These proved even
greater than had been foreseen. The path had been conducted in the
most judicious manner round the rugged and precipitous sides of the
mountains, so as best to avoid the natural impediments presented by the
ground. But it was necessarily so steep, in many places, that the cavalry
were obliged to dismount, and, scrambling up as they could, to lead their
horses by the bridle. In many places, too, where some huge crag or
eminence overhung the road, this was driven to the very verge of the
precipice; and the traveller was compelled to wind along the narrow
ledge of rock, scarcely wide enough for his single steed, where a misstep
would precipitate him hundreds, nay, thousands, of feet into the dreadful
abyss! The wild passes of the sierra, practicable for the half-naked
Indian, and even for the sure and circumspect mule,--an animal that
seems to have been created for the roads of the Cordilleras,--were
formidable to the man-at-arms encumbered with his panoply of mail.
The tremendous fissures or quebradas, so frightful in this mountain
chain, yawned open, as if the Andes had been split asunder by some
terrible convulsion, showing a broad expanse of the primitive rock on
their sides, partially mantled over with the spontaneous vegetation of
ages; while their obscure depths furnished a channel for the torrents, that,
rising in the heart of the sierra, worked their way gradually into light, and
spread over the savannas and green valleys of the tierra caliente on their
way to the great ocean.
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