It was beautiful optimism. I took another look at the reeking hospital between decks and wondered if we could ever get into any port and, as I turned away, two wretched, tottering skeletons passed on their way to the open cargo port. They were convalescing. I hoped for the third.
Some time during the night we passed over to the Peruvian coast and anchored off Payta early the next morning. Two miles away a white thread of slow surf broke on a thin line of blazing yellow beach; beyond rose a low range of brown-and-yellow bluffs, the hot and arid fringe of the long dessert that edges the west coast of South America. Back from the edge of surf spraddled a shabby, sand-blown, flea-bitten town with only here and there a patch of gay red-tiled roof; nowhere a strip of green or frond of palm to relieve the arid deadliness of the brown-and-yellow hills.
Off shore—there was neither bay nor bight in the even line of surf—a deserted brigantine at anchor dipped slowly with the long Pacific swells, its yards and decks whited like a leper from the unmolested frigate-birds and sea fowl that made it home. Beyond, here and there, a patched sail of no particular size or shape wasbarely filled by the lightest of breezes; occasionally, as one crept past, the outfit developed into a raft on the after part of which was a rough platform of palm on which were housed the Indian fisherman and his crew or family. A few abandoned square tins—the well known export tins of Rockefeller—held the drinking water, an earthen pot their food, and on this flimsy contraption they would put out miles to sea. In beating to windward a loose board or piece from a packing case is poked through the crevices to act as centerboard.
A DESERTED BRIGANTINE AT ANCHOR DIPPED SLOWLY WITH THE LONG PACIFIC SWELLS.
A DESERTED BRIGANTINE AT ANCHOR DIPPED SLOWLY WITH THE LONG PACIFIC SWELLS.
Slowly creeping over the ground swells was the port officer’s boat; it had a uniformed crew and rowed well. The Peruvians watched it contentedly;por Dios, no such stupid work hereas in that Guayas River—buenos dias, Señor Comandante, buenos dias, Señor Doctor—and they stood aside as the captain led the way into his quarters, the procession closing with the nervous ship’s surgeon and a steward with a bottle of warm champagne—for there was no more ice.
Presently they emerged amiably and the port officers put back to shore. We would beincommunicadountil that very afternoon and then we would hear. The little boats that had clustered around theMapochowith Panama hats, fruits, and suspicious looking native candy were waved ashore in a cloud of disappointment. In the afternoon back came the boat and the young surgeon prepared to meet them ceremoniously at the foot of the companion ladder. He could have spared himself the trouble; the little boat stopped fifty feet off while the port doctor handed out a judgment of five days’ quarantine. Twelve dollars and a half a head for the first cabin and a dollar and a quarter, gold, for the steerage, and all additional! Going into quarantine was not, from a purely business standpoint, without its profits. And also the Ecuadorans and the Peruvians once more met with a common bond of sympathy.
A barefooted Chileno sailor who had been already to haul down the big yellow pest flag at the foremast belayed the halliards permanently to the bridge pin rail and trotted off to help in putting over a small boat. This boat flying a small yellow flag, was anchored a half-mile away and during the days of quarantine was the only means of communication with the shore. Each morning through the medium of this anchored boat we did the ship’s business with the shore and from it the steward would return with watermelons, eggs, turkeys, ducks, and vegetables and quinine for the doctor. Occasionally from day to day the port doctor, the port captain, or a member of the sanitary junta would be rowed out in the official boat to look us over and the tottering wrecks between the decks would be mustered at an open cargo port for a distant and sceptical inspection. The local steamship agents, through the daily messages in the anchored boat, kept us interested with the daily rumors—we were a plague ship, a floating charnel house plying our way shamelessly from port to port, a leper of the high seas shunned even by Guayaquil—and one vague and indefinite that seemed to suggest that a port official contemplated a seatrip in a week or so and was engineering this means of giving us the pleasure of his company when he was ready. It was interesting.
One morning when the official sanitary junta—the port doctor, the town druggist, and three shopkeepers, all of whom except the first, were contentedly selling us supplies—were making their inspection within easy hailing distance the returning Peruvian diplomat dealt himself a hand in the game. In a few pointed remarks he demanded that they send a doctor on board to make an examination. The port captain returned an indignant oration in which, after paying tribute to the ancestral deeds of the diplomat’s forebears, he hurled shame at the diplomat for his selfish lack of patriotism in so distrusting the conclusions and acts of his countrymen, obviously he had been so enervated by effete foreign associations that—that—well, it sounded like good oratory anyway. There was no doubt in their minds that we were concealing yellow fever.
Slowly the five days of quarantine passed with this solemn official mockery. The Chinamen ceased from troubling and yielded the daily shilling, the chicken coop was returned to the authority of the steward—although once, for variety, a Chinaman shared it with a couple of turkeys for some hours—and then the final day arrived.
Leisurely the official boat rowed out. The passengers for Ecuador, it announced, were to be transferred to the leprous-looking brigantine where they would remain in quarantine until they could be transfered to a northbound steamer. Incidentally they were privileged to pay twelve sols a day, each, for board. Then the official boat was rowed back; and that was all.
Indignantly the passengers met and decided to pay no more daily quarantine charges—it seemed as if the company needed a little stimulating, perhaps; the purser chuckled sympathetically and then a self-appointed committee looked over the chicken coop with a speculative eye. It was heartening, for at least the monotony would be broken. That night an unofficial boat stole out of the darkness alongside; confirmed the rumorthat the port captain was holding us for a week longer to suit his convenience; then the messenger disappeared in the night. This was interesting as pure news matter and that was all.
Came the morning of the sixth day without change. And then the diplomat’s cables to Lima had effect. A doctor had been appointed on a cabled order from Lima to make a real examination; he came out accompanied by a sanitary junta of very sour officials, climbed on board, and began his work. They pulled away and returned in the afternoon.
The young ship’s surgeon and the new doctor shouted the report across the water. Barring the three cases of malarial fever between decks we had a clean bill of health. The official boat drew a trifle nearer; in the stern sheets the port doctor scanned a formidable looking medical volume that lay open on his knees and the druggist bent his head over the same pages. Solemnly they accepted little test tubes that the ship’s surgeon passed across to them and examined them gravely. They turned a few pages of the book and asked a question. The new doctor answered it promptly. Again they shuffledthe pages and came back with another; another answer, and then more hasty poring.
WHAT THE DIPLOMAT SAID WAS DIRECT AND VOLUBLE.
WHAT THE DIPLOMAT SAID WAS DIRECT AND VOLUBLE.
At length came their decision: it was true that the excellent doctors had described no such symptoms as were standardized for either yellow fever or thepeste bubonica, but there was nothing to prevent those doctors from stating and confirming that which was not true; therefore be it resolved that we had yellow fever, but were concealing it! They were the incorruptible guardians of a nation’s health.
What the diplomat said was direct and voluble and carried perfectly across the calm evening sea: Heaven was a sad witness of his unpatriotic perfidy for he threatened them with a touch of patriotism direct from Lima upon the hour ofhis arrival—however distant or uncertain that might be. A little conference and they voted on our admission, two and two—could anything be fairer! Their honest hearts thanked Heaven for the thought of this simple and adroit deadlock that preserved their official activities and at the same time kept us in a profitable quarantine. Tersely it was pointed out by the diplomat that by virtue of the cabled commission the new doctor was a member of the board—vote again!
That evening we wandered through the dust and sand of Payta and rode grandly, and briefly, to the out-skirts of the town in the single mule-and-rope tram that skirted the beach. It is well in the troubled times of quarantine on the West Coast always to travel with an accredited diplomat on board.
A Wide, Dusty Canal Which in the Intervals Between Showers Serves as a Market
A Wide, Dusty Canal Which in the Intervals Between Showers Serves as a Market
All next day the whirr and clatter of the steam-winches and the bang of cargo kept up and again we visited the dusty port, wading through the lines of Panama hat sellers that lined up to greet the landing of our small boat. Of hotel runners there were none, this being due to the fact that there was but one hotel to which the stray custom is bound to drift. At the hotel we saw a few palms and tropical blooms in tubs and in a carefully irrigated patio, for Payta is—like all that West Coast—rainless. As a cold matter of meteorological fact itdoesrain sometimes; I accidentally started an acrimonious discussion by a merely polite remark on the weather as to whether it had been nine, eleven, or fourteen years since the last rain. In apparent proof of this there is a wide, dusty canal bulkheaded with piling on either side which in these intervals between showers serves as a native market. Little red flags flutter from thechicheriaswhere the opaque, yellow, Indian corn beer is sold, ranging in flavor and potency from warm buttermilk to the wicked “stone-fence” of New Jersey.
Back of the town a trail wades through the sand to the crest of the long bluffs; the feet of countless pack trains have worn a driveway through the ridge until, stepping through, there are suddenly spread before the view the endless stretches of a dried and dusty desert that has been an ocean’s prehistoric bed. The hot airs quiver and boil from the twisting valleys or ridges of blistering sand and rock and through the pulsing heat the occasional pack train in the distance turns to a wavering, shimmering thread. To the imagination a desert rises as a dull, gray expanseendless in its colorless monotony; here there was a riot of color, every hue, raw and gorgeous—except green—from the soft purples and cool sapphire of the shadows to the blazing yellows and reds and white of the open spaces. And in the garish stretch of a dead ocean there slowly rises like a parching thirst a longing for a sweep of tender green.
CLOSE RESEMBLANCE TO AN ARMY OF DRUNKEN BUGS.
CLOSE RESEMBLANCE TO AN ARMY OF DRUNKEN BUGS.
The little governmental touch from Lima had cleared the path of quarantine and we began a dot-and-carry-one course down the coast from Payta; every day our winches whirred and clattered off some dusty, sand-blown port. Before our anchor had touched bottom in the open road-stead a fleet oflanchas, heavy, double-ended, open lighters of from ten to twenty-five tons capacity were crawling over the water; the dozen long oars that were their means of locomotion—and that were manipulated on an independentcompetitive basis—spraddled on each side gave the fleet a close resemblance to an army of drunken bugs struggling forward on uncertain legs. There was always a race to theMapocho’sside and the first to get there caught the heaving line.
Once a lancha defeated in a close finish came on and cut the heaving line so that its rival was left with the useless section while it hurriedly hauled in on the hawser. Instantly a fine naval engagement was in progress as the lanchas locked like a couple of old Carthaginian galleys. By the aid of force peace was established and the rightful and original award of the hawser sustained; had it not been, as the first officer explained, they would need a new heaving line at every port.
The bluffs of the coast gave way to hills and these in turn to higher ones; the Andes were closing in on the Pacific. At times the great mountain chain towered from the very water’s edge in a succession of steep cliffs, each receding tier softening in the distance and rising through the slowly shifting strata of clouds until only the gashes of white snow picked out the towering peaks. Here and there steep, rocky islets fringed the coast line and we stood far out to save the chances, and yet there was no appreciablechange in the proportions of the tremendous mountain range. The sense of proportion and distance was lost in the comparison of these vast reaches. A rocky islet, a steep sugar-loaf affair, rose from the ocean perhaps five feet—not much as an island or a mountain peak. Through the binoculars a tiny unknown speck at the base developed into a full-rigged bark with tapering masts above which the sugar-loaf rock rose for thousands of feet in the clear air, and on it was a wretched colony of guano workers.
Then the coast opened out into level reaches again with occasional lines of irrigation ditches showing a thread of green. Occasionally—twice I think—there was actually a landlocked harbor. It was one of these, Chimbote, that James G. Blaine proposed to use or secure as a naval base and coaling station. It is perfectly sheltered with a narrow, bottle-neck entrance guarded by a rocky island in the middle which is covered with a wriggling film of seals that are perfectly indifferent to the close passage of ships or men.
Every Day our Winches Whirred and Clattered off some Dusty, Sand-blown Port
Every Day our Winches Whirred and Clattered off some Dusty, Sand-blown Port
In this harbor rode the queerest of sea-going craft. In Mexico I had once seen a Chinaman fit himself up a home from about eight feet of one end of a hopelessly wrecked dugout, take in a partner, and then the two of them paddle off up the river in the fishing business, sleeping and eating aboard the flat-iron shaped thing. Here in this case was a bow and stern bolted together without a midship section. And both the bow and stern were those of a fairly full size tramp freighter. The bow was the ram bow of a war ship and back of it there was barely room to squeeze in a capstan and a tiny hatch; the foremast shared the bridge, a funnel and whistle jammed themselves up against the bridge, while the short distance to the stern rail gave room for a squat cabin out of which rose the mainmast. A score of Chimbote lanchas were as big—bigger—and where this telescoped liner would find room for cargo or coal after providing for engines and a galley is a mystery. Yet it does carry cargo and ambles along from port to port a tragic marvel of compression.
The day before, off Huanchazo, where a storm far out had piled up a heavy, oily groundswell, that even put the racks on the tables, a wealthy old Peruvian lady had been hoisted abroad in a cask clinging to her son. She was a garrulous old soul, powdered like a marshmallow, withthree chins and a little moustache, and her son was the very apple of her eye. Therefore, son was what one might expect. His adolescent and mature ambition was to be the amorous cut-up of the coast and so far he had succeeded generously in making a smug, self-satisfied nuisance of himself. He counted doting mother’s allowance publicly, drank warm champagne noisily when thrifty mother was not around, and dressed in the Huanchazo idea of French fashions for men. In the morning he did not appear. Mother explained fondly—but not the truth. She did not know it.
Passengers are warned not to go between decks after dark, the steerage hutches and the crew have the freedom of that deck. Son prowled down on some shifty little romantic project of his own. In the darkness he suddenly felt two sharp little pricks in the skin of his back and one sharp little prod in front; they felt very, very much like the points of knives. Up went son’s hands promptly and in the blackness he felt heavy hands pulling out his maternal allowance—the beautiful money with which he was to flaunt his fascinations in Lima. Hence no Limanean gay life—mother it seemed was a thriftySpartan in money matters—and son was in his berth, weeping. A steward told us the latter, confidentially of course.
Samancho, Chimbote, Salivari, Suppe, and then at last, in the daybreak of the morning after the last named and in the midst of a soft, clouded day, Callao. There was the usual customs search of the baggage—a maddening process to an Englishman, mildly irritating to a Frenchman, and accepted meekly and placidly by Americans as a matter of course from a thorough training in our own home ports. I have never passed through any country that could give as close an imitation of our own thorough methods of dock robbery and tariff brigandage as Peru. A quarter of an hour by train through a rich soil that can be worked only by irrigation and Lima, the first halt on the continent, has been attained.
For two weeks there was nothing to do but to idle in Lima. A delightful city full of the old contrasts of highly civilized, sybaritic pleasures alongside of the squalid, aimless poverty of the survivors of a devastated empire. There is the Bois where fashionable equipages with cockaded, copper-colored lackeys—possibly in bare or sandaledfeet—on the box, silver-mounted harness and heavy, Chilean bred coach horses jingle past in procession on Sunday afternoons while some gallant Peruano lopes alongside with huge silver stirrups and a saddle almost solid with bullion; the sodden side streets where the buzzard and the scavenger pig are man’s best friend; the cathedral where lies the dessicated body of Pizarro in a marble casket like an aquarium, the one open side covered with glass through which may be seen the remains of that treacherous old buccaneer, with his head re-fastened by a silver wire to guard against a repetition of the theft; the cathedral itself with its murky interior smoked by the votive candles of millions of conscript converts; its queer carvings where the ecclesiastical memories of architecture have been freely rendered by the Indian stone-cutters; the clubs, the cafés—and the ambrosial coffee—chapels with the bullion covered walls, the wretched tobacco at high tariff—extorted prices—all these and then the Hotel Maury.
Lima, a Delightful City of Contrasts
Lima, a Delightful City of Contrasts
Peace be to Savarin, to Delmonico, and to Chamberlain. They did well in their way. But they never served a squid, or cuttlefish, floating like a small hot-water bottle, tender and delicious in an inky sauce of their own founding; nor a starfish sprawled in a five-pointed dream of savory, lobster-like succulence; nor “señoritas”—a delicate species of scallop—each with its tiny scarlet tongue draped across the pearl-white bivalve bosom and that, steamed or not, melted in one supreme ecstatic flavor; nor five inchlangostinfresh from the cold waters of the Andean hills, nor compounded or invented a strawberry gin cocktail of surpassing allurement—cooled by a piece of ice kept in a flannel-lined drawer and returned thereto after stirring. None of these things had they and so by just that much they fell short.
In the Hotel Maury there was a written bill of fare for those who could merely read. But for the expert, the fastidious—or the adventurous—there was a redoubt in the main room whose flanking bastions and crest were a solid array of great joints and little joints, steaks, chops, unnamed fish in platoons and señoritas in brigades, fruits, vegetables and all of the foregoing—and more—laid out in tiers and terraces whose foundations were of cool, inviting seaweeds and mosses, and still further seductively embellished with a variety of paper ribbons and crests andcockades until one almost lost sight of the pagodas of gaudy, many-storied cakes and confections that rose like watch towers at judicious intervals along the battlements. It was a salon.
To the shuffling, woolen-capped, sandaled, or bare-footed Indian at one’s heels the directions were given, you chose what you would as they thus reposed in the altogether and then repaired to await in a sawdust-floored cavern at one side and in a state of serene and expectant bliss the certain pleasures of the very immediate future. You waited, it is true, at a warped table with a stained cloth on which a bent cruet supplied the only note of elegance. And, lest any of the precious viands be lost in transit or breakage, you knew that you would be served with a substantial, hard-shell crockery only slightly more vulnerable than reinforced concrete. Presently your Indian reappeared in a shuffling trot scattering sawdust from the prow of each sandal like a harbor pile-driver under full speed—the hard-shell crockery is white hot, but he has the hands of a salamander—and then with a flourish he drops an assorted collection of tableware somewhere within reach—you are served. And what a repast! Peace be to Savarin, Delmonico and—enough.Comparisons are invidious and the Maury can stand alone in the continent of his choosing.
Very shortly the sailing day came for, since it was not possible to land in Mollendo owing to that port being afflicted with a quarantine, it had been necessary to catch a steamer that would put us through the surf at Quilca, a hole in a cliff that has its only function in these times of quarantine. A farewell inspection of the redoubt and bastions, a recharging of the bottle of salicylic acid and alcohol, which while it had in no way abated the fleas of the Hotel Maury, yet had mitigated their consequences, and Lima and Callao drifted into the background with the closing day. From Quilca in some way we would connect by muleback and packtrain across the desert to the desert station of La Joya with the railroad to Arequipa and thence to Lake Titicaca and across to La Paz.
The stand-by bell of theLimaritinkled from her engine-room, our baggage and freight were safely stowed in the wallowing Peruvian lanchas alongside, and the Bolivian mail followed. The Captain of the Port and the Inspector of Customs balanced down the swaying gangway and dropped into the gig alongside. We followed.
Before us stretched the long, barren line of rocky coast, fading away in the soft mist of a Peruvian winter. For it is winter here, damp and chill, in September. Directly ahead is a narrow, ragged break in the cliffs. Inside is Quilca, the side door to La Paz in days of quarantine.
We cross the barrier of half-concealed rock before us, and soon we are in the smooth waters of the cañon beyond. On either side the red volcanicbluffs rise for perhaps two hundred feet, their faces scarred and seamed or beaten into grotesque forms by the Pacific of ages past. Up this defile we rowed for several hundred yards, then we rounded a ragged promontory, and the full glories of the metropolis of Quilca burst upon us. A broken flight of steps led from the water, and, back of it all, two thin straggling lines of woven-cane huts bounded the solitary street. Two houses, more dismally pretentious than the rest, with mud walls and corrugated-iron roofs, marked the local seat of government. In the distance rose the red volcanic hills, dull, flat, and shadowless under the clouded sky of the tropical winter. This was all of Quilca.
We had cabled from Lima for horses and a pack-train to meet us and bring us over the desert of San José, where we could get the train to the interior.
The morning after our arrival we were awakened by the clatter of the pack-mules as they passed our quarters, and the “Hola, hola! Huish, huish!” of theirarrieros. It was our train.
In the middle of the lone street the arrieros were busy lashing our smaller packages in rawhidenets. Scattered about in the sand were the larger cases of freight—prospecting machinery and mining hardware—amounting to a little over a ton in weight; and still under the guard of Agamemnon in our quarters of the night was the personal equipment—trunks, instruments, rifles, shotguns, cartridges and powder and shot—making nineteen hundred pounds more. And blocking the only thoroughfare of Quilca were the twelve pack-mules—long-haired, disconsolate animals, with pepper-and-salt complexions, save where patches of bare hide showed the chafing of the pack-ropes. They looked as though our own regulation army load of two hundred pounds per mule would be far too great. And they were to divide four thousand pounds among them.
It was eleven o’clock in the forenoon when the last diamond-hitch was thrown and the last pack lashed in place. The arrieros swung their long, knotted rawhide thongs, the saddle-galled bell-mare clanged as she led the way, and we climbed into our saddles and fell in behind the straggling mules as they led the way up the dismal street and out into the desert.
The trail rose sharply as it left Quilca, andthen wound around to the right, where it joined the old desert road used by the Spaniards after their conquest, and for centuries before that by the Incas in their barter with the coast. On each side rose white walls of rotten rock, higher than our heads as we rode by, the path between them worn down by plodding hoofs for untold ages. Upon this path the rock was ground to a fine white powder that rose in clouds and covered us until we looked ahead as through the mists of a fog. Vaguely, over the walls, the ragged volcanic hills silhouetted against the sky.
We kept on ascending between these winding walls, at length emerging on a narrow table-land—the top of the cliffs we had seen from the decks of theLimari. A short distance over the level ground, and then from the farther edge we looked down on the flat, stony bottom of the Vitor Valley—a ragged gorge that wound a tortuous course through the desert. A narrow trail with short, sharp angles zigzagged down a steep gully to the bottom. The mules carefully picked their way down among the loose stones, halting inquiringly at times to choose perhaps a shorter cut. If it seemed to their instinct feasible, they gathered their hind legs under them, their fronthoofs sticking stiffly out in front, and slid down on their bellies, in a cloud of dust, carrying with them a small avalanche of loose shale as they landed in a section of the trail below.
You sit back in your saddle—all saddles in these parts have cruppers and breastplates to prevent your sliding over the animal’s ears as you go down or slipping off behind as you go up a mountain path—and as you watch the tossing line of packs below, the speculation forces itself as to the consequences of a mule’s misstep. That it is not all idle speculation is shown by the scattered skeletons below in the valley, bleached to varying degrees of dull white.
We do not descend to the pavement of river-washed stones on the bed of the valley. Twenty yards above, the trail leads abruptly off to the left into a narrow ditch worn in the face of the cliff, which in places has been scooped out to allow for the width of the packs, leaving an insecure overhang of rock above.
For miles we followed the contour of the valley, clinging to the steep slopes and the sides of the cliffs that hedged it in. Then down a clayey bank the trail started diagonally across the bottom of the valley to the farther side. Occasionallywe would come suddenly on a little clearing where two or three Indians, grisly through the ashen grime, were burning charcoal—little twigs scarcely bigger than one’s finger. We came out at the farther side of the valley against the cliffs of the mesa beyond. On the little stony flat before them, three straggling huts of woven cane with thatched roofs of barley straw marked a lonely hacienda. A few dirty Indians and their slatternly wives lounged about. A short distance beyond, the trail led over the steep talus at the base of the cliffs; then on up through a narrow, wedge-shaped crevice that wound back and forth in short ascending turns, till it disappeared over the edge of the mesa a thousand feet above. For miles on either side it was the only break in the cliff; and as we looked at the stiff prospect ahead of us, the rocky descent of a few hours before seemed like gentle morning exercise in the park.
For a short distance the trail ran straight up over the loose shale; then the real ascent began. Ten yards to the right, then ten to the left, and steeper with each change. The mules humped their backs and scratched along on the toe of the hoof, choosing their foothold with the nice precisionof a cat crossing a sprinkled street. Two turns to the right, then two to the left; then a rest of half a minute, when without urging they would recommence the ascent. Slowly and tediously we climbed, and finally rode out on a broad, level plateau that stretched away and merged with the desert hills of the distance. Below us toiled our pack-train, tediously weaving back and forth on the zigzag trail. As each section reached the level ground, the arriero dismounted and went among his animals, talking mule-talk and easing loads to a better balance or tightening the stretched cinches. All the unkempt, hairy sides were heaving with heavy breaths. A few lay down—a bad sign in a pack-animal. But in twenty minutes every mule was apparently as fresh as ever, wandering about and foraging on the stiff, wiry bunch-grass of the arid soil. And when we started they stepped off easily under their loads, with their long ears briskly flapping. The two small arrieros left us here and returned to Quilca, for the chief difficulties were passed, and the rest was but persistent plodding over the desert to San José.
The trail over the plateau had been worn in parallel furrows like the thin strip of a newlyploughed field. Each mule chose his furrow and insistently walked there, resenting the effort of any of the others to get in ahead of him. When a collision occurred you could hear the rattle of nail-kegs and the clatter of shovels, picks, and hardware a half-mile off as they butted and shoved for the right of way. Our two remaining arrieros rode in the rear, muffled in their gaudy woolen ponchos. Occasionally a lean arm would shoot out from under its folds and the knotted thong bite the flank of some lagging mule. These mule-drivers’ thongs are long, braided strips of rawhide spliced into the curb-rein—they use no snaffle—ending in a heavy knot. Its twelve or fourteen feet lie coiled in the bridle-hand until called into service. Then with a twist of the wrist, it feeds rapidly out through the right hand, humming like a sawmill as it circles round his head, and landing with a thwack that generally corrects the indisposition for which it is intended. Often the arrieros imitate its vicious hum, and it will frequently prove sufficient.
The trail was distinct enough—there was no fear of wandering away from it—a slender ditch worn in the bed of the arroyo. Here and therea ragged little hole dug in the soft walls of white rock marked the lonely home of some desert badger; and again we would ride past whole colonies of them. In these badger villages the holes fairly honeycombed the sides of the trail and the bluff walls of the arroyos, and the shuffling claw-marks of the badger trails scarred the dust in all directions. There were no other signs of life; not even the scaly windings of a lizard were to be seen, and the sparse patches of bunch-grass had long since disappeared.
Mile after mile we pushed up these narrow valleys. The badger-holes disappeared, and strange desert growths began to appear from time to time. As we had ascended, the clouds had seemed to lower, and now we could see on either hand the light mists floating about us.
One more steep loomed ahead. We pushed through the damp strata of mists clinging to its sides, and came out on the flat land above in the long level rays of the setting sun. Below us, over the clouds, it cast its cold, blue shadows and sparkling high lights, transforming those shifting, unstable vapors into rippling waves of golden foam. To the east the whole desert glowed with color. The long furrows of thetrail wove themselves in patterns of orange and purple. Rolling shadows, rich in their changing violets, faded slowly and softly away to the left. Gorgeous reds and scarlets, madders, oranges, crimsons—every brilliant color of the palette—spread in glowing masses, changing with each minute of the dying day. The saddle-stiffness, cracked lips, and parched throat, dry with the alkaline dust, were forgotten—even the dismal clank of the bell-mare slowly toiling in the lead mellowed to a far-off chime—and in those few brief moments of the vanishing day we felt the subtle desert spell.
The shadows grew colder and merged one into another; the desert dimmed, a few stars glistened, and, as though a door had closed behind us, we passed into the night. Twilight is short in the tropics. Down by the horizon on our right the Southern Cross slowly lighted up—four straggling points of light that feebly struggled with the blazing stars about them. We closed in behind the swaying shadow of the mules, from which came the subdued rattle of packs and creaking cinches, that were the only sounds to disturb the dark stillness. It was but a little way now; in another hour we would be in camp.
Out of the shadow ahead came the clash of picks and shovels, the rattle of a load as it struck the sand, and the swaying shades of the mules divided around a black mass stretched on the trail. It was the first note of exhaustion. For twelve hours the mules had plodded at the same steady gait, rested only by the halt on the cliff, miles back, and the wonder of it was that, with their loads, none had dropped before. As we rode up we could see against the faint starlit ground the sprawling silhouette of the beast, lying as he fell, the long, expressive ears limp on the desert sand. The arrieros dismounted and pried him on his feet again, and patiently he hit the trail. In the next half-hour four more went down. At one time half our mules were down, and we strung out over the desert for two miles picking them up.
A few minutes later we swung off to the right, stumbling through a series of broken ditches—the remains of the old Inca irrigation systems that ran for miles back into the Andes. Then we dropped down steep winding paths, our shoulders scraping against walls of sand as we turned to the right or left around the corners. The mules apparently understood that a campwas not far ahead, and seemed fresher. Soon we rode out on a flat, sitting straight in our saddles once more, with the hard rattle of stones underfoot and the cool wet sound of running water just ahead. Then the noiseless, padded ground of a corral, and the mules lay down and we climbed out of our saddles. It was the camp at last.
A dried old Indian appeared from somewhere, and by the light of his tallow dip I made out the time—half past three in the morning. We had come seventy-six miles without water or rest.
At a little after six we were awake. The sun was rising above the cliffs that lined the valley, though the chill of the night air still lingered. Coffee awaited us in the openwork cane hut of the Indian proprietor of this hacienda, and as soon as we finished it we would start. In the daylight we could see that we were in a broad level valley. Through the center of the valley ran a brook—a portion of the same Vitor River of the day before, but now dwindled to a tiny thread. About us clustered a few buildings with low walls of broken stone from some Inca ruin. A short distance off was the mission church of the desert, announced by a cross of two twigs tiedwith a strip of rawhide and surmounting an excrescence of broken stones evidently intended as a steeple. We drank the thick, black coffee, for which the Indian refused both money and presents, and at seven o’clock we started.
It was all white sand now, and everywhere the same hot, white glare hedged us in. There was not a breath of air, and as the sun rose higher it beat down with a constantly growing heat. Then once more out on the flat desert above. For endless miles it stretched, quivering in the heated air of the morning. Away down in the east the long line of the ragged, snow-covered Andes loomed up, their summits thrust through the low banks of clouds along the horizon. All signs of a trail had disappeared. The little furrows left by the passing pack-trains were filled in by the hot desert winds that blow always from the west. It is the unvarying steadiness of these winds that causes the curious crescent-shaped dunes of sand found on this desert. There were thousands of these shimmering in the long distances of the heated glare, from little ones just blown into existence and not six inches from tip to tip up to great banks forty feet high and with two hundred feet between the horns. Superheatedpuffs of air blew from them that struck like a breath from the first run of molten slag. The heat crept between your closed teeth and dried your tongue. When you spoke it was from the throat, and the words seemed to shrivel in your mouth.
For twenty miles we plodded over the scorching glare, and then, far ahead, a small dark patch appeared. Slowly it developed and became a dull, dusty green—scraggly palms and a few peach-trees; then a railroad station with a hot galvanized-iron roof. It was San José.
In the half-hour to train-time our saddles were off and stored, the baggage and freight separated and shipped, and we ourselves stretched comfortably in the shade of the agent’s thatched porch. The Arequipa train backed in, and the agent and conductor loaded the one box car, and we followed our outfit in.
The baking heat of the desert boiled in through the open doors of the freight car, the blazing sun beat down upon the roof, and, inside, a thousand essences from its variegated life simmered and blended. Together with some half dozen of assorted native passengers we had jammed ourselves in among a jumble of food-stuffs and mining hardware in transit. The box car banged and groaned and occasionally halted on the desert at the hail of some wayfarer whom we helped cordially up and stirred into the odoriferous oven. Sociably we rode in this freight car up from the desert oasis of San José because this freight car constituted the whole of the train. Farther on at Vitor there was hope of a real train.
In the scant space left by the cargo I had wedged myself against a stack of dried fish whilemy feet reposed easily on the body of a newly dead pig on his way to the market in Arequipa joggling in time to the uncertain swaying of the car; Agamemnon fitted his saddle-stiff joints into a niche in the freight and went peacefully to sleep, indifferent to the broken barrel of lime that sifted its contents over him. And so it was that we pulled in to Vitor, a town that hung on the edge of the desert from which rose the foothills of the first Andean range to the eastward. Stiffly we climbed down and out into the heated, but untainted air and idled in the station shadow until the train should signify its readiness to receive us.
I was passing through the patio of the station when I was briefly conscious of a rush, a choked snarl, and in the same instant my whole right leg seemed to have stepped into a vise clamped to a jig-saw; the impact spun me half around and I found myself helpless in the grip of a huge, flea-bitten mongrel that just lacked, by what appeared to be a mere shadow of a margin, sufficient power to shake me rat fashion. I judged that it was about eight years afterward when an Indian leisurely appeared and clattered at the brute. Adroitly it let go and disappeared beforeI could get a sufficiently able-bodied rock out of the pavement for I was unarmed, having packed my gun when preparing to leave San José.
AN AREQUIPA CARRIER
AN AREQUIPA CARRIER
But it turned out to have been purely illusion after all, as was apparent on the assurances of the lean buccaneer who had the restaurant privilege and acted as station master. There was not a dog about the place no, señor! I pointed to the dorsal facade of my battle-scarred person.Caramba—investigation,prontissimo! The lean buccaneer called and an Indian responded. It wasthe same Indian who had driven off the dog. He listened to the buccaneer. Then he replied at length and with gestures. I listened, but it was in Quechua they spoke, a dialect that sounds not unlike German interspersed with an occasional vocal imitation of a brass band. The buccaneer again turned to me:
“Señor, it is as I said. There is no dog,—there has been no dog,—I have no dog—it is a very great pity,—I sympathize!”
It revealed to me a power of imagination I had not suspected myself of possessing, though Agamemnon who was pinning up the rents and counting the punctures still regarded it as an actual occurrence.
The blistering hours on the trail across the desert had left us as parched as a dried sponge, crackly and dusty and with brittle, peeling skins ravenous for moisture. Outside the newly made-up train on either side straggled a collection of grimy, sand-blown Indians—mainly women—peddling queer, uncertain foods from earthen pots or battered tin cans that were in great demand among the sophisticated natives while, on a higher plane of dignity, a fat, placid Cholo sent the first native urchin on whom his eye fellinto the station presently to deliver to you a bottle of unripe, bilious beer as warm as the hot shadow in which it had been kept. Its color, foam, and the characteristic shape of the bottles were means of identification, but, with the eyes closed, it did not differ materially from catnip tea or any of the old home remedy stand-bys. And never did an orange look more nobly luscious, for the round, unripe, green skin of the native product enfolds a heart of nectar.
From Vitor on we wound through twisting gorges or steep valleys, barren of all save cactus and the desert shale and boulders. Steadily the train climbed. Always on one side or the other were the traces of the old Inca empire and its industrious dominion; here a fragmentary stretch of road and a ruined gateway, now and again the almost obliterated ruins of some old town or village, but always, running along the sides of the steep hills or through the valleys, the dusty remains of a tremendous system of irrigation ditches. Where once has been a busy land, soft with the green of growing things, there are the cactus and the badger and the occasional baked-mud hut of an Indian wringing a dull living from the desert, Heaven knows how, where his ancestors once farmed and throve in multitudes.
In Arequipa the City of Churches
In Arequipa the City of Churches
The contrast stirs the dullest fancy. And on the side of the spoilers for their gains? Only the dessicated remains of a treacherous old pirate that may be viewed—for a very moderate tip—through the side of a marble aquarium back in Lima as a cathedral curio and, in Europe, an asthmatic and toothless Spain drained to decrepitude by her own remorseless greed and predaceous piety.
In the long rays of the sunset the train rolled across the level stretches of the high valley in which lies the city of Arequipa. The low, flat houses—more or less earthquake proof—and the red tile roofs were radiant in the mellow glow. Beyond rose the dull, volcanic slopes of Misti in an immense cone, while best of all, in the one story hotel of rambling patios in that city of earthquakes we were once more able to collect sufficient water at one time to accomplish a bath. In Arequipa the first train stops exhausted;mañana, or at the worst only a few days later, a second train leaves to climb the first high pass and leave its passengers on the shores of Lake Titicaca.
Throughout the city there is scarcely a buildingthat cannot show patched cracks or gaping cornices that are the scars of earthquakes; here and there a heap of rock and plaster or fragmentary walls abandoned to the Indian beggars mark the years of greattemblors. Rarely does a private house attempt a second story and the marvel is how the churches or the cathedral, with their high walls and towers, have been able to survive at all! Though often cracked and battered, yet in some way they have weathered the subterranean gales.
And what a city for churches! On every street, on all but every turn, there rises an ecclesiastical edifice with its grim walls of faded, peeling kalsomine and its porticos, perhaps ornamented with odd stone carvings that preserve a strong Indian flavor in spite of the old monkish guidance. Whole blocks in the heart of the city are bounded by enormous walls enclosing the sacred precincts of a convent or monastery. I was informed that out of every twelve inhabitants, men, women, and children, one was in some of the many orders behind the high walls. Each day in some part of the city is a fiesta in honor of some particular saint who is heralded and honored by a vast popping of firecrackers, squibs,and rockets and a grand procession through the neighborhood. Often several saints’ fiestas fall on the same day and from all directions come the rattle of firecrackers and the plop of the daylight bombs or rockets and any casual stroll will bring one against a procession heavy with the smoke of incense or uncanny with the thin, wailing chanting of the celebrants.