THE ALTOS OP THE PUNA. 29 



particular antipathy to the white race, and it is rather a bold 

 undertaking- for the European traveller to approach the hut of 

 an Indian that is guarded by these animals. 



The frosts of winter and an eternal spring are nowhere found 

 in closer proximity than in the Peruvian highlands, for deep 

 valleys cleave the windy Puna ; and when the traveller, be- 

 numbed by the cold blasts of the mountain-plains, descends 

 into these sheltered gorges he almost suddenly finds himself 

 transported from a northern climate to a terrestrial paradise. 

 Situated at a height where the enervating power of the tro- 

 pical sun is not felt, and where at the same time the air is not 

 too rarefied, these pleasant mountain vales, protected by their 

 rocky walls against the gusts of the Puna, enjoy all the ad- 

 vantages of a genial sky. Here the astonished European sees 

 himself surrounded by the rich corn-fields, the green lucerne 

 meadows, and the well-known fruit trees of his distant home, 

 so that he might almost fancy that some friendly enchanter had 

 transported him to his native country, if the cactuses and 

 the agaves on the mountain-slopes by day, and the constella- 

 tions of another hemisphere by night, did not remind him of 

 the vast distance which separates him from the land of his birth. 



There are regions in this remarkable country where the tra- 

 veller may in the morning leave the snow-decked Puna hut, and 

 before sunset pluck pine-apples and bananas on the cultivated 

 margin of the primeval forest ; where in the morning the stunted 

 grasses and arid lichens of the naked plain remind him of the 

 arctic regions, and where he may repose at night under the fronds 

 of gigantic palms. 



