71 
Chilian frontier present, none of the beauty you read of in connection 
with the former. There is a grandeur, but it is the grandeur of deso¬ 
lation and of the world in making. Trees are absent, and beyond 
Uspallata there is little vegetation of any kind, rain scarcely ever 
falling in the main range, but, I believe, after the melting of the 
winter snows a wealth of wild flowers springs from the ground in the 
valleys. The foothills are covered with cacti and other plants. A 
great part of the mountains may be described as peaks and ridges of 
bare rock above, with below a heap of debris, stacked at a slope at 
which it will not stand safely, and, as a consequence, continually 
slipping and falling in avalanches or coming down in “ mud runs.” 
Aconcagua itself is a little disappointing, being a huge and rather 
shapeless mass of rock, but Tupungato, a volcano, is typical of our_ 
°r> perhaps, 1 should say my—original idea of a mountain, the moun¬ 
tain of the picture-books we see in childhood and remember ever after, 
cone-shaped, white at the summit, and, when seen with the rising sun,' 
of perfect loveliness. We stayed at the Puente, close to the wonder¬ 
ful natural bridge you have, no doubt, read of, for three or four days, 
and did a little collecting at the height above the sea of from, I sup¬ 
pose, 7,000 to 9,000 feet, in the valley towards Aconcagua, distant 
about ten miles. Three kinds of butterflies were taken, and a good 
many others seen, but any exertion is very difficult at the altitude,°and 
our captures were, therefore, not so numerous as they would have been 
on lower ground. The first was a (Julias (one $ and one $ ), a grand 
fellow, with a broad black band on the forewings, the male dark yellow 
and the female white ; the second a Pierid, in form almost a little 
Tatoddla autodice, Hb.; the third an Aryynnis, small and pale coloured. 
The last-named gave us some occasion for thought. It is a strange 
thing, in the midst of the Cordillera, and far away from the old coun¬ 
try, in the shade of Aconcagua, on the side of a hill having the con¬ 
tour of a chalk down, with a tiny lake at the foot, chasing a small 
fritillary amongst the stones and boulders, indistinguishable to the 
inexperienced eye from the A. euphrosyne or selme (although, perhaps, the 
resemblance is really greater to A. latlwnia), and with a ( 'alias on the 
wing the very image of C. eilwsa. But I must notallow myself to 
wander into attempting to describe the course of the river Mendoza, 
which, starting from the foot of the snow, runs through a gorge,' 
narrow in many places, especially in the sierra of Uspallata, then & is 
diverted to irrigate and fertilize the vineyards, containing one-seventh 
part of solid matter ; or the Cordillera itself, with rocks of varied 
tints—purple, white, red, or greenish in the sunshine—the sunsets, 
the valleys by moonlight, the play of the lightning behind the peaks 
at night, or the bishop of stone sleeping in his mitre, whose head 
closed the valley to the east. 
We left the Inca again the day before Good Friday (the weather 
had turned cold, and snow lay everywhere until the sun was high), 
reaching Mendoza at night. We started again on the Saturday morn¬ 
ing, and spent a great part of that day at Tunuyan, visiting the 
river of that name—a glorious locality for insects. Imagine 
the old bed of a broad stream with high banks, deep pools 
here and there, tall rushes, bushy scrub (monte), large patches 
of aromatic shrubs—the bog myrtle of the country—with the 
peaks of the snow mountains far to the west, and you have 
