, into which we sank up to
our knees. The place was horribly haunted by clouds of mosquitoes and
every form of flying pest, so we were glad to find solid ground again
and to make a circuit among the trees, which enabled us to outflank
this pestilent morass, which droned like an organ in the distance, so
loud was it with insect life.

On the second day after leaving our canoes we found that the whole
character of the country changed. Our road was persistently upwards,
and as we ascended the woods became thinner and lost their tropical
luxuriance. The huge trees of the alluvial Amazonian plain gave place
to the Phoenix and coco palms, growing in scattered clumps, with thick
brushwood between. In the damper hollows the Mauritia palms threw out
their graceful drooping fronds. We traveled entirely by compass, and
once or twice there were differences of opinion between Challenger and
the two Indians, when, to quote the Professor's indignant words, the
whole party agreed to "trust the fallacious instincts of undeveloped
savages rather than the highest product of modern European culture."
That we were justified in doing so was shown upon the third day, when
Challenger admitted that he recognized several landmarks of his former
journey, and in one spot we actually came upon four fire-blackened
stones, which must have marked a camping-place.

The road still ascended, and we crossed a rock-studded slope which took
two days to traverse. The vegetation had again changed, and only the
vegetable ivory tree remained, with a great profusion of wonderful
orchids, among which I learned to recognize the rare Nuttonia
Vexillaria and the glorious pink and scarlet blossoms of Cattleya and
odontoglossum. Occasional brooks with pebbly bottoms and fern-draped
banks gurgled down the shallow gorges in the hill, and offered good
camping-grounds every evening on the banks of some rock-studded pool,
where swarms of little blue-backed fish, about the size and shape of
English trout, gave us a delicious supper.

On the ninth day after leaving the canoes, having done, as I reckon,
about a hundred and twenty miles, we began to emerge from the trees,
which had grown smaller until they were mere shrubs. Their place was
taken by an immense wilderness of bamboo, which grew so thickly that we
could only penetrate it by cutting a pathway with the machetes and
billhooks of the Indians. It took us a long day, traveling from seven
in the morning till