[CHAPTER XVII]
A TRIP INTO THE ANDES
It was intended to be a jolly party. We were going to Puerta del Inca and to make a picnic of it. There was the Englishman, born in Australia, trained in the United States and now an engineering expert in Argentina. He was the biggest man I met in the Republic, and his friends called him "Chico," which means the little one. There was the Scot, grizzled and cautious, who disappeared for months and was away exploring the unknown mountains up in the snows, carrying his camp with him, never seeing anybody with whom he could converse, coming back with maps of possible new routes over the frozen shoulders of the Andes, and who loved long hours in the English Club in Mendoza, expressing Carlylean views about the world, quoting poetry and enjoying long games at cards. There was the man who came out here from England many years ago to help in the building of the Transandine railway, married a Spanish wife, has taken to vine growing, and knows he now speaks his native tongue with a foreign accent. There were others, men who had knocked about the world and had done things; men with none of the light talk of stay-at-home Englishmen, but showing strong character kneaded by rough circumstances.
| "CHICO" IN CHARGE. |
| A CORNER OF THE ENGLISH CLUB AT MENDOZA. |
The trip was arranged amongst the orange trees which grow in the little courtyard of the English Club. It was when the night was warm and we stretched in easy chairs, puffing smoke rings at the moon. "Chico" was master of ceremonies. What he arranged was to be right. And we were to be ready early the next morning, for a special coach was to be fastened to the express coming through from Buenos Aires on its way to Valparaiso.