THE CORDILLERA OF PERU. THE Cordilleras may be traversed at any season, but the most favorable time for visiting them is in the month of April or September, that is to say, the month which precedes or which follows the melting of the snows. At an earlier or later period, the route is perhaps somewhat dangerous, as much from the force and impetuosity of the torrents, which all at once form in the gorges, as from the bad state of the roads, then deluged by the rains, and sometimes even entirely disappearing under an immense mantle of snow. But, even in the fine season, the route which one takes, once fairly into the mountains, is almost impracticable. One is scarcely out of Lima, till Nature herself seems to undergo some immediate change: the valleys close and disappear by degrees; the roads are little better than bad footpaths, winding with difficulty across gorges and ravines. After a few hours' march, you already feel in the midst of solitude. At every step, the country seems to grow more naked and savage. Here you have a narrow and deep rent, which extends like the bed of a torrent that had been dry for ages, encased on all sides by a rampart of ruddy mountains; the sun, darting its direct beams into the fine and smooth sand, which reflects them like a mirror, turns this desolate gorge during the day into a veritable furnace. Here and there a cactus, long and prickly, grows alone among the stones. Not a sign of life, not a single bird, not one insect: everything flies this arid and burning soil, where you encounter at every step nothing but the carcasses of mules killed with the heat and fatigue, whose bleached bones serve as staves to travellers. Again, there are mountains where the route, suspended over an abyss, is at the same time so narrow and tortuous, that the head and neck of the mule, in passing the edges, stretch quite entirely over the void. Here and there, the traveller arrives at some peaks, where he sees in one entire panorama the country in which he is immersed. Everywhere, gorges, ravines, separating by immense gaps masses still more immense, heaped one above another in piles of frightful disorder; in the distance, a sea of mist, pierced at intervals by arid and naked crests; at the feet of these crests, new gorges which must be descended, and which seem lost amid the mountains. It was in such scenery that the first few days of our journey to the Cordilleras were passed. We had at last arrived at the foot of their highest peaks, and it was a little beyond midnight when, after some hours passed in an Indian hut, we mounted our mules, and set forward to cross them. At the moment of our departure, the air was sharp; but, owing to the difficulties of the road, we could only march at a slow pace. Happily, a superb moonshine favored us, and the pale rays, which were reflected from the snow of the great peaks, illuminated with a gentle lustre the immense masses heaped around us. In Europe, we have no nights comparable in the lucidity of the sky to these of the Cordilleras thousands of stars shed a sort of twilight, or rather an aurora, over the scene. Sometimes, at the bottom of a ravine, we saw the white foam of a torrent bounding in the midst of the rocks; the noise reached our ears with a low and plaintive sound. A black point was suspended over the waters: this was the bridge of branches which traced our route, and which we had to traverse. We thus arrived, towards morning, at the summit of the Cordilleras. Around us rose enormous peaks, some infinitely higher than the point which we had reached; others piled below us, like the waves of an ocean become solid. The sky was serene, the air fresh and pure. Those mountains, so high and so broken by ravines, at the foot of which we had just passed, did not appear of more consequence than the undulations of an immense sea. And, like the great condors which we saw wheeling over our heads, we embraced in a single view all these desolate crests, these entangled rocks, these plateaux covered with snow; but, unfortunately, we had but a few minutes to bestow on the contemplation of this grand spectacle. Our guide reminded us that time was flying, and that it would be scarcely prudent to wait till mid-day on the summit of the Cordilleras. It is in the afternoon, indeed, that the frightful storms which are so common in these mountains for several months of the year burst. Then, immense whirlwinds envelope them: the storm rolls and drives the snow with such force, and the snow itself is so dense, that it becomes impossible to distinguish anything at a few paces even before you; every road, every beaten path disappears; nothing but the hurling roar of thunder is heard; nothing is seen but the red glare of lightning. We were then about fourteen thousand feet above the level of the sea. The air was rarefied to such a degree, that we breathed with great difficulty; even the mules were obliged to stop every instant. It is worthy of notice, that this rarefication of the air is greater after mid-day than in the morning; and then it has been sometimes so great as to draw blood from the noses and ears of travellers. What, however, is more common, is a certain general discomfort, accompanied by sharp pains in the head and stomach, and a sort of sea-sickness, which seizes almost all those who cross the Cordilleras for the first time. The Indians call it soroche, and ascribe the discomfort to the rarefication of the air, and to certain metallic gases disengaged by the sun from the mountains. At last we commenced to descend. The slope on this side of the Cordilleras presents numerous asperities. The great mountains never rise into a single point. At their summit, as at their base, they are composed of a multitude of other mountains, whose crests rise in the form of an amphitheatre; so that, after reaching the bottom of one gorge, several hundred feet deep, you discover other heights which you must climb, then descend again, and that for a space of many leagues. This side, however, of the mountains essen tially differs from that which we had just crossed. Less mixed, and less torn up by ravines, it encloses between its more isolated peaks considerable plains, watered by numerous streams running from west to east, and forming the sources of the great rivers which traverse the American continent before pouring themselves into the Atlantic. These rivers themselves issue from lakes or ponds formed by the melting of the snows, and which lie on the top of the Cordilleras between their more elevated peaks. Some flocks of wild geese, with white bodies and black wings, the peaceful inhabitants of these desolate regions, rose heavily at our approach, and settled at a few paces farther off. Sometimes, too, a llama stretched its neck towards us from the height of a rock, regarded us half-frightened, and fled into the mountains. We saw it bound lightly away into the ravine, disappear a moment, then, showing itself again on some higher point, listen with indifference to the sounds of our retreating steps. Further on, some domestic llamas were nibbling the thin grass which grows among the stones. They scarcely raised their heads on our appearance, and tranquilly resumed their pasture. These animals announced the neighbourhood of man. In fact, wherever we met herds of llamas, we saw immediately afterwards some Indian huts, whose threshold was in general guarded only by some children in rags, playing on the ground in the midst of a band of thin and famished dogs. One must enter these huts, and be present at the repast of the inhabitants, in order to know what may suffice to enable human creatures, we do not say to live, but to vegetate in debasement and wretchedness. Only, in order to shake, once a-year, perhaps, the cloak of misery which burdens them, they plunge into excesses which no description can paint, when an occasion happens, as, for example, when a fête is announced in a neighbouring village. Lavandais. * *Fête (pron. feht), feast or festival. THE CORDILLERA OF CHILI. THE road across this flat country is always tedious; for the mountains, on leaving Mendosa, appear within three or four miles of the town, and the path seems literally to lengthen as one goes. We found it particularly dreary, as we had to travel during a night which was unusually dark. The plain before us was not visible, while the black outline of the mountains against the sky appeared close to us, or rather immediately above us. However, we at length got to the first ravine of the Cordilleras; and there, with the noble mountains towering over our heads, sometimes lost in darkness, and sometimes faintly traced by the few stars which were visible, we followed the sound of the water until the distant light at the post-hut and the barking of the dogs as they came rushing toward us, informed us that we should now cross the stream, and we then rode up to the post. The road, on leaving Villa Vincencia, suddenly turns up a ravine, which is one of the finest passes in the Cordilleras. The mountains are extremely steep on both sides, and as the ravine winds in many directions, one often comes to a spot which has the appearance of a cul de sac*, from which there is no exit to be seen. In some places the rock hangs perpendicularly overhead, and the enormous fragments which nearly block up the road, contrasted with those which seem to be on the point of falling, add to the apparent danger and grandeur of the scene. As we were passing we saw a guanaco on the very highest summit of one of the mountains. He was there evidently for safety; and as he stood against the blue sky, his attitude, as he earnestly watched us, was very expressive of his wild free life; and his small head and thin neck betokened his agility of action. I had ridden on by myself about fifteen miles, and had * Cul de sac, a blind alley, or road, closed at one end. |