At the ancient and graceful arched bridge across the Mantaro, a half-day further down, I came to the parting of the ways. The direct trail to Ayacucho continued along the stony, winding river-bank to Tablachaca (Plank-bridge), but Huancavelica promised interest in proportion to its isolation, and I prevailed upon Chusquito to undertake the long, stiff climb up the face of the range under the vertical blazing sunshine. Little patches, inhabited since time immemorial, stood out here and there, their green trees, flowers, and fruit-odors, in as sharp contrast to the grim mountain flanks as any oasis, of the Sahara. Somewhat above the ancient town of Izcochaca, spilled up the hillside, rocks of a faint red or purple hue are dug out of the mountainside and tied in pairs on the backs of donkeys or llamas, scores of which we passed on their way to the great market of Huancayo. Even the inexperienced Andean traveler might easily have guessed what these stones were, from the habit of the donkeys of licking the burdens of their fellows at every halt. Salt is a government monopoly in Peru, and truly Peruvian in its condition. In the rural districts he who asks for salt is handed a stone—and a hammer with which to break it. Or in lieu of the latter he may beat two slabs of this mountainside rock together, and sprinkle, the resultant gravel on his food. It behooves the wise traveler to carry his own kodak-tin of civilized salt, for even in the larger towns this is often unattainable.
All the afternoon we undulated across a lofty mountain-top, with a few human kennels of shepherds stuck on rock-ledges along the way, passing through one straw hamlet bright new in outward appearance, since threshing-time had but recently passed. In Huando, one of those dismal, rocky, comfortless, cold Indian towns that abound in the Sierra, I made my first acquaintance with alcaldes carrying silver-mounted staffs of office. His bedraggled wife, who was much more at home in Quichua than in Spanish, sent a messenger to announce my arrival to the gobernador. The latter was a quaint little man in side-burns, wearing the only even theoretically white collar in town, and a not too successful imitation of “European” garb that did not exactly set off to advantage his bashful rural dignity. There ensued that long, diplomatic parley by means of which the traveler at length wins hospitality—in rural Peru the word must be taken with a scanty meaning, since it commonly consists of permission to spread one’s own trappings on the earth floor of the corredor. He who would be successful even in this must never state his wants abruptly, but only gradually drift toward them, without appearing to care particularly whether he be granted the permission or not. Ramón Lagos, however, for all his childlike simplicity, knew the duty of a gobernador toward a distinguished traveler, even though he could not fathom my reason for coming on foot. By the time cold night was settling down he had sent an Indian to pile my possessions in the corredor, and in due season the most soapless of Indian girls arrived with a puchero, the Irish-stew of the Andes, containing the wing and drumstick of a guinea-pig, and carrying carefully on the end of a fork—no doubt after having stuck it there with her unmentionable fingers—another fat leg of the same squeaky rodent. Then there was ancient bread and weak willow-leaf tea, and á la postre my hostess came to share with me a delicacy she called “chicharrón,”—strips of hard-fried pork.
Meanwhile, I had diplomatically put the gobernador in possession of ten cents, with which to buy fodder for Chusquito. A messenger went forth, and in due time an Indian alguacil on the down-grade of life appeared, bearing his barajo with all the dignity of an English beadle. Behind him came several youthful assistants, with less pretentious staffs of office. Though they are appointed by compulsion, these aids to the ruler of an Andean town are proud in their undemonstrative way of being thus raised above the common rabble. None of them would permit even the wife of the gobernador to take the black cane with silver bands out of his hands, and I could only admire them at a distance. Not one of the alguaciles spoke a word of Spanish. The gobernador in a Napoleonic voice gave the old man an order for two nickel’s worth of straw. Apparently it was not etiquette for the younger aids of government to understand the command direct from the lips of the great gobernador himself. The chief alcalde bowed faintly and turned to stride away with an authoritative, if soft-footed tread. To carry out the order himself? No, indeed! Instead, he passed it on to one of the youths, whose badge of office was a much shorter staff, tied to his wrist, that it might not interfere with the actual and physical carrying out of the command. Somewhat later one of these returned, struggling under a great bundle of straw, the old Indian strutting behind him, in all the dignity of his high authority still firmly grasping his barajo. After them came a girl, evidently the inferior of another of the authoritative youths, carrying at least a peck of cebada, or barley. I sat late superintending the repast of my companion, for only the inexperienced Andean traveler will trust to native supervision of his animal’s requirements.
Not only do the Indian alcaldes and alguaciles hold office for the mere “honor” of the position, but the gobernadores themselves are appointed on compulsion and receive no reward, except from the traveler who, with great care not to give offense, chooses to make up for this governmental oversight. The news of my arrival had spread through the town, and in the morning the alguaciles had increased to a half-dozen, who sat motionless about the yard, staring like ruminating oxen and accepting with leisurely avidity the crusts of my desayuno, handed them by the gobernador. That official, certain I could not find my way alone, had ordered a youth to accompany me. But as he was not overjoyed at the appointment, it was no hard matter to lose him in the bleak and gloomy labyrinthian town.
An all-day tramp across an often laborious upland, brilliant for all its yellow-brown waste under the broad blue lift of the sky, raised a glacier-topped range, at the foot of which lies Huancavelica. The rolling uplands were alive now with llamas, alpacas, and sheep, grazing together as one family. Here was the “home” of the llama—which, by the way, is the Quichua term for domesticated animal—the only beast of burden known to the inhabitants of Peru before the coming of the Conquistadores, their only domestic animal, in fact, except the guinea-pig, unless we count the now exterminated allcu. Relics of an ancient civilization in which they held chief place, the llama and the Indian of the Andes have much in common; they seem two branches of the same race who have fallen on evil days together, to plod through modern life like ghosts of a far-off past. Both endure only the high altitudes; both are firmly wedded to their ancestral home; both suffer uncomplainingly; both are temperamentally incapable of haste. The llama will not travel alone, but only in company with its fellows; the Indian is a moderately effective workman in “bees” or bands, but lacks the self-reliance requisite to individual accomplishment. As the Indian squanders half his time in fiestas and celebrations, and breaks his labors frequently for a “coca-time,” so the llama can work but twelve or fifteen days a month, spending the rest in feeding. The drivers—and only an Indian can drive them—are as soft-footed as the animals themselves, never shouting or urging them on with those cries common to all other arrieros.
The llama, however, is more cleanly in his instincts than the Indian; does not rival him as a drunkard; and, above all, retains a manly air, even under adversity, in striking contrast to the slinking manner of his human companion. He is the aristocrat among animals. Ever silent—if he has a bleat or cry, I have never heard it—his gentle, liquid eyes seem to look unseeing clear through one; he gazes upon the world about him with an expression of timorous disdain and the indifference of convinced superiority. His dignified attitude suggests a proud Inca set to carrying fire-wood, or a “decayed gentlewoman” refusing to be outwardly cast down by her misfortunes; his air is dreamy, as if he were looking back to the time when he and the Incas reigned supreme over all the Andean plateau. Like an aristocratic prisoner on parole, all the security he requires is a rope laid across his neck, or a corral bordered round with stones a foot high. If the figure may be carried still further, there is yet another suggestion of the aristocrat in the fact that, beneath his haughty exterior, he is apt to be stupid, assuming his impressive dignity of manner to cover this interior paucity of matter.
Had the llama been found in North America, he would have been exterminated even more completely than was the Indian. He is far too slow and ineffective a beast of burden to endure long against our national impatience. He carries barely a hundred pounds, and covers at best ten miles a day, grazing along the way, since he cannot feed by night. But in the leisurely southern continent he still survives on the high, cold plateaux that are his natural home, as the thin, hardy vegetation of páramos and punas is his natural food; and in this day of trains and automobiles, caravans of these frail, graceful creatures, their ears gaily decorated with bright ribbons, still glide across the frigid heights, as in the centuries when they represented the only freighters of an immense empire.
Graceful when he walks, the llama runs with much the same awkward gait as the kangaroo, throwing his neck, and looking at a distance like an ostrich on four legs. In the region round about us were grazing, also, many alpacas—here called pacos—a far uglier animal in its thick wool of many colors, from black to gray, than the gracefully formed and generally white llama. He is suggestive of a shaggy, spring bear, and though he, too, occasionally serves as a beast of burden, his chief value is in his wool. Two other members of the same Andean family, the guanaco and the vicuña, found chiefly in the wilder regions further south, are never domesticated. The latter, graceful and delicate as a fawn, produces the most valuable wool to be found in the Western Hemisphere.
A native horseman, or, more exactly, muleman, had fallen in with us, after striving for hours to overtake us. We rose and fell two or three times more over rocky ridges, then came out suddenly on the brow of a tremendous ravine above Huancavelica, in a situation extraordinary even in comparison with the many striking ones throughout the Andes. Grim, almost perpendicular mountains, their jagged summits of rock like decaying fangs, lay piled into the sky on every hand, and completely boxed in a vega, or little, flat plain, in the center of which, close at hand, yet far below us, every patio of the city lay as plainly in sight as the unroofed houses of Paris under the gaze of “Diable Boiteu.” The trail pitched so steeply downward that the native was forced to dismount and lead his mule.
“You see,” he boasted, pointing to several iron crosses on almost inaccessible crags high above the city, “this is a Christian” (by which he meant Catholic) “country.”