On the fifteenth day they crossed the watershed and began the descent, advancing more rapidly. There was a risk of the mountains becoming a habit, as they obviously were for the guides, who charged by the day. The Germans would be protected against this danger by the exercise of their art, but only in the long term; in the short term, as they acquainted themselves with the surroundings and their representation, the effect was reversed. Riding on slowly or stopping to rest, they passed the time discussing questions of a technical nature. Each novel sight set their tongues in motion as they sought to account for the difference. It should be remembered that the bulk of the work they were doing was preliminary: sketches, notes, jottings. In their papers, drawing and writing were blended; the exploitation of these data in paintings and engravings was reserved for a later stage. Engravings were the key to circulation, and their potentially infinite reproduction had to be considered in detail. The cycle was completed by surrounding the engravings with a text and inserting them into a book.
Krause was not alone in his appreciation of Rugendas's work. It was obvious how well he painted, primarily because of the simplicity he had attained. Everything in his pictures was bathed in simplicity, which gave them a pearly sheen, filled them with the light of a spring day. They were eminently comprehensible, in conformity with the physiognomic principles. And comprehension led to reproduction; not only had his one published book been a commercial success throughout Europe, the engravings illustrating his Picturesque Voyage through Brazil had been printed on wallpaper and even used to decorate Sèvres china.
Krause would often refer, half jokingly, to this extraordinary triumph, and in the solitude of the Cordillera, with no one else there to see, Rugendas would smile and accept the compliment, which was accompanied but not undercut by gentle, affectionate mockery. This was the spirit in which he considered the suggestion that a drawing of Aconcagua be used to decorate a coffee cup: the greatest and smallest of things conjoined by the daily labor of a skilled pencil.
Yet it was not so simple to capture the form of Aconcagua, or any given mountain, in a drawing. If the mountain is imagined as a kind of cone endowed with artistic irregularities, it will be rendered unrecognizable by the slightest shift in perspective, because its profile will change completely.
In the course of the crossing they were constantly making thematic discoveries. Themes were important in genre painting. The two artists documented the landscape artistically and geographically, each in accordance with his capacities. And while they could comprehend the vertical, that is the temporal or geological, dimension unaided, since they knew how to recognize schist and slate, carboniferous dendrites and columnar basalts, plants, mosses and mushrooms, when it came to the horizontal or topographical dimension they had to rely on the Chilean guides, who turned out to be an inexhaustible source of names. "Aconcagua" was only one of many.
The landscape's structuring grid of horizontal and vertical lines was overlaid by man-made traces, which were gridlike in turn. The guides responded to reality without preconceptions. The varying weather and the whims of their German clients, whom they regarded with a combination of respect and disdain so reasonable it could hardly offend, made the changeless world they knew by heart resonate with mystery. The Germans, after all, represented the meeting of science and art on equal terms, as well as the convergence, but not the confusion, of two quite distinct degrees of talent.
Travel and painting were entwined like fibers in a rope. One by one, the dangers and difficulties of a route that was tortuous and terrifying at the best of times were transformed and left behind. And it was truly terrifying: it was hard to believe that this was a route used virtually throughout the year by travelers, mule drivers and merchants. Anyone in their right mind would have regarded it as a means of suicide. Near the watershed, at an altitude of two thousand meters, amid peaks disappearing into the clouds, rather than a way of getting from point A to point B, the path seemed to have become quite simply a way of departing from all points at once. Jagged lines, impossible angles, trees growing downwards from ceilings of rock, sheer slopes plunging into mantles of snow under a scorching sun. And shafts of rain thrust into little yellow clouds, agates enveloped in moss, pink hawthorn. The puma, the hare and the snake made up a mountain aristocracy. The horses panted, began to stumble, and it was time to stop for a rest; the mules were perpetually grumpy.
Peaks of mica kept watch over their long marches. How could these panoramas be rendered credible? There were too many sides; the cube had extra faces. The company of volcanos gave the sky interiors. Dawn and dusk were vast optical explosions, drawn out by the silence. Slingshots and gunshots of sunlight rebounded into every recess. Grey expanses hung out to dry forever in colossal silence; air- shafts voluminous as oceans. One morning Krause said that he had had nightmares, so their conversations that day and the next turned on moral mechanics and methods of regaining composure. They wondered if one day cities would be built in those mountains. How might that be? Perhaps if there were wars, when they ended, leaving the stone fortresses empty, with their terraced fields, their border posts and mining villages, a hardworking frontier community composed of Chileans and Argentineans could settle there, converting the buildings and the infrastructure. That was Rugendas's idea, probably influenced by the military painting of his ancestors. Krause, on the other hand, in spite of his worldly outlook, was in favor of mystical colonization. A chain of affiliated monasteries perched in the most remote attics of stone could spread new strains of Buddhism deep into the inaccessible realms, and the braying of the long horns would awaken giants and dwarves of Andean industry. We should draw it, they said. But who would believe it?
Rain, sun, two whole days of impenetrable fog, night winds whistling, winds far and near, nights of blue crystal, crystals of ozone. The graph of temperature against the hours of the day was sinuous, but not unpredictable. Nor, in fact, were their visions. The mountains filed so slowly past that the mind amused itself devising constructivist games to replace them.
A series of studies in vertigo occupied them for the best part of a week. They encountered all sorts of mule drivers, and had the most curious conversations with Chileans and Argentineans from Mendoza. They even came across priests, and Europeans, and the guides' uncles and brothers-in-law. But their solitude was soon restored, and the sight of the others receding into the distance was a source of inspiration.
For some years, Rugendas had been experimenting with a new technique: the oil sketch. This was an innovation and has been recognized as such by art history. It was to be exploited systematically by the Impressionists only fifty years later; but the young German artist's only precursors were a handful of English eccentrics, followers of Turner. It was generally thought that the procedure could only produce shoddy work. And in a sense this was true, but ultimately it would lead to a transvaluation of painting.