vine narrows again, narrows until it
becomes a mere cleft; the mule-path goes up and down like some mighty
snake, now mounting to a dizzy height, anon descending to the bed of the
thundering torrent. The air is dull and sepulchral, an icy wind blows in
our faces, and though I am warmly clad, and wrapped besides in a thick
_poncho_, I shiver to the bone.

At length we emerge from this valley of the shadow of death, and after
crossing an arid yet not quite treeless plain, begin to climb by many
zigzags an almost precipitous height. The mules suffer terribly, stopping
every few minutes to take breath, and it is with a feeling of intense
relief that, after an ascent of two hours, we find ourselves on the
_cumbre_, or ridge of the mountain.

For the first time since yesterday we have an unobstructed view. I
dismount and look round. Backward stretches an endless expanse of bleak
and stormy-swept billowy mountains; before us looms, in serried phalanx,
the western Cordillera, dazzling white, all save one black-throated
colossus, who vomits skyward thick clouds of ashes and smoke, and down
whose ragged flanks course streams of fiery lava.

After watching this stupendous spectacle for a few minutes we go on, and
shortly reach another and still loftier _quebrada_. Icicles hang from the
rocks, the pools of the streams are frozen; we have reached an altitude as
high as the summit of Mont Blanc, and our distended lips, swollen hands,
and throbbing temples show how great is the rarefaction of the air.

None of us suffer so much from the cold as poor Gahra. His ebon skin has
turned ashen gray, he shivers continually, can hardly speak, and sits on
his mule with difficulty.

The country we are in is uninhabited and the trail we are following known
only to a few Indians. I am the first white man, says Gondocori, by whom
it has been trodden.

We pass the night in a ruined building of cyclopean dimensions, erected no
doubt in the time of the Incas, either for the accommodation of travellers
by whom the road was then frequented or for purposes of defence. But being
both roofless, windowless, and fireless, it makes only a poor lodging. The
icy wind blows through a hundred crevices; my limbs are frozen stiff, and
when morning comes many of us look more dead than alive.

I asked Condocori how the poor girls of San Andrea could possibly have
survived so severe a journey.

"The weaker would have died. But I did not expect this cold. The w