16^ PASSAGE ACROSS 



and desolate beyond description; and the mules, 

 now unsaddled, were standing in the attitudes in 

 which they had been unladen — their heads were nod- 

 ding, or drooping, and they were putting up their 

 backs and going to sleep, which was the only com- 

 fort they could enjoy, for there was literally nothing 

 for them to eat. 



The snow was all around us, and the features of 

 the scene so large, that one could not but reflect on 

 the situation of the many travellers, who, in these 

 parts of the Andes, have been overtaken by the 

 storm, and have perished. 



The capataz told me that these temporales'** 

 are so violent that no animal can live in them ; that 

 there is no warning, but that all of a sudden the 

 snow is seen coming over the tops of the mountains 

 in a hurricane of wind ; that hundreds of people 

 have been lost in these storms ; that several had 

 been starved in the house before us ; and that only 

 two years ago, the winter, by suddenly setting in, as it 

 generally does, had shut up the Cordillera, and had 

 driven ten poor travellers to this hut. When the 

 violence of the first storms had subsided, the cou- 

 rier came to the spot, and found six of the ten 



