The Indian, the native miner, has his own methods of winning the gold from the rocks and gravels, or the gold-bearing streams of the Montaña, or the auriferous earths of the high pampas. In the streams he selects a suitable spot and paves it with large stones. Then, when the floods pass over the prepared surface of rude "riffles," the gold carried down by the waters from the auriferous rocks lodges in the interstices, and, removing the stones, he recovers the precious nuggets and dust. Or, by laborious panning in a batea, or wooden bowl, hollowed out of a block of wood, he washes the gravel from the rich banks of sediment, and the gold lies at the bottom. In the case of the gold-bearing ores, he digs shallow pits in the surface of the ledge, where Nature, under the oxidation of the pyrites, has transformed the gold into a form recoverable by the simple method of amalgamation with quicksilver, after crushing the friable quartz under a primitive rocking-stone.
Indeed, in many places, it would seem that Nature has placed the gold here in a form such that recovery will remunerate the natural son of the soil, when a more greedy and better-equipped "company" would be unable to pay its way. The stores of gold possessed by the Incas of Peru were won by such primitive methods; large bodies of Indians being employed upon the work, and evidences of their operations remain to the present time.
The ancient folk of the Andes had as their greatest food products maiz, millet and potatoes, together with the numerous tropical fruits of the lowlands. They gave Europe the potato—surely no inconsiderable gift—having developed it in Ecuador, Peru and Chile, from the wild, bitter variety; and Europe gave them wheat and other cereals, and, of course, the domestic animals—ox, cow, sheep, horse and pig.
The llama was their only beast of burden here—this curious, hoofed, ruminating quadruped of the camel tribe, with its long neck and timid face. In our journeys along these bleak uplands we shall meet large droves of the llamas, bearing loads of merchandise, in weight up to a hundred pounds. These animals are sagacious in their way, and if overloaded refuse to move. Their services, their wool, their flesh, are all extremely valuable adjuncts of Indian life. The creature costs little or nothing to keep: it requires no shelter, and it feeds itself as it goes along, at a rate of about four miles an hour. The llama indeed was—and is—an outstanding figure in the native economics of the Peruvian and Bolivian Andes. Its cousin the alpaca is also to be seen in large bands.
Up to the limit of the temperate zone in the Peruvian Andes, about 11,500 feet, we shall remark some of the familiar flora of England, such as ferns, nettles, buttercups, violets and stitchwort, together with wild geraniums and pelargoniums. Apples, pears, cherries and strawberries also grow, under desultory cultivation. Trees are scant in the almost treeless Andes, and we find little beyond the groves of stunted quinua and other native shrubs, which, however, are valuable for fuel. The ichu grass—stipa Incana—which also serves for "thatching" the Indian huts, is the predominant herbage.
As we ascend, the vegetation becomes even more humble. At 13,500 feet the potato will not grow; the hardy barley will not yield. Only a few thorny shrubs and some curious cacti are to be seen. Higher still we reach the limit of the perpetual snow, where little but the lichens and a few cryptogams appear, except a few cold-resisting flowers having medicinal properties. Above, all is bare, the inorganic world asserts its kingdom—except for the condor of the Andes circling around the summit of some ice-covered volcano.
Here in these high, inclement uplands, I have pitched my tent, and my Indians are now preparing a meal around the camp-fire, made of the dry grass or some scanty leña or firewood, or possibly we may have come across a "colony" of the curious yareta, a huge mushroom-like woody growth, perhaps three feet in diameter, full of resin, which burns fiercely: a product only of the Peruvian and Bolivian heights. Failing these matters, the fire must be of dry llama dung, or taquia, a useful fuel in the Andes, from which even the ores of silver, in places, are smelted.
PERU: LLAMAS AND ALPACAS.