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 began to talk of other things and to inquire about our route and our destination as casually as she might under happier circumstances,

After several weeks in the mountains and highlands at great elevations and with freezing temperatures at night, we found the soft, balmy air that swept up the canyon from the desert an immense relief, and our spirits returned with every foot of descent. We sang and shouted like boys out of school and peeled off one layer after another of clothing as the air grew warmer and warmer. The only source of discomfort was in cracked and chapped hands and faces. Every exposed portion of our necks and heads was covered with a scabby crust, the result of glare from the snow and the drying effect of the high winds we had experienced.

A shrubby vegetation now began to come in and increased in height until nightfall, at Algarrobal, at an elevation of about 6000 feet we camped in the midst of a small scattered grove of algarrobo trees. Here we saw signs of terracing and of irrigating canals that had been constructed years before but abandoned since an unusually destructive flood had devastated the site. Our mules found at least scant pasture, and we ourselves had a comfortable night's rest for the first time since we had left Pica several weeks before. Our food boxes contained nothing but a little oatmeal, which we were almost unable to cat, and some sweet crackers which we could not cat at all; but eating of any sort was almost out of the question, for as we came down to lower elevations our thirst increased to such an extent that we could do without water for hardly more than fifteen minutes at a stretch.

From Algarrobal we set out the following morning and by a little after midday had reached Pique, where there are wells and shade trees. It is a pumping station for the nitrate works of Alianza farther west. After we had rested our beasts and ourselves, and the sun had declined to the point where the desert heat and glare on the salt-incrusted surface were no longer unendurable, we started with our pack train westward