He kept up easily the first two hours, and, with considerably more difficulty, the second two; five miles in one hour, and twenty in four hours, are however, not quite the same thing; and when he had walked the twenty-second mile, he was ready to drop from fatigue and hunger. Yet they showed no signs of being about to stop; and conversation was not easy, for only one of the number understood Spanish, and that very scantily; the language of the Aymaras being almost pure Quechuan, i.e. the tongue of the 168 ancient Incas, who founded their wonderful empire when we English were vainly endeavouring to ward off invasion by the Normans. He explained that he was both tired and hungry, and, at last growing desperate, inquired where he could get a mule. Happily that article was obtainable at a village which they were now approaching, and, his curiosity thoroughly aroused as to how far they intended going, he ambled on after them (for they had not deigned to stop while he concluded his bargain), caught them, and kept up with them, though he was now almost too stiff to sit his mule and too tired to enjoy the food which he had brought with him.
The thirty-fifth mile was reached before those energetic Indians stopped, and de Bonelli wished he had with him some of the people who make the sweeping statement that “all Indians are lazy.” He expected to see them bivouac for at least a couple of hours; instead of this, not one man sat down; all stood or lounged, as though they knew by instinct that the walker who allows his muscles to relax completely is doubling the strain of the after walk; and the standing only lasted long enough to enable them to eat their meal—twenty minutes at the outside. Then on again. Seventy miles did these indolent wretches walk between sunrise and sunset, only stopping for that one brief meal. It sounds incredible, but even greater distances are stated, on the best authority, to have been covered by members of this wonderful tribe.
De Bonelli found a contrast when, after some weeks’ 169 condor and wild-cat shooting in the mountains, he descended to the lowlands and moved for a while among the Moxos of the Beni River. A member of this tribe had come up to Titicaca, as ambassador from his cacique, to treat for the barter of copper and turtle-oil for mountain silver; and the inquiring traveller was glad to engage him as a guide to the Lower Beni, which he was anxious to trace as far as its junction with the Mamore, the chief feeder of the Madeira River.
De Bonelli was bound to admit that the Moxo was to be preferred as a companion; he was chatty, light-hearted, and witty, whereas the Aymaras had a sort of Puritan austerity and were devoid of sense of humour; he spoke Spanish and they did not; and further, he considered twenty miles—with a four hours’ siesta between the two tens—an ample day’s walk. Better still, on the fourth day he produced a canoe from a cunning hiding-place among the undergrowth by the river, and thenceforward the journey became a luxurious holiday; for the woods on either bank were, to all intents and purposes, orchards, the fish was delicious and easily caught, and the Moxo guide kept the boat well supplied with venison and peccary-pork.
The Indian’s destination was a large village about fifty miles from the Brazilian frontier, and, as the canoe drew near to it, de Bonelli observed that they were continually overtaking or being overtaken by other canoes; not tiny boats, manned singly or by twos, such as he had seen higher up the river, but large family concerns; houseboats, literally; for 170 everyone carried a family and all the cooking utensils, tools, weapons, toys, etc., that it might require.
“It is the great egg-gathering,” said the Moxo enthusiastically.
“Do you mean that the whole tribe is turning out to go bird’s-nesting?” asked the white man with good-humoured contempt.
“Our birds are water-birds, with houses on their backs,” laughed the Indian. “Turtles!”
“Even then I shouldn’t have thought several hundred people were required to take the eggs.”