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300
NOTES OF A BOTANIST
I started from Tabacal on September 28. The
road thence to Guayaquil follows the right bank of
the river, as far as to where the latter is confined
to a deep chasm, and then crosses to the left bank.
The descent is really very gradual, but seems more
steep than it is, because the river tosses and
foams among the huge stones which impede its
course. As we descended, it was interesting to
mark the gradual transition to the vegetation of the
hot region. Leguminous trees, so scarce in the
hills, began to be frequent. A bombaceous tree
here and there adorned the forest with its numerous
purple flowers. Cinchona magnifolia was budding
for flower ; it accompanied me to within 1000 feet
of the plain. Enormous figs, with a long cone of
exserted roots, straddled over the decayed remains,
or often only over the site, of the tree which had
served to support them in their infancy, and which
they had strangled to death after establishing for
themselves a separate existence.
At about 1500 feet elevation, I met with a
Myristica, which grows about Tarapoto at the same
altitude. A little lower down I saw the first Neea,
and near it a Vismia, not one of those weedy species
diffused throughout tropical America, but a handsome
tree, resembling V. uvulifera (from the
Casiquiari). These three genera seem rarely to
ascend above the hot region.
Five leagues below Tabacal the road again
passes, by a broad pebbly ford, to the right bank
at Pozuelos, where we drew up for the night,
thoroughly wetted by a soaking shower which had
accompanied us for the last hour and a half.
Pozuelos is a miserable little bamboo village, but