414 The Andes and the Amazons. 



pumice and saline incrustations; and the dull and dusty, 

 naked and calcined surface has a cold, forbidding look, in 

 spite of the flood of light from a meridian sun. " The 

 purity of the air" (in the words of a French traveler), 

 " the intensity of the light, the unalterable blue of the sky, 

 bring out in sharp relief all the details of the weird scen- 

 ery, and, leaving none of its features in shadow, impress 

 the beholder with a sense of blinding immensity, of melan- 

 choly splendor, and implacable repose." Nothing breaks 

 the monotony but now and then a mirage, here and there 

 a sand-dune, and the roughest kind of metamorphic hills 



in the distance, covered with a sheet of white volcanic 

 dust ; for the surface of this sea of sand is really as rest- 

 less as the ocean — always on the move. The dunes are 

 from fifteen to thirty feet high, and lunar-shaped, with the 

 convex side always toward the sea, and slowly travel, drift- 

 ing before the wind. They can be originated artificially 

 by planting a stake, or any fixed object, for a nucleus. 



There is scarcely a trace of vegetation, save here and 

 there an ashy, gaunt-looking cactus ; yet around the leaky 

 railway water-tanks the grass grows luxuriantly. Such is 

 the excessive dryness of the pampa, there is a loss of one 

 hundred pounds weight in taking a train of lumber from the 

 sea to Arequipa. On the other hand, wool must increase 

 in weight before it reaches Liverpool. Before the railway, 

 trade and travel were accomplished by beasts, and the 

 journey across the Desert (sixty miles) was usually made 

 in the night, for as soon as the sun is up every facet on 



