What I had seen of the aspects of nature round Santiago increased the desire to know something of southern Chile, a region little visited by travellers, but reported to be full of those beauties which make the scenery of temperate regions more attractive, at least to persons born in the temperate zone, than all the grandeurs of the tropics. Accordingly we set off for the south, the Chilean government having kindly provided special facilities along their railways.53 All the lines, except that which crosses the Andes into Argentina, are the property of the state. From Santiago to the strait which separates the large island of Chiloe from the mainland, a distance of 650 miles, there stretches that long depression mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, the northern part of which contains nearly all of the population as well as most of the cultivable area of the republic. The railway that traverses it from end to end is the main highway of the country sending off branches which run westward to the towns that lie on or near the coast, and as it keeps generally in the middle of the valley, one gets admirable views toward the Andes on one side and the Coast Range on the other.
Travelling south, one observes four changes in physical conditions. The rainfall steadily increases. At Santiago it is only about fifteen inches in the year; at Valdivia, 440 miles to the south, it is seven times as great. With this abundant rainfall, the streams are fuller, the landscape greener, the grass richer, the trees taller. The mountains sink in height, and not the Andes only, but the average height of the Coast Range also. The snow line also sinks. Near Santiago it is about 14,000 feet above sea-level; at Valdivia it is rather under 6000. These four things completely alter the character of the scenery. It is less grand, for one sees no such mighty peaks and wide snowfields as rise over Santiago, but it is more approachable, with a softer air and more profuse vegetation. As compared with the desert regions of northern Chile, the difference is as great as that between the verdure of Ireland and the sterility of the Sahara.
From Santiago to Osorno, the southern limit of our journey, there was beauty everywhere, beauty in the fields and meadows which the railway traverses, beauty in the wild quebradas (narrow glens) that descend from the Andes, beauty in the glimpses of the snow mountains where a break in the nearer hills reveals them. But I must be content to speak of a few points only.
The long depression between the Andes and the Coast Range, which forms the best part of Chile, is crossed by a series of large and rapid rivers descending from the Andean snows and forcing their way through the clefts in the Coast Range to the sea. The first of these is the Maule, which was the southernmost limit of the conquests of the Inca monarchs. Next to it, as one goes south, is the still larger Biobio, on whose banks the Spaniards strove for nearly a century with the fierce Araucanian tribes, till at last, despairing of success, they desisted and allowed it to be the boundary of their power. It is the greatest of all Chilean streams, with a broad and strong current, but is too shallow for navigation, and the commercial city of Concepcion, which lies a little above its mouth, uses the harbour of Talcahuano as its port.
Here, one is already in a well-watered land, but before I describe the scenery of this delightful region something may be said of the coast towns, which are quite unlike those of northern Chile and Peru. Concepcion, founded by Valdivia to bridle the Indians, is an attractive little city, with a large plaza and wide streets, which are tidy and well kept. Indeed, as compared with those of Spain and Italy, the larger cities of South America are as superior in cleanliness as they are inferior in architectural interest. Cuzco stands almost alone in its offensiveness to sight and smell. The cheerful airiness and brightness of the place are enhanced by the beauty of the wide river on whose north side it stands, and along whose shores, backed by wooded hills, there are many pretty villas with gardens, most of them the property of the British and German colonies who live here in social good will and active business competition. The former have laid out an excellent golf course a few miles away towards the Ocean and have infected some Chileans with their passion for the Scottish game. Though not now so large as Valparaiso, the city has played a more important part in Chilean history, for it was the military capital of the southern frontier on the side of Araucania and the centre of the energetic and fighting population of that region. The leading families formed the only aristocratic group that was capable of resisting, as, after independence had been achieved, they did occasionally resist, the larger aristocratic group of Santiago. There was not enough wealth in those days to build stately churches or mansions, but the place has a look of dignity and is more Chilean and less cosmopolitan than Valparaiso.
Talcahuano, possessing the finest natural harbour in central Chile, has been made the principal naval stronghold of this country which sets store upon the strength of its navy, deemed essential to protect its immensely long coast line. An enemy possessing a more powerful fleet would, it is thought, have Chile at its mercy until the longitudinal railway is completed which is to run the whole length of the country parallel to the coast. A naval harbour has been formed and docks built and batteries erected to command the approaches. From the heights one sees across the ample bay the site of an old Spanish town, abandoned because exposed to the English and Dutch sea-rovers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Since this time no hostile European vessels54 have appeared in these waters, though they have seen plenty of sea-fights in the days of the Revolution and in those of the great war between Chile and Peru, and again in the civil war between Balmaceda and the Congress.
Two other places on the Chilean coast are worth mentioning. From Concepcion a railroad, crossing the Biobio by a bridge three-quarters of a mile long, runs southward to the ports of Coronel and Lota. The shore, sometimes rocky, sometimes bordered by thickets or grassy flats behind sand beaches, is extremely picturesque; and were it in the populous parts of Europe or North America, it would be lined by summer cottages and alive with children. But its vegetation and general aspect are curiously unlike those of the Atlantic coasts of either of those two continents, and remind one rather of California. At Lota, the hills rise boldly from the sea and a large island lying some way out gives variety to the ocean view. Here, on an eminence behind the town, is a garden of singular interest and beauty which I had especially wished to see because it had excited the admiration of my friend, the late Mr. John Ball, the distinguished botanist and traveller, who has described it in his Notes of a Naturalist in South America, published in 1887. It occupies the top of a hill which breaks down almost precipitously to the shore, and was formed by a wealthy Chilean, the owner of a coal mine and copper smelting works close by, who built a handsome villa, and assisted by an energetic Irish gardener, laid out a park with admirable taste, gathering and planting a great variety of trees and shrubs and so disposing the walks as to give delightful views along the coast and out into the ocean. There are few things in the course of journeys which one recalls with more pleasure than parks and gardens which combine opportunities for studying the flora of a new country with the enjoyment of natural beauty. This place had the peculiar interest of showing how, in a mild and humid climate, trees and shrubs from sub-tropical regions may flourish side by side with those of the temperate zone. Its profuse variety of trees, many of them seen by us for the first time, lives in my recollection with the gardens of the Scilly Isles and those on Valentia Island on the coast of Kerry, and the famous park at Cintra (near Lisbon), the two former of these possessing similarly favourable climatic conditions. The landscape at Lota is more beautiful than at any of those spots, and though it is marred by the smoke of the smelting works placed here to take advantage of the coal mine, one must remember that without the coal mine and the smelting works their owner would not have had the money to expend on the park and gardens.
About two hundred miles to the south of Concepcion a large river finds its way to the sea through a comparatively wide and open valley and meets the tide of the ocean at a point where Valdivia, the lieutenant of Pizarro, whom I have already mentioned as the first Spaniard to penetrate into these wild regions, built a small fort and called it by his own name. His fort was thenceforth the chief and sometimes the only seat of Spanish power in this whole stretch of country, constantly besieged and reduced to dire extremity by the warlike Indians, but almost always saved because it was accessible by sea from the ports of Peru. No trace now remains of the ancient stronghold, nor, indeed, are there any old houses, for in this well-wooded part of Chile houses are built of timber and fires are proportionately numerous and destructive. A terrible one had swept away half the town in 1909. They were busy rebuilding and improving it, for the country all round is being brought into cultivation, and trade is brisk. The phenomena remind one of western North America, though the pace at which population grows and natural resources are developed is far slower. There is a German colony, of course with a large brewery, the chief manufacturing industry of the spot, and a somewhat smaller British mercantile colony. The town stretches along both banks of the broad stream, on which light steamers ply to the seaport of Corral, some twelve miles below. Here, also, the resources of the land are being exploited. A French company has erected large works for the smelting of copper, which is brought by sea from the ports of northern Chile. All the most recent metallurgical appliances have been introduced, and a considerable population has been drawn to the place. It is, however, an indigenous population. That inrush of immigrants from Europe, which is the conspicuous feature in North America, wherever railways or other large works are being executed, or new industries set up, is here wanting. It has not yet been worth while to tempt Italian or Slavonic labour from Europe. Here at Corral, one touches an interesting bit of history. There are on both sides of the port ancient forts which command not only the harbour and the passage out to sea, but lovely views over the smiling land and wooded mountains. In their present form they seem to date from the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century. They stand now as mouldering and grass-grown monuments of a vanished empire. Erected to protect the colonists from British and Dutch attacks, they succumbed long afterwards to a later British adventurer leading those colonists themselves against the power of Spain. Less than a century ago (in 1817) they saw one of the most brilliant achievements of Lord Cochrane, then fighting for the Chilean revolutionaries, when with the crews of his few ships he stormed these forts, chasing the Spaniards away to Valdivia and received next day the surrender of that town, their last stronghold on the Chilean mainland. The services of this Scotchman are gratefully remembered here along with those of two men of Irish stock, O'Higgins and Lynch. All three have won a fame not unlike that of Lafayette and Rochambeau in the United States.
In these seaports we saw the commercial side of Chilean town life, a side in which the foreigner plays a considerable part, whether he manages metal works for European capitalists or represents some great English or German trading firm. Temuco, situated in a purely agricultural district, supplying its wants and serving as a market for its produce, is of a different type and gave one a notion of what corresponds in Chile to the smaller country town of England or North America. It is a new place, for this region was almost purely Indian till thirty years ago, covers a great deal of ground, and reminds one more of an Hungarian or Russian town than of the North American West, for the wide and generally unpaved streets were not planted with trees and the one story houses were mostly thatched. The air was soft and humid, rich green meadows stretched out on every side and though there were evident signs of growth and comfort, nobody was in a hurry. The country is lovely. To the west are picturesque wooded hills, outliers of the Coast Range, and on the east, there opens a view of the Andes twenty or thirty miles distant, their snowpeaks rising behind a mass of dark green forest. We were entertained to dinner by the officers of the regiment quartered here, the commandant, who was also governor of the district, presiding, and met a large and agreeable company composed of the officers and their wives, a few officials, and some of the chief business men. Here, as everywhere in Chile, educated society is more modern and less ecclesiastical in sentiment than what the traveller finds in the more northerly republics. In listening to the graceful and well-phrased speech in which the commandant toasted the guests, we had fresh occasion to admire the resources of the Castilian tongue, which like the Italian, perhaps even more than the Italian, seems to lend itself more naturally than English or German to oratory of an ornamental kind.
While in Peru and Bolivia the great mass of the aboriginal population remained distinct from their Spanish masters, in Chile the fusion began early and went steadily on until, except in one district, the two races were blended. A certain number of families, including most of the aristocracy, have remained pure white; but many more intermarried with the natives, and the peasants of to-day belong to this mixed race. As elsewhere in Spanish America, the man of mixed blood deems himself white, and does so the more easily here, because over most of the country there are no longer any pure Indians. The aborigines of this region were less advanced in the arts of life than those of Peru, but they were better fighters and of a bolder spirit. They have made a good blend with the whites; the Chilean roto is a hardy and vigorous man.55
The one district in which a pure Indian race has remained is that in which Temuco stands, for this is the land of those Araucanian Indians to whom I have already referred, a race deservedly famous as the only aboriginal people of the Western hemisphere that successfully resisted the European intruders.56 I had imagined this people dwelling in the recesses of forest-covered mountains, and themselves tall and stalwart men like the Patagonian giants whom Magellan encountered on the other side of the Andes. But the Mapoche57—that is the name by which the Araucanians call themselves—are, in fact, short men, though sturdy and muscular, with broad faces, not unlike some East Asiatic types. Their country is part of that long and wide depression which constitutes the Central Valley of Chile, a fertile land which, though doubtless once more thickly wooded than it now is, was probably, even in the days of Valdivia's invasion, partly open savannah. There is, and apparently there always has been, so little game that the natives must have lived chiefly by tillage, for they had, of course, neither sheep nor cattle. Although less civilized than were the tribes dwelling north of them, who had received some of the material culture of the Inca empire, they had risen above the savage state, and were at least as far advanced as were the Algonquins or Dakotas of North America. They had organized a sort of fighting confederacy of four tribes, resembling the "Long House" of the Iroquois Five Nations. Each tribe had its leading family in which the chieftainship was hereditary, but if the eldest son were not equal to the place, a second or other son might be selected by the tribe in his stead. For war, they chose leaders of special bravery or talent, as Tacitus tells us that the Germans of his time did. Their weapons were the lance, probably a sort of assegai, and the axe or tomahawk of stone, and a club of wood, sometimes with a stone head fastened to it. When Valdivia, having overcome the more northerly tribes, and having strengthened his force by contingents from them, crossed the Biobio into the Araucanian country, the chiefs of the confederacy summoned a general assembly of all the fighting men—a sort of Homeric agora—and after three days' debate, resolved on resistance. In the first encounters they suffered terribly from the firearms and the horses of the Spaniards. Valdivia defeated them and marched through their country as far as the place where he built (as already mentioned) the town which still bears his name. After a few years, he returned with a stronger force hoping to complete his conquest. A hundred miles south of the Biobio the Araucanians attacked him. Their furious charge could not be stopped by musketry—gunshot range was very short in those days—the invading force was destroyed, and Valdivia, flying from the field, was captured. While he was attempting to save his life by a promise to withdraw altogether from Chile, an old chief smote him down with a club.
From this time on the warfare lasted with occasional intermissions for more than sixty years. The Araucanians discovered by degrees tactics fitted to reduce the advantages which firearms gave to the Spaniards. They obtained horses, and, like the Comanches in Arizona and the Basutos of South Africa, learnt to use them in war. They produced leaders like Lautaro and Caupolican of talents equal to their bravery. When they found themselves unable to stem a Spanish invasion they retired into their woods, and as soon as the enemy had retired, they fell upon the forts and raided across the border. Weary of this incessant and apparently hopeless strife, the Spaniards at last agreed to a treaty by which the Biobio was fixed as the boundary. During his daring cruise in the Pacific in 1578 Sir Francis Drake had occasion to land on the Chilean coast. The Araucanians, seeing white men come in a ship, assumed them to be Spaniards, and attacked them. Had they realized that Drake's crew, being the enemies of their own enemies, would gladly have been their friends, an alliance profitable to both parties could have been struck, and it might have been serviceable to Drake's English and Dutch successors. Fearing such a contingency, the Spaniards made it a part of their treaty with the Araucanians that they should give no help to the maritime foes of Spain. Fresh wars from time to time broke out, but they always ended in the same way, so Araucania continued independent down till, and long after, the revolt of Chile from Spain.
By the middle of the nineteenth century the nation had begun to lose its old fighting habits. Diseases contracted from the whites had reduced its numbers and sapped its strength, while peaceful intercourse with the colonists had mitigated the ancient animosity. Accordingly, when Chile, about 1881, asserted her authority, and the town of Temuco was founded in the middle of the Araucanian country, the idea of resistance which some of the chiefs entertained was dropped on the advice of others who saw that it would be hopeless under conditions so different from those of the seventeenth century. Thus it may still be said of this gallant race that though they have consented to become Chileans, they remain the one unconquered native people of the continent. Though there has not been much intermarriage between them and the Spanish colonists, the long conflict had a marked effect upon the character of the latter, giving to the Chileans a rude force and aptitude for war not unlike that which the constant strife with the Moors gave to the Spaniards in the Middle Ages. The earlier part of the conflict had the rare honour of being made the theme of an epic poem which ranks high among those of modern Europe, the Araucana58 of Alonzo de Ercilla, who himself fought against Caupolican. No ill feeling seems to exist now between the Mapoche and the Chileans. Educated men among the latter feel a certain pride, as do the Araucanians themselves, in their romantic history, each race remembering that its ancestors fought well.
How large the Mapoche nation was when the Spaniards first came is quite uncertain. The estimate of 400,000 seems excessive for a people who had no cattle, and did not till the soil on a large scale. Even now while some put the present population as high as 140,000, others put it as low as 50,000. There is, unfortunately, no doubt that they are diminishing through diseases, especially tubercular diseases, which have spread among them from the whites, and are now transmitted from parents to offspring. Laws have been passed for their benefit, and a functionary entitled the Protector of the Indians appointed, but some of these laws, such as those restricting the sale of intoxicating liquors, are enforced quite as imperfectly as they are in other countries better known to us. The tribal system has almost vanished, but the local communities into which the people are now grouped respect the heads of the old families and often regret the days when a simple and speedy justice was administered by the chieftains.
Scattered over a wide area they dwell in villages of grass huts or frame houses, the latter far less favourable to health, and live by tillage or stock keeping, though a few go north to seek work and are deemed excellent labourers. The custom observed by the Kafir chiefs in South Africa, of allotting a separate hut to each wife, does not seem to hold here, but as the huts are large, each wife, if there are several, is allowed her own hearth and fire. Some families have considerable estates; some own large herds of cattle and sheep which at certain seasons are driven across the Andean passes to the pastures of Argentina.
While the wars lasted there was, of course, no question of converting the Araucanians to Christianity; and though in the intervals of peace friars sometimes went among them, they remained practically heathen till the establishment of Chilean authority in 1882. Their religion is a form of that spirit worship which one finds among nearly all primitive peoples. Its rites are intended to avert the displeasure of the spirits, to obtain from them fine weather or rain (as the case may be), and to expel a noxious demon from the body. The priesthood—if the name can be used—is not hereditary and is confined to females. The women who discharge the functions of wizards or medicine men are selected when young by the elder sorceresses and initiated with elaborate rites. A tree of a particularly sacred kind is chosen and a sort of ladder of steps cut in it, which the sorceress mounts to perform the ceremonies. When the tree dies, its trunk continues to be revered and is dressed up with fresh green boughs for ceremonial occasions. I could not find that any other natural objects, besides trees, receive veneration, nor is there anything to shew that the Inca worship of the sun and the host of heaven had ever spread so far to the south. The old beliefs and usages are now fast waning. Many Mapoche have become Christians, a considerable number Protestants, converted by the English South American mission, others Roman Catholics. They are described as a people of good intelligence, and easy to deal with when they are treated with justice, a valuable element in the population, and one which Chilean statesmen may well seek to preserve, if drink could be kept from them and the germs of hereditary disease rooted out.
The occupation by the Araucanians of a considerable part of the central Chilean valley accounts for the fact that the population of the region beyond them to the south has grown but slowly. It now contains no Indian tribes till one gets across the channel of Ancud to Chiloe and the other islands along the coast. Few settlers came to these parts from Europe until about the middle of last century the Chilean government encouraged an immigration from Germany which continued, on a moderate scale, for a good many years, but thereafter stopped altogether. Going southward from Valdivia one finds both in small towns and in rural districts round them a good many solid German farmers and artizans and tidy little German Fraus who might have come straight out of the Odenwald. We spent a night in Osorno, our furthest point toward the south, a neat and prosperous looking town, and dined with one of the leading German citizens, a man of wide reading, and especially devoted to Robert Burns, whose poems he recited to us, and to Thomas Moore, some of whose songs he had translated into German. Thereafter a group of the German residents hospitably took us to their club, where they have a concert hall and just such a Kegelbahn (skittle alley) as that in which I remember that we students used to play at Heidelberg in 1863, about the time when the parents of these worthy Germans were migrating to Chile. They gave us champagne, the unfailing accompaniment of every social function in South America; but it ought to have been Bavarian beer. This is the only part of western South America to which any considerable mass of settlers have come from Europe, for most of the English, Germans, French, and Spaniards one meets in the commercial and mining centres are passing business visitors. On the other side of the Andes it is different, for there the Italian immigration has been and still is very large.
Comparatively few immigrants enter Chile now, which would imply that the quantity of land available for agriculture, but not yet taken up, is supposed to be not very large. To me the country we traversed appeared to be far from fully occupied, though on such a matter the impressions of a passing traveller are of little value. Of all the parts of the New World I have seen there is none which struck me as fitter to attract a young man who loves country life, is not in a hurry to be rich, and can make himself at home in a land where English is not the language of the people. The soil of southern Chile is extremely fertile, fit both for stock-raising and for tillage. The climate is healthy and mild, without extremes either of heat or cold. Wet it certainly is, but not wetter than parts of our own western coasts.
The summer sun is strong yet not oppressive, the air both soft and invigorating, for Ocean sends up shrill blowing western breezes to refresh mankind.59 There are no noxious beasts, no mosquitoes, no poisonous snakes, nor other venomous creatures, except a spider found in the cornfields whose bite, though disagreeable, is not dangerous. Intermittent fevers, the curse of most countries where new land is being brought under cultivation, seem to be unknown. There are deer in the woods, and plenty of fish in the clear, rapid rivers. The Englishman who loves hunting will not want for foxes; the North American golfer will find grassy flats by the sea, waiting to be laid out as links. Remote, secluded, and tranquil as the country is, the settler should have little difficulty in procuring whatever Europe supplies, for even at Osorno he is only forty hours from Santiago, and Santiago is now only two days from Buenos Aires, and Buenos Aires only seventeen days from Europe.
Perhaps it is the charm of the Chilean scenery that prompts a view of the country, considered as a home for the emigrant, more favourable than might be taken by one to whom life would be just as enjoyable in the boundless levels of Manitoba as within view of a snowy range. Perhaps, also, this charm of southern Chile with its soft, green pastures and shaggy woods and flashing streams was enhanced to us by contrast with the dreary deserts of Peru and Bolivia, through which we had lately passed. Whoever has in his boyhood learnt to love the scenery of a temperate country never finds full satisfaction in that of the tropics, with all their glow of light and all their exuberance of vegetation. Such lands are splendid to visit, but not so good to live in, for exertion is less agreeable, the woods are impenetrable, and the mountains, therefore, less accessible, and the constant heat is enervating, not to add that insects are everywhere, and in many places one has to stand always on guard against fevers. Nothing could be grander than the landscapes in the Andes which we had seen, nor more beautiful than the landscapes in Brazil which we were shortly to see. But of all the parts of South America that we visited, southern Chile stands out to me as the land where one would choose to make a home.
Two excursions, one to the sea, the other into the hills, gave us samples of two different kinds of scenery. Of the many brimming rivers that sweep down from the Andes across the Central Valley none is more beautiful in its lower course than is the Rio Bueno. It has in the course of ages cloven for itself through the hard rocks of the Coast Range a channel so deep that the tide comes up to the little town of Trumajo forty miles from the sea, and from that town small steamers can pass all the way to the bar at its mouth. In one of these little craft which a kind friend had procured we spent a long day in sailing down and back again. The hills on each side, sometimes hanging steeply over the stream, sometimes receding where a narrow glen opened, were clothed with the richest wood. It was a brilliant day in October, answering to our April, and the sun brought out an infinite variety of shades of green in the young foliage in these glens, the trees all new to us, and the spaces between them filled with climbing plants hanging in festoons from the boughs. Wild ducks and other water-birds fluttered over the water and rose in flocks as the little vessel moved onward, and green paroquets called from the thickets. As it nears the sea, the river spreads into a wide deep pool under a crescent of bold cliffs, and at the end of this is seen the bar, a stretch of sand on which the huge rollers of the Pacific break in foam. There is a lighthouse and a few houses near a flat stretch of meadow by the banks, the grass as green and the flowers as abundant as in Ireland. Specially vivid were the yellow masses of gorse, apparently the same species as our own, and, if possible, even more profuse in its blossoms than on those Cornish shores of which it is the chief ornament. I have seen few bits of coast more picturesque than this meeting of the still, dark river and the flashing spray of ocean under rocks clothed with feathery woods.
On our way back something went wrong with the machinery and the vessel had more than once to moor herself to the bank till things were set right. This gave opportunities for going ashore and exploring the banks. In some places the forest was too dense to penetrate without a machete to hew a way through the shrubs and climbers. In other places where one could creep under the trees or pull one's self up the cliffs by the boughs, the effort was rewarded by finding an endless variety of new flowers and ferns. The latter are in this damp atmosphere especially luxuriant; and their tall fronds, dipping into the river, were often seven or eight feet long. It was a primeval forest, wild as it had been from the beginning of things, for only in two or three places had dwellings been planted on level spots by the river and little clearings made; and the hills are so high and rocky that it may remain untouched and lonely for many a year to come.
The other excursion was towards the Andes. There is along the railway no prettier spot than Collilelfu, where a rapid river, broad and bright like the Scottish Tay, but with clearer and greener water, sweeps down out of the foothills into the meadows of the Central Valley. Here a French company have constructed a little branch railway, partly to bring down timber, partly in the hope of continuing their line far up the valley and across a pass into Argentina, in order to carry cattle to and fro. The manager, a courteous Frenchman from the Basque land of Bearn, ran us up this line through a succession of lovely views along the river to a point where we got horses and rode for seven or eight miles further through the forest up and down low ridges to the shore of Lake Rinihue. The forest was in parts too thick to penetrate without cutting one's way through creeping and climbing plants, but in others it was open enough to give mysterious vistas between the tall stems, and delicious effects where the sunlight fell upon a glade. The trees were largely evergreen, but few or none of them coniferous, for in Chile it is only at higher levels that the characteristic conifers, such as the well-known Araucaria, flourish. Here at last we found that characteristic South American arboreal flora we had been looking forward to, a forest where all that we saw was new, unlike the woods of western North America and of Europe, not only because the variety of the trees was far greater than it is there, but also because so many bore brilliant flowers upon their higher boughs, where the sunlight reached them. We were told that in midsummer the flowers would be still more profuse, but those we saw were abundant and beautiful enough, some white, some crimson or scarlet, some yellow, very few blue. One climber lit up the shade with its red blossoms, and below there were long rows, standing up along the path, wherever it was fairly open to the light, of white and pink foxgloves, a species closely resembling our own, while a woody ragwort, eight to ten feet high, bore a spreading umbel of yellow. The Calceolarias, frequent in Peru, do not seem to come so far south as this. Most of the trees had small leaves, but two, one called the lengue, valued for its bark, and another resembling a laurel, had large, dark green, glossy foliage. It was a silent wood, except for the paroquets and the occasional coo of a wood-pigeon; nor did we see any four-footed creatures, except two large, reddish brown foxes scurrying across the path ahead of us. Wildcats are scarce, and the puma, the beast of prey that has the widest range over the Western Hemisphere, is here hardly ever seen. The woodscape was less grand and solemn than what one sees in the great redwood forests of California or in the sombre depths of those that cover the Cascade Range in Oregon and Washington, where the Douglas fir and the huge "cedar"60 tower so high over the trails that one can scarce catch the light through their topmost branches. Nor can I say that the views were more beautiful than may still be had in the few remaining ancient forests of England with their ancestral oaks and spreading beeches. But there was here a peculiar feature, giving a sense of the exuberant vitality of nature, in the profusion of parasitic plants clothing the trunks of the trees, both the fallen and the living, some of them flowering plants, but more of them ferns and mosses, especially tender little filmy ferns such as one finds on the moist and shady rocks of western Scotland and among the mountains of Killarney.
We embarked on Lake Rinihue in a tiny steamboat, and sailed some miles over its exquisitely clear, green waters. Steep hills from two to three thousand feet high enclose it, and at its upper end, where it winds in towards the central range of the Andes, small glaciers descend from between high snowpeaks. The view, looking across the deep green of the forests, broken here and there by a rocky cliff, up to these glittering pinnacles, had a beauty not only of color and form, but of mystery also,—that indefinable sense of mystery which belongs to little-known countries. In regions like Scotland or the Alps or Norway one has historical associations and the sense of a long human past to enhance the loveliness of hills and groves and streams. Here one has the compensating charm of an untouched and almost unexplored nature. The traveller in southern Chile feels as if he were a discoverer, so little visited is this land, and such a promise of wild beauty waiting to be revealed lies in the recesses of these mountains. Along the shores of Rinihue, which is twelve miles long, there is, save for a house or two at the place where we embarked, no trace of human life. Other such lakes, many of them much larger, lie scattered over a space some four hundred miles long and fifty miles wide on both the Argentine and the Chilean side of the Cordillera, a land of forests virtually unexplored and uninhabited, except by a few wandering Indians, standing now as it has stood ever since the Andes were raised. The day will come, perhaps less than a century hence, when the townsfolk of a then populous Argentina, weary of the flat monotony of their boundless Pampas, will find in this wilderness of lake and river and mountain such a place, wherein to find rest and recreation in the summer heats, as the North Americans of the Eastern states do in the Appalachian hills; and the North Americans of the West, in the glorious ranges along the Pacific coast. Superior to the former region in its possession of snow mountains, equal to the latter in climate and picturesque beauty, and to the naturalist more interesting than either from its still active volcanoes and its remarkable flora, this lake land of the southern Andes is an addition, the value of which the South Americans have hardly yet realized, to the scenic wealth of our planet.
For more than two thousand miles the republics of Argentina and Chile are divided from one another by the gigantic barrier of the Andes. So great is the continuous elevation of the range, so little commercial intercourse can there be across it, so few are the points at which it can be crossed even on foot by any travellers who are not expert mountaineers, that the communications between those dwelling on opposite sides of the mountains have been at all times very scanty. The contrast between the two sides is marked. For eight hundred miles south of the Equator, the eastern slopes of the Andean chain have abundance of rain, while the central plateau is dry and the western declivity is a waterless desert. But in the region which lies south of the Tropic of Capricorn, outside the region of trade-winds, the exact reverse holds. In this southern section of the Andes it is the eastern side that is dry and the western side that is wet, because westerly winds prevail and bring up from the Pacific rain clouds that scatter their moisture on the heights they first meet and have none left to bestow on the Argentine side of the Cordillera. This great dividing range, checking intercourse between the peoples on its two flanks, is the dominant fact in the political and economic life as well as in the physical geography of the southern part of the continent. It has given these two neighbour peoples, Chileans and Argentines, different habits, different characters, and a different history.
The infrequency of communication across the mountains was increased by the fact that most of the country on the eastern side, being sterile, was thinly settled, so that there were few people who had any occasion to cross the mountains, while the approach to the passes was difficult, for there was little food or shelter to be had along this track. In the middle of the sixteenth century, however, Mendoza, Captain General of Chile, founded on the Argentine side the town which still bears his name. Placed at the foot of the mountains on the banks of a stream descending from the glaciers of Aconcagua, it was a well-watered spot in a thirsty land, and population slowly gathered to it. As Argentina began to fill up with settlers in the latter half of the nineteenth century and as railways began to be pushed farther and farther inland from the Atlantic coast, the notion of making a railway across the Andes began to dawn on enterprising minds, especially after the Brenner and Cenis lines had been constructed across and through the main chain of the Alps. At last an English company built a railroad up to this town of Mendoza, and nothing remained except to pierce the belt of mountain country. That, however, was no simple matter. The belt is indeed of no great width. The Cordillera, which in the latitude of Antofagasta is the western edge of a high plateau, has here narrowed itself down to a single very lofty ridge, the summits of which are from 18,000 to 23,000 feet in height. There are transverse lower ridges running at right angles to the main chain, both westward towards the Pacific and eastward to the Argentine plain, but as these ridges average only thirty-five miles in length on the latter and twenty-five on the former side, the whole distance from the low country on the eastern side to the low country on the western, does not exceed seventy miles, which is less than the width (between Luzern and Arona) of the much less lofty chain of the Alps at the point where the Gothard railway crosses it.
The central ridge of the Cordillera is, however, so continuously lofty and its slopes so steep as to be passable for beasts of burden at very few points and then only during the summer months. Among these points that which has for a long time, probably from days before the Spanish conquest, been most in use, is the Uspallata Pass, so called from a place about fifteen miles west of Mendoza on the mule track which runs from that town towards the mountains. As population increased, there was at last substituted for the mule track a road passable by vehicles. Finally, in 1887, a railroad began to be constructed up the long and winding river valley which leads from Mendoza to the main chain, while on the Chilean side, another railway was built up the shorter valley which rises to the western foot of the same ridge.
Thereafter, the work of construction stopped for a good while, passengers continuing to cross the ridge on foot or mule back, or in vehicles which painfully climbed the steep track that led over the top. At last a tunnel under this ridge was bored, and the whole line opened for traffic in 1909. The tunnel is only two and a half miles long, much shorter than those which penetrate the Alps at the Simplon, the Gothard and the Cenis. But its height above sea-level (12,000 feet) is much greater and the scenery along the line more striking. If any other trunk line of railroad in the world traverses a region so extraordinary, it has not yet been described. Till one is run from Kashmir to Kashgar, over or under the Karakoram Pass, this Andean line seems likely to "hold the record."
The description of the Uspallata route may begin from Valparaiso. From that port to the junction for Santiago at the station of Llai Llai the country is hilly, rather dry, with rolling pastures and meadows along the streams, and thickets of small trees or scrub on the slopes,—a country much like southern California, save that there are no oaks and no coniferous trees. Further on, the hills grow higher; there are rocks with patches of brilliant flowers, and occasional glimpses of the great range are caught up the openings of valleys. At a pretty place called Santa Rosa de los Andes, the Andean railway proper (Ferro Carril Transandino) begins, and we change into a car of narrower gauge.
This Transandine railroad, one of the few which does not belong to the Chilean government, is narrow gauge, and its construction involved difficulties unusual even in the case of mountain lines, not only because the grades were very steep, but also because the valleys leading up to the central ridge were, especially that on the Chilean side, extremely narrow. To have bored corkscrew or zigzag tunnels, like those on the Gothard railway in Switzerland, would have involved an expenditure altogether disproportionate to the returns to be expected from the traffic. It was therefore found necessary to adopt the cog-wheel system; and on those parts of the line where the grade is too steep for the ordinary locomotive a rack or cog-wheel apparatus is fixed between the rails, and the locomotive, fitted with a corresponding apparatus, climbs by its help. This reduces the speed of the train in ascending those steep parts, most of which are on the Chilean side, and unavoidably reduces also the freight-carrying capacity of the line. There is, therefore, not much heavy goods traffic passing over it.61 But to passengers who wish to save time and escape a sea voyage the gain is enormous, for while the transit from Valparaiso to Buenos Aires through the Straits of Magellan takes eleven days, the land journey by this Transandine railway can be accomplished in forty hours. The regular working of the trains had been interrupted in the winter before our visit by heavy falls of snow, but the construction of snowsheds, which was in progress, has probably by this time overcome such difficulties.
Travellers sleep at Santa Rosa in order to start early in the morning by the tri-weekly train which in twelve hours crosses the mountains to Mendoza. From the hotel at the station, we looked straight up a long, narrow valley to tremendous peaks of black rock thirty miles away to the east. How they stood out against the bright morning sky behind them, a few white clouds hovering above! One felt at a glance that this is one of the great ranges of the world, just as one feels the great musician in the first few chords of a symphony.
Up this valley runs the railway past little farm-houses, surrounded by stiff poplars, which thrive well here, though the tree is not a native, but brought from Europe. Fields, irrigated from the rushing stream beneath, are green with young corn; weeping willows droop over the watercourses, vines trail along the fronts of the cottages, and the pastures are bright with spring flowers. A cart road runs parallel to the line, and here one sees better than in the cities the true Chilean roto (peasant of mixed Spanish and Indian blood), in his rough coat and cotton shirt, baggy trousers and high boots fitted with large spurs, his low-crowned, narrow-brimmed felt or straw hat, and on his shoulders the thick homespun poncho characteristic of South America. His horse is usually near him, for they are all riders, a sturdy little animal with many saddle-cloths and a heavy, high-peaked saddle and heavy bit.
After eight or ten miles the valley narrows, and at its bottom there is only the torrent with sometimes a few yards of grass on one or other bank. The rock walls begin to rise more steeply, and the trees give place to shrubs. At a spot called the Soldier's Leap, the train runs on a shelf in the rock through a gorge over which the converging crags almost touch one another and shut out the light, the torrent roaring sixty feet below. One considerable stream, the Rio Blanco, descends from the south, but otherwise there are no side glens. Vast black precipices rise on the northern bank six or seven thousand feet above the river. Slender streamlets, perhaps the children of unseen snows behind, fall slowly from ledge to ledge, some of them lost in mid-air when a gust of the west wind sweeps them along.
At last, vegetation having now disappeared, a great black ridge rises in front across the end of the valley and seems to bar further progress. On its steep face, however, one can presently discover a sort of track, winding up it in zigzags. This is the old mule path by which travellers used to climb slowly to the pass, itself still far behind. The spot at its foot, where there are a few houses, is Juncal, the last place where the wayfarer halted to rest before he started for the formidable passage of the mountains. Here two glens opening from opposite sides meet at the foot of the great ridge. The glen to the north is short, descending abruptly from a semicircle of savage black peaks, the hollows between them filled with snow and ice. That to the south is long, narrow, and nearly level; it is a deep cleft which runs into the heart of the mountains as far as the west side of the mighty Tupungato, whose glaciers feed its torrent. Up this southern valley the railway, turning at right angles from its previous easterly direction, runs for some miles, then crosses and leaves the torrent, turns north and mounts along a narrow shelf cut out in the side of the great black ridge of Juncal, already mentioned. The slope rising above the line and falling below it to the valley is of terrific steepness. The grade is also steep and the locomotive toils and pants slowly upward by the aid of the cog-wheel, passing through tunnel after tunnel till at last it comes out, two thousand feet above Juncal, into a wide hollow surrounded by sharp peaks, those to the north streaked with beds of snow, those on the south of bare rock, because the snow has been melted off their sunward turned slopes. The bottom of this hollow is covered with enormous blocks that have fallen from the cliffs, and its northern end is filled by a small lake, part of whose surface was covered with ice. The fanciful name of Lago del Inca has been given to it. A scene more savage in its black desolation it would be hard to imagine. Compared to this frozen lake, the glacier lakes of the Swiss Alps, like the Märjelen See on the Aletsch glacier, are gentle and smiling. The strong sunlight and brilliant blue of the sky seemed to make the rocks blacker and bring out their absolute bareness with not so much as a moss or a lichen to relieve it. From the lake the railway, making another great sweep, climbs another slope and enters another still higher hollow, where it stops at the base of a steep ridge. Here a cluster of huts of corrugated iron, more than usually hideous in such a landscape, marks the mouth of the great tunnel, at a point 10,486 feet above the sea. In winter everything is covered deep with snow and now, in October, patches were still lying about and the cold, except in the sun, was severe. Big icicles were hanging from the eaves of the iron hut roofs.
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.
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.