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LAVA STREAM. 



in this place than we had been before. The people, I believe, took 

 us for peddlers, and the woman from whom we got our supper and 

 breakfast seemed offended because we would not sell her some candles, 

 and importuned Gibbon for the sale of his straw hat. The men wore 

 short woollen trousers, buttoned at the knee, together with, generally, 

 two pair of long woollen stockings. The woollen articles of clothing 

 are woven in this neighborhood, except the ponchos, which come from 

 Tarma. Printed cottons from Lima sell for eighteen and three-quarter 

 cents the vara, (33 inches;) a cup and saucer of the commonest ware 

 are held at thirty-seven and a half cents, but purchasers are few; sewing- 

 cotton, a dollar the pound. Shoes come from Jauxa; also candles and 

 potatoes. Fuel is the "taquia," or dried cattle manure. Gibbon and 

 I had occasion afterwards to laugh at our fastidiousness in objecting 

 to a mutton-chop broiled upon a coal of cow-dung. 



June 5. — We travelled down the valley about east. At about one 

 and a half mile we passed a very curious- looking place, where a small 

 stream came out of a valley to the northward and westward, and spread 

 itself over a flat table-rock, soft and calcareous. It poured over this 

 rock in a sort of horse-shoe cataract, and then spread over an appa- 

 rently convex surface of this same soft rock, about two hundred and 

 fifty yards wide, crossing the valley down which we were travelling. 

 This rock sounded hollow under the feet of the mules, and I feared we 

 should break through at every instant. I am confident it was but a 

 thin crust; and, indeed, after crossing it, we observed a clear stream of 

 water issuing from beneath it, and flowing into the road on the farther 

 side. We saw another such place a little lower down, only the stream 

 tumbled, in a variety of colored streaks, principally white, like salt, 

 over the metallic-looking rock, into the rivulet below. I presume there 

 must have been some volcano near here, and that this rock is lava, 

 for it had all the appearance of having once been liquid. 



The valley about two miles from Pachachaca is cut across by rocky 

 hills. Here we turned to the northward and eastward. The country at 

 first offered some pasturage, but became more barren as we advanced, 

 only showing, now and then, some patches of barley. We travelled till 

 noon on the left bank of the Yauli stream, when we crossed it by a 

 natural bridge, at a little village of a few huts, called Saco. At half- 

 past two, after a ride over a stony and dusty plain, bordered on each 

 side by rocky mountains, we arrived at the bridge of Oroya. This is a 

 chain suspension bridge, of about fifty yards in length, and two and a 

 half in breadth, flung over the river of Jauxa, w T hich is a tributary of 

 the Ucayali. The Yauli stream, into which emptied the stream from 



