As we advanced, and rounded the hills which
shut in the little _plateau_ of Caridad on the north, we saw that the
high lateral mountains sent down their rocky spurs towards each other
like huge buttresses, lapping by, and, so far as the eye could
discern, forming a complete and insurmountable barrier. Over the brow
of one of these, a zigzag streak of white marked the line of the
mule-path. Our guide traced it out to us with his finger, and assured
us that it traversed a bad _portillo_, over which the wind sometimes
sweeps with such force as to take a loaded mule off his feet, and
dash him down the steep sides of the mountain. Half a mile of level
ground still intervened between us and the apparent limit of our
advance, and we trotted over it in silence, pulling up on the abrupt
bank of the deep trough of the river, which foamed and chafed among
the great boulders in its bed, and against its rocky shores, nearly a
hundred feet below us. A break-neck path wound down to a little
sandpit; and on the opposite side of the stream another path wound
up, in like manner, to a narrow _plateau_, on which stood a single
hut, with its surroundings of plantain-trees and maize-fields.
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