Midshipman Alexander Campbell's Overland Trek To Buenos Aires
Had Campbell known just how hazardous the overland journey would prove, he may have considered his sulky avoidance of Cheap's company on the ship Lys a trifling reason to take the alternate route home. On 20 January 1745 Campbell and four Spanish naval officers set out across South America from Valparaiso to Buenos Aires. Using mules, the party trekked into the high Andes, where they faced precipitous mountains, severe cold and, at times, serious altitude sickness. First a mule slipped on an exposed path and was dashed onto rocks far below, then two mules froze to death on a particularly horrendous night of blizzards, and a further twenty died of thirst or starvation on the remaining journey. After seven weeks travelling the party eventually arrived in Buenos Aires.
Read more about this topic: Wager Mutiny
Famous quotes containing the words alexander and/or campbell:
“Take the serious side of Disney, the Confucian side of Disney. It’s in having taken an ethos ... where you have the values of courage and tenderness asserted in a way that everybody can understand. You have got an absolute genius there. You have got a greater correlation of nature than you have had since the time of Alexander the Great.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“There was silence deep as death;
And the boldest held his breath
For a time.”
—Thomas Campbell (1774–1844)