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VAGABONDING DOWN THE ANDES

In the _Monte Grande_, the “Great Wilderness” of Bolivia, the
commander of the first garrison insisted on sending a boy soldier,
with an ancient and rusted Winchester, to “protect” me from the
savages]

VAGABONDING DOWN THE ANDES

Being the Narrative of a Journey, Chiefly Afoot, from Panama to Buenos Aires

by

HARRY A. FRANCK

Author of “A Vagabond Journey Around the World,” “Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras,” “Four Months Afoot in Spain,” “Zone Policeman 88,” etc.

Illustrated with 176 Unusual Photographs by the Author, with a Map Showing the Route

New York The Century Co. 1917

Copyright, 1917, by The Century Co.

Published September, 1917

------------------------------------------------------------------------

A FOREWORD OF WARNING

A few years ago, when I began looking over the map of the world again, I chanced to have just been reading Prescott’s “Conquest of Peru,” and it was natural that my thoughts should turn to South America. My only plan, at the outset, was to follow, if possible, the old military highway of the Incas from Quito to Cuzco. Every traveler, however, knows the tendency of a journey to grow under one’s feet. This one grew with such tropical luxuriance that before it ended I had spent, not eight months, but four full years, and had covered not merely the ancient Inca Empire, but all the ten republics and three colonies of South America.

A considerable portion of this journey was made on foot. The reader may be moved to ask why. First of all, I formed the habit of walking early in life, developing an inability to depend on others in my movements. Then, too, the route lay through many regions in which no other animal than man can make his way for extended periods. Moreover, there was the question of caste. It is one of the drawbacks of South America that a white man cannot efface himself and be an unobserved observer, as on the highways of Europe. Social lines are so sharply drawn that he who would be received in frank equality by the peon, by the great mass of the population, must live and travel much as they do. Merely to ride a horse lifts him above the communality and sets a certain barrier, akin to race prejudice, between him and the foot-going hordes among whom my chief interest lay.

At best these lines of caste are a drag on observant travel in South America. The “gringo” can never get completely out of his social stratum. His very color betrays him. It is always “Goot mawning, Meestear,” too often with a silly, patronizing smile, from the “gente decente” class; among the rest his mere appearance makes him as conspicuous as a white man among West Indians. Never can he be an inconspicuous part of the crowd, as in Europe. To get in touch with the “common people” requires actually living in their huts and tramping their roads. The dilettante method of approaching them, “slumming,” will not do. The disadvantages of the primitive means of locomotion in wild regions, such as the Andes, are obvious. But the advantages of walking over more ordinary methods of travel are no less decided. Though the means be more laborious, the mind is far sharper for facts and impressions while on foot than when lolling half asleep on a horse or in a train. The mere pleasure of looking forward to his arrival, subconsciously building up before his mind’s eye a picture of his goal complete in every detail, not to mention that of looking back upon the journey from the comfort of his own armchair, is ample reward to any true victim of wanderlust. Thousands of men, supplied with all the comforts money can buy, roam the earth from top to bottom—and are supremely bored in the process. It is the struggle, the satisfaction of physical action, the accomplishment of something greatly desired and for a long time seemingly impossible, that brings real pleasure, that makes every step forward a satisfaction, every little success in the advance an enjoyment. For after all, real travel is real labor. He who journeys only so far as he can without exertion, who shirks the difficulties, will know no more of the real joy of travel than he who lives without toil, seeking pleasure only and finding but the cold, dead body thereof, without ever realizing the joy of life itself.

As in ancient times, so it is in the Andes to-day; distance cannot be covered without fatigue. On the other hand there is the compensation of knowing completely the country through which one passes, storing away in the mind a picture of each long-anticipated spot, indelible as long as life lasts. The Andean traveler will know the pleasures as well as the drawbacks of the journeys of earlier, more primitive days, the joy of evening hours, when suddenly, from the summit of the last toilsome ascent, he discovers, spread out in its smiling valley below, the peaceful village in which he is to take his night’s repose, or when he perceives from afar, gilded by the rays of the setting sun, the towers of the famous city so long sought,—hours of a vivid joy that few experiences can equal.

Thanks again to the barriers of caste, he who would really know the masses of Latin America should not only live with them, but should dress as plainly as they do. It is hard at best to get into more than superficial contact with the South American Indian, and to some extent his traits, like his blood, run through all classes. The upper-caste Latin American is by nature a masquerader; he treats a “distinguished stranger” as a real estate agent pilots a prospective buyer about the streets of some “New Berlin,” cleverly sidestepping the drawbacks; he shows his real self only when he is not on parade, before he learns that he is under observation, and claps on the mask he always has instantly at hand when he wishes to show “himself”; and he rates every man’s importance by the height of his collar and the color of his spats, cloaking himself in pretense accordingly. He who does not wish to know the truth about a Latin-American country should attire himself in a frock-coat, a silk hat, and appear with letters of introduction to the “people of importance.” His hosts will take him in regal style along two or three of the best streets and into the show-places, will gild every garbage-can that is likely to fall under his august eye, and will shield him from all the unpleasantnesses of life as carefully as the guardians of the princess in the fairy-tale. Hence the mere lack of ostentation, the mere appearance of being one of the negligible masses, goes far toward giving the unassigned wanderer a vast advantage in getting at the unmasked truth, in avoiding false impressions, over men of more brilliant mind and better powers of observation.

My purpose in journeying through South America was primarily to study the ways of the common people. I am no more fond of the unsavory, either in physical contact or on the printed page, than are the rest of my fellow-countrymen. But every occupation has its drawbacks. No traveler through interior South America with whom I have yet spoken has found conditions better than herein indicated; though for some strange reason it appears to be the custom to shield readers from this, to tell intimate facts only privately and to falsify public utterances by glossing over all the crudities. The fact is that the man who has spent four years afield south of the Rio Grande, and has come back to tell the tale, can only shake with laughter when an exponent of the “germ theory” speaks. Explorers with millionaire fathers-in-law tell us that the out-of-the-way traveler to such a country should take with him numberless supplies, from sheets to after-dinner coffee. It is the best plan, for those whose aim is to live in comfort—or a still better plan is to remain at home. Far be it from me to censure the man who journeys southward for other purposes for taking with him all the comforts he can carry; but he who seeks to know the people intimately must not merely tramp their trails; he must become, in so far as is possible, physically one of them. We should care little about the impressions of a European studying life in the United States who lived in his own tent and subsisted on canned goods he brought with him, however much we might admire his foresight.

It may be argued that by following the plan I have outlined I saw only the lower class and do not report conditions among the more fortunate inhabitants. Yet after all, the peon, the Indian, the masses, comprise nine tenths of the population of South America. There are fewer persons of pure European blood between our southern boundary and Cape Horn than in the state of New York; and by no means all of these live in even comparative comfort. The well-dressed minority of Latin America has often had its spokesman; numerically, and on the whole, the condition of these is of as little importance in the general scheme of things as are the doings of our “Four Hundred” in the life of our hundred million. I have, therefore, summed up briefly the ways of this small, if conspicuous, class, and its ways are so monotonously alike throughout the length and breadth of Latin America that this lumping together is not difficult. The chief problem in any country is the status of the great mass of population, the condition of the common people, and it is to this that I have almost entirely confined myself in the ensuing pages.

“Have you read ——’s book on Brazintine?” a noted French traveler once asked me. “He says all the brazintinos are immoral and dishonest. You and I, who have been there, know this is true. But those are things one tells to a circle of friends, that one shares over a pipe at the club, _mais, enfin, ça ne s’écrit pas_”!

It is due, I suppose, to a lack of Gallic finesse that I have never been able to grasp this point of view. Why the plain truth should be reserved for the fireside and personal friends, and should be kept from one’s friends of the printed page, is beyond my fathoming. At any rate, I have made no attempt to follow that plan. I tried not to expect everything in South America to be exactly as it is in the United States—I should, indeed, have considered that a misfortune. After all, I went south to see the Latin American as he is, not with the hope of finding him another American merely speaking another language. I have tried to judge him by his own ideals and history, fully aware that in the latter he did not have a “fair shake,” rather than by our own. Yet the traveler cannot entirely lay aside his native point of view; that would imply that he was not convinced of the wisdom of his own way of life, and the question would arise, Why not change? Neither the Latin-American nor the American point of view is all right or all wrong; they are simply different. Because we criticize does not necessarily mean that we claim superiority, though I am reminded of the American resident in South America who asserted that were he not convinced of his superiority to his neighbors, he would forthwith tie a mill-stone about his neck and jump in where it was deep. But the traveler who does not express his own honest opinions, “loses,” as the Brazilians say, “a splendid chance to keep silent.” I have, therefore, set down my real, heartfelt impressions. These may be false, even worthless; the reader has full right to reject them in toto. But at least they have the virtue of frankness.

Moreover, South America has had its fair share of apologists. Virtually every country publishes at intervals a luxurious volume of self-praise that resembles in its point of view the year-book of a high school or college class. Trade journals are constantly painting things South American in the rosiest of colors. It has been the traditional policy of certain branches of our government to cultivate Latin-American friendship by a myopic disregard of all the shadows in the picture. In our own capital there exists a criminally optimistic society for the propagation of emasculated information concerning our neighbors to the south. Among “distinguished strangers” from our own land who have visited Latin America there seems to have been a conspiracy to whitewash everything, an agreement to have all they see or experience bathed, barbered, and manicured before permitting it to make its bow to our public. The enormous majority of descriptions of South America resemble the original about as much as a portrait resembles the sitter after a professional photographer has finished with it.

I do not know what the Latin American may have been in other years—perhaps he was the splendid fellow many make him out. I am merely telling, as charitably as possible, how I found him. I am not interested in winning or losing his friendship, in selling him goods, or in gaining his “moral support” to our governmental activities. I am interested only in giving as faithful a picture as possible of my experiences with him. There are good things, praiseworthy things in South America; if, in the telling, these have been overshadowed by the less laudable, it is because the latter do so overshadow in point of fact.

Obviously, the experiences of four years, even in Latin America, cannot be crowded within the covers of a volume or two. I have, therefore, confined myself within certain limits. History, for instance, has been almost completely eliminated. I have taken for granted in the reader a certain basic knowledge of South America, though in the case of many even well-educated Americans this seems to be taking much for granted. I have passed as briefly as possible over those things which are already to be found within the walls of our libraries, confining myself so far as possible to that which I have personally seen or experienced. I have, however, dipped as freely into the literature of each country as into the life itself, and in the few cases where I have made use of facts so acquired, I have not taken of my cramped space to acknowledge the debt in words. For similar reasons, though it may seem ingratitude, I have not taken the reader’s time to thank individuals by name for personal kindnesses. They were many; but the doers know that their deeds were appreciated, without thanks being detailed here; or if they do not, it is the fate of those who lend passing assistance to world-roamers to take their reward in inner satisfaction.

The modern reader is prone to tire quickly of mere description; but nature is so important a factor in the Andes that it cannot be briefly passed over. Personally I like an occasional sunset, like it so much that I sometimes go to the unrequited toil of attempting to paint one. The reader who prefers his stage bare, as in Shakespeare’s day, can easily glide over those pages. If he does without stage-setting, however, and relies only on his imagination, his picture is apt to be false, for the imagination has very faulty materials from our school-books and the tales of wandering Münchausens to work upon. Yet after all, even with all one’s effort, it is sad how little of the splendid scenery, the atmosphere, the charm of it all—for in spite of its drawbacks, South America has charm—one can get down on paper.

This was not a voyage of discovery; or rather, if there was discovery, it was only of a different stratum of life, and not of new lands. My plan was not so much to find unexplored country in the ordinary sense, as to go by hitherto unmentioned paths through inhabited and known regions, the out-of-the-way corners of familiar cities and the undescribed gathering-places of mankind. In that sense South America is still chiefly “unexplored.”

Lastly, let me give fair warning that this is no tale of adventures. I would gladly have had it otherwise. I sought eagerly for experiences that would make the story more worth the telling; I tried my sincerest to get into trouble; all in vain. In Mexico I marched peacefully about between two falling empires. In Guatemala I strolled nonchalantly among Estrada Cabrara’s band of hired assassins. In Honduras I chatted with the leaders of the latest revolution. In Colombia I met many cripples of the civil war but recently ended. In Ecuador I found only peace and apathy in the very streets through which an ex-president and his henchman had been dragged to death a few months before. In Peru all was love and brotherhood—until after I left. In the Bolivian Chaco wild Indians wiped out a company of soldiers not a hundred miles from where I was passing in placid unconcern. In the Paraguayan capital I sat with the man who not a year before had captained a particularly bloody coup d’état. In Brazil I passed through two sections virtually in anarchy, and in one of its state capitals watched a riot that came perilously near being a revolution. In Venezuela I strolled serenely through the very ranks of revolters mere days before the leader and many of his band were killed. Yet hardly once did I knowingly come near personal violence. The fact is that South America is atrociously safe. Dangers are mostly those of popular novelists, from the pages of travelers who succumb to the natural temptation to “draw the long bow,” after the fashion of Marco Polo.

It may be that there was a better way to have told this story than as a day-to-day narrative. But even at that, it could not honestly have escaped a certain monotony; for monotony is ingrained in the fiber of South America. Not to have reported the journey chronologically would have made for succinctness, but at the expense, perhaps, of truth. It may be wearisome to hear of virtually every night’s stopping-place; yet as the traveler through the interior must stop at almost every hut along the way, the sum total of these is a description of the whole country. If the story appears sketchy and piecemeal, it is because I have denied myself, erroneously perhaps, even the Barrovian privilege of transposing or inventing enough to make a smoother and more interesting story. A book of travel cannot have something always happening; that is the privilege of fiction. The novelist can forge his materials to his liking; the travel-writer is very limited, even in opportunity to amalgamate, his material being very hard and nonplastic. Even to transpose and combine incidents is often to falsify, for what is true in one spot may never have been so a hundred miles further on.

The necessity of suddenly abandoning this task for other and more important duties has made it impossible to give it final polish, to eliminate much that should have been eliminated, and to improve much of what remains.

HARRY A. FRANCK.

Plattsburg, New York, August 1, 1917.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I UP TO BOGOTÁ 3

II THE CLOISTERED CITY 22

III FROM BOGOTÁ OVER THE QUINDÍO 39

IV ALONG THE CAUCA VALLEY 63

V DOWN THE ANDES TO QUITO 85

VI THE CITY OF THE EQUATOR 127

VII DOWN VOLCANO AVENUE 167

VIII THROUGH SOUTHERN ECUADOR 190

IX THE WILDS OF NORTHERN PERU 209

X APPROACHING INCA LAND 244

XI DRAWBACKS OF THE TRAIL 270

XII THE ROOF OF PERU 300

XIII ROUND ABOUT THE PERUVIAN CAPITAL 324

XIV OVERLAND TOWARD CUZCO 342

XV THE ROUTE OF THE CONQUISTADORES 374

XVI THE CITY OF THE SUN 405

XVII A FORGOTTEN CITY OF THE ANDES 454

XVIII THE COLLASUYU, OR “UPPER” PERU 480

XIX ON FOOT ACROSS TROPICAL BOLIVIA 517

XX LIFE IN THE BOLIVIAN WILDERNESS 543

XXI SKIRTING THE GRAN CHACO 573

XXII SOUTHWARD THROUGH GUARANI LAND 600

ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING PAGE

In the _Monte Grande_, the “Great Wilderness” of
Bolivia, the commander of the garrison insisted on
sending a boy soldier, with an ancient and rusted
Winchester, to “protect” me from the savages _Frontispiece_

One of the wood-burning steamers of the lower Magdalena,
on the route to Bogotá 4

Along the Magdalena we halted several times each day for
fuel 4

Hays catches his first glimpse of the jungles of
Colombia 13

The stewards of the “Alicia” in full uniform 13

A village on the banks of the Magdalena 17

Jirardot; end of the steamer line and beginning of the
railroad to Bogotá 17

A typical Indian hut on the outskirts of Bogotá 20

Indian girls and women are the chief dray-horses of the
Colombian capital 20

Bogotá and its _sabana_ from the summit of Guadalupe 28

The central plaza of Bogotá from the window of our room 28

A _chola_, or half-Indian girl, of Bogotá backed by an
outcast of the “gente decente” class 32

A street of Bogotá. The line of flaggings in the center
is for the use of Indians and four-footed burden
bearers 32

Celebrating Colombia’s Independence Day (July 20th) 37

Meanwhile in another square the populace marvels at the
feats of “maroma nacional” of an amateur circus 37

A section of the ancient highway, built by the Spaniards
more than three centuries ago 44

Fellow-travelers at the edge of the _sabana_ of Bogotá 44

Approaching the Central Cordillera of the Andes 49

Hays, seated before the “Hotel Mi Casa” and behind one
of his $5 cigars 53

A bit of the road by which we mounted to the Quindío
pass over the central range, with forests of the
slender palms peculiar to the region 53

The first days on the road; showing how I would have
traveled by choice 60

On the western side of the Central Cordillera the trail
drops quickly down into the tropics again 60

Like those of the days of Shakespeare, the theater of
Cartago consists of a stage—of split bamboo, with a
tile roof—inside the patio of the “hotel” 64

Cartago watching our departure 64

Along the Cauca Valley 69

In places the Cauca Valley swarmed with locusts 69

Worse than the locusts 72

The market-place of Tuluá, with the cross that protects
it against all sorts of calamities 72

A view of the “sacred city” of Buga, with the new church
erected in honor of the miraculous Virgin 76

A horseman of the Cauca in full regalia 76

The scene of “Maria,” most famous of South American
novels, and once the residence of its author 80

The home of “Maria”; and a typical _hacendado_ family of
the Cauca 80

The market-place of Cajibío, in the highlands of Popayán 96

Crossing the Cauca River with a pack train by one of the
typical “ferries” of the Andes 101

A village of the mountainous region south of Popayán 101

Hays, less considerable weight, and a fellow-roadster 108

An Indian woman weaving _teque-teque_ or native cloth,
by the same method used before the Conquest 108

Quito lies in a pocket of the Andes, at the foot of
Pichincha, more than 10,000 feet above sea-level 120

A view of Quito, backed by the Panecillo that bottles it
up on the south 129

A patio of the Monastery of San Francisco, one of the
eighteen monasteries and convents of Quito, said to be
the most extensive in the Western Hemisphere 129

The family of “Don Panchito” with whom I lived in Quito 133

Girls of the “gente decente” class of Quito, in a school
run by European nuns 133

Quito does not put its faith in small locks and keys 140

Ecuadorian soldiers before the national “palace” 140

A corner of Quito—looking through a garbage-hole into
one of the many ravines by which the city is broken up 144

After the bullfight a yearling is often turned into the
ring for the amusement of the youthful male population
of Quito 149

A group of the Indians that form so large a percentage
of Quito’s population 149

The undertaker’s delivery wagon 156

Probably not his own in spite of the circumstantial
evidence against him 156

Almost everything that moves in Quito rides on the backs
of Indians 161

An Indian family driving away dull care—and watching me
take the picture of a dog down the street 161

The street by which one leaves Quito on the tramp to the
south 165

Long before Edison thought of his poured-cement houses,
the Indians of the Andes were building their fences in
a similar manner 165

Typical huts of the _páramo_ of Tiopullo 168

Beyond the _páramo_ of Azuay the trail clambers over
broken rock ledges into the town of Cañar 168

Indians carrying a grand piano across the plaza of Cañar
on a journey to the interior 172

The Indians of Ecuador draw their droves of cattle on
after them by playing a weird, mournful “music” on the
_bocina_, made of a section of bamboo 172

Ruins of the fortress of Ingapirca, near Cañar 176

A mild example of the “road” through southern Ecuador 176

Cuenca, third city of Ecuador, lies in one of the most
fertile and beautiful valleys of the Andes 181

A detail of the “Panama” hat market of the Azogues 184

Arrived at the wholesale establishments of Cuenca, the
hats are finished 184

My home in Cuenca, with the Montesinos family 188

Students of the _Colegio_ of Cuenca 188

The “English Language Club” of Cuenca in full session 193

An hacienda-house of southern Ecuador, backed by its
grove of eucalyptus-trees 193

Plowing for wheat or corn on the hacienda of Cumbe 200

The church, and the dwelling of my host, the priest of
Oña 208

Loja, southernmost city of Ecuador, backed by her
endless labyrinth of mountains 208

The guinea-pigs on which I feasted upon breaking out of
the wilderness on the Peruvian frontier—and the cook 213

The Indians of Zaraguro are different, both in type and
costume, from the meeker types of Quito and vicinity 213

In the semi-tropical Province of Jaen, in north Peru,
sugarcane grows luxuriantly 220

The sugar that is not turned into _aguardiente_, or
native whiskey, is boiled down in the _trapiche_ into
crude brown blocks, variously known as _panela_,
_chancaca_, _rapadura_, _empanisado_, _papelón_, etc.,
weighed and wrapped in banana-leaves, selling at about
5 cents for 3 pounds 220

The _teniente-gobernador_, or “lieutenant-governor,” of
Jaen 229

The two of us 229

The main street of the great provincial capital of Jaen 236

The government “ferry” across the Huancabamba 236

A woman of the jungles of Jaen preparing me the first
meal in days at the typical Ecuadorian cook-stove 248

Peruvian prisoners earn their own livelihood by weaving
hats, spinning yarn, and the like 248

The ancient city of Cajamarca lies in one of the most
magnificent highland valleys of the Andes 257

The only wheeled vehicle I saw in Peru during my first
three months in that country 264

One of the many unfinished churches of Cajamarca 264

One of the few remaining _simpichacas_, or suspension
bridges, of the Andes 272

A typical shop of the Andes 272

Detail of the ruins of “Marca-Huamachuco,” high up on
the mountain above the modern town of that name 289

Pallasca, to which I climbed from one of the mightiest
_quebradas_ in the Andes 289

Catalino Aguilar and his wife, Fermín Alva, my nurses in
the hospital of Caráz 296

An Indian of Cerro de Pasco region carrying a
slaughtered sheep 296

Though within a few degrees of the equator, Huaráz,
capital of the most populous department of Peru, has a
veritable Swiss setting of snow-clad peaks and
glaciers 304

Threshing wheat with the aid of the wind 304

Crossing the Central Cordillera of the Andes south of
Huaráz, barely nine degrees below the equator 308

The fortress of the former Inca city of Huánaco el Viejo 317

A typical residence of the Indians of the high _páramos_ 317

The _arrieros_ with whom I left Huallanga, and the
family inhabiting the hut shown in the preceding
picture 321

The immaculate staff of the Cerro de Pasco hospital 321

The semi-weekly lottery drawing in the main plaza of
Lima 328

All aboard! A Sunday excursion that was not posed 328

The bleak mining town of Morococha, more than 16,000
feet above sea-level 336

The American miners of Morococha live in comfort for all
the altitude and bleakness of their surroundings 336

A typical miner of the high Peruvian Andes 340

Miners of Morococha,—a Welch foreman and two of his gang 340

A hint of what the second-class traveler on Peruvian
railways must put up with 349

The wide main street and a part of the immense market of
Huancayo, said to be the largest in Peru 349

A detail of the market of Huancayo, with a bit of
pottery like that of the days of the Incas 356

“Chusquito” descending one of the few remnants of the
old Inca highway I found from Quito to Cuzco 356

Huancavelica, one of the most picturesque and
least-visited provincial capitals of Peru 365

On the “road” to Ayacucho I overtook a lawyer who was
importing a piano 376

Carrying the piano across one of the typical bridges of
the Peruvian Andes 376

The striking headdress of the women of Ayacucho 385

The friendly and ingratiating waiters of our hotel in
Ayacucho 385

A religious procession in the main square of Ayacucho 392

A gala Sunday in the improvised “bullring” of Ayacucho 392

A familiar sight in the Andes—a recently butchered beef
hung in sheets along the clothes-line to sun-dry into
charqui 400

A typical “bed” in the guest-room provided for travelers
by many Peruvian _hacendados_ 400

The fatherless urchin who fell in with me beyond
Andahuaylas 405

My body-servant in Andahuaylas, and the sickle with
which he was supposed to cut all the alfalfa
“Chusquito” could eat 405

A view of Quito, capital of Ecuador, from the summit of
the Panecillo 408

View of Cuzco, the ancient Inca capital, from the summit
of Sacsahuaman 408

Building a house in Peru 412

The patio of the “Hotel Progreso” of Abancay 412

A religious procession in Abancay 417

A _chola_ of Abancay, wearing the _dicclla_ which all
put on at the age of puberty 432

A chiefly-Indian woman of Abancay 432

The first view of Cuzco 437

An Indian of Cuzco, speaking only Quichua 444

Indian women of the market-place, wearing the “pancake”
hat of Cuzco 444

An Indian required to pay for the day’s mass proudly
clings to his staff of office 449

Youth from a village near Cuzco, each with a coca cud in
his cheek 449

Our party setting out for Machu Picchu across the high
plains about Cuzco 453

Ollantaytambo, the end of the first day’s journey, in
the valley of the Urubamba 453

Spring plowing in the Urubamba valley 460

As we rode eastward into the sunrise down the gorge of
the Urubamba, glacier-clad Piri above threw off its
night wraps of clouds 464

The semicircular tower and some of the finest
stone-cutting and fitting of Machu Picchu 464

We came out on the edge of things and Machu Picchu lay
before us 469

The resounding gorge of the Urubamba, with terraces of
the ancient inhabitants on the inaccessible left bank 472

One of the many stairways of Machu Picchu 472

The temple of the three windows, an unusual feature of
Inca architecture 476

“Rumiñaui” seated on the _intihuatana_, or sun-dial, at
the top of the town 476

The babies of Bolivia sit in a whole nest of finery on
nurse’s back 485

Arequipa is built of stones light as wood, cut from a
neighboring quarry 485

Indians plowing on the shores of Titicaca 492

Sunrise at Copacabana, the sacred city of Bolivia on the
shores of Titicaca 492

One of the two huge figures facing the grass-grown plaza
of modern Tiahuanaco at the entrance to the church 501

The ancient god of Tiahuanaco before which the Indian
woman, herding her pigs, bowed down in worship 501

Arequipa, second city of Peru, in its desert oasis,
backed by misty volcano 504

“Suddenly the bleak pampa falls away at one’s feet” 504

Llamas of La Paz patiently awaiting the return of their
driver 508

Down the valley below La Paz the pink and yellow soil
stands in fantastic, rain-gashed cliffs 508

_Cholas_ of La Paz, in their native garb 513

“Sandy” leading his train of carts loaded with
construction material for the railroad to Cochabamba 528

The “gringo bench” of Cochabamba,—left to right, “Old
Man Simpson”; Tommy Cox; Sampson, the Cockney; Owen;
and Scribner 528

The home and family of the alcalde who could not read 536

Our impromptu celebration of Christmas Eve in Pampa
Grande 536

A street of Santa Cruz de la Sierra after a shower 545

Conscripts of the Bolivian army practicing their first
maneuvers in the central plaza of Santa Cruz 545

Manuel Abasto, a native of Santa Cruz de la Sierra 552

Through the open doors of Santa Cruz one often catches a
glimpse of the patio, a garden gay with flowers 552

Konanz seated on our baggage in the _pelota de cuero_ 560

The force of one of the four _fortines_, or
“fortresses,” with which the Bolivian government
garrisons the Monte Grande against the savages 560

Jim and “Hughtie” Powell, Americans from Texas who have
turned Bolivian peons 564

A jungle hair-cut 564

The old stone and brick church and monastery of San José 573

The fatherly old cura of San José standing before the
Jesuit sun-dial 573

Henry Halsey, the American rancher, of tropical Bolivia,
and his family 577

Saddle-steers take the place of horses and mules in the
muddy parts of tropical Bolivia 577

A German of tropical Bolivia and his “housekeeper” 581

Santiago de Chiquitos, above the gnat-line, backed by
its reddish cliffs 581

“Don Cupertino,” chief adornment of eastern Bolivia,
with his family and dependents 589

The _tipoy_, a single loose gown, constitutes the entire
garb of most of the native women of tropical Bolivia 593

A girl of Santiago de Chiquitos selling a chicken to the
cook of “los americanos” 593

The shoemaker who lived next door to “los americanos” in
Santiago de Chiquitos, and his latest “wife” 597

A birthday dance in Santiago de Chiquitos, in honor of
the German in the center background 597

A view from the promenade-deck of the steamer 604

A Paraguayan landscape, with native cart 604

The mixture of types in the Argentine 608

MAP

The author’s itinerary 40

VAGABONDING
DOWN THE ANDES

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Vagabonding down the AndesChapter I: Front Matter

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