From the exit we went faldeando (skirting) the mountain to the ancient mining village of Chaclatacana, about which, and scattered over all the vicinity, were the evidences of little mines the Indians had dug on their own account. The cinebrio deposits of the region were first disclosed to the Spaniards in 1566, by the custom of the aboriginals of painting their faces with it. My guide asserted that condors were numerous, and often dangerous to the eyes of men wandering over these lofty heights; but it was my luck not to catch sight of one of those giant birds of the Andes. I was rewarded, however, for taking the “short-cut” that proved longer and more laborious than the road, by a bird’s eye view of Huancavelica, so directly below us that we could have tossed our hats into the central plaza. Here, too, among the split and jagged rock-crags we stumbled upon a colony of viscachas,—“biscachos” my companion called them—almost the only quadruped, besides the guinea-pig and the llama family, indigenous to the Peruvian highlands. The creature is sometimes dubbed the “squirrel of the Andes,” but its size was more nearly that of the rabbit, its prominent tail and means of locomotion suggestive of some diminutive species of the kangaroo, its color not unlike that of our prairie dog, which it resembled somewhat also in its manner of dodging in and out among the rocks and crags, as if inviting us to a game of “hide and seek.” According to my attendant, the meat of the animal is even more succulent than llama-flesh, providing the tail is cut off at the moment of killing.
But for the unkindness of fate there would have been a gala bull-fight in Huancavelica on the Sunday of my stay. The one negro I had seen shivering about town turned out to be a torero, imported—chiefly at his own expense—from Lima for the occasion. The corral behind the rambling dwelling of my hosts had been turned into a “ring,” a square one, to be sure, laboriously fenced with poles tied with bark and cords to upright stakes. But on Saturday afternoon, just as the town was rubbing its hands together at the prospect of a half-forgotten entertainment, the one bull that was to have furnished it sprang through the barrier and over the low wall to the sunken street below, fifteen feet if it was an inch, and instead of dying on the spot, was last seen making record time for his mountain pasture.
The irrepressible “Turks” were wellnigh obnoxious in their hospitality. The most baggage-abhorring of travelers acquires gradually and unconsciously a new point of view with respect to his pack when he is no longer forced to burden his own shoulders with it, and articles that have hitherto seemed only useless weight take on the aspect of necessities. But after they had “sold” me an enamel cup and a roll of cotton-flannel for “Fusslappen,” the Syrians refused vociferously to accept payment. When I caught sight of a mouth-organ that might have served to while away the tramp across the lonely uninhabited world ahead, my mere glance at it caused José to drop it into my pocket when I was off my guard. A wordy battle ended with his acceptance of a sol, which he swore was the wholesale price of an instrument marked to retail for five times that amount; but it cost me eternal vigilance to keep now one, now the other brother from surreptitiously returning the coin. There was nothing left but to curtail my purchases. To choose from their stock was to have charity thrust upon me; to buy off their rivals would have been the height of insults, and would quickly have published to all the town their lack of hospitality, or my ingratitude. My last day with them the firm of Atala Hermanos spent in writing me letters of introduction to all their countrymen from Huancavelica to Cape Horn, and when I sneaked into their patio at dawn next morning, bent on abducting Chusquito unseen, the entire household was already waiting to drag me in to an extraordinary breakfast. Not satisfied with that, they forced upon me a boiled leg-of-mutton and several other delicacies, among them a dozen raw eggs which, tied in a handkerchief on Chusquito’s back, broke one by one with his jolting gait and ran in yellow streams down the rubber poncho that covered the pack.
All Huancavelica united in attempting to force a guide upon me, asserting that even “hijos del lugar” frequently lost themselves on the trackless puna beyond. I smiled indulgently at what had long since become a threadbare prophesy, but had occasion to recall it before the day was done. The way mounted steadily all the morning, uncovering a vast yellow-brown world that stretched forever before me. In the early hours it was scantily inhabited by wild, weather-faded shepherds watching over flocks of llamas, pacos, or sheep, and leisurely busy turning wool into yarn on their crude spindles, an occupation that gave the men a curiously effeminate air, out of all keeping with their rough exterior. These chary fellows took good care that we should not come within shouting distance of them, and even the rare travelers and llama drivers made wide circuits to avoid us, as if fearful of their defenselessness on this bleak, shelterless top of the world. If taken unaware in some fold of the earth, they muttered some stupidity in the Quichua slang dialect of the region, and sped away like startled hares. Unable to make inquiries, I could only trust to chance, compass, and the instinct that develops with long Andean travel. For on these broad mountain-tops the traveler is by no means master of the situation, and to guess wrong between several at best faintly marked paths may be to go hopelessly astray, and come out on the opposite side of the Andes from that toward which one is headed. For long stretches the dreary páramo showed no sign whatever of travel, though here and there the droppings of llamas gave the route a more or less fixed direction. A jolly, coca-chewing old Indian, whom I came upon in the afternoon plodding patiently behind his haughty train, had seen enough of the world to have lost some of his fear of white men and assured me I was still on the right road. But he must have been mistaken, or else I guessed wrong at the next opportunity, for the bit of trail that had grown up under my feet split irreconcilably and left, at the hour when I should have come upon an hacienda reputed hospitable to travelers, only the rolling, trackless, yellow puna stretching away on every hand.
Huancavelica, one of the most picturesque and least-visited provincial capitals of Peru, is completely boxed in by grim, rocky mountain walls noted for their deposits of mercury. The city itself is more than two miles above sea-level
A raging thunder-storm of rain and hail, under which the vast land and skyscape turned dark as night, soon broke upon us. I had struggled a long distance through the storm, when I faintly made out a little cluster of huts some distance to the right in a wrinkle of the pampa. After I had overcome my own disinclination to go out of my way to seek lodging, there was needed a laborious argument to bring my companion to my way of thinking. For Chusquito would have none of your side trips. The truth is I had been somewhat deceived and disappointed in the disposition of my chosen fellow-adventurer. As long as the road lay straight and undoubtedly before us, he was an ideal companion, never breaking the thread of my reflections by calling attention to the scenery, nor otherwise making himself humanly obnoxious. But in temperament he might best be likened to a cat, accepting all favors and friendly overtures with a complacent aloofness and matter-of-course manner that resembled ingratitude, refusing to be won over, even by caresses, to the faintest expression of a reciprocal affection. Moreover, he had a will, not to say a wilfulness, of his own that is inimical to all genuine companionship on the road, and a respect for costumbre that betrayed his Latin-American training. I felt no compunction in having recourse to brute force in a dispute under such circumstances as then faced us, however, and we soon gained the only visible shelter.
On a cold, cheerless spot, almost devoid of even the vegetation of high pampas, I found five miserable human kennels of loosely laid stones and ichu grass, in charge of several gaunt, savage, yet cowardly curs, and an Indian boy speaking only monosyllabic Quichua. All the huts, except a beehive-shaped structure that served as kitchen, had huge native padlocks on the doors. Choked with thirst, in tantalizing contrast to my dripping garments and the raging storm, I called for water.
“Manam cancha,” murmured the boy dully, using the Quichua version of that stereotyped Andean falsehood, “There is none.”
“Yacu!” I shouted, jokingly laying a hand on my revolver.