Between Culluai on one side, and Casacancha, an estancia with a mean hut or two, on the other side of the Cordillera, the distance is five leagues; and about a league or more from Culluai we begin to ascend by the Viuda, or Widow, a towering mountain that stands out as it were apart from the other great masses that at this point group together to form a portion of the great Western Cordillera: and it may be sometimes convenient to know, that on the right-hand side of the Viuda, as we ascend the road that winds round its flank, there is concealed in a recess close to the line of snow the Indian hamlet of Yantac.[28] Before the arriero attempts to ascend the Cordillera, he anoints, as we have seen him do, his cattle over the eyes and on the forehead with an unguent made of tallow, garlic, and wild marjoram, as a preventive against what he calls the veta; attributing the effects of atmospherical rarefaction to a subterraneous _veta_, or vein of a noxious ore or metal, which, he believes, diffuses in the air of the cold summits and heights its mephitic and poisonous particles. The Cordillera crossed at noon, and in dry weather, is a grand sight. When we first crossed it the sun was out in full blaze; and, though the mountains of snow lay on every side of our way, we felt quite warm, but we observed that in the shade the cold was very chilling. It was to us peculiarly exhilarating to gaze on so many snowy monuments reflected in all their sublimity from the green waters of the lakes beneath, thickly thronged with sportive ducks and cormorants. These reservoirs of rain and melted snow, which here and there challenge the traveller’s admiration, are like so many appropriate mirrors, successively disclosed to the eye among the concavities and basins that separate the majestic heads of the hoary Andes. In a neighbouring and far grander part of the Cordillera, to which on another occasion we clambered by a narrow, rocky, and steep path, we were caught in a sudden fall of thick mist, which at once unrolled its folds, and threw over the broad light of a clear and frosty morning the dark obscurity of night. This transition was accompanied by no thunder or lightning, or sensible commotion of any kind; and after the darkness continued a few minutes, on looking upwards towards the firmament a scantling of rays began to shoot from among the clouds, and a certain though ill-defined body of light could be distinguished as the centre whence those rays seemed to emanate, when, in an instant after, the peak of a mountain—a crystallized pyramid of snow—glistened to view, and shone in the fullest blaze of brilliancy. With such celerity did the cloudy curtain drop and vanish on the face of the deep dark lake of Pomacocha, that the whole scene appeared but as a vision of enchantment.