CHAPTER IV

A FORCED MARCH ACROSS THE DESERT OF ATACAMA

The stand-by bell of the _Limari_ tinkled from her engine-room, our baggage and freight were safely stowed in the wallowing Peruvian lanchas alongside, and the Bolivian mail followed. The Captain of the Port and the Inspector of Customs balanced down the swaying gangway and dropped into the gig alongside. We followed.

Before us stretched the long, barren line of rocky coast, fading away in the soft mist of a Peruvian winter. For it is winter here, damp and chill, in September. Directly ahead is a narrow, ragged break in the cliffs. Inside is Quilca, the side door to La Paz in days of quarantine.

We cross the barrier of half-concealed rock before us, and soon we are in the smooth waters of the cañon beyond. On either side the red volcanic bluffs rise for perhaps two hundred feet, their faces scarred and seamed or beaten into grotesque forms by the Pacific of ages past. Up this defile we rowed for several hundred yards, then we rounded a ragged promontory, and the full glories of the metropolis of Quilca burst upon us. A broken flight of steps led from the water, and, back of it all, two thin straggling lines of woven-cane huts bounded the solitary street. Two houses, more dismally pretentious than the rest, with mud walls and corrugated-iron roofs, marked the local seat of government. In the distance rose the red volcanic hills, dull, flat, and shadowless under the clouded sky of the tropical winter. This was all of Quilca.

We had cabled from Lima for horses and a pack-train to meet us and bring us over the desert of San José, where we could get the train to the interior.

The morning after our arrival we were awakened by the clatter of the pack-mules as they passed our quarters, and the "_Hola, hola! Huish, huish!_" of their _arrieros_. It was our train.

In the middle of the lone street the arrieros were busy lashing our smaller packages in rawhide nets. Scattered about in the sand were the larger cases of freight--prospecting machinery and mining hardware--amounting to a little over a ton in weight; and still under the guard of Agamemnon in our quarters of the night was the personal equipment--trunks, instruments, rifles, shotguns, cartridges and powder and shot--making nineteen hundred pounds more. And blocking the only thoroughfare of Quilca were the twelve pack-mules--long-haired, disconsolate animals, with pepper-and-salt complexions, save where patches of bare hide showed the chafing of the pack-ropes. They looked as though our own regulation army load of two hundred pounds per mule would be far too great. And they were to divide four thousand pounds among them.

It was eleven o'clock in the forenoon when the last diamond-hitch was thrown and the last pack lashed in place. The arrieros swung their long, knotted rawhide thongs, the saddle-galled bell-mare clanged as she led the way, and we climbed into our saddles and fell in behind the straggling mules as they led the way up the dismal street and out into the desert.

The trail rose sharply as it left Quilca, and then wound around to the right, where it joined the old desert road used by the Spaniards after their conquest, and for centuries before that by the Incas in their barter with the coast. On each side rose white walls of rotten rock, higher than our heads as we rode by, the path between them worn down by plodding hoofs for untold ages. Upon this path the rock was ground to a fine white powder that rose in clouds and covered us until we looked ahead as through the mists of a fog. Vaguely, over the walls, the ragged volcanic hills silhouetted against the sky.

We kept on ascending between these winding walls, at length emerging on a narrow table-land--the top of the cliffs we had seen from the decks of the _Limari_. A short distance over the level ground, and then from the farther edge we looked down on the flat, stony bottom of the Vitor Valley--a ragged gorge that wound a tortuous course through the desert. A narrow trail with short, sharp angles zigzagged down a steep gully to the bottom. The mules carefully picked their way down among the loose stones, halting inquiringly at times to choose perhaps a shorter cut. If it seemed to their instinct feasible, they gathered their hind legs under them, their front hoofs sticking stiffly out in front, and slid down on their bellies, in a cloud of dust, carrying with them a small avalanche of loose shale as they landed in a section of the trail below.

You sit back in your saddle--all saddles in these parts have cruppers and breastplates to prevent your sliding over the animal's ears as you go down or slipping off behind as you go up a mountain path--and as you watch the tossing line of packs below, the speculation forces itself as to the consequences of a mule's misstep. That it is not all idle speculation is shown by the scattered skeletons below in the valley, bleached to varying degrees of dull white.

We do not descend to the pavement of river-washed stones on the bed of the valley. Twenty yards above, the trail leads abruptly off to the left into a narrow ditch worn in the face of the cliff, which in places has been scooped out to allow for the width of the packs, leaving an insecure overhang of rock above.

For miles we followed the contour of the valley, clinging to the steep slopes and the sides of the cliffs that hedged it in. Then down a clayey bank the trail started diagonally across the bottom of the valley to the farther side. Occasionally we would come suddenly on a little clearing where two or three Indians, grisly through the ashen grime, were burning charcoal--little twigs scarcely bigger than one's finger. We came out at the farther side of the valley against the cliffs of the mesa beyond. On the little stony flat before them, three straggling huts of woven cane with thatched roofs of barley straw marked a lonely hacienda. A few dirty Indians and their slatternly wives lounged about. A short distance beyond, the trail led over the steep talus at the base of the cliffs; then on up through a narrow, wedge-shaped crevice that wound back and forth in short ascending turns, till it disappeared over the edge of the mesa a thousand feet above. For miles on either side it was the only break in the cliff; and as we looked at the stiff prospect ahead of us, the rocky descent of a few hours before seemed like gentle morning exercise in the park.

For a short distance the trail ran straight up over the loose shale; then the real ascent began. Ten yards to the right, then ten to the left, and steeper with each change. The mules humped their backs and scratched along on the toe of the hoof, choosing their foothold with the nice precision of a cat crossing a sprinkled street. Two turns to the right, then two to the left; then a rest of half a minute, when without urging they would recommence the ascent. Slowly and tediously we climbed, and finally rode out on a broad, level plateau that stretched away and merged with the desert hills of the distance. Below us toiled our pack-train, tediously weaving back and forth on the zigzag trail. As each section reached the level ground, the arriero dismounted and went among his animals, talking mule-talk and easing loads to a better balance or tightening the stretched cinches. All the unkempt, hairy sides were heaving with heavy breaths. A few lay down--a bad sign in a pack-animal. But in twenty minutes every mule was apparently as fresh as ever, wandering about and foraging on the stiff, wiry bunch-grass of the arid soil. And when we started they stepped off easily under their loads, with their long ears briskly flapping. The two small arrieros left us here and returned to Quilca, for the chief difficulties were passed, and the rest was but persistent plodding over the desert to San José.

The trail over the plateau had been worn in parallel furrows like the thin strip of a newly ploughed field. Each mule chose his furrow and insistently walked there, resenting the effort of any of the others to get in ahead of him. When a collision occurred you could hear the rattle of nail-kegs and the clatter of shovels, picks, and hardware a half-mile off as they butted and shoved for the right of way. Our two remaining arrieros rode in the rear, muffled in their gaudy woolen ponchos. Occasionally a lean arm would shoot out from under its folds and the knotted thong bite the flank of some lagging mule. These mule-drivers' thongs are long, braided strips of rawhide spliced into the curb-rein--they use no snaffle--ending in a heavy knot. Its twelve or fourteen feet lie coiled in the bridle-hand until called into service. Then with a twist of the wrist, it feeds rapidly out through the right hand, humming like a sawmill as it circles round his head, and landing with a thwack that generally corrects the indisposition for which it is intended. Often the arrieros imitate its vicious hum, and it will frequently prove sufficient.

The trail was distinct enough--there was no fear of wandering away from it--a slender ditch worn in the bed of the arroyo. Here and there a ragged little hole dug in the soft walls of white rock marked the lonely home of some desert badger; and again we would ride past whole colonies of them. In these badger villages the holes fairly honeycombed the sides of the trail and the bluff walls of the arroyos, and the shuffling claw-marks of the badger trails scarred the dust in all directions. There were no other signs of life; not even the scaly windings of a lizard were to be seen, and the sparse patches of bunch-grass had long since disappeared.

Mile after mile we pushed up these narrow valleys. The badger-holes disappeared, and strange desert growths began to appear from time to time. As we had ascended, the clouds had seemed to lower, and now we could see on either hand the light mists floating about us.

One more steep loomed ahead. We pushed through the damp strata of mists clinging to its sides, and came out on the flat land above in the long level rays of the setting sun. Below us, over the clouds, it cast its cold, blue shadows and sparkling high lights, transforming those shifting, unstable vapors into rippling waves of golden foam. To the east the whole desert glowed with color. The long furrows of the trail wove themselves in patterns of orange and purple. Rolling shadows, rich in their changing violets, faded slowly and softly away to the left. Gorgeous reds and scarlets, madders, oranges, crimsons--every brilliant color of the palette--spread in glowing masses, changing with each minute of the dying day. The saddle-stiffness, cracked lips, and parched throat, dry with the alkaline dust, were forgotten--even the dismal clank of the bell-mare slowly toiling in the lead mellowed to a far-off chime--and in those few brief moments of the vanishing day we felt the subtle desert spell.

The shadows grew colder and merged one into another; the desert dimmed, a few stars glistened, and, as though a door had closed behind us, we passed into the night. Twilight is short in the tropics. Down by the horizon on our right the Southern Cross slowly lighted up--four straggling points of light that feebly struggled with the blazing stars about them. We closed in behind the swaying shadow of the mules, from which came the subdued rattle of packs and creaking cinches, that were the only sounds to disturb the dark stillness. It was but a little way now; in another hour we would be in camp.

Out of the shadow ahead came the clash of picks and shovels, the rattle of a load as it struck the sand, and the swaying shades of the mules divided around a black mass stretched on the trail. It was the first note of exhaustion. For twelve hours the mules had plodded at the same steady gait, rested only by the halt on the cliff, miles back, and the wonder of it was that, with their loads, none had dropped before. As we rode up we could see against the faint starlit ground the sprawling silhouette of the beast, lying as he fell, the long, expressive ears limp on the desert sand. The arrieros dismounted and pried him on his feet again, and patiently he hit the trail. In the next half-hour four more went down. At one time half our mules were down, and we strung out over the desert for two miles picking them up.

A few minutes later we swung off to the right, stumbling through a series of broken ditches--the remains of the old Inca irrigation systems that ran for miles back into the Andes. Then we dropped down steep winding paths, our shoulders scraping against walls of sand as we turned to the right or left around the corners. The mules apparently understood that a camp was not far ahead, and seemed fresher. Soon we rode out on a flat, sitting straight in our saddles once more, with the hard rattle of stones underfoot and the cool wet sound of running water just ahead. Then the noiseless, padded ground of a corral, and the mules lay down and we climbed out of our saddles. It was the camp at last.

A dried old Indian appeared from somewhere, and by the light of his tallow dip I made out the time--half past three in the morning. We had come seventy-six miles without water or rest.

At a little after six we were awake. The sun was rising above the cliffs that lined the valley, though the chill of the night air still lingered. Coffee awaited us in the openwork cane hut of the Indian proprietor of this hacienda, and as soon as we finished it we would start. In the daylight we could see that we were in a broad level valley. Through the center of the valley ran a brook--a portion of the same Vitor River of the day before, but now dwindled to a tiny thread. About us clustered a few buildings with low walls of broken stone from some Inca ruin. A short distance off was the mission church of the desert, announced by a cross of two twigs tied with a strip of rawhide and surmounting an excrescence of broken stones evidently intended as a steeple. We drank the thick, black coffee, for which the Indian refused both money and presents, and at seven o'clock we started.

It was all white sand now, and everywhere the same hot, white glare hedged us in. There was not a breath of air, and as the sun rose higher it beat down with a constantly growing heat. Then once more out on the flat desert above. For endless miles it stretched, quivering in the heated air of the morning. Away down in the east the long line of the ragged, snow-covered Andes loomed up, their summits thrust through the low banks of clouds along the horizon. All signs of a trail had disappeared. The little furrows left by the passing pack-trains were filled in by the hot desert winds that blow always from the west. It is the unvarying steadiness of these winds that causes the curious crescent-shaped dunes of sand found on this desert. There were thousands of these shimmering in the long distances of the heated glare, from little ones just blown into existence and not six inches from tip to tip up to great banks forty feet high and with two hundred feet between the horns. Superheated puffs of air blew from them that struck like a breath from the first run of molten slag. The heat crept between your closed teeth and dried your tongue. When you spoke it was from the throat, and the words seemed to shrivel in your mouth.

For twenty miles we plodded over the scorching glare, and then, far ahead, a small dark patch appeared. Slowly it developed and became a dull, dusty green--scraggly palms and a few peach-trees; then a railroad station with a hot galvanized-iron roof. It was San José.

In the half-hour to train-time our saddles were off and stored, the baggage and freight separated and shipped, and we ourselves stretched comfortably in the shade of the agent's thatched porch. The Arequipa train backed in, and the agent and conductor loaded the one box car, and we followed our outfit in.