Untitled - The Alfred Russel Wallace Website

2i8 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP.
hands of the English race. It should be noted that
this consummation has also been hindered by our
unbroken alliance with the most beggarly nation in
Europe (Portugal) -- the nation which most hates
the English, because they have most interfered
with her staple trade the traffic in human flesh !
[Among a quantity of loose notes, headed
" Quitonian Andes," the following, on the " Bridge
of Banos," seems worth quoting :
" The Pastasa runs in a
]
tortuous course, about
40 feet broad, between perpendicular walls 150 feet
high, sometimes much excavated at the base, the
water foaming against blocks and down cascades
into deep caverns, whence it issues in a savage
whirl. Across this chasm the frail is bridge thrown,
and is higher at its northern side. The adjacent
seems as if it had been shaken into
rocky ground
irregular rather small fragments, not separated but
as if the original mass of rock had been crushed
without much displacement. The ground rises
abruptly to a great height on the left, but lower
on the right ;
and
a col stretches on one side
towards the other, looking as if it might formerly
have been the barrier of a lake.
The view down the Pastasa as one descends the
hill towards the bridge is savagely sublime. A dense
grey curtain of Tillandsia sometimes 30 feet deep-
hangs from the cliffs and adjacent trees, contrasting
with the black trachytic rock over which it hangs.''
[The bridge here referred to was probably of
similar construction to that at Agoyan (described
at p. 163), which was passed on the route from