Through the Palace Square of Lima--not forgetting to look up for the fortieth time at its magnificent cathedral--over the Rimac by a handsome bridge, which connects the city with the suburb of San Lazaro, I got out with my friends into the open country. The plain on which Lima stands gradually contracts as it approaches the Sierra, until it becomes a narrow track between great walls of rock. The road then slowly rises to a height of upwards of six thousand five hundred feet. Having mounted thus far, and so done more up-hill business than belongs to the ascent of Snowdon, we are told quietly that we have reached the foot of the mountains. From this point the ascent is steeper and more dangerous, winding along narrow paths, and doubling huge projections, yielding, sometimes, barely room for a mule to pass; whilst, now and then, a heavy mass comes tumbling down from overhead, and lodges on some ledge that is wide enough to stop it, with a crash that makes the mountain tremble. The Sierra is cleft in many places by gorges, that descend, straight as the plummet, to an immense depth; and, as the road passes along the edge of these abysses, the view suggests a strong temptation to make one false step, or cause the same to be made by the mule, since it would be but a moment’s work to slip into the throat of the old gaping chasm. As we ascend, the change in the climate and vegetation, of course, soon attracts attention. We pass from the sugar-cane and banana in the plains, through every shade of increasing barrenness, to a few mosses and scrubby bushes on the Puna. A few villages are scattered on the route, and in the neighborhood of these, maize and potatoes are grown even at a height of some ten thousand feet. But, by degrees these disappear, and the monotony of the road is broken only by an occasional tambo--a most miserable stunted species of road-side inn--which yields a scanty supply of food and accommodation, and is eaten up almost to the very walls by fleas. Fleas, I should guess, were, like the potato, first imported into Europe from Peru. In that country, certainly, the species must have been multiplying rapidly from the remotest times. The scenery of the Andes (like that of the Himalayas, and of all vast mountains) appears, at first sight, to fall short of one’s previous ideas. The view is often very much confined. The idea of their enormous height is not at all conveyed by traveling over them; for, the successive valleys and table-lands present successive starting-points, and the stupendous mountain chain, supporting countries on its bosom, escapes the measurement of a mere pair of eyes.