CHAP. XII. THE ESPWOSA GLACIER. 229 



Leaving Verity behind to continue buying two-pennyworths of 

 bread until he had accumulated a sackful^, I went up to the 

 camp, and was received with open arms, as one risen from the 

 dead. The ten men searched until they found my track, and 

 divining my intentions had given me up for lost. They passed 

 the night of the 31st of March in lamentations, for the White 

 Valley down which I had made my way, Sen or Espinosa told 

 them, was pathless, inaccessible, and full of wild beasts. He 

 said it was useless to attempt to follow, and the thing to do 

 was to return to the village, to organize a search for my bones. 

 Pumas, indeed, were rather numerous in this neighbourhood. A 

 young horse belonging to Sefior Espinosa had just been killed by 

 one, and an Indian we passed reported that he had noticed another 

 roving about. Yet we never saw any, although they prowled 

 around us at night, and left their footprints in the snow. 



The camp (14,762 feet) was established at the eastern end 

 of an upper prolongation of the Monk's Valley, and was com- 

 manded on the north by the precipitous cliffs along which I 

 had gone. On the east (that is to say, at the head of the 

 valley) there was a ridge descending a little to the west of south 

 from a secondary peak of Cayambe, and on the eastern side of 

 this there was a large glacier — invisible alike from our camp 

 and from the village — which my people had discovered during my 

 absence. This glacier was one of the finest we found in Ecuador, 

 having its birth in the snows at the upper part of the mountain, 

 and a length of several miles after it streamed away from the 

 central reservoir. The part nearest to the camp descended steeply, 

 in what is termed an ice-fall. There were no moraines nor even 

 stray rocks upon it, though there w*ere two small, lateral moraines 

 upon its western side, which shewed that rocks had risen above 

 the ice in former times, and that the glacier had been larger. 



Our course led alongside and partly over these moraines to 

 the top of the secondary peak of which I have already spoken, 

 that juts out from Cayambe like the Aiguille du Gouter on 



