CHAP. ir. A LIVELY DESCENT. 31 



impossible to obtain precise information about tlie route which he 

 had followed to get there.'" They set out at 7 a.m. on Dec. 16, 

 for the Arenal/ and by 9 o'clock had got to a height of 4335 

 metres (14,223 feet), and stopped for breakfast. At 10.45 a.m., 

 they left their mules at a height of 4945 metres (16,224 feet), that 

 is to say, they had got them 2000 feet upwards in an hour and 

 three-quarters, including the time occupied by breakfast and 

 reading the barometer. At 12.45 they were at a height of 5680 

 metres (18,636 feet), or had monnted 2412 feet more in two hours,, 

 including the stoppages necessary for further observations of the 

 barometer and the formation of a geological collection, notwitli- 

 standing that they had to pause every six or eight steps to get 

 breath. Here they halted for rest, and again read the barometer, 

 yet at 1.45 p.m. they had reached a height of 6004 metres 

 (19,698 feet), although npon this section they ^'were obliged to 

 stop every two or three steps"" to get breath, and even to sit 

 down. They commenced to descend about 3 p.m., and at 4.45 

 arrived again at the height of 4335 metres (14,223 feet), that 

 is to say, descended 5475 feet in an hour and three-quarters. 

 Boussingault says the descent was wearisome (penible). It seems, 

 however, to have been rather lively. His average rate through- 

 out the whole of the descent was 52 ieet per minute, over slopes 

 on which a thin coating of snow lay over ice, where step-cutting 

 was necessary; over a ' mauvais pas," and a ^ nappe de glace," 

 where ^a slip would have been fatal"; and talus, ''quite im- 



1 Boussingault, like Humboldt, gives neither courses nor bearings. He appears 

 to have followed the ordinary track round the mountain, and must have arrived 

 at the Arenal by passing through the place called Tortorillas. The speed with 

 which he now travels is remarkable, and is very much faster than the rates 

 quoted for his first attempt. 



He evidently intended to follow the route taken by Humboldt ; and presum- 

 ably he did so, as nothing subsequently is said to the contrary. I endeavoured 

 in 1879 to learn more particulars from M. Boussingault about the route he fol- 

 lowed. He informed me that he could not at that distance of time (forty-eight 

 years) remember anything more than he had published. Boussingault died in 

 1887, aged 83. 



