ARRIVAL AT SANTIAGO, 153 



feet* To the eye, however, the outline seen from the 

 plain is very varied, and by no means gives the 

 impression of a continuous wall. Huge buttresses, 

 with peaked summits, not much inferior in height to 

 the main range, project westward, and in the bays 

 between them form Alpine valleys, which send down 

 streams to fertilize the country. By these buttresses 

 the peak of Tupungato, 20,278 feet in height, the 

 highest summit of this part of the chain, is concealed 

 from Santiago, and I doubt whether it is anywhere 

 visible from the low country on the Chilian side. 



Soon after twelve o'clock the train reached the 

 station at Santiago, and I found Mr. Flint, the 

 obliging German proprietor of the Hotel Oddo, in 

 readiness with a carriage to take me to his hotel 

 The first impression of Santiago, irrespective of the 

 grandeur of its position, is that of a great city. The 

 houses, consisting only of a ground floor, or at most 

 with a single floor overhead, built round an enclosed 

 court, or patio, cover a large space, and the town 

 occupies three or four times the area that an equal 

 population would require in Europe. It is laid out, 

 even more regularly than Turin, in square blocks of 

 nearly the same dimensions, so that the ordinary wa}- 

 of reckoning distances is by quadras. One enters the 



* The mapping of the Andean chain is a task of immense difficulty, 

 and although the Chilian survey is the best that has yet been executed, 

 it leaves much to be desired. Even in the small district which I was 

 able to visit, I found several grave errors in Petermann's map, reduced 

 from the Chilian survey, which is, nevertheless, the best that has been 

 published in Europe. One of the most serious is the omission of the 

 Uspallata Pass, the most frequented of those leading from Central Chili 

 to the Argentine territory, which is neither named nor correctly indi- 

 cated by the tints adopted to mark the zones of elevation. 



