“The Heart of the Andes”/Part 4

Next let our thoughts come down from these supernal regions, and pause “new-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill.” A man becomes exalted to a demigod, more nobly divine than any of the Olympians, when he can soar to such a summit as this. An isolated snow-peak is the sublimest of material objects, and worthiest of daring Art, if Art but dare. Here it has dared and done.

This mountain is a type, not a portrait. If the reader insists upon a name, he may call it Cayambe, and fancy he sees the ghost of La Condamine stepping off an arc of the Equator on its shoulders, and blowing his icy fingers as he parts the snow to find the line. But Cayambe perhaps does its share in carrying the girdle of the world. It has been useful enough in a scientific way, and need not take the artistic responsibility of resembling this pictured peak. Besides, compared to this, Cayambe is but a stunted hillock, being only some nineteen thousand feet high. The snow line of the equatorial Andes is at sixteen thousand feet, and Cayambe’s three thousand feet of snow would be but a narrow belt on this mountain’s breadth of golden fields of winter. Chimborazo then! — clarum et venerabile nomen — is it Chimborazo? Alas those revolutionary South American republics! — they have allowed El Chimborazo to be dethroned. Once he was chieftain of the long line from Tierra del Fuego to Arctic ice. Then fickle men revolted and set up two temporary bullies, a doubtful duumvirate, Sorato and Illimani. Finally, some uneasy radical rummaged out Aconcagua from modest retirement in the Chilian Andes, and pronounced his ermine to be broadest, unless his brother Tupungato should pretend to rival him. This mountain, dominant at the “Heart of the Andes,” is not then Cayambe or Chimborazo, or any other peak of the equatorial group. It is each and all of them, and more than any. It is the type of the great trachytic domes of the Andes, which stand in such solemn repose beside the fiery vigor of volcanic cones like Cotopaxi, and the terrible ghastly ruin of a gulf of burning craters like Sangay.

And now, let us dally no more with questions, but look and wonder before the supreme object of the picture, — this miracle of vastness, and peace, and beauty, not merely white snow against blue sky, but Light against Heaven. No poetry of words can fitly paint its symmetry, its stateliness, the power of its rising slowly and strongly, from chasm and cloud, up with pearly shadows and coruscating lights, up with golden sunshine upon its crown, up into the empyrean. The poetry is before our eyes. A look can read it. For this is what great Art alone can do, and triumphs in doing. It gives a vision of glory, and every one who beholds it is a poet.

But we can study the architecture of this firm fabric. Consider on what a base it stands, — what buttresses it has. No threatening crag is this that may be sapped. Here toppling ruin will never befall. We are safe in our Paradise at the Heart of the Andes.

Observe the method of its growth. First, across and closing the purple glen to the left, rises a rosy purple mountain, as it were an experiment of form toward the grander edifice. A few spots of snow rest among its tyro domes and pinnacles. It is not, then, a petty structure. The snow tells us that, if it stood where stands the shadowy mountain of the middle background, it would rise far above that cloud-compelling height.

Behind this disrobed model of the grander forms above, rises another experimental mountain, climbing up to the regions where snow gives roundness and softness to anatomical lines of rock. It leans upon the dome, and bears it up with stalwart breadth of shoulder. Separated from its younger brother by profound ravines, it grows up a mighty concave mass, a slow, majestic upward surge, with a sweep, and sway, and climb in every portion of its substance and its surface, and yet so broken by insurgent crests of cliff, paly purple over opalescent shadows, and so varied by slopes of snow, and wreath, and drift, and dimple, and bend, and rounded angle everywhere, that there is no monotony in its solemn curve towards the dome. Faint shadows of clouds dim its lustre. It has not yet attained to the uppermost cloudlessness. A delicate drapery of blue mistiness over its swelling reaches is rendered with masterly refinement.

Two essays have thus been made in mountain building, and two degrees of elevation overcome. Now the vigor of the first purple cliffs, and the broad sweep of the snowy shoulder, are combined in the Dome. Suddenly, across its chasm of isolation, the Dome mounts upward, and marks its firm outlines against the sky. Its convex lines of ascent are bold as the lines of the first model, while its calm, rounded summit repeats the deliberate curves of the snow-clad terrace beneath. There is no insubordination among the parts, nothing careless or temporary in the work. Skill and plan have built up a mass, harmonious, steadfast, and adamantine. This is a firm head upon firm shoulders, whatever else may crumble in a century, and fall to ruin in an æon. Cities of men may sink through the clefts of an earthquake, but this mountain is set up to be a symbol of power for the world’s life.

Observe further the effect of orderly vastness given by the nearly parallel lines of the ridges upholding the Dome. The uppermost of these is a complete system of mutually sustaining buttresses. Up from crag to crag of this ridge, the eye climbs easily; dashing up the shady purple precipices, resting in each gray shadow, speeding across the snowy levels, leaping crevice, and pausing at each fair dimple until it has measured its way up to the specular summit. If colossal peaks rose, naked rock, against the sky, their gloom would be overpowering. And if fiends had the making of worlds, mountains would be dreadful bulks of black porphyry, the flame-born rock, — monuments and portents of malignity. Cyclops and gnomes, to say nothing of more demoniac craftsmen, would never have capped their domes and pyramids with lightsome snow. But mountains, the most signal of earthly facts, are transfigured from gloom to glory by the gentlest creature of all that float and fall, — the snow-flake. It is not enough that air should lie in clouds, and float in mists, and linger in violet haze in every dell of the lower mountains, but there must be a grander beauty than bare mountains, rich with play of strong color, and softened with shadow, can express. High above the strength of his earth God has set the beauty of his earth; — glory of snow above the might of adamant.

When the observer estimates that the Dome is at least sixty miles from his point of view, he will be able to measure the power of its mass and the proportions of its details. Each sunny dimple thus expands to an abyss. Seeming ripples on the snow-fields become enormous mounds heaped up by the whirlwinds that riot forever among those dry, unfathomable drifts, the accumulation of ages. Below the first sheer slope on the front of the summit is a chasm between the precipice and a bare elbow of rock, — a lovely spot of pearly shadow. Measure that chasm with the eye; — into it you might toss Ossa and see it flounder through the snow and drown; and Pelion upon Ossa would only protrude a patch of its dishevelled poll. Things are done in the large among the Andes.

Clouds close the view on each slope of the Dome; on the left touched with orange, where they reflect the glow of the peak; on the right gray and shadowy. They half disclose and half conceal a mysterious infinite on either side. An isolated silvery aiguille juts out of this obscure, a contrast in its color and keen form to the Dome, and hinting at successions of unseen peaks beyond. A slender stratus cloud comes in with subtle effect across the vapors below the summit, — a quiet level for the eye, where all the lines are curved and tending upward.

The Dome is the Alpha and the Omega of the picture, — first to take the eye as the principal light, and the last object of recurring thought when study proves that all the wealth below lies tribute at its feet, and every minor light only recalls its mild benignancy.

It is hard to put the essence of a volume into a few paragraphs. This mountain is a marvel, and merits silent study of hours; I have endeavored to point out briefly its great qualities of construction. The reader must remember that the beauty of snowy mountains is a recent discovery. An age ago, poets had nothing to say of them but a shiver, and painters skulked away and painted “bits.” The sublimity of snow-peaks should underlie all our feeling for the lesser charms of Nature. Yet many people of considerable sentiment still shiver and skulk before these great white thrones of the Almighty. But yet not every one who would, can be a pilgrim to Mecca. Not every one can kneel at the holiest shrines of Nature. Let us be thankful to Mr. Church that he has brought the snowy Andes to us, and dared to demand our worship for their sublimity.