Untitled - The Alfred Russel Wallace Website

160 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP.
and continued till noon. Though not very heavy,
it had the accustomed effect of putting the forest in
weeping plight. The track, instead of improving
as we approached the residences of civilised people,
was this day decidedly worse than ever, and the
natural obstructions were multiplied almost tenfold.
At 8 o'clock we reached the terminus of the beach,
above which the Pastasa ran close to the barranco,
so that we could no longer follow its banks.
And now commenced a series of ascents and
descents, of which I counted eight from Mapoto to
Rio Verde. Of these, the first two ridges were the
highest and most fatiguing. Beyond these was a
narrow sloppy plain at whose further side we had
to pass a long puddle -hole called Runa-cocha, in
which are laid slender poles from one projecting
stone or tree-stump to another, and as they were
now covered by water it was difficult to step on
them. I had, in fact, the pleasure of slipping off
them into the water nearly up to my
waist. As the
Indians travelled now without cargo, they got much
ahead of me, and I know not how long they had
been at the Rio Verde when I came out there, at
3 P.M., very much wayworn. What a pleasure it
was to see again a white man's habitation, with plots
of cultivated land ! The hacienda has only been
recently established, and the dwelling-house, which
has an upper story, was unfinished ; but there was
a cane -mill worked by water-power, and from
twenty to thirty people at work cutting
cane in the
adjacent cane-piece, distilling brandy, etc.
The Rio Verde is very little less than the Topo,
and, like it, is unfordable. We crossed it by two
stout poles laid from rock to rock at a part where