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RESIDENCE AT TARAPOTO 61
a very long one, and when I returned, with heavier
loads, I found it expedient
to divide it into two. It
would take several pages to describe the savage,
rocky and wooded gorges, with rugged ascents and
descents ;
and the torrents that traversed them, and
must be crossed and recrossed, as the cliffs rose
from the water's edge, first on one side, then on the
other. A turbid saline stream of considerable
volume, called Cachi-yacu (Salt River), had to be
waded through eleven times in the space of half a
mile. When we reached the grassy rounded summit
of the pass of the Campana, at about 5000 feet, the
sun was fast declining, and we had still a long and
devious descent on the other side of the mountain
1
to Lirio-pampa (as Chumbi had called his chacra),
which we reached about nightfall. On receiving
the Padre's missive, Chumbi, with a profound bow,
begged permission to open it, and when he had read
it and applied his lips to the signature, he placed
himself, his house, his wife, and his little ones at
my entire disposal.
Lirio-pampa was a nearly level strip of fertile
land adjacent to a considerable stream (the Alan)
that ran not into the Mayo, but into the Sisa, the
next river entering the Huallaga to southward. It
was all forest, save where Chumbi's colony had
made their little plantations of plantains and other
esculents, including a plot of thriving sugar-cane, !
which the first crop was expected to be ripe by the
time the mill they were putting up with wooden
machinery should be ready in j^nnd
distance a spur of the Campana
1
Lirio-pampa: lat. 6 25' S.. [on]
alt. (pass) 5144 E. ft., (nmuntain-topi