32 



ENTERPRISE OF DON ULLOA. 



range of the Cordilleras de los Andes, as the 

 Spaniards call them, the upper is covered with 

 snow that never melts. Those who have as- 

 cended to the highest elevation, affirm that the sky 

 is always serene and bright, hut that the air is so 

 highly rarefied as often to render respiration difficult, 

 while far beneath thunders are heard to roll, and 

 the clouds that hover on the sides of the mountains, 

 hide the lower range, with its woods and valleys, its 

 deep solitudes, and sunny hills. 



The natural historian may be allowed to diverge 

 from his accustomed path, when in pursuit of 

 animals or plants, he visits countries renowned for 

 tales of other times. He may surely dwell on the 

 history of by-gone days, and, in speaking of the 

 Andes, it is interesting to associate with them 

 the names of Ulloa and his companions ; those 

 enterprising men, who were sent forth by Louis 

 XV. to measure a degree of the meridian, and who, 

 having passed the woody belt of the Cordilleras, 

 erected a solitary hut on the narrow summit of 

 Pichincha. That hut stood at an elevation of two 

 hundred yards above the highest part of the desert, 

 it was based on one of the loftiest crags of the 

 mountains, and was soon covered with snow and ice. 

 The ascent was extremely rugged, and only admitted 

 of being climbed on foot, during four hours of con- 

 tinual fatigue. 



Thus circumstanced, the astronomers generally 

 kept within the hut ; they were constrained to do 

 so by the severity of the weather, the violence 

 of the wind, and the dense fogs in which they 



