The next morning at eight o'clock the two Indians who were to carry our food, blankets, &c., put in their appearance, looking somewhat seedy and informing us that the others were coming later. They were accompanied by a pretty little Indian girl, carrying their _habío_, who they said was their sister. The _padre_, however, suspected immorality and, as a precautionary measure, bade them go to church. This over, we sent them on ahead in charge of Pedro, with orders to wait for us at the next village--San Francisco--while we stopped a little longer to take lunch with the _padres_. Lunch concluded, we duly thanked the hospitable Capuchins for their kindness to us and once more set out. After a pleasant walk of about two hours we reached San Francisco, where we were cordially received by the head priest, whom we had met at Sibundoy, and installed in the convent, where we found Pedro and the Indians. San Francisco is a little, _triste_ place of some two hundred inhabitants, who claim to be whites, but, except for the fact that they wore hats and trousers, I could see but little difference between them and the _infieles_. There are two or three small shops and about twenty other houses, most of which were of _adobe_. Bright and early the next morning we set out along the level valley, which we followed for some time until we struck the Putumayo, here a small, swift-flowing mountain torrent, about six feet wide. Crossing it, we continued along its heavily wooded banks until we came to a small affluent on the left, which we followed up to its source. Climbing to the top of the hill, we found ourselves upon a sort of divide, which we slowly descended by an almost perpendicular trail over huge, slippery rocks and rolling cobble-stones to the bottom of a deep, narrow cañon, formed by another small, torrential _quebrada_. All the rest of the day we followed the course of this stream, which we crossed no less than thirty-four times. Occasionally the cañon, always steep and narrow, became merely vertical walls of rock, rising from the edge of the stream upwards to a height of from fifty to a hundred metres. In these places we were compelled to wade down the bed of the stream, while on other occasions the trail, about six inches wide, passed along the perpendicular face of some wet, slippery rock, forty or fifty feet above the river. How the Indians passed such places, carrying the heavy _bultos_[29] that weighed from eighty to a hundred pounds, is beyond my comprehension, nor have I any desire to make that day's journey again to find out. At about six o'clock we reached the junction of this stream with another of about the same size, where they combine to form the River Patoyacu. Here we stopped at a tolerable _rancho_, Perkins and I utterly exhausted, but the two Indians and the girl apparently as fresh as ever. Neither Perkins nor myself suffered from sleeplessness that night, although a large, flat rock was our only couch.