- resque; yet I viewed them with a gratification heightened
almost into delight by the particular interest and pleasure with which, in early childhood, I had looked at the shape of this Asiatic inland sea on maps. That which is thus excited in us[19] by childish impressions, or by accidental circumstances in life, takes at a later period a graver direction, and often becomes a motive for scientific labours and distant enterprises.
When after many undulations of the ground, on the summit of the steep mountain ridge, we finally reached the highest point, the Alto de Guangamarca, the heavens which had long been veiled became suddenly clear: a sharp west wind dispersed the mist, and the deep blue of the sky in the thin mountain air appeared between narrow lines of the highest cirrous clouds. The whole of the western declivity of the Cordillera by Chorillos and Cascas, covered with large blocks of quartz 13 to 15 English feet long, and the plains of Chala and Molinos as far as the sea shore near Truxillo, lay beneath our eyes in astonishing apparent proximity. We now saw for the first time the Pacific Ocean itself; and we saw it clearly: forming along the line of the shore a large mass from which the light shone reflected, and rising in its immensity to the well-defined, no longer merely conjectured horizon. The joy it inspired, and which was vividly shared by my companions Bonpland and Carlos Montufar, made us forget to open the barometer until we had quitted the Alto de Guangamarca. From our measurement taken soon after, but somewhat lower down, at an isolated cattle-farm called the Hato de Guangamarca,
