326 TRAVELS IN 
On the banks of the river, near the place where we crossed 
it, were several very excellent farms. Rice was here pro- 
duced of a large heavy grain, and white as snow. The mul- 
titude of birds attracted by it was said to require a number of 
people to guard it from them. The small Loxia Astrild is 
particularly troublesome. The immense flocks of this species 
of Grossbeak may in some degree be conceived, from the cir- 
cumstance of three-and-sixty having been shot at one dis- 
charge of a small fowling-piece. 
On the twenty-first I attempted, with sixteen fresh oxen in 
the waggon, to cross the great chain of mountains ; which was 
effected in about eight hours. The passage had not been 
made at this place for a length of time by any waggon, yet as 
the usual circuitous road would have occasioned the loss of a 
whole day, I considered it as an object worth the trial. 
This part of the chain of mountains was exceedingly grand 
and lofty, and the road serpentizing through the narrow passes 
whose massy sides rose into lofty pinnacles, was dreadfully steep 
and rugged. On approaching the summit, the same kind of 
pyramidal remains made their appearance, in the midst of a 
surface of sand and fragments of rock. These peaks were, some 
of them, a thousand feet high, and of such vast bulk, that 
each might be considered as a separate mountain. They 
form the very highest ridge of the great chain, but the extent 
of the summit which I had to cross might be considered at 
least five miles in width. The grotesque manner in which the 
resisting fragments grew out of this surface, or rollina: from 
the upper ridges, had tumbled on each other, formino- natural 
