Having crossed the passes of the Alto de Jaquehambo, and the Alto de Lachaqual--the latter of which is above the snow line, fifteen thousand, five hundred feet high--we begin to descend, and presently, a sudden turn in the road reveals a large and apparently well-built town. This town lies in a basin surrounded by rocks, and the view of it forms a scene oddly inconsistent with the grand solitude and bleakness of the scenery around. Closer acquaintance dissipates our notion that the town is well built. It is a dirty miserable place, in which there are uncomfortably huddled together fifteen thousand people. It is chiefly composed of miners’ huts--something like overgrown bee-hives--with a few tolerable houses that belong to shop-keepers and the proprietors of mines. As we descend from the pass into the Puna, a scene worthy of the Andes breaks upon us. We are on the highest and most extensive table-land in all Peru. Its breadth is about seventy miles; its length scarcely determinable, as it penetrates into the mountains at various points, and is not abruptly broken by them, but sweeps gradually upwards to their summits. In the centre is a large lake, from one side of which the principal tributary of the Amazon begins its course, whilst, from the other side, several small streams flow to the western coast, so that from this lake tribute is sent both to the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. In the distance rises the great Cordillera stretching towards the Brazils; whilst the nearer peaks of the Andes, whitened with snow, shine round about us, cold, rugged, and silent, in vast masses that cause our hearts to dilate with a half painful sense of the sublime. The clear blue sky of the plains has deepened almost into black; the dull, lead-colored sun seems to have lost the power of communicating heat, and looks like a mere spectre of the tyrant under whose reign for so many years, men, women, and children have been flayed, or roasted, or marked with a brand upon the skin.