ice; and one of Green's sling psychrometers. Our
most serious want was an aneroid, in case the fragile mercurials
should get broken. Six months previously I had written to J. Hicks,
the celebrated instrument maker of London, asking him to construct,
with special care, two large "Watkins" aneroids capable of recording
altitudes five thousand feet higher than Coropuna was supposed to
be. His reply had never reached me, nor did any one in Arequipa know
anything about the barometers. Apparently my letter had miscarried. It
was not until we opened our specially ordered "mountain grub" boxes
here in Chuquibamba that we found, alongside of the pemmican and
self-heating tins of stew which had been packed for us in London by
Grace Brothers, the two precious aneroids, each as large as a big alarm
clock. With these two new aneroids, made with a wide margin of safety,
we felt satisfied that, once at the summit, we should know whether
there was a chance that Bandelier was right and this was indeed the
top of America.

For exact measurements we depended on Topographer Hendriksen, who was
due to triangulate Coropuna in the course of his survey along the 73d
meridian. My chief excuse for going up the mountain was to erect a
signal at or near the top which Hendriksen could use as a station in
order to make his triangulation more exact. My real object, it must
be confessed, was to enjoy the satisfaction, which all Alpinists feel,
of conquering a "virgin peak."

CHAPTER II

Climbing Coropuna

The desert plateau above Chuquibamba is nearly 2500 feet higher than
the town, and it was nine o'clock on the morning of October 10th
before we got out of the valley. Thereafter Coropuna was always in
sight, and as we slowly approached it we studied it with care. The
plateau has an elevation of over 15,000 feet, yet the mountain stood
out conspicuously above it. Coropuna is really a range about twenty
miles long. Its gigantic massif was covered with snow fields from one
end to the other. So deep did the fresh snow lie that it was generally
impossible to see where snow fields ended and glaciers began. We could
see that of the five well-defined peaks the middle one was probably
the lowest. The two next highest are at the right, or eastern, end of
the massif. The culminating truncated dome at the western end, with its
smooth, uneroded sides, apparently belonged to a later volcanic period
than the rest of the mountain. It seemed to be the highes