Identifier: mountainadventur00head (find matches)
Title: Mountain adventures in various parts of the world
Year: 1876 (1870s)
Authors: Headley, Joel Tyler, 1813-1897
Subjects: Mountaineering
Publisher: New York, Scribner, Armstrong, and co.
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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aw to lie on, and some sheep-skins tokeep us from the cold. The farm stands on an ele-vation of 12,350, so that the nights are cool there;and as a resting place, it is not agreeable, becausewood is scarce. We were already in the region oxgraminaceous plants, which has to be crossed beforethe region of perpetual snow is reached : there allligneous vegetation ends. On the loth, at seven in the morning, we putourselves en route, guided by an Indian from thefarm. We followed, in ascending, a rivulet enclosedbetween two walls of trachyte, whose waters descendfrom the glacier; but very soon we quitted thiscrevasse, in order to direct our steps towards Mocha,going along the base of Chimborazo. We roseinsensibly; and our mules walked with trouble anddifficulty through the debris of rock which has accu-mulated on the foot of the mountain. The slopethen became very rapid, the ground was unstable,and the mules stopped almost at every step to makea long pause ; they no longer obeyed the spur. The
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CHIMBORAZO. 325 breathing of the animals was hurried and panting.We were then precisely at the height of Mont Blanc,for the barometer indicated an elevation of 15,626feet above the level of the sea. After we had covered our faces with masks oflight gauze, in order to preserve ourselves fromaccidents such as we had met with on the Antisana,we began to ascend a ridge which abutted on avery elevated point of the glacier. It was midday.We went up slowly ; and, as we got further andfurther on to the snow, the difficulty of breathing inwalking became more and more felt; but we easilyregained our strength by stopping at every eight orten steps without always sitting down. As we wenton, we felt extreme fatigue from the want of con-sistency in a snowy soil, which continually gave wayunder our feet, and in which we sank sometimes upto the waist. In spite of all our efforts, we weresoon convinced of the impossibility of advancing ;in fact, a little farther on the shifting snow was morethan four

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