CH. XIX IN THE ECUADOREAN ANDES 195 
intense kind. Its approach is indicated by the 
wind beginning to whistle shrilly in the distance 
among the dead grass-stalks. When he hears that 
ominous sound, the horseman takes a pull at his 
flask, draws his wraps close around him, and his 
hat down over his eyes ; and his horse too seems 
to nerve himself for the encounter of the withering 
blast — carries his head low, and throws forward 
his shaggy mane.^ It seems to be the first shock 
of the cold blast that kills. If a man can sustain 
it unscathed, he generally escapes with his life. 
Horses are much more rarely frozen to death than 
men. Indeed, the amount of cold and wet these 
mountain horses will bear is surprising ; but they 
are to the manner born, and have never known 
the luxury of sleeping under cover. 
The descent from the southern side of the 
paramo of Sanancajas is along a ravine, worn deep 
into the black turfy soil and subjacent volcanic 
alluvium by the rains and melting snows from 
Chimborazo. One of my two horses carried my 
trunks, and got along so slowly that night closed 
over us as we reached San Andres, a village nearly 
9 miles from Riobamba. We would fain have 
remained there for the night, but there had been a 
bull-fight that day in the plaza, and the houses were 
so thronged with noisy, drunken men, that we saw 
^ I have been reminded by this sound on the paramos of the Andes of our 
bleak Yorkshire moors and moor-pastures, where the wintry wind whistles 
through the " windlestraws " — the dead flower-stalks of Bent-grass and Dog's- 
tail grass {Agrostis canina and Cyiwsm^iis cristatus). In the Pyrenees, the 
strings of Eolus's harp are the slender stalks and rigid pungent leaves of 
Festuca Eskia—^h^ "Esquisse" of the shepherds — which grows on bleak 
mountain sides at great elevations. In the Andes the whistling grasses are 
chiefly Festuca Tolucensis and Stipa Javava, whose thread-like leaves and 
stalks are most apt for the wind to play upon. 
