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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