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.