DEAD MULES. 



89 



should never have been able to have got him 

 through it; (it must be observed, had I dis- 

 mounted^ the animal would have stood still.) 

 Many carcases of these poor drudging animals 

 strewed our path^ just where they had died on 

 the journey ; audit was surprising to see in what 

 a state of preservation they appeared ; the rarified 

 atmosphere^ I suppose^ having that effect upon 

 them. Some seemed as if they had only died the 

 previous day. On examining them^ the skin was^ 

 as it were^ baked, but adhered to the bones, leav- 

 ing a mere skeleton covered with skin, so that 

 I could with ease lift up any one of them in my 

 arms, being so very light. This appearance of 

 dead bodies is likewise applicable to many parts 

 of the Pampas, and also Peru. Wafer^ an En- 

 glish surgeon, says, he and some others landed 



at Vermejo in Peru, in 1687, and marched 

 about four miles up a sandy bay — " all which,^^ 

 he says, we found covered with the bodies of 

 men, women, and children, which lay so thick 

 that a man might, if he would, have walked half 



