124 Mr Cruckshanks's Excursion from Lima to Pasco. 



by a craggy and precipitous wall of the trachyte rocks. Half 

 a league below the town, we passed some hot springs : the water 

 leaves a calcareous deposit, which is gradually encroaching upon 

 one side of the valley. 



" At the lower extremity of the valley, the trachyte is divid- 

 ed into columns, coated with blackish lichen, that from a dis- 

 tance gives them the appearance of basalt. The masses have 

 been very differently acted upon by the weather, some parts dis- 

 integrating more readily than others. Many columns stand 

 alone ; they are obliquely divided by transverse fissures, and the 

 different joints have been unequally worn, so that a slender shaft 

 sometimes supports an immense mass on its summit, and the 

 whole has the appearance of architectural ruins, interspersed 

 with grotesque colossal figures. 



" On emerging from the valley, we found ourselves at last on 

 the plains of Bourbon, which extend fifteen or twenty leagues 

 from north to south, presenting a surface of green sward as 

 level as a bowling-green. We had now only to travel six leagues 

 to the mines, situated among the hills on the opposite side of 

 the plain. At the distance of two leagues, we passed a low 

 belt of limestone, and we crossed three small rivers on our way. 

 When we looked at the vast meadow over which we were tra- 

 velling, bounded by gently swelling hills that shut out the view 

 of the distant snowy peaks, we could hardly persuade ourselves 

 that we were fourteen thousand feet above the level of the sea. 



" Having reached the further side of the plain, and crossed 

 a range of limestone rocks, we came abruptly upon the town 

 and mines of the Cerro de Pasco, which occupy one side of an 

 open space, about half a league across, and nearly surrounded 

 by rugged hills. The satisfaction we felt at having arrived at 

 the end of our journey was increased upon entering a house fit- 

 ted up by the Pasco Peruvian Company, and finding ourselves 

 in a comfortable apartment, with boarded floor and glass win- 

 dows, and a coal fire blazing in an English grate. Mr M— — 

 was the only one who continued to suffer from the puna after 

 our arrival ; he was seriously ill for some days, and confined to 

 his room upwards of a week. 



" This celebrated spot, from which so much wealth has is- 

 sued, has a wretched appearance ; the town consists of narrow 



