...of the Andes

He made an effort to recall the precise sequence of events. He had been flying over the cordillera of the Andes. Beneath their coverlets of snow the mountains slept. The winter snows had spread their peace over this mountain mass, like the passage of the centuries in dead castles. One hundred and twenty miles across, one hundred and twenty miles of thickness - without a man, a breath of life, a movement. Nothing but vertical ridges which one grazed at twenty thousand feet, nothing but gigantic coats of stone dropping sheer, nothing but an awe-inspiring silence.

[Night Flight, Saint-Exupery, A. d.]