MINT AT QUINUA. 



Ill 



CHAPTER VI. 



Departure from Cerro Pasco — Mint at Quinua— San Rafael — Ambo— Quicacan — 

 Huanuco — Cerro de Carpis — Chinchao valley — Huallaga river. 



By cajoling, and threats of appeal to the military, (a small military 

 force is stationed here as a police,) we got our drunken vagabonds to 

 "load up" and set off by half-past 1 p. m. One of them gave us the 

 slip at the outskirts of the town. The other wished to look him up, 

 or at least to get the key of a tambo where two spare mules belonging 

 to them were locked up ; but we would not hear of it ; and driving the 

 loaded mules on, he was fain to follow. The deserter joined us at our 

 stopping-place for the night, but on finding the condition of things, he 

 had to return to the Cerro for his missing beasts. 



Almost immediately on leaving the Cerro, and ascending the hills 

 that encircled it on the north, we came in sight of the Eastern Andes, 

 which is here a Cordillera, for it has many abrupt and snow-clad peaks. 

 Close at hand, on the left, was a spot of marshy ground, which had 

 some interest for us, as we were not to quit the waters which we saw 

 trickling in tiny streams from it, until, swelled by many others, they 

 pour themselves into the Atlantic by a mouth one hundred and eighty 

 miles broad. This is the source of the Huallaga, one of the head tribu- 

 taries of the Amazon. 



Seven miles in a N. N. E. direction, and passing many haciendas for 

 the grinding of ore, brought us to the village of Quinua, where a mint 

 was established several years ago, but is now abandoned. The machinery 

 for coining is much better than any I have seen in South America. It 

 was made by a Boston man, named Hacket, who also made nearly all 

 the machinery for the sugar- mills near Huanuco. There are gold mines 

 in this neighborhood, but I think they are not worked. This village is 

 just at the point where, leaving the sterility of the Cerro, we fall in with 

 bushes and flowers. 



Four miles further we stopped for the night at a hacienda called 

 Chiquirin, which appears once to have been flourishing, but which is 

 now nearly abandoned, being only tenanted by an old man to take care 

 of the house. The bridge, which crossed the stream in front of the 

 house, had had arched gateways at each end ; and a respectable-looking 

 church occupied one side of the patio. A field or two of barley is all 

 the cultivation now about it. Indeed, there seemed little room for 



