Untitled - The Alfred Russel Wallace Website

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NOTES OF A BOTANIST
evening I made them into bundles putting alternate
layers of Musci and Hepaticae, and hung them
up to "smoke" through the night, along with my
soaked garments. Even gathered in this hasty
way, I have a great many fine things ;
of
Hookeria
alone there seem to be not fewer than fitteen
species. I saw also great numbers of new ferns,
but could not take them, save two or three of the
minute ones that I had not seen elsewhere.
Having perforce to remain at Barios till my
goods were got out from the Topo, and finding it
favourably situated for exploring Mount Tungu-
ragua, which, like much in ground the neighbourhood,
scarcely any botanist has visited, I determined
station for some months. It is a
to make it my
poor little place, much subject to earthquakes and
violent winds, and not abundant in provisions.
Bread is brought from Ambato and other places
where the climate is more suitable for the growth
of wheat. Banos is some 5500 feet above the sea
according to my barometer. Its position much
reminds me of that of in Argelez
the Basses-
Pyrenees, though the is valley narrower and the
schistose hills grassy
that bound it seem much
higher than those of Argelez.
In the gorge of the
Pastasa we have still oranges and the sugar-cane,
and on the hills that rise from it barley, beans, and
potatoes. The volcanic cone of Tunguragua is
perhaps the highest
in the world ;
it is quite
isolated from the rest of the Cordillera, and on its
eastern side is joined by a narrow col to the
wooded hills which subside into the great Amazonian
plain ; taken from the
cannot be much less
valley
than
of Banos, its
15,000 feet.
height
It has