Chapter XIII
The Puna de Atacama: Land Forms, Pasture, and Woodland
From the earliest descriptions of the mountain chains of the Andes one might suppose that they were as rugged as they are lofty and that great peaks and canyons are the rule. The frontispiece of von Tschudi’s travels in South America is an almost glorious piece of misrepresentation in its attempt to show everything connected with the Andes or its borders in one composite view.[1] This is not to say that canyons and peaks are lacking. Some of them are larger than any we have in North America, that of the Apurimac in Peru being in places 10,000 feet deep. ‘The Huatacondo in Chile, on the east- ern border of the Desert of Atacama, is 3000 feet deep; and the Calchaqui valley at the eastern edge of the una de Atacama has almost the proportions of the Grand Canyon of the Colo- rado but without its amazing architecture. The Andes contain also the highest peaks of the western hemisphere: Aconcagua, 22,868 feet; Sajama, 21,385; and Mercedario, 21,877. Such figures of peak heights are of no value whatever unless we know how frequently we encounter them and at what eleva- tion stands the platform from which they rise.
In view of this special character of the Andes a brief ex- planation of their land forms is given at this point that the subsequent narrative and description of the Puna and its settlements may be better understood. The coastal belt has already been described (pp. 149-155), the present concern is with the interior chains and plateaus that form the Puna de Atacama, the southernmost unit of the Central Andes.
After repeated crossings of the Andes in widely different latitudes I should say that it is not their height and ruggedness that is their most surprising feature but rather the wide extent
- ↑ J. J. von Tschudi: Reise durch die Andes won Siid-Amerika, Leipzig, 1866-1869.
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