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224 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP.
will have learnt from a letter I wrote to Mr.
Saunders that I found the vegetation there (in
October 1858) consisted of so very few species
that I judged it expedient to return to the Sierra,
where I found the people in great alarm more
at the devastating progress of their own armies
than at the threatened invasion of the Peruviansand
ready to desert the towns should hostilities
actually commence. So the risk of losing all my
goods has kept me from leaving them far, during
the remainder of the dry season. But for this, I
should, after leaving Pallatanga, have plunged into
some other forest, for I find that the woody slopes
on both sides of the Andes must be in future my
principal
field for collecting, the really Alpine
plants having been already gathered to a great
extent, and having most of them a very wide
range.
I am now packing my flowers and ferns, which
(especially the former) comprise many interesting
things, gathered under disadvantageous circumstances.
The difficulties of travelling anywhere
out of the central plain of the Ecuadorean Andes
is immense. Roads there are none what go by
that name are deep slippery gullies and narrow
ledges along steep declivities, where far more lives
are annually lost than in navigating the rivers of
the plain. . . .
. . . The
To Mr. George Bcnthaiu
AMBATO, April 13, 1859.
collection now sent is not of the class
I could have liked, but the unsettled state of the