PICA, THE FLOWER OF THE SAND
A towering, scoop-topped wagon, fruit-filled, dragged by nine mules,
lurched through the desert. Far in the distance, on the first low
swelling of the mighty chain of the Andes, there was a faint dark line
whence it came.
The driver of the wagon handed me a small branch of a _chirimoya_ tree.
The three narrow, fleshy lobes of the _chirimoya_ flower lie close
together among the pale green foliage and send forth a perfume as
poignant, though faint, as if there were rain-drops for conductors. The
aromatic, gently acid flesh of its fruit lies in rays, the exquisite
scent of the flower tasted in the fruit. Warmed by the sun on its
journey from the valley oasis, the whole freshness of the desert was
condensed in this single flavor, like the crystallization of a perfect
moment. Strange imaginings sprang from tasting it.
A gallop across the desert is a good prelude to anywhere, especially
if one has silver bridle and stirrups and a long lariat with silver
knobs. The muleteers sat upon high black saddles of alpaca hair. The
colors of their mufflers must have been brilliant underneath the dust.
Their trappings were embroidered in red with a red-worsted fringe,
Inca-fashion, over the mules’ temples. Our little unshod ponies picked
their way between the stones, up hill and down, over the roadless road
to Pica.
The desert of Tarapacá, now belonging to Chile, is called the Plain of
the Eagle. A fit arena for gaunt battles in former days, a road across
it is now distinguishable by the bones of beasts of burden which have
dropped on their way.
There are valleys of nitrate to explore, hills of nitrate to be
climbed, plains of nitrate to gallop across, and the only break is one
windswept _tamarugo_ tree. Does it exist upon the morning mist which
the sun disperses? Or does its tough life go on underground, like some
uncouth monster in the depth of the sea? Or does its tap-root bore down
into a deeply buried flow of water? Every one believes that there is
a honeycomb of tunnels from water-giving strata in the mountain-sides,
far antedating the days when Uiracocha went to Tarapacá.
No convulsion of nature is unknown to this pitiless land. Volcanic
bombs lie about, and fantastic heaps of lava from molten mountains
mingle with corals from the sea-bottom. Streams come to the surface,
ripple for a short distance, and disappear. Their water tastes of
sulphate of soda. Sometimes it springs suddenly from a cave, suggesting
a system of underground rivers. Sometimes it is brought by water-works
of prehistoric days, whose exact position is not known, making life
possible for their would-be destroyers. Whether freaks of nature or
remnants of the vast system of irrigation, importance enough has been
given to the underground waterways of Peru to bring a scientist from
the United States to chart them all.
Curious symbols and conventionalized llamas are cut into the hills
of pink trachite and black slate rock whose strata have been jostled
and overturned by earthquake. Pictures of serpents, foxes, and
birds endure through ages of merciless sun. Were they the work of a
megalithic people of a megalithic age, when cyclopean stones were
transported to build cyclopean edifices, and gigantic ant-eaters
and other jungle-dwellers swarmed in this desert of Tarapacá? Their
irrefutable bones are found here, but so are shells of the sea-bottom
and water-worn stones of green jasper with red spots. Moreover, the
nitrate is filled with the petrified eggs and bones, even the feathers
of sea-birds, suggesting that the nitrate was originally guano. Why
should it not be true? For this desert was once beside the sea, as it
was once beneath the sea.
But the law of compensation works even here. It has always been common
opinion that the desert of Tarapacá shelters fabulous riches. Lured
by the glisten of a fallen meteor, men have squandered their fortunes
and risked their lives searching for gold, while they trod the nitrate
under foot.
* * * * *
The large dark cave was gently steaming. The water filling it gurgled
out from sunless twilight, hot from the hold of the earth, cool as it
spread over the desert valley from the mouth of the cave. A brown man
and his little daughter, lying in it, were being waved to and fro by
the water as it issued, just their heads visible. Saturating the bamboo
tangle, it left a wake of gardens, orange and guava trees, citrons,
figs, and slender _paltas_, tall _chirimoyas_ and _pacays_, grown
to fruit-bearing size in six months. Trees of the jungle bathing in
incandescent desert light! There were thick mimosas, geranium trees,
and darts of poinsettia, grape-vines a foot across at the root, and
spikes of heavy-smelling tuberoses. Jasmine trailed on the trellis
above my head, and bougainvillea made a roof of purple flowers.
The slope of the sand-hills was crossed in the foreground by shadows of
orange groves, “indefinitely elongated.” Domestic constellations glowed
in their black foliage. Men in _ponchos_ whirled up on mule-back,
unbuckled their three-inch spurs, and flapped their saddles down. This
time the mirage was real.
Old Dorothea came down from her bright green veranda, where the
sunshine glistened from a humming-bird’s wings as it hovered above
a passion flower, a whirl of black fringe with yellow deeps, the
favored blossom which the Incas carried in their hands as a sign of
greatness. She held a dove in the crotch of her arm and offered me a
bunch of narcissus and white fleurs-de-lis, unthinkably sweet. She was
dressed in yellow ocher and an old straw hat which she removed on being
introduced to ladies. Her little earless dancing dog did a _cueca_
(native dance) for us, while she clapped queer aboriginal time, and the
gold hands danced in her ears.
Birds sang in the thorn hedgerows, and frogs croaked in the warm pool,
frogs which die in cold water.
Dorothea said that some day the desert will again be covered with
forests and gardens, as it was before it became a desert.
In a cloud of dust made luminous by the sun, a drove of llamas galloped
down over the desert hillside to drink, soft eyes wonderingly looking
out from tall fuzzy heads, legs bungling with heavy wool. An old Indian
woman in Panama hat and brilliant blankets followed slowly, puffing at
a pipe.
[Illustration: A CHARACTERISTIC PERUVIAN CHURCH]
This pool in a shadowed vale of the western Andes, a shady,
sweet-smelling spot, lost in an immensity of desert, is a little
solitude in the midst of a great solitude, hospitable by sweet
contrast. It takes very little water to make a perfect pool for a tiny
fish, where it will find its world and paradise all in one, with never
an intimation of the dry bank.
A large butterfly poised gently on the water’s surface. It was sunset
time, the butterflies’ drinking hour. A copper bell tolled slowly.
The reverberation pierced far into the silence and was “prolonged by
the whole surrounding desert.” A boy perched on an overhanging rock
was playing a flute. The frail sounds echoed through the quiet air,
“hesitating within a silence almost too large.” What can give such
an impression of space as a flute? Or, in ceasing, leave such utter
stillness? A gorgeous peacock preened itself against the crimson
bougainvillea in the sunset, then folded its fan for the night.
It is curious how the atmosphere of a dream cannot be conveyed in words.
Sitting beneath the mango tree by a lily-edged brook, I watched the
low bonfire roasting desert quail and smelled the scent of heliotrope
hedges, while I listened to an old man’s plaintive song, mingling with
a quiet desert waterfall. A wild youth with a bullet gash across one
cheek told me of reckless escapades in the valleys above. He twisted
off oranges with a stick of bamboo and dropped them into my lap, as
the moon, poised on the crest of the mauve-colored Andes like a discus
thrown by a mighty arm from beyond, disengaged herself and traveled
upward. Moonlight, he said, is brighter in the mountain defiles. The
moon sometimes drops a rainbow up there, a faint, round, dream rainbow,
made of thin far-diluted sunlight. Pushed by a little breeze, it
divides the cloud and disappears.
He pointed out the false Cross preceding the true Cross, preparing its
way into the sky.
“Some violets have got in here,” he said suddenly, tweaking one out by
the roots. Intrusive violets!
A man with spurs passed _picante_ and young kid and trays of fruit,
their crevices filled with flowers.
Was not Amiel right when he said that “_Un paysage est un état d’âme_?”
It was an “ambrosial night,” in a place to attach affection, except
that affection is not for places, either actually or in retrospect. One
heart-beat faster, and the nitrate desert has fairy illusions. Why is
it that merely seeing foreign sights leaves only craving, while a whiff
of feeling in a distant, lonely spot fills one with the meaning and
the mystery of everything and brings tears to the eyes of memory? The
purple of the bare mountains is significant in the afterglow. Dripping
water is significant. The moon sheds a different light. The heat of
the desert sand just below the surface becomes suggestive. The air is
filled with indefinable odors never perceived elsewhere, and the sight
of a sand-colored bird explains all the secrets of the universe.
The beauty which alone would have woven a spell about the place merely
lapsed into a background. In itself the voice was not faultless, nor
the moon different from other windless, immaculate nights; but the air
was sweeter, and the guavas were at the season’s climax, their one day
of perfection. They tell you that if you eat guavas in Pica, you become
either ill or enchanted; in either case you cannot leave.
He must have been talking for a long time. It was as if his voice
had been beneath my range of sound, or too soft--though I heard well
enough. All at once I began to understand.
“Perhaps you have heard of the bush which grows in Patagonia. It is
covered with pale yellow flowers. When a match is placed beneath
it, the bush blazes forth and is reduced to immediate ashes, all
its strength exhausted in a single dazzling effort. It is called
_escandalosa_.
“Had you let me know two weeks ago that you would come, I would have
put a bit of nitrate on the roots of my rose-tree, and it would have
blossomed viciously for you!”
“Yes,” I said, “but afterwards?”
“Oh, to be sure. Then it would have died.”
An owl screamed from the top of a _ciruela_ tree, a little
owl-of-the-desert, just a few inches high.
Pica, the Flower of the Sand! With what golden words borrowed from
Hindoo poets might not its charm be told? By what enchantment its suave
breezes be recalled? Everybody knows it is a magic spot. Its quiet
existence is a sort of self-expression of inmost thoughts without
technique.
Doctor Stübel, the earthquake specialist, says Pica is an eruption
center.