This Peru, approachable from the Atlantic, the “monstrous thicke wood” of the early travelers, still remains undisturbed. Illimitable it is as you gaze down upon it, stretching away one unbroken forest to the faint blue horizon, without a single natural approach except the waterways. Lying close below the austere mountain-tops is a luxuriant world of vegetation; wide stretches of unpreëmpted soil, sparseness characteristic of polar regions hangs just above a tropical phantasmagoria of growth. Shifting cloud-shadows and wandering rainbows flit and interchange over the jungle like the play of colors on a peacock’s neck. Though we know that there are no mighty civilizations of human making, there are no streets of gold with ruby walls, yet within the imperturbable recesses are strange races and wonders of plant and animal life which may interpret whole domains of knowledge. Nature’s secrets are still locked up in this prolific laboratory. Though we know that no great race of kings holds sway, yet it is certain that here is a chance to study in the wild tribes the growth of human language--beginning with the poor Inje-inje, who has not more than a bird’s speech, and whose needs are no greater than his speech would suggest. CHAPTER II TOWARD THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY From the mountain-tops the stream leads toward the east over the Eyebrows of the Jungle, La Ceja de la Montaña, letting loose a deluge from its black clouds. Caught between walls of red and black striped rock, the valley grows deeper and hotter and filled with mist. The water accumulates brightly colored pebbles. It rolls over ungathered bits of gold in its sand and rushes them along with slivers of glistening mica. All about is the sound of springs “whose waters moss has turned aside.” Buried in luxuriant vegetation, it slides on beneath thickets of guava, golden cassia, and red-leaved _tilandsia_ bushes, hung with rank passion vines, whose ripened fruit, the crackly _granadilla_, lies everywhere upon the ground. A mammoth iguana, munching the flesh-colored bignonias, falls occasionally from the tree-tops. Small, richly plumed parrots nest in the rock walls. A whole book might be written about the parrots, various as vegetation itself, flashing multi-colored light as they scream through the air-spaces. There is the toucan, turning his bill with its accessory head around to gloss his splendid plumage in a ray of sunlight. At the other end of the scale are the meek little green parroquets with perpendicular bills, hardly larger than sparrows, which go in pairs and move in parallel lines. Every variety keeps together, each to its kind.