192 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. x,x 



de Sanancajas), which stretches along the eastern 

 base of the mountain for about 8 miles, and at a 

 height of 1 1,000 to 12,000 feet. Here the icy cope 

 of Chimborazo seemed so near that one might have 

 touched it by stretching out the hand an illusion 

 caused by the transparency of the atmosphere. 

 The temperature was pleasant, for the bright sun 

 tempered the cool breeze, and there was no sand. 

 But as I returned, a few weeks afterwards, I 

 crossed the paramo in a piercingly cold misty 

 rain, and when I reached Mocha I scarcely knew 

 whether I had any hands or feet. If you have 

 been up Teesdale as far as the Weel, you have 

 seen in that chilly treeless solitude something very 

 like the paramos of the Andes. The Weel itself 

 is not unlike the small lagoons scattered about in 

 hollows on Sanancajas. They are often to be 

 seen covered with small wild-ducks that no one 

 cares to disturb. Herds of shaggy wild cattle 

 roam over the paramo, and pick up a scanty sub- 

 sistence from the sedgy herbage. 



You may have read of the paramero - - the 

 deadly-cold wind, charged with frost, that some- 

 times blows over the paramos, and withers every 

 living thing it meets. A person has told me that 

 when a boy he was once crossing the highest point 

 of Sanancajas, towards Guayaquil, along with his 

 father, when they saw a man sitting by the wayside 

 and apparently grmning at them with all his might. 

 " See," said the boy, "how that man is laughing at 

 us!" "Silence, my son," replied the father, "or 

 say a prayer for the repose of his soul the man 

 is dead ! ' 



I have had to face a paramero, but never of this 



