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Show PLATEAU O.F CAXAMARCA. 425 driven in every direction, presents also natuJ:al openings in the mass of the silicious rock, through which the intensely dark blue sky of these elevated regions is visible to a spectator standing at the foot of the mountain. These openings are popularly called H windows," "las ventanillas de Gualgayoc." Similar "windows" were pointed out to us in the trachytic walls of the volcano of Pichincha, and called by a similar name--" ventanillas de Pichincha." The strangeness of the view presented to us was still farther increased by the numerous small sheds and dwelling-houses which nestled on the side of the fortress-like mountain wherever a flat surface admitted their erection. The miners carry down the ore in baskets, by very steep and dangerous paths, to the places where the process of amalgamation is performed. The value of the silver furnished by the mines in the first thirty years (from 1771 to 1802) amounted probably to considerably above thirty-two millions of piastres. Notwithstanding the hardness of the quartzose rock, the Peruvians, before the arrival of the Spaniards (as ancient galleries and excavations testify), extracted rich argentiferous galena on the Cerro de la Lin and on the Chupiquiyacu, and gold in Curumayo (where native sulphur is also found in the quartz rock as well as in the Brazilian Itacolumite ). We inhabited near the mines the small mountain town of Micuipampa, which is 11,140 (11,873 English) feet above the level of the sea, and where, though only 6° 43' from the Equator, water freezes in the house nightly throughout a large portion of the year. In this desert, devoid of vegetation, live three or four thousand persons, who are obliged to have all their means of subsistence brought from the warm valleys, as they themselves only rear some kinds of kale and excellent salad. In this wilderness, as in every town in the high mountains of Peru, ennui leads the richer class of persons, who are not on that acco\lnt more cultivated or more civilized, to pass their time in deep gambling : thus wealth quickly won is still more quickly dissipated. There is much that reminds one of the soldier of Pizarro's troop, who, after the pillage of the temple of Cuzco, complained that he had lost at one night at play H a great piece of the sun" (a gold plate). I observed the thermometer at Micuipampa at 8 in the morning 1°, and at noon 7° Reaumur (34°.2 and 47°.8 Fahrenheit). 36* |
