Untitled - The Alfred Russel Wallace Website

34 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP.
spondents. At Nauta I collected scarcely anything,
for fear of adding to my already unwieldy baggage,
and I could not leave any dried plants there, where
they would be wasted. The same reasons, added
to illness, have limited at my gatherings
Yuri-
sufficient to
maguas, for I cannot hope to gather
make it worth while sending a collection from here
direct to England. Towards the sources of these
rivers it would be easier to collect in descending
than in ascending were it practicable to remain a
few days in the promising localities ; for in coming
down the size of one's canoe may be as large as one
chooses, but in going up one must necessarily use
the smallest canoes, and even then be content to
get on at a very
slow rate.
[The letter to Mr. Teasdale now takes up the
narrative again :
]
The banks of both Maranon and Huallaga
but at
continue flat all the way to about two clays below this
Yurimaguas,
place / enjoyed my
first view of the Andes \ It was on the 2nd of May
-we had had terrible rain from midnight to noon,
and it still kept dropping until 5 P.M. About hall-
past five the sky cleared to N.W., distinctly revealing
a line of blue mountains which might be some 4000
feet higher than the river. They are called the
Curi-yacu (Mountains of the River of Gold), and
extend along the western side of the pongos of the
Huallaga.
You are, I daresay, aware that the Maranon, the
Huallaga, and their tributaries have the peculiarity
of issuing from the mountains into the plains
through deep narrow rifts called pongos. From