me as having been the great rendezvous for cascarilleros or chinchona-bark collectors, at the time of his visit. After wading across the rapid little river of Llami-llami, which enters the Tambopata on the left bank, we came to a small clearing, planted with sugar-cane, the property of a very energetic and obliging old Bolivian, named Don Juan de la Cruz Gironda. He was living in a shed, open on two sides, and with a young son, and two or three Indians, was actively clearing, planting sugar-cane, and making rum in an extemporized distillery of his own manufacture. This little farm was the extreme outpost of civilisation in this direction, and had only been commenced since December 1859.
Gironda was cultivating sugar-cane, maize, and edible roots; and, at the time of my visit, he was just commencing his michca, or small sowing of maize. His people were driving holes in the ground with long poles, about a foot deep, into which they drop four to six grains, and cover over. The holes are four feet apart, for here the maize grows to an immense height. The agricultural tools were of a most primitive kind. The ground is first broken and cleared with a bit of old iron, fastened, at an acute angle, on a short handle. It is further broken up by an attempt at a spade, an oblong piece of iron, bent at one end round a long pole. The weeds and brushwood are cleared away by an instrument like the first, only turned a different way, both being secured to their handles by leathern thongs. They reap with the blade of an old knife, and where the clods require to be broken up very fine, as in coca plantations, it is done by hand. The only use that Gironda puts his small supply of sugar-cane to, as yet, is making spirits and a small quantity of treacle. The cane is expressed by a very primitive mill of three upright rollers of hard wood, worked by a single capstan-bar and a mule, the juice flowing into a gutter, and running thence, through a bamboo, into a large jar. The juice is then placed in two long canoes, hollow trunks of trees, where it is allowed to ferment. In about eight days the fermentation is over, and it is ready for distilling. This sugar-beer is called huarapu, and is rather good. The juice is then poured into a large jar, over an oven, and above the mouth of this jar he places the broken side of another smaller one, covering the joining round with mud. From the mouth of the second jar a bamboo is led through a large canoe to the mouth of a third jar. The fire is lighted in the oven, the canoe is filled with cold water to condense the vapour as it comes up through the bamboo, and the work of distilling begins; the clear colourless rum soon commencing to flow out of the bamboo into the receiving-jar. The sugar-cane is of the purplish-brown kind, which is said to ripen quickest.
Gironda also raises a few edible roots, such as yucas (Jatophra manihot), aracachas[328] (Conium maculatum), camotes or sweet potatoes, and ocas. He gave me the following information respecting the climate and seasons in the valley of Tambopata, which is worthy of attention, as this is the very centre of the C. Calisaya region.