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Whether it was destroyed by enemies, whether it was buried under the ashes of a volcano, whether it still exists, deserted and solitary in some valley amid the mountain fastnesses of the Andes, I do not know. But I am certain the city once existed, and it may exist yet, though it may be in dust-covered ruins. That is what I seek to find. See! Here are the tablets telling about it.
It may be said that Argentina of to-day was colonized from three directions the first by means of the River Plate and its tributaries, the second by the passage of the Andes from the west, and the third by an advance from the direction of Bolivia. Thus the north-western section of present-day Argentina had become, as it were, the centre towards which all the Castilian forces were converging.
He climbed here and he climbed there, and then came the attempt on Parascotopetl, the Matterhorn of the Andes, in which he was lost to the outer world. The story of the accident has been written a dozen times. Pointer's narrative is the best.
After the great knot of mountains of Cuzco and Parinacochas, in 14 degrees south latitude, the Andes present a second bifurcation, on the east and west of the Rio Jauja, which throws itself into the Mantaro, a tributary stream of the Apurimac.
At length, on January 17, 1817, he began the passage of the Andes with about 5,000 men, 1,600 horses, and 9,000 mules, the latter carrying the field artillery, ammunition, and provisions. The summit of the Uspallata Pass is 12,700 feet above the sea-level, 5,000 feet higher than the Great St. Bernard, by which Napoleon led his army over the Alps.
Fancy twenty-four thousand guns thundering at each other. Fancy the sky red with the fires of hundreds of thousands of blazing, brazen meteors; the air thick with impenetrable smoke the universe almost in a flame! for the noise of the cannonading was heard on the peaks of the Andes, and broke three windows in the English factory at Canton.
Three separate mountain-systems exist in South America: that of the Andes on the west, Guiana and Venezuela on the north, and the serras of Brazil in the centre. The surface of the remainder of the continent is occupied by vast level, or undulating tracts of different elevations.
But he confessed to me that ten years ago he robbed his employer of eight thousand dollars. By the way, what is the name of the firm your father founded?" "The Andes Construction Company. Do you think we could find him something to do there?" eagerly. "He builds bridges." "I shouldn't advise that. But we have gone astray. You ought not to see him again." "I have made up my mind not to."
The steep cliff near the mouth of the Rio Negro is its northern limit on the Patagonian coast; and they have there wandered about four hundred miles from the great central line of their habitation in the Andes. Further south, among the bold precipices at the head of Port Desire, the condor is not uncommon; yet only a few stragglers occasionally visit the sea-coast.
In fact, there is one tribe of the Apaches who have obtained the name of "Mezcaleros," from the fact of their eating the wild aloe, which in those countries goes under the name of "mezcal" plant. In many parts of the Andes, where the soil is barren, the wild maguey is almost the only vegetation to be seen, and in such places the Indians use it as food.
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