GLACIAL MORAINES. 1 23 



that which lay spread out before me. A black, barren waste of lava sur- 

 rounded me on all sides. Its surface was distorted by huge overthrusts 

 and indented by numerous deep, yawning chasms and caverns. Of life 

 there was little or none. For indeed what animal or plant could find 

 sustenance on such barren and inhospitable rocks ? Notwithstanding the 

 absolutely desolate nature of the scene about me, there was something 

 both attractive and impressive in it, that led me to wander farther and 

 farther over the surface, so that it was late at night when I retraced my 

 steps and descended to our camp in the valley beneath. 



About the middle of the forenoon of the second day after our halt we 

 arrived at a point where the canon makes a rather sharp turn and stretches 

 away in an almost due westerly course, expanding into a broad, open valley 

 or basin, which lies at the foot of the Andes. For the first time we now had 

 a view of the forest-covered slopes and snow-clad peaks and summits of 

 those magnificent and picturesque mountain ranges with which we were 

 soon to become so familiar. 



In the afternoon of this same day we came to the first of a series of 

 great terminal moraines, which had been left at various stages in the 

 upper course of the valley by a great glacier, as it receded from the plains. 

 The position of this moraine is just above the forks of the river, where the 

 Rio Belgrano enters the Rio Chico from the northwest. Our course lay 

 up the Rio Chico, or south fork of the stream. On the north side, and 

 immediately opposite this point, the high basaltic platform, which had fol- 

 lowed the various meanderings of the valley, enclosing it like a mighty 

 wall, with scarcely a break for a distance of a hundred miles, is interrupted 

 by a broad, level plain, some fifteen or twenty miles in width. This 

 stretches away to the northern horizon, between lofty basalt-covered table- 

 lands, which enclose it on the west and east. At this point the old Indian 

 trail, along which we had been travelling, crosses to the northern side of 

 the stream, and, leaving the river valley, strikes due north over the surface 

 of the plain just mentioned. With some difficulty we made our way 

 through the rounded hillocks to the upper side of the moraine and camped 

 near the river, just at the foot of a bluff of glacial silt. The side of the 

 slope, as well as the little plain at its foot, was literally alive with rodents. 

 Hopping about among the bushes and rocks, were to be seen in great 

 numbers representatives of the little gray, tailless and hare-like Cavia 

 australis. Most interesting and amusing little creatures they are, as, 



