Untitled - The Alfred Russel Wallace Website

FROM MANAOS TO TARAPOTO 1
night and the village was La Laguna,
1
so called
from a large lake a little behind it, but not visible
from the village, which is reached by a very narrow
side-channel. There are perhaps a hundred families
in fifty houses built irregularly around a square
open space. There is a very large church dating
from the time of the Jesuits. The walls are of
adobe and the roof is supported on pillars formed
from large trees. The Cura was absent at Moyobamba.
May 4. --This day (about 4 P.M.) we passed some
rather high land about 12 feet above the highest
floods, and the first uninundated land I had seen
on the banks of the Huallaga. It had been very
wet, but after 5 P.M. it cleared up and I enjoyed my
first view of the Andes. The part seen is called
the Serra de Curiayacu, and in form and extent
reminded me much of Duida as seen from the Casi-
quiari, showing
a table-like summit with several
outlying peaks on the right. Yurimaguas was
reached the next day at 10 A.M.
\Ve were very kindly received by tin- priest ( Dr.
Don Silverio Mori), and as I had decided to wait
here until I could get Indians from Chasm. i to
take us up the pongo, he installed us in the cuartel,
a commodious building of three rooms, In it much
infested by rats.
Yurimaguas is a small place (about equal
to San
Regis), but is pleasantly situated on -round rising
abruptly but to no great height. It is one ol the
most ancient missions in Maynas, and according
to information derived from the priest,
founded in 1709 by Spanish Jesuits,
a few armed whites, descend
panied by
it