CHAPTER XIV

OVERLAND TOWARD CUZCO

The truly romantic thing, of course, would have been to buy a llama to

bear my burdens to the capital of the ancient Inca Empire. But however

in keeping with the local color that prehistoric denizen of the Andes

might have been, there were at least a score of cold, practical, modern

reasons why he was not suited to my purpose. A few of them, such as

pace, disposition, slight powers of sustained endurance, and

uncompanionable temperament, experience had demonstrated native to a

donkey, also. A horse, as a famous traveler has remarked, is a delicate

and uncertain ally. A mule, in addition to several traits inherited from

his paternal forebear, had the drawback of unattainability; for the

house of Rothchild and I have this in common—that our wealth is not

unlimited. There remained, however, an animal unknown to mankind at

large that fitted my requirements exactly, as exactly at least as is

possible in this imperfect world,—the Peruvian imitation of a horse. In

a bare three centuries this descendent of our “fine lady among animals”

has adapted himself to Andean conditions. His small, compact hoofs are

almost as sure on precarious mountain-trails as those of the mule; he is

gifted with an uncomplaining endurance far beyond what his appearance

suggests; and he possesses an even, peaceful temper, and an absence of

ambition and personal initiative equal to his fellow-countryman, the

Indian. Moreover, he is capable of sustaining life and strength for an

indefinite period on the sparse and hardy vegetation of the uplands, and

is, at certain seasons, within reach of a modest purse.

“Foxy’s” mozo owned such a _chusco_ and, the feast of his patron saint

being near at hand, was induced to sell. I took to the animal at first

sight. Not that he was a thing of beauty, in his shaggy coat of shedding

reddish-brown; but it was this very air of unpretentious modesty and

unAndean sense of duty over mere personal appearance that won my instant

regard. Here, surely, was a companion who would keep his own counsel

under the most trying circumstances. Being no larger than a large

donkey, he was nicely fitted to the modest load of some sixty pounds

that was destined to represent his share of the world’s labor. Not

merely was he newly shod, but he had been enjoying the unbroken freedom

of a _potrero_ for several days, and should therefore be in condition to

hold his own for an indefinite period, provided I did not set too swift

a pace. The masculine gender was an asset not to be overlooked. Not

merely did my sense of chivalry forbid sentencing any member of the

other sex to the hardships that rumor insisted lay before us, but once

they had been surmounted, I would not have my glory smudged by the

possibility of a mere female boasting that she had also accomplished the

feat. Again, the animal had never been fifty miles east of Huancayo; and

I am of those who find no pleasure in a trip with a companion who has

already been over the route. The mere nine dollars at which we finally

came to terms seemed a slight equivalent for all these virtues, though I

took care not to hint that impression to the erstwhile owner. The matter

of a name was no problem at all. Even the Peruvians unconsciously tacked

on the diminutive _ito_ as often as they referred to my new

fellow-adventurer, and it was natural that I should have instantly

dubbed him Chusquito.

Relieved of the necessity of being my own packhorse, I could somewhat

increase my outfit. In Lima I had acquired a rum-burner, with

coffee-pot, frying-pan, and soup-boiling attachments that closed up into

a compact kitchenette about six inches in diameter. With this went a

bottle of alcohol, that could be filled at any town “muy provisto de

todo” along the way. “Foxy” himself, whose faults, as every gringo up

and down the Andes knows, do not include a lack of generosity, insisted

that he would be forced to throw away a somewhat worn, but still very

serviceable, rubber poncho, unless I carried it off; and this, with my

llama-hair poncho from Quito, was destined to shield me from many a

bitter night on lofty mountain-ranges. The clothing requisite for every

possible variation of altitude, and photographic supplies sufficient to

avoid the ill-will of local “authorities,” made up the bulk of my

alforjas. Then there was room for a native and a foreign book, for a

half-liter of pisco, with which to win the esteem of isolated Indians, a

bag of cocoa leaves and the accompanying burnt-banana lime, to sustain

such estimation, a candle for the endless Andean evenings, and a

sufficient supply of imperishable foodstuffs to relieve my mind of the

harassing daily preoccupation of finding hospitality before dark. Even

my coat and kodak could be hung on the pack, leaving me free to stride

lazily along, dressed in my shirt-sleeves and a cynical smile.

It was the tenth day of September when I creaked my hobnailed way out of

Huancayo’s interminable street, my only load the end of a clothes-line

that tempered Chusquito’s pace to my own. At the principal _pulpería_

his former owner drank my health in pisco, and, though he shed no tear,

it might easily have made a clean mark down his cheek. Of the road to

Cuzco I knew nothing, except that it led through four “cities,” and that

I should never reach, much less bring my four-footed companion to, the

end of a journey on which not even a “son of the country” would “venture

himself” without a guide and a _tropilla_ of mules and arrieros. For

myself I had no misgivings; as to Chusquito, I trusted to frequent halts

and a militant attitude that should win him an unaccustomed wealth of

fodder to confound the pessimists. All Huancayo gazed after me from

their doorways with a mixture of astonishment and incredulity as I set

out. Now is it not strange, when walking is the first and, indeed, the

only natural means of locomotion, that people who look with complacency

upon men on horseback, and upon trains, men who have heard of

automobiles and aëroplanes, should gasp with wonder to see a man

journeying afoot; and that _andarines_ may go about living on the

country and gathering certificates from every possible source to prove

they do walk; as if there were any virtue in that action, except the

purely personal pleasure of it, or nothing?

Even the burden of the tow-rope did not last long. Chusquito, being an

experienced pack-animal, I soon found could be left to his own devices.

In his own country, he knew fully as well as I how to climb up and down

rocky, mountain trails, and if he showed a tendency now and then to

wander off across the pampa, especially at sight of some of his own

kindred, it was natural that he should have been somewhat bored at

merely human companionship. Within two days we were strolling along like

lifelong friends, at an even gait that never called for cudgel

acceleration, and I journeyed as serenely as if I had found at last that

automatic baggage of which I had so long dreamed, only subconsciously

aware that my possessions were marching peacefully before me. The mind

ran unbidden over the many improvements that might be added,—a tent and

more supplies; or I might even become an itinerant photographer or

peddler, and earn my way as I went, instead of greeting with disdainful

silence the frequent question, “Qué lleva de venta?” But on one point I

was quickly disillusioned. Somehow I had pictured a pack-animal as

simply a perambulating chest of drawers, fancying that I had merely to

hang my possessions on the animal’s back, snatching up anything as I

chanced to need it. Whereas in real life I found that everything must be

made snug and tight, and secured by the intricate “diamond-hitch” that

made it as inaccessible on the march as if it had been left behind.

At Pucará, where the great valley of the Huancas narrows and begins to

squeeze the trail upward, the inhabitants were killing a cow and

stringing it up between two trees in the center of the grass-grown

plaza. All the beef that could not be disposed of on the spot was cut

into sheets a half-inch thick, and left to dry in the sun. By reason of

this treatment all meat in the Andes is hopelessly tough; either it is

“green,” direct from the hand of the butcher, or _charqui_ of

soleleather properties. Veal is unknown, for who would slaughter a calf

that would grow up into several times its weight in beef? Mutton is

scarce, or treated to the same charqui-ing process; and pork is of

Hebraic rarity. Besides, the traveler who longs for a rasher of crisp

bacon is more easily content to assuage his appetite in beef when

experience has taught him what the pigs of the Andes feed on.

There was no public eating-house in Pucará. A party of a dozen men and

women, however, all more or less gay with pisco, were glad of assistance

in making away with their share in the weekly killing. I tied Chusquito

before a bundle of wheat straw at a corner of the plaza, and we crowded

around a wabbly-legged table in a neighboring mud room, and dined amid

an uproar of maudlin hilarity and a series of stories often of a

distinctly “raw” nature, in which the females easily held their own.

Here _cancha_, or toasted, ripe, shelled corn did duty as bread, and

each helping of beef was flanked by boiled _chuño_, or small, frozen

potatoes. Then there were _camotes de la sierra_, one of the several

species of the potato family unknown in other lands, a soft, sweetish,

mushy tuber of the shape of a large peanut, which it was à la mode to

pick from the plate with the fingers, and dip before each bite into the

general bowl of _ají_, the Incaic peppers so beloved of the ancient

Peruvians. As in all Peru, it was the custom here to drink the health of

a companion and expect him to round the circle ad infinitum et

intoxicatum. Luckily, my companions were so far gone in liquor, even

before my arrival, that I managed to avoid most of the fiery “copitas”

without giving offense.

In the group was the cholo school-master of the baked-mud _Escuela

Fiscal de Varones_ across the plaza. He was a native of Carhuáz, and

grew so excited over the extraordinary fact that I had not only been in

his birthplace but had traveled thence “by land” that, irrespective of

the pisco, he was unable to begin the afternoon session when the boys

gathered at one o’clock. It didn’t matter anyway, he confided, since he

spoke no Quichua and the pupils almost no Spanish, and he would get his

salary—whenever the government had the money—whether he pretended to

teach or not. The school system of Peru being centralized, like that of

France, orders from Lima sometimes transfer a _maestro_ from one

province to another without any notion as to whether or not he is fitted

to his new assignment. The boys, all but one of whom were at least half

Indian, could mispronounce a few sentences from the “Lives of the

Saints,” but few could recognize one letter from another. Though he had

nothing to show in the way of teaching, the _maestro_ pointed with pride

to the school-name in huge red letters, all but covering the adobe

façade, as an example of his handiwork and “culture.” We spent an hour

or more in posing the school for a group in the act of saluting the

national flag, the “teacher” insisting on changing his brilliant red

poncho for a khaki coat before he would face the kodak, and of course he

grew enraged because I was so miserly as to refuse to deliver a dozen

copies of the picture on the spot. Another round of “copitas” restored

his amiability, however, and he insisted on giving me “something not to

forget him by,” and forced upon me one of the unvarnished lead-pencils

which the government supplied his pupils.

Travelers were frequent on the vast, rising world beyond, where the

great valley of the Huantas shrivelled and disappeared into the past.

Indian women trotted by, not only with a load and a baby on their backs,

but often suckling the infant as they went. _Ccoto_, as the Incas called

goitre, was common. Llama-trains, driven by fishy-eyed, noiseless

Indians with colored rags around their heads under their thick, gray

felt hats, passed frequently. There are few more interesting sights than

that afforded by two of these trains shuttling through each other on a

narrow mountain trail, each animal keeping its course as unerringly as a

homing-pigeon. At a rocky turn of the road one of the frail beasts lay

dying, an Indian boy slashing the gay ribbons out of its still quivering

ears with a crude cutlass. Chusquito strongly objected to passing a

scene so fraught with the dangers and cruelties of the trail. It was our

first real difference of opinion. From Inca days it seems to have been

the custom to decorate the ears of llamas with these bits of bright

cloth, less from artistic notions than as a means of designating the

ownership. To-day even the cows, bulls, goats, and sheep of certain

regions are thus embellished—often with ludicrous results. When, as

here, the matter is carried so far as to beribbon the donkeys, it seems

time to call a halt; for what can look more absurdly incongruous than a

plodding ass solemnly waving with the monotonous rhythm of his gait his

gaily bedecked ears.

Beyond Marcavalle, on the second day, the stony road was for a time even

more densely populated by llama, donkey, and mule-trains, by haughty,

white-collared gentry ahorse, and villagers afoot, all,—“gente,”

arrieros, Indians of both sexes, and, one could almost believe, the very

llamas—silly or stupid with drink. Even the women chewed coca, each

bulging cheek suggesting a cud of tobacco. Indian women, that is, for in

a land where every man rides it is the rarest sight to see a woman on

horseback; and even the chola who drags her skirts through the

accumulations of years in her native hamlet, would sooner break the

seventh commandment than ride astride. Then bit by bit the travel died

out; the single telegraph wire strode knock-kneed away over an

uninhabited world, and for an unbroken half day we tramped across a vast

brown pampa, with only an occasional flock of sheep, the stone and straw

kennels of shepherds at so great a distance off that I must trust as

usual to luck in guessing aright among many faint paths, and at times

even total absence thereof.

The adobe-and-thatch Indian hamlet of Nahuinpuquio was _en fiesta_,

celebrating some church holiday. The air pulsated with the harsh and

discordant noise of fife and drum, in the melancholy rhythm of all music

of the aboriginals, and the drear landscape was brightened here and

there by groups of dancers, Indians in fantastic costumes and ludicrous

masks, who danced in fixed spots without moving a yard an hour in any

direction. Over the valleyed and rocky face of the mountain beyond, a

bit of the road consisted of rough-stone steps that may have been part

of the old Inca highway. Then the trail pitched down into an ever warmer

valley, the enclosing hillsides and rocky ranges marked off in hundreds

of little stone-fenced patches, most of them newly plowed and waiting

for rain. Toward sunset we came out suddenly above a river brilliant

green with the patches of verdure stretching along it as far as the eye

could command,—the Mantaro, racing Amazonward through its rock-hewn

gorge, with villages tucked away here and there up the face of the great

cliffs that rose ever higher as we wound forever downward round and

round the headlands.

In the parlor of the “Hacienda Casma,” where shake-downs were prepared

for three travelers whom chance had brought together in the

half-tropical throat of the valley, lay piled the Huancayo-Huancavelica

mail,—in virtually new American mail-sacks. The unusually noiseless

sincerity of our host and the extraordinary order of his establishment

surprised me not a little, until I learned that he was Argentine born.

These rural haciendas take life easily. It was nearly eight next morning

before we drifted together for coffee, bread, and cheese, and some time

later that the mayordomo prevailed upon his Indian assistants to drive

from the hacienda pasture a score of mules and horses, from which we

each chose our animals. While I sat reading in the fresh, bird-singing,

June morning, awaiting my four-footed companion, a travel-stained Indian

slipped noiselessly into the yard with a letter which the wife of the

hacendado opened and began to read. Her suppressed laughter soon drew

the attention of her husband, who, having taken possession of the

epistle, began in his turn to shake with mirth. When he had finished, he

sent out of ear-shot the Indians who flocked in and about the corredor,

and read the note to his guests. It was from the parish priest high up

on the mighty range that shut in the river, and ran in part, all in a

solemn, almost sanctimonious tone:

“Yesterday, dear compadre, while on a round of confession among my

scattered flock, to whom God grant all blessings, I found in the house

of the widow —— a poor little orphan, newly born. Now I beg of you in

the name of charity and the Holy Church to do me the inestimable service

of acting as godfather to this unfortunate little innocent, that it may

not be in danger of dying in mortal sin for want of baptism. We will

ride there on Thursday.... Now I beg and pray you, dear compadre, to

grant me this favor, and above all to say nothing whatever of this

matter to anyone, since it is of no importance to any but ourselves, not

even to mention it to your good and pious wife, whom God....”

“But—” I began, somewhat at a loss to account for the roars of laughter

that increased with each phrase.

[Illustration:

A hint of what the second-class traveler on Peruvian railways must put

up with—without the clashing of colors and the odors of _pisco_ and

chicha]

[Illustration:

The wide main street and a part of the immense market of Huancayo,

said to be the largest in Peru. The Indians, dressed in every shade

of vivid colors and carrying every species of native product, trot

in from a hundred miles around for this Sunday gathering]

“Why, it’s—you see it’s—well, the padre knows the widow well, very well

indeed,” explained my host, wiping his eyes with a corner of his poncho,

“and this is the fourth time since I became owner of Casma that he has

asked me to be godfather to some poor little orphan he has found in

different parts of his scattered parish. He is a man of force, is the

padre. But of course he doesn’t want the good and pious señoras of his

flock to know about his little amusements. We Argentinos, however—well,

who knows the secret of keeping a secret from a woman,” he concluded,

gazing after his wife as she hurried away, her shoulders still shaking.

At the ancient and graceful arched bridge across the Mantaro, a half-day

further down, I came to the parting of the ways. The direct trail to

Ayacucho continued along the stony, winding river-bank to Tablachaca

(Plank-bridge), but Huancavelica promised interest in proportion to its

isolation, and I prevailed upon Chusquito to undertake the long, stiff

climb up the face of the range under the vertical blazing sunshine.

Little patches, inhabited since time immemorial, stood out here and

there, their green trees, flowers, and fruit-odors, in as sharp contrast

to the grim mountain flanks as any oasis, of the Sahara. Somewhat above

the ancient town of Izcochaca, spilled up the hillside, rocks of a faint

red or purple hue are dug out of the mountainside and tied in pairs on

the backs of donkeys or llamas, scores of which we passed on their way

to the great market of Huancayo. Even the inexperienced Andean traveler

might easily have guessed what these stones were, from the habit of the

donkeys of licking the burdens of their fellows at every halt. Salt is a

government monopoly in Peru, and truly Peruvian in its condition. In the

rural districts he who asks for salt is handed a stone—and a hammer with

which to break it. Or in lieu of the latter he may beat two slabs of

this mountainside rock together, and sprinkle, the resultant gravel on

his food. It behooves the wise traveler to carry his own kodak-tin of

civilized salt, for even in the larger towns this is often unattainable.

All the afternoon we undulated across a lofty mountain-top, with a few

human kennels of shepherds stuck on rock-ledges along the way, passing

through one straw hamlet bright new in outward appearance, since

threshing-time had but recently passed. In Huando, one of those dismal,

rocky, comfortless, cold Indian towns that abound in the Sierra, I made

my first acquaintance with _alcaldes_ carrying silver-mounted staffs of

office. His bedraggled wife, who was much more at home in Quichua than

in Spanish, sent a messenger to announce my arrival to the gobernador.

The latter was a quaint little man in side-burns, wearing the only even

theoretically white collar in town, and a not too successful imitation

of “European” garb that did not exactly set off to advantage his bashful

rural dignity. There ensued that long, diplomatic parley by means of

which the traveler at length wins hospitality—in rural Peru the word

must be taken with a scanty meaning, since it commonly consists of

permission to spread one’s own trappings on the earth floor of the

corredor. He who would be successful even in this must never state his

wants abruptly, but only gradually drift toward them, without appearing

to care particularly whether he be granted the permission or not. Ramón

Lagos, however, for all his childlike simplicity, knew the duty of a

gobernador toward a distinguished traveler, even though he could not

fathom my reason for coming on foot. By the time cold night was settling

down he had sent an Indian to pile my possessions in the corredor, and

in due season the most soapless of Indian girls arrived with a

_puchero_, the Irish-stew of the Andes, containing the wing and

drumstick of a guinea-pig, and carrying carefully on the end of a

fork—no doubt after having stuck it there with her unmentionable

fingers—another fat leg of the same squeaky rodent. Then there was

ancient bread and weak willow-leaf tea, and _á la postre_ my hostess

came to share with me a delicacy she called “chicharrón,”—strips of

hard-fried pork.

Meanwhile, I had diplomatically put the gobernador in possession of ten

cents, with which to buy fodder for Chusquito. A messenger went forth,

and in due time an Indian _alguacil_ on the down-grade of life appeared,

bearing his _barajo_ with all the dignity of an English beadle. Behind

him came several youthful assistants, with less pretentious staffs of

office. Though they are appointed by compulsion, these aids to the ruler

of an Andean town are proud in their undemonstrative way of being thus

raised above the common rabble. None of them would permit even the wife

of the gobernador to take the black cane with silver bands out of his

hands, and I could only admire them at a distance. Not one of the

alguaciles spoke a word of Spanish. The gobernador in a Napoleonic voice

gave the old man an order for two nickel’s worth of straw. Apparently it

was not etiquette for the younger aids of government to understand the

command direct from the lips of the great gobernador himself. The chief

alcalde bowed faintly and turned to stride away with an authoritative,

if soft-footed tread. To carry out the order himself? No, indeed!

Instead, he passed it on to one of the youths, whose badge of office was

a much shorter staff, tied to his wrist, that it might not interfere

with the actual and physical carrying out of the command. Somewhat later

one of these returned, struggling under a great bundle of straw, the old

Indian strutting behind him, in all the dignity of his high authority

still firmly grasping his barajo. After them came a girl, evidently the

inferior of another of the authoritative youths, carrying at least a

peck of _cebada_, or barley. I sat late superintending the repast of my

companion, for only the inexperienced Andean traveler will trust to

native supervision of his animal’s requirements.

Not only do the Indian alcaldes and alguaciles hold office for the mere

“honor” of the position, but the gobernadores themselves are appointed

on compulsion and receive no reward, except from the traveler who, with

great care not to give offense, chooses to make up for this governmental

oversight. The news of my arrival had spread through the town, and in

the morning the alguaciles had increased to a half-dozen, who sat

motionless about the yard, staring like ruminating oxen and accepting

with leisurely avidity the crusts of my desayuno, handed them by the

gobernador. That official, certain I could not find my way alone, had

ordered a youth to accompany me. But as he was not overjoyed at the

appointment, it was no hard matter to lose him in the bleak and gloomy

labyrinthian town.

An all-day tramp across an often laborious upland, brilliant for all its

yellow-brown waste under the broad blue lift of the sky, raised a

glacier-topped range, at the foot of which lies Huancavelica. The

rolling uplands were alive now with llamas, alpacas, and sheep, grazing

together as one family. Here was the “home” of the llama—which, by the

way, is the Quichua term for domesticated animal—the only beast of

burden known to the inhabitants of Peru before the coming of the

Conquistadores, their only domestic animal, in fact, except the

guinea-pig, unless we count the now exterminated _allcu_. Relics of an

ancient civilization in which they held chief place, the llama and the

Indian of the Andes have much in common; they seem two branches of the

same race who have fallen on evil days together, to plod through modern

life like ghosts of a far-off past. Both endure only the high altitudes;

both are firmly wedded to their ancestral home; both suffer

uncomplainingly; both are temperamentally incapable of haste. The llama

will not travel alone, but only in company with its fellows; the Indian

is a moderately effective workman in “bees” or bands, but lacks the

self-reliance requisite to individual accomplishment. As the Indian

squanders half his time in fiestas and celebrations, and breaks his

labors frequently for a “coca-time,” so the llama can work but twelve or

fifteen days a month, spending the rest in feeding. The drivers—and only

an Indian can drive them—are as soft-footed as the animals themselves,

never shouting or urging them on with those cries common to all other

arrieros.

The llama, however, is more cleanly in his instincts than the Indian;

does not rival him as a drunkard; and, above all, retains a manly air,

even under adversity, in striking contrast to the slinking manner of his

human companion. He is the aristocrat among animals. Ever silent—if he

has a bleat or cry, I have never heard it—his gentle, liquid eyes seem

to look unseeing clear through one; he gazes upon the world about him

with an expression of timorous disdain and the indifference of convinced

superiority. His dignified attitude suggests a proud Inca set to

carrying fire-wood, or a “decayed gentlewoman” refusing to be outwardly

cast down by her misfortunes; his air is dreamy, as if he were looking

back to the time when he and the Incas reigned supreme over all the

Andean plateau. Like an aristocratic prisoner on parole, all the

security he requires is a rope laid across his neck, or a corral

bordered round with stones a foot high. If the figure may be carried

still further, there is yet another suggestion of the aristocrat in the

fact that, beneath his haughty exterior, he is apt to be stupid,

assuming his impressive dignity of manner to cover this interior paucity

of matter.

Had the llama been found in North America, he would have been

exterminated even more completely than was the Indian. He is far too

slow and ineffective a beast of burden to endure long against our

national impatience. He carries barely a hundred pounds, and covers at

best ten miles a day, grazing along the way, since he cannot feed by

night. But in the leisurely southern continent he still survives on the

high, cold plateaux that are his natural home, as the thin, hardy

vegetation of páramos and punas is his natural food; and in this day of

trains and automobiles, caravans of these frail, graceful creatures,

their ears gaily decorated with bright ribbons, still glide across the

frigid heights, as in the centuries when they represented the only

freighters of an immense empire.

Graceful when he walks, the llama runs with much the same awkward gait

as the kangaroo, throwing his neck, and looking at a distance like an

ostrich on four legs. In the region round about us were grazing, also,

many alpacas—here called _pacos_—a far uglier animal in its thick wool

of many colors, from black to gray, than the gracefully formed and

generally white llama. He is suggestive of a shaggy, spring bear, and

though he, too, occasionally serves as a beast of burden, his chief

value is in his wool. Two other members of the same Andean family, the

_guanaco_ and the _vicuña_, found chiefly in the wilder regions further

south, are never domesticated. The latter, graceful and delicate as a

fawn, produces the most valuable wool to be found in the Western

Hemisphere.

A native horseman, or, more exactly, muleman, had fallen in with us,

after striving for hours to overtake us. We rose and fell two or three

times more over rocky ridges, then came out suddenly on the brow of a

tremendous ravine above Huancavelica, in a situation extraordinary even

in comparison with the many striking ones throughout the Andes. Grim,

almost perpendicular mountains, their jagged summits of rock like

decaying fangs, lay piled into the sky on every hand, and completely

boxed in a _vega_, or little, flat plain, in the center of which, close

at hand, yet far below us, every patio of the city lay as plainly in

sight as the unroofed houses of Paris under the gaze of “Diable Boiteu.”

The trail pitched so steeply downward that the native was forced to

dismount and lead his mule.

“You see,” he boasted, pointing to several iron crosses on almost

inaccessible crags high above the city, “this is a Christian” (by which

he meant Catholic) “country.”

The retort suggested itself that there were other and even less pleasant

proofs of that fact, but there would have been no gain in talking

plainly to one of his low mental caliber. The Latin-American can always

build crosses along his roads, even if he cannot build the roads

themselves. Our thighs ached from the swift descent long before we

passed through the suburb of San Cristobal, separated from the town

proper by the crystal-clear little mountain river, Ichu, and we had all

but encircled the department capital before an ancient bridge of

_mampostería_, a mixture of mud, stones, and plaster, at last gave us

admittance.

Rare is the traveler of to-day who passes through Huancavelica. As I

climbed the slippery, squeaky, small-cobbled streets toward the central

plaza, I was quickly reminded that I was far from the haunts of

civilized man, in an isolated world where even the sight of a strange

face is a rare treat, to say nothing of a foreigner in shirt-sleeves,

armed with a revolver and a sheath-knife, struggling to drag with him a

diminutive, shaggy mountain pony laden with miscellaneous junk. For

Chusquito, bewildered by the surroundings of an unknown city, displayed

an excitement and a waywardness of which I had not suspected him

capable. As I entered the cobbled and grassy plaza, across which the

towering western mountain-wall was already throwing its cold evening

shadow, the chiefly Indian soldiers on guard before the Prefectura

stared with bulging eyes, and rubbed their hands across their brows, as

if wondering whether they saw aright and whether they should do anything

about it. The adjoining streets were long lines of gaping faces, each

new group falling suddenly silent as they caught sight of the unexpected

apparition that had descended unheralded upon them, and the at best

slight industry and energy of Huancavelica came completely to a

standstill.

I was supplied with no fewer than six letters of introduction. The

Prefectura was officially closed, which made one useless. I dragged

Chusquito into the patio of Dr. Durán next door, and announced myself

possessor of a recommendation to the lawyer from his best friend in

Lima. He acted like a Peruvian. Not merely did he decline to step out of

his office, but sent an Indian boy to demand the letter. When I

presented myself in the doorway instead, he read it with fear plainly

depicted on his features that he might be obliged to offer hospitality

to a man who could not be a caballero, since he came on foot, and as

plainly sought some loophole to avoid that necessity. He found one, too,

when he turned again to the envelope. The writer had carelessly written

the first name and, though he had explained the error, had not taken the

trouble to change it.

“Ah, but this letter is not for me,” cried the lawyer triumphantly, “it

is addressed to Felipe, and I am Enrique”—though he knew as well as I

that there was not another Dr. Durán in all Huancavelica.

The open-mouthed throng that had massed about the zaguán led me en masse

to a building that had once been a hotel on the further corner of the

plaza. It was too much to expect the inhabitants to know already that it

had ceased its ministrations to transients—the proprietor had been

barely four years dead. The whispering chorus about me swelled gradually

to the audible assertion that there was another establishment a few

squares away which “sometimes had given accommodations to estranjeros.”

At that moment a soldier, bearing a naked sword in one hand and a musket

in the other, came running to say that the ayudante wished to know who I

was, why, where, whence, and all the rest of it,—and that I was to

report to him at once. I commandeered the messenger to lead me to the

rumored hostelry. Before we reached it, however, a boy shouted to a

shopkeeper, leaning out over his half-door to watch the unwonted

excitement, that—a fact I had chanced to mention to some one, whereupon

it instantly became general knowledge—I had a letter for Solomón Atala.

The “Turk,” for such he was, dashed into the crowd and announced himself

the addressee.

“Very well; you will come and live at my house,” he cried, when he had

perused the note.

I protested that a public hostelry in the Andes was too rare a luxury to

be lightly given up, and that it was bad enough to intrude upon private

families when there was no other alternative. The “Turk” would not hear

any such argument. I had been recommended by his good friend, and I

belonged to him as long as I chose to remain in Huancavelica. Memories

of Palestine reminded me that to men of his race hospitality has none of

the hollow nothingness common to Peru. While we stood talking, a boy

surreptitiously led Chusquito off down a gaping side-street to the

“Turk’s” home, and I had perforce to follow. My possessions disappeared

through a narrow door within a door, once through which I found myself

in the littered patio of an ancient house of ample, rambling

proportions. A female voice bade me mount a century-worn stairway to a

sagging second-story balcony completely surrounding the yard. Barely had

I dubiously set foot upon it than there popped out several slatternly

women and the mightiest swarm of unassorted children I had ever yet seen

in captivity. My imagination began to picture what sleeping, and writing

notes, and getting the few days’ rest to which I was entitled, would be

in that swarming household, and unable to think of any ceremonial

excuse, I slipped down the aged stairs, untied Chusquito, and dragged

him away up the slippery cobbled street.

The worst of it was that I had to pass the “Turk’s” shop again to reach

the hotel. The good fellow was just locking up to come home and

entertain me, and he pounced upon me at once, quite literally, throwing

his arms about me and attempting to drag me off bodily, while

Huancavelica stared open-mouthed upon us from every doorway. But I had

set my heart on the repose of a room of my own. Beating off the

affectionate “Turk” with one hand, and struggling in vain to keep

Chusquito off the sidewalk and out of each succeeding shop with the

other, I gradually worked my way forward, leaving my would-be host on

the verge of tears, and gained at last the “Saenz-Peña Hotel.” It was a

dislocated little building of long, long, ago, wrapped like a carelessly

flung garment around a tiny patio, its most conspicuous feature the city

billiard-room in which a half-dozen youths of sporting proclivities were

gathered—at least, until they caught sight of us. Summoned from the

mysterious interior, the respectful and astonished poncho-clad

proprietor went in quest of a key, and unlocked the padlock of one of

three small doors tucked away in as many corners of the patio—doors made

of battered drygoods boxes with the lettering still upon them, so

precious is lumber in these treeless heights—explaining that the other

two rooms were “ocupados”—perhaps with empty bottles or guinea-pigs,

certainly not with guests.

The chamber assigned me awoke my gratitude. It was, to be sure, so small

that I could touch both walls at once, windowless and doorless, except

for the narrow opening by which I squeezed in, gloomy and chill, after

the fashion of adobe mountain rooms long closed; but it was furnished,

even to a bed with real springs. Barely had I carried my traps inside,

when there burst into the patio another “Turk,” who asserted in

gestureful Spanish that _he_ was the real Solomón Atala to whom I

belonged during my stay in Huancavelica, the other being merely his

brother, who had opened the letter in the brotherly way of Palestinians.

He, too, was a believer in forcible hospitality, and the hotel

proprietor looked on in helpless dismay at what promised to be a

successful attempt to carry off his only guest in—the patron saint of

hoteleros knows how long. A bed with springs, in a room by myself,

however, was not a luxury to be given up for the mere danger of making a

few Turkish enemies, and in the end the engaging Syrian, seeing no way

out of it, admitted with bad grace that, as I already had my possessions

scattered about the hotel room, it would be unfair to the proprietor not

to retain it. I should remain where I was until morning, when we would

talk the matter over. He agreed under protest, and at length gloomily

took his departure.

This “friend in town” is the bugbear of hotel-keepers, or would-be

keepers, in the Andes. The Arabian notion of hospitality, inherited from

the Moors and mixed perhaps with the traditions of Inca days, with their

free and public tambos along all the highways of the empire, still holds

sway, at least superficially. The Peruvian will all his life put up with

begging lodging, food, and fodder on his travels, often going without

them entirely, rather than help support a hotel, considering it a sign

of high rank to be housed by an outwardly delighted acquaintance, and

thus cheat the struggling hotelero out of a livelihood.

[Illustration:

“Chusquito” descending one of the few remnants of the old Inca highway

I found from Quito to Cuzco]

[Illustration:

A detail of the market of Huancayo, with a bit of pottery like that of

the days of the Incas]

Having led Chusquito to the river to drink and heaped before him half of

a five-cent bundle of _alcazer_—green barley, for grain does not ripen

at this altitude—and locked the rest inside my chamber, I stalked in

solitary grandeur through the gaping billiard-players to the

dining-room, and sat down at the end of a long oil-clothed table near a

small opening in the wall that looked like an enlarged rat-hole. The

poncho-clad proprietor proceeded with fitting gravity to serve me a

thoroughly Peruvian meal, of which the chief ingredient was a

_churrasco_, or steak, not of beef, as I at first fancied, but of llama,

a favorite Huancavelican dish which would not exactly win the unstinted

praise of an epicure. Between each course he repaired to the kitchen in

a corner of the barnyard to poke the various dishes through the hole in

the wall, and then reappeared within to serve them. It may have been a

long time since he had been honored with a guest, but he had not

forgotten the proper form of service. After each trip he balanced on

alternate legs, staring at me silently, until at last his tongue refused

longer to obey his will, when he burst out tremulously:

“Usté’—ah—señor, es andarín, no?”

“Not at all,” I replied, to his patent disappointment. “You see I

haven’t a single medal on my chest.”

“Ah, then you travel to sell something; jewelry perhaps, like all

franceses?”

Squier, traveling through the Andes a half-century ago, found that “in

the Sierra all foreigners are supposed to be French in nationality and

peddlers of jewelry by profession,” and conditions have changed little

to this day. The landlord-waiter was openly incredulous of my second

denial, but once the sluice-gates of his curiosity had been opened, the

flow of words swamped even the service, and the soup had long since

become a memory of the dim past before he poked the _pastre_ of melted

panela through to himself. I made my escape at last, and went to sit on

the wooden sofa in the billiard-room, as the only place in town with

light enough to see oneself by; but my distinguished presence was so

evidently the cause of bad shots that gradually turned the players

bitterly resentful, and the atmosphere was so decidedly wintry, that I

soon “hit the hay”—quite literally, for such proved to be the filling of

the outwardly luxurious-looking mattress.

I had barely ventured into the street next morning when I was dragged

into the shop of the two Palestinians. After a bitter and noisy struggle

we patched up a truce as follows: Since I was already enstalled there, I

was to keep my room at the hotel, but it was at their house that I must

take breakfast and dinner....

“And desayuno!” cried the “Turks” as one man, “You must also come and

take breakfast with us. If you like eggs, or steak, or pickled pigs’

feet, or.... Very well, even if you take only coffee and bread, like a

Peruvian....”

Though it was barely ten of a brilliant Sunday morning, the Andean

merchant’s richest hour, they shut up shop, in spite of the mild

protests of a dozen ponchoed shoppers, and led the way to their rambling

residence. A meal heavy with meat was enlivened with an excellent wine

that could have cost little less than a small fortune at this altitude.

The manners of the household recalled Palestine. We three men sat at

table with our hats on, in Arabic as well as Andean fashion, while the

women hovered more or less inconspicuously in the background. A dozen

small children of both sexes crawled and climbed and sprawled and

displayed their plump, unwashed nakedness on, around, and under the

table, drinking wine and swearing like arrieros in both Spanish and

Quichua. They were being brought up in the Palestinian, which is to some

extent the Latin-American, fashion that forbade coercion, and were

heartily laughed at and dubbed “cute” whenever they did anything

particularly naughty or disobedient.

The two Syrians, as we would call them, or “Turks,” as their

fellow-countrymen are known through all South America, had left

Bethlehem some eight years before. They announced themselves

“Christians,” which meant merely that they were not Mohammedans; though,

as behooves ambitious merchants, they diplomatically avoided any

religious controversy with their clients. For several years they had

peddled on foot over all the accessible portion of central Peru,

descending even into the montaña, or great hot lands to the east, the

abode of rubber, fever, and “wild” Indians. Bit by bit they had

established shops in various towns, until they had come to be among the

most important merchants of the region, with headquarters in

Huancavelica and branches in charge of more youthful fellow-countrymen

in the chief centers of population of the department. Their success was

typical of thousands of men of their race throughout the southern

continent. For the native, equally scanty of initiative, industry, and

the inclination to risk his capital, is at best an ineffective

competitor of this tireless race of born shopkeepers. Of productive

labor, great as is the call for it in this backward Andean land, the

“Turk” brings nothing. Nor is his example likely to better the personal

habits of the native population, though it may breed more effective

“business methods,” and even a higher grade of commercial honesty—to say

nothing of hospitality. It is not by such immigration, however, that the

dormant continent will be rejuvenated.

My irrepressible hosts cherished a hazy dream of some day returning to

Palestine with their fortune. Yet their children spoke not a word of the

Arabic that still served for most of the intercourse between the men and

their slatternly wives. The brothers themselves were fluent, not only in

Spanish, but in Quichua. The throaty dialect of the aboriginals has much

in common with the no less guttural Arabic; as the similarity of customs

and point of view makes the race particularly adaptable to Peruvian

surroundings. No other foreigner fits better into the life of the Andes,

and it is not strange that the Syrian has most effectively invaded

Andean commerce. Even the Chinaman, who quickly disappears as the

traveler turns his back on Lima, has found it impossible to compete with

these more western Orientals.

It is unfortunate that the traveler given to reporting his wanderings

cannot have his mind erased every little while, like a slate; for so

quickly do the sights and sounds of a strange country sink to the

commonplace that many things that might delight the stay-at-home pass

unnoticed. Thus an American untouched with the contempt of familiarity,

suddenly set down in Huancavelica, would no doubt find it abounding with

“local color.” Hays, who journeyed overland to Cuzco some months before

me, enthusiastically proclaimed it “the most picturesque town in South

America.” But to one who had followed the Andes step by step it was

rather monotonously like any other town of the Sierra, its customs

varying only in a few minor details from those that had long since grown

familiar. By night it lies silent and dead under its cold stars. Dawn

finds the fountain in its central “Plaza de la Independencia” bearded

with icicles, and no clock or sun-dial could give the hour more exactly

than the regularity with which these drip away to nothing in the late

morning. For the sun falls tardily on Huancavelica, having first to

climb the mountain rampart that shuts it in on the east. The town wisely

remains in bed until the god of the Incas has asserted his brilliant,

undisputed sway, and my road-habit of rising at daybreak gave me the

sensation of strolling through a city from which the entire populace had

fled. Indeed, the only really comfortable place in town was in bed. All

day long one shivered in the shade or burned in the sun. In my dank,

dungeon cell it was distinctly too dark, cold, and gloomy to read or

write; on the red benches of the plaza the glare of the molten disk

above was too brilliant to endure, even when some unsophisticated old

native did not join me and remain deaf to all hints that even a traveler

has his work to do. I soon formed the habit of taking daily possession

of the ancient band-stand facing the white “cathedral.” Here was a bench

on which I could, by constant manipulation, keep myself in the sun and

my note-book in the shade; and as it was apparently against the rules or

contrary to _costumbre_ for a native to occupy the structure, I sat here

hour after hour in solitary glory, flanked by the four staring sides of

the plaza. The activity of an Andean town can generally be gaged by its

plaza, and by that token Huancavelica was inactive indeed. Evidently no

industry more important than a soup-kettle could be run by natives, and

foreigners were rare. Charcoal braziers, or the three-stone, fagot-fires

at the backs of huts, where crouched old women almost too feeble to

drive off the curs that swarmed around the steaming earthen calabashes,

represented the ordinary cooking processes, the fires being now and then

given new life with a bamboo, or woven-weed fan. So bucolic was the

populace that every stroll through the streets brought a score of

inquiries as to what I was selling, many regarding even my kodak as a

sale-kit and inviting me to enter, while children and grown-ups alike

hastened to summon the rest of the family as often as I hove in sight.

In common with all Latins, the people are lovers of perpetual noise, and

have no conception of our Anglo-Saxon desire to be occasionally let

alone. Though the annoyances were always innocent, rather than

intentional, I could not pause for a moment that I did not have a

surrounding mob, and there was almost constantly a procession of boys,

and even those old enough to know better, at my heels. If I paused to

look at an old carved corner-stone or an ancient balcony, necks were

craned in wonder as to what on earth an _estranjero_ from the great

outside world could find of interest in the lifelong sights of their

drowsy capital. Yet there was a peculiar repose and quiet about the

place, as if it were literally shut off by its grim mountain-walls from

all the troubles of the great world. Shopkeepers locked up and went home

to play or sleep whenever the whim struck them. Though a department

capital, there was not a physician in town, nor any open evidence of a

drug-store; and while there was no doubt some advantage in this state of

affairs, the death-rate from dysentery and pneumonia was high. An

awkward, slow-minded, mountain people, they had not even the usual

mountaineer virtue of shyness, being as forward in their manner as

Hebrews. I was never out of sight of at least one “authority,” a ragged

Indian from some neighboring hamlet up among the higher ranges, clinging

jealously to his black silver-mounted cane of office. Pacos and llamas

could be made out, tiny as mice, feeding on the perpendicular crags

sheer above the town, among the abrupt splintered masses of rock that

cut all the surrounding sky-line sharply with their jagged crests.

As I was strolling about town the day after my arrival, a soldier again

came running after me to say that the prefect himself desired me to

report and explain myself. I handed the menial my card, and heard no

more of the matter. The printed name on a bit of cardboard is proof

sufficient of aristocracy in most of South America. Burglars and

highwaymen contemplating entrance into that field of activities would do

well to provide themselves with a plentiful supply of visiting cards,

the larger and more imposing the better. Later on, when I called on the

department ruler at my own volition and with the dignity befitting an

envoy from the outside world, a man was assigned to attend me on any

excursions I chose to make in or about the town.

The origin of the name of Huancavelica is curious. There was, it seems,

no town here at the time of the Conquest. To the Incas this flat

enclosed plain with its clear little river offered too fine an

opportunity for their enemies to roll rocks down upon them from the

towering heights above. Centuries ago there settled on the spot an

Indian of the Huanca tribe, inhabiting the great valley between Jauja

and Huancayo. He died young, and for long years his wife dwelt alone in

the only hut in this capacious mountain-pocket. Her name was Isabel,

which in South America becomes familiarly or affectionately, “Velica.”

Her hut was a sort of tambo, where a bit of corn or eggs might

occasionally be had, or at least pasture for pack-animals and shelter

from the páramo winds. Hence travelers through the region, asked where

they would spend the night, announced: “Voy llegar donde la Huanca

Velica.”

Then it was discovered that the grim, treeless mountains piled into the

sky about the little valley were rich in quicksilver, and a mining town

built itself up about the hut of Isabel, the Huanca. For centuries the

great Santa Barbara mine high above the town, and several smaller

workings in the vicinity, yielded the mercury used in Potosi and in all

the mines of Peru, High or Low, which was brought from Huancavelica on

the backs of llamas. Then, as more scientific methods came into vogue,

the miners turned to California for their supply, until to-day the

Mercury Queen is but an echo of her former greatness, and the open

shafts of her cinnabar mines, which rumor has it left several of the

surrounding ranges great hollow caverns, stand silent and deserted. It

is this failure to keep up with modern times that has left Huancavelica

one of the most “picturesque” department capitals, with poverty her

chief handmaid. Lack of transportation is her principal drawback. The

very town itself is said to sit on top of great deposits of quicksilver.

Workmen, digging for the foundation of a new building on a corner of the

plaza during my sojourn, found pure-liquid mercury bubbling up out of

the ground. Modern miners, however, refuse to operate where only the

slow and unreliable llama must be depended on for transportation, and

only when the long-promised railroad arrives, will Huancavelica come

into her own again.

The chief point of interest was the famous old mercury mine of Santa

Barbara. Strangely enough, the cicerone appeared within an hour of the

daylight time set, though without breakfast, and shared with me the

results of my own rum-burning handicraft. A roundabout, but exceedingly

steep road, on which we panted audibly in spite of frequent halts for

breath, brought us to our goal far above the town. Near a silent, cold,

Indian hamlet, with an aged Spanish church facing its dreary plaza, was

the ruin of a cut-stone smelting-works of colonial days, and behind it

the imposing arched entrance to the enormous caverns said to undermine

all the neighboring range. Above this was a large Spanish coat-of-arms

cut in stone, with the information that the arch had been constructed by

General Fulano in 1707; and the weather-defaced relief of a saint

holding a child. The silence of long abandonment brooded over all the

scene. We lighted the medieval oil-lamp borrowed from the hotel, and

disappeared within. The tunnel that led straight into the mountainside

was large enough, if not for a railway train, at least for a horseman to

have ridden in comfortably, its floor easily as good a road as the

average Peruvian one outside. Here and there we crawled over a heap of

stones and earth where a part of the wall had fallen, and at 382 paces

from the mouth were halted by a cave-in that had choked up the entire

tunnel. My companion had assured me that the spirits of ancient

Spaniards and their Indian victims, lying in wait for unwary moderns,

made our entrance perilous in the extreme, and, once permission was

given, lost no time in retreating.

From the exit we went _faldeando_ (skirting) the mountain to the ancient

mining village of Chaclatacana, about which, and scattered over all the

vicinity, were the evidences of little mines the Indians had dug on

their own account. The cinebrio deposits of the region were first

disclosed to the Spaniards in 1566, by the custom of the aboriginals of

painting their faces with it. My guide asserted that condors were

numerous, and often dangerous to the eyes of men wandering over these

lofty heights; but it was my luck not to catch sight of one of those

giant birds of the Andes. I was rewarded, however, for taking the

“short-cut” that proved longer and more laborious than the road, by a

bird’s eye view of Huancavelica, so directly below us that we could have

tossed our hats into the central plaza. Here, too, among the split and

jagged rock-crags we stumbled upon a colony of _viscachas_,—“biscachos”

my companion called them—almost the only quadruped, besides the

guinea-pig and the llama family, indigenous to the Peruvian highlands.

The creature is sometimes dubbed the “squirrel of the Andes,” but its

size was more nearly that of the rabbit, its prominent tail and means of

locomotion suggestive of some diminutive species of the kangaroo, its

color not unlike that of our prairie dog, which it resembled somewhat

also in its manner of dodging in and out among the rocks and crags, as

if inviting us to a game of “hide and seek.” According to my attendant,

the meat of the animal is even more succulent than llama-flesh,

providing the tail is cut off at the moment of killing.

But for the unkindness of fate there would have been a gala bull-fight

in Huancavelica on the Sunday of my stay. The one negro I had seen

shivering about town turned out to be a torero, imported—chiefly at his

own expense—from Lima for the occasion. The corral behind the rambling

dwelling of my hosts had been turned into a “ring,” a square one, to be

sure, laboriously fenced with poles tied with bark and cords to upright

stakes. But on Saturday afternoon, just as the town was rubbing its

hands together at the prospect of a half-forgotten entertainment, the

one bull that was to have furnished it sprang through the barrier and

over the low wall to the sunken street below, fifteen feet if it was an

inch, and instead of dying on the spot, was last seen making record time

for his mountain pasture.

The irrepressible “Turks” were wellnigh obnoxious in their hospitality.

The most baggage-abhorring of travelers acquires gradually and

unconsciously a new point of view with respect to his pack when he is no

longer forced to burden his own shoulders with it, and articles that

have hitherto seemed only useless weight take on the aspect of

necessities. But after they had “sold” me an enamel cup and a roll of

cotton-flannel for “Fusslappen,” the Syrians refused vociferously to

accept payment. When I caught sight of a mouth-organ that might have

served to while away the tramp across the lonely uninhabited world

ahead, my mere glance at it caused José to drop it into my pocket when I

was off my guard. A wordy battle ended with his acceptance of a _sol_,

which he swore was the wholesale price of an instrument marked to retail

for five times that amount; but it cost me eternal vigilance to keep now

one, now the other brother from surreptitiously returning the coin.

There was nothing left but to curtail my purchases. To choose from their

stock was to have charity thrust upon me; to buy off their rivals would

have been the height of insults, and would quickly have published to all

the town their lack of hospitality, or my ingratitude. My last day with

them the firm of Atala Hermanos spent in writing me letters of

introduction to all their countrymen from Huancavelica to Cape Horn, and

when I sneaked into their patio at dawn next morning, bent on abducting

Chusquito unseen, the entire household was already waiting to drag me in

to an extraordinary breakfast. Not satisfied with that, they forced upon

me a boiled leg-of-mutton and several other delicacies, among them a

dozen raw eggs which, tied in a handkerchief on Chusquito’s back, broke

one by one with his jolting gait and ran in yellow streams down the

rubber poncho that covered the pack.

All Huancavelica united in attempting to force a guide upon me,

asserting that even “hijos del lugar” frequently lost themselves on the

trackless puna beyond. I smiled indulgently at what had long since

become a threadbare prophesy, but had occasion to recall it before the

day was done. The way mounted steadily all the morning, uncovering a

vast yellow-brown world that stretched forever before me. In the early

hours it was scantily inhabited by wild, weather-faded shepherds

watching over flocks of llamas, pacos, or sheep, and leisurely busy

turning wool into yarn on their crude spindles, an occupation that gave

the men a curiously effeminate air, out of all keeping with their rough

exterior. These chary fellows took good care that we should not come

within shouting distance of them, and even the rare travelers and llama

drivers made wide circuits to avoid us, as if fearful of their

defenselessness on this bleak, shelterless top of the world. If taken

unaware in some fold of the earth, they muttered some stupidity in the

Quichua slang dialect of the region, and sped away like startled hares.

Unable to make inquiries, I could only trust to chance, compass, and the

instinct that develops with long Andean travel. For on these broad

mountain-tops the traveler is by no means master of the situation, and

to guess wrong between several at best faintly marked paths may be to go

hopelessly astray, and come out on the opposite side of the Andes from

that toward which one is headed. For long stretches the dreary páramo

showed no sign whatever of travel, though here and there the droppings

of llamas gave the route a more or less fixed direction. A jolly,

coca-chewing old Indian, whom I came upon in the afternoon plodding

patiently behind his haughty train, had seen enough of the world to have

lost some of his fear of white men and assured me I was still on the

right road. But he must have been mistaken, or else I guessed wrong at

the next opportunity, for the bit of trail that had grown up under my

feet split irreconcilably and left, at the hour when I should have come

upon an hacienda reputed hospitable to travelers, only the rolling,

trackless, yellow puna stretching away on every hand.

[Illustration:

Huancavelica, one of the most picturesque and least-visited provincial

capitals of Peru, is completely boxed in by grim, rocky mountain

walls noted for their deposits of mercury. The city itself is more

than two miles above sea-level]

A raging thunder-storm of rain and hail, under which the vast land and

skyscape turned dark as night, soon broke upon us. I had struggled a

long distance through the storm, when I faintly made out a little

cluster of huts some distance to the right in a wrinkle of the pampa.

After I had overcome my own disinclination to go out of my way to seek

lodging, there was needed a laborious argument to bring my companion to

my way of thinking. For Chusquito would have none of your side trips.

The truth is I had been somewhat deceived and disappointed in the

disposition of my chosen fellow-adventurer. As long as the road lay

straight and undoubtedly before us, he was an ideal companion, never

breaking the thread of my reflections by calling attention to the

scenery, nor otherwise making himself humanly obnoxious. But in

temperament he might best be likened to a cat, accepting all favors and

friendly overtures with a complacent aloofness and matter-of-course

manner that resembled ingratitude, refusing to be won over, even by

caresses, to the faintest expression of a reciprocal affection.

Moreover, he had a will, not to say a wilfulness, of his own that is

inimical to all genuine companionship on the road, and a respect for

_costumbre_ that betrayed his Latin-American training. I felt no

compunction in having recourse to brute force in a dispute under such

circumstances as then faced us, however, and we soon gained the only

visible shelter.

On a cold, cheerless spot, almost devoid of even the vegetation of high

pampas, I found five miserable human kennels of loosely laid stones and

ichu grass, in charge of several gaunt, savage, yet cowardly curs, and

an Indian boy speaking only monosyllabic Quichua. All the huts, except a

beehive-shaped structure that served as kitchen, had huge native

padlocks on the doors. Choked with thirst, in tantalizing contrast to my

dripping garments and the raging storm, I called for water.

“Manam cancha,” murmured the boy dully, using the Quichua version of

that stereotyped Andean falsehood, “There is none.”

“Yacu!” I shouted, jokingly laying a hand on my revolver.

He slunk away, and picked up a battered cup behind one of the huts.

Wiping this on his lifelong sleeve, he scraped the bottom of a huge

earthen jar that leaned awry, in what would have needed only a fence to

be a barnyard, at an angle that enabled the dogs to help themselves at

the same source, and presented the half-filled vessel to me. There was

no second choice in the matter, for this region, untold miles above

sea-level, had no other supply of water than the rain that chanced to

drop into the leaning cántaros. Fortunately the taste bore little

evidence of what the appearance suggested. I made a round of the huts,

resolved to spend the night there, even if I had to break into one of

the buildings.

“Huasi-muñuy!” I cried, patching my Quichua together after my own

fashion, and pointing to one of the padlocks.

“Manam cancha,” repeated the _huarma_ in the same dull monotone. I held

out what would have seemed a fortune of small coins to a country boy of

other lands, but he shook his head doggedly, without a gleam of

interest, casting a half-frightened glance at my weapon. An older youth,

who had appeared noiselessly from somewhere, treated the offer of money

with the same indifference and settled down to a silent attempt to drive

me off, in spite of the storm and the night that was closing in. It was

then that I thought of the sack I had filled in the market of Huancayo.

At the magic word “coca” the pair awoke to a new interest in life. Each

snatched off his hat to receive a handful of leaves, mumbling a

“Gracias, tayta-tayta,” and the older youth ordered the other to clear

away a miscellaneous assortment of junk, bundles of old sheepskins, and

a heap of llama-droppings gathered for fuel, from one end of the hut

“porch” under the edge of which I was seated. As he worked, there fell

from somewhere under the projecting eaves the corpse of a tiny, black

pig that had quite evidently died a natural death, but which the family

just as evidently proposed to eat, for the boy carried it off to a safer

spot, plainly doubting my honesty. In a corner lay two bundles of ichu

grass. I tossed one to Chusquito, standing dejected and disgusted beside

me, and spread out the other as a mattress. The youth made no protest,

but shook his head at the _real_ I offered in payment. A howling wind

that even the stone hut failed to break made it useless to attempt to

set up my cooking outfit. As I drew cold food from my pack, the Indians

sat motionless as stone statues, but watched with keen eyes,

monkey-like, my every move. I shared the lunch with them, though I

should much have preferred paying them in money for their dubious

hospitality. It is one of the drawbacks of Andean journeying that the

traveler is expected to share his scanty supplies, not merely with his

human companions of the moment, but is invariably surrounded under such

circumstances by a ravenous swarm of begging and thieving dogs, pigs,

and fowls. Except for a score of llamas lying in patrician aloofness

beyond the huts, every living creature crowded round to appeal to my

generosity or to catch me off my guard. The Indians accepted each morsel

with a murmured “Gracias” that plainly proceeded from custom rather than

from any real thankfulness. Innumerable experiments, from the Rio Grande

southward, had demonstrated that the American aboriginal has not a trace

of gratitude in his make-up; indeed, the use of the Spanish term

suggests that the native language did not even include a word for

thanks.

The thirst that follows an all-day tramp outlived the available supply

of water, and even the bottle of pisco I dared not bring to light until

darkness had concealed my movements from the Indians could not be shared

with Chusquito, no doubt choking within, in spite of his bedraggled,

dripping flanks. As the storm died down, the evening spread wonderful

colors across this bleak upper world, bringing out in lilac tints,

shading to purple and then to black, the saw-toothed range bounding the

horizon on the far south. The night would have been bitter cold even

inside one of the huts, to say nothing of lying on the earth floor of

the open, mud corredor. Yet the cold which my rubber poncho kept out was

no less surprising than the heat which the wooly llama-hair one kept in,

and my sleep might easily have been much more broken than it was.

During my first doze there arrived an old Indian, evidently the head of

the household that had hitherto kept itself successfully concealed. He

was somewhat the worse for fiery waters and, being apprized of his

visitor, set up a deal of howling and shouting in Quichua. Receiving no

answer, he ventured to take a mild poke at me with his stick. It would

have been heroic indeed to have gotten out of “bed.” Instead, I turned

loose a string of American and Spanish words of high voltage which

experience had shown to have a withering effect on his race. Though he

did not understand them individually, he evidently grasped their general

import, for he subsided at once, and retired to the beehive kitchen,

where for a long time he howled and yelped, as brave men will in the

midst of their trembling and admiring families. Bit by bit his women

pacified him, in the way women have, perhaps with more pisco and coca,

for I heard him laugh several times thereafter, with a sound like that

of a choking cow, before anything resembling silence settled down over

the lofty mountain-top world. Real silence is rare in these Indian huts

at night. Either the lack of comfort they are too lazy or uninitiative

to remedy, or the chewing of coca keeps the miserable inhabitants

half-awake, and periods of growling and grumbling are seldom far apart

from dark to dawn.

I fancy it was midnight, more or less, when I became drowsily aware that

Chusquito, tied within a foot of my head, was munching some fodder I

knew he did not possess; but I was too nearly asleep to rise and

investigate. The moon testified that it was some two hours later when I

was awakened to find the head of the household standing beside me, his

hand on a damaged roof and bellowing a guttural stream in which I caught

several times the words “Huasi micuni—eating my house.” This would be an

impoliteness in any land, and I bravely forced myself to slip into my

brogans and out into the icy moonlight. Chusquito had scalloped out the

bangs of the grass roof in a new style that, to my notion, was more

fetching than the original. If only the Indians of the Andes were not so

stonily conservative, my host would have thanked me for the improvement,

instead of sputtering with rage. I tied the innocent culprit to a

stone-wall nearby, which was also an unfortunate choice, for I heard him

knock down most of that in the hours that remained before daylight.

During the long uproar that ensued in the kitchen, no doubt the old

Indian told his family many times over that had _he_ been at home when I

arrived, I should not have remained; but in that he was mistaken, for it

would have taken a considerable band of South American Indians to have

denied me hospitality. I lay down again with my revolver and

cartridge-belt handy under the edge of the ponchos; not that there was

any danger, but because I do not care to be numbered among those who

take foolish chances.

The next I knew distinctly, it was dawning. I fed my mattress to

Chusquito and set up my kitchenette in the most sheltered corner of the

corredor, bent on concocting a hot broth with a lump of ice from the

bottom of a leaning cántaro. The directions on my magic can of

concentrated soup asserted that “one cube with hot water makes a

delicious bouillon.” But this, experience had demonstrated, should be

taken with a grain of salt—also four other cubes. Even under the lee of

my alforjas the rum-burner went out at the faintest breath of wind, but

by constant coaxing, and at the imminent risk of setting fire to my

possessions, I managed even to boil the two eggs that remained whole,

though so great was the altitude that with eight minutes of boiling they

were still soft. Gravelly bread of Huancavelica, and a native

“chocolate” that was really a pebbly brown sugar, topped off a meal I

might have longed for in vain at that hour in the best hotel of Peru.

Many an hour on the road, during the best part of the day for walking,

that simple little contrivance gave me, when I should otherwise have

been waiting on the sleepy natives for breakfast.

By the time I had eaten, the householder appeared in his slit panties

with white buttons down the sides, and a fancy upper garment evidently

intended to impress me with his importance. But when he noted by

daylight with whom he had to do, he gradually shrivelled up to a

half-friendly smile, and accepted with a pretence of gratitude a coin

for his forced hospitality and newly decorated roof. A silver-ringed,

black cane, leaning against what Chusquito had seen fit to leave of the

stone wall, proved him one of the “authorities” of the region. Above it

stood a crude cross decorated with dry grass, designed to keep evil

spirits—except those in bottles—away from the cluster of huts. Either my

host’s knowledge of the trail ahead, or his manner of imparting it, was

extremely hazy, and I dragged Chusquito away across the pampa in the

cutting cold, but invigorating mountain air, burdened with the task of

finding ourselves once more.

Within an hour we were so fortunate as to fall again upon a trail, where

I could relinquish the tiller and drift into those day-dreams that come

upon the solitary traveler across these vast Andean punas. Snow had

fallen during the night, and a great white immensity, slightly

undulating, spread out to infinity before us. We shared an all-night

thirst that set us both to munching snow at frequent intervals. By ten

the sun had burned away the whiteness and restored to the scene its

accustomed monk’s robe of faded yellow-brown. All morning I continued to

guess the way across a steadily rising world, in the utter silence that

makes more impressive the dreariness of these lofty regions, until at

noon we panted over a jagged rock-ridge from which all the kingdoms of

the earth lay spread out below us, tumbled, broken, and velvety brown as

far as the eye could command even in this transparent air. As we started

gradually downward, shepherds and their flocks appeared once more, then

little fenced patches and stone-heap hovels; then we dropped almost

suddenly into the blazing hot valley of a little river, along which

tiled huts and travelers were numerous. Several times I went astray and

waged pitched battle with Chusquito cross-country, past hovels swarming

like disturbed beehives with barking dogs, before I once more got

securely under our feet the trail that was to lead us upward again over

the next páramo. It is not merely that the stupid inhabitants of these

regions speak only Quichua, but they are incapable of giving intelligent

directions, even in that tongue. There is something exhilarating in the

air of Andean heights that breeds reflection and a peaceful serenity of

mind; but it is nature, rather than humanity, that awakens the marked

optimism of spirits. The traveler grows “inspired,” lifted up out of

himself by the magnificence of the scene, realizing for a moment how

marvelous is this world we inhabit; then suddenly an Indian, a human

being, intrudes, and snatches him back to earth again. Time after time I

caught sight of an approaching figure which the mind, from youthful

force of habit, imbued with human intelligence—and as many times it

turned out to be a shuffling Indian, stupid and glassy-eyed from the

quid of coca in his cheek and the chicha and pisco of the last hamlet in

his belly, who cringed like some degenerate animal as he passed,

mumbling some Quichua monosyllable. Incapable of intelligent reply, even

when they are not in a half-drunken stupor, these plodding creatures

have a very hazy notion of distance. The _acco_, or time of duration of

a quid of coca, which they throw on the _achepetas_, or symbolical

stone-heaps along the way, is at best but an uncertain term of length,

and their besotted intellects seldom retain the memory of any number

above three or four. So that, in spite of the frequent appearance of

fellow-travelers, I had perforce to be satisfied with the half-certainty

that I was on the right road, without any notion of whether the nearest

shelter was one, or ten leagues distant.

Clouds crawled into the evening sky again, where the daytime sunshine

had swept it clean; the purple shadows of the mountains, across the tops

of which the setting sun cast a crimson glow, spread and darkened, and I

had visions of shivering out another night in the corredor of an Indian

hut, or out on the bare, freezing pampa. I had suffered so many dreary

nights, twelve hours long, in South America, that it had become a habit

to lose my cheerful mood in the late afternoon and succumb to

apprehension, as of some impending misfortune. Under this I developed

unconsciously a pace so swift that Chusquito, like a small boy trying to

keep up with an inconsiderate father, took to trotting every little

while some distance ahead. We were now far up again on a cold puna

across which the bitter mountain wind swept unchecked, and even my

companion seemed to cast apprehensive glances at the angry, black clouds

overspreading the sky, and at the cold dusk descending upon us. We

hurried unbrokenly on, without a sign of town or hamlet, though the last

Indian stragglers still bore sufficient evidences of intoxication that

proved it could be no great distance off. Then, in the last rays of

daylight, we turned a wind-whipped boulder and caught sight of the

place, far off in the lap of a stony valley, well aware from long Andean

experience that the intervening distance was much greater than

appearance suggested.

Black night had long since settled down when I found myself surrounded

by indistinct, low structures that turned out to be Acobamba, home of

one Zambrano, for whom I bore a letter from the “Turks.” As often as I

inquired for him, however, there came back that Spanish-American-Indian

mumble of indifference and distrust, “Más arriba,”—higher up, until I

felt like a District Attorney on the trail of “graft.” When a

half-civilized youth in “store” clothes gave me the same identical,

lackadaisical answer for the tenth or twentieth time, I caught him by

the slack of the garments and jerked him into the street, with a polite

ultimatum to conduct me in person to that elusive upper region.

He led the interminable, cobbled way down one street and up another,

equally unlighted, and finally stopped before a zaguán with an “Aquí,

señor.” I cut off his proposed escape, and drove him into the patio to

summon the man of the house. He returned with the Indian mayordomo, and

the information that the Zambrano who lived there was not the one I

sought, and was, moreover, out of town. The youth proposed that he “go

look for” the right Zambrano.

“No, indeed, my friend,” I countered. “You will stay right with me while

_we_ look for him.”

“Sí, señor,” said the youth in a shivering voice. Then he turned back

across town and plaza by another route, and pointed out the Zambrano

household exactly two doors from the one out of which I had originally

snatched him. The flock of women who surged out upon me greeted me with

the threadbare “No ’stá ’cá!” He never was—when I bore a letter to him.

The wife spelled it out laboriously under the blinking light of a

home-made tallow candle, then invited me into the earth-floored

“parlor,” separated by a calico curtain from the little shop she kept.

“There is no one in Acobamba who prepares food for strangers,” she

replied to my roundabout hint, “but we shall serve you such as we can

here in our poor house.”

While the mystery to come was cooking, I managed to get inoffensively

into her possession the price of a peck of grain for Chusquito—and some

time later found the poor, misused animal munching about two cents’

worth of old, dry corn-husks in the corral.

“It is,” murmured the wife, in reply to my questioning gesture, “that

there is no grain in town—at these hours.” But though she would have

considered an insult any direct offer of a traveler consigned to her

husband by letter to pay for his accommodation, she carefully avoided

any further reference to the grain-money.

It would have been in the highest degree scandalous to have lodged a

stranger in her own dwelling during the absence of the head of the

household. But the delegation of females, having discovered, by dint of

turning the house wrong-side out, the massive key of a mud-flanked door

across the street, let me into an abandoned shop lumbered with the

accumulated odds and ends of many years, an immense, woven-straw

hogshead full of shelled corn bulking above the rest. A creaking board

counter, barely five feet long, was the only available sleeping space.

The only means of avoiding asphyxiation was to leave the door open to

any passing sneak-thief or congenital hater of gringos. But even had the

risk been great, the key would have proved an effective weapon.

Unfortunately it would have been anti-simpático to have felled with it

the solicitous night-hawks who called my frequent attention to the

perils of night air, not merely by rapping on the door, but by prodding

me in the ribs with their sticks.

It was butchering day in Acobamba when I awoke, and at the suggestion of

my hostess I sent a servant to buy ten cents’ worth of meat. She

returned with an entire basketful,—eight slabs of raw, red beef, each as

large as an honest sirloin steak “for two.” Virtually every shop in town

being a pulpería, it was easy to lay in supplies for the road ahead. But

though competition was brisk in all other wares, for some reason I was

never able to fathom, in all the region of the central Andes my favorite

food was always hedged round with refusals. As often as I stepped into a

shop where a basket of eggs was displayed, I was sure to be informed in

a dull, uninviting monotone, “No están de venta.” “Of course they are

not for sale,” the experienced Peruvian wayfarer soon learns to reply,

“No Andean lady who considers herself a lady would think of selling

eggs. But—er”—meanwhile picking out the largest specimens of the fruit

in question—“I have taken a dozen. How much?”

The answer was sure to be a meek, “Dos reales—ten cents, señor.”

Over the lofty, tumbled world ahead the way was often so steep and stony

and contorted that Chusquito more than once fell on his neck, and

threatened to twist himself permanently out of shape. It was a land so

dry and barren that only the half-liter of pisco kept my thirst

endurable. Whenever I paused for a sip, my companion glanced furtively

and anxiously back at me, as if he remembered other masters who had got

bad tempers out of bottles along the way. But his was none of your meek

and canine dispositions that permit abuse unprotestingly. On the level,

high pampas, with all the world spread out in full view about us, the

exhilaration of scene and air caused me unconsciously to set so swift a

pace that I was obliged frequently to kick the brute out from under my

feet—until he retaliated by suddenly projecting one small, shod hoof

against a shin that I was distinctly aware of for days afterward.

One afternoon, not fifty miles beyond Acobamba, I was threatened with

violence for the first time during my fifteen months in South America. I

sat beside a mountain pool, coaxing my cooking-outfit under shelter of

my alforjas, when two half-Indians, bleary-eyed with drink, appeared on

stout mules. They had nearly passed when they caught sight of me, and

charged forward in drunken insolence, all but trampling my possessions

under the hoofs of their animals. In the haste of the moment I made the

error of showing aggressiveness to the point of drawing my revolver—and

came perilously near having to use it for my mistake. When reflection

caused me to change my tactics and humor them like the witless children

they were, the danger was dissipated like a puff of smoke. Within ten

minutes the pair grew so maudlinly affectionate that they insisted on

shaking hands alternately a dozen times each, and at length rode slowly

away, casting frequent besotted, loving glances behind them.

Across a barren páramo ahead the mood struck me to cheer the long hours

with my mouth-organ. Even the Indian carries one of these, or a reed

flute on his journeys, and whiles away the sky-gazing solitudes with

monotonous ditties. But I was soon forced to forgo the pleasure. Not

merely did that plebian instrument in the hands of a gringo bring

glances of unconcealed contempt from the rare horsemen who passed, but I

could no sooner strike up than Chusquito, unhumanly frank and honest in

his criticisms, would lay back his ears and trot ahead well out of

hearing, with some peril to my pack, before he would consent to fall

again into a walk.