Andes

“ The name of the Andes, to the traveller who has crossed the giddy passes and scaled the high peaks of this stupendous mountain chain, brings back sensations which are a blend of the pleasurable and the painful. In his retrospect the Cordillera—for such is its familiar name to the inhabitants of the land it traverses—bulks as a thing of varied and almost indescribable moods. It possesses that individuality—menacing, beautiful by turns—which no doubt is an attribute of all mountains, in the recollection of those who best know them. ”

“ We are on the montaña of the eastern Cordillera, a mountain land of amazing fertility, well wooded, yet not so thickly as to render progress difficult; the wayside is bordered with brilliant flowers, cascades tumble from rocky heights, and far away to the west rise in the clear air the glorious Andes, alps on alps, a vast range of stately snow-crowned peaks, endless and solemn, veiled yet not hidden by fleecy clouds, and as cold and mysterious as winter stars looking down on a sleeping world. ”

“ Only those rare mortals who have jaunted cross-country in the Andes can have any conception of the stone-quarry heights I scaled, the dense-jungled, bottomless quebradas through which I tore my way, the brush-tangled streams I forded, and the paths that faded out under my feet during that day. ”

“ But my hopes rose high when we surmounted one of the countless desert ridges and sighted at last a vast, level, though somewhat tilted plain between the Santa river and the brilliant white snow peaks of the ever higher Cordillera, with hundreds upon hundreds of inviting houses specking with red its many orchards and checkered green patches of cultivation. The Andes rise to appalling heights in these parts, and take on a variety of color and form almost comparable to the Alps in beauty, vastly outdoing them in a certain wild, somber undomesticated grandeur. ”

“ The Andes, which are among the loftiest mountains in the world, are mostly about 120 miles from east to west, in that part of their course which belongs to Chili, consisting of a vast number of mountains of prodigious height, as if chained together, and displaying all the beauties and horrors of the most sublime and picturesque grandeur, abounding everywhere with frightful precipices, interspersed with many fine vallies and fertile pastures, watered by numerous streams and rivers which rise in the mountains. ”

“ The long and lofty chain of the Andes is certainly one of the grandest results of the plications and uplifts of the earth's crust. While the waves of the Pacific, from Panama to Patagonia, submissively kiss the feet of the Andes, and the showers that swell the Amazon fall within sight of the mariner on that peaceful ocean, the Rocky Mountains are situated five hundred miles from the sea. ”

“ Eight hundred miles back, through cañon and mountain torrent, over the giant passes of the inner Andes, lay the Bolivian capital of La Paz, the last civilization from the Pacific shore. Two thousand miles to the eastward from this little frontier nucleus of Rurrenabaque lay the civilization that groped its way westward from the Atlantic, while between were long reaches of desolate rivers, and primitive jungle.
The few whites—refugee mostly; two, I knew, had a price on their heads on the other side of the Andes—popped out of their cane shacks to see me off. ”

“ Cieza de Leon properly divides this region into four great divisions:—the uninhabitable frozen plains and mountain peaks, the temperate valleys and plains which intersect the Andes, the great primeval forests, and the deserts and valleys of the coast. It is a land of surpassing grandeur, and exceeding beauty. The snowy peaks of the Andes, upwards of twenty thousand feet above the sea, may be seen from the deserts of sand which fringe the coast, rising in their majesty from the plains, and towering up into a cloudless sky. ”

“ Always wonderful, the mighty ramparts of the Andes rise tier upon tier from the reddish strip of desert shore, first in solid black, then in slaten pallor to the misty heights of inland distance where the peaks are ill-defined against the sky, except when the sun burns through the haze and makes brilliant for a moment some snow-capped summit floating apparently in mid-air four miles above. ”

“ In this region of northern Peru, the Andes break down into great sweltering gorges and tropical wildernesses instead of the unbroken high pampas the range seems to promise. The traveler so foolish as to journey through it catches the valley of a river as it tears its way across the jungled mountain wilderness, follows it as far as possible, then fights his way across a divide, to descend or ascend another stream. ”

“ Imagine all the mid-mountain region in the deep, and you have the Andes here.
We descended in a zigzag way into a deep gorge, one of those cuts through the shore mountains from inland regions to the sea, which occasionally become fiords or narrow bays. Along the rocky steps, resembling galleries, were patches of grass and beds of flowering mosses, with springs bubbling up in the spongy turf, and spinning themselves out into snowy threads from the points and edges of the crags. At the bottom is the little village of Petty Harbor, where the river, a roaring torrent, meets the salt tide. ”

“ In sight of the snowy Andes, here rise in the foreground rounded hills covered with vegetation; there rise barren rocks through whose clefts rushes the turbulent Cachapoal. Here are gardens filled with flowers; there are impenetrable thickets. Light and shadows everywhere, colors without end, harmony and contrast which reflect or darken the rays of the sun. ”

“ The Alps have the avalanche, “the thunderbolt of snow,” and the glaciers, those icy Niagaras so beautiful and grand. Here they are wanting. The monarch of the Andes sits motionless in calm serenity and unbroken silence. The silence is absolute and actually oppressive. The road from Guayaquil to Quito crosses Chimborazo at the elevation of fourteen thousand feet. Save the rush of the trade wind in the afternoon, as it sweeps over the Andes, not a sound is audible; not the hum of an insect, nor the chirp of a bird, nor the roar of the puma, nor the music of running waters. ”

“ The Andes have a character that is all their own, while in the temperate region of the South Chilean Cordillera one finds landscapes which, while not so unlike as are the Peruvian to those of western Europe and the Pacific coast of North America, have also a charm peculiar to themselves, which will endear them to the memory of whoever has traversed their flowery forests and sailed upon their snow-girt lakes. ”

“ A blank indifference hangs like moss over the records of the past throughout all the Andes, and the curious traveler will find more by wandering around until he stumbles upon them, than by making inquiries. Not only are the natives ignorant of all points of historical interest, but utterly incapable of distinguishing any such from so much junk. ”

“ The far slopes of the Andes are checkered with cultivated fields; a roaring stream, the Choqueyapu, tears its way through the floor of the amphitheatre, and the series of snow-covered summits form a magnificent background for the unusual spectacle. ”

“ They imagine, according to the greater part of maps, that this huge continent has but one chain of mountains, the Andes, which forms its western boundary; and they form a vague idea of the boundless sea of verdure, stretching the whole way from the foot of this gigantic wall of rock, from the Orinoco and the Apuré, to the Rio de la Plata and the Straits of Magellan. ”

“ We of the northern hemisphere have a geographical belief in the Andes as an unsteady family of mountains in South America, — a continent where earthquakes shake the peaks and revolutions the people, where giant condors soar and swoop, where volcanoes hurl up orbed masses of fiery smoke by day and flare luridly by night, where silver may hang in tubers at the roots of any bush, and where statesmen protocol, and soldiers keep up a runaway fight, for the honor and profit of administering guano. ”

“ The extreme rarity of the strata of air across which the summits of the Andes are seen, contributes greatly to the splendor of the snow and the magical effect of its reflection. Under the tropics, at a hight of sixteen thousand, four hundred feet, or upward of three miles, the azure vault of the heavens appears of an indigo tint; while, in so pure and transparent an atmosphere, the outlines of the mountains seem to detach themselves from the sky, and produce an effect at once sublime, awful, and profoundly impressive. ”

“ It is built right at the water's edge, with the grand mountain-wall of the Andes running so stiffly, loftily and impenetrably up behind, that you wonder how the rays of the rising sun ever reach the little city nestled at their rocky feet. At least you think they must have daylight on the level pampas beyond many moments before it surmounts those mountains to reach the narrow strip of plain between them and the sea. ”

“ This scenery is not to be compared in point of grandeur with the naked and towering majesty of the great chain of the Andes, which we had lately left, but in its kind it is of uncommon beauty. The hills, though often abrupt and high, are sometimes smooth and grassy to their summits, having a surface, unbroken by a single rock or tree, large enough to be seen at the distance of a mile. ”

“ One looks in vain for some sign of a quiet view, for some uniformity of features, for some landscape that will remind him of the familiar hills of home. The Andes are aggressive mountains that front the sea in formidable spurs or desert ranges. Could we see in one view their entire elevation from depths of over 20,000 feet beneath sea level to snowy summits, a total altitude of 40,000 feet (12,200 m.) , their excessive boldness would be more apparent. No other mountains in the world are at once so continuously lofty and so near a coast which drops off to abyssal depths. ”

“ From the top of this eminence the view of the Andes is most enchanting; the snow-covered mountains rise majestically, one range behind another, until their summits are lost in the clouds, or, when the sky is clear, till they are most exactly defined in the azure vault of heaven. When nearly at the foot of the cuesta, the city of Santiago, the capital of Chile, makes its appearance ”

“ Let not the fascination of this valley, the songs of birds, the flowers, the hummingbirds glistening among them like gems, the soft outlines of the scenery detain you long. Harder and sterner scenes await you. The Andes are a picture of life. Every cliff records a lesson ”

“ The day is pleasant, and we take our last blow and rest; the clouds lift, and while seated on the smooth top of a peak of the Andes, we see afar off to the east the magnificent view we have been anxiously expecting. The rich lowlands are looked down upon from a height of over nine thousand feet. It is like looking upon the ocean; those regular ridges trending northwest and southeast, decreasing in height as they increase in distance, seem like the waves of the sea rolling towards the mountains. ”

“ As you approach the summit of the Andes you will see the sides of the trail strewn with the bleached bones of cattle and horses that have succumbed to the cold and the rare atmosphere of this elevated region. ”

“ The Andes towered above the plains a few miles to the west, while on the east the solid range of the mountains of Cordova, stretching far to the north, gave an additional grandeur to the scene. The nights were bland and lovely, excepting when the wind called the zonda (a sort of sirocco) came from the Andes, when the natives suffered from its parching heat, and those affected with diseases of the heart trembled in expectation of sudden death. ”

“ The Andean traveler will know the pleasures as well as the drawbacks of the journeys of earlier, more primitive days, the joy of evening hours, when suddenly, from the summit of the last toilsome ascent, he discovers, spread out in its smiling valley below, the peaceful village in which he is to take his night’s repose, or when he perceives from afar, gilded by the rays of the setting sun, the towers of the famous city so long sought,—hours of a vivid joy that few experiences can equal. ”

“ The city with its 160,000 inhabitants lies flat in its arid setting, the disk of the bull-ring in the foreground, an irregular triangle with its base resting on the babbling Rimac, without chimneys, almost without smoke-stacks; for its industries are still chiefly confined to handicraft. The red tiles that give the prevailing color to the cities of the Andes are here unknown. ”

“ The Andes themselves, from the main ridge eastwards to the plain country of La Plata, and the Chilese islands. Chili Proper, or that which lies between the main ridge of the Andes and the Pacific, is usually distinguished into the Maritime and Midland countries. The Maritime country is intersected by three chains of hills, running parallel to the Andes, between which are many fine vallies which are watered by delightful rivers. The Midland country consists almost entirely of a uniform plain of considerable elevation, having a few isolated hills interspersed which add much to its beauty. ”

“ The Andes in South America are the highest ridge of mountains in the known world. There is a road over them, on which, about halfway between the summit and the foot, is a house of entertainment, where it is common for travellers in their ascent and descent to meet. The difference of their feelings upon the same spot is very remarkable. Those who are descending the mountain are melting with heat, so that they can scarcely bear any clothes upon them ”

“ The inhabited region is after this fashion. In parts of the mountains of the Andes are ravines and dales, which open out into deep valleys of such width as often to form great plains between the mountains; and although the snow falls, it all remains on the higher part. As these valleys are closed in, they are not molested by the winds, nor does the snow reach them, and the land is so fruitful that all things which are sown yield abundantly; and there are trees and many birds and animals. The land being so fertile, is well peopled by the natives. ”