At length they came to colder and more rugged regions, where the vegetation, at first abundant and pleasant to the eye, like that of our temperate zone, grew gradually poor and scanty. But Fray Fernando said reverently, that God had given the mountain to the beasts to dwell in. Here graceful fawn-coloured vicuñas, and guanucos with long shaggy fleeces and mild camel-like faces, roamed at large, feeding on the ychu and alfalfa, that still grew in abundance. Pretty little piscaches, with bushy tails, startled by the footsteps of the travellers, ran to hide in the ychu; and here and there a plover flew screaming into the air above their heads. Once they saw a huge condor perched on an elevated rocky peak. Thus for many days they journeyed onwards, now ascending, now in turn descending again. By-and-by they came to grassy table-lands, where herds of llamas or alpacas roamed about, either wild, or more often under the care of Indian shepherds. Where the nature of the ground permitted cultivation, the soil was well and carefully cultivated. Even on the steep sides of mountains terraces were constructed with ingenious industry. By means of these andenaria, as the Spaniards called them, many a hill, that in another country would have been a brown and sterile mass, was transformed into a beautiful hanging-garden, displaying every variety of production, from the rich tropical splendours that adorned the broad belts around the base, to the few rows of maize which were all that even the industrious Indian could persuade to take root on the narrow strip at the top. The long journey was a very safe and easy one. For nearly all the way our travellers had only to use the excellent roads provided by the care of the Incas. Fray Fernando was not the first Spaniard who grew enthusiastic in his admiration of these wonderful works, executed without machinery, and even without iron tools. Passages leagues in length were cut through the living rock, precipices were scaled by long flights of steps, ravines were filled up with masonry, and rivers crossed by means of suspension bridges made of maguey—the native osier. At convenient distances all along the road tampus, or post-houses, were erected, where the wayfarers found shelter. José explained that, in the old times, they would have found entertainment also in many of these tampus; but since, to use his mournful and oft-repeated expression, “the Spaniards have changed all,” they had usually to throw themselves on the hospitality of the Indians; and sometimes, in lonely places, to rely on the little store of roasted maize or of frozen potatoes (called chuñu), which José never failed to bring as provision for the way. The Indians were always kind and generous to wayfarers; but they had only to recognize José as a Child of the Sun, to induce them to lay the best their huts contained at his feet.