Peotographical Suction Proceedinos. 1089 



tlie stock of vendors of glass, and stripped the market of black and 

 yellow muslin for a tent, etc., etc., 



The bills of his photographer were portentious, and the articles of 

 whit3h they related made nearly three full mule-loads. And all this 

 was to be carried up and over the Cordilleras, 18,000 feet above the 

 sea, where barley straw costs sixteen cents a pound, and a wretched 

 drench, called chu^e, more than a dinner at Delmonico's. It was a 

 wonderful and fearful agglomeration, that photographic outfit, with 

 gold at 280 in New York, and only to be had on sight drafts. 



Whether it was from spiritualism, or native rum, or something else, 

 lie could not undertake to say ; but one bitter night, under the keen 

 stars that shone out weirdly from an ebon sky, and with nobody except 

 some rude but kindly Indians to assist him, he tried vainly to compose 

 the mental hallucinations of his photographer and companion, who 

 died before morning, murmuring something in the Gaelic tongue, in 

 which the endearing term of " mamma," common to all languages, 

 and sacred in all, was alone intelligible, and the last on his thin, blue 

 lips, the pass-word to a better world,! 



"I found myself next day," continued Mr. Squier, "not only alone 

 in the great American Thibet, but incumbered with bulky apparatus, 

 and a large amount of material. To utilize them, I found no instruc- 

 tion except such as is contained in !that lively and lucid book, ' Hard- 

 wick's Manual of Photographic Chemistry,' including (and here is 

 where the laugh comes in) the ' Practice of the Collodion Process.' 

 If you discover any silver streaks in my beard, or other evidence of 

 premature old age, you will now know to what to ascribe them. The 

 last syllable of Mr. HardwicFs name is a pleonasm. Now, I do not 

 doubt that ' HJ + NO* -= HO + J + NO3' is an exact formula, but 

 it is not altogether a pleasing one to encounter, when one is all alone 

 among the Andes, with three mule-loads of bottles and other things, 

 which he must try to utilize, or surrender the object of all his labor 

 and outlay. 



" How I made baths and collodion in low-thatched, Indian huts, 

 staining my fingers and spoiling my clothes ; how my ether went off" 

 with a bang, on the shallow pretext of being too closely approached 

 by the dimmest of aU dim tallow dips ; how my arriera nearly died 

 from taking a surreptitious swig of Atwood's 95 per cent alchohol, 

 and afterward nearly murdered me by bringing glacial acetic aicid 

 when I asl^ed for vinegar ; how — but gentlemen, if you want to know 

 liow, forget all you ever knew about photography, and go up Among. 



[LreT.] 69 



