the face of a precipice had yet to be negotiated. In broad daylight we should never had dared to ride down the tortuous trail that led from the terrace to the bank of the river. But as it was quite dark and we were quite innocent of any danger we readily followed the cheery voice of our guide. The path is what is known as a corkscrew and descended the wall of the cañon by means of short turns each twenty feet long. At one end of each turn was the precipice, while at the other was a chasm down which plunged a small cataract which had a clear fall of seven hundred feet. Half way down the path my mule stopped, trembling, and I dismounted to find that in the darkness he had walked off the trail and had slid down the cliff to a ledge. How to get him back was a problem. It is not easy to back an animal up a steep hill, and there was no room in which to turn him around. It was such a narrow escape that when I got safely back onto the trail, I decided to walk the rest of the way and let the mule go first, preferring to have him fall over the precipice alone if that were necessary.
Two thirds of the way down the descent came the crux of the whole matter, for here the path crossed the narrow chasm close to and directly in front of the cataract, and in the midst of its spray. There was no bridge. To be sure, the waterfall was only three feet wide, but it was pitch dark. As I could not see the other side of the chasm, I did not dare to jump alone, but remounted my mule, held my breath, and gave him both spurs at once. His jump was successful.
Ten minutes later we saw the welcome light of the master of the camp who came out to guide us through a thicket of mimosa trees that grew on the lower terrace just above the river.
The camp consisted of two huts, six by seven, built of reeds. Here we passed a most uncomfortable night. Mr. Hay has described the next few hours so vividly in his diary that, with his permission, I am going to quote his account of it.
“Our luggage, including the folding cots, did not arrive that night till very late, so we slept on benches made of bamboo poles, in our boots, under an open thatch-roofed shelter. During the night the Prefect’s secretary, el periodista, either in exuberance over reaching the bottom of the mountain in safety, or being unstrung on account of his recent experience, or simply because he was a bounder, fired his revolver off at three different times, the ball fortunately passing through the roof each time. I must admit that I was so sound asleep as to hear only one of the shots, though I was so near the “young idea” that I could have touched him with my hand. Even he, though, wearied of that form of amusement after a time, and quiet was restored until 3 A.M. At that hour a rooster, who had quietly been resting with his women-folk on a pole over our heads, decided that dawn was coming on, or if it wasn’t, ought to be, and showed us conclusively what a healthy pair of feathered lungs, in a rarified atmosphere, was capable of. He was within reach, but I bided my time. Not half enough notice had been taken of the alarm to suit him, and I saw the chest of Sr. Chanticlerio expand for a supreme effort. He raised himself to his full height and let loose. With ever increasing volume the notes poured out, until just as it seemed he would burst, in the concluding notes of the anthem, I arose, and with the side of my hand, caught him in the place that needed it most. He summoned up the courage to give one defiant little crow three hours later. But his spirit was broken, and his style was cramped by the periodista, who, awake by this time, was firing at him with his revolver. There were no casualties.”
While breakfast was being prepared we went out to take pictures and measurements of the bridge. This was 273 feet long by 32 inches wide, and the river 250 feet wide. “Don Mariano,” the builder of the bridge, told us that when construction commenced, the water was nearly eighty feet below the bridge although at present the river had risen so that it was only twenty-five feet below it, an increase in depth of over fifty feet. An almost incredible bulk of water was roaring between its steep banks. It was estimated at 100 feet deep, and yet the water piled up on itself in such a way as to give the appearance of running against huge boulders in midstream.
We sent the Indian bearers ahead with our luggage. Pack animals could not possibly use the trail on the other side of the river and the bridge was not constructed to carry their weight. The surprising thing was that the Indians were very much afraid of the frail little bridge which Chinese courage and ingenuity had built, and crept gingerly across it on their hands and knees while they carried our luggage and supplies to the other side of the river. They had been accustomed for centuries to using frail suspension bridges much less strong in reality than this little structure. But they are not acquainted with the tenacity of wire, and it seemed the height of frivolity to them that we should be willing to trust our lives to such a small “rope.” Yet the much larger fibre ropes of which their suspension bridges were constructed would not begin to stand the strain as well as these six telegraph wires.
After a breakfast of thin soup and boiled sweet potatoes, we girded ourselves for the ascent. The river at this point is about 5000 feet above sea-level. We had had little practice in mountain climbing, except on mule-back, for many months, and it seemed like a pretty serious undertaking to attempt to climb six thousand feet more to an elevation of 11,000 feet. This will sound tame enough to the experienced mountain climber although it was anything but easy for us. Our patient, long-suffering Quichua bearers, coming of a race that, at high altitudes, is in the habit of marching distances which appear incredibly long to those students of military history that have confined their attention to the movements of European troops, bore their burdens most cheerfully. At the same time they gave frequent evidence of great fatigue which was not at all to be wondered at under the circumstances.