Mountain Journeys 25 



twenty-five or thirty leagues of the pass, and in extent stretches more 

 than five hundred leagues, as I said (page 87). 



After he had made this description, and we will admit that 

 exactness could not have been joined to picturesqueness more skil- 

 fully, Acosta discusses the cause of these symptoms which he says 

 he experienced in four other crossings of the great Cordillera. We 

 shall report in a chapter devoted to a summary of theoretical ex- 

 planations the ideas of this reverend gentleman, ideas which are 

 really marvellous for insight and clearness. 



It is hard to determine the exact point at which Acosta crossed; 

 Pariacaca is a name that has disappeared in Peru as well as in 

 Ecuador. It is almost certain that it was below the snow line, for 

 his account, so exact and so detailed, does not speak of the snow; 

 its height above sea level was therefore probably 4500 meters at 

 the most. 



It is very strange to see that after describing so admirably and 

 after explaining the painful sensations he had experienced while 

 crossing the lofty mountains, Acosta does not consider them as 

 accounting for the disasters undergone by the Spanish armies. Yet 

 he knew them very well; he speaks of them; but here his clearness 

 of mind seems to abandon him. 



There are other deserts or uninhabited places, which in Peru they 

 call Punas (to speak of the second point which we promised) where 

 the quality of the air cuts body and life from men without their feel- 

 ing it. In the past the Spaniards travelled from Peru to the kingdom 

 of Chile across the mountain; today they usually go by sea, and some- 

 times along the coast; and although this route is tiresome and incon- 

 venient, there is never as much danger there as on the mountain road, 

 in which there are plains in passing through which several men have 

 died and perished, and others have escaped with great luck, and some 

 of them were maimed. In this place there blows a little wind which is 

 not too strong or violent. But it is so penetrating that men fall dead 

 of it almost without feeling it, or maybe their fingers and toes are left 

 there; which may seem a fabulous tale, and yet it is a trUe thing. I 

 knew and long frequented General Hierosme Costilla, former adminis- 

 trator of Cusco, who had lost three or four toes, which had fallen off 

 when he passed through the deserts of Chile, because they had been 

 attacked and penetrated by this little wind, and when he happened to 

 look at them, they were all dead and fell off of their own accord 

 without giving him any pain, just as a rotten apple falls from the tree. 

 This captain related that of a good army which he had led through this 

 place the preceding years, since the discovery of this kingdom of Al- 

 magro, a great part of the men remained there dead, and that he saw 

 their bodies stretched out on the desert, without any bad odor or 

 decay. ... No doubt this is a kind of cold so penetrating that it ex- 

 tinguishes the vital heat by cutting off its power; and also because it 



