Who would have thought that so long a lake could be so shallow? However, my feelings were soothed by remembering the story of the captain of a man-of-war who was once told that the salt lake near one of the red hills between Honolulu and Pearl Harbor was reported by the natives to be “bottomless.” Page 77He ordered one of the ship's heavy boats to be carried from the shore several miles inland to the salt lake, at great expenditure of strength and labor. The story told me in my boyhood does not say how much sounding line was brought. Anyhow, they found this “fathomless” body of water to be not more than fifteen feet deep.
Notwithstanding my disappointment at the depth of Parinacochas, I was very glad that we had brought the little folding boat, for it enabled me to float gently about among the myriads of birds which use the shallow waters of the lake as a favorite feeding ground; pink flamingoes, white gulls, small “divers,” large black ducks, sandpipers, black ibis, teal ducks, and large geese. On the banks were ground owls and woodpeckers. It is not surprising that the natives should have named this body of water “Parinacochas” (Parina = “flamingo,” cochas = “lake”). The flamingoes are here in incredible multitudes; they far outnumber all other birds, and as I have said, actually make the shallow waters of the lake look pink. Fortunately they had not been hunted for their plumage and were not timid. After two days of familiarity with the boat they were willing to let me approach within twenty yards before finally taking wing. The coloring, in this land of drab grays and browns, was a delight to the eye. The head is white, the beak black, the neck white shading into salmon-pink; the body pinkish white on the back, the breast white, and the tail salmon-pink. The wings are salmon-pink in front, but the tips and the under-parts are black. As they Page 78stand or wade in the water their general appearance is chiefly pink-and-white. When they rise from the water, however, the black under-parts of the wings become strikingly conspicuous and cause a flock of flying flamingoes to be a wonderful contrast in black-and-white. When flying, the flamingo seems to keep his head moving steadily forward at an even pace, although the ropelike neck undulates with the slow beating of the wings. I could not be sure that it was not an optical delusion. Nevertheless, I thought the heavy body was propelled irregularly, while the head moved forward at uniform speed, the difference being caught up in the undulations of the neck.
Flamingos on Lake Parinacochas, and Mt. Sarasara
The flamingo is an amusing bird to watch. With its haughty Roman nose and long, ropelike neck, which it coils and twists in a most incredible manner, it seems specially intended to distract one's mind from bathymetric disappointments. Its hoarse croaking, “What is it,” “What is it,” seemed to express deep-throated sympathy with the sounding operations. On one bright moonlight night the flamingoes were very noisy, keeping up a continual clatter of very hoarse “What-is-it's.” Apparently they failed to find out the answer in time to go to bed at the proper time, for next morning we found them all sound asleep, standing in quiet bays with their heads tucked under their wings. During the course of the forenoon, when the water was quiet, they waded far out into the lake. In the afternoon, as winds and waves arose, they came in nearer the shores, but seldom left the water. The great extent of shallow water in Parinacochas offers them a splendid, Page 79wide feeding ground. We wondered where they all came from. Apparently they do not breed here. Although there were thousands and thousands of birds, we could find no flamingo nests, either old or new, search as we would. It offers a most interesting problem for some enterprising biological explorer. Probably Mr. Frank Chapman will some day solve it.
Next in number to the flamingoes were the beautiful white gulls (or terns?), looking strangely out of place in this Andean lake 11,500 feet above the sea. They usually kept together in flocks of several hundred. There were quantities of small black divers in the deeper parts of the lake where the flamingoes did not go. The divers were very quick and keen, true individualists operating alone and showing astonishing ability in swimming long distances under water. The large black ducks were much more fearless than the flamingoes and were willing to swim very near the canoe. When frightened, they raced over the water at a tremendous pace, using both wings and feet in their efforts to escape. These ducks kept in large flocks and were about as common as the small divers. Here and there in the lake were a few tiny little islands, each containing a single deserted nest, possibly belonging to an ibis or a duck. In the banks of a low stream near our first camp were holes made by woodpeckers, who in this country look in vain for trees and telegraph poles.
Occasionally, a mile or so from shore, my boat would startle a great amphibious ox standing in the water up to his middle, calmly eating the succulent Page 80water grass. To secure it he had to plunge his head and neck well under the surface.
While I was raising blisters and frightening oxen and flamingoes, Mr. Tucker triangulated the Parinacochas Basin, making the first accurate map of this vicinity. As he carried his theodolite from point to point he often stirred up little ground owls, who gazed at him with solemn, reproachful looks. And they were not the only individuals to regard his activities with suspicion and dislike. Part of my work was to construct signal stations by piling rocks at conspicuous points on the well-rounded hills so as to enable the triangulation to proceed as rapidly as possible. During the night some of these signal stations would disappear, torn down by the superstitious shepherds who lived in scattered clusters of huts and declined to have strange gods set up in their vicinity. Perhaps they thought their pastures were being preempted. We saw hundreds of their sheep and cattle feeding on flat lands formerly the bed of the lake. The hills of the Parinacochas Basin are bare of trees, and offer some pasturage. In some places they are covered with broken rock. The grass was kept closely cropped by the degenerate descendants of sheep brought into the country during Spanish colonial days. They were small in size and mostly white in color, although there were many black ones. We were told that the sheep were worth about fifty cents apiece here.
On our first arrival at Parinacochas we were left severely alone by the shepherds; but two days later curiosity slowly overcame their shyness, and a Page 81group of young shepherds and shepherdesses gradually brought their grazing flocks nearer and nearer the camp, in order to gaze stealthily on these strange visitors, who lived in a cloth house, actually moved over the forbidding waters of the lake, and busied themselves from day to day with strange magic, raising and lowering a glittering glass eye on a tripod. The women wore dresses of heavy material, the skirts reaching halfway from knee to ankle. In lieu of hats they had small variegated shawls, made on hand looms, folded so as to make a pointed bonnet over the head and protect the neck and shoulders from sun and wind. Each woman was busily spinning with a hand spindle, but carried her baby and its gear and blankets in a hammock or sling attached to a tump-line that went over her head. These sling carry-alls were neatly woven of soft wool and decorated with attractive patterns. Both women and boys were barefooted. The boys wore old felt hats of native manufacture, and coats and long trousers much too large for them.
At one end of the upland basin rises the graceful cone of Mt. Sarasara. The view of its snow-capped peak reflected in the glassy waters of the lake in the early morning was one long to be remembered. Sarasara must once have been much higher than it is at present. Its volcanic cone has been sharply eroded by snow and ice. In the days of its greater altitude, and consequently wider snow fields, the melting snows probably served to make Parinacochas a very much larger body of water. Although we were here at the beginning of summer, the wind that Page 82came down from the mountain at night was very cold. Our minimum thermometer registered 22° F. near the banks of the lake at night. Nevertheless, there was only a very thin film of ice on the borders of the lake in the morning, and except in the most shallow bays there was no ice visible far from the bank. The temperature of the water at 10:00 A.M. near the shore, and ten inches below the surface, was 61° F., while farther out it was three or four degrees warmer. By noon the temperature of the water half a mile from shore was 67.5° F. Shortly after noon a strong wind came up from the coast, stirring up the shallow water and cooling it. Soon afterwards the temperature of the water began to fall, and, although the hot sun was shining brightly almost directly overhead, it went down to 65° by 2:30 P.M.