Mountain Journeys 37 



I now come to the important journey of d'Orbigny 33 and the in- 

 teresting description he gives of mountain sickness. 



In his first journey, he is going from Arica to La Paz: 



May 21, 1830, I reached the point where the ravine of Palca joins 

 another dry ravine. . . . There I left vegetation and humidity. . . . 



Soon I began to mount the side of Cachun, and on its summit I 

 felt at the same time as the first effects of the rarefaction of the air a 

 very keen cold, due to the elevation. (Vol. II, p. 377.) . . . 



The slope became still steeper. ... I felt more and more the severe 

 effects of the rarefaction of the air, a very violent headache and a great 

 difficulty in breathing; my arrieros, their mules, and even my dog, my 

 faithful Cachirulo, were forced to stop every twenty or thirty meters, 

 tormented like me by the soroche. . . . 



Whenever one feels the illness due to the rarefaction of the air, 

 the natives say that he has the soroche. They fail to recognize the real 

 cause, the great elevation above sea level, and attribute it to mineral 

 emanations from antimony, called in Spanish soroche. It is this suf- 

 fering, this difficulty in breathing in the very lofty parts of the Cordil- 

 leras that has given them the name of puna brava. Some travellers use 

 for the Peruvian Cordilleras the word Paramo,, not used in the coun- 

 try, and which does not take the place of the word Puna, meaning a 

 lofty plateau, dry and deprived of trees. 



After many fatigues, we reached the top of the last slope; I was 

 at last on the crest of the Cordillera. (P. 378.) . . . Ever since my 

 arrival at the summit of the Cordillera, I had been suffering terribly 

 irom the rarefaction of the air. I felt frightful pains in my temples; 

 I had nausea like that produced by seasickness, I breathed with dif- 

 ficulty. At the least movement, I felt violent palpitations and general 

 discomfort, added to an exhaustion which all my efforts failed to over- 

 come. I had very strong proof of what habit can do. While I was suf- 

 fering thus, I saw two natives, sent as couriers, nimbly and easily 

 climbing on foot places incomparably higher than those in which I was 

 in order to shorten their journey. . . . Yet they were at an elevation 

 equal to that of Mont Blanc. In the evening I had a severe hemor- 

 rhage from the nose which relieved me a little; yet I passed a night 

 which was all the more terrible because I was without shelter, ex- 

 posed to a keen and cutting cold which froze all the water in the 

 neighborhood. (P. 380.) . . . 



May 23. I still felt the effects of the rarefaction of the air; head- 

 ache and palpitation of the heart did not leave me a moment of repose. 

 . . . My muleteers told me that a few months before a Spaniard who 

 was taking the same route as they was so much affected by the rare- 

 faction of the air that the very first day he experienced very alarming 

 symptoms, and being unable to continue, he died the following night, 

 without being able to get the least relief. They mentioned many other 

 instances in which the travellers whom they accompanied had suffered 

 atrociously from what they call the soroche. (P. 387.) . . . 



May 24. As I descended I breathed more easily, and I hoped that 

 before the day ended at least a part of the discomfort I felt from the 

 rarefaction of the air would cease. (P. 390.) 



