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Show 122 BY PATH AND TRAIL. out sharp and well defined. At a distance of fifteen miles foothills seem but one or two miles off. From the top of Para hill, fifty miles inland, I have seen the pano rama of the shores and bay, the town of La Paz, the hills and valleys, all clearly outlined. The escarpment of the San Juan mountains, 100 mies to the north of the hill on which I was standing, seemed but twenty miles away, and from the highest peak of the Cerita range, on a fine, clear day, they tell me, a circular panorama 350 miles in diameter, inclosing the most varied scenes of tower ing mountains, sunken deserts of yellow, shifting sands, patches of cultivated land and rolling ocean, is plainly visible. This diaphanous condition of the atmosphere is so deceptive that a stranger will sometimes begin a walk for a neighboring hill, thinking it only a few miles off, when in reality, it is twenty miles away. In certain stretches of this wonderful land currents of air of widely different temperature, and hydrometric layers of atmosphere lying one over the other produce an electric condition like what we are told occurs on the high Peruvian Andes. Owing to extreme dryness the ground is a very poor conductor, so that the superabund ance of electricity in the air corrodes metallic imple ments or objects exposed and left upon the ground for any length of time. At times when desert storms sweep across the face of the land the air is so abundantly charged with electricity that the hair of the head will stand out like that of a boy on an insulating stool. The,, hair on horses' tails and manes become like the bristles on a brush, but seemingly no annoying effects follow. There are regions of this extraordinary land where rheu matism is unknown. Leather articles, books and goods which mildew in other coast lands, may here remain ex- |