They reached Monte-Video on New Year’s Day, 1824, stopped a few days for repairs, and made Buenos Ayres soon after, their joy at finding themselves on _terra firma_ much tempered by the extremely rude reception accorded to them by the civil authorities. But Buenos Ayres was merely the starting-point for the most difficult part of the journey, the crossing of the Andes. Had the good Countess Mastai-Ferretti had the slightest idea of what her cherished son was to encounter there, I believe she would have died of anxiety before his return! I only met one or two Europeans, when I was in Chile, who had accomplished the feat, and they told me that nothing would induce them to attempt it again. I have described some of the terrors of the passes in former works,[5] and will not enlarge upon them here. Suffice it to say that for two whole months Monsignor Muzi and Fathers Sallusti and Mastai rode through those appalling solitudes, over the bridle-paths cut in the face of the rock that towers thousands of feet above and sinks sheer down thousands of feet below, paths where one false step means death, and so narrow in some places that, if two parties meet, it is usual for them—if they are not the fighting sort—to decide on the spin of a coin which shall dismount, pitch its mules over the precipice, and crawl past the winners as best they can—to continue the journey on foot! The resting-places are even now the haunts of outlaws and robbers. The members of the Roman Embassy of 1824 only escaped being murdered _en masse_, because, through some unforeseen occurrence, they changed the time of their departure from a hamlet called Desmochadas. Had they waited till the hour first fixed upon, they would have shared the fate of a party of merchants who, on that day, were massacred, to a man, by a band of robbers. It was Father Mastai who discovered—and stayed behind to take care of—a sick English officer, named Miller, forsaken in a wayside inn; and it was Father Mastai, the others said, who had during the whole journey sustained their courage by his unfailing fun and good-humour. It seems to me that this is not the least glorious note in all his wonderful record, and because few, even of those who most loved and venerated him in his later years, have ever heard of it I have written it here. The whole thing, somehow, is so absolutely Pius IX!