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.