Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/395

Rh this spot terminated eleven leagues of a wide road, capable of admitting, without the smallest risk, mules and droves of cattle, and completed in ten months only, by so small a number as a hundred men, constantly employed, and stimulated to fulfil their engagement by ample encouragement. In this district three bridges were built, one over the river named Santa Rosa, another over the Yanamayo, and the third over the stream Xincartambo. A lake denominated Negrococha, which was a great obstacle to the passage, was drained: the Indians, impressed with an old and superstitious belief, that of three who should attempt to cross, one would be drowned, would not venture on the trial, each dreading least he should be the unfortunate third, the one doomed to destruction. The grounds having been cleared for that purpose, a variety of esculent grains were planted; and this was followed by the introduction of a herd of cattle, which, as there is an abundance of good pasturages, at the same time that there are not, in the whole of that territory, any of the larger tribes of venomous creatures, afford, to the new settlers, the prospe6l of a prodigious increase.

We must not omit the discoveries made, in this undertaking, to the advantage of the public, and of natural history. Bezares met with a description of very lofty trees, the wood of which is unknown, but valuable, not only because, with all its solidity, it yields with equal suppleness to the plane and the chisel; but likewise on account of its semi-violet colour, by which it appears to be, in preference to any other wood, adapted to the purpose of dyeing. He found another tree which produces, in the shoots of its branches, a resinous substance in grains, of a greenish hue, which, as he proved it to