But to return: we safely crossed the last rib of the Cordillera, and descended into the plain of Casacancha, where we did not stop, but pressed forward three leagues beyond this common halting-place to take up our night’s quarters at Palcomayo, another common stage or resting-place for travellers on this unprovided though much frequented thoroughfare. But we had not left Casacancha far behind, when one of our fellow-travellers experienced the most distressing headache: his face became turgid, the temporal arteries throbbed with violence, the respiration was difficult, and it seemed to him as if the chest was too narrow for its contents. The other gentleman complained less; it was only a vexatious headache that disturbed him, but his eyes were blood-shot. The writer was still differently affected from either of his fellow-travellers. His headache was moderate; but his extremities soon became quite cold as the sun declined; the skin shrank, and then came on a sense of sickness and oppression about the stomach and heart, with a short, hurried, and panting respiration. His kind associates on this occasion forgot their own ailments in attending to his more urgent wants. They had him carefully wrapped in warm sheep-skins, which formed the usual bedding of the poor Indian family within, and renovated his strength by a cordial basin of hot tea. In this manner, and immersed at the time in the pungent smoke that filled the whole hut, the natural warmth of the extremities and surface was soon restored, so that he became comparatively easy, and passed a better night than either of his two obliging friends. The servant intrusted with the cargo-mule dropped behind; and not being acquainted with the route, or able to keep sight of us, he went off the road, wandered into a neighbouring valley, Caraguacayan, and did not appear till morning. The gentlemen alluded to had, therefore, to shift for the night as less provided travellers usually do. Their _alforjas_ (saddle-bags) served them as pillows, their _pellons_ and saddle-cloths for beds, and their _ponchos_ as their best covering. They thus lay cooped up on the floor of a dirty little hovel, too small to allow them to stretch their limbs without risk of burning their toes in the hot ashes around the fire-place. The sharp wind pierced through a hundred crevices of the rude wall, and was ill excluded from the low and narrow door-way by a tattered sheep-skin fitted with thongs into a hurdle-frame.