HOME OF THE GUANACO. 49 



We turn from this inhospitable strait to a region if 

 possible even more forbidding, more stern, more grandly 

 awful ; one of the passes of the mighty Andes, the Cor- 

 dilleras of Peru. 



" We now came," says a traveller, " to the Jaula, or 

 Cage, from which the pass takes its name, where we took 

 up our quarters for the night, under the lee of a solid 

 mass of granite upwards of thirty feet square, with the 

 clear, beautiful heavens for our canopy. Well may this 

 place be called a cage. To give a just idea of it would be 

 next to impossible, for I do not think a more wild or 

 grander scene in nature could possibly exist ; neverthe- 

 less I shall attempt a description. The foaming river, 

 branching off into different channels formed by huge 

 masses of granite lying in its course, ran between two 

 gigantic mountains of about one thousand five hundred 

 feet high, and not more than two hundred yards distant 

 from each other ; so that to look up at the summits of 

 either, we had to lay our heads completely back on our 

 shoulders. Behind us, these tremendous mountains met 

 in a point, round which we had just passed, but now 

 appeared as one mountain, closing our view in a distance 

 of not more than four or five hundred yards ; before was 

 the mighty Cordillera, a mass of snow, appearing to block 

 up further progress. Thus were we completely shut up 

 in a den of mighty mountains; to look up either way 

 before, behind, right, or left excited astonishment, awe, 

 and admiration. Huge masses of granite, that had fallen 

 from the awful heights above, lay scattered about, and 



