Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/293

 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 11140 (11873 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 account more cultivated or more civilised, 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 at Cuzco, complained that he had lost in one night at play "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}. We found among the thin blades of Ichhu-grass (perhaps our Stipa eriostachya), a beautiful Calceolaria (C. sibthorpioides), which we should not have expected at such an elevation.

Not far from the town of Micuipampa, in a high plain called Llanos or Pampa de Navar, there have been found throughout an area of above an English geographical square mile, immediately under the turf, and as it were intertwined