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.

“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.

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.

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