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.