PROM SANTIAGO TO MENDOZA BY THE USPALLATA PASS. 



11 



While we were adjusting the girths of our saddles, the two burden-mules went ahead, and met 

 a train descending in this tunnel. To pass each other was impossible, and we were all alarmed 

 lest they should be knocked over the precipice. They succeeded in turning, however, by bring- 

 ing all four feet close together and poising themselves beautifully on the brink of the road, and 

 then came trotting back, apparently as much relieved as we certainly were. 



Valley of the Tupungato. 



I do not think I was ever rnore provoked by the want of knowledge on the part of the arrieros 

 as regarded distances, than I was this day. At the time of starting from the Casucha de los 

 Puquios, I was informed that we would go but a short distance and take our meal at the river 

 Pichiuta. My habit was to provide myself, before setting out, with crackers to nibble on the 

 way; but this morning, in consideration of the short distance, I had neglected it. By n(5on I 

 was quite hungry, and, on inquiry, I was told that we were near the Pichiuta, whose locality 

 the arriero indicated by sticking out his chin and saying: "Un poco mas alia, al otro lado de 

 aquella lomita" — a little farther on, on the other side of that hill. As the hill was near, I 

 resisted the gnawing of my stomach for a while; but lost patience after passing not one, but a 

 dozen lomitas, and asked the peon to point out the exact place where we were to stop. He 

 showed me a hill some ten miles off, and said the Pichiuta was just this side of it. As it was 

 now four o'clock in the afternoon — more than twenty-four hours since our last meal — I ordered a 

 halt ; and we got a pot of charqui soup, made from the muddy and disagreeable water of the 

 Mendoza. 



Two hundred yards farther on we arrived at the Pichiuta, a fine stream of clear and excellent 



