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This morning I was particularly anxious to get a picture of our pack train jogging steadily along over the desert, directly away from Coropuna. Since my mule would not gallop ahead, I had to dismount, run a couple of hundred yards ahead of the rapidly advancing animals and take the picture before they reached me. We were now at an elevation of 16,000 feet above sea level.
The next day we entered a region of mountain pastures. We passed occasional swamps and little pools of snow water. From one of these we turned and looked back across the great Cotahuasi Canyon, to the glaciers of Solimana and snow-clad Coropuna, now growing fainter and fainter as we went toward Parinacochas.
Exciting things are always easy to do, no matter how you are living, but frequently they produce less important results than tasks which depend upon daily drudgery; and daily drudgery depends upon a regular supply of wholesome food. We reached Arequipa, the proposed base for our campaign against Mt. Coropuna, in June, 1911.
The story of our discoveries there, of identifying Uiticos, the capital of the last Incas, and of the finding of Machu Picchu will be found in later chapters. In September I returned to Arequipa and started the campaign against Coropuna by endeavoring to get adequate transportation facilities for crossing the desert.
With faint smiles and renewed courage we pegged along, resting on our ice axes, as usual, every twenty-five steps until at last, at half-past eleven, after six hours and a half of climbing from the 20,000-foot camp, we reached the culminating point of Coropuna.
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