Cut off the kernels of green corn while still small and fairly soft. Crush them to a pulp—under a round stone on a broad flat one out beneath the thatched eaves, if it is desired to keep the local color intact—sprinkling water lightly on the mass from time to time. When the whole has been reduced to a somewhat adhesive dough, wrap in corn-husks rolls of the stuff about the size and shape of an ear of corn and tie with strips of husk. Sit down on the earth floor in a corner of the hut—driving off the persistent guinea-pigs with any weapon at hand—and drop these packages one by one into a kettle of boiling water supported by three stones. Let boil from twenty minutes to a half hour—depending on the energy with which fagots have been gathered during the day—taking care that none of the gaunt curs prowling about between the legs of the cook and through other unexpected openings thrust their noses into the kettle, as they would be sure to be burned. Those who succeed in beginning the task while daylight still lingers should also beware any of the family chickens climbing to a convenient shoulder and springing into the pot, as this would result, not in choclo tanda, but in choclo tanda con gallina, which is a far more expensive dish. Zest is added by a successful attempt surreptitiously to get into one’s saddle-bags a couple of the choclo tandas for the land of starvation that is expected ahead.
Several times during the night I descended to alleviate my insect-bitten skin by a plunge in the clear, cold mountain stream that sounds in the Carrera family ears 365 days a year. In the morning I was forced to dress under my poncho, with far less convenience than in an upper Pullman berth; for la señora was already grinding coffee for my desayuno on the flat stone under the eaves beside me. To my diplomatically framed question as to what I owed him, Don Fructuoso replied:
“For what should you owe us anything?”
All that day the trail, wandering back and forth across the rock-boiling “river,” first by little thatched pachachacas, or earth-covered pole-bridges, then, as the stream dwindled, by precarious stepping-stones, climbed ever higher, at times through stretches of mud where dense overhanging forests had retained the rainfall. Mankind grew more frequent in this more habitable, rising world. Thatched cottages were tucked away here and there in forty-five-degree patches of bananas and coffee, and the pilfering of the tandas to weigh down my load proved an entirely gratuitous felony.
The very air of Tablabamba, where I slept on dried cane-pulp in an unwalled trapiche hung well up the side of the new constricted valley, as humid and green as Jaen Province had been desert-brown and arid, teemed with stories of robbers and assassins among the mountain defiles ahead. The only visible danger I encountered, however, was the notorious “Sal-si-puedes—Climb it if you can,” the terrors of which had grown daily more persistent for a fortnight past. This was one of those endless zigzags by which Andean trails climb from one river system, when near its source, to another, revealing its nefarious purpose only bit by bit, and subtly enticing the traveler ever upward in an undertaking he might not have the courage to face as a whole. A rut piled full of loose rocks, down which trickled enough water to suggest what the climb might have been on a rainy day, carried me into the very sky above and, taking there new foothold, scaled doggedly on into the “realms of eternal silence” where even birds were no longer heard and sturdy, squat trees, sighing fitfully as if struggling for breath, at length gave up in despair and abandoned the scene to huge, black rocks protruding from a soil that gave sustenance only to the dead-brown ichu-grass of Andean heights. “Hay mucho silencio y mucho matador,” my host of the night had mumbled lugubriously, but I was aware only of the music of the wind and the joyful realization that the broken mountains had gathered themselves together again under my feet and raised me once more to my accustomed temperate zone. By cold noonday a tumbled, blue world lay about and below me, only an insignificant dent in it representing that overheated hell locally known as the Province of Jaen. Like life itself, what had seemed at its base a mighty climb proved here at the top to have been only an insignificant little knoll down in the valley, and only when one had reached the real summit, and could look back upon the region as a whole after all was accomplished, did each little struggle and petty suffering assume its correct proportion.
The ancient city of Cajamarca, in which Pizarro took the Inca Atahuallpa captive and later executed him, lies in one of the most magnificent highland valleys of the Andes
Another step forward, and before my glad eyes spread one of those broad, green interandean valleys, backed by serrated black ranges, their brows wrinkled and furrowed with age, the clouds trailing their purple shadows across a panorama of little cultivated valleys, into which I descended from the unconscionable summit by a natural stairway. The blue-gray peaks turned to lilac in the last rays of the chill highland sun, then faded away into the luminous sky of night as the mountain cold settled down like an icy poncho, and with dusk I tramped through a long adobe street into the central plaza of Cutervo.
My legs seemed to have pushed me again into the outskirts of civilization. Not only did the subprefect drive off of his own initiative the open-mouthed throng that gathered about his door, rather than read my papers aloud to them, but here at last was a Peruvian town that actually recognized the existence of strangers with appetites, and a large adobe hut publicly admitted itself a fonda. Cutervo was, in reality, monotonously like any other town of the Sierra. To one coming upon it out of the trackless wilderness, however, it seemed at first sight a place of mighty importance, and only gradually dwindled to its true proportions. Like a man just returned from long months in the polar ice, I had an all but irresistible desire to rush in and buy everything in sight, as I wandered past its long line of open shop-doors. The capital of a department recently cut off from the neighboring one of Chota, it was the first place in Peru where any appreciable number of the inhabitants could unreservedly be called white, and boasted the first specimens of beauty among the fair sex. Even the Lima newspapers were there, to give me a skeleton sketch of the activities of a half-forgotten world.
There is a reserve of strength in the human body which few suspect until they tax it in an emergency; but it is only after recovery that the traveler through the rough places of the earth realizes how weak he has gradually become from hardships and lack of real nourishment. The invigorating air of the temperate zone and the meat of Cutervo’s fonda, however, had soon given me new energy, and seemed to have reduced to half the weight of my load. Hope, brutally felled to earth, ever crawls dizzily to its feet again. I could no more rid myself of the fond dream of some day ceasing to stagger under my own baggage than a leper can shake off his affliction. Yet the solemn promise of the ruler of Cutervo to furnish me a carrier resulted only in a lost day, and I struck off across the rolling mountains and valleys beyond, convinced at last, so I fancied, that I should dream no longer. So persistent had been the promise of foul play on this day’s route that, despite a lifetime of disappointments, I could not but peer hopefully into the many splendid lurking-places of the wild, rock-strewn upland I followed in utter solitude all the gorgeous day from Cutervo to Chota, the next provincial capital. Only once did I catch sight of fellow-beings. A group of arrieros with laden asses paused dubiously near the top of the range where they caught the first glimpse of me, then ventured forward and halted to ask anxiously: