IQ2 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. XIX 
de Sanancajas), which stretches along the eastern 
base of the mountain for about 8 miles, and at a 
height of ii,ooo to 12,000 feet. Here the icy cope 
of Chimborazo seemed so near that one might have 
touched it by stretching out the hand — an illusion 
caused by the transparency of the atmosphere. 
The temperature was pleasant, for the bright sun 
tempered the cool breeze, and there was no sand. 
But as I returned, a few weeks afterwards, I 
crossed the paramo in a piercingly cold misty 
rain, and when I reached Mocha I scarcely knew 
whether I had any hands or feet. If you have 
been up Teesdale as far as the Weel, you have 
seen in that chilly treeless solitude something very 
like the paramos of the Andes. The Weel itself 
is not unlike the small lagoons scattered about in 
hollows on Sanancajas. They are often to be 
seen covered with small wild- ducks that no one 
cares to disturb. Herds of shaggy wild cattle 
roam over the paramo, and pick up a scanty sub- 
sistence from the sedgy herbage. 
You may have read of the paramero — the 
deadly-cold wind, charged with frost, that some- 
times blows over the paramos, and withers every 
living thing it meets. A person has told me that 
when a boy he was once crossing the highest point 
of Sanancajas, towards Guayaquil, along with his 
father, when they saw a man sitting by the wayside 
and apparently grinning at them with all his might. 
" See," said the boy, ''how that man is laughing at 
us!" "Silence, my son," replied the father, "or 
say a prayer for the repose of his soul — the man 
is dead ! " 
I have had to face a paramero, but never of this 
