It is a colossal, brutal land, fresh from the cataclysm, whose ponderous masses of rock are all sterile from cold, all silent under perpetual snow. In its clearness of atmosphere sparkles a new conception of the night-time sky. It is a land where thin layers of lichens are the only trace of plant life, where condors wheel about the highest pinnacles, and silver lies buried deep in the ground. It is the lair of mercury-mines which paralyze those working in them, where hot and cold fountains mingle to make one river, where springs of tar and rivers of peat ooze from suffocation within. [Illustration: A TRESTLE OF THE HIGHEST RAILWAY IN THE WORLD, ACROSS THE _INFIERNILLO_.] Hot from their passage through the glowing veins of the mountains, springs bubble into life, sour, turbid, saturated with gases, possessed of weird powers, capable of giving life as well as of taking it away. Their waters turn to stone as they spread over the plain. In this frozen waste of glaciers, sheltering fire and magnetic iron within, all forces and elements are seething, though shrouded with snow. As the noise of water fills the desert, so the roar of fire can be heard among the frozen mountain-tops. Long, long ago, a volcano was puffing out asphyxiating fumes. It melted the metal on the edge of its crater, and turned rocks burst from its own black mouth-pit to red and yellow and green. Fire boiled over the edge and advanced in a tide of flame down the mountainside and into the valleys. The favorites of the Sun who lived beside it complained to him of the ruin caused by the volcano. Somewhat irritated himself, he “smothered the genius of devastation in his lair,” covering the top of the mountain with an impenetrable cap of snow, leaving little, seraphic blue lakes here and there upon it as a hostage. This frozen giant, whose entrails the fire is devouring, still lies sleeping with his granite dreams. When all the beneficent qualities inherent in a world have been wrested from it, and life has disappeared toward experiences elsewhere, or when a comet’s tail has swished life suddenly away, a wilderness like that of the high Andes would result--a place where chaos and disorder is the only rule. Yet the law of chaos we must believe is no law at all. Stretched among these mountains is the vast table-land called _puna_, on which flourished the Indian civilizations so famous in history. Abundant rain falls, but cold prevents it from covering the ground with flowers. Reveling in the high pressure of the mountain-tops, humming-birds flit about in the snow. The finest morning begets the heaviest afternoon clouds, and warm atmospheric currents, quite definitely confined in the cold air, travel through the desolation.