From this cheering eminence, in times of the greatest misrule, the traveller can indulge in the delightful feeling of security, as he casts a backward glance over the dark furnace of the Rio Seco, so appropriate for the infernal deeds of banditti for which it is celebrated, and then descends in good spirits to Alcacota and Yanga, congratulating himself on having got safely through a desolate and perilous route, where wayfarers are often plundered and abused, and, when they offer inefficient resistance, sacrificed and murdered.
Two leagues higher than Yanga are the church and ruins of Santa Rosa de Quive, overlooking the only habitable house of this stage, (a sort of tambo or tavern,) by the banks of a mountain torrent which descends to join the main river of the valley, from the high hills on the right, through an intersecting ravine. In the arid season on the upland, it is nearly dried up; but, in the wet, its turbid waters roll with impetuous course, hurling immense round stones along their channel, and sending forth sounds that may be heard by the traveller at the tambo,—telling him he cannot ford the stream till the river lowers, but must cross a bad bridge of pieces of timber with some earth and sticks, laid over a narrow part of the ravine, considerably higher up than the usual ford.
On the opposite side of this stream is Santa Rosa; here are several houses overlooking a small wooded plain between it and the main river, where men are always employed in cutting and charring wood, which is sent to Lima, fourteen leagues distant. The disease which the natives call Uta, a species of cancer well known among chimney-sweeps in England, prevails in this place. We have also seen here the most severe ague, originating at the season when it rains in the hills of the Cordillera (for here it never rains), and when the torrent alluded to inundates, and overspreads with large stones, sand, and slime, the flat ground near its disemboguement.
Four leagues higher up than Santa Rosa is a place called Yaso, once a flourishing hacienda, with a garden where lucumas, pacays, guayavas, and sour oranges are still seen; but where, in place of a flourishing estate, there are now but a few huts of cane and hurdles, partially bedaubed with mud, and furnished with open corridors, under which the muleteers and travellers stretch themselves to sleep: but as lucern is scarce, and as there is no natural pasture, few choose to pass the night here; though many call for a glass of chicha, or country beer made from maize, to quench their thirst while resting here at noon, when the sun is reflected powerfully from the towering and naked hills around.
The river water being always turbid in time of inland rains, the traveller is tempted to drink of a pure and crystalline stream that here issues from the rock; but the good-natured inmate of some wretched hut warns him of his danger, and assures him, if he drink that water, he will be seized with the severe disease called verrugas, or a painful warty eruption, peculiar to certain quebradas; and Yaso, it may be kept in mind, is one of the localities subject to this sore visitation. A couple of leagues still higher up the “quebrada,” or glen, is the resting-place—Huaramayo; a little green spot, with a few neat huts surrounded with plots of lucern, and many rugged fragments from the neighbouring steeps.
We observed that one of these humble dwellings, made of mud, cane, and wicker, was thatched with a sort of living lichen; a simple style of architecture, which of itself tells us that here the climate is still dry and warm, and the place sheltered from rude winds or storms.
We have seen the cottager, who occupied the hut immediately at the foot of the arduous ascent which here commences, look with indescribable complacency as we, from his little corridor, gazed up in admiration at beholding the rain pour in torrents a few hundred yards above us, while his own snug retreat was hardly reached by a gentle sprinkling, which a Limenian would call “agua bendita,” or holy water, which imparted softness and salubrity to the air, and gave longevity to the aged inmate of the cottage.
This now bent and year-worn, but still active and lively octogenarian, was in his youth a shoemaker in Lima; and being attacked with hæmoptysis, or spitting of blood, and pronounced incurable by the doctors, he sought for the benefit to be derived from change of climate, and found, after repeated trials, that as often as he returned to Lima his disease of the lungs was renewed, but again removed as often as he arrived at this elfin abode, twenty leagues from the capital. For these good reasons he resolved to settle here, a favoured site where even ague is unknown; and had, when we saw him, already attained a ripe yet energetic old age.
Were this spot a spacious plain like Glen-Rimac, enjoying the climate which it now does, it would be as calm and bright and beauteous as a druidical paradise, and we might even conceive how man might live in such a climate and on such a soil to an antediluvian measure of years.
From Yanga to Huaramayo, the glen through which lies the road to Cerro Pasco by Canta is extremely narrow and confined, except at Santa Rosa, where it is somewhat more open. The way often recedes from, though it is generally in sight of, the bed of the river; and is bound in on each side by lofty and sterile granite mountains, which, on the left side of the river as we ascend, are frequently intersected with narrow, perpendicular veins that arise from the level of the water to the very summit of the mountain, and, from the road, present a ferruginous appearance, suggesting the idea of grand conductors of the electric fluid. It is only by continued irrigation that the few patches and strips of soil, which at this distance here and there relieve the tedium of a rugged way, are compelled to throw forth their vegetable luxuriance.