Untitled - The Alfred Russel Wallace Website

88 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP.
stream be swollen it is quite impassable, and
travellers have to wait till it abates. The whole
number of these crossings is twelve, and after
leaving it a tributary stream of scarcely
less size
has to be crossed thrice in ten minutes.
Many attempts have been made to find a way
which shall avoid the gorge of the Cachi-yacu, but
hitherto without success. Beyond
long painful ascent to a spring of clear water called
Potrero, where the traveller begins to emerge on
this there is a
the grassy plateaux and declivities of the Campana.
In imitation of the tambos or houses of rest and
refreshment placed by the Incas along their great
roads, the modern Peruvians have erected sleepingplaces
wherever the pueblos are at too great a
distance to be reached in one day. To these also
they give the name of tambos, but they are as
inferior to the ancient ones as are the modern roads
to the solid structures of the Incas. They consist
of a roof supported on four bare poles, without
walls, but when large and well-made such shelters
answer their purpose tolerably well. Of course
they have no permanent occupants, and the only
thing a traveller can calculate on finding when he
reaches a tambo is fire, which is rarely allowed to
become extinguished, as it is the custom for those
who have last occupied it to leave their fire well
heaped up with rotten logs. A slight channel
is made round the tambo to carry off rain-water,
and the soil taken out serves to heighten the floor-
ing, which, being spread with palm-leaves
or with
fern, the traveller extends thereon his mattress or
his blanket, and wrapped up in his poncho and
another blanket, may calculate on passing the night