we have peaches in perfection and plenty; and as we approach towards the village of Saint Rafael, a few leagues lower down, we are amused by looking up at heights topped with Indian hamlets, and at little flats and declivities under crop of wheat and potatoes, &c. and, near the river, maize. The temperature of Saint Rafael is delicious, and this locality is free from any endemic disease. From Saint Rafael to Ambo is a distance of several leagues of hard road, sometimes running close to the river’s edge, often running along the steep, and with its rocky staircases and narrow passes subjected in time of rains to be blocked up by large stones and small trees, carried down by the mountain torrents. Where the glen expands towards the hill-tops, but closes so narrowly below as only to give room for the channel of the river, we find the road at certain narrows carried along the face of the rock; and here the craggy projections serve as supporters for poles or rafters extending along the intervening gaps, and covered with flags or brushwood laid on and coated with a little earth, thus forming an extremely awkward and narrow bridgeway suspended over the stream. At Ambo, nine leagues lower down than Huariaca, the aspect of the country is changed. Here the loud chirping (for it cannot be called croaking) of little frogs heard by night—the granadilla in elegant flowering festoons seen by day on the pacay and lucuma tree, tell the warm and thirsty traveller that he has come to the land of “guarapo,”[7] where he may enjoy the cool of the corridor, and cast off the load of his Sierra ponchos and heavy clothing.