111. Across the Cordilleras.

Otago Witness, Issue 2250, 15 April 1897, Page 49

111. Across the Cordilleras.

A day later we turned inwards once more, and presently we struck the vast, black wall of the Andes. Another two days wore through before we could reach a croseable pass ; and on the third day, weary to sickness of the grim plain and its dead, we toiled up the broken path towards the ragged slice in the mountain that was to let us through. The lower slopes of fche great hills were green and well watered, the upper walls black and forbidding, while the uttermost peaks shone in caps of case-hardened snow that has lain there since the world began. An aggressive kind of grey monkey haunted the half-way ground, bolder and more fearless than the little brown gibberers of the thicker forests ; bat we socn lefc these behind in the lower wcrld. When the earnest part of the climb began I invested in some vicious-heeled mules, and I soon found that when we trod a ragged ledge, with 1000 ft; in the rook sheer above and below ue, our live 3 hung on the hoofs of those flat-eared brutes. But they made no flip. Only our pack-pony, which the seller had advised me to take against my own judgment, slipped on a rolling pebble that any mule would have avoided, and PLUKGED THROUGH 700 FT OP THIN AIR with a shriek like a woman's. With the pony vanished three days' provender, and we were thrown on short rations for the rest of the march. The grey-toothed peaks that stood round to the north and south threw pale ahadows far over the plains as the sun sank, and in places the huge waste of mountains loomed like a storm-riven sea struck solid by frost. At night there was a solemn oppression in that vast emptineßS. We were voiceless specks in an ocean of stone. On the second day, towards evening, an I inky cloud bore down and blotted oat the

sun. Later came a hailstorm, which wipes away the impressions of any other tempest I have ever breasted. Hailstones the size of large walnuts pelted and thrashed the mountain like grapeshofc, strewing the slopea with rolling ice. We hurried blindly to a rock shelter and orouohed there, braised, battered, and half-stunned, till the bombardment thinned and passed away. It was a storm of storms, that hail tempest of the Andes. As the fourth day died we crept olear of the great mountain wall and back into that which its natives are pleased to call civilisation — soarred, ekin-cracked, but full of the strange things of the Peruvian loneliness — and there we rested. — Answers.