In each division of the American Continent, nature seems to have carried on her operations with boundless magnificence, and upon a gigantic scale. Chateaubriand, reclining by his watch-fire on the banks of the Niagara, where the thunders of its cataract were only interrupted by the startling yell of the Iroquois, could yet feel, in the midst of tumult, the amazing silence and solitude of the North American forest. And the hardy mariner, whose bark has escaped the perils of the Southern sea, and is wafted along the western coast of Chili, looks with no less admiration upon the fertile plains gradually receding into the swell of the Andes, which literally lifts its smoking craters and towering eminences above the clouds, and upon its snow-capped and sunny summits, scarcely feels the undulations of the storms which gather and burst around its waist.
With the stars and stripes of the Union floating from the mast-head of our frigate, we were sailing along that part of the coast of Chili, where the waving line of the Andes rounds within a short distance of the Pacific, and were unusually solicitous, after the perils and privations of a tempestuous sea-voyage, to tread upon a soil on which nature, from her horn of abundance, has poured forth the choicest of her gifts.
Older sailors than ourselves had spoken of the generous hospitality of the Spanish colonists, and there were historical associations connected with this favored land, well calculated to render a visit agreeable. Who that has been nurtured in the lap of freedom, would not long to look upon the only race of native people on the western continent who had never been subdued, and who, to this day, tread the soil of their forefathers unvanquished and invincible?
The Araucanians, who inhabit the southern portion of this delightful country, like the Saxons of the European continent, are the only native race who have successfully repelled every invader, and who, happier than the Saxon, still rejoice in their unbridled freedom.
Neither Diego Almagro, with his brutal treachery, nor Valverde, with his unsparing cruelty, could ever subdue or intimidate a race of freemen whose liberties still survive the frequent convulsions by which they have been agitated. The flame of freedom among this gallant people, like the volcanoes of their native mountains, seems destined to burn on for ever unextinguished. But I proposed to speak of the Condor Hunt on the plains of Chili.
Every one has heard of the Condor or Great Vulture of the Andes, rivaling in natural history, the fabled feats of the Roc of Sinbad. Even the genius of Humboldt has failed to strip this giant bird of its time-honored renown, and his effort to reduce the Chilian Condor to the level of the Lammergyer of the Alps, is a signal failure.
Although he has divested this mountain-bird of all its fictitious attributes, and stripped a goodly portion of romantic narrative of its wildest imagery, yet the Condor still floats in the solitude of the higher heavens, the monarch of the feathered race. The favorite abiding-place of this formidable bird is along a chain of mountains in our southern continent, whose summits, lifted far above the clouds, are robed in snow, which a torrid sun may kiss but never melt. Above all animal life, and beyond the limit of even mountain vegetation, these birds delight to dwell, inhaling an air too highly attenuated to be endured by other than creatures peculiarly adapted to it. From the crown of these immense elevations they slowly and lazily unfold their sweeping pinions, and wheeling in wide and ascending circles, they soar upward into the dark blue vault of heaven, until their great bulk diminishes to the merest speck, or is entirely lost to the aching sight of the observer.
“All day thy wings have fanned,
At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere,
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,