THE FORESTS OF ALAUSI 235 
could not pass each other without endangering the 
life of one of them. Fortunately, our beasts were 
sure-footed and the road was dry ; in fact, from 
Ticsan, where we fairly began to descend the 
western slope of the Cordillera, we found we had 
got into the height of summer, having left mid- 
winter behind us at Ambato and Riobamba. The 
hill-sides were well covered with grass, but all 
completely withered up by nearly two months of 
dry weather ; so that, except near the streams, 
where there was a margin of scrub or low forest, 
the eye rested on nothing green. 
Alausi stands at about the same height as 
Ambato, but is subject to still more violent winds, 
so that even the crops of maize are rarely to be 
seen standing erect. As a town it bears no com- 
parison with Ambato either for size or neatness, 
and, like all the other pueblos of the canton (of 
which it is the chef -lieu), seems to have been for 
several years in a state of decadence : the houses 
begin to fall and are merely propped up, not 
repaired or rebuilt ; and yet there are all around 
valuable farms of wheat and maize. 
Throughout the Quitonian Andes a bit of solid 
rock is rarely seen, save where black, jagged masses 
of trachyte stand out in the higher peaks, which 
are all either active or dormant volcanoes ; and on 
a superficial view most of the hills seem to be made 
up of debris, either, as around Ambato, of calcined 
and triturated granite and schists, or, as in descend- 
ing from Alausi, of stones and rude blocks con- 
fusedly heaped together. But in one place we 
saw above us a low cliff of vertical strata, much 
cracked and bent, as if by some force applied to 
