Читать книгу White Waters and Black - Gordon MacCreagh - Страница 6

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We the intrepid explorers have left the City of Our Lady of Peace, with the plaudits of the assembled multitudes ringing in our ears. Heroes we were, to a man. For the discoveries which we are going to make will be all to the glorification of that beloved Bolivia, and will be of a value the most inestimable to la patria; and we are plunging into the unknown, probably to our deaths.

A very pleasant and complimentary gentleman with medals and a blue sash told us all this and presented us with importantly sealed letters to all intendantes, illicates, and jefes of administration, bidding them further us on our way with all the means at their disposal. The Intendente of Espía was not overlooked.

We have crossed the High Cordillera by unknown passes and have discovered—Espía.

What can I record about crossing the High Andes? Nothing, I fancy. Mountain trails are mountain trails, whether they be over the Himalayas or our own Rockies or the Andes. Many travelers have written about crossing mountains. Our manner of crossing was in no way different from theirs.

For me every foot of it was full of interest, the interest of some new thing around every corner; even though it were no more than a painted crag or a sweep of windblown snow. Some of it was hard. Much of it was cold, terribly cold. And all of it was wondrously beautiful.

Up and up and always up! On bare mountain scarps from the very beginning; for the La Paz plateau, the Altiplano, is a good three thousand feet above timberline, to start with. First on long slopes of sparse llama grass; then on the barren steeps where nothing grew at all; then into the snow.

Merciful Heaven, what snow! Thin, powdery stuff that gave poor foothold and kicked up in clouds under the mules' hoofs. Clouds that lifted on the wind and blew back like fine bird-shot into the faces of those behind. And what wind! There is always a wind on those slopes, either rushing up from the comparatively warmer Altiplano or hurtling down from the snow peaks to see that the plain never gets too warm. It was our fate to be going against a down wind which rejoiced in the powdery snow. So that going was exactly the same as butting into a blizzard. And since the blizzard was caused entirely by the hoofs of pack-mules and fodder-mules and riding-mules to the number of sixty or so, the obvious thing for an astute person to do was to get ahead of that stupendous train.

This remained my ambition for the rest of the journey. But it was unfulfilled. It is a clammy thing to get up of a chill morning in a lopsided tent pitched at a precarious angle on a half-cleared snow slope. So it was inevitable that while I yet hugged the blankets some hardy arriero would be up and packed and away with his string of mules. Hence my days were spent trying to squeeze past stubborn beasts on narrow trails, beasts who had learned by uncanny experience to hug the cliff-side of the trail and to let ambitious passers edge round on the precipice side. A procedure not encouraging to ambition.

What matter that I was theoretically the boss of those mules and arrieros? Mules are beasts much too wise to be respecters of persons when the business of mountain trails is on hand. And arrieros are people much too stubborn, from long association with their wise beasts, to permit any mere gringo tenderfoot to interfere with the order of their going. They have but one argument, the old irrefutable one of the man who knows his job:

"Señor, we have done this thing before. This is our business and our responsibility."

What answer could the boss make? Particularly since they were amazingly right. So there was no time during all those strenuous days of interminable "excelsior" that I couldn't look up and see a thin trail of mules, dotted black against the snow, winding up and up and disappearing round a knife edge of out-flung scarp, to reappear as crawling ants flattened out against the perpendicular white wall of the farther ridge and to disappear finally over the jagged sky-line.

Those heartbreaking sky-lines! White and hard against the thin cloudless blue. Actually cloudless from one toilsome day to the next, notwithstanding the blizzard through which we toiled. For we have, naturally, chosen the dry season to make our crossing. So the skylines stand out clear and deceptively close, and incalculably high. Surely each one is no farther than a dozen miles away, and surely each one is the last! For quite surely no pass can be higher than the next chill eminence. Even we who ride feel the effort of breathing the thin air. How those unhappy mules keep climbing, under these loads, is a wonder.

There was a period earlier in the ascent when I experienced some of the exhilaration that comes with crisp air and looking down from an eminence upon a white sea of lesser peaks.

"Smokin' my pipe in the morning, sniffin' the mountain cool," I thought that I would get off and "walk in my old brown gaiters along o' my old brown mule." I must confess, too, to a feeling of confidence in my own feet rather than in those of any mule beast when one walked "a foot on the edge of the mountain, a foot on the edge of the pit, and a drop into nothing beside you as far as a beggar can spit."

But all those braggart thoughts oozed away within the first mile of the attempt, and I was grateful to leave my fate, as many have done before me, to the sure cunning of my wise old mule! "The Other Mary" was that good old mule's name—because she always chose the better way.

Content was I and grateful to let Mary pant up those endless inclines which some clairvoyant in the far lead insisted was a path; and more than grateful when each towering sky-line opened up to a cold white vista of farther inclines and yet higher sky-lines. When the inclines were too steep even for Mary, she had a startling habit of protesting. She would look craftily out of the corner of her eye and when she found me becoming unwatchful and gazing round at the terrifying delight of the scenery she would turn and bite swiftly at my foot. The cunning of the very devil had my meek-eyed Mary. For she would make her protest only at places of dire peril, where narrow was the way and strait was the path, and fear for my life prevented my entering into any serious altercation with her.

I have seen bold horsemen—in motion pictures—perform heart-stopping antics upon a two-foot path with a thousand feet of sheer rock on one side and a thousand feet of nothing on the other. I boast, myself, that upon my own two feet I will stand with my toes as far over the dizzy edge as any other intrepid explorer; for I have traveled mountain trails before. But perched high in a precarious seat on the back of another creature whose mysterious emotions I have no means of understanding, I have no illusions about security.

It has been in my experience to see a horse in a much safer position become startled at a black smudge left against the cliffside where a charcoal-burner had rested his pack, and leap with legs all aspraddle into the air, crabwise so that the half of him came down over the edge of the path; and I have watched him hang there, pawing desperately with his fore feet while he screamed with fear and while the rider clung helplessly to his neck, unable either to dismount or to reach for anything else. Just a few seconds of tense horror, till that scanty foothold gave way and both dropped from sight—and the screaming of both continued long after they had dropped.

There are other unpleasant memories of horses, though that was the worst. A mule, of course, is no such hysterical fool as a horse. In the same ratio that his sure-footedness is greater than that of a horse and his endurance is again greater than his sure-footedness, so is his wisdom greater than his endurance. None the less, all that I ever said to Mary when on a narrow trail she tried to bite my toes was, "Tcha! tcha! Giddap, old girl." A wise and beautiful old moth-eaten mule was Mary.

But there had to be a last trail and a final topmost sky-line eventually. At eighteen thousand feet on the fifth day the snow cliffs could not continue rearing themselves up indefinitely. So they gave up the valiant attempt, with the abruptness that Andean scenery delights in. We staggered round a jutting ice corner and stood suddenly in a deep cleft between dark walls so steep that the snow could cling only in patches. The next instant we snatched at our hats and ponchos, for a hurricane shrieked through this gap as though all the winds of the farther Amazon Valley were trying to get through it at once.

A killing wind it would have been had it been as chill as the drafts from off the snow peaks into which we had butted until then. But this heavenly hurricane was warm. No tropical blast, by any means, for that hot air arising from the plains had had plenty of time to get cooled off while coming over the heights; but none the less on our cheeks, chapped with the snow winds, it blew mild and it carried with it the wet vague smells of the plains.

This was the pass of Songo. A bad pass to get to, but a wonderful pass when reached. For it was no long and arduous, boulder-belittered climb of a day, like the Jalap La into Tibet, which very evil place it has been my misfortune to traverse. A clean, deep cut into a towering hogback is this Songo. Half a mile, perhaps, from end to end, and four hundred yards from its sudden gape to its highest point.

And beyond that—the Promised Land! Peak below dwindling peak and vast sweeping scarp of snow. Miles beyond tedious miles of it. Then a far fuzzy belt of bare brown earth below the line of everlasting snow, a belt that merged in the distance into patches of yellows and reds. Grasses which merged dimly into greens. Trees. Things that were alive and grew. Birds and animals and men. Warm life once again after all those ages of dead snow. Green jungles of discovery that faded out in the far distance of steamy blue haze.

I can understand the "Thallatta" of Xenophon's Ten Thousand as they topped whatever mountain ridge it was; the "Nombre Sanctissimo" of Balboa from his peak in Darien. For that sea of jungle stretching into the remote haze was quite as much the goal of our endeavor where all things and anything might happen.

Just a glimpse of our land of promise was vouchsafed to us, and then up out of nowhere there whirled a white wet mist. Moist plains air, condensing against the snows. In a moment we were enveloped, and men and mules loomed spookily huge out of the fog. We in our thoughtlessness laughed. It was eerily queer and a new experience. But in the dimness around us the arrieros cursed by the name of the Green One and by the Most Sacred Shoes. Mules floundered with clattering hoofs on an insecure footing. Packs bumped into other packs and the rawhide ropes squeaked and strained as the beasts pushed and tugged in panic.

Pack-mules will, you know. Wise as they are, as soon as pack touches pack they seem to lose all sense and to struggle each one desperately to push forward in a direct line. Not an inch will any one give. As I watched them later, on the down trails, the explanation of their panic came to me. Experience or the instinct of their forefathers has taught them—or the clever beasts have told one another—that straight ahead, without a hair's-breadth deviation, is safety; while sideways, perhaps, is the long last step into nothing.

Eighteen Thousand Feet. The Last Glacier. To the Right is the Pass

Going Over the Top

The Long, Long Trail a-winding Over the Mountaintops

Even on the trail in clear daylight this desperate instinct is paramount. Up there in that sudden Songo mist, where they could see no more than a few feet, they milled about, bumped one another, locked packs, and strained against one another in crazy fear. Therefore with good reason the arrieros swore; for presently a clatter and a thud told that "somebody's load had slipped off in the road." There were many such clatters and thuds before that mist lifted. Certain more resounding thuds were followed by a squeal, proclaiming the news that some nervously irritable gentleman had kicked another right sturdily in the short ribs.

A good place to remain in such a milling mess was upon one's own mule, keeping it as nearly in one place as possible. Which I did. There was nothing to do but wait, since no mere gringo possesses a vocabulary sufficient for pacifying mules.

While we waited, an evil spirit of the upper air visited us. A thin whistling noise like the whine of wind against aeroplane wires hissed down the cleft toward us. It whizzed through the mist overhead, so close that I, for one, instinctively ducked. A rattle as of dry reeds sounded as the thing veered. It croaked sepulchrally once, and was gone. "Cien mil diablos!" shouted an arriero. "Condor! Bend low, señores. If one of those should hit you you would be knocked clear to the last ridge you have just left."

Cheering thought. And unpleasantly possible. For a full-grown cock condor may weigh a good fifty pounds. Don't laugh in loud scorn. How much does a good husky Christmas turkey weigh? Fifty pounds is no stretch of a traveler's imagination. And hurtling down that gap, before the hurricane that swept through it, a condor would be a considerable missile. You've heard what migrating birds do when they fly against lighthouses. You've heard how a shot duck hitting a sportsman in the chest can knock him clear off his feet. Consider, then, the momentum of fifty pounds of condor multiplied by the square of his velocity in a high wind.

However, it didn't happen. The potentiality of accident, bogged as we were in the mist of that pass, was a plenty. But our fortune was good. The worst that happened was the kicking open of a crate of canned goods, by a frightened mule. No more condors came till the mist lifted.

The solid white wall began to break up into thin wisps and long streamers—the latter end of the fog-bank, I suppose—and then it was gone. Whirled out of the narrow gap as suddenly as it had been whirled in.

We were collecting gear and untangling mules when we were treated to the rare sight of more condors negotiating a high pass. And what an unforgettable sight. An arriero pointed suddenly and said "Mira, señor. Look how they come." My less keen eyes required some little time to distinguish a string of irregularly spaced dots against the snow far below. Like distant aeroplanes they looked. And like aeroplanes they swept into swift view, as steadily and much faster. Never a flap, never a tremor of wing to make them rise. Up they zoomed, one behind the other like a fast scout squadron, aiming to take the pass low.

Quite clearly it was a regular route with them, and they wasted no effort to make unnecessary altitude. I couldn't imagine that they would skim the surface, yet as I watched the first of the squadron lift in its clean sweep and flatten out to take the gap, my impulse was to duck. Ten feet of clearance was all that it was allowing for; and ten feet it held as it hurtled into the pass. I gasped at the horrific size of the thing in its flight. A twelve-foot wing-spread, if it was an inch, and it seemed to fill the gap from wall to wall.

Then the great bird saw us, and performed a feat that wrenched my heart for the deficiencies of our man-made machines. How shall I explain it? The condor, without a flutter of those steady wings, just altered the angle of incidence. That was all. It raised the entering edge of the pinions and depressed the following edge. The instant result was that it shot forty feet into the air. The wind rattled harshly through the upturned pin-feathers, open like the palm of a hand. The bird croaked once in surprise and hurtled on down the pass. The whole manoeuver was performed in a flash. A swoop, a swish, a croak, and it was gone.

One after another the squadron followed their flight commander—eight or ten of them—performing the same perfect manoeuver with the same perfect ease. Just as the first one, sensing us in the mist, must have done. It was a wonderful thing to have seen. I was enthralled. I forgot about the possibility of one of those hurtling masses hitting us. Surely with such uncanny control it wouldn't. But the arriero says:

"Señor, the thing has happened. This is an evil pass."