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HIDDEN TREASURE 509
The mines of Llanganati, after having been
neglected for half a century, are now being sought
out again with the intention of working them ; but
there is no single person at the present day able to
employ the labour and capital required for successfully
working a silver mine, and mutual confidence
is at so low an ebb in this country that companies
never hold together long. Besides this, the gold of
the Incas never ceases to haunt people's memories ;
and at this moment I am informed that a party of
explorers who started from Tacunga imagine they
have found the identical Green Lake of Llanganati,
and are preparing to drain it dry. If we admit the
truth of the tradition that the ancients smelted gold
in Llanganati, it is equally certain that they extracted
the precious metal in the immediate neighbourhood ;
and if the Socabon of Valverde cannot at this day
be discovered, it is known to every one that gold
exists at a short distance, and possibly in consider-
able quantity, if the Ecuacloreans would only take
the trouble to search for it and not leave that task
to the wild Indians, who are content if, by scooping
up the gravel with their hands, they can get together
which the white man
enough gold to fill the quill
has given them as the measure of the value of the
axes and lance-heads he has supplied to them on
trust.
The gold region of Canelos begins on the
extreme east of the map of Guzman, in streams rising
in the roots of Llanganati and flowing to the Pastasa
1
and Curaray,
the principal of which are the Bom-
bonasa and Villano. These rivers and their smaller
tributaries have the upper part of their course in
1 The name Curaray itself may l>e