CHAPTER II
DESERT QUALITY
A certain herb lives for years underground in the desert; it feels no necessity for a leaf-existence. Yet if the parched roots are reached by water, they expand toward the sun in lovely bloom.
Up from the shore stretches the bare immensity of desert, ending in one tremulous horizon with the ocean, and with the wilderness of mountains against the pulsating sky at the other. It is the Land of Light. All sensation of color is lost in this great sensation of light, an ardent light “shining through things, not on them.” Even the clouds expire from excess of light. It reduces all colors to mere hot vibration. The translucent mountains swim in a sea of light, reflecting from it as from wide stretches of water. Though sensation of color is lost in light, their huge forms are distinct in the radiant atmosphere, but unreal as if half-veiled.—One attribute of mirage is absolute clearness of outline.—Insignificant details emerge, but they rouse admiration only because of the light investing them.
The whole wide desert culminates in illusion and mystery of distant outlines. Everything floats in it, as it sweeps over from the opalescent mountains. A cross in the midst of the shelly sand, “protruding through thin layers of mirage,” marks the spot where a greatly feared bandit was killed. Skulls are heaped beneath it, with matches and half-burned candles.
Water being denied, the desert is soaked with sun. It is the Land of Heat. No plant grows in the scorching soil, no animal can endure it. No bird, no insect flies through the burning atmosphere. Each object shimmers until it seems but the reflection of itself. Fire descends from the burnished sky and vibrates in the air and scalds the sand. Yet concentrating a tropical sun, this hot solitude lies between the cold ocean and the mountains, a region of ice.
This desert is the abode of weird phenomena. Sometimes a globe of fire springs to the size of the sun, illuminating the sky for a quarter of an hour; then it dissipates into an infinitude of stars, which wriggle off into bright little tails and disappear.
A slowly moving company, muffled to the eyes, with heads done up like Tuaregs of the Sahara, mincing across the desert on donkeys, suddenly see themselves swinging along over their own heads, as if magnified by a gigantic mirror in the sky. The clouds give back strange pictures of one’s self enlarged and surrounded by a halo or a circular iris, summoning a saint or revealing a fairy. This quality is inherent in Peru, making ordinary moments ornamental.
Near Casma is a hill called “Dreadful,” whose continuous sandslides when the heat is greatest give off a sound of mystery, suggesting heat, like the roar of a distant volcano.
No matter how much the political status of Peru may change from century to century, it remains always the lair of earthquakes. Mines of gold and silver, islands of guano, deserts of nitrate, may be in turn discovered, exploited, exhausted. Earthquakes destroy those who have been enriched as those who have lived beside them in want. Even now earthquakes are almost daily recurrent along the coast. In laying your ear to the ground you can hear subterranean rumblings. Only in the frequency of slight shocks do people feel secure; otherwise they know the underground world is hoarding strength for a fury of destruction. As a traveler of the old time expressed it: “The inhabitants are subject to being buried in the ruins of their own houses at any time.”
The Indians say that when God rises from His throne to review the human race, each step as He progresses is an earthquake. As soon as they feel the pressure of His foot upon the earth, they rush from their huts to show themselves to Him. When the rumbling becomes loud enough to be noticeable, dogs howl, beasts of burden stop and spread their legs to secure themselves from falling, people rush to doorways, and churches are emptied in an instant. Reddish mists steam from the sea, bad odors from the earth; distant thunder—complete wind-stillness. The clouds of sea-birds rise from the earth and fly high, watching an agony in which they have no part. Then a frightful crash, rocks are torn asunder, great masses fall off as islands into the sea, which is still. But soon it turns black, boiling with a smell of sulphur, and many dead fish float about.