volcanic desert dotted with isolated peaks covered with snow and occasional glaciers.  Not an atom of green was to be seen anywhere.  Apparently we stood on top of a dead world.  Mountain climbers in the Andes have frequently spoken of seeing condors at great altitudes.  We saw none.  Northwest, twenty miles away across the Pampa Colorada, a reddish desert, rose snow-capped Solimana.  In the other direction we looked along the range of Coropuna itself; several of the lesser peaks being only a few hundred feet below our elevation.  Far to the southwest we imagined we could see the faint blue of the Pacific Ocean, but it was very dim.

My father was an ardent mountain climber, glorying not only in the difficulties of the ascent, but particularly in the satisfaction coming from the magnificent view to be obtained at the top.  His zeal had led him once, in winter, to ascend the highest peak in the Pacific, Mauna Kea on Hawaii.  He taught me as a boy to be fond of climbing the mountains of Oahu and Maui and to be appreciative of the views which could be obtained by such expenditure of effort.  Yet now I could not take the least interest or pleasure in the view from the top of Coropuna, nor could my companions.  No sense of satisfaction in having attained a difficult objective cheered us up.  We all felt greatly depressed and said little, although Gamarra asked for his bonus and regarded the gold coins with grim complacency.

After we had rested awhile we began to take observations.  Unslinging the aneroid which I had been carrying, I found to my surprise and dismay that the needle showed a height of only 21,525 feet above sea level.  Tucker’s aneroid read more than a thousand feet higher, 22,550 feet, but even this fell short of Raimondi’s estimate of 22,775 feet, and considerably below Bandelier’s “23,000 feet.”  This was a keen disappointment, for we had hoped that the aneroids would at least show a margin over the altitude of Mt.  Aconcagua, 22,763 feet.  This discovery served to dampen our spirits still further.  We took what comfort we could from the fact that the aneroids, which had checked each other perfectly up to 17,000 feet, were now so obviously untrustworthy.  We could only hope that both might prove to be inaccurate, as actually happened, and that both might now be reading too low.  Anyhow, the north peak did look lower than we were.  To satisfy any doubts on this subject, Tucker took the wooden box in which we had brought the hypsometer, laid it on the snow, leveled it up carefully with the Stanley pocket level, and took a squint over it toward the north peak.  He smiled and said nothing.  So each of us in turn lay down in the snow and took a squint.  It was all right.  We were at least 250 feet higher than that aggravating peak.