After a long and wearisome but fruitless search for young plants of the _zamba morada_ (the _β rufinervis_ variety of _C. ovata_) in these excessively damp forests, we began the descent again. Nothing struck me so much as the extraordinary variety of forms and shapes in which nature works in these tropical forests. One is amazed to see enormous trees with their gigantic roots separating at least twenty feet above the ground, and forming perfect Gothic arches. In one place a giant of the forest had grown on the edge of a ridge of rock, and the roots had combined with the stone to form a spacious vaulted cave large enough to hold ten men comfortably. Beautiful variegated leaves of _Colocasiæ_, and a scarlet-flowered _Justitia_, with bright purple leaves, united with a profusion of ferns to ornament the opening, while some tree-ferns, and a _chinilla_, the most slender and elegant of the palms of the forest, guarded the entrance. Rays of the sun struggled through a network of bamboos on an opposite bank, and penetrated into the recesses of the cavern. While I gazed on this lovely scene, the plaintive mournful notes of the little "_Alma perdida_" reached me from the boughs of the great tree. This is a small bird of the finch tribe, of which there are two kinds, one black, the other chesnut with black wings. Their loud clear note is peculiarly sad. Such peeps as these into the secret beauties of the innermost forest recesses are rewards for many hours of toil and disappointment. Late in the evening I returned to the tent dead tired, sodden and wet to the skin, covered with moss and fungus, bitten all over by mosquitos, stung by a hornet, and with hands sliced in pieces by the sharp blades of a _Panicum_ called _challi-challi_, but with only three plants of the valuable variety of _C. ovata_. It is most provoking that only the seedlings of all the worthless species of Chinchonæ should be in great abundance; the reason is of course connected with the general felling of the trees of valuable species by the cascarilleros, years ago.