“Standing on the crest of the bed of snow that crowned the _arête_. In a moment I was beside him and Argentina lay at our feet. The southern snow face, delusively precipitous though actually as steep as snow can lie, dropped in a single fall to the glacier two miles below. To the right and left for over a mile there stretched, like the fine edge of an incurved blade, the sharp snow _arête_ that reaches from the slightly lower southern summit to the northern. It forms the top edge of the great snow slope down which we were looking, and is only visible from the Horcones valley side as a delicate silver crest, edging the rocks. At many points it overhung in big cornices, like frozen waves about to break. The day had thus far been fine, but clouds were now gathering in the east. Fearful lest the view might soon be blotted out, I took a few photographs before moving on. The view abroad from this point differed little from that which we finally obtained. To the south was Tupungato (22,408 feet), a majestic pile of snow, over which even more majestic clouds were presently to mount aloft. To the north was the still grander Mercedario (22,315 feet), beheld around the flank of the final rocks. In the west were the hills, dropping lower and lower to the Chilean shore, and then the purple ocean. To the northeast, like another ocean, lay the flat surface of the Argentine pampas. Elsewhere the Cordillera, in long parallel ridges running roughly north and south, stretched its great length along, crowding together into an inextricable tangle the distant peaks, partly hidden by the near summits, which alone interrupted the completeness of the panorama.”