Chapter XIV: Overland Toward Cuzco (2)

Then it was discovered that the grim, treeless mountains piled into the sky about the little valley were rich in quicksilver, and a mining town built itself up about the hut of Isabel, the Huanca. For centuries the great Santa Barbara mine high above the town, and several smaller workings in the vicinity, yielded the mercury used in Potosi and in all the mines of Peru, High or Low, which was brought from Huancavelica on the backs of llamas. Then, as more scientific methods came into vogue, the miners turned to California for their supply, until to-day the Mercury Queen is but an echo of her former greatness, and the open shafts of her cinnabar mines, which rumor has it left several of the surrounding ranges great hollow caverns, stand silent and deserted. It is this failure to keep up with modern times that has left Huancavelica one of the most “picturesque” department capitals, with poverty her chief handmaid. Lack of transportation is her principal drawback. The very town itself is said to sit on top of great deposits of quicksilver. Workmen, digging for the foundation of a new building on a corner of the plaza during my sojourn, found pure-liquid mercury bubbling up out of the ground. Modern miners, however, refuse to operate where only the slow and unreliable llama must be depended on for transportation, and only when the long-promised railroad arrives, will Huancavelica come into her own again.

The chief point of interest was the famous old mercury mine of Santa Barbara. Strangely enough, the cicerone appeared within an hour of the daylight time set, though without breakfast, and shared with me the results of my own rum-burning handicraft. A roundabout, but exceedingly steep road, on which we panted audibly in spite of frequent halts for breath, brought us to our goal far above the town. Near a silent, cold, Indian hamlet, with an aged Spanish church facing its dreary plaza, was the ruin of a cut-stone smelting-works of colonial days, and behind it the imposing arched entrance to the enormous caverns said to undermine all the neighboring range. Above this was a large Spanish coat-of-arms cut in stone, with the information that the arch had been constructed by General Fulano in 1707; and the weather-defaced relief of a saint holding a child. The silence of long abandonment brooded over all the scene. We lighted the medieval oil-lamp borrowed from the hotel, and disappeared within. The tunnel that led straight into the mountainside was large enough, if not for a railway train, at least for a horseman to have ridden in comfortably, its floor easily as good a road as the average Peruvian one outside. Here and there we crawled over a heap of stones and earth where a part of the wall had fallen, and at 382 paces from the mouth were halted by a cave-in that had choked up the entire tunnel. My companion had assured me that the spirits of ancient Spaniards and their Indian victims, lying in wait for unwary moderns, made our entrance perilous in the extreme, and, once permission was given, lost no time in retreating.

From the exit we went _faldeando_ (skirting) the mountain to the ancient mining village of Chaclatacana, about which, and scattered over all the vicinity, were the evidences of little mines the Indians had dug on their own account. The cinebrio deposits of the region were first disclosed to the Spaniards in 1566, by the custom of the aboriginals of painting their faces with it. My guide asserted that condors were numerous, and often dangerous to the eyes of men wandering over these lofty heights; but it was my luck not to catch sight of one of those giant birds of the Andes. I was rewarded, however, for taking the “short-cut” that proved longer and more laborious than the road, by a bird’s eye view of Huancavelica, so directly below us that we could have tossed our hats into the central plaza. Here, too, among the split and jagged rock-crags we stumbled upon a colony of _viscachas_,—“biscachos” my companion called them—almost the only quadruped, besides the guinea-pig and the llama family, indigenous to the Peruvian highlands. The creature is sometimes dubbed the “squirrel of the Andes,” but its size was more nearly that of the rabbit, its prominent tail and means of locomotion suggestive of some diminutive species of the kangaroo, its color not unlike that of our prairie dog, which it resembled somewhat also in its manner of dodging in and out among the rocks and crags, as if inviting us to a game of “hide and seek.” According to my attendant, the meat of the animal is even more succulent than llama-flesh, providing the tail is cut off at the moment of killing.

But for the unkindness of fate there would have been a gala bull-fight in Huancavelica on the Sunday of my stay. The one negro I had seen shivering about town turned out to be a torero, imported—chiefly at his own expense—from Lima for the occasion. The corral behind the rambling dwelling of my hosts had been turned into a “ring,” a square one, to be sure, laboriously fenced with poles tied with bark and cords to upright stakes. But on Saturday afternoon, just as the town was rubbing its hands together at the prospect of a half-forgotten entertainment, the one bull that was to have furnished it sprang through the barrier and over the low wall to the sunken street below, fifteen feet if it was an inch, and instead of dying on the spot, was last seen making record time for his mountain pasture.

The irrepressible “Turks” were wellnigh obnoxious in their hospitality. The most baggage-abhorring of travelers acquires gradually and unconsciously a new point of view with respect to his pack when he is no longer forced to burden his own shoulders with it, and articles that have hitherto seemed only useless weight take on the aspect of necessities. But after they had “sold” me an enamel cup and a roll of cotton-flannel for “Fusslappen,” the Syrians refused vociferously to accept payment. When I caught sight of a mouth-organ that might have served to while away the tramp across the lonely uninhabited world ahead, my mere glance at it caused José to drop it into my pocket when I was off my guard. A wordy battle ended with his acceptance of a _sol_, which he swore was the wholesale price of an instrument marked to retail for five times that amount; but it cost me eternal vigilance to keep now one, now the other brother from surreptitiously returning the coin. There was nothing left but to curtail my purchases. To choose from their stock was to have charity thrust upon me; to buy off their rivals would have been the height of insults, and would quickly have published to all the town their lack of hospitality, or my ingratitude. My last day with them the firm of Atala Hermanos spent in writing me letters of introduction to all their countrymen from Huancavelica to Cape Horn, and when I sneaked into their patio at dawn next morning, bent on abducting Chusquito unseen, the entire household was already waiting to drag me in to an extraordinary breakfast. Not satisfied with that, they forced upon me a boiled leg-of-mutton and several other delicacies, among them a dozen raw eggs which, tied in a handkerchief on Chusquito’s back, broke one by one with his jolting gait and ran in yellow streams down the rubber poncho that covered the pack.

All Huancavelica united in attempting to force a guide upon me, asserting that even “hijos del lugar” frequently lost themselves on the trackless puna beyond. I smiled indulgently at what had long since become a threadbare prophesy, but had occasion to recall it before the day was done. The way mounted steadily all the morning, uncovering a vast yellow-brown world that stretched forever before me. In the early hours it was scantily inhabited by wild, weather-faded shepherds watching over flocks of llamas, pacos, or sheep, and leisurely busy turning wool into yarn on their crude spindles, an occupation that gave the men a curiously effeminate air, out of all keeping with their rough exterior. These chary fellows took good care that we should not come within shouting distance of them, and even the rare travelers and llama drivers made wide circuits to avoid us, as if fearful of their defenselessness on this bleak, shelterless top of the world. If taken unaware in some fold of the earth, they muttered some stupidity in the Quichua slang dialect of the region, and sped away like startled hares. Unable to make inquiries, I could only trust to chance, compass, and the instinct that develops with long Andean travel. For on these broad mountain-tops the traveler is by no means master of the situation, and to guess wrong between several at best faintly marked paths may be to go hopelessly astray, and come out on the opposite side of the Andes from that toward which one is headed. For long stretches the dreary páramo showed no sign whatever of travel, though here and there the droppings of llamas gave the route a more or less fixed direction. A jolly, coca-chewing old Indian, whom I came upon in the afternoon plodding patiently behind his haughty train, had seen enough of the world to have lost some of his fear of white men and assured me I was still on the right road. But he must have been mistaken, or else I guessed wrong at the next opportunity, for the bit of trail that had grown up under my feet split irreconcilably and left, at the hour when I should have come upon an hacienda reputed hospitable to travelers, only the rolling, trackless, yellow puna stretching away on every hand.

Huancavelica, one of the most picturesque and least-visited provincial
capitals of Peru, is completely boxed in by grim, rocky mountain
walls noted for their deposits of mercury. The city itself is more
than two miles above sea-level]

A raging thunder-storm of rain and hail, under which the vast land and skyscape turned dark as night, soon broke upon us. I had struggled a long distance through the storm, when I faintly made out a little cluster of huts some distance to the right in a wrinkle of the pampa. After I had overcome my own disinclination to go out of my way to seek lodging, there was needed a laborious argument to bring my companion to my way of thinking. For Chusquito would have none of your side trips. The truth is I had been somewhat deceived and disappointed in the disposition of my chosen fellow-adventurer. As long as the road lay straight and undoubtedly before us, he was an ideal companion, never breaking the thread of my reflections by calling attention to the scenery, nor otherwise making himself humanly obnoxious. But in temperament he might best be likened to a cat, accepting all favors and friendly overtures with a complacent aloofness and matter-of-course manner that resembled ingratitude, refusing to be won over, even by caresses, to the faintest expression of a reciprocal affection. Moreover, he had a will, not to say a wilfulness, of his own that is inimical to all genuine companionship on the road, and a respect for _costumbre_ that betrayed his Latin-American training. I felt no compunction in having recourse to brute force in a dispute under such circumstances as then faced us, however, and we soon gained the only visible shelter.

On a cold, cheerless spot, almost devoid of even the vegetation of high pampas, I found five miserable human kennels of loosely laid stones and ichu grass, in charge of several gaunt, savage, yet cowardly curs, and an Indian boy speaking only monosyllabic Quichua. All the huts, except a beehive-shaped structure that served as kitchen, had huge native padlocks on the doors. Choked with thirst, in tantalizing contrast to my dripping garments and the raging storm, I called for water.

“Manam cancha,” murmured the boy dully, using the Quichua version of that stereotyped Andean falsehood, “There is none.”

“Yacu!” I shouted, jokingly laying a hand on my revolver.

He slunk away, and picked up a battered cup behind one of the huts. Wiping this on his lifelong sleeve, he scraped the bottom of a huge earthen jar that leaned awry, in what would have needed only a fence to be a barnyard, at an angle that enabled the dogs to help themselves at the same source, and presented the half-filled vessel to me. There was no second choice in the matter, for this region, untold miles above sea-level, had no other supply of water than the rain that chanced to drop into the leaning cántaros. Fortunately the taste bore little evidence of what the appearance suggested. I made a round of the huts, resolved to spend the night there, even if I had to break into one of the buildings.

“Huasi-muñuy!” I cried, patching my Quichua together after my own fashion, and pointing to one of the padlocks.

“Manam cancha,” repeated the _huarma_ in the same dull monotone. I held out what would have seemed a fortune of small coins to a country boy of other lands, but he shook his head doggedly, without a gleam of interest, casting a half-frightened glance at my weapon. An older youth, who had appeared noiselessly from somewhere, treated the offer of money with the same indifference and settled down to a silent attempt to drive me off, in spite of the storm and the night that was closing in. It was then that I thought of the sack I had filled in the market of Huancayo. At the magic word “coca” the pair awoke to a new interest in life. Each snatched off his hat to receive a handful of leaves, mumbling a “Gracias, tayta-tayta,” and the older youth ordered the other to clear away a miscellaneous assortment of junk, bundles of old sheepskins, and a heap of llama-droppings gathered for fuel, from one end of the hut “porch” under the edge of which I was seated. As he worked, there fell from somewhere under the projecting eaves the corpse of a tiny, black pig that had quite evidently died a natural death, but which the family just as evidently proposed to eat, for the boy carried it off to a safer spot, plainly doubting my honesty. In a corner lay two bundles of ichu grass. I tossed one to Chusquito, standing dejected and disgusted beside me, and spread out the other as a mattress. The youth made no protest, but shook his head at the _real_ I offered in payment. A howling wind that even the stone hut failed to break made it useless to attempt to set up my cooking outfit. As I drew cold food from my pack, the Indians sat motionless as stone statues, but watched with keen eyes, monkey-like, my every move. I shared the lunch with them, though I should much have preferred paying them in money for their dubious hospitality. It is one of the drawbacks of Andean journeying that the traveler is expected to share his scanty supplies, not merely with his human companions of the moment, but is invariably surrounded under such circumstances by a ravenous swarm of begging and thieving dogs, pigs, and fowls. Except for a score of llamas lying in patrician aloofness beyond the huts, every living creature crowded round to appeal to my generosity or to catch me off my guard. The Indians accepted each morsel with a murmured “Gracias” that plainly proceeded from custom rather than from any real thankfulness. Innumerable experiments, from the Rio Grande southward, had demonstrated that the American aboriginal has not a trace of gratitude in his make-up; indeed, the use of the Spanish term suggests that the native language did not even include a word for thanks.

The thirst that follows an all-day tramp outlived the available supply of water, and even the bottle of pisco I dared not bring to light until darkness had concealed my movements from the Indians could not be shared with Chusquito, no doubt choking within, in spite of his bedraggled, dripping flanks. As the storm died down, the evening spread wonderful colors across this bleak upper world, bringing out in lilac tints, shading to purple and then to black, the saw-toothed range bounding the horizon on the far south. The night would have been bitter cold even inside one of the huts, to say nothing of lying on the earth floor of the open, mud corredor. Yet the cold which my rubber poncho kept out was no less surprising than the heat which the wooly llama-hair one kept in, and my sleep might easily have been much more broken than it was.

During my first doze there arrived an old Indian, evidently the head of the household that had hitherto kept itself successfully concealed. He was somewhat the worse for fiery waters and, being apprized of his visitor, set up a deal of howling and shouting in Quichua. Receiving no answer, he ventured to take a mild poke at me with his stick. It would have been heroic indeed to have gotten out of “bed.” Instead, I turned loose a string of American and Spanish words of high voltage which experience had shown to have a withering effect on his race. Though he did not understand them individually, he evidently grasped their general import, for he subsided at once, and retired to the beehive kitchen, where for a long time he howled and yelped, as brave men will in the midst of their trembling and admiring families. Bit by bit his women pacified him, in the way women have, perhaps with more pisco and coca, for I heard him laugh several times thereafter, with a sound like that of a choking cow, before anything resembling silence settled down over the lofty mountain-top world. Real silence is rare in these Indian huts at night. Either the lack of comfort they are too lazy or uninitiative to remedy, or the chewing of coca keeps the miserable inhabitants half-awake, and periods of growling and grumbling are seldom far apart from dark to dawn.

I fancy it was midnight, more or less, when I became drowsily aware that Chusquito, tied within a foot of my head, was munching some fodder I knew he did not possess; but I was too nearly asleep to rise and investigate. The moon testified that it was some two hours later when I was awakened to find the head of the household standing beside me, his hand on a damaged roof and bellowing a guttural stream in which I caught several times the words “Huasi micuni—eating my house.” This would be an impoliteness in any land, and I bravely forced myself to slip into my brogans and out into the icy moonlight. Chusquito had scalloped out the bangs of the grass roof in a new style that, to my notion, was more fetching than the original. If only the Indians of the Andes were not so stonily conservative, my host would have thanked me for the improvement, instead of sputtering with rage. I tied the innocent culprit to a stone-wall nearby, which was also an unfortunate choice, for I heard him knock down most of that in the hours that remained before daylight. During the long uproar that ensued in the kitchen, no doubt the old Indian told his family many times over that had _he_ been at home when I arrived, I should not have remained; but in that he was mistaken, for it would have taken a considerable band of South American Indians to have denied me hospitality. I lay down again with my revolver and cartridge-belt handy under the edge of the ponchos; not that there was any danger, but because I do not care to be numbered among those who take foolish chances.

The next I knew distinctly, it was dawning. I fed my mattress to Chusquito and set up my kitchenette in the most sheltered corner of the corredor, bent on concocting a hot broth with a lump of ice from the bottom of a leaning cántaro. The directions on my magic can of concentrated soup asserted that “one cube with hot water makes a delicious bouillon.” But this, experience had demonstrated, should be taken with a grain of salt—also four other cubes. Even under the lee of my alforjas the rum-burner went out at the faintest breath of wind, but by constant coaxing, and at the imminent risk of setting fire to my possessions, I managed even to boil the two eggs that remained whole, though so great was the altitude that with eight minutes of boiling they were still soft. Gravelly bread of Huancavelica, and a native “chocolate” that was really a pebbly brown sugar, topped off a meal I might have longed for in vain at that hour in the best hotel of Peru. Many an hour on the road, during the best part of the day for walking, that simple little contrivance gave me, when I should otherwise have been waiting on the sleepy natives for breakfast.

By the time I had eaten, the householder appeared in his slit panties with white buttons down the sides, and a fancy upper garment evidently intended to impress me with his importance. But when he noted by daylight with whom he had to do, he gradually shrivelled up to a half-friendly smile, and accepted with a pretence of gratitude a coin for his forced hospitality and newly decorated roof. A silver-ringed, black cane, leaning against what Chusquito had seen fit to leave of the stone wall, proved him one of the “authorities” of the region. Above it stood a crude cross decorated with dry grass, designed to keep evil spirits—except those in bottles—away from the cluster of huts. Either my host’s knowledge of the trail ahead, or his manner of imparting it, was extremely hazy, and I dragged Chusquito away across the pampa in the cutting cold, but invigorating mountain air, burdened with the task of finding ourselves once more.

Within an hour we were so fortunate as to fall again upon a trail, where I could relinquish the tiller and drift into those day-dreams that come upon the solitary traveler across these vast Andean punas. Snow had fallen during the night, and a great white immensity, slightly undulating, spread out to infinity before us. We shared an all-night thirst that set us both to munching snow at frequent intervals. By ten the sun had burned away the whiteness and restored to the scene its accustomed monk’s robe of faded yellow-brown. All morning I continued to guess the way across a steadily rising world, in the utter silence that makes more impressive the dreariness of these lofty regions, until at noon we panted over a jagged rock-ridge from which all the kingdoms of the earth lay spread out below us, tumbled, broken, and velvety brown as far as the eye could command even in this transparent air. As we started gradually downward, shepherds and their flocks appeared once more, then little fenced patches and stone-heap hovels; then we dropped almost suddenly into the blazing hot valley of a little river, along which tiled huts and travelers were numerous. Several times I went astray and waged pitched battle with Chusquito cross-country, past hovels swarming like disturbed beehives with barking dogs, before I once more got securely under our feet the trail that was to lead us upward again over the next páramo. It is not merely that the stupid inhabitants of these regions speak only Quichua, but they are incapable of giving intelligent directions, even in that tongue. There is something exhilarating in the air of Andean heights that breeds reflection and a peaceful serenity of mind; but it is nature, rather than humanity, that awakens the marked optimism of spirits. The traveler grows “inspired,” lifted up out of himself by the magnificence of the scene, realizing for a moment how marvelous is this world we inhabit; then suddenly an Indian, a human being, intrudes, and snatches him back to earth again. Time after time I caught sight of an approaching figure which the mind, from youthful force of habit, imbued with human intelligence—and as many times it turned out to be a shuffling Indian, stupid and glassy-eyed from the quid of coca in his cheek and the chicha and pisco of the last hamlet in his belly, who cringed like some degenerate animal as he passed, mumbling some Quichua monosyllable. Incapable of intelligent reply, even when they are not in a half-drunken stupor, these plodding creatures have a very hazy notion of distance. The _acco_, or time of duration of a quid of coca, which they throw on the _achepetas_, or symbolical stone-heaps along the way, is at best but an uncertain term of length, and their besotted intellects seldom retain the memory of any number above three or four. So that, in spite of the frequent appearance of fellow-travelers, I had perforce to be satisfied with the half-certainty that I was on the right road, without any notion of whether the nearest shelter was one, or ten leagues distant.

Clouds crawled into the evening sky again, where the daytime sunshine had swept it clean; the purple shadows of the mountains, across the tops of which the setting sun cast a crimson glow, spread and darkened, and I had visions of shivering out another night in the corredor of an Indian hut, or out on the bare, freezing pampa. I had suffered so many dreary nights, twelve hours long, in South America, that it had become a habit to lose my cheerful mood in the late afternoon and succumb to apprehension, as of some impending misfortune. Under this I developed unconsciously a pace so swift that Chusquito, like a small boy trying to keep up with an inconsiderate father, took to trotting every little while some distance ahead. We were now far up again on a cold puna across which the bitter mountain wind swept unchecked, and even my companion seemed to cast apprehensive glances at the angry, black clouds overspreading the sky, and at the cold dusk descending upon us. We hurried unbrokenly on, without a sign of town or hamlet, though the last Indian stragglers still bore sufficient evidences of intoxication that proved it could be no great distance off. Then, in the last rays of daylight, we turned a wind-whipped boulder and caught sight of the place, far off in the lap of a stony valley, well aware from long Andean experience that the intervening distance was much greater than appearance suggested.

Black night had long since settled down when I found myself surrounded by indistinct, low structures that turned out to be Acobamba, home of one Zambrano, for whom I bore a letter from the “Turks.” As often as I inquired for him, however, there came back that Spanish-American-Indian mumble of indifference and distrust, “Más arriba,”—higher up, until I felt like a District Attorney on the trail of “graft.” When a half-civilized youth in “store” clothes gave me the same identical, lackadaisical answer for the tenth or twentieth time, I caught him by the slack of the garments and jerked him into the street, with a polite ultimatum to conduct me in person to that elusive upper region.

He led the interminable, cobbled way down one street and up another, equally unlighted, and finally stopped before a zaguán with an “Aquí, señor.” I cut off his proposed escape, and drove him into the patio to summon the man of the house. He returned with the Indian mayordomo, and the information that the Zambrano who lived there was not the one I sought, and was, moreover, out of town. The youth proposed that he “go look for” the right Zambrano.

“No, indeed, my friend,” I countered. “You will stay right with me while _we_ look for him.”

“Sí, señor,” said the youth in a shivering voice. Then he turned back across town and plaza by another route, and pointed out the Zambrano household exactly two doors from the one out of which I had originally snatched him. The flock of women who surged out upon me greeted me with the threadbare “No ’stá ’cá!” He never was—when I bore a letter to him. The wife spelled it out laboriously under the blinking light of a home-made tallow candle, then invited me into the earth-floored “parlor,” separated by a calico curtain from the little shop she kept.

“There is no one in Acobamba who prepares food for strangers,” she replied to my roundabout hint, “but we shall serve you such as we can here in our poor house.”

While the mystery to come was cooking, I managed to get inoffensively into her possession the price of a peck of grain for Chusquito—and some time later found the poor, misused animal munching about two cents’ worth of old, dry corn-husks in the corral.

“It is,” murmured the wife, in reply to my questioning gesture, “that there is no grain in town—at these hours.” But though she would have considered an insult any direct offer of a traveler consigned to her husband by letter to pay for his accommodation, she carefully avoided any further reference to the grain-money.

It would have been in the highest degree scandalous to have lodged a stranger in her own dwelling during the absence of the head of the household. But the delegation of females, having discovered, by dint of turning the house wrong-side out, the massive key of a mud-flanked door across the street, let me into an abandoned shop lumbered with the accumulated odds and ends of many years, an immense, woven-straw hogshead full of shelled corn bulking above the rest. A creaking board counter, barely five feet long, was the only available sleeping space. The only means of avoiding asphyxiation was to leave the door open to any passing sneak-thief or congenital hater of gringos. But even had the risk been great, the key would have proved an effective weapon. Unfortunately it would have been anti-simpático to have felled with it the solicitous night-hawks who called my frequent attention to the perils of night air, not merely by rapping on the door, but by prodding me in the ribs with their sticks.

It was butchering day in Acobamba when I awoke, and at the suggestion of my hostess I sent a servant to buy ten cents’ worth of meat. She returned with an entire basketful,—eight slabs of raw, red beef, each as large as an honest sirloin steak “for two.” Virtually every shop in town being a pulpería, it was easy to lay in supplies for the road ahead. But though competition was brisk in all other wares, for some reason I was never able to fathom, in all the region of the central Andes my favorite food was always hedged round with refusals. As often as I stepped into a shop where a basket of eggs was displayed, I was sure to be informed in a dull, uninviting monotone, “No están de venta.” “Of course they are not for sale,” the experienced Peruvian wayfarer soon learns to reply, “No Andean lady who considers herself a lady would think of selling eggs. But—er”—meanwhile picking out the largest specimens of the fruit in question—“I have taken a dozen. How much?”

The answer was sure to be a meek, “Dos reales—ten cents, señor.”

Over the lofty, tumbled world ahead the way was often so steep and stony and contorted that Chusquito more than once fell on his neck, and threatened to twist himself permanently out of shape. It was a land so dry and barren that only the half-liter of pisco kept my thirst endurable. Whenever I paused for a sip, my companion glanced furtively and anxiously back at me, as if he remembered other masters who had got bad tempers out of bottles along the way. But his was none of your meek and canine dispositions that permit abuse unprotestingly. On the level, high pampas, with all the world spread out in full view about us, the exhilaration of scene and air caused me unconsciously to set so swift a pace that I was obliged frequently to kick the brute out from under my feet—until he retaliated by suddenly projecting one small, shod hoof against a shin that I was distinctly aware of for days afterward.

One afternoon, not fifty miles beyond Acobamba, I was threatened with violence for the first time during my fifteen months in South America. I sat beside a mountain pool, coaxing my cooking-outfit under shelter of my alforjas, when two half-Indians, bleary-eyed with drink, appeared on stout mules. They had nearly passed when they caught sight of me, and charged forward in drunken insolence, all but trampling my possessions under the hoofs of their animals. In the haste of the moment I made the error of showing aggressiveness to the point of drawing my revolver—and came perilously near having to use it for my mistake. When reflection caused me to change my tactics and humor them like the witless children they were, the danger was dissipated like a puff of smoke. Within ten minutes the pair grew so maudlinly affectionate that they insisted on shaking hands alternately a dozen times each, and at length rode slowly away, casting frequent besotted, loving glances behind them.

Across a barren páramo ahead the mood struck me to cheer the long hours with my mouth-organ. Even the Indian carries one of these, or a reed flute on his journeys, and whiles away the sky-gazing solitudes with monotonous ditties. But I was soon forced to forgo the pleasure. Not merely did that plebian instrument in the hands of a gringo bring glances of unconcealed contempt from the rare horsemen who passed, but I could no sooner strike up than Chusquito, unhumanly frank and honest in his criticisms, would lay back his ears and trot ahead well out of hearing, with some peril to my pack, before he would consent to fall again into a walk.