12 DESCRIPTIVE GEOGRAPHY. 



close at hand, but, in reality, the Lontueand more than a league of territory intervene between 

 us. From here, too, in a narrow valley whose bottom is some 3,500 feet below us, we descry 

 the lake of Mondaca, a canopy of vapor overhanging its greenish-yellow and waveless surface. 

 The road continues along its south shore through elliptic valleys, or rather basins, of different 

 elevations, enclosed by porphyritic columnar rocks, and clothed with pasturage. These prisms, 

 in some places not more than eight or ten inches in diameter, have from three to five faces, as 

 equal and symmetrical as though cut by art. Thousands of them are grouped together some- 

 times erect, at others curved, while again others spring from a common centre. From the 

 loftiest series of these grim pillars, partially covered with snow, gush an infinity of tiny rivulets 

 tending to one common stream below, whose limpid waters foam wildly over a bed composed of 

 material breccia of obsidian whose formation is yet a mystery to the geologist, and thence flow 

 on to the lake. 



Four or five leagues above the Laguna the road turns from its stream more to the southeast, 

 passes over a hill of nearly the same height as Cerro de Cruces, and subsequently a lofty table 

 plain covered with fragments of stone and destitute of vegetation. Here we perceive, for the 

 first time, the Descabezado, with its two cones, united by a plain of perpetual snow more exten- 

 sive than that of the Planchon, the bed of snow resting on an antique mass of lava, perceptibly, 

 even at this distance, rugged and broken. Both these mountains form points in the plane 

 of greatest elevation of the Andes, but they are not in the line of hills dividing the waters of 

 the two oceans. The latter is found beyond Cerro del Medio, which is also volcanic, snow- 

 covered, and three or four leagues farther east. From the now extinct craters, and the snow 

 of Cerro del Medio, originates quite a stream, whose course is first northwardly through Valle 

 Grande, and eventually (Prof. Domeyko says) unites with one from Lake Mondaca, the union of 

 the two forming the Lontue. But in another place he asserts that, "the Lontue does not originate 

 in Lake Mondaca, although people say it does;" and as he neither made a circuit of the lake nor 

 traced the stream of the Valle Grande, there is very reasonable ground for doubting whether 

 there is any such break here in the continuity of the great chain. Crossing the valley, we 

 attain the final range of elevations and ascend to Puerta del Yeso, as the immediate pass is 

 called, by a tolerably good mountain road which is entirely free from snow during all the 

 summer months. The height above the ocean is only 6,600 feet, scarcely half that of any of 

 the northern passes. The eastern slope, with its gentle declivities, fertile valleys, and broad 

 pampas a -stream of water flowing away to the northeastward, and herds of cattle that have been 

 driven from haciendas in the province of Talca for the rich grasses that bound its margin all 

 these are spread before us ; but, as at the north, there is great monotony in the forms of the 

 hills, in the colors of the rocks, even in the verdure itself ; and we greatly miss the luxuriant 

 trees that adorn the western slopes of the Andes in this latitude. I could not find any one who 

 had travelled farther than to the Valle del Yeso, but was told that there is a continuation of 

 the road, through the country of the Pehuenches to Mendoza. 



Pass of ANTUCO. It is admitted that this is more easy of access than any of the known 

 passes. Instead of following the direction of streams to near their sources, and then climbing 

 rugged ranges, often at great inclinations, as is done at all the others, the path proceeds from 

 the junction of the Laja and Biobio, on the great plain, immediately up and along the ridge 

 of a spur of the Andes, and the ascent is so gentle that a cart may travel the whole distance 

 over it. By order of the colonial government, such a journey actually was made nearly half a 

 century ago, the engineer reporting, at his return, that a carriage road could be made at small 

 expense. The elevation above the sea to be overcome is only 6,500 feet ; there are no steep 

 acclivities, and almost all the rocky formation is covered with a stratum of earth. If such a 

 road was made, the distance between Buenos Ayres and Concepcion would be shortened at least 

 one third, and passengers from the north of Chile, embarking for the latter port in a steamer, 

 might proceed to the shores of the Atlantic through a country beautiful in scenery and abound- 

 ing in the necessities of life, and in half the time that they now occupy in a voyage round Cape 



