When we reached the crest and looked backwards, a glorious view was presented.

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.