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upper right corner: 3 With the world for our cathedral and nature for an altar, what meretricious aid do we require to stir up in ouur hearts sensations of awe or of devotion. In the vallies and the mountains, in the seas, the lakes and rivers, God speaks through his high priest, Nature the word of power and truth. What seek we more to prove his omnipotence and glory, for us his loved children doth he not provide spectacles of awful grandeur, scenes of soft and pleasing beauty, compared to which the cunningly devised allurements wrought by children of men are as fire sparks in lustre to the stars of heaven.

Doubt, if your soul allows you, his power and truth. Go ahead then unbeliever and cast your eyes around you: look to yonder mountain piled in stupendous blocks into the clouds of heaven. Behold its gorgeous canopy of painted vapours, through which the sun imparts its hues of endless splendour and variety. See its dazzling mantle of purest white, clothed by the snows of winter with a spotless garment, symbol of the glory and perfection of its maker. What human hands, think you, could effect this. What human mind concieve it.

Look over head, doth not the burning orb of day, which warns your eyes of their arrogance and yet will remind you too of your likeness. From morn to night, it wends its impartial way distributing to every portion of the globe its share of warmth and life and happiness. See this and doubt not, for to doubt it is to die here and hereafter.

As the day advanced we proceeded somewhat more briskly, interupted and delayed ‘tho now and then, by one of the macho’s tumbling into a snow drift, from which it required an hour or so of pulling and shouting and numerous vollies of Basque and Spanish oaths, startling and horrible enough in their sentiments to split one up the back, como se dicen en America. One scene will suffice. We are proceeding in Indian file, along a narrow track of barely 3 ft width. On one side rises abruptly the rocky sides of the mountain against which the well laden baggage frequently rubs and jostles, on the other some thousand feet of perpendicular descent, at the bottom of which rushed headlong amongst falling masses of snow and icicles of huge dimensions, though hardly ”bergs”, a roaring torrent, its bed choked with rocks, over which we could occasionally discern a string of loping wolves following on our flank. In most places, between the track and the precipice, there was a ledge of snow of some 4 or 5 feet broad, beyond this “facilis discensus averni”. In rounding a corner, the leading macho would strike his well secured load against an abutting angle of the rock. In an instant slipping by the force off his legs, down he would thud on the ledge of snow with his head over the side, enjoying the view of the “gentle descent” below.

Here, perfectly aware of the insecurity of his position and taking in at one glance of his brown expressive eye, the critical juncture, for in his struggles to rise with his back encumbered, the chances were less than even he would topple over. All these considerations being at once grasped in his sagacious mind,