Mountain Journeys 49 



De Castelnau, after a few days, made an excursion to a nearby- 

 cavern, situated at a height of 4400 meters, in which he found the 

 bones of prehistoric animals, among others a sort of armadillo 

 (probably a glyptodon) : 



We were suffering frightfully (he says) from the soroche, the 

 stifling from which forced us to rest constantly; even the -Indians 

 seemed affected by it. 



A French tourist with a picturesque account, M. de Saint-Cricq, 

 who published his travels under the pseudonym of Paul Marcoy, 4 * 

 felt similar symptoms while he was going from Arequipa to Puno. 

 He had passed the night at the post-house of Apo (no date) : 



After an hour's walking, which had raised us some hundreds of 

 meters, I began to feel a general discomfort which I attributed to the 

 insufficiency of the atmospheric pressure. This phenomenon, which 

 the mountain Quechuas call soroche, and to which they are immune, 

 gifted as they are by nature with lungs a third more capacious than 

 those of Europeans, is attributed by them to poisonous gases produced 

 by antimony, (in Quechua soroche), even in places where this metal 

 does not exist. A contraction of the diaphragm, dull pains in the dorsal 

 region, twinges in the head, nausea and vertigo are forerunners of this 

 strange disease, which are sometimes followed by syncope. But I did 

 not go that far. My guide, warned of what I was feeling by my livid 

 pallor and by my efforts to remain in the saddle, gave me a clove of 

 garlic, urging me to crunch it. ... I obeyed . . . but the antidote . . . 

 having produced no effect, my Esculapius advised me to give myself 

 several blows with my fist on my nose, and since this would cause 

 a hemorrhage, it should bring prompt relief; but this method seemed to 

 me much too heroic, and I preferred to nibble a second clove.of garlic. . . 



About twenty minutes passed, and whether the remedy began to 

 work or whether my lungs by degrees became accustomed to this thin 

 air, I felt my discomfort passing away. (Vol. I, p. 76.) 



Lieutenant Gillis, 44 of the English Navy, gives similar informa- 

 tion, collected, it is true, second hand, but summarized in a very 

 intelligent fashion. 



In the first part of his work, devoted to the geographical de- 

 scription of Chile, the author speaks of the routes from Santiago 

 to Mendoza, and especially of the Piuquenes route: 



Very few travellers reach its summit (13,189 feet above sea level) 

 without feeling respiratory troubles; and the poor mules suffer almost 

 as much as their masters. In Chile, this illness is called puna, in Peru, 

 veta, soroche, or mareo, indifferently by the natives and the Creoles. 

 The latter, in their ignorance of its real cause, attribute it to exhala- 

 tions of metallic veins, so common in the Andes. With variations in 

 different cases, the disease produces extraordinary fatigue, prostra- 

 tion, vertigo, temporary blindness, and nausea, quite frequently ac- 



