There are valleys of nitrate to explore, hills of nitrate to be climbed, plains of nitrate to gallop across, and the only break is one windswept tamarugo tree. Does it exist upon the morning mist which the sun disperses? Or does its tough life go on underground, like some uncouth monster in the depth of the sea? Or does its tap-root bore down into a deeply buried flow of water? Every one believes that there is a honeycomb of tunnels from water-giving strata in the mountain-sides, far antedating the days when Uiracocha went to Tarapacá.
No convulsion of nature is unknown to this pitiless land. Volcanic bombs lie about, and fantastic heaps of lava from molten mountains mingle with corals from the sea-bottom. Streams come to the surface, ripple for a short distance, and disappear. Their water tastes of sulphate of soda. Sometimes it springs suddenly from a cave, suggesting a system of underground rivers. Sometimes it is brought by water-works of prehistoric days, whose exact position is not known, making life possible for their would-be destroyers. Whether freaks of nature or remnants of the vast system of irrigation, importance enough has been given to the underground waterways of Peru to bring a scientist from the United States to chart them all.
Curious symbols and conventionalized llamas are cut into the hills of pink trachite and black slate rock whose strata have been jostled and overturned by earthquake. Pictures of serpents, foxes, and birds endure through ages of merciless sun. Were they the work of a megalithic people of a megalithic age, when cyclopean stones were transported to build cyclopean edifices, and gigantic ant-eaters and other jungle-dwellers swarmed in this desert of Tarapacá? Their irrefutable bones are found here, but so are shells of the sea-bottom and water-worn stones of green jasper with red spots. Moreover, the nitrate is filled with the petrified eggs and bones, even the feathers of sea-birds, suggesting that the nitrate was originally guano. Why should it not be true? For this desert was once beside the sea, as it was once beneath the sea.
But the law of compensation works even here. It has always been common opinion that the desert of Tarapacá shelters fabulous riches. Lured by the glisten of a fallen meteor, men have squandered their fortunes and risked their lives searching for gold, while they trod the nitrate under foot.
The large dark cave was gently steaming. The water filling it gurgled out from sunless twilight, hot from the hold of the earth, cool as it spread over the desert valley from the mouth of the cave. A brown man and his little daughter, lying in it, were being waved to and fro by the water as it issued, just their heads visible. Saturating the bamboo tangle, it left a wake of gardens, orange and guava trees, citrons, figs, and slender paltas, tall chirimoyas and pacays, grown to fruit-bearing size in six months. Trees of the jungle bathing in incandescent desert light! There were thick mimosas, geranium trees, and darts of poinsettia, grape-vines a foot across at the root, and spikes of heavy-smelling tuberoses. Jasmine trailed on the trellis above my head, and bougainvillea made a roof of purple flowers.
The slope of the sand-hills was crossed in the foreground by shadows of orange groves, “indefinitely elongated.” Domestic constellations glowed in their black foliage. Men in ponchos whirled up on mule-back, unbuckled their three-inch spurs, and flapped their saddles down. This time the mirage was real.
Old Dorothea came down from her bright green veranda, where the sunshine glistened from a humming-bird’s wings as it hovered above a passion flower, a whirl of black fringe with yellow deeps, the favored blossom which the Incas carried in their hands as a sign of greatness. She held a dove in the crotch of her arm and offered me a bunch of narcissus and white fleurs-de-lis, unthinkably sweet. She was dressed in yellow ocher and an old straw hat which she removed on being introduced to ladies. Her little earless dancing dog did a cueca (native dance) for us, while she clapped queer aboriginal time, and the gold hands danced in her ears.
Birds sang in the thorn hedgerows, and frogs croaked in the warm pool, frogs which die in cold water.
Dorothea said that some day the desert will again be covered with forests and gardens, as it was before it became a desert.
In a cloud of dust made luminous by the sun, a drove of llamas galloped down over the desert hillside to drink, soft eyes wonderingly looking out from tall fuzzy heads, legs bungling with heavy wool. An old Indian woman in Panama hat and brilliant blankets followed slowly, puffing at a pipe.