Fortunately for them, it lasted only five days; had it been prolonged to
six they must inevitably have perished. Fortunately, also, for them,
they had acquired from the Indians a knowledge of the wonderful, almost
miraculous, virtue that lay in the coca leaf--with a bountiful supply of
which they had been careful to provide themselves--otherwise even their
indomitable hardihood and courage must have succumbed to the frightful
toil, privation, and exposure which they were obliged to undergo. A
detailed description of that five days' journey over the mountains would
of itself suffice to fill a book, for it would be a record of continuous
adventure and hairbreadth escapes from avalanches that were constantly
threatening to overwhelm them; of treacherous snow-bridges that crumbled
away beneath their feet; of furious, icy winds that, seeming to be
imbued with demoniac intelligence and malignity, always assailed them in
some especially perilous situation, and sought to buffet them from their
precarious hold; and of long hours of intolerable suffering when, during
the hours of darkness, they were compelled to camp on some snow-patch
and build themselves a snow-hut as a partial protection from the
howling, marrow-piercing, snow-laden gale. Such a narrative, however,
exciting as it might be in its earlier pages, would soon grow wearisome
from the rapidity with which one adventure would tread upon the heels of
another, and can therefore only be hinted at here. Suffice it to say
that early in the afternoon of the fourth day, upon surmounting the
crest of a long ridge of ice-encased rock, at a moment when the demon of
the mountain had temporarily withdrawn himself elsewhere, and the
atmosphere was for a brief space calm and clear, the two weary and
exhausted adventurers caught a brief but entrancing glimpse of a long
green valley stretching away ahead of them between the two mountain
ranges, with an island-dotted lake in the far distance, and Sorata's
dominating ice-clad peak piercing the blue sky to the left of it. At
last, at last, their goal was in sight; and incontinently they flung
themselves down, gasping, upon the iron-hard rock, and gazed entranced
upon the glorious vision--thrice glorious to them after all that they
had suffered--until another great snow-cloud evolved itself out of
nothing and swooped down upon them in a final effort at destruction.

The gale and snowstorm lasted less than an hour, however, and when at