Towards sunset, the Cordillera, capped with snow, is often visible, though above 200 miles distant. It has been generally supposed to be Tupungato which is thus seen; but Tupungato does not rise above the limit of perpetual snow,[70] and is often entirely free from it; is it not more likely therefore to be Aconcagua, which Captain Fitzroy found to attain the enormous elevation of 23,200 feet, upwards of 2000 higher than the famous Chimborazo? The direct distance differs very slightly of either from San Luis, Tupungato is 213, and Aconcagua 216 geographical miles from it; the latter being about 50 miles to the north of the other.
The gold-mines of San Carolina are about sixty miles to the north of San Luis, in the mountains; they have long since been filled with water, and, as there are no capitalists or machinery to drain them, they are no longer worked, but the people of the hamlet wash and sift the alluvial soil collected at particular places (the lavaderos) in the neighbourhood, and so collect every year a quantity of gold in dust and small bean-like lumps, which they call _pepitas_. According to the official returns in the King of Spain's time, the produce of one year, on which duty was paid, was about 150 lbs. At present the people take little trouble to collect more than is absolutely necessary to enable them to purchase at San Luis the few articles of clothing and horse-gear which they require; if anything, they are even worse off than the gauchos upon the estancias. Captain Head paid them a flying visit, and has described the wretched poverty in which he found them.
Originally, and before the erection of Buenos Ayres into a Vice-Royalty, the province of Cuyo was subject to the government of Chile, of which San Luis was at that time the frontier-town to the eastward, and the place where the Captains-General in consequence first received the honours due to them when they crossed the pampas from Buenos Ayres to take possession of their government. It takes its name from Don Luis de Loyola, a Governor of Chile, who founded it in the year 1596.
By the post-road it is 226 leagues distant from Buenos Ayres, and 84 from Mendoza; and it is the only place that exceeds the description of a straggling village throughout the whole distance. The road which runs through it has been often described by those who have crossed the pampas in the last twenty years, and they have left little to say about it. By all accounts it seems to be a most uninteresting one; and the grand object, therefore, is to get over it with the greatest possible expedition. The more common mode of performing the journey is on horseback; but this is necessarily attended with great fatigue, and he must have an iron constitution who attempts it; but if he can live upon meat yet warm with life, or barely toasted over a gaucho fire, dispense with bread, drink brackish water, and sleep as a luxury upon the ground in the open air, in spite of bugs as big as beetles, which will suck him like vampires, his saddle for a pillow, and the sky for his covering, and with such fare gallop a hundred miles a day, he may, barring accidents, reach Mendoza in about ten days. He will find no temptation to loiter on the way, though much to make him wish to reach his journey's end.