March, 1835. passage of Cordillera. 



397 



cursed pot (which was a new one) did not choose to boil 

 potatoes.^^ 



March 22d. — After eating our potato-less breakfast, we 

 travelled across the intermediate tract, to the foot of the Por- 

 tillo range. In the middle of summer cattle are brought up 

 here to graze ; but they had now all been removed ; even 

 the greater number of the guanacoes had decamped, know- 

 ing well, that, if overtaken by a snow-storm, they would be 

 caught in a trap. We had a fine view of a mass of moun- 

 tains called Tupungato, the whole clothed with unbroken 

 snow. From one peak my arriero said he had once seen 

 smoke proceeding ; and I thought I could distinguish the 

 form of a large crater. In the maps Tupungato figures as 

 a single mountain ; this Chileno method of giving one name 

 to a tract of mountains is a fruitful source of error. In the 

 region of snow there was a blue patch, which no doubt w^as 

 a glacier ; — a phenomenon that has been said not to occur 

 in these mountains. 



Now commenced a heavy and long climb, similar to that 

 up the Peuquenes. Bold conical hills of red granite rose on 

 each hand; and in the valley there were several broad 

 fields of perpetual snow. These frozen masses, during the 

 process of thawing, had in some parts assumed the form of 

 pinnacles or columns, which, as they were high and close 

 together, caused some difficulty on account of the cargo 

 mules. This structure in frozen snow was long since 

 observed by Scoresby in the icebergs near Spitzbergen, and 

 lately, with more care, by Colonel Jackson* on the Neva. 

 On one of these columns of ice a frozen horse was exposed, 

 sticking as on a pedestal, but with its hind legs straight up 

 in the air. To account for its strange position, we must 



* Journal of Geograph. Soc, vol. v., p. 12. Mr. Lyell (vol. iv., p. 360) 

 has compared the fissures, by which the columnar structure seems to be 

 determined, to the joints that traverse nearly all rocks, but which are best 

 seen in the non-stratified masses. I may observe, in the case of the frozen^ 

 snow, the columnar structure must be owing to a " metamorphic" action 

 and not to a process during deposition. 



