Chapter I 

 MOUNTAIN JOURNEYS 



1. South America. 



It is to the accounts of travellers who followed .the first Amer- 

 ican conquerors that we owe our knowledge of the discomforts 

 that attack man when he reaches a certain height on a mountain 

 side. To gain this elementary information, science had to wait 

 until Cortez attacked Mexico in 1519 and until Pizarro, twenty-five 

 years later, took Quito and conquered Chile and Peru. And yet 

 the conquerors themselves gave little heed to the increase of suf- 

 fering brought them by an unknown disease; at least their his- 

 torians do not mention it. In the account of the two expeditions 

 which by order of Cortez ascended to the crater of Popocatepetl 

 (5420 meters) in 1519 and 1522, the details of the second of which 

 were told by Herrera, 1 mountain sickness is not very clearly indi- 

 cated. 



The companions of Francis Pizarro (62 horsemen and 102 foot- 

 soldiers), in the daring march which took them in October, 1532, 

 from the Pacific coast to Cuzco, the heart of the empire of the 

 Incas, had to cross the lofty passes of the Cordillera ol the Andes 

 through a thousand perils. The historian, Xeres, 2 who is the nar- 

 rator of this marvellous expedition, speaks only of "the great cold 

 experienced on these heights". However, they were below the 

 region of perpetual snow; the ground was covered with a plant 

 like the "esparto corto" (page 65) . Ferdinand Pizarro, sent by his 

 brother from Caxamalca to Parcama and Xauxa, on March 3, 1533, 

 passed over "a very steep mountain of snow, into which the horses 

 sank up to their bellies" (page 157) ; but mentioned no special com- 

 plaint. 



In 1534, Pedro de Alvarado with 500 men and 225 horses under- 

 took the conquest of Peru; disembarking at Cape San Francisco, he 



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