Untitled - The Alfred Russel Wallace Website

516 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP.
to follow the river-bank till you come to the canon
(on the map marked " Chushpi pongo "), up the righthand
side of which you must climb the mountain,
"and in this manner thou canst by no means miss
thy way "
which the ; map clearly shows, since it
leads up to the " Encanado," which is shown by the
other and more easy route to be the " way
I nca.
of the
I submit, therefore, that the "Guide" is equally
minute and definite in its descriptions throughout,
that it agrees everywhere with Guzman's map, and
that, as it is admitted to be accurate in every detail
for more than three-fourths of the whole distance,
there is every probability that the last portion is
equally accurate. It will, of course, be objected that,
if so, why did not Guzman himself, who made the
map, also complete the exploration
of the route and
make the discovery ? That, of course, we cannot
tell ; but
many reasons may be suggested as highly
probable. Any such exploration of a completely
uninhabited region must be very costly, and is
always liable to fail near the end from lack of food,
or from the desertion of the Indian porters when
there was doubt about the route. Guzman had
evidently been diverted from the search by what
seemed the superior promise of silver and gold
mines, from which he may have hoped to obtain
wealth enough to carry out the other expedition
with success. This failing, he apparently returned
home, and may have been endeavouring to obtain
recruits and funds for anew effort when his accidental
death occurred.
It is to be noted that beyond the point where the
hieroglyph puzzled all the early explorers
there is a