Mountain Journeys 27 



cussed scientifically. In one of their trips, Bouguer and La Con- 

 damine remained three weeks on Pichincha, at an altitude of about 

 4860 meters. There they experienced discomforts which Bouguer '■' 

 describes in the following terms: 



We were all at first considerably inconvenienced by the keenness 

 of the air; those of us who had more sensitive lungs felt the difference 

 more and were subject to slight hemorrhages, which no doubt came 

 from the fact that the atmosphere, since its weight was less, did not 

 by its compression help the vessels sufficiently to retain the blood, 

 which, however, was still capable of the same action. Personally I 

 did not notice that this inconvenience increased much when we hap- 

 pened later to ascend higher; perhaps because I was already accli- 

 mated, or perhaps also because the cold prevents the expansion of the 

 air from being as great as it would be otherwise. Several of us, when 

 we were ascending, fell fainting and were seized by vomiting; but these 

 symptoms were more the result of fatigue than of the difficulty of 

 breathing .... We sometimes felt a very severe cold, when the ther- 

 mometer indicated only a moderate degree (page 261). 



Bouguer then expounds a hypothesis of which we shall speak in 

 the third chapter; according to him, the symptoms experienced are 

 due in part to fatigue, in part to a sort of scurvy. 



In the two volumes which La Condamine 1 " devotes to the ac- 

 count of his journey, and which are anyway half filled by his vio- 

 lent disputes with Bouguer, I could find only the following pas- 

 sage referring to his stay on Pichincha: 



Don Antoine d'Ulloa, while ascending with us, fell in a faint, and 

 had to be carried to a nearby cave . . . Personally I felt no difficulty in 

 breathing. As to the affections which M. Bouguer mentions and which 

 apparently refer to the tendency to bleed from the gums, with which 

 I was then inconvenienced, I think it should not be attributed to the 

 cold of Pichincha, since I felt nothing like it in other places of equal 

 altitude, and since the same symptom attacked me again five years 

 after at Cotchesqui, the climate of which is temperate. (Vol. I, p. 35.) 



But the most circumstantial and exact information is furnished 

 us by Don Ulloa, a young naval officer whom the Spanish govern- 

 ment had sent to protect the French mission, and who later played 

 a great part in his nation. His accounts 11 give at the same time the 

 story of the symptoms experienced temporarily by mountain climb- 

 ers, and those which are the consequence of a stay of several 

 months in certain regions of the Cordillera of the Andes. Here 

 also for the first time we find suggested the services which a sojourn 

 in lofty altitudes can render to therapeutics: 



Those who are not accustomed to frequenting these places are also 

 exposed to another discomfort, besides the cold of which we have just 



