122 Mr Cruckshanks"s Excursion from Lima to Pasco. 



a kitchen, dining-room, and bed-room ; the dinner was cooked 

 over a turf fire, the smoke from which eddied round the roof, 

 and then partially escaped by the door-way, which was only 

 about four feet high. 



" At daybreak, on the 28th, when we raised the piece of sooty 

 cloth that served for a door to our dwelling, the whole valley 

 was so thickly covered with hoar-frost, that it appeared as if 

 snow had fallen in the night. We were delayed more than two 

 hours from some of our mules having strayed to the hills. As 

 the beasts are suffered to wander about at night in search of pas- 

 ture, an Indian is generally to be found where travellers halt, 

 who, for a trifling reward, undertakes to keep them together : 

 he passes the night in the open air, frequently in the midst of 

 frost and snow, and is seldom known to sleep, or neglect his 

 charge. In this instance, a dense mist had filled the valley, and 

 no blame could attach to the watchman ; but from the abuse 

 that was lavished upon him, one would have thought that he 

 had been taken in the act of stealing all our mules, instead of 

 merely not having seen one or two of them through the mist on 

 a dark night. 



" Mr M continued very ill, and although I felt tolerably 



well when I rose, we had not travelled half a league when the 

 headach returned with increased violence, and it was greatly 

 aggravated by the motion of the mule. Some of our companions, 

 too, were similarly affected in the course of this day's ride. 



" The valley, and even the slopes of the hills, were so swampy, 

 that we travelled very slowly for about a league and a half, when 

 we left the valley, and crossed over some high land that brought 

 us to the small river of Palcamayo, three leagues from Casa- 

 cancha. From Palcamayo, we passed over a succession of low 

 hills, covered with short grass ; the intervening hollows were 

 very swampy, and we were frequently obliged to make a long 

 circuit to avoid them. The whole of the district through which 

 we were travelling, including the plain of Bourbon, whither we 

 were bound, and the country for many leagues to the north and 

 south, may be considered as forming an immense basin between 

 two distant Cordilleras ; and from the quantity of rain and snow 

 that falls in winter, and the thawing of the latter on the sum- 

 mits of the hills and sides of the mountains during summer, the 



