ACROSS THE ANDES
For more than two thousand miles the republics of Argentina and Chile
are divided from one another by the gigantic barrier of the Andes. So
great is the continuous elevation of the range, so little commercial
intercourse can there be across it, so few are the points at which
it can be crossed even on foot by any travellers who are not expert
mountaineers, that the communications between those dwelling on
opposite sides of the mountains have been at all times very scanty. The
contrast between the two sides is marked. For eight hundred miles south
of the Equator, the eastern slopes of the Andean chain have abundance
of rain, while the central plateau is dry and the western declivity is
a waterless desert. But in the region which lies south of the Tropic of
Capricorn, outside the region of trade-winds, the exact reverse holds.
In this southern section of the Andes it is the eastern side that is
dry and the western side that is wet, because westerly winds prevail
and bring up from the Pacific rain clouds that scatter their moisture
on the heights they first meet and have none left to bestow on the
Argentine side of the Cordillera. This great dividing range, checking
intercourse between the peoples on its two flanks, is the dominant
fact in the political and economic life as well as in the physical
geography of the southern part of the continent. It has given these two
neighbour peoples, Chileans and Argentines, different habits, different
characters, and a different history.
The infrequency of communication across the mountains was increased by
the fact that most of the country on the eastern side, being sterile,
was thinly settled, so that there were few people who had any occasion
to cross the mountains, while the approach to the passes was difficult,
for there was little food or shelter to be had along this track. In
the middle of the sixteenth century, however, Mendoza, Captain General
of Chile, founded on the Argentine side the town which still bears his
name. Placed at the foot of the mountains on the banks of a stream
descending from the glaciers of Aconcagua, it was a well-watered spot
in a thirsty land, and population slowly gathered to it. As Argentina
began to fill up with settlers in the latter half of the nineteenth
century and as railways began to be pushed farther and farther inland
from the Atlantic coast, the notion of making a railway across the
Andes began to dawn on enterprising minds, especially after the Brenner
and Cenis lines had been constructed across and through the main chain
of the Alps. At last an English company built a railroad up to this
town of Mendoza, and nothing remained except to pierce the belt of
mountain country. That, however, was no simple matter. The belt is
indeed of no great width. The Cordillera, which in the latitude of
Antofagasta is the western edge of a high plateau, has here narrowed
itself down to a single very lofty ridge, the summits of which are
from 18,000 to 23,000 feet in height. There are transverse lower ridges
running at right angles to the main chain, both westward towards the
Pacific and eastward to the Argentine plain, but as these ridges
average only thirty-five miles in length on the latter and twenty-five
on the former side, the whole distance from the low country on the
eastern side to the low country on the western, does not exceed seventy
miles, which is less than the width (between Luzern and Arona) of
the much less lofty chain of the Alps at the point where the Gothard
railway crosses it.
The central ridge of the Cordillera is, however, so continuously lofty
and its slopes so steep as to be passable for beasts of burden at very
few points and then only during the summer months. Among these points
that which has for a long time, probably from days before the Spanish
conquest, been most in use, is the Uspallata Pass, so called from a
place about fifteen miles west of Mendoza on the mule track which runs
from that town towards the mountains. As population increased, there
was at last substituted for the mule track a road passable by vehicles.
Finally, in 1887, a railroad began to be constructed up the long and
winding river valley which leads from Mendoza to the main chain, while
on the Chilean side, another railway was built up the shorter valley
which rises to the western foot of the same ridge.
Thereafter, the work of construction stopped for a good while,
passengers continuing to cross the ridge on foot or mule back, or in
vehicles which painfully climbed the steep track that led over the
top. At last a tunnel under this ridge was bored, and the whole line
opened for traffic in 1909. The tunnel is only two and a half miles
long, much shorter than those which penetrate the Alps at the Simplon,
the Gothard and the Cenis. But its height above sea-level (12,000
feet) is much greater and the scenery along the line more striking.
If any other trunk line of railroad in the world traverses a region
so extraordinary, it has not yet been described. Till one is run from
Kashmir to Kashgar, over or under the Karakoram Pass, this Andean line
seems likely to "hold the record."
The description of the Uspallata route may begin from Valparaiso. From
that port to the junction for Santiago at the station of Llai Llai the
country is hilly, rather dry, with rolling pastures and meadows along
the streams, and thickets of small trees or scrub on the slopes,--a
country much like southern California, save that there are no oaks
and no coniferous trees. Further on, the hills grow higher; there are
rocks with patches of brilliant flowers, and occasional glimpses of the
great range are caught up the openings of valleys. At a pretty place
called Santa Rosa de los Andes, the Andean railway proper (Ferro Carril
Transandino) begins, and we change into a car of narrower gauge.
This Transandine railroad, one of the few which does not belong
to the Chilean government, is narrow gauge, and its construction
involved difficulties unusual even in the case of mountain lines,
not only because the grades were very steep, but also because the
valleys leading up to the central ridge were, especially that on the
Chilean side, extremely narrow. To have bored corkscrew or zigzag
tunnels, like those on the Gothard railway in Switzerland, would have
involved an expenditure altogether disproportionate to the returns
to be expected from the traffic. It was therefore found necessary to
adopt the cog-wheel system; and on those parts of the line where the
grade is too steep for the ordinary locomotive a rack or cog-wheel
apparatus is fixed between the rails, and the locomotive, fitted with
a corresponding apparatus, climbs by its help. This reduces the speed
of the train in ascending those steep parts, most of which are on
the Chilean side, and unavoidably reduces also the freight-carrying
capacity of the line. There is, therefore, not much heavy goods traffic
passing over it.[61] But to passengers who wish to save time and
escape a sea voyage the gain is enormous, for while the transit from
Valparaiso to Buenos Aires through the Straits of Magellan takes eleven
days, the land journey by this Transandine railway can be accomplished
in forty hours. The regular working of the trains had been interrupted
in the winter before our visit by heavy falls of snow, but the
construction of snowsheds, which was in progress, has probably by this
time overcome such difficulties.
Travellers sleep at Santa Rosa in order to start early in the morning
by the tri-weekly train which in twelve hours crosses the mountains to
Mendoza. From the hotel at the station, we looked straight up a long,
narrow valley to tremendous peaks of black rock thirty miles away to
the east. How they stood out against the bright morning sky behind
them, a few white clouds hovering above! One felt at a glance that this
is one of the great ranges of the world, just as one feels the great
musician in the first few chords of a symphony.
Up this valley runs the railway past little farm-houses, surrounded
by stiff poplars, which thrive well here, though the tree is not a
native, but brought from Europe. Fields, irrigated from the rushing
stream beneath, are green with young corn; weeping willows droop over
the watercourses, vines trail along the fronts of the cottages, and the
pastures are bright with spring flowers. A cart road runs parallel to
the line, and here one sees better than in the cities the true Chilean
_roto_ (peasant of mixed Spanish and Indian blood), in his rough coat
and cotton shirt, baggy trousers and high boots fitted with large
spurs, his low-crowned, narrow-brimmed felt or straw hat, and on his
shoulders the thick homespun poncho characteristic of South America.
His horse is usually near him, for they are all riders, a sturdy little
animal with many saddle-cloths and a heavy, high-peaked saddle and
heavy bit.
After eight or ten miles the valley narrows, and at its bottom there is
only the torrent with sometimes a few yards of grass on one or other
bank. The rock walls begin to rise more steeply, and the trees give
place to shrubs. At a spot called the Soldier's Leap, the train runs
on a shelf in the rock through a gorge over which the converging crags
almost touch one another and shut out the light, the torrent roaring
sixty feet below. One considerable stream, the Rio Blanco, descends
from the south, but otherwise there are no side glens. Vast black
precipices rise on the northern bank six or seven thousand feet above
the river. Slender streamlets, perhaps the children of unseen snows
behind, fall slowly from ledge to ledge, some of them lost in mid-air
when a gust of the west wind sweeps them along.
At last, vegetation having now disappeared, a great black ridge
rises in front across the end of the valley and seems to bar further
progress. On its steep face, however, one can presently discover a
sort of track, winding up it in zigzags. This is the old mule path by
which travellers used to climb slowly to the pass, itself still far
behind. The spot at its foot, where there are a few houses, is Juncal,
the last place where the wayfarer halted to rest before he started for
the formidable passage of the mountains. Here two glens opening from
opposite sides meet at the foot of the great ridge. The glen to the
north is short, descending abruptly from a semicircle of savage black
peaks, the hollows between them filled with snow and ice. That to the
south is long, narrow, and nearly level; it is a deep cleft which
runs into the heart of the mountains as far as the west side of the
mighty Tupungato, whose glaciers feed its torrent. Up this southern
valley the railway, turning at right angles from its previous easterly
direction, runs for some miles, then crosses and leaves the torrent,
turns north and mounts along a narrow shelf cut out in the side of the
great black ridge of Juncal, already mentioned. The slope rising above
the line and falling below it to the valley is of terrific steepness.
The grade is also steep and the locomotive toils and pants slowly
upward by the aid of the cog-wheel, passing through tunnel after tunnel
till at last it comes out, two thousand feet above Juncal, into a wide
hollow surrounded by sharp peaks, those to the north streaked with
beds of snow, those on the south of bare rock, because the snow has
been melted off their sunward turned slopes. The bottom of this hollow
is covered with enormous blocks that have fallen from the cliffs, and
its northern end is filled by a small lake, part of whose surface was
covered with ice. The fanciful name of Lago del Inca has been given to
it. A scene more savage in its black desolation it would be hard to
imagine. Compared to this frozen lake, the glacier lakes of the Swiss
Alps, like the Märjelen See on the Aletsch glacier, are gentle and
smiling. The strong sunlight and brilliant blue of the sky seemed to
make the rocks blacker and bring out their absolute bareness with not
so much as a moss or a lichen to relieve it. From the lake the railway,
making another great sweep, climbs another slope and enters another
still higher hollow, where it stops at the base of a steep ridge. Here
a cluster of huts of corrugated iron, more than usually hideous in such
a landscape, marks the mouth of the great tunnel, at a point 10,486
feet above the sea. In winter everything is covered deep with snow and
now, in October, patches were still lying about and the cold, except
in the sun, was severe. Big icicles were hanging from the eaves of the
iron hut roofs.
Reserving for a later page some account of the top of the Pass and the
colossal statue of Christ which has been set up there, I will describe
the route, as travellers now take it, through the tunnel into Argentina
and down the valley to the plains at Mendoza. The tunnel, cut through
hard andesite rock, under a ridge fifteen hundred feet higher, is
nearly three miles long, and the passage through it takes ten minutes.
The air is cool and free from that sense of oppression which people
complain of in the Gothard. The Duke of Wellington used to say that the
business of a general in war consists largely in guessing what is on
the other side of the hill. Whoever crosses a hill on foot or horseback
sees the surrounding landscape change by degrees, and is more or less
prepared for the view which the hilltop gives of what lies beyond. But
when carried along in the darkness through the very core of a great
mountain range expectation is more excited, and the sudden burst of
a new landscape is more startling. So when, after the few minutes of
darkness, we rushed out into the light of the Argentine side, there was
a striking contrast. This eastern valley was wider and the peaks rose
with a bolder, smoother sweep, their flanks covered with long slides
of dark sand and gravel, their tops a line of bare precipices, not
less lofty than those on the Chilean side but shewing less snow. The
air was drier and the aspect of things not, indeed, less green, for
there had been neither shrub nor plant visible since we passed Juncal,
but more scorched and more aggressively sterile. There was far more
colour, for on each side of the long valley that stretched before us
to the eastward the declivities of the ridges that one behind another
dipped towards it on both sides glowed with many tints of yellow,
brown, and grey. A great flat-topped summit of a rich red, passing into
purple, closed the valley in the distance. The mountains immediately
above this upper hollow of the glen--it is called Las Cuevas--though
nineteen or twenty thousand feet high, are imposing, not so much by
their height, for the bottom of the hollow is itself ten thousand feet
above sea-level, but rather by the grand lines with which they rise,
the middle and lower slopes covered by sloping beds of grey ash and
black sand, thousands of feet long, while at the head of the glen to
the northwest glaciers hang from the crags that stand along the central
range, the boundary of the two countries. In the presence of such
majesty, the grim desolation of the scene is half forgotten.
From Las Cuevas the train runs rapidly down eastward, following the
torrent through a confused mass of gigantic blocks that have fallen
from the cliffs above, and after seven or eight miles, it passes the
opening of a lateral glen down which there comes a far fuller torrent,
bearing the water that has melted from the glaciers of Aconcagua. The
huge mass of that mountain, loftiest of all the summits of the Western
Hemisphere, is seen fifteen miles away, standing athwart the head of
this lateral valley. It is a long ridge of snow, arching into two
domes with a tremendous precipice of black rock facing south, on the
upper edge of which is a cliff of névé. The falling fragments of thin
ice feed a glacier below, just as a similar ice cliff above a similar
precipice makes a little glacier thousands of feet below on the side
of Mount Ararat. The top of Aconcagua is nearly twenty-three thousand
feet high, and the valley at this point about eight thousand. Only in
the Himalayas and the Andes can one see a peak close at hand soar into
air fifteen thousand feet above the eye, and I doubt if there be any
other peak even in the Andes which rises so near and so grandly above
the spectator. It was first ascended in 1897 by an Englishman, Mr.
Vines.[62] The steepness of the snow slopes offered less difficulty
than did the rarity of the air, the violence of the winds, the severity
of the cold, besides the other hardships which are incident to camp
life in this desolate region, where the climber, far from all supplies,
waits day after day for weather steady enough to permit an attempt
highly dangerous except under favouring climatic conditions.
A little below this point one reaches the spot called Puente del Inca
(the Inca's bridge). Unusual natural phenomena are called after the
Incas in these countries, just as they are after the Devil in Europe.
Hot springs of some medicinal value which gush from the ground have
been turned to account in a small bathing establishment to which a few
visitors resort in summer. There is a real natural curiosity in the
sort of bridge which the torrent has formed by cutting a way for itself
underneath a detrital mass, the upper part of which has been bound hard
together by the mineral deposits from the hot springs, so that it makes
a firm roadway above the river roaring below. The place is, however,
unspeakably lonely and dreary, bare and shelterless, too sterile for
aught but a few low, prickly shrubs to grow. Over it whistles that
fierce west wind which comes up from the Pacific in the afternoon,
and sweeps down this valley chilled by the snowy heights which it has
crossed.
The journey down the valley from this point is a piece of scenery to
which it would be hard to find a parallel on any other railroad. It
is like traversing the interior of an extinct volcano, for the rocks
are all volcanic, of different ages and different colours, black and
grey lavas, yellow and pink and whitish and bluish beds of tufa and
indurated ash, sometimes with long streaks of gravel or dark sand
streaming down from the base of the precipices above. At one place
there is seen just under such a precipice, a row of sharp black
pinnacles, not unlike miniature aiguilles, apparently the remains of
a lava bed that has disintegrated, leaving its harder parts to stand
erect. These are called the Penitentes, from a fancied resemblance
to sinners in black robes standing or kneeling to do penance.[63] I
could perceive no trace of any defined craters or, indeed, of any
recent volcanic phenomena in the valley, and should conjecture that
subterranean fires had died out here many ages ago. Of the former
presence of glaciers and the action of water on a great scale there
are abundant signs in the remains of large moraines and in the masses
of alluvium, through which the streams have cut deep trenches all the
way down the valley. Its mountain walls rise so high and steep that the
snow mountains behind are hidden. But at one point where a narrow glen
comes down from the south, there is seen at the end of a long vista,
thirty miles away, the great, blunt pyramid of Tupungato.[64] Tupungato
attains 22,000 feet, the upper six thousand of which are draped in
white, and is, among the southern Andes, inferior only to Aconcagua and
to Mercedario.
About thirty miles below the tunnel the valley opens into the little
plain of Uspallata, bounded on the opposite or eastern side by a range
of flat-topped hills, across which the old mule track and carriage road
ran to Mendoza. This range, running parallel to the main chain of the
Cordillera and therefore at right angles to the valley down which we
had come, turns the course of the torrent southward, forcing it to find
its way out to the level country through a deep gorge or cañon. The
railway follows the river. As we reached Uspallata, the declining sun
was turning to a rosy pink the mists that hung upon the peaks to the
northwest, now hiding and now revealing the snow fields that filled
their highest hollows. The dry eastern hills glowed purple under its
rays, and the purple was deepening into violet in the fading light when
the train plunged into the depths of the cañon along the banks of the
swirling stream. Here we were at once in different scenery. The rocks
were of red and grey granite, and there were shrubs enough to give some
greenness to the slopes. Stern and wild as the landscape was, it seemed
cheerful and homelike compared with the black grimness of the volcanic
region above. Night descended before we had emerged into the Argentine
plain, and when we drove through the friendly lights of Mendoza to
our hotel in the handsome Plaza, it was hard to believe that four
hours before we had been in the awesome Valley of Desolation between
Aconcagua and Tupungato.
To these two mountains Mendoza owes its existence. It stands in an
oasis watered by the torrent which brings down the melting of their
snows, the rest of this part of Argentina being an almost rainless
tract, where coarse grass and sometimes low scrub-woods cover ground
that is barely fit for pasturage and hopeless for tillage. At this
spot, however, the perennial flow of the glacier-born river suffices
to fill numerous channels by which water is carried through fields and
vineyards over a wide area, giving verdure and fertility. It was the
good fortune of this position that made Mendoza's lieutenant, Castillo,
choose this spot so far back as 1560 for the first Spanish settlement
made on this side of the mountains. For a long time it remained a tiny
and isolated outpost, useful only as a resting place on the track from
Chile to the Atlantic coast. But it was never forsaken, and though
frequently shaken and as late as 1860 laid in ruins by earthquakes, it
has of late years recovered itself and become a prosperous centre of
commerce.
It stands on the great Pampa, just at the point where the last
declivities of that low, flat-topped range to which I have referred
sink into the vast and almost unbroken level, slightly declining
eastward, which extends six hundred miles from here to Buenos Aires.
As the fear of earthquakes keeps the houses low, and the streets are
wide, it covers a space of ground large in proportion to its population
which is 45,000. The principal business thoroughfare is quite handsome
with double rows of lofty Carolina poplars and a cool stream of reddish
glacier water coursing along beneath. In the ample Plaza, planted with
plane trees, there is a colossal statue of San Martin the Liberator of
Argentina and Chile; and quite recently a large park with an artificial
lake has been laid out on the slope of the hill. All these adornments
are due to the Mendoza River (the one which descends from Aconcagua)
and two other smaller streams, whose combined waters have been
skilfully used not only to beautify the city, but to irrigate a wide
space round. Most of the land is planted with vines, but all sorts of
fruit trees, particularly peaches, pears, and cherries, are grown and
despatched by rail to the eastern cities. Vine culture is in the hands
of the Italians, who have settled here in large numbers, and brought
with them their skill in wine making. In an establishment which we saw,
managed by an Italian gentleman from Lombardy, it was interesting to
note how chemical science and mechanical invention have changed the
forms of this oldest of human industries. Thirty-five years before in
the port wine country of the Douro I had seen the ancient wine-press
scarcely changed, if changed at all, from the days of Virgil, perhaps
from the days of Isaiah, perhaps from the days of Noah, with the old
simple methods of casking and keeping the wine still in use. Now it is
all factory work, done like that of a foundry or a cotton mill by all
sorts of modern scientific methods and appliances. The wine made here
is of common quality, intended for the humbler part of the Argentine
population, who have happily not exchanged their South European
habits for the modern love of ardent spirits. Nearly all the country
is supplied from Mendoza because eastern Argentina is ill fitted for
viticulture. The vineyards, interspersed with meadows of the bright
blue-green alfalfa, give some beauty to the oasis, though the vines
are mostly trained on sticks, not made to climb the poplar or mulberry
as they do in north Italy. The land both north and south outside the
range of irrigation is a sterile wilderness, except along the banks
of a few streams that descend from the Andes, and to the east also it
remains barren for a long way, bearing nothing except the algaroba
tree, which is of use for firewood, but for little else. Travelling
still farther eastward, one reaches a region where a moister climate
gives grass sufficient for ranching, and thereafter, the rainfall
growing more copious as one approaches the Atlantic, comes the region
of those prodigious wheat fields which are now making the wealth of
this country.
Here in Argentina we were "on the other side of the hill," in a social
as well as in a physical sense, and we soon found ourselves trying
to note the differences between Chileans and Argentines, peoples
of the same origin, dwelling side by side but divided by a lofty
mountain chain. Two contrasts are evident. Chile is, always excepting
Santiago and Valparaiso, a quiet tranquil country, developing itself
in a leisurely way. But in Mendoza, though it is one of the smaller
Argentine towns, there is a stir and bustle like that of England or
Germany or North America. Land values are going up. Branch lines
of railway are being run through the outskirts of the city among
the vineyards. The main streets are crowded, and there is a general
air of "expansion" and money making. Then in Chile the population
is stable and comparatively homogeneous. The Germans who are found
in some of the small southern towns have settled down and become
completely domesticated. But here in Argentina the Italians who flock
in daily are conspicuous as a growing element, which is contributing
effectively to the wealth of the country, for most of the immigrants
are hard-working and intelligent people from Lombardy and Piedmont.
To describe with precision the differences between the Argentines
proper, that is to say, those of Spanish stock, and the Chileans, is
not easy for a passing foreign visitor, nor can he attempt to judge
whether the Chilean is justified in claiming that he is more frank and
open, and the Argentine that he is more perfectly a child of his time.
One does, however, receive the impression that the Argentine, being
usually better off, is more disposed to enjoy himself. In both nations
Castilian courtesy has lost some of its elaborateness, but those who
know both say that the change has tended to make the Chilean of the
less educated class more abrupt even to the verge of brusqueness, and
the Argentine more offhand and "casual." The prosperous Argentine
gathers money quickly and spends it freely; the Chilean retains the
frugality of old Spain, and while the former is more vivacious, the
latter is more solid.
Placed on the edge of a monotonous desert, and far from all other
cities, Mendoza may seem a depressing place to dwell in, yet it has
some attractions for those to whom natural environment means something.
At the end of those streets which open to the west glimpses are caught
of the distant richly coloured mountains; and the man who goes to and
fro amidst the crowd on his daily tasks is reminded of the beauty of
a far-off lonely nature. Then there is the view of the Andes from the
southwestern outskirts of the city. It is a view specially noble just
at sunrise, when the level light reddens the long line of ghostly snows
that stretches south for more than a hundred miles from where the cone
of Tupungato, towering above its fellows, is the first to catch the
rays. It is like the view of the Alps from Turin, and even grander,
since not only the height, but also the immense length of the Andean
range, trending away towards distant Patagonia till its furthest peaks
sink below the horizon, lays upon the imagination the spell of vastness
and mystery.
A third equally striking prospect is that over the Pampa from the high
ground of the new park. There is something in looking over a boundless
plain that inspires more awe than even the grandest mountain landscape.
The latter is limited, the former thrills the mind with a sense of
infinity, land and sky meeting at a point which one cannot fix. There
is little colour on this plain and little variety of aspect except that
given by the shadows of the coursing clouds. But its uniformity seems
to make it the more solemn.
Over that plain lay our shortest way to Buenos Aires and Europe, along
the line of railroad that runs for hundreds of miles without a curve
or a rise or a bridge, always steadily eastward to the sea. But it
is a dull and dusty journey through a monotonous landscape, at first
mostly desert, then mostly pasture, at last mostly wheat fields, but
always flat as a table, possibly the widest perfectly level plain in
the whole world. And we had the stronger reason for not taking this
route that it had been a main object of our journey to see the Straits
of Magellan, that great sea highway from ocean to ocean, the finding
and traversing of which was an achievement second only to the voyage
of Columbus. So leaving Mendoza before dawn, we threaded the windings
of the granite cañon, and then, passing the little plain of Uspallata,
took our way up the long volcanic Valley of Desolation, that leads to
the pass, finding it not less strange and terrible than it had seemed
two days before. When we reached the Argentine end of the tunnel at Las
Cuevas, we quitted the train in order to mount to and cross the top of
the pass, the _Cumbre_, as it is called, which is fifteen hundred feet
above, and over which, until the tunnel was pierced, all travellers
walked or rode. The ridge is composed of friable volcanic rock,
decomposed to a sort of coarse gravel, steep on both sides, but most
so on the Argentine. The road, which, although rough, is still barely
passable for light vehicles, is not likely long to remain so, as no one
now crosses the ridge, unless indeed he wishes to see the statue on the
top.
We took mules, for in this thin air it is well to save effort by
riding when one can, and as there was no vegetation, there could be
no gathering of alpine plants. But more than once we had occasion to
feel that we should have been happier on our feet, for in heading
the animals across short cuts between the windings of the track we
got on slopes so steep that it was a marvel how the creatures could
keep their feet. It was now past midday, so a furious west wind was
careering over this gap between the far loftier heights on either side,
and making it hard for the mules to resist it, and for us to keep in
the saddle. Once upset, one might have rolled down for hundreds of
feet, for there was nothing for beast or rider to catch at.
The Cumbre is a flattish ridge hardly a quarter of a mile across, with
towers of rock rising on each side, the cold intense and no shelter
anywhere from the biting blast. There is a small stone hut, but it was
half full of snow. One thought of the hapless travellers of former
days caught here in some blinding snowstorm far from human help. One
recalled the daring march of that detachment of the Argentine army
of San Martin, when, in 1817, they crossed the pass in that hero's
expedition to deliver Chile from the yoke of Spain, the rest of his
force having taken the equally difficult though less lofty route by the
Los Patos Pass to the north of Aconcagua. The passages of the Alps by
Hannibal and by Napoleon were over ridges only half as high and only
half as far from the dwellings of men.
The view to the west into Chile looking down into the abysmal depths of
the valley that leads to Santa Rosa, with formidable spires and towers
of rock nineteen thousand feet high rising on either hand, grand and
terrible as it is, is less extensive and less imposing than that to the
east into Argentina. Both Tupungato to the south and Aconcagua to the
north are hidden by nearer heights, the latter by the huge Tolorsa,
whose cliff-crested slope descends in singularly beautiful lines to
the hollow of Las Cuevas. But to the east are the two great ranges that
enclose the valley, their forms less bold than those of the Chilean
mountains to the west, where rain and snow wear down the softer rocks,
and leave the crags standing up like great teeth, but their colours
richer and more various.
On the level summit of the pass stands the Christ of the Andes,
a bronze statue of more than twice life size standing on a stone
pedestal rough hewn from the natural rock of the mountain. The
figure, which is turned northwards so as to look over both countries
and bless them with its uplifted right hand, is dwarfed by the vast
scale of the surrounding pinnacles, and although there is dignity
in the attitude and tenderness in the face, it hardly satisfies the
conception one forms of what such a figure might be. Rarely does
any modern representation of the Redeemer approach the dignity and
simplicity which the painters and sculptors of the Middle Ages and
early Renaissance knew how to give.[65] But when one reflects on the
feeling that placed this statue here and the meaning it has for the two
peoples, it is profoundly impressive. There had been a long and bitter
controversy between Chile and Argentina over the line of their boundary
along the Andes, a controversy which more than once had threatened war.
At last they agreed to refer the dispute to the arbitrament of Queen
Victoria of Great Britain. A commission was authorized by her and her
successor to examine the documents which bore upon the question and
to survey the frontier. After years of careful enquiry an award was
delivered and a boundary line drawn in which both nations acquiesced.
Grateful for their escape from what might have been a long and ruinous
strife, they cast this figure out of the metal of cannon, and set up
here this monument of peace and good-will, unique in its place and in
its purpose, to be an everlasting witness between them.
We descended the opposite side of the pass on foot in the teeth of the
raging blast, taking short cuts across the broken rocks, and avoiding
the steep snow beds. At Caracoles, the stopping place at the Chilean
end of the tunnel, the manager of the railway, a bright and pleasant
young North American engineer, who had accompanied us over the top,
and to whose courtesy we had been much beholden on the whole trip,
proposed to run us down the first and steepest part of the descent to
the station of Rio Blanco, on an open trolley. By now the sun was near
his setting, but there would presently be some moon, so we welcomed
the suggestion of this less familiar kind of locomotion and started in
the waning light, sitting on a low bench back to back, so as to steady
one another, while our friend the manager took his seat on the edge
of the little car and grasped the brake handle. We ran swiftly down
the first steep incline to the Frozen Lake, while the orange glow of
the sky was paling to a cold and steely grey, then out to the edge of
the ridge which rises above Juncal, then down into the black depths
of the Juncal Valley, along the narrow shelf cut out of the rock,
rushing down the steep incline in and out of the tunnels. The tunnels
were hardly blacker than the night without, for the moon was still
hidden behind the peaks. At length she rose over the crags, just where
the torrent comes down from behind Tupungato, and for the rest of our
twenty-six miles we could by her help see a little way ahead, just
enough to know if some block had fallen from above upon the rails. It
was bitterly cold, but cold is more easily borne in this keen, dry air
than in humid England, and sometimes we forgot it in noting how the
trolley quickened or reduced its speed as the practised hand on the
brake loosened it on a straight run or pressed it hard when we entered
a dangerous curve. Twice before I had made similar descents, once down
the Himalayan railway from Darjiling to Siliguri, and once through the
dismal solitudes of the Bolan Pass in Beluchistan. But those were in
broad daylight. To get the thrills of such a ride in their brimming
fulness one must take it in the pale moonlight, passing into and out of
the shadow of black crags as one spins along the ringing lines of steel.
As it is here that I bid farewell to the Andes, this is a fitting place
for some observations on their scenery, as compared with that of the
mountain systems more familiar to most of us, such as the Alps and the
Caucasus, and the Himalayas, in the Old World; the Rocky Mountains
and Sierra Nevada in the New. It is, however, only of the central and
southern parts of the Andes, and for the most part of their western
side, that I can speak, for I had no time to visit the valleys which
descend into the forests of eastern Peru and Bolivia. But before I come
to the scenery, let a few words be said upon the mountains from the
climber's point of view, as offering a field for his energy and skill.
The Andes are not only a longer and loftier chain than any of those
just named, except the Himalayas, but are altogether on a vaster scale,
the plateaux higher and wider, the valleys longer and deeper. Thus they
bear what one may call a different ratio to man,--that is to say, his
power of walking and climbing enables him to accomplish less in a given
time in these two greater than in the lesser ranges. He is less able
to cope with their heights and their distances, especially as above
a certain height the rarity of the air reduces his powers. In Great
Britain an active man can ascend two of the highest mountains in a day
without fatigue. In the Alps a first-class peak demands the afternoon
of one day and the forenoon of another. A little more time is required
in the Caucasus, a little less in the Pyrenees or the Tatra. But in the
central Andes he may probably have to give several days to one ascent,
so much more effort is required to reach the summit from his base of
operations. A _coup de main_ is seldom possible; one must allow plenty
of time and make elaborate preparations.
When huge mountains with spreading bases stand apart from one another,
they less frequently combine to form a landscape perfect in the
variety of its features than do the mountains of lower ranges. Size
is only one element in grandeur. A single peak, or even one of its
precipices, may be sublime in the boldness of its lines and its
enormous bulk, yet too isolated for that kind of beauty which lies
either in the combination of fine lines or in the contrast of rich
colours. A mountain that rises alone in a desolate region, strewn with
tumbled rocks and ancient moraines, or, if it be a volcano, with fields
of ashes and lava spreading miles from its base, may want the elements
which make the charm of scenery in Europe or the temperate parts of
North America. Andean peaks are often seen best a long way off, so that
they fall into groups or show one behind the other, giving variety of
position and contrast of form. Then, the unlovely heaps of gravel and
stones or ash cease to deface the landscape, because distance, touching
them with delicate colour, gives them a beauty not their own.
These atmospheric effects are of supreme value in the scenery of the
arid parts of South America, in which one may include nearly all of the
higher Peruvian, Bolivian, and North Argentine Andes. Such a dryness as
belongs to the Pacific coast and to the central plateau from Titicaca
southward into the desert of Atacama withdraws an element which gives
half their charm to the best parts of Europe, for it forbids grass to
clothe the hillsides and groves to break the monotony of plains. From
the Equator till one reaches central Chile, there is scarcely any water
in Andean landscapes, very few lakes, except Titicaca, few rivers, and
those rivers usually torrents, raging at the bottom of deep gorges,
where they are heard, but scarcely seen. There is, except in the deeper
valleys, no wood, seldom even such glossy shrubs or stunted and gnarled
trees as one finds on the dry isles and coasts of the Ægean and the
Levant, or on the equally dry hills of California and Arizona. Neither,
except in a few upland valleys, is there any verdure of grassy slopes.
Green, the softest and most tender of hues, is almost wholly absent
from the great ranges and the plateau. On the eastern side of the Andes
there is, indeed, vegetation enough and to spare, but once plunged into
the forest all distant views are lost, for it is everywhere so thick
that neither it nor the mountains above can be seen at all. Except when
cresting a ridge, the traveller swelters under an unbroken roof of
impenetrable foliage.
What redeems the scenery of the high Andes is the richness and delicacy
of the colours which the brilliant desert light gives to distant
objects. A black peak becomes deep purple; a slope of dry, grey earth
takes a tender lilac; and evening as it falls transfigures the stones
that strew the sides of a valley with a soft glow. The snow sparkles
and glitters at noonday and flushes in sunset with a radiance unknown
to our climates. This is what replaces for these regions the charm of
the thick woods and marshy pools of New England, of the deep grassed
river meadows of France, or the heathery hillsides of Scotland, and
brightens the sternness of those vast prospects which the Cordillera
affords. Yet it cannot make them inspire the sort of affection we
feel for the mountains of temperate countries, with their constant
changes from rain to sunlight, their fresh streams and bubbling
springs, and flowers starring the high pastures. So the finest things
in the Andes are either the views of a single giant peak, like that of
Aconcagua, described a few pages back, or some distant prospect of a
great mountain group or range, such as that of the snowy line of the
Cordillera Real as it rises beyond Titicaca, or the volcanic peaks of
Arequipa seen from the desert of the coast.
It follows from what has been said that the Andes offer a much less
favourable field for the landscape painter than do the lower mountains
of European countries, such as Scotland or Norway, or the Pyrenees or
Apennines. The nearer and lesser beauties which the painter loves are
just those which are here wanting. Sometimes one finds landscapes which
some master of the grand style might place upon a large canvas. Several
such there are in the Vilcañota Valley, especially below Sicuani, and
still further down at Ollantaytambo. But the want of what is called
"atmosphere" and the comparative scarcity of the objects which make
good foregrounds are serious disadvantages. Grandeur and wildness, not
beauty, are the note of these regions. Immense depths and heights, vast
spaces, too bleak and bare for human life, lying between the habitable
valleys, the sense of tremendous forces at work piling up huge volcanic
cones, of unthinkable periods of time during which the hard rocks
have been crumbling away and fathomless gorges have been excavated
by rivers,--these are the things of which the Andes speak, and they
speak to the imagination rather than to the sense of beauty. They are
awesome, not loveable.
It is with European scenery, as that likely to be most familiar to
my readers, that I have been trying to compare the scenery of the
Cordilleras. But a word may be added about the Himalayas, since they,
too, are on a great scale and the fitter to be compared to the Andes
because near, though not actually within, the tropics.
They resemble the Andes in being too vast for beauty and for the sort
of enjoyment to be derived from wandering among mountains of a moderate
size, whose heights one can reach with no excessive fatigue. It is even
more difficult in them than in the Cordilleras to explore the valleys
and reach the base of the great summits. They offer some prospects
wider and grander than any in South America, such as that from Phalut
on the borders of Nepal and Sikkim, where forty peaks, each of which
exceeds twenty thousand feet, stand up east, north, and west of the
beholder.[66] The capital difference between the two chains, besides
that difference in the forms which arises from geological character,
the Himalayas being composed of ancient crystalline rocks, while many
of the high Andes are of volcanic origin, lies in the fact that the
south side of the Himalayas receives abundance of rain and is covered
with dense forests. This adds to the sublimity of the great Himalayan
views a certain measure of beauty which the Andes lack. On the other
hand those effects of colour on bare surfaces which belong to dryness
and a powerful sun, are absent in the parts of the Himalayas which
front toward India. When one passes behind the outer peaks into the
great tableland of Tibet, physical conditions resembling those of the
Andean deserts appear; and the same remark applies to the inner valleys
of the northwestern Himalaya, such as that of the upper Indus. The
parallel may be carried further, for just as the Himalayan chain has a
dry side, that turned to the lofty northern plateau of Tibet, so the
Andean Cordillera has a wet side, its eastern, turned to the Amazonian
forests. This side I have not seen, but gather from those who have that
its rock and river scenery is superbly beautiful in the valleys, but
that it is more difficult than in the Himalayas to obtain a distant
view of the great range, because the points are few at which one can
get above the forest.
Europe, although the smallest, is, in point of the accessibility,
and of what may be called the serviceability to man, of its beauty,
the most fortunate of the continents. Less grand and extensive than
either the Himalayas or the Andes, the Alps have more of varied charm,
and contain more of mingled magnificence and loveliness than any
other mountain chain. It would lead me too far afield to discuss the
respective merits of South American and of North American scenery.
But those who have seen both will agree that there is nothing in the
Andes which better combines beauty with majesty than the Yosemite and
its sister cañons in the Sierra Nevada of California, and nothing so
extraordinary as the Grand Cañon of the Colorado River in Arizona.
It may seem more natural to compare the Andean Plateau with what most
nearly corresponds to it in North America, the plateau of Anahuac, in
the centre of which lie the lakes and the city of Mexico. The northern
parts of that country are for the most part bare mountains and barren
desert, but on this plateau seven thousand feet above sea level there
is rain enough to give fertile fields and woods and a profusion of
flowers upon the hillsides. There is the brilliant sunlight of the
tropics without their too rank vegetation. Ranges of craggy hills
traverse it, and a few great snowy cones, such as Popocatepetl and
Citlaltetepl (near the town of Orizava), rise in solitary grandeur
from its surface to a height of seventeen thousand feet. The presence
together of all these elements creates landscapes of surpassing beauty.
Even in Italy and on the coasts of Asia Minor I have seen nothing
equal to the views of the plain and lakes of Mexico from the castle
of Chapultepec and the views of the broad valley of Cuernavaca either
from that city or from the heights around it. These landscapes are not
only lovely in their combination of hill and plain, of rock and forest,
with snowclad summits closing the distance: they are also "in the grand
style," ample and harmonious landscapes such as one has in the greatest
pieces of Claude Lorrain or Turner. Whether there are any equal to
these on the east side of the Andes I cannot say. Those on the west
side have equal amplitude and equal grandeur, but not such finished
beauty.
Can a lover of nature in general and of mountains in particular be
advised to take the long journey to western South America for the sake
of its scenery? If he be a mountain climber who enjoys exploration
and pants for yet untrodden peaks, he will find an almost untouched
sphere for his energies, summits of all degrees of difficulty from
eighteen thousand to twenty-two thousand feet, with the advantage of
having at certain times of the year uninterruptedly fine weather and a
marvellously clear air. If, not aiming so high, he nevertheless loves
natural beauty enough not to regard some discomforts, and if, having
a sound heart and lungs, he does not fear great altitudes, he will be
repaid by seeing something different in kind from anything which the
mountains of Europe and North America and Africa have to shew, and
the like of which can be seen only in the Himalaya and the even less
approachable desert ranges of central Asia, such as the Thian-Shan
and Kuen-Lun. The Andes have a character that is all their own, while
in the temperate region of the South Chilean Cordillera one finds
landscapes which, while not so unlike as are the Peruvian to those
of western Europe and the Pacific coast of North America, have also
a charm peculiar to themselves, which will endear them to the memory
of whoever has traversed their flowery forests and sailed upon their
snow-girt lakes.
NOTE TO CHAPTER VII
GENERAL SAN MARTIN'S PASSAGE OF THE ANDES
The passage of the Andes by the army of San Martin has been
pronounced by military historians of authority to have been one of
the most remarkable operations ever accomplished in mountain warfare.
The forces which he led were no doubt small compared to those which
Suvarof and Macdonald commanded in their famous Swiss campaigns,
and small also when compared to those which Hannibal and Napoleon
carried across the Alps. But the valleys which the two detachments
of San Martin's army had to traverse lay in an arid and practically
uninhabited region, and the passes to be crossed were much higher.
This added immensely to the hardships and difficulties of the march,
yet few men were lost.
San Martin divided his army into two parts. The smaller, in charge
of Colonel Las Heras, consisted of eight hundred men, including two
field guns and a few cavalry. It proceeded by the Uspallata Pass,
over the Cumbre, while the larger, under San Martin himself, moved
by the much longer and colder though not quite so lofty route over
the pass of Los Patos to the north of Aconcagua. The rendezvous was
successfully effected at the exact point chosen by San Martin, where
the two lines of march down the two valleys on the Chilean side of
the Cordillera converge a little below the village of Santa Rosa de
los Andes, now the terminus of the Trans-Andine railway. San Martin,
screened by the Andes, had from his position at Mendoza so skilfully
contrived to deceive and perplex the commander of the Spanish army
in Chile as to induce him to scatter his greatly superior force
over much too long a line, so as to guard the various passes, all
very difficult, which lie to the south of the Uspallata. Thus when
San Martin, having effected his own concentration near Santa Rosa,
marched straight upon Santiago, he was able to overpower the Spanish
army, still somewhat larger than his own, when it tried to bar his
path at Chacabuco. The Spanish general fled to the coast, and though
some time had yet to pass before San Martin won his decisive victory
at Maipo, and before Lord Cochrane drove the Spaniards out of their
last maritime strongholds at Corral, the crossing of the Andes was
not only the most brilliant operation of the whole war, but was also
that which most contributed to the liberation of Chile and Peru.
The best account I have been able to find of this campaign is in
Mitre's elaborate _Historia de San Martin_, with the accompanying
volumes of _Documentos_. The description there given of the crossing
of the passes is, however, sadly wanting in topographical details.
José de San Martin, a strong and silent man, whose character and
achievements have been little known or appreciated outside his own
country, had learnt war under the Duke of Wellington in Spain. He
comes nearer than any one else to being the George Washington of
Spanish America.