of rock. The road then slowly rises to a
height of upwards of six thousand five hundred
feet. Having mounted thus far, and so done
more up-hill business than belongs to the
ascent of Snowdon, we are told quietly that
we have reached the foot of the mountains.
From this point the ascent is steeper and
more dangerous, winding along narrow paths,
and doubling huge projections, yielding,
sometimes, barely room for a mule to pass;
whilst, now and then, a heavy mass comes
tumbling down from overhead, and lodges
on some ledge that is wide enough to stop
it, with a crash that makes the mountain
tremble.

The Sierra is cleft in many places by gorges,
that descend, straight as the plummet, to an
immense depth; and, as the road passes along
the edge of these abysses, the view suggests
a strong temptation to make one false step, or
cause the same to be made by the mule, since
it would be but a moment's work to slip into
the throat of the old gaping chasm.

As we ascend, the change in the climate
and vegetation, of course, soon attracts attention.
We pass from the sugar-cane and
banana in the plains, through every shade of
increasing barrenness, to a few mosses and
scrubby bushes on the Puna. A few villages
are scattered on the route, and in the
neighbourhood of these, maize and potatoes are
grown even at a height of some ten thousand
feet. But, by degrees these disappear, and
the monotony of the road is broken only by
an occasional tambo—a most miserable stunted
species of road-side inn—which yields a
scanty supply of food and accommodation,
and is eaten up almost to the very walls by
fleas. Fleas, I should guess, were, like the
potatoe, first imported into Europe from
Peru. In that country, certainly, the species
must have been multiplying rapidly from the
remotest times. The scenery of the Andes
(like that of the Himalayas, and of all vast
mountains) appears, at first sight, to fall short
of one's previous ideas. The view is often
very much confined. The idea of their
enormous height is not at all conveyed by
travelling over them; for, the successive
valleys and table-lands present successive
starting-points, and the stupendous
mountain-chain, supporting countries on its bosom,
escapes the measurement of a mere pair of
eyes.

Having crossed the passes of the Alto de
Jaquehambo, and the Alto de Lachaqual—the
latter of which is above the snow line, fifteen
thousand, five hundred feet high—we begin
to descend, and presently, a sudden turn in
the road reveals a large and apparently
well built town. This town lies in a basin
surrounded by rocks, and the view of it forms a
scene oddly inconsistent with the grand
solitude and bleakness of the scenery around.
Closer acquaintance dissipates our notion that
the town is well built. It is a dirty miserable
place, in which there are uncomfortably
huddled together fifteen thousand people. It
is chiefly composed of miners' huts
something like overgrown bee-hives with a few
tolerable houses that belong to shop-keepers
and the proprietors of mines. As we descend
from the pass into the Puna, a scene worthy
of the Andes breaks upon us. We are on
the highest and the most extensive table-land
in all Peru. Its breadth is about seventy
miles, its length scarcely determinable, as it
penetrates into the mountains at various
points, and is not abruptly broken by them,
but sweeps gradually upwards to their
summits. In the centre is a large lake, from one
side of which the principal tributary of the
Amazon begins its course, whilst, from the
other side, several small streams flow to the
western coast, so that from this lake tribute
is sent both to the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
In the distance rise the great Cordillera
stretching towards the Brazils; whilst the
nearer peaks of the Andes, whitened with
snow, shine round about us cold, rugged, and
silent, in vast masses that cause our hearts to
dilate with a half painful sense of the sublime.
The clear blue sky of the plains has deepened
almost into black; the dull, lead-coloured
sun seems to have lost the power of
communicating heat, and looks like a mere spectre
of the tyrant under whose reign for so many
years, men, women, and children have been
flayed, or roasted, or marked with a brand
upon the skin.

On first reaching the Puna, we all suffer a
good deal from the rarefaction of the air,
which produces sickness, bleeding at the
mouth and nose, and pain in the chest.
Horses and mules, on their first visit, suffer
from this cause more acutely than men, and
the drivers often slit the nostrils of these
animals; an operation which is said to give
relief. The slitting of our own noses being, of
course, out of the question, we get over our
discomfort as we can. The only native
animals found on the Puna belong to the llama
tribe; alpacas, guanacas, and vicunas. The
llama works at the mines as the ordinary
beast of burden, and is perfectly efficient;
it is more sagacious, steady, and
sure-footed even than the mule. The alpacas are
tamed and kept in flocks for the sake of their
wool, an article which has of late become
important to the English manufacturers.
The guanacas and vicunas—the former the
largest, and the latter the handsomest
members of their tribe—are seldom to be
tamed; they range the mountains, and the
pursuit of them affords sport to the European
hunter in Peru.

On entering the city of Pasco from the
mountain solitudes, we are in the first place
annoyed at the incessant clatter that
surrounds us. The mines are opened in the
streets, the courtyards, and occasionally even
in the houses of the town. We encounter
them at every step, and as they are often very
shallow—the depth varying from twenty to a