102 
strong daily winds, that the mule paths are obliterated almost 
as soon as made, and the traveller finds his way by the tall 
stakes that have been planted, and the skeletons of animals 
that have died on the road from heat and thirst.” Passing 
through the town of Piura, where they rested for a day and 
obtained important local information, they followed the dry 
beds of the so-called rivers, pitching their tent nightly. 
Water for the party, none of the best, was carried by the 
muleteers in calabashes. On the second day the guide lost his 
way, and it was not until noon of the fourth day from Piura, 
the fifth of their travel, that they reached the little town 
of Olmos, in just 6° South latitude, which had been chosen 
for the place of observation. But the journey had been too 
exhausting, and long before his arrival Gilliss was suffering 
from an intense fever. Here his energy and determination 
made themselves strikingly manifest. The fever assuming 
an intermittent type, he availed himself of its intervals to 
select a site for his tent, about One mile from the town, to 
obtain time for his chronometers and observations for lati- 
tude, and, while lying prostrate on the ground, he instructed 
his companion as to each part of the telescope, until it was 
properly mounted, for on the next morning the eclipse was 
to take place. Happily the fever had abated when morning 
came, and the eclipse was satisfactorily observed, with all 
the magnificent phenomena of a total obscuration, which 
lasted for more than a minute. Descending to the town 
early next day, they reached Payta on the sixth day there- 
after. The results of the observations of Messrs. Gilliss, 
Raymond, and the French officers, are published in the 
Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge. 
_ The tedious, exhausting, and even hazardous journey 
across the Peruvian desert had been undertaken in spite of 
e — point on the sea-coast called Lambayeque was 
