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THE FORESTS OF ALAUSI 235
could not pass each other without endangering the
our beasts were
life of one of them. Fortunately,
sure-footed and the road was dry ; in fact, from
Ticsan, where we fairly began to descend the
western slope of the Cordillera, we found we had
left mid-
got into the height of summer, having
winter behind us at Ambato and Riobamba. The
hill-sides were well covered with grass, but all
completely withered up by nearly
dry weather ;
two months of
so that, except near the streams,
where there was a margin of scrub or low forest,
the eye rested on nothing green.
Alausi stands at about the same height as
Ambato, but is subject to still more violent winds,
so that even the crops of maize are rarely to be
seen standing erect. As a town it bears no com-
parison with Ambato either for size or neatness,
and, like all the other pueblos of the canton (of
which it is the chef-lieu}, seems to have been for
several years in a state of decadence :
the houses
begin to fall and are merely propped up, not
repaired or rebuilt ; and yet there are all around
valuable farms of wheat and maize.
Throughout the Quitonian
Andes a bit of solid
rock is rarely seen, save where black, jagged masses
of trachyte stand out in the higher peaks, which
are all either active or dormant volcanoes ; and on
a superficial view most of the hills seem to be made
up of debris, either, as around Ambato, of calcined
and triturated granite and schists, or, as in descend-
ing from Alausi, of stones and rude blocks confusedly
heaped together. But in one place we
saw above us a low cliff of vertical strata, much
cracked and bent, as if by some force applied to