96 The Andes and the Amazon. 



The sickness felt by some travelers at great elevations 

 — violent headache and disposition to vomit — is called veta • 

 and the difficulty of breathing from the rarity of the air is 

 termed ^wwa. Gerard complained of severe headache and 

 depression of spirits at the height of 15,000 feet on the 

 Himalayas ; Dr. Barry, in ascending Mont Blanc (15,700 

 feet), speaks of great thirst, great dryness and constriction 

 of skin, loss of appetite, difficult bi'eathing, tendency to 

 syncope, and utter indifference. Baron Miiller, in his as- 

 cent of Orizava (17,800 feet), found great difficulty in 

 breathing, and experienced the sensation of a red-hot iron 

 searing his lungs, and agonizing pains in the chest, fol- 

 lowed by fainting-fits and torrents of blood from his 

 mouth; Humboldt, in scaling Chimborazo, suffjsred from 

 nausea akin to sea-sickness, and a flow of blood fi'om the 

 nose and lips ; while Herndon, on the slope of Puy-puy 

 (15,700 feet), said he thought his heart would break from 

 his breast with its violent agitation. Though ascending 

 the Andes to the height of 16,000 feet, and running up 

 the last few rods, we experienced nothing of this except a 

 temporary difficulty in respiration. We were exhilarated 

 rather than depressed. The experience of Darwin on the 

 Portillo ridge (14,000 feet) was only "a slight tightness 

 across the head and chest." " There was some imagina- 

 tion even in this (he adds) ; for, upon finding fossil shells 

 on the highest ridge, I entirely forgot the puna in my de- 

 light." De Saussure says truly : " The strength is repaired 

 as speedily as it has been exhausted. Merely a cessation 

 of movement for three or four minutes, without even seat- 

 ing one's self, seems to restore the strength so perfectly 

 that, on resuming progress, one feels able to climb at a sin- 

 gle stretch to the very peak of the mountain." 



in 101° for the blood, air 78°. The lieutenant jocosely adds: "The Span- 

 iards have forced the hog so high up on the Andes that he suffers every time 

 he raises his bristles, and dies out of place." — Puna has been attributed to 

 the presence of .nrsenical vnpnv. 



