After staying a few days at Potrero Seco, I proceeded up the valley to the house of Don Benito Cruz, to whom I had a letter of introduction.

I found him most hospitable; indeed it is impossible to bear too strong testimony to the kindness with which travellers are received in almost every part of South America.

The next day I hired some mules to take me by the ravine of Jolquera into the central Cordillera.

On the second night the weather seemed to foretell a storm of snow or rain, and whilst lying in our beds we felt a trifling shock of an earthquake.
The connexion between earthquakes and the weather has been often disputed: it appears to me to be a point of great interest, which is little understood.

Humboldt has remarked in one part of the "Personal Narrative," that it would be difficult for any person who had long resided in New Andalusia, or in Lower Peru, to deny that there exists some connection between these phenomena: in another part, however, he seems to think the connexion fanciful.