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laboriously employed, performed their work without suffering 

 any inconvenience from this cause. Several of our party, who 

 had frequently been at Pasco, and resided there a considerable 

 time, were not affected ; and, indeed, the only one who was 



attacked besides Mr. M and myself, recovered almost 



immediately. In this, too, the puna resembles sea-sickness, 

 that different individuals, under precisely similar circum- 

 stances, are affected in a very different degree, and many do 

 not suffer at all. It is, however, worthy of remark, that the 

 same persons are not equally affected by the two disorders. 

 My friend and I, some years before, had made a voyage of 

 four months together, and he only suffered for a few hours from 

 sea-sickness, while I was never wholly free from it during 

 the voyage; but, in the pi'esent instance, he suffered more 

 severely than I did. Persons of full habit, affected with the 

 puna, frequently spit blood. Some months before we passed, 

 an Englishman, who had been employed at the mines, set 

 out to walk to the coast; he had previously been in bad 

 health, and shortly after his arrival at Casa-cancha he died, 

 from haemorrhage, having burst a blood-vessel in the lungs. 



The valley of Casa-cancha is about half a mile wide, 

 abruptly terminated by the limestone hills we had passed 

 over, and bounded at the side by red sandstone and conglo- 

 merate. We were lodged at a miserable hut, built of stones 

 and mud. The single apartment, of which it consisted, 

 served us successively for a kitchen, dining-room, and bed- 

 room ; the dinner was cooked over a turf fire, the smoke from 

 which eddied round the roof, and then partially escaped by 

 the door-way, which was only about four feet high. 



At daybreak, on the 28th, when we raised the piece of 

 sooty cloth that served for a door to our dwelling, the whole 

 valley was so thickly covered with hoar-frost, that it appeared 

 as if snow had fallen in the night. We were delaved more 

 than two hours from some of our mules having strayed to the 

 hills. As the beasts are suffered to wander about at night 

 in search of pasture, an Indian is generally to be found where 

 travellers halt, who, for a trifling reward, undertakes to keep 

 them together : he passes the night in the open air, frequently 



