Across the Andes

by Charles Johnson Post

There were scores of llama trains coming down the Andes from the uttermost parts of the empire, a veritable flood of gold was on its way to secure the release of the sacred Inca chief. It never arrived and somewhere up and down some three thousand miles of Andes there are legends galore of Inca tribute treasure concealed by the Indians on the burning of their king. There are legends of monkish parchment maps left by early missionaries that locate rediscoveries with apparent exactness up to certain points, of mines relocated by accident; in one case, a drunken Scotch donkey-engine driver took up and finally married a wretched Aymará mine-woman, a half-human creature; she finally revealed to him the location of one of the old concealed mines and the two worked it together. As the story runs, they acquired fabulous wealth, he longed for Scotland and went back taking her with him and importing for her use the chuno and chalona that was her only food. He played fair. Finally he died there and his widow managed to get back to her own mountains where she was finally poisoned for her money or her secret.

Legend also has it that around the city of Cuzco—the seat of the Incas—there was a great golden chain and that this, upon the approach of Pizarro, was dropped into Titicaca. It is always a steamer discussion as to how soon the lake will have receded enough to make its discovery a matter of possibility. At the possible place where it was dropped in the engineer of the Coya holds that the lake has receded some six miles since the conquest.

There is also the legend of the immense treasure train coming down in sections from what is now Colombia and Ecuador which was on the mountain trails at the time of Atahualpa’s death; evidence is said to exist of the despatch of this gold which would have more than completed the ransom. It never arrived, it was never heard of again after the burning at the stake, but it is a common belief to-day that there are many Indians to whom these matters are tribal secrets. There are common tales of odd Indians, neither Quechua nor Aymará, those being the two great Indian divisions, suddenly appearing from time to time and taking part in some Indian fiesta of peculiar importance, although evidently all the fiestas now have been given an ecclesiastical significance—and then as completely disappearing. There are rumors of tribes and even cities buried in the eastern slopes of the Andes from which these irregular excursions come.

Skirting the shore until the late afternoon, the Yavari struck out into the ocean horizon that stretched away in the blue distance, until we raised the Island of the Sun and the Island of the Moon. The former is reputed to have been the summer residence of the Incas and there still remain the ruins of palaces together with a great basin or reservoir hewn from the solid rock and traditionally known as the Inca’s bath tub. To the other island is ascribed the home of the wives and concubines of the Incas, or perhaps a training school where they were domiciled until, like an army reserve, they were called to the colors.

From each of them the Yavari took on a little freight, a few sacks of cebada, barley, and chuño, the little, dried up, original, native American potato, not much larger than a nutmeg. The cargo was on board a heavy, sluggish reed boat, a big affair in which burros and even bullocks are carried to or from these lake islands—of which there are many scattered here and there—and the mainland.

All the western slopes of the Andes are treeless, the high plains are treeless, and the few poles that are used in the thatched roofs of the Indian huts are dragged out from the montaña, as the interior over the final Andean passes is called. These skinny little poles are regular articles of trade. Therefore, the Lake Titicaca Indian has evolved his reed canoe and boat.

The reed, which grows along the shores of the lake, is bound in round bundles tapering at both ends; these bundles in turn are lashed together to form the canoes, from the little bundles to the larger boats that can carry freight. Sometimes a mat sail, also from these same reeds, is hoisted on a couple of poles lashed together at the apex and at the base braced against the inside of the clumsy craft. The steering is done with an oar made from a pole and a board, while similar oars are used by the crew who drive a wooden pin for an oarlock at any convenient spot along the reed-bundle gunwale. In this kind of an outfit they put out on the lake fishing for the little fish that alone seem to have survived in the cold waters, or shuffling across the waves from the coast to one little sugar-loaf island after another in their native trade. In Pizarro’s day it was probably the same—costume, craft, and barter.

In Pizarro’s Day It Was Probably the Same—Costume, Craft, and Barter

One more night in the cramped wardrobe of the Yavari—during which my solution of alcohol and salicylic acid procured in flea-bitten Lima—against other similar emergencies—did valiant service, and in the morning we awoke to the clatter of the Indian mate and his Quechua crew as they made the little steamer fast to the dock at Guaqui. From here a railroad runs over a continuation of the level high plain and past the ruins of Tiajuanaca to the edge of the plateau above La Paz. The valley of La Paz is a vast crack torn in the level plain as by some primeval cataclysmic blast; on the farther side there is the tremendous peak of Illomani with a cape of perpetual snow far down its grim flanks; far off in the ragged valley and some two thousand feet below the railroad terminal is the capital of Bolivia, La Paz. Once no trolley wound its way down the steep sides, and in those days there still gathered at the station every Deadwood and express coach that had ever existed at the north. A crew of runners would meet the train, pile all the freight and passengers that were possible inside, lash the rest on the roof, and then with their four or six horse teams—never an animal free from a collar gall—on a dead run race for a place at the edge of the mesa in order to be the first on the winding trail that led downward to the city. Whips cracking, horses on the jump, coaches swinging and banging, here a hairy rawhide trunk goes off, and there an Indian hotel mozo is snapped straight out in the rush as he tries to crawl up on the baggage rack behind; and then the dropping trail in a whirl of dust over a road scarcely better than a dry creek bottom until, at last, over the rough cobbles of La Paz itself, to pull up at the door of the hotel with the rough horses in a lather and with white eyes and heaving sides. That was the way it was once. Now it is different; you can ride down sedately in a trolley car and walk into the hotel with never a hair turned.