Fig. 63—The deep fertile Majes Valley below Cantas. Compare with [6] showing the Chili Valley at Arequipa.
Fig. 64—The Majes Valley, desert coast, western Peru. The lighter patches on the valley floor are the gravel beds of the river at high water. Much of the alluvial land is still uncleared.
I remember that we halted beside a great wooden cross and that our guide, dismounting, walked up to the foot of it and kissed and embraced it after the custom of the mountain folk when they reach the head of a steep “cuesta.” Also that the trail seemed to drop off like a stairway, which indeed it was.[18] Everything else about me was completely overshadowed by snowy mountains, colored sky, and golden-yellow desert. One could almost forget the dark clouds that gather around the great mass of Coropuna and the bitter winds that creep down from its glaciers at night—it seemed so friendly and noble. Behind it lay bulky masses of rose-tinted clouds. We had admired their gay colors only a few minutes, when the sun dropped behind the crest of the Coast Range and the last of the sunlight played upon the sky. It fell with such marvelously swift changes of color upon the outermost zone of clouds as these were shifted with the wind that the eye had scarcely time to comprehend a tint before it was gone and one more beautiful still had taken its place. The reflected sunlight lay warm and soft upon the white peaks of Coropuna, and a little later the Alpine glow came out delicately clear.
When we turned from this brilliant scene to the deep valley, we found that it had already become so dark that its greens had turned to black, and the valley walls, now in deep shadow, had lost half their splendor. The color had not left the sky before the lights of Chuquibamba began to show, and candles twinkled from the doors of a group of huts close under the cliff. We were not long in starting the descent. Here at last were friendly habitations and happy people. I had worked for six weeks between 12,000 and 17,000 feet, constantly ill from mountain sickness, and it was with no regret that I at last left the plateau and got down to comfortable altitudes. It seemed good news when the guide told me that there were mosquitoes in the marshes of Camaná. Any low, hot land would have seemed like a health resort. I had been in the high country so long that, like the Bolivian mining engineer, I wanted to get down not only to sea level, but below it!