Mr Cruckshanks's Excursion from Lima to Pasco. 121 



had scarcely arrived when we were both seized with violent 

 vomiting, accompanied by all the sensations that usually attend 

 sea-sickness, but the throbbing pain of the head was much more 

 acute and depressing. 



" It is generally said that difficulty of breathing is one of the 

 most common and distressing symptoms of this disorder, but it 

 is not the case. Few people suffer in their respiration, although 

 the pulse is frequently accelerated, while they are riding or 

 walking on a level road ; it is only in walking over rough 

 ground, or in climbing the mountains, that respiration is affect- 

 ed, and it then becomes necessary to halt repeatedly and take 

 breath. The miners work as hard, and perform the same quan- 

 tum of labour at Tasco, fourteen thousand feet above the level 

 of the sea, as those at a sixth -part of the elevation ; and indeed 

 the English mechanics there, unless very laboriously employed, 

 performed their work without suffering any inconvenience from 

 this cause. Several of our party, who had frequently been at 

 Pasco, and resided there a considerable time, were not affected ; 



and, indeed, the only one who was attacked besides Mr M 



and myself, recovered almost immediately. In this, too, the 

 puna resembles sea-sickness, that different individuals, under 

 precisely similar circumstances, are affected in a very different de- 

 gree, and many do not suffer at all. It is, however, worthy of 

 remark, that the same persons are not equally affected by the 

 two disorders. My friend and I, some years before, had made 

 a voyage of four months together, and he only suffered for a few 

 hours from sea-sickness, while I was never wholly free from it 

 during the voyage ; but, in the present instance, he suffered more 

 severely than I did. Persons of full habit, affected with the 

 puna, frequently spit blood. Some months before we passed, an 

 Englishman, who had been employed at the mines, set out to 

 walk to the coast ; he had previously been in bad health, and 

 shortly after his arrival at Casa-cancha he died, from ha-mor- 

 rhage, having burst a blood-vessel in the lungs. 



The valley of Casa-cancha is about half a mile wide, abruptly 

 terminated by the limestone hills we had passed over, and bound- 

 ed at the side by red sandstone and conglomerate. We were 

 lodged at a miserable hut, built of stones and mud. The an- 

 gle apartment, of which it consisted, served us successively for 



