THE PLAINS. 



183 



at the time that he was a known bandit, whose fidelity 

 and safeguard the good cura had thus thought proper to 

 secure ; and we have since had them verified, and found 

 that this was really the case. 



The plains over which we now moved, were more 

 barren and inhospitable in their character than I can 

 describe. The surface, strewed with loose scoria and 

 rock, and brown as the sands of Arabia, produced not 

 a blade of grass ; but reflected the hot rays of the sun 

 with a glare which blistered and excoriated the face and 

 hands. And the fervid, glowing, furnacelike heat of the 

 sun I shall never forget ! There it hung in the heavens 

 like a blazing ball of copper, shedding its beams through 

 a yellow haze, which, at an early hour of the day, 

 spread a thin transparent veil over the vast plains and 

 their towering mountain boundary ; and as it rose to the 

 zenith, throwing our shadows under our feet, it scorched 

 the skin like fire. In vain the eye was cast abroad in 

 search of relief : every object far and near glared with the 

 reflected brilliance — not a tree, not a rock, not an over- 

 hanging bank in the shadowless and thirsty land ! The 

 yawning barranca, deep as it might be, formed but a 

 focus, where the sun's rays were concentrated. The 

 very hills in advance seemed to cast no shade. Opin- 

 ions as to our distance from them, were hazarded and 

 recanted again and again. They loomed in thin haze, 

 till they appeared near at hand, while their lowest swell 

 lay at the distance of many miles. And then the bar- 

 rancas ! Though our previous travelling in this singular 

 country had prepared us for this feature of the plains as 

 well as of the mountain slopes, we had nowhere seen 

 them upon the same scale. One of those we traversed 

 this morning, of which no indication had been observed 

 till we arrived at the very brink, took us an entire hour 

 to traverse. Though water has undoubtedly been an 

 agent in their formation, the origin of the greater number 

 of those tremendous furrows in the surface of the table 

 land is to be traced to the earthquake, and the sudden 

 disruption of the strata by volcanic agency. You see 

 many, in which the two sides, though furlongs apart, 



