ASCENDING THE ANDES. 



491 



Superb bananas, with glossy leaves eight feet long, slender bamboos, and lofty palms 

 overarch the way. Soon we begin to climb the mountain sides. The path — the 

 present royal road to Quito — grows steeper, running sometimes through a gully so 

 narrow that the traveler must throw up his legs to save them from being crushed. 

 Before night we have reached an altitude where the air is sensibly cold. We stop 

 near a rude hut ; but there is room for only a part of us within ; the others sleep out- 

 side on the ground, upon beds which we have brought with us. But we have reached 

 a comparatively passable road. 



As the sun goes down we have a view which amply repays us for our weary travel. 

 We are on the summit of a sierra 8,000 feet high. Still above us is a wild chaos of 

 mountains, their sides broken into ravines. Looking westward, the mountains tumble 

 down to verdurous hills, which in the distance melt into plains, dipping into the great 

 Pacific. Upward rise the lofty peaks, over all of which towers Chimborazo, its pure 

 white dome piercing the unclouded azure. The road now slopes gently down the side 

 of the Sierra, climbs again still higher, and brings us at evening to the sleepy little 

 town of Guaranda. The people seem to have nothing to do but to eat potato soup, 

 and keep themselves warm by wrapping themselves in their ponchos and basking in 

 the sun. The place is of note in one respect, for it is the capital of the region which 

 produces the chinchona, whence comes quinine. The trees grow at elevations of from 

 2,000 to 9,000 feet, the richest species occupying moist situations in the highest alti- 

 tudes. Close by we are shown the spot where Church painted one of the views for 

 his magnificent composition, *' The Heart of the Andes." 



Still ascending, we find ourselves in a wilderness of crags and treeless mountains, 

 clothed with long, coarse grass. The summit of the pass, known as the arenal, is a 

 sandy plain of a league in length, at an elevation of more than 14,000 feet. In the 

 afternoon it is swept by cold winds, and often by violent snow-storms. It is said that 

 some of the Spanish soldiers were frozen to death here. Then again we begin to 

 descend along a gray, barren waste. Not a tree or a human habitation is in sight. 

 Icy rivulets and mule-trains are the only moving objects. We pass the night in a 

 dirty, mud hovel, the halting-place for all the caravans between the capital and its sea- 

 port. For food we have the invariable potato soup, to which have been added cheese 

 and eggs. It is well that the potatoes are small, for water boils at this altitude before 

 it is fairly hot. Descending in all 6,000 feet from the summit of the pass, we come 

 to Ambato, a town of 15,000 inhabitants, beautifully situated in a deep ravine. It 

 has also an inn — the first since leaving Guayaquil. Once more upward, through vast 

 deposits of rocks and pumice dust, thrown out by the volcano of Cotopaxi, and we 

 gain the last summit which we are to surmount. Fifteen hundred feet below us, and 

 seemingly at our very feet, lies Quito, nestled in its lovely valley, sentinelled on each 

 side by the lofty peaks of Pichincha and Antisana, while behind us tower Chimborazo 

 and Tunguragua. Pichincha, the lowest of these four peaks, is 7,000 feet above the 

 plain; Chimborazo, the highest, is 12,000; and it is almost 10,000 feet more before 

 the level of the sea is reached. 



The climate of the valley of Quito is the most absolutely perfect of any on earth. 

 The thermometer never rises above 70° or sinks below 45^; its mean is 60^, the 

 temperature of a mild spring day in New York. There is no cold winter and no hot 

 summer; it is always spring and autumn; but each day furnishes a change just 



