Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/418

364 are not, perhaps, in any part of the globe, roads so bad as those which are to be found in all the provinces of the interior of Peru. The passes which are the least dangerous and inconvenient, are the brinks or declivities of the mountains: and these have rather the air of narrow cornices, fastened to the summit of the Cordillera, than of paths destined for the continual journeying of men and beasts of burden. The steep descents, the little balconies, as they are named, the quarries of stone, and precipices, are nothing when compared with the passes denominated barbacoas, or steps. In descending these last, a man, mounted on a horse or mule, forms with his head, and with that of the beast, an obtuse angle, the base of which is the road itself, in the midst of his descent. From this description it will readily be perceived, that the risk of the traveller is the greater, inasmuch as he proceeds, out of the equilibrium, by a plane nearly perpendicular: consequently, on the mule or horse making the slightest trip, or on the least inadvertence of the rider, the precipice is inevitable.

The barbacoas consist of cross poles, fixed in the rock, but without being fastened at the extremities. They are usually placed at the sharpest prominences of a rock by which the road is interrupted, and which it is necessary to cross, by passing on the top of these bridges, so weak that they tremble, and are sometimes bent double by the weight of the passenger. On one side of these barbacoas rises an inaccessible mountain; and on the other, and beneath them, are precipices of a league