The Atmosphere Resplendently Clear;
The Sky An Intense Blue; The Profound Valleys; The Wild
Broken Forms:
The heaps of ruins, piled up during the lapse
of ages; the bright-coloured rocks, contrasted with the quiet
mountains of snow, all these together produced a scene no
one could have imagined.
Neither plant nor bird, excepting
a few condors wheeling around the higher pinnacles, distracted
my attention from the inanimate mass. I felt glad
that I was alone: it was like watching a thunderstorm, or
hearing in full orchestra a chorus of the Messiah.
On several patches of the snow I found the Protococcus
nivalis, or red snow, so well known from the accounts of
Arctic navigators. My attention was called to it, by observing
the footsteps of the mules stained a pale red, as if their
hoofs had been slightly bloody. I at first thought that it was
owing to dust blown from the surrounding mountains of red
porphyry; for from the magnifying power of the crystals
of snow, the groups of these microscopical plants appeared
like coarse particles. The snow was coloured only where it
had thawed very rapidly, or had been accidentally crushed.
A little rubbed on paper gave it a faint rose tinge mingled
with a little brick-red. I afterwards scraped some off the
paper, and found that it consisted of groups of little spheres
in colourless cases, each of the thousandth part of an inch in
diameter.
The wind on the crest of the Peuquenes, as just remarked,
is generally impetuous and very cold:
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