South America Observations and Impressions

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.