Mountain Journeys 47 



seems to me to be rather useful, because the animals can then breathe 

 a larger quantity of air. As a preventive garlic is placed in their 

 nostrils. Mules and donkeys suffer less from the Veta, probably be- 

 cause they know better how to rest. Horses born on the Sierra are 

 almost immune to these symptoms. (Vol. II, p. 32.) 



A very striking episode in the account of Tschudi is the story 

 of his twenty-four hour stay in the icy Puna of Peru, at an average 

 elevation of 4300 meters: 



I was beginning to climb the mountain vigorously when I felt the 

 dangerous effect of the rarefied air; while I was walking I experienced 

 an unknown distress. In order to breathe I had to remain quiet; even 

 then I could hardly succeed; if I tried to walk, an indescribable anguish 

 seized me. I heard my heart beating against my ribs; my breathing was 

 short and interrupted; there was an enormous weight upon my chest. 

 My lips were blue, swollen, cracked; the capillaries of the conjunctiva 

 burst and a few drops of blood issued. My senses were strangely 

 blunted; sight, hearing, touch, were altered; before my eyes there 

 floated a thick cloud, grayish, often reddish, and I shed bloody tears. 

 I felt as if I were between life and death; my head whirled, my senses 

 failed, and I stretched out trembling on the ground. In truth, if the 

 most precious riches, if immortal glory had awaited me some hundreds 

 of steps higher, it would have been physically and mentally impossible 

 for me merely to stretch out my hand towards them. 



For some time I x'emained lying on the ground in this half-fainting 

 condition, then I recovered a little, hoisted myself painfully on my 

 mule, and I succeeded in going on. (Vol. II, p. 152.) 



The accounts given by de Castelnau 42 are no less explicit, and 

 contain many interesting details: 



Our stay in September, 1845, at Chuquisaca, a city of some 11,000 

 to 12,000 souls (Bolivian Republic), was rather gloomy. . . . Most of my 

 companions were also affected by the soroche, an illness caused by the 

 rarefaction of the air at high altitudes (according to the observations of 

 M. Pentland, Chuquisaca is 9343 English feet (2847 meters) above sea 

 level) : it is especially while climbing the uneven streets that one feels 

 this painful sensation of suffocation; dogs, horses, and beasts of burden 

 are equally subject to it there, and I have seen some beasts of burden 

 from whose nostrils blood was dripping. In this case, muleteers usually 

 make them swallow cloves of garlic. Animals have often died from such 

 symptoms; this is especially true of horses. No matter how little they 

 are urged on, they try to overcome the distress they feel, and some- 

 times fall dead in the streets; mules, on the contrary, stop of them- 

 selves and start only when they are rested, in spite of the ill treat- 

 ment to which an unwise master may subject them. (Vol. Ill, p. 317.) 



At La Paz (3717 meters) , de Castelnau attended a bull fight: 



Unfortunately (he says) the bulls of La Paz, raised on the frozen 

 plains of the Puna, and which besides probably had the soroche, which, 



