296 PLATEAU OF CAXAMARCA. 



"We remained for five days in the town of the Inca Ata- 

 huallpa, which at that time scarcely reckoned seven or eight 

 thousand inhabitants. Our departure was delayed by the 

 number of mules which were required for the conveyance of 

 our collections, and by the necessity of making a careful 

 choice of the guides who were to conduct us across the 

 chain of the Andes to the entrance of the long but narrow 

 Peruvian sandy desert (Desierto de Sechura). The passage 

 over the Cordillera is from north-east to south-west. Imme- 

 diately after quitting the plain of Caxamarca, on ascending 

 a height of scarcely 9600 (10230 English) feet, the 

 traveller is struck with the sight of two grotesquely shaped 

 porphyritic summits, Aroma and Cunturcaga (a favourite 

 haunt of the powerful vulture which we commonly call 

 Condor; kacca in the Quichua language signifies "the 

 rock.") These summits consisted of five, six, or seven- 

 sided columns, 37 to 42 English feet high, and some of 

 them jointed. The Cerro Aroma is particularly picturesque. 

 By the distribution of its often converging series of columns 

 placed one above another, it resembles a two-storied build- 

 ing, which, moreover, is surmounted by a dome or cupola 

 of non-columnar rock. Such outbursts of porphyry and 

 trachyte are, as I have before remarked, characteristic of the 

 high crests of the Cordilleras, to which they impart a phy- 

 siognomy quite distinct from that presented by the Swiss 

 Alps, the Pyrenees, and the Siberian Altai. 



From Cunturcaga and Aroma we descended by a zig-zag 

 course a steep rocky declivity of 6400 English feet into 

 the deep cleft valley of the Magdalena, the bottom of which 



