Chapter XIII: Arica to Ilo Overland, Via Tacna, Tarata, and Moquegua (1)

Arica is seven hours north of Pisagua. Its population is 4886. It is the pleasantest port on the rainless coast for in its neighborhood is verdure due to irrigation from the Lluta River. It looks nice from the steamer's deck, which appearance is not belied by a visit to the lower town. The upper town, which extends to the desert, is a compactly built place of low buildings, but is far superior to the other coast towns of its size. In the lower town are the banks, shipping offices, and government buildings. Its streets are bordered with pepper trees and it has two cool and pleasant plazas in one of which the Italian residents have erected a bust to Columbus. Arica is the port of the provincial capital, Tacna, but its present importance is due to the opening in 1913 of a railroad to La Paz, Bolivia, of which city it is also a port. A traveler is carried to the Bolivian metropolis in twenty-four hours over a pass thirteen thousand feet high.

One of the first things that I did when I arrived in Arica was to go to the steamship office to find out about the sailings of the ships on the Chilean Line and of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company. The agent for both these lines was the American consul, a man whose name I believe was Smith. As I was waiting for information, Smith himself appeared and he was in an ugly mood. He was a thin blonde man about fifty years old, bespectacled, and had red blotches on his face which showed that he was a heavy drinker. In fact he stunk of liquor. He was an Englishman and was acting as representative for the United States.

This building was designed and built by Eiffel, who built the tower
named after him in Paris.]

This is in the upper town.]

"Can't you read the schedule?" he inquired, indicating a time card which hung on the wall of the outer office.

"Yes, but owing to the ships being overcrowded, I want to make reservations."

"Wait until the ship arrives, then we will sell you a ticket," he answered hastily and then left the room. This was a nice fix because if I returned to Arica a few hours before sailing, it might happen that there would be so much loading and unloading of merchandise that it would be too late for me to buy my ticket after getting my passports viséd. There was no use of arguing with such self-important and gin-soaked individuals as Smith so I went away trusting to chance. It turned out that I did not return to Arica to catch the steamer because I traveled overland to Ilo, the port of Moquegua in Peru. A half hour after leaving the shipping office I saw Smith coming out of a _cantina_ or saloon in the lower town and after walking for about a block he entered another one. Later on in the afternoon, happening to be in the barroom of the Hotel Francia, I arrived in time to see him gulp down a tumbler of gin and follow it up with a brandy chaser. I stepped up to him and offered to treat him, mainly to see what mood he would be in, and was surprised to hear him acquiesce by ordering a half pint of Guinness' stout. This performance he kept up all day and I was told by the brother of the hotel proprietress that it was a daily trick of his.

When the _Guatemala_ anchored at Arica a French Calvinist minister, Dr. Petit, came on board to visit one of the passengers, the Reverend McLaughlin, a Methodist Episcopal minister from Buenos Aires. McLaughlin introduced me to Petit and during the following days at both Arica and Tacna I became fairly well acquainted with him. Petit had a degree as a physician but changed his profession to that of minister of the gospel. He had done considerable missionary work in South America and had a church in Arica where he preached. He did not believe in war but was a strong advocate for divorce; in fact he was contemplating divorcing his wife whom he claimed was unfaithful. He was at the present prevented from doing so because there is no divorce law in South America excepting Uruguay, and he did not have enough money to go to Montevideo to start proceedings. He also informed me that if the husband of the proprietress of the Hotel Francia was onto his job he would divorce her because that woman had driven him to distraction by her amours and her extravagances, so that to avoid domestic scenes the poor fellow had returned to France, hoping to be killed in battle to relieve him of his mental anguish. The husband I understand is an officer. Petit was a truly conscientious man and was wrapped in his work as missionary; he did not practice religion as a cloak to cover his sins. In build he was an athlete.

None of Arica's hotels are highly recommendable although the Hotel de France, or Francia as the natives call it, is the best. It is run by an accommodating peroxide or lemon juice blonde Frenchwoman about forty years old who is heartily sick of Arica and is anxious to sell out. This is the woman whom Dr. Petit had no respect for. The real manager of the hotel is her brother, a good-for-nothing, powerfully built creature about her age whose chief pleasure is to emulate Smith's example by overindulgence in alcoholic refreshments and to argue and quarrel with the guests.

A landmark for miles around is the solitary rock named the Morro de Arica which towers above the town. It is a duplicate of Gibraltar, and was one of Peru's last strongholds during the Pacific War. It was defended in 1880 by a regiment of Bolognesi's troops under Colonel Uguarte. In the face of a violent storm of rifle bullets, the Chilenos took the Morro by landing a short distance down the coast and climbing it from behind. When Uguarte saw that he had lost he spurred his horse to the brink of the precipice and jumped to his death several hundred feet below. Many of his followers did likewise because the Chilenos had the reputation of taking no captives. The Morro is now strongly fortified. People are forbidden to make its ascent and the day before I arrived two men were thrown into jail for attempting it. In front of the Morro is a small, low guano island. It is used as a fort and is honeycombed so that it can hold a force of five hundred men.

The day after we arrived a northbound Chilean steamer put into the harbor of Arica. On it was Kermit Roosevelt returning to the United States after having spent some time in the employ of the National City Bank at Buenos Aires. We did not know he was on the ship until walking down one of the streets a man breathlessly hurried towards us and asked us if either one of us were Señor Roosevelt. Thinking that some wag had told the gentleman one of us was Teddy, Prat answered saying that he was Colonel Roosevelt. Now Prat is a slender, medium-sized man about thirty years old and clean shaven and I cannot understand what kind of an ass that Arica gentleman was when he accepted Prat's statement and believed him. He stated that there was a delegation already to meet him and that he himself would accompany him to the _cabildo_ where a banquet was being arranged. A crowd gathered around Prat and would have carried him off by force if an Italian blacksmith had not appeared on the scene who had seen Colonel Roosevelt and told the natives that a joke was being played on them.

The province of Tacna, the most northern in Chile, formerly belonged to Peru. At the close of the Pacific War in 1880, Chile, the victor over Peru and Bolivia, annexed to her already long seacoast the Bolivian province Antofagasta and the Peruvian province Tarapaca; Tacna it was only supposed to annex temporarily. Chile was to occupy it for twenty years; a vote of the inhabitants was then to be taken to determine which country it should go to. Thirty-eight years have passed by and still no vote has been taken. The chances are that it will always remain Chilean. To keep it so, Chile has seven regiments in the province, five of which are stationed at Tacna, the capital city. The present government has tried to Chilenize the province by planting within its confines men from the south of the republic so that even in the event of a vote, which is doubtful, the majority will be in favor of the present ownership. It is another Alsace and Lorraine question because Peru is always thinking of the day when it will get it back and its inhabitants are Peruvian sympathizers. Peru even goes through the sham of having Tacna and Arica represented in its congress at Lima.

Tacna is thirty-eight miles north of Arica. The connecting railroad is the oldest in South America having been completed in 1844. The railroad at first skirts a fertile fringe near the seashore and then crosses a sandy desert until within a few kilometers of Tacna when it enters an oasis caused by irrigation from the Caplina River, all of whose water is drawn off for the gardens so that none of it empties into the ocean.

Tacna lies at an altitude of 2820 feet above sea level but so imperceptible is the rise that one can imagine it to be on the same level plain as Arica. The population is 14,176, including five thousand soldiers. The city appears much larger. The ordinary transient would carry the impression that it is a town of twenty-five thousand people. It is a healthy place yet the death rate exceeds the birth rate, which state of affairs is true in many old settled towns all over the world.

Tacna is a beautiful place and is well worth a visit. It is the best built city in Chile and is the only one where the buildings are of stone. It is opulent,--a rarity in Chile,--its inhabitants are refined, educated, and wealthy. There are handsome public buildings, large stores, and spacious houses. In many respects Tacna has a European appearance. The most noticeable object that strikes one's vision in the city is a large stone shell of an incompleted cathedral with two massive stone towers. The square trimming stones are of a pinkish hue while the ordinary ones are the dun-colored ones of the country. This huge shell will never be completed. It was built from the plans of the French architect, Charles Pitaud, when Tacna was a Peruvian city. Then came the Pacific War and the money for its completion was turned into other channels. Monsieur Pitaud returned to France; Chile took Tacna, and used much of the iron for the framework of the cathedral for military purposes. When everything again became normal, the people wished again to complete the cathedral. Pitaud in the meantime had died and his drawings were never found so it was impossible to complete the building. In design it was to be much like the Duomo in Florence.

Built by Pitaud.]

Another of Pitaud's works of art is the bronze fountain in the Plaza Colon. It was cast in 1868 and is the finest in the Western Hemisphere. There are more expensive ones, elaborate sculptures of marble, but none its equal artistically.

This building was designed by the French architect Pitaud, when Tacna
was Peruvian. The Chilean War came on, Pitaud died and the cathedral
was never finished.]

The streets of Tacna are paved, most of them with round polished stones, and many are bordered with trees planted along the curbs. There is much verdure and the city has several shady plazas with statues. There is a marble one to Columbus in the plaza of the same name. The Alameda Anibal Pinto is a garden spot. It is a well-kept-up lovely parkway. A peculiarity of Tacna is the architecture of many of its residences. These are gabled, but by far the most have "sawed off" gables. In these the sides slope upwards as if to form a gable, but about a yard or more below the imaginary peak, they terminate in a flat roof. This style is supposed to make them earthquake resisting.

HOUSES WITH SAWED OFF GABLES, SUPPOSED TO BE EARTHQUAKE PROOF]

Of the six Courts of Appeals in the republic, one is at Tacna. Both Antofagasta and Iquique for a long time have been trying to get it away for themselves, but so far have been unsuccessful. Of the five regiments stationed at Tacna, two are artillery, two are infantry, and one is cavalry. There was an engineer corps but it has been moved to Copiapó.

Tacna has a good hotel, the Raiteri, owned by an Italian of the same name. His business, which has somewhat fallen off since the Arica-La Paz railroad has been completed, is large enough, however, for him to keep two annexes running. His hotel is one of the best in rural Chile. The coffee is the best I have had served to me in South America. There is another hotel named the Tibios Baños (Warm Baths). It is of the free and easy sort where when you engage a room the landlord asks you, "With or without?" and governs the price accordingly. It has a cool grape arbor where it is pleasant to repair hot Sunday afternoons for a schuper of beer.

In an obscure corner of the province not far from the Peruvian line lies the high, broad mountain valley of the Ticalco River, hemmed in on all sides by snow-capped mountains, the lowest of which is higher than the highest mountains of North America save McKinley, St. Elias, and Popocatepetl. The Ticalco is joined by numerous freshets from the melting snow and like a silver thread flows through this valley and by great jumps cuts its way through a gorge before it finally joins with the Salado at Talapalco to form the Sama, the national boundary with Peru. Although very high, of all the valleys of the Province of Tacna, the Ticalco is the most fertile. It is cold; no fruit excepting the apple thrives, but as a recompense it is rich in oats and in alfalfa. In this valley and on a small stream about a mile above where it flows into the Ticalco River lies the town of Tarata, 9919 feet above sea level. Its population probably numbers five hundred souls. It is the third town in size in the Province of Tacna. It is the capital of a department, newly created, has a court house and a barracks.

To Tarata I went. Don Santiago Carmona, a rich _haciendero_ of Tarata, was in Tacna with a caravan of thirty-one mules and six horses. Accompanying him were five muleteers. One of the horses he himself rode. Several times a year he made these trips. He would drive a herd of cattle the two days' trip into Tacna, sell them, and return with his mules laden with flour, oil stoves, kerosene, beans, onions, beds, and blankets. On the narrow streets of Tacna his caravan made a picturesque sight. I expressed a desire to see Tarata, and the man to whom I expressed it, a resident of Tacna but a stranger to me whom I stopped in front of his residence to inquire into the history of the unfinished cathedral and with whom I entered into a general conversation, said that he would speak to Señor Carmona asking his permission for me to accompany him on his return trip. He would let me know the result later at my hotel. True to his word, late in the afternoon he appeared at the hotel bar (the place where most business is transacted in Chilean small towns) bringing with him a tall, wind-tanned, thin man of about fifty-five years of age who wore a straggling grayish beard and a moustache of the Don Quixote type. This man was Don Santiago Carmona. He said that he was returning home the next morning and with great politeness and dignity invited me to accompany him as his guest. This invitation I gladly accepted and for their kindness I treated both gentlemen to as much Fernet Branca and vermouth as they could handle, and then some.

I made arrangements with Signor Raiteri for three horses, a mozo, provisions, and blankets. It is certain that Señor Carmona would have shared blankets with Prat and myself, but since I did not care to impose upon him we brought our own equipment which in reality belonged to Raiteri. As it was Carmona refused to allow me to use any of the provisions I brought along, but made me eat from his larder, his mozos doing the cooking.

At eight o'clock in the morning we started from a courtyard across the street from the market. Now the direct way out of the city was to follow the Alameda, but Carmona evidently wishing to inspire the inhabitants with a reverence for his own importance had his caravan of mules cross the Alameda and turn up the main street, which indeed created a general diversion for all the clerks ran to the sidewalk and the pedestrians halted to view this extraordinary cavalcade. At the parochial church we again turned into the Alameda and followed that avenue the length of the extremely long town.

The valley of the Caplina is narrow, fertile, and is a veritable garden. One thing I noticed as we left the city behind. We would come to fields in the height of production with irrigation ditches full of water. Adjoining them we would see parched fields of bushes trying to eke out a meager existence. The flow of water from the Caplina is not sufficient to supply all the arable land in the valley. A farmer will raise crops for several years in one field; then when the soil has run out he will cultivate an adjoining field, neglecting the first one, and will deviate the water to the new one. After a few years he will give up the new field and return to the first one which in the meantime has been fertilized by nitrate. Since there are but few cattle on the coastal plain, no manure is used to bring up the land, but nitrates are easily imported from Pisagua. On account of nitrates washing away they are put on the uncultivated land during the period that the fields are not in use. The road follows the right bank of the stony river bed whose water has been turned aside to water the quintas as the small gardens are called. In some spots there is an intermission of the cultivation where the sandy desert comes down to the river bed, but the trees and green gardens always begin again. From this valley Iquique receives most of its fruits and vegetables.

Calientes which we reached after six hours' travel but which can be reached in one and a half hours by automobile and in two and a half by carriage, is the place where we left the road. On our way there we passed through three hamlets--Calana, La Vilca, and Pachia. Each has a cantina and thither Don Santiago, Prat, and myself repaired to moisten our dusty throats with native red wine while the mules took a breathing spell. The thirsty mozos stood humbly at one end of the cantina drinking their wine in silence while we stood at the counter which served as a bar. Calientes is so named from some hot springs which here gush forth from the sides of a barren mountain. They are sulphurous and when the rivulet which springs from them enters the Caplina, the water is turned black caused by the precipitate the sulphur of the rivulet makes with the copper properties of the Caplina. There are at Calientes but a few huts. Here we unsaddled the beasts and in the hour's rest the mozos cooked a stew which served as a midday repast.

An hour after leaving Calientes we arrived at a couple of huts which are called Tacuco and two hours later in the dim light of the waning day reached the end of the first day's ride at the hamlet of Challata deep down in the valley at the foot of Mount Pallagua. The night was cool and the bountiful meal of cazuela, stew, and vegetables eaten before a roaring camp-fire with the murmuring of the rapidly flowing stream at our feet made me rejoice that I was far away from the sham and inane conventions of modern city life. A peon offered us his only bed in his hut but Don Santiago and myself spread our blankets on some straw pallets in an open shed with the starlit sky for a canopy, and there we slept until awakened by the sonorous grunting of sows at dawn.

"We have a hard day ahead of us," remarked Señor Carmona after we forded the Caplina and started the steep ascent up the sandy side of Pallagua. A high mountain range to the right had shut off a vista of the snow peaks of the Cordillera, but upon reaching a stony plateau, suddenly the high dome of the extinct volcano Tacora, 19,338 feet high reared its lofty summit above the whole eastern mountain chain. To the northeast appeared Uchusuma, 18,023 feet high, while near at hand were the ice fields of the Cordillera del Baroso. These high mountains are visible from Arica, at which port the Andes come nearer the ocean than at any other place on the South American continent except Puerto Montt. After two hours' climb up the barren ridge we reached a spine and then descended by zigzags to the canyon formed by the Quebracho de Chero in which grew a few mountain shrubs not unlike chaparral. In Indian file we followed the narrow trail between the mountains Pallagua (altitude 13,065 feet) on the right and Palquilla (altitude 12,415 feet) on the left and arrived at midday at the Pass of Caquilluca about 12,000 feet above the sea level where we rested a couple of hours and had our dinner.

Behind us all was desert and as we looked westward past the numerous creases of the earth's surface which were arid canyons and valleys we could see the limitless expanse of the blue Pacific Ocean. At our feet to the north and west lay a valley as green as an emerald traversed by silvery streams, and dotted with light blue farmhouses. In the distance was a cluster of buildings which I was told was Tarata. Hemming in the whole valley were the mountains whose snowy bulwarks formed a circle leaving only one gap that in the northwest through which the Ticalco flowed. These mountains from west to east were Cumaile (altitude 17,095 feet), Vivini (altitude 17,733 feet), Chilicolpa (altitude 18,303 feet), Chiliculco (altitude, 16,835 feet), Barroso, and Uchusuma.

It was six o'clock in the evening when the caravan, having clattered over the narrow pebbly streets of Tarata, pulled up at the Casa de Huespedes (Guests' House) where I was to spend the night. Señor Carmona made me acquainted with the fat mixed-breed Vargas who owns the tambo, and after admonishing him to take good care of me, he galloped off to his three-league-distant ranch saying that he would look me up the next afternoon.

Tarata does not lie on level ground as it appears from the mountains above the town. The streets slope steeply down to the Ticalco which is no more than a creek. Near its banks is a narrow level stretch of land where the plaza, town hall, and church stand. This stream not only serves for irrigating purposes but it is likewise the sole supply for potable water and for washing purposes. Every morning its banks are cluttered with half-breed and Indian women who lay their laundry on the stony slopes of the stream to dry. On the plaza which is bordered by Lombardy poplars is a bandstand where twice a week a six-piece band plays. Beneath these trees is a fringe of alfalfa where the village cows graze. Like in Tacna the houses have the same sawed-off gables, and like in that city they are painted tones of salmon and blue. The town hall is the only two-story building in the place and with the exception of the church belfry it is the tallest. The church is a cream-colored affair with a domed steeple rising from the center of its façade. On it painted in red is the inscription "Anno 1808," the date of its founding.

Strolling about the village I was surprised to see, through the windows of the residences, pianos, and one saloon had a billiard table. It required much labor to bring them here for all transportation of merchandise is done by mule back. In the fields were many llamas. They are never used in carrying burdens to the low altitudes because they sicken while at work below six thousand feet elevation. In the high altitudes both llamas and mules are used for beasts of burden. Horses are employed only for pleasure riding as they cannot stand the lightness of the atmosphere to work in. Llamas refuse to carry more than one hundred pounds burden, and no matter how much beating they receive, are persistent in their refusal to be laden with more. They are not so docile as they look. Their method of fighting is to run up and strike one with their forefeet; they also spit a nauseating substance at a stranger if he approaches too close to one of them. One of them did this trick on me and when I assailed it with my riding crop it struck at me with its forefeet. A kick from me in its belly only gave me the satisfaction of making it grunt. Its disgusting saliva nearly ruined a suit of my clothes.

In the afternoon on the day after my arrival in Tarata, Señor Carmona came to the Casa de Huespedes and asked me to call on the priest with him. The latter, Padre Albarracin lived in an adobe house which had a broad verandah adjoining the cream-colored church. When we entered he was sitting in the patio behind a morning-glory vine talking with two officers of the Chilean army, Captain Frias and Lieutenant Guzman. They had evidently been "hitting it up" as was evidenced by several empty quart bottles of chicha (grape cider) lying about, and also for the fact that each of the trio held a glass half-filled. We were invited to join with them in the libation and I discovered that this drink, ordinarily a temperance beverage, had fermented to such an extent as to make the imbiber feel as if he were walking on wires. Shortly after we arrived the two officers left and the priest invited us to remain for dinner.

He clapped his hands to which a chola girl appeared.

"Kill the two game cocks that got whipped last week, and throw them in the kettle," he commanded.

Our conversation turned to hidden treasure and antiquities which the neighboring mountains are said to be full of if we can believe legend. Tarata is in the heart of what once was the great Inca Empire. Upon the advent of the Spaniards the Incas hid from them the greater part of their ornaments of silver and gold where they remain undiscovered to this day. The Spaniards worked the mines of Peru, Chile, and Bolivia, but they in turn for three centuries were a prey to the pirates which ravaged the coast and many of the inhabitants were obliged to bury their wealth to keep it from them. The Catholic Church in South America was always wealthy in its amount of gold ornaments, so when the Inquisition was overthrown, it was in vogue for the citizens to loot the churches. In order to save its wealth from rapinous hands, the clergy sequestered much of its treasure in the mountains. Priests were murdered by pillaging bands of Indians and with their death was lost the cue to the hiding-places. Enough treasure has been found, practically stumbled upon, to give authenticity that vast amounts have been hidden, but the only person in modern times that made a fabulously rich haul was Valverde in Ecuador, who was wise enough when he found his treasure to return to Spain and die in opulence.

Padre Albarracin excused himself and soon returned bringing with him two images several inches long which he said were Inca idols of silver. He also stated that they were in good hands because the pagans could not get them as long as they were in his possession; the drunker he got the oftener he would repeat this and utter quotations from the Scripture such as this: "Their idols are of silver and gold, the work of men's hands. Eyes have they, but they see not," etc. When he finished he would ask me: "It applies, does it not? These idols are of silver."

Then with a sweep he would send them flying from the table. Once I ran to pick them up. "Do they please you?" he asked. I answered in the affirmative. "Then you may have them," he said. He then expounded on the great sacrifice he was making saying that these two manikins were the identical ones Holy Writ referred to and that they were priceless on account of it.

After supper when I was examining one he grabbed it away from me, climbed on a chair, and placed it on top of a wardrobe. When I asked him why he did that he replied that he was hiding it because he feared that I would worship it. I told him that there was little chance, which made him quote more Scripture such as: "Let the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing."

When he went to get another bottle of chicha, I removed the idol from the wardrobe. The other one was lying on the mantlepiece and I took them both because he gave them to me. I have shown these idols to many people and although I have had them stolen several times by acquaintances, I have always got them back. Regarding antiquities Señor Carmona made me a present of a plate of solid silver hand wrought in Cuzco in the end of the sixteenth century. On its face are the portraits of Pizarro and of Atahulapa carved in silver. Although it was of no value to Carmona, who would have been unable to sell it for more than its intrinsic value of metal, I have been offered three thousand dollars for it which I refused to consider.

Padre Albarracin was getting so drunk that both Don Santiago and myself excused ourselves soon after supper. Coming out of the house, Prat stumbled over something lying in the garden. It was Lieutenant Guzman in full dress uniform, soused and dead to the world. Things were just as bad at the Casa de Huespedes. Captain Frias was asleep with his head on the dining room table, and Vargas fell down the stairs trying to show Carmona his room. The cause of the debauch was due to the fact that Don Santiago brought up much wine, gin, vermouth, and grape chicha with his mule caravan. The shaking the chicha got en route augmented its fermentation which made it as bad as hard cider. The night before when we arrived he had left six cases to be distributed to the priest, the alcalde, the intendente, Captain Frias, Vargas, and the notary.

The next day I rode to Carmona's hacienda which is located about nine miles up the Ticalco River on a level expanse of land which stretches northward to the stony slopes of the barren mountain Cumaile. The house itself is a long, low, rambling affair of adobe which was once whitewashed, but that so long ago that but little of the white color is left on its sides. It rains in this region and the broad tiles of the roof are the only things, I take it, which prevented the building from being melted by the rains. A compound originally enclosed the whole building, flower garden, and adjacent peon and work sheds, but at the present time only pieces of wall of this compound remain. It was destroyed in 1881 by the Chilean soldiers who here besieged the Peruvian landlord who had fortified himself and held out behind the walls. Everywhere on the landscape steers grazed in tall alfalfa, fattening themselves for the butcher shops of the coast towns.

Most of the civil inhabitants of Tacna and Tarata are of Peruvian origin having either been born there when the Chilean Province of Tacna formed part of the Peruvian Province of Moquegua, or are descendants of people born before the Pacific War. Tacna is an old town of stone buildings, not at all Chilean in character, but very much like the larger towns of south central Peru. The natives have strong Peruvian sympathies and are always living in hope that some day or other Tacna and Arica will be returned to Peru. Now this is ridiculous because Chile has no intention of giving these places up, although the resources of the Province of Tacna are small. The most important feature is that Arica is the seaport of La Paz, Bolivia, and it is well for Chile to retain possession of it. Tacna was a poor town when it was Peruvian; the majority of its inhabitants lived in poverty. Since it has become Chilean, it has prospered and is to-day very wealthy. This is largely due to live regiments which are stationed there and which bring money into the town. For the past thirty years Peru has passed through many changes of governments, and revolutions have been frequent; it has been misgoverned and unprogressive. Chile, although it cannot be called progressive has aims that way but has been handicapped from the want of money and immigration. It has only had one revolution; that a small civil war started by Balmaceda, but in government, progress, and in everything else is so far ahead of Peru that it seems incredible that the natives of the Province of Tacna are desirous of again returning to Peru's revolutionary and mediæval yoke.

Don Santiago Carmona was an exceptional haciendero in so far that he is a native Chileno. He left his birthplace, La Serena, forty years ago and never once has he returned. His military service was spent not far from Temuco where his regiment was quartered as a protection to the settlers against the Araucanian invasions. For this reason he took no part in the Pacific War. His father died when he was in the service and he was left with a small fortune. With this money he bought from the Chilean Government the hacienda that he now resides upon. The latter had originally confiscated it from the Peruvian landlord who had fortified himself there against him. Carmona married a Peruvian girl from Tacna who had long since died after having borne two sons. One of these sons is a haciendero in Ovalle and the other is a priest in Spain. The latter is figuring on returning shortly to Chile because he has been offered a sacerdotal office in Santiago. Carmona has become wealthy and is thinking of making a a trip for a half-year's duration to his birthplace, thence to Ovalle, Santiago, and Araucania. He also has a desire to see Punta Arenas.

Prat suggested that since we had come thus far towards Peru by land that it would be as well to continue it this way. He had a mortal fear of seasickness to which malady he was a prey every time he put foot upon a ship no matter how calm the water was. Now I had no maps with me and did not know how to get to Peru, although I knew that Tacna was the northernmost province of Chile and the boundary line was no great distance away. To get information on the subject I went to Don Santiago who told me that Moquegua was the nearest Peruvian city, but that it was a week distant over a hot, sandy desert, and that the best way would be for me to return to Arica and go up the coast by steamer. He said that in Tarata there were people who had made the horseback ride to Moquegua and that it would be possible for me to hire a _cholo_ to accompany us. I had heard about bandits in the interior and asked him about it. He answered that highwaymen existed only in the high mountains near the Bolivian frontier, and that I would find the few inhabitants in the country I was contemplating traveling through very docile. Beyond the Sama River which was Peru, he knew nothing about the inhabitants but imagined them to be much the same as on the Chilean side of it. The Peruvian boundary was not fifteen miles away, yet the hacienderos of the neighborhood seldom crossed it, and it was as much of a _tierra incognita_ with them as is the interior of Chihuahua to the ordinary citizen of El Paso, Texas.

At Tarata, through the services of the notary who was an intimate of Don Santiago, we procured an overgrown boy of the cholo variety who, after considerable haggling, proposed to take us to Moquegua for the sum of one hundred pesos Chileno (less than $20.00). He was to fetch back the beasts that we were to procure as a loan from Don Santiago. Having shipped my valise to Lima from Tacna, I was unencumbered save for the blankets and a few edibles which I carried. Prat was attired in a Palm Beach suit and wore a straw sailor hat which looked as much out of place in this part of the country, where everybody rode in spurred boots, were clad in ponchos, and wore as head gear broad-brimmed pointed felt hats, as a snowball in hell.

We descended the valley formed by the Ticalco, and after riding for over an hour came to a place where a stream from the north, named the Ticaco, joined the Ticalco and formed the Pistala River. The valley narrowed in and presently the mountains came down to the stream so closely that one could with ease throw a stone across the canyon. A rocky promontory on the left was rounded and the green, fertile pocket in which Tarata nestles was shut from view. A half-score of adobe huts with red-tile roofs were arrived at. These constitute the hamlet of Pistala, all of whose inhabitants are Indians. The horse trail, instead of descending with the river, keeps on an even altitude so that it is soon a sheer height of several hundred feet about it, its way having been dug out of the shaly rock that constitutes the side of the mountains. Around a bend is a narrow canyon and down this it zigzags for half a mile and finally crosses a tiny stream named the Jaruma, which a mile farther down, jumps into the Pistala forming a new river--the Tala. At the ford of the Jaruma is a primitive mill with a huge water wheel. From here on to the Sama River is a very steep descent by a narrow bridle path and very dangerous on account of the precipices which form a gorge through which the waters of the Tala rush from shelf to shelf with a roar. On the narrow mountain path we met a troop of llamas laden with sugar cane and tubers in charge of three _arrieros_. At our approach they leaped onto the rocks above as nimbly as goats. The arrieros and ourselves had to dismount; they backed their horses to a ledge and we led ours past them before mounting again. Where the Tala joins the Sama it must be two thousand feet lower than Tarata. This is in a broad valley well cultivated to corn, potatoes, and alfalfa in which are many mud huts of the natives and an occasional chapel. The river bed is wide but the stream itself is narrow and forks out in many channels which every little way unite again. The Chilean or south side slopes gently down to the stream in some places leaving a plain of a mile wide at the water's edge, while the Peruvian side is mountainous, precipitous, and uncultivated. The mountains are absolutely destitute of any cultivation. We continued all day down this river, following the Chilean side, and camped at night beside a ruined stone wall across the stream from the Peruvian hamlet of Sambalai Grande, at an altitude of 3025 feet. During the afternoon the mountains had receded and their places were taken by high sandy hills the essence of lonesome desolation. The water in the river had much diminished having been used largely for irrigation. I was told that what little there is left is used for the cane-fields which are plenty about twenty-five miles farther down. This cane is not made into sugar but into rum; also much of the cane is cut and is sent up on mule back to the high country where the natives themselves ferment it, using the pulp as fodder. Estevan, the cholo guide, although polite and humble, would never talk unless spoken to and then he would answer in monosyllables. Prat and I had no idea how far Moquegua was for we had no map; Carmona said it would take a week, but he had never been there. I knew it could not be that far because Ilo, its port, is only a half-day's steam north of Arica, and we were now considerably north of that last-mentioned place. I several times asked Estevan how far Moquegua was, but to each query he would answer the highly unintelligent reply of "muy lejo," which translated into English means "very far," but fails to designate whether the distance is two kilometers or two thousand miles. This is an example of a conversation between Estevan and myself.

"How far is Moquegua?" I asked him.

"Muy lejo" (very far), he answered.

"How far?"

"Lejo" (far), was his brilliant answer.

"Is it a week's journey?"

"Quien sabe" (who knows).

"Is it three days away?"

"Dios sabe" (God knows).

"Can we make it in one day?"

"No, señor."

"Can we make it in two days?"

"I do not know, señor."

"Can we make it in three days?"

"I do not know, señor."

"You have made the trip to Moquegua before?"

"Si, si, señor" (yes, yes, sir).

"And yet you don't remember how long it took you to make it?"

"I have forgotten, señor."

The country across the river did not look very inviting to us and it was decidedly exasperating to be met with answers of such unintelligence especially as we had to cross what appeared to be a duplicate of the Mohave Desert. We forded the shallow Sama to some mud huts in a field of alfalfa, from one of which waved the washed-out and dirty cloth which once was the red, white, and red flag of Peru. No sooner had we reached high ground than a fat, dirty half-breed, barefooted and wearing filthy linen trousers beneath a faded blue military coat on the shoulders of which were red epaulettes, planted himself in our way and assuming a grandiose air of mock dignity inquired our business.

"We are travelers for Moquegua," I told him.

"What is your business there?" he asked insolently.

"To visit the town."

This reply took some time to penetrate his thick skull. He pondered over it and then a gleam of intelligence spread over his fat countenance which, by the way, was smeared yellow with the yoke of an egg he had just been eating, as he replied in an interrogative kind of a way:

"Ah, Ustedes son Judios!" (Ah, you are Jews!)

This fat guardian of the frontier had taken Prat and myself for itinerant Jews. This gentry as well as Turks and Armenians occasionally make the rounds of the remote towns peddling their wares, such as cheap finery, pencils, looking-glasses, buttons, and so forth. To be called a Jew without an inflection of the voice is, in Catholic South America, the height of insult, because it is considered the vilest reproach one man can give another in the heat of an argument. The manner in which this officer put the question to us was meant in the form of a query. Prat, however, being a Spaniard and a none too amiable one at that when dealing with the cholos and other mixed breeds, went into a towering rage and upbraided the official in the purest and most blasphemous Castillian that he ever before heard and which caused his overbearing, insolent, and stupid countenance to change to one of servility.

"A thousand pardons, señor," he cringingly broke in, "but you must understand that I have received my commands to interrogate strangers entering Peru. Not that I am in the least interested myself, but the government, alas----"

"We will pardon you this time but not the next," interposed Prat, curtly starting to ride off.

"Señor, señor," pleaded the official calling to him. Prat paid no attention. I swung around in my saddle asking him what he wanted.

"Your papers," answered the official. "I would lose my position if I let you pass without seeing them. The pay is very small and it is my sole income; the illustrious señores would not be so ungracious as to wish to see me lose that?" he entreated.

I showed him my passport which he looked at, then turned upside down, frowningly trying to figure out what it was.

"What nationality are you?" he inquired.

"North American."

"What language is this paper written in?"

"English," I replied.

A puzzled look spread over the stupid face of my interlocutor.

"How is it then that you have an English passport since you are a North American?"

"English is the language of North America."

The official was astounded. "Pardon, señor, but I thought Spanish was the language of entire America."

"You are mistaken," I replied.

"How is it then that you gentlemen speak such good Castillian. You speak it much better than I do."

"I learned it in Spain," I answered. "The señor with me is a Spaniard."

"Ah, I understand," answered the official. I could see by his amazed and ignorant look that he did not understand but was unwilling to have us know the extent of his ignorance.

"We are in a hurry to be on our journey to Moquegua; you had better return the passport," I said as I tendered him two silver pieces of the one sol denomination, the standard monetary unit of Peru. A sol is worth fifty cents.

"Mil gracias, señor, mil gracias," answered the official thanking me profoundly. Prat, who had ridden on, now turned back and wanted to know what was delaying me. He was on the point of letting off steam anew at the cholo, but upon seeing me give him a tip, he threw a piece of silver on the ground at the fat official's feet. It was comical to see the latter grovel in the dust to pick it up.

"Adios, señores," he yelled after us as we spurred our horses into a gallop and were soon lost to sight.

Upon our reaching the top of a high, barren hill, a vista of a parched and sandy, barren imitation of the Sahara unveiled itself before us. Everywhere lay the bones of oxen and mules. This was the horrible desert of Pampa Zorra about twenty miles wide, which it took us over four hours to cross, in a hot, desiccating, blazing sun. The thermometer must have been in excess of 120 degrees Fahrenheit. With our eyes smarting with dust and our throats parched (we partook sparingly of the water from our canteens), we arrived shortly after midday at a dry ravine named the Coari. Following this downwards between high hills of shale rock we came in half an hour to the Curibaya River at the cluster of mud huts and ranch house of Coari. Here were some green fields of alfalfa surrounded by eucalyptus trees.

The Curibaya River is much like the Sama, only its river bed is narrower. It also has more water, there being plenty to wet one's feet in. The reason for this is that cultivation does not extend as high in its bottom as in the Sama so less is drawn off for irrigation. About twenty miles below Coari it widens out into a broad valley of great fertility; most of its water is used at that point to supply the large vineyards in that neighborhood. The small remainder loses itself in the sand and never reaches the ocean excepting during times of cloudbursts in the mountains. In the fertile valley is the small city of Locumba, which is famous for its grapes and wines said to be the best in Peru. We forded Curibaya before we reached Coari and then turned eastward again, ascending the valley. This soon forked the Ilabaya joining it from the north. The latter is a swiftly rushing and jumping rivulet; our trail lay up its defile and we must have crossed it two dozen times in the eight miles that it took us to reach the town of the same name which is situated in a high open valley, surrounded on all sides with hills not entirely devoid of vegetation. The landscape instead of being sandy was rocky and abounded with gray boulders. There were several varieties of cactus and a plant not unlike the yucca.

Ilabaya is a typical town of the coastal region of Peru, differing greatly from Andean cities in so far that the houses were all built of adobe. The roofs instead of being of mud, were tiled, because it rains several times a year in the summer months and the mud roofs would be washed away. In Copiapó, where it rains only once in a decade, and in Tacna where it never rains, the roofs are of mud, but in Tarata and here, tiles were in evidence. Ilabaya is a larger place than Tarata, but is a dirtier, and more poverty-stricken place. It is also a terribly hot place, and swarmed with flies and vermin; mangy curs abounded and the odor of the streets abounding with house slops and garbage was disgusting. There were numerous street stands in front of which Indian women sat offering for sale melons, oranges, and pears, but not once during the part of the afternoon that I was there, did I see any purchaser.

Arrived at Ilabaya, Estevan said that we had better spend the night there because he thought there would be no water the next stage. We dismounted at a primitive blacksmith shop where the cholo boy was apparently known, and carried our grips inside. Our arrival excited considerable curiosity because much of the male populace soon arrived on the scene, and at a respective distance looked us over, and then began to become interested in our grips and saddlebags. One urchin tried to undo the straps of my suit case but a threatening blow with my stick made him desist and seek shelter behind one of the grownup half-breeds. The usual questions were asked to which Prat and myself deigned to reply, but strange to say Estevan found his tongue among those of his own breed and there was let loose a volume of Babel in the Quichua language which was surprising to me since I did not realize that language had such a large vocabulary. I had forgotten temporarily that the early padres had translated the Bible in Quichua and had them printed in that language. I saw one of these books among the church relics in Cuzco.

I interrupted Estevan's garrulity with a prod of my stick, and asked him where we were to find lodging.

"Quien sabe" (who knows), he whiningly replied in the singsong tones used by all cholos in their conversation with their superiors. If a stupid cholo or Indian does not know what answer to give he invariably says "quien sabe" and lets it go at that. I expostulated with him telling him that he must procure for us lodging. This he translated into his native language to the crowd of spectators. A small boy in the group said that he thought that a certain old woman who lived at the end of the town would take in lodgers and offered to direct us there and carry our grips. We set out down the long straggling street of adobe hovels and arriving at our destination found the door was shut. The boy knocked but no response came. I then banged on the door with my stick. Presently the head of a withered hag appeared at a shutter and asked what we wanted.

"We want lodging for the night," I answered.

"Ah, señores, but I am too old," she said. "At the next street to the right in the second house lives Carmen Vargas. She is young and makes a business of it!" The old woman was on the point of closing the shutters when I called to her again.