Note 5 — Chapter IX · IN CLOUDLAND

It was a little after midday when we finally reached the paramo of Chipaque—that dread paramo of which we had so frequently heard so many and so extraordinary tales. It was, we had been told, a place of eternal frost and snow, and of blasts so tempestuous that both men and animals were sometimes picked up bodily and hurled into a yawning gorge near the dizzy height which we were obliged to pass. We soon discovered, however, that most of the stories we had heard of this and similar paramos, had but little foundation in fact, or were greatly exaggerated.5