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238 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP.
him with me in all my subsequent
excursions in
the district. From him I learnt that the Cascarilla
roja did not commence until another day's journey
downwards, and that to have a chance of seeing it
in any quantity (which, he admitted, was at best
it
only problematical), would be necessary to
penetrate at least three days into the forest. As
my object for the present was merely to make
myself acquainted with the plant,
and with the
soil and climate in which it grows, I decided on
going no farther than until I should meet with it ;
for the procuring and transporting of provisions
necessary for a long stay
difficult and expensive.
in the forest is both
I remained a day at Lucmas to look around. It
is at an altitude of between 5000 and 6000 feet,
and produces luxuriant sugar-cane. The small
banana called Guineo flourishes (as indeed it does
at Guataxi), but the plantain is near its upper
limit, and the fruit is small and scanty. There are
tolerably lofty forest trees in the valleys and on
the hills, while the steep sides of the latter are
often covered with grass, more or less intermingled
with scrub, and often with Bromeliacese. In
descending towards Lucmas, I saw on the bushy
hill-sides a great deal of the small tree called Palo
del Rosario, a curious, and I believe undescribed,
Sapindacea, which I had already gathered at Banos
in the Eastern Cordillera. Its most remarkable
feature is, that while the layer of wood next the
bark is quite white, all the internal layers are
purple-brown with a black outer edge a colour
not unlike that of old walnuts ; so that articles
fabricated of this wood are curiously mottled.