Next morning dawned still and portentous. Not a zephyr breeze stirred the leaves of the trees. The sweltering heat turned to a suffocating one. As the morning dragged on we found it more and more difficult to breathe; there seemed to be nothing to inflate our lungs. By afternoon we stared helplessly at each other and gasped as we lay simmering on the deck. Were we to be asphyxiated there after all? I had known as many as two hundred a day to die in one South American city from this cause. Surely mortal men never went through such awful, airless heat as this and lived. We had been permitted to discover the lake, and if the world heard of our death, would that flippant remark be used again, as with previous explorers, "To make omelettes eggs must be broken"? However, we were not to _melt_. Towards evening the barometer, which had been falling all day, went lower and lower. All creation was still. Not a sound broke the awful quiet; only in our ears there seemed to be an unnatural singing which was painful, and we closed our eyes in weariness, for the sun seemed to have blistered the very eyeballs. When we mustered up sufficient energy to turn our aching eyes to the heavens, we saw black storm-clouds piling themselves one above another, and hope, which "springs eternal in the human breast," saw in them our hope, our salvation. The fall of the barometer, and the howling of the monkeys on shore also, warned us of the approaching tempest, so we prepared for emergencies by securing the vessel fore and aft under the lee of a rugged _sierra_ before the storm broke--and break it did in all its might. Suddenly the wind swept down upon us with irresistible fury, and we breathed--we lived again. So terrific was the sweep that giant trees, which had braved a century's storms, fell to the earth with a crash. The hurricane was truly fearful. Soon the waters of the lake were lashed into foam. Great drops of rain fell in blinding torrents, and every fresh roll of thunder seemed to make the mountains tremble, while the lightning cleft asunder giant trees at one mighty stroke. [Illustration: VICTORIA REGIA, THE WORLD'S LARGEST FLOWER] In the old legends of the Inca, read on the "Quipus," we find that Pachacamac and Viracocha, the highest gods, placed in the heavens "Nusta," a royal princess, armed with a pitcher of water, which she was to pour over the earth whenever it was needed. When the rain was accompanied by thunder, lightning, and wind, the Indians believed that the maiden's royal brother was teasing her, and trying to wrest the pitcher from her hand. Nusta must indeed have been fearfully teased that night, for the lightning of her eyes shot athwart the heavens and the sky was rent in flame.