But we have left behind us the sombre and rain-saturated forests of the Amazon and the Orinoco, and the fine country around us and the magnificent prospect before us made me, at least, forget for the moment both our past privations and our present anxieties.  We are on the montana of the eastern Cordillera, a mountain land of amazing fertility, well wooded, yet not so thickly as to render progress difficult; the wayside is bordered with brilliant flowers, cascades tumble from rocky heights, and far away to the west rise in the clear air the glorious Andes, alps on alps, a vast range of stately snow-crowned peaks, endless and solemn, veiled yet not hidden by fleecy clouds, and as cold and mysterious as winter stars looking down on a sleeping world.

For a long time I gaze entranced at the wondrous scene, and should probably have gone on gazing had not Gahra reminded me that the day was well-nigh spent and that we were still, according to the last information received, some distance from the mission of San Andrea de Huanaco, otherwise Valle Hermoso, or Happy Valley.

One of our chief difficulties had been to find our way; maps we had none, for the very sufficient reason that maps of the region we had traversed did not at that time exist; our guides had not always proved either competent or trustworthy, and I had only the vaguest idea as to where we were.  Of two things only was I certain, that we were south of the equator and within sight of the Andes of Peru (which at that time included the countries now known as Ecuador and Bolivia).

A few days previously I had fallen in with an old half-caste priest, from whom I had heard of the Mission of San Andrea de Huanaco, and how to get there, and who drew for my guidance a rough sketch of the route.  The priest in charge, a certain Fray Ignacio, a born Catalan, would, he felt sure, be glad to find me quarters and give me every information in his power.

And so it proved.  Had I been his own familiar friend Fray Ignacio could not have welcomed me more warmly or treated me more kindly.  A European with news but little above a year old was a perfect godsend to him.  When he heard that I had served in his native land and the Bourbons once more ruled in France and Spain, he went into ecstasies of delight, took me into his house, and gave me of his best.

San Andrea was well named Valle Hermoso.  It was like an alpine village set in a tropical garden.  The mud houses were overgrown with greenery, the rocks mantled with flowers, the nearer heights crested with noble trees, whose great white trunks, as smooth and round as the marble pillars of an eastern palace, were roofed with domes of purple leaves.

Through the valley and between verdant banks and blooming orchards meandered a silvery brook, either an affluent or a source of one of the mighty streams which find their homes in the great Atlantic.