Mountain Tracks.

--The path became more and more narrow and steep.

The natives forsook us all but one at the height of 15,600 feet.

All entreaties and threats were unavailing.

The Indians maintained that they suffered more than we did from breathlessness.

We remained alone, Bonpland,--our amiable friend the younger son of the Marquis of Selvalegre, Carlos Montufar, who in the subsequent struggle for freedom, was shot (at the command of General Morillo),--a Mestize from the neighbouring village of San Juan,--and myself.

We attained, with great exertion and endurance, a greater height than we had dared hope to reach, as we were almost entirely wrapped in mist.

The ridge, (very significantly called in Spanish, Cuchilla, as it were, the knife-back,) was in many places only eight to ten inches broad.

On the left the precipice was concealed by snow, the surface of the latter seemed glazed with frost.

The thin, icy, mirror-like surface had an inclination of about 30 deg.

On the right our view sank shuddering 800 or 1,000 feet into an abyss out of which projected, perpendicularly, snowless masses of rock.

We held the body continually inclined towards this side, for the precipice upon the left seemed still more threatening, because there no chance presented itself of grasping the toothed rock, and because, further, the thin ice-crust offered no security against sinking in the loose snow.

Only extremely light porous bits of dolerite could we roll down this crust of ice; and the inclined plane of snow was so extended that we lost sight of the stones thus rolled down before they came to rest.

The absence of snow, as well upon the ridge along which we ascended, as upon the rocks on our right hand towards the east, cannot be ascribed so much to the steepness of the masses, and to the gales of wind, as to open clefts, which breathe out warm air from deeper situated beds.

We soon found our further ascent more difficult, from the increase of the crumbling nature of the rock.

At single and very steep echelons it was necessary to apply at the same time the hands and feet, as is so usual in all alpine journeys.

As the rock was very keenly angular, we were painfully hurt, especially in the hands.

Leopold Van Buch and I suffered very much in this manner near the crater of the Peak of Teneriffe, which abounds in obsidian.

The little adhesion of the rocks upon the ridge now rendered greater caution necessary, as many masses which we supposed firm lay loose and covered with sand.

We proceeded one after the other, and so much the more slowly, as it was needful to try the places which seemed uncertain.

Happily the attempt to reach the summit of Chimborazo was the last of our mountain journeys in South America; hence previous experience guided us, and gave us more confidence in our powers.

It is a peculiar character of all excursions in the Andes, that above the snow line white people find themselves, in the most perilous situations, always without guides, indeed without any knowledge of localities.--Ascent of Chimborazo by A. V. Humboldt.