re in
safety? How could we attempt such a journey without provisions. It would
be impossible."

My hopes fell as quickly as they had sprung up.

"I noticed your countenance change as you sat upon the tree."

"True, you might easily have done so: the prospect of reaching Para,
penniless, and becoming a beggar in the streets--the nearer prospect of
starving in the wilderness of the Amazon--were before my mind."

My eyes for awhile were bent mechanically upon the green ocean of
tree-tops. All at once an object arrested them. It was a patch of bright
rose-coloured foliage, easily distinguishable amid the green leaves that
surrounded it. It was not down in the Montana--for that is a thousand
feet below us. It was upon the side of the Sierra. My eyes glanced
quickly around. I beheld other patches of similar foliage, some of them
nearly an acre in breadth. My heart again leaped with joy. I knew well
what these red spots of the forest were. They were clumps of _cinchona_
trees--those trees that yield the celebrated febrifuge--the Peruvian
bark!

New ideas passed rapidly through my mind. "Our fortune is gone," thought
I. "Here is a fortune in these valuable trees. Here is a mine that only
requires to be worked. I shall turn _cascarillero_--I shall be a
_bark-hunter_."

"At first I thought that we might gather the bark, and send Guapo to
sell it in the towns of the Sierra. Then the idea came into my mind that
it might be possible to collect an immense quantity, store it up, build
a great raft, float it down the rivers, and dispose of it in Para. I
knew that in this way it would more than quadruple its price--for the
traders of the Sierra purchase it from the poor cascarilleros, and have
enormous profits upon it from the larger merchants.

"But how to live while making this store? Yes, how to live even on the
morrow? Could we support ourselves by hunting, or find sustenance from
fruits and roots, as you have suggested? This was the most important
question of all, for our present necessities far outweighed our future
prospects.

"The very thought of our necessity caused me once more to glance over
the forest, and I continued to scan it on all sides. My eye was again
arrested, and fixed upon a point where I saw there existed a different
vegetation from any that could be seen elsewhere. There is a small
valley about five hundred feet below us. It is a sort of table valley,
and the stream along which we have been travelling