398 The Andes and the Amazons. 



may revel among ammonites and brachiopods ; and on the 

 third day, as the road rises above the clouds to the tiptop 

 of Calla - calla,* every traveler must be entranced by the 

 magnificent panorama at his feet — a sea of mountains with 

 the still loftier coast-range in the background, hiding the 

 Pacific. In presence of such a view from the Andes one 

 is painfully sensible of the poverty of language. Words, 

 however grandiose, are too clumsy for description. One 

 can not help thinking, also, how "Nature, careless of mor- 

 tal admiration, lavishes with proud indifference her fair- 

 est charms where most unseen, her grandest forms where 

 most inaccessible." Here, too, is the place (though not 

 equal to the Quito valley) to test the statement of Charles 

 Kingsley, that in the tropics distance is apparently short- 

 ened by the intense clearness of the atmosphere ; the 

 mountains look lower and their summits nearer than they 

 really are. 



Descending from this frigid zone by a fearfully inclined 

 zigzag path along narrow ridges that looked like walls 

 rather than mountains, and where the traveler must call 

 home his wandering thoughts, and give his undivided at- 

 tention to his mule, 1 soon reached the other extreme — a 

 deep, narrow valley wedged in among the mountains, 

 through which the Maranon struggles to reach its nortliern 

 outlet. In making this descent, I passed over granite and 

 mica schist, the first metamorphic rocks west of the Hual- 

 laga, the other rocks both east and west being sedimenta- 

 ry. This point, therefore, is the geological " Heart of the 

 Andes." 



The Maranon is crossed on a raft at the miserable mud 

 village of Balsas, the temperature of which may be com- 



* Calla-calla is the highest point between Chachapoyas and Cajamarca, 

 and separates the Uteubamba from the Rio Tenas, which enters the Maranon 

 just below Balsas. 



