of appetite, difficult breathing, tendency to syncope, and utter
indifference. Baron Mueller, in his ascent of Orizava (17,800 feet),
found great difficulty in breathing, and experienced the sensation of a
red-hot iron searing his lungs, and agonizing pains in the chest,
followed by fainting-fits and torrents of blood from his mouth;
Humboldt, in scaling Chimborazo, suffered from nausea akin to
sea-sickness, and a flow of blood from the nose and lips; while Herndon,
on the slope of Puy-puy (15,700 feet), said he thought his heart would
break from his breast with its violent agitation. Though ascending the
Andes to the height of 16,000 feet, and running up the last few rods, we
experienced nothing of this except a temporary difficulty in
respiration. We were exhilarated rather than depressed. The experience
of Darwin on the Portillo ridge (14,000 feet) was only "a slight
tightness across the head and chest." "There was some imagination even
in this (he adds); for, upon finding fossil shells on the highest ridge,
I entirely forgot the puna in my delight." De Saussure says truly: "The
strength is repaired as speedily as it has been exhausted. Merely a
cessation of movement for three or four minutes, without even seating
one's self, seems to restore the strength so perfectly that, on resuming
progress, one feels able to climb at a single stretch to the very peak
of the mountain."

CHAPTER VI.

Astronomic Virtues of Quito.--Flora and Fauna of the Valley of
Quito.--Primeval Inhabitants of the Andes.--Quichua Indians.

Quito, with a position unparalleled for astronomical purposes, has no
observatory. The largest telescope in the city is about five feet long,
but the astute professor of natural philosophy in the Jesuit College who
has charge of it had not the most distant idea that an eclipse of the
sun would occur on the 29th of August, and an eclipse of the moon
fifteen days later. In ancient days this "holy city" had within it the
Pillar of the Sun, which cast no shadow at noon, and a temple was built
for the god of light. The title of the sovereign Inca was the Child of
the Sun; but there was very little knowledge of astronomy, for, being
the national religion, it was beyond the reach of scientific
speculation.

The atmosphere of Quito is of transparent clearness. Humboldt saw the
poncho of a horseman with the naked eye at a horizontal distance of
ninety thousand feet. The sky is of a dark indigo colo