How appropriate it is that quicksilver, a liquid heaviest of metals, should come from this land of contrast. The most elusive product of a mysterious country, imperceptibly by fumes it enters the nostrils of those who seek it, either destroying their teeth or disintegrating their limbs; a metal which, becoming mere vapor, is again transformed by a sudden chill to metal; though it rises as steam, it falls as quicksilver. Pliny calls it the poison of all things, the “eternal sweat,” since nothing can consume it. To the Incas it remained a mystery, for although its “quick and lively motions” were admired, its search, being harmful to the seeker, was forbidden. They did, however, use the vermilion found with it: handsome women streaked their temples with vermilion.
Silver also is born in certain cold and solitary deserts of the mountain-tops, melted by subterranean fires within its deep veins. Silver being the only produce of the soil, the necessities of life have to be brought from afar. It seems as if the vigor that vegetation would absorb goes into the silver.
The mountain-tops are full of legends of mine discoveries usually intertwined with romance. Greedy lovers have sacrificed their love for a mine, and many are the mines filled with revengeful floods. Huira Capcha, a shepherd who had been guarding his flocks near Cerro de Pasco, awoke one day to find the stone beneath the ashes of his fire turned to silver.
It is told in connection with the mine of Huancayo that an Indian friend gave a Franciscan monk a bag of silver ore. The eager friar wished to know where more could be found. The Indian consented to show him, but blindfolded the friar, who took the precaution to drop a bead of his rosary here and there as he went along. When at last the monk stood marveling at the bright masses of silver, his Indian friend gave him a handful of unstrung beads. “Father,” he said, “you dropped your rosary on the way!”
In 1545, an Indian called Hualpa was pursuing a vicuña up the mountainside. He grasped at the bushes as he scrambled up a steep cliff. One came up by the roots, which were hung with globules of silver. That particular vicuña hunt took place on a mountain called Potosí. The discoverer of the mine of Potosí was murdered by a Spaniard named Villarroel, who became its proprietor. The murder was an unnecessary precaution, however, since a mysterious voice had commanded the Indians to take no silver from this hill, which was destined for other owners. From that romantic mountain has flowed far “more silver than from all the mines of Mexico.” “Prior to 1593 the royal fifth had been paid on three hundred and ninety-six millions of silver.” The only difficulty the Spaniards encountered was in finding water enough to wash the silver. The hills about Potosí gleamed with as many as six thousand little fires, smelting furnaces belching horrid odors, scattering liquid silver pellets. They had to be carried where the wind blew, sometimes higher up and sometimes lower down.
So this splendid Imperial City grew up in the subtle air, varied by icy winds and storm. The extraction of its prodigious wealth was a means of torture to those who worked in continual darkness without knowledge of day or night.
Yet, even among the tops of the Andes, living things are adjusted to their environment, queer little animals of the heights giving the only human atmosphere there is. Leaping viscachas, with cat-like tails, carve through the frozen ground village burrows made to last forever, treacherous pitfalls for a traveler’s mule. With the finest, silkiest fur, valued by even the Incas, chinchillas sit in the shadows, never in the sun. They appear suddenly on the steep cliffs at dusk and nibble stiff grasses; then disappear like magic, leaving little chains of footprints in the snow. A small toad inhabits the boundaries of perpetual snow, and a nice little plant called maca has its best flavor only above an altitude of thirteen thousand feet, where all flavoring ingredients have long been left behind.
The wild gazelle of the Andes, with fur the color of dried roses, the graceful vicuña, creature of quickness and flight, lives upon the coldest heaths and in the most secluded fastnesses of the mighty Andes and seldom descends below the limit of perpetual snow. His back, burned tawny by the tropical sun, is covered with snow.
Far in the distance a flock is grazing. The single male stands near by upon a rock. A foreign sight or sound, a quick movement of his foot, a short, shrill whistle vibrating through the clear, puna air, a flash of golden brown, and the whole flock is lost in the wilderness of rocks, fleeing miles without stopping. It is said that if the male is wounded, the females surround him, allowing themselves to be shot down rather than leave.
The vicuña defies pursuit or capture and disappears at the first glimpse of intruders, driving the young before him. He is no less wild than in the days when he was royal purveyor of softest fabric to the Incas’ wardrobes. His habits are as elusive now as then, when Indians thirty thousand strong entrapped the wild animals among the mountain-tops. These solemn huntings took place every fourth year. Meanwhile the wise men kept account of the flocks with colored threads, so-called quipus, their method of enumeration.