“The Heart of the Andes”/Part 7

A canopy of the lofty rain-clouds of this region overhangs the central mountain. We have already observed their shadows; let us now analyze their substance, and note their effect.

Western winds sweeping the Pacific catch dew from the thickets of palm-islands, and foam from breakers on the reefs that shelter blue lagoons, scoop handfuls from the deeps, where sunlight strikes like bended lightning, and tear away the stormy crests of surges. And as the winds hasten on in their hot journey, they play with their treasures of coolness, and find that vapor is a ductile thing, and may be woven into transparent fabrics of clouds, light, fragile, strong, elastic, and with all the qualities of dew and foam, sunny water, and the lurid might of angry sea. Such cloud-wreaths the warm ocean winds hold ready to fling upon every frigid slope of the Andes. No one of these aerial elements is wanting to the clouds over Mr. Church’s majestic Cordillera. They have the shimmer of dew, and the bulk of the surge; they are light as a garland, yet solid to resist a gale. Flexible sunbeams can penetrate this texture, and twine themselves with every fibre, and yet bluff winds cannot shatter them. Brightness and darkness flow and fuse together among their rims and contours.

These are not woolly clouds, nor fleecy breadths of woolliness; not feathery clouds, nor brooding feathered pinions. They are not curls of animal hair, nor plumes of fowls. Only the morbid will be reminded by them of flocks of sheep, or flights of rocs. They are clouds made of vapor, not of flocculent pulp, or rags, or shoddy. They are no more like either syllabub or dumplings than Mr. Churches air is like lymph, his water like yeast, or his peaks like frosted plum-cake. Epithets from the kitchen or the factory are equally out of place. These are veritable clouds of coherent, translucent vapor; — magical creations, because there is no magic in them, but only profound, patient, able handiwork guided by love. They are beautiful because they are actual clouds of heaven, and show that the artist knew the infinite life of clouds and the dramatic energy of their coming and going, eventful with shadow and light, and sometimes with tears and dreary tragedies of storm, — that he has seen what wreathed smiles they have for sunshine, what mild rebuffs for boisterous winds, — seen their coquetries of flying and waiting, their coy advances, their wiles of hiding and peering forth with bright looks from under hoods of gray. And having thus studied the character and laws, the use and the loveliness of these spirits of the air, the artist, knowing that he cannot better the models of Nature, has adopted them. Painting of natural objects must be imitation or mockery. A great artist studies to master type forms. When he has grasped the type, then he can construct individuals as he will, but any attempt to create new types results in inanity or caricature, in the deformity of feebleness, or the deformity of the grotesque.

Nothing in the picture is more masterly than these clouds upon the Cordillera. See how they climb and cling to the slopes, how they bridge the hollows, and fling themselves against the opponent cliffs, how they trail and linger, as if to choose their bivouac for the night-watches. They do not sag ponderous and lethargic, nor droop in sorry dejection, weeping out their hearts because their backs are broken. Nor do they fritter away their dignity in a fantastic dance. They are elate and springy with eagerness through all their brilliant phalanxes, and detach themselves with perfect individuality from the far-away sky and the dark mountain. They are naturally and rightly in their place, and give the needful horizontal, for change of line, after so much height, as well as the needful concealment and revelation of form.

But the Llano at the Heart of the Andes, the village, the Montaña, the cataract, and the inexhaustible charms of the rich foreground, invite us. Let us take at a leap the gulf on the mountain-side where a thread of cascade is faintly visible. We advance over the gradual slope behind the dark forest, and notice the forceful quiet of that breadth of gray woodland in shadow, in the middle distance, with its bold fronts of rock.

Let us here pause for a moment. What have we done? Where are we? Let us review our mountain work before we go among the groves and flowers of Arcady. We passed first up the misty glen to the left under the purple precipices, — a stern gorge and a terrible, though now it look so fair. We beheld the Dome, and approached it reverently. We climbed its three terraces. We studied its impressive mass. We saw where its foundations were laid deep and broad, — the triumphant peace of its golden curves against the sky, —and found exquisite light in its shadows. We noticed the magnificent rolling line of the Cordillera where it cuts against the sky and meets the snows, — observed its varied color and form, and marked what a cloudy world it upholds on Atlantean shoulders. We have, in short, studied the Andes, Cordillera and Nevado, the region of animated clouds above the one, and the realm of sinless sky above the other. This is what we have done; — what we have gained will appear when we come to review the whole picture.