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Five or six gauchos were with me, and we were on the southern pampas of Buenos Ayres, near to a long precipitous stony sierra which rose to a height of five or six hundred feet above the plain. Who that has travelled for eighteen days on a dead level in a broiling sun can resist a hill? That sierra was more sublime to us than Conon-dagua, than Illimani.
At first it was thought that we all wanted a passage, but when we explained matters Captain Thomas, the commander of the 'Illimani, very kindly undertook to receive all our refugees and convey them to England. We therefore sent the gig back for the rest of the men and the chests of the whole party, and then availed ourselves of the opportunity afforded by the delay to walk round the ship.
Captain Runciman is convinced, after comparing notes with the chief officer of the 'Illimani, that the vessel which refused to notice his signal of distress was the 'Wilmington, sent down from New York, with a party of forty wreckers, to try and get the steamer 'Georgia' off the rocks near Port Famine, in the Straits of Magellan.
Moreover, one would think that, with her powerful engines, she might have made an attempt to tow the distressed vessel into Monte Video, and so secure three or four thousand pounds of salvage money. The captain of the 'Illimani' kindly gave us half a bullock, killed this morning, a dozen live ducks and chickens, and the latest newspapers.
Flame-breathing Cotopaxi, whose wrathful mutterings are audible two hundred leagues away, and Chimborazo, Antisana, Sarata, Illimani, Aconcagua names of mountains that affect us like the names of gods, implacable Pachacamac and Viracocha, whose everlasting granite thrones they are. At the last I showed her Cuzco, the city of the sun, and the highest dwelling-place of men on earth.
You will be glad to learn that the master and crew arrived all well, in due course, at Liverpool, by the "Illimani," and were very grateful for your kindness to them.
Although La Paz is more than twelve thousand feet above sea level it is located in the bottom of a deep canyon. Back of the city is the giant peak of Mount Illimani which pierces the sky at the height of twenty-one thousand feet. While the weather is always warm in the day time it gets very cool at night, sometimes freezing cold.
It will be remembered that the Beni reaches away up into the Illimani mountains, with its springs not far distant from the summit of the Andes. Where the boys were the Paredon and the Paderneira, falls and the Araras and the Misericordia rapids made the navigation of the river, even in the protected Black Bear, impossible for many miles.
This beautiful valley is the most elevated table-land on the continent, Lake Titicaca being 12,846 feet above the sea level. Were it not within the tropics, it would be a region of eternal snow, for it is more than 4000 feet higher than the beginning of perpetual snow on Mont Blanc. Near it are some of the higher peaks of the Andes, among them Sorato, Illimani, and Sahama.
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