Marvellous was the beauty of their next stage. It brought them to the region of the Peruvian-bark tree, which José called quina-quina, with its light-green leaves and its little clustered flowers, rose-coloured or white, filling the air with their delicious fragrance. But the cypress and the palm were the monarch trees of those primeval forests, and they gave shelter to an almost incredible undergrowth of vegetation. Their long slender stems were climbed to the very top by tangled lianas, with luxuriant leaves and gorgeous flowers. It was the land of flowers. There hung the large violet blossoms of the melastoma, there gigantic fuchsias drooped their graceful crimson bells; whilst beneath them blossoms of every hue enamelled the living green of the turf. Fray Fernando could not help asking, “Is not this Paradise?” Just then José stooped down, and from the sweet tangle of flower-covered bushes selected and gathered a single spray. It was a cluster of curious slipper-shaped blossoms, bright yellow spotted with crimson—the calceolaria of our modern conservatories. “Amongst us,” he said, “this flower means pity and kindness. With garlands of it, mingled with the cantut[22] and the evergreen, our fathers used to crown the heads of the noble youths at the great belting festival, to teach them that as the sun brings forth flowers from the earth for the joy of man, their hearts should bring forth pity and kindness. But pity and kindness are gone now; the Spaniards have driven them away.” And then Fray Fernando knew that this was not Paradise. Soon afterwards they came to a land of giant trees. Many of them raised their mighty stems, like the pillars of a wonderful cathedral, a hundred feet in the air before they sent forth a single branch. Here a strange fit of home-sickness surprised Fray Fernando in the midst of Nature’s richest glories. In the lower levels there was no perceptible change of season; eternal summer reigned supreme. But here it was autumn, and these giant trees were shedding on his pathway withered leaves, like those that used to rustle round his footsteps in the cork-groves of his native land. He began to feel an affection for them such as he never could have felt for the wonderful trees of the valley, whose great spreading branches kept their green the whole year round. Yet another day’s journey, and the travellers entered the region of mist and rain. Here were no great trees, but the perpetual moisture nourished a luxuriant growth of evergreens, of arbutus, and other flowering shrubs, in whose blossoms a bright yellow seemed the prevailing hue. José called this district the Puna, and hastened through it as rapidly as he might, unconsoled for the absence of Ynty by its numerous flowers, its verdant mosses, and its creeping mimosas.