He did not sleep at all the last night of his stay and had us called at three in the morning. He told his friends that he was going to leave with us, but that they were to announce his leaving a day later. In addition, the Subprefect was to accompany us until daybreak so that no harm might befall me while under the protection of a soldier who expected to be shot from ambush.
At four o’clock our whispered arrangements were made, we opened the gates noiselessly, and our small cavalcade hurried through the pitch-black streets of the town. The soldier rode ahead, his rifle across his saddle, and directly behind him rode the Subprefect and myself. The pack mules were in the rear. We had almost reached the end of the street when a door opened suddenly and a shower of sparks flew out ahead of us. Instantly the soldier struck spurs into his mule and turned into a side street. The Subprefect drew his horse back savagely and when the next shower of sparks flew out pushed me against the wall and whispered: “Por Dios, quien es?” Then suddenly he shouted: “Sopla no mas, sopla no mas” (stop blowing).
Thereupon a shabby penitent man came to the door holding in his hand a large tailor’s flatiron. The base of it was filled with glowing charcoal and he was about to start his day’s work. The sparks were made in the process of blowing through the iron to start the smoldering coals. We greeted him with more than ordinary friendliness and passed on.
At daybreak we had reached the steep western wall of the canyon where the real ascent begins, and here the Subprefect turned back with many felicidades for the journey and threats for the soldier if he did not look carefully after the pack train. From every angle of the zigzag trail that climbs the “cuesta” the soldier scanned the valley road and the trail below him. He was anxious lest news of his escape reach his enemies who had vowed to take his life. Half the day he rode turned in his saddle so as to see every traveler long before he was within harm’s reach. By nightfall we safely reached Salamanca, fifty miles away (Fig. 62).
The alertness of the soldier was unusual and I quite enjoyed his close attention to the beasts and his total abstinence, for an alert and sober soldier on detail is a rare phenomenon in the interior of Peru. But all Salamanca was drunk when we arrived—Governor, alcaldes, citizens. Even the peons drank up in brandy the money that we gave them for forage and let the beasts starve. The only sober person I saw was the white telegraph operator from Lima. He said that he had to stay sober, for the telegraph office—the outward sign of government—was the special object of attack of every drink-crazed gang of rioters. They had tried to break in a few nights before and he had fired his revolver point-blank through the door. The town offered no shelter but the dark filthy hut of the Gobernador and the tiny telegraph office. So I made up my bed beside that of the operator. We shared our meals and chatted until a late hour, he recounting the glories of Lima, to which he hoped to return at the earliest possible moment, and cursing the squalid town of Salamanca. His operator’s keys were old, the batteries feeble, and he was in continual anxiety lest a message could not be received. In the night he sprang out of bed shouting frantically:
“Estan llamando” (they are calling), only to stumble over my bed and awaken himself and offer apologies for walking in his sleep.
Meanwhile my soldier, having regained his courage, began drinking. It was with great difficulty that I got started, after a day’s delay, on the trail to Chuquibamba. There his thirst quite overcame him. To separate him from temptation it became necessary to lock him up in the village jail. This I did repeatedly on the way to Mollendo, except beyond Quilca, where we slept in the hot marshy valley out of reach of drink, and where the mosquitoes kept us so busy that either eating or drinking was almost out of the question.
The drunken rioters of Cotahuasi and their debauched brothers at Salamanca are chiefly natives of pure or nearly pure Indian blood. They are a part of the great plateau population of the Peruvian Andes. Have they degenerated to their present low state, or do they display merely the normal condition of the plateau people? Why are they so troublesome an element? To this as to so many questions that arise concerning the highland population we find our answer not chiefly in government, or religion, or inherited character, but in geography. I doubt very much if a greater relative difference would be seen if two groups of whites were set down, the one in the cold terrace lands of Salamanca, the other in the warm vineyards of Aplao, in the Majes Valley. The common people of these two towns were originally of the same race, but the lower valley now has a white element including even most of those having the rank of peons. Greater differences in character could scarcely be found between the Aztecs and the Iroquois. In the warm valley there is of coarse drunkenness, but it is far from general; there is stupidity, but the people are as a whole alert; and finally, the climate and soil produce grapes from which famous wines are made, they produce sugar cane, cotton, and alfalfa, so that the whites have come in, diluted the Indian blood, and raised the standard of life and behavior. Undoubtedly their influence would tend to have the same general effect if they mixed in equal numbers with the plateau groups. There is, however, a good reason for their not doing so.
