appeal to public charity; one to the director of the theatre, to give an entertainment for their benefit, and an article to the "Mercurio" of Valparaiso to alarm the whole country and awake compassion. When the assistance he had so quickly collected was on the way, and the various couriers despatched with the letters, and his purse emptied to the last maravedi, he was obliged to seek repose, for he had run down the mountains from Los Ojos de Agua to Los Andes without resting from his previous ascent. Within two days he received replies from General las Heras and his friends Gana, Zapata, and Quiroga Rosas, which do honor to themselves as well as to him. In three days sufficient food, medicines, physicians, etc., etc., for a thousand men, were on their way over the giant heights.
The danger of the transit was increased by threats of an approaching storm. Those conversant with the Andes knew by the heavy clouds, always more dangerous than the frozen snows, and on this day, unusually dark and lowering, that it would be of more than ordinary violence. It was easy after the first day to calculate how many out of the thousand would be frozen before succor could reach them. The sublime but heart-rending spectacle of the gently falling snow that covered every rock and quenched every fire that was kindled, chilled the hopes of the relieving party, but no one turned back. After three days of suffering, seven of the fugitives had perished, and many others had lost their limbs by frost before the physicians got to the foot of the Cordilleras. An Argentine artist has immortalized upon canvas the scene in which the first Chilian broke the snow on arriving at the spot.
