PLATEAU OF CAXAMARCA. 425 



driven in every direction, presents also natural openings in the mass 

 of the silicious rock, through which the intensely dark blue sky of 

 these elevated regions is visible to a spectator standing at the foot of 

 the mountain. These openings are popularly called " windows," "las 

 ventanillas de Gualgayoc." Similar "windows" were pointed out 

 to us in the trachytic walls of the volcano of Picliincha, and called 

 by a similar name " ventanillas de Pichincha." The strangeness 

 of the view presented to us was still farther increased by the nume- 

 rous small sheds and dwelling-houses which nestled on the side of the 

 fortress-like mountain wherever a flat surface admitted their erection. 

 The miners carry down the ore in baskets, by very steep and dan- 

 gerous paths, to the places where the process of amalgamation is 

 performed. 



The value of the silver furnished by the mines in the first thirty 

 years (from 1771 to 1802) amounted probably to considerably above 

 thirty-two millions of piastres. Notwithstanding the hardness of 

 the quartzose rock, the Peruvians, before the arrival of the Spaniards 

 (as ancient galleries and excavations testify), extracted rich argenti- 

 ferous galena on the Cerro de la Lin and on the Chupiquiyacu, and 

 gold in Curumayo (where native sulphur is also found in the quartz 

 rock as well as in the Brazilian Itacolumite). We inhabited near 

 the mines the small mountain town of Micuipampa, which is 11,140 

 (11,873 English) feet above the level of the sea, and where, though 

 only 6 43' from the Equator, water freezes in the house nightly 

 throughout a large portion of the year. In this desert, devoid of 

 vegetation, live three or four thousand persons, who are obliged to 

 have all their means of subsistence brought from the warm valleys, 

 as they themselves only rear some kinds of kale and excellent salad. 

 In this wilderness, as in every town in the high mountains of Peru, 

 ennui leads the richer class of persons, who are not on that account 

 more cultivated or more civilized, to pass their time in deep gam- 

 bling: thus wealth quickly won is still more quickly dissipated. 

 There is milch that reminds one of the soldier of Pizarro's troop, 

 who, after the pillage of the temple at Cuzco, complained that he 

 had lost in one night at play "a great piece of the sun" (a gold 

 plate). I observed the thermometer at Micuipampa at 8 in the 

 morning 1, and at noon 7 Reaumur X->4. 2 and 47. 8 



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