or of Papallacta! After this
we were more respectful.

The next morning, our baggage having come up, we pushed up the mountain
through a grand ravine, and over metamorphic rocks standing on their
edges with a wavy strike, till we reached a polylepis grove, 12,000 feet
above the sea. We lunched under the wide-spreading branches of these
gnarled and twisted trees, which reminded us of the patriarchal olives
in the Garden of Gethsemane, and then, ascending over the monotonous
paramo, we stood at the elevation of 15,000 feet on the narrow summit of
the Guamani ridge. Some priest had been before us and planted a cross by
the roadside, to guide and bless the traveler on his way.

Of the magnificent prospect eastward, over the beginning of the
Amazonian Valley, which this lofty point commands, we have already
spoken. There was a wild grandeur in the scene--mountain behind
mountain, with deep intervening valleys, all covered with one thick,
unbroken mass of foliage. A tiny brook, the child of everlasting snows
still higher up, murmured at our feet, as if to tell us that we were on
the Atlantic slope, and then dashed into the great forest, to lose
itself in the mighty Amazon, and be buried with it in the same ocean
grave. The trade-wind, too, came rushing by us fresh from that sea of
commerce which laves the shores of two worlds. Guamani gave us also our
finest view of Antisana, its snow-white dome rising out of a wilderness
of mountains, and presenting on the north side a profile of the human
face divine.

And now we rapidly descended by a steep, narrow path, and over paramo
and bog, to a little tambo, where we had the luxury of sleeping on a bed
of straw. Here we made the acquaintance of two Indians from the Napo,
who were on the way to Quito with the mail--probably half a dozen
letters. A strip of cloth around the loins, and a short cape just
covering the shoulders, were all their habiliments. We noticed that they
never sat down, though a bench was close by them; they would squat for
an hour at a time. The day following we took our last horseback ride in
South America. It was short, but horrible. Through quagmire and swamp,
and down a flight of rocky stairs, in striking imitation of General
Putnam's famous ride--over rocks, too, made wondrously slippery by a
pitiless rain, but which our unshod Indian horses descended with great
dexterity, only one beast and his rider taking a somerset--thus we
traveled two hours, reaching