An incident of the day is thunder and a threatened rain. A ragged purple curtain hangs over the summit of Guadalupe, but that is far away and the clouds pass. They are followed by a soft wind which grows almost into a gale.
These winds are said by the Indians to cause the siroche, which is the dread both of the natives and of travellers. Some authorities claim that the illness is due to the presence in the earth of minerals, which are exhaled like gases and poison the atmosphere. I had been warned especially against this sickness when crossing the sierras between Tupiza and Uyuni, but during my travels in the Andes I experienced only one attack of siroche, and this was before reaching Tupiza. It had been a long morning climb and ride across sandy plains and among the cactus and fir underbrush. Coming up gradually from the sea-level and by slow stages, I had not felt any serious apprehension, though somewhat troubled by a neuralgic headache and by just the appearance of bleeding at the nostrils.
That morning the wind was blowing so softly that it seemed to cradle itself. A feeling of intense depression came over me. It was purely mental, because the day had not advanced far enough for the physical fatigue to manifest itself. I was out of temper, and my nerves were on edge. At noon, taking the observation of the temperature by means of a Centigrade thermometer, I found myself in a hopeless muddle in trying to reduce it to Fahrenheit. The method was absolutely clear in my mind,—“divide by 5, multiply by 9, add 32,”—but at every calculation the result was different, though I was certain I was following the rule. Finally I turned to the muleteer and asked him crossly, “Loreto, what’s the matter with me?” “It’s the siroche, sir,” he explained. “The wind is very bad to-day, but if you can keep on for a few hours we’ll be all right.” Then he looked at me a little suspiciously and said, “I don’t think we had better stop here.”
I had no desire to stop there under the savage sun, while the wind was forming white mantles of sand on the fir bushes, and told him we would go on. We kept on, and I began to feel myself again, though for a period of perhaps six hours I was in a condition of collapse similar to that which I often had experienced following attacks of sea-sickness. In my own case, however, there was none of the nausea which accompanies that distressing malady, and which with most persons is also an incident of siroche. My muleteer’s fear was that I would insist on stopping or on turning back. He had had that trouble with two or three persons whom he had guided over the mountains, and, as he told me, they had given him a great deal of worry by their whims.
Having had this attack, I was a little apprehensive with regard to crossing the punas, or table-lands, from Tupiza to Uyuni, and I could see that my arriero also was watchful. But I felt not the slightest symptoms. Mining engineers who make that journey two or three times a year told me that they always suffered from the siroche. Animals likewise suffer from it. The horse is of little use in these altitudes, and the mules are not immune. My own pack animals gave out twice.
My greatest annoyance was from the blistering and bleeding of the lips due to the dry wind. The natives grow expert enough to save themselves by means of scarfs while riding, but I found that this method gave me no protection. My lips were swollen unnaturally, and local applications did not reduce the swelling or the pain except temporarily at night. It was weeks before they became normal, and this I found was the gravest inconvenience in traversing the punas. My nerves also were under intense strain. That tension is unavoidable so high up, but it is something that gradually can be overcome. After living a month at an altitude of 12,000 to 14,000 feet, I experienced little annoyance from keyed-up nerves.
The increased heart movement is something which no one can escape, and it varies only in degree according to the individual. Jogging along comfortably on the back of a mule, the accelerated action is not appreciated, but let the traveller get off to rest the animal by walking and he quickly discovers the limit of his exertion. In my own case I found it easier to climb the hills afoot than to descend them, the heart apparently pumping with more regularity on the up-grade. But at night, after a hard day’s travel, on lying down to sleep it would be half an hour to an hour before the trip-hammer beating would lull itself away into slower and more regular palpitations.
From Escariano to Tambilla is a wearying ride. The course is across gorges and chasms, up the dry river-bed, then down for a good many hundred feet and again up into white plains covered with scrub. The longest climb is up the corkscrew height of Portugalete. It would be not only cruelty, but physical impossibility, to surmount this summit on the back of a mule, and I trudged it at an even pace with the panting pack animals. The pass or gateway of Portugalete is 14,137 feet above sea-level. Through this pass the railroad will wriggle its way.
After the divide was reached the descent was fairly steady, though abrupt. Guadalupe was in sight part of the day, and there were also glimpses of other peaks, snow-covered, while in some of the transverse gorges which the sun did not penetrate I saw the perpetual ice and snow. I stopped two or three times to gather a handful of snow, and then climbed back on the mule, passing in a very brief space of time from temperature below freezing to 90° or 95° Fahrenheit. On this slope were pasturing many alpacas and other sheep as well as goats and llamas.
During that long day we passed just two human dwellings, adobe huts, and reached Tambilla after nightfall. Tambilla lies in a valley, but its altitude is 12,900 feet. The Indians who kept the tambo were very indifferent to our comfort. They were having some kind of a celebration, and at first professed not to understand Spanish. As the arriero knew a little Quichua, he went after them in the Indian vernacular, and I swore some Spanish oaths, which were not nice but which brought out sullen rejoinders and the promise of something to eat. This was prepared in time,—the usual chupé,—but having seen its preparation, my stomach revolted, and I went to bed after partaking of hot coffee and crackers. During the night a freight train arrived, burros laden with dynamite for the mines, and I felt satisfaction in hearing the freighters, all of whom were natives, take possession of the sleeping quarters of the inmates of the tambo.