There is no part of the American continent, save perhaps Guatemala (and, of course, the Arctic Regions), where the Indian race has survived in such power and—relatively—such numbers as in Bolivia. At the last census, the entire population of the republic was two millions, and of that number the whites, blacks, and half-bloods together amounted to less than three hundred thousand. The coast Indians belong mainly to the Colla (more commonly called Aymara) tribe of the Quechuan family, and, unlike the average redskin, are square and squat in build; long in the arms and body and short in the legs; many of them have passed their lives entirely on the mountains and have never seen a lowland river or town.

In Bolivia there is no British Consulate, for Britishers there are almost as rare as Samoyeds; but as a rule there is some semi-official chargÉ d’affaires in residence. From 1848 to 1855 this office was filled by a young Englishman of Italian extraction—Hugh de Bonelli; and much of that time he passed exclusively among Indians; hunting, sight-seeing, mountaineering, and collecting natural history specimens.

In mixing among the Aymaras, one of the first 167 things he discovered was that, though himself an exceptionally good walker, he was a baby at such exercise when pitted against them. While staying at a native village on Lake Titicaca, he expressed a wish to visit a spot rather less attractive than the Sahara—the Atacama Desert, to wit, which lies between the coast and the Andes. Plenty of men were willing to guide him, though they cautioned him that they could not be spared for more than a day or two, because a general meeting of the tribe was about to take place. Now as the lake lies more than twelve thousand feet above the sea-level, and when this prodigious descent had been made, there would be several miles to traverse on foot, he wisely abandoned the project. Nevertheless, being curious to test the truth of the reports he had heard as to their long walks, he accompanied a party of Aymaras who were bound for the far end of the lake with loads of silver.

They started at sunrise, and the mountain air being deliciously cool, he was not at first incommoded by the pace at which they went. But that pace was five miles an hour!

He kept up easily the first two hours, and, with considerably more difficulty, the second two; five miles in one hour, and twenty in four hours, are however, not quite the same thing; and when he had walked the twenty-second mile, he was ready to drop from fatigue and hunger. Yet they showed no signs of being about to stop; and conversation was not easy, for only one of the number understood Spanish, and that very scantily; the language of the Aymaras being almost pure Quechuan, i.e. the tongue of the 168 ancient Incas, who founded their wonderful empire when we English were vainly endeavouring to ward off invasion by the Normans. He explained that he was both tired and hungry, and, at last growing desperate, inquired where he could get a mule. Happily that article was obtainable at a village which they were now approaching, and, his curiosity thoroughly aroused as to how far they intended going, he ambled on after them (for they had not deigned to stop while he concluded his bargain), caught them, and kept up with them, though he was now almost too stiff to sit his mule and too tired to enjoy the food which he had brought with him.

The thirty-fifth mile was reached before those energetic Indians stopped, and de Bonelli wished he had with him some of the people who make the sweeping statement that “all Indians are lazy.” He expected to see them bivouac for at least a couple of hours; instead of this, not one man sat down; all stood or lounged, as though they knew by instinct that the walker who allows his muscles to relax completely is doubling the strain of the after walk; and the standing only lasted long enough to enable them to eat their meal—twenty minutes at the outside. Then on again. Seventy miles did these indolent wretches walk between sunrise and sunset, only stopping for that one brief meal. It sounds incredible, but even greater distances are stated, on the best authority, to have been covered by members of this wonderful tribe.

De Bonelli found a contrast when, after some weeks’ 169 condor and wild-cat shooting in the mountains, he descended to the lowlands and moved for a while among the Moxos of the Beni River. A member of this tribe had come up to Titicaca, as ambassador from his cacique, to treat for the barter of copper and turtle-oil for mountain silver; and the inquiring traveller was glad to engage him as a guide to the Lower Beni, which he was anxious to trace as far as its junction with the Mamore, the chief feeder of the Madeira River.

De Bonelli was bound to admit that the Moxo was to be preferred as a companion; he was chatty, light-hearted, and witty, whereas the Aymaras had a sort of Puritan austerity and were devoid of sense of humour; he spoke Spanish and they did not; and further, he considered twenty miles—with a four hours’ siesta between the two tens—an ample day’s walk. Better still, on the fourth day he produced a canoe from a cunning hiding-place among the undergrowth by the river, and thenceforward the journey became a luxurious holiday; for the woods on either bank were, to all intents and purposes, orchards, the fish was delicious and easily caught, and the Moxo guide kept the boat well supplied with venison and peccary-pork.

The Indian’s destination was a large village about fifty miles from the Brazilian frontier, and, as the canoe drew near to it, de Bonelli observed that they were continually overtaking or being overtaken by other canoes; not tiny boats, manned singly or by twos, such as he had seen higher up the river, but large family concerns; houseboats, literally; for 170 everyone carried a family and all the cooking utensils, tools, weapons, toys, etc., that it might require.

“It is the great egg-gathering,” said the Moxo enthusiastically.

“Do you mean that the whole tribe is turning out to go bird’s-nesting?” asked the white man with good-humoured contempt.

“Our birds are water-birds, with houses on their backs,” laughed the Indian. “Turtles!”

“Even then I shouldn’t have thought several hundred people were required to take the eggs.”

“You shall judge presently, SeÑor. The cacique was sending out the order for the people to collect when I left. No one may touch the eggs till he grants permission.”

They found the Indian village overflowing with detachments of new arrivals. De Bonelli was introduced to the cacique, who was so overjoyed by the present of a silver-mounted pistol that he was ready to place the whole town and its resources at his visitor’s feet.

“Pray stay among us as long as you will,” he said. “Our egg-taking begins to-morrow and will last for about a week; but, after that, I and my tribe will be at your service, and I can promise you better hunting than you have seen with the gloomy Aymaras.”

The noise in and around the village aroused the traveller at an early hour in the morning, and he strolled out from his tent to survey the neighbourhood. Since the previous night the village had swelled to four times its size; for on every side pyramidal tents had been erected by the simple process of sticking 171 three poles in the ground, sloping so that the tops met, and covering the spaces between the poles with mats made of grass or palm-leaves. The cacique was already at breakfast, which he begged his guest to share; and, when it was finished, he said:

“You will do me the favour to ride in my canoe. Then you will be able to see all my people at once.”

They proceeded to the water-edge and found all the tribe—nearly two hundred men with their wives and children—seated in canoes and impatiently awaiting their chief’s arrival as the signal to start. The moment he and his guest were embarked, a great shout went up and paddling began with a will, the canoes moving at such a rate that the journey to the “turtle-ground,” five miles away, seemed to occupy no time. Arrived here the chief’s paddlers drew in and he and de Bonelli landed, the tribe following in due order of importance.

As an amateur naturalist the chargÉ d’affaires knew something of the habits of the turtle, but he was not prepared for many things which he saw that day. Turtles seldom lay their eggs immediately by the water; as often as not they choose a place half a mile or more away from it. In this case the row of “nests” took the form of a long sand-bank which lay between two fringes of trees, and this, the traveller learned, had been stealthily and jealously watched by spies from the village for some weeks past, so that there could be no mistaking the spot. Behind the cacique walked a man with a drum, and, as soon as the bank was reached, a short “call” was beaten and all the men, every one carrying a paddle, collected round him. The chief made a short speech, enjoining patience, 172 industry, and good temper, and then began to portion off the bank among the men, each family thus being entitled to whatever they might find in their patch.

The reader is probably aware that the turtle, like many other reptiles, deposits her eggs in the ground, and carefully covers them with sand or soft earth. Through this covering the fierce sun of the tropics can easily penetrate, and in a short time—if left alone—the young are hatched. And what a family! One to two hundred eggs, and sometimes more, are laid by this prolific creature.[2] When every man had taken up his station at his “claim,” his wife and children went and stood at the other side of the bank opposite him, and everyone waited breathlessly for the signal to begin; for etiquette forbade the stirring of a single egg till the cacique had formally opened the patch which belonged to him. He made a sign to the drummer, who handed him a paddle, with which he turned over a spadeful of earth. Immediately there followed a long roll of the drum, and every man struck his paddle into the ground and began to dig.

De Bonelli could scarcely believe his eyes; the place seemed alive with turtle-eggs; yellowish, globular objects considerably larger than a golf-ball, with a soft but very tough shell. As fast as a “nest” was turned out by the digger, his wife and children collected the eggs, throwing them into bags, baskets, or copper pots; and, by evening, the canoes were so full that it was a wonder how the families stowed themselves away.

The return journey was like the home-coming of a party of hop-pickers, for jubilation and noise, the only difference being that these benighted Moxos were perfectly sober, and that their singing consisted mainly of hymns in a mixture of Spanish, native dialect, and truly barbarous Latin, instead of music-hall songs. On reaching the village each family carried its share of eggs to its tent and piled them up outside, and a feast of some of these delicacies followed, recalling the “herring-breakfasts” in which the more old-fashioned of our fishermen indulge at the opening of the season.

The next day the digging was continued, though no opening ceremony was observed, each man beginning when he thought fit; and this went on for five days, most of which time de Bonelli spent in teaching the cacique the use of firearms—a task which he would probably better have left undone—and in shooting jaguars and alligators. The sixth day was passed in the village, for the eggs were now all gathered and all the tribe were busy converting their eggs into oil.

Large copper tanks were filled with the eggs; those Indians who had come from a distance and could not borrow tanks, borrowed small canoes for the purpose, which seemed to do equally well; and the owners set to work to break the eggs, which they did by beating them with sticks, stones, paddles, or anything that came handy. In some cases the younger men and boys jumped into the tank and danced on them, as though they were treading a wine-press; and by and by the various receptacles were half full of a dirty yellow mash. The women now came toiling up from the river-bank with pots of water, which they poured 174 into the tanks till the mixture rose nearly to the top.

By this time the dinner and siesta-hour had come round, and the tanks were left to take care of themselves; good care, too, thought de Bonelli, as he walked round, an hour or two later, with the chief. While the workers slept, the sun had done their work for them; had warmed the tanks, freed the oleaginous particles contained in the eggs, and now the top of every tank was several inches deep in oil, which the Indians were preparing to skim off and bale into their cooking-pots; the skimming being done by means of large shells. By evening the whole village was dotted with small fires over which hung pots of oil; and the oil, thus clarified, was ultimately poured into earthenware pots, corked up, and ready to be exported to the towns for use in lamps, or carried up the river and across country to the hills, where the Aymaras were willing to pay high prices in silver for a product which could be used for fuel, light, or even food.