The Indians Recognize The Species By The Smell, And More Particularly By Chewing The Woody Fibres.

Two natives, to whom the same wood was given to chew, pronounced without hesitation the same name.

We could avail ourselves but little of the sagacity of our guides, for how could we procure leaves, flowers, and fruits growing on trunks, the branches of which commence at fifty or sixty feet high? We were struck at finding in this hollow the bark of trees, and even the soil, covered with moss* and lichens. (* Real musci frondosi. We also found, besides a small Boletus stipitatus, of a snow-white colour, the Boletus igniarius, and the Lycoperdon stellatum of Europe. I had found this last only in very dry places in Germany and Poland.) The cryptogamous plants are here as common as in northern countries. Their growth is favoured by the moisture of the air, and the absence of the direct rays of the sun. Nevertheless the temperature is generally at 25 degrees in the day, and 19 degrees at night.

The rocks which bound the crevice of Cuchivano are perpendicular like walls, and are of the same calcareous formation which we observed the whole way from Punta Delgada. It is here a blackish grey, of compact fracture, tending sometimes towards the sandy fracture, and crossed by small veins of white carbonated lime. In these characteristic marks we thought we discovered the alpine limestone of Switzerland and the Tyrol, of which the colour is always deep, though in a less degree than that of the transition limestone.* (* Escher, in the Alpina volume 4 page 340.) The first of these formations constitutes the Cuchivano, the nucleus of the Imposible, and in general the whole group of the mountains of New Andalusia.

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