CHAPTER VI

THE BORDER VALLEYS OF THE EASTERN ANDES

On the northeastern border of the Peruvian Andes long mountain spurs trail down from the regions of snow to the forested plains of the Amazon. Here are the greatest contrasts in the physical and human geography of the Andean Cordillera. So striking is the fact that every serious student of Peru finds himself compelled to cross and recross this natural frontier. The thread of an investigation runs irregularly now into one border zone, now into another. Out of the forest came the fierce marauders who in the early period drove back the Inca pioneers. Down into the forest to escape from the Spaniards fled the last Inca and his fugitive court. Here the Jesuit fathers sowed their missions along the forest margin, and watched over them for two hundred years. From the mountain border one rubber project after another has been launched into the vast swampy lowlands threaded by great rivers. As an ethnic boundary the eastern mountain border of Peru and Bolivia has no equal elsewhere in South America. From the earliest antiquity the tribes of the grass-covered mountains and the hordes of the forested plains have had strongly divergent customs and speech, that bred enduring hatred and led to frequent and bloody strife.

On the steepest spurs of the Pampaconas Valley the traveler may go from snow to pasture in a half day and from pasture to forest in the same time. Another day he is in the hot zone of the larger valley floors, the home of the Machigangas. The steep descents bring out the superimposed zones with diagrammatic simplicity. The timber line is as sharply marked as the edge of a cultivated field. At a point just beyond the huts of Pampaconas one may stand on a grassy spur that leads directly up--a day’s journey--to the white summits of the Cordillera Vilcapampa. Yet so near him is the edge of the forest that he is tempted to try to throw a stone into it. In an hour a bitter wind from the mountains may drive him to shelter or a cold fog come rolling up from the moist region below. It is hard to believe that oppressive heat is felt in the valley just beneath him.

In the larger valleys the geographic contrasts are less sharp and the transition from mountains to plain, though less spectacular, is much more complex and scientifically interesting. The forest types interfinger along the shady and the sunny slopes. The climate is so varied that the forest takes on a diversified character that makes it far more useful to man. The forest Indians and the valley planters are in closer association. There are many islands and peninsulas of plateau population on the valley floor. Here the zones of climate and the belts of fertile soil have larger areas and the land therefore has greater economic value. Much as the valley people need easier and cheaper communication with the rest of Peru it is no exaggeration to say that the valley products, are needed far more by the coast and plateau peoples to make the republic self-supporting. Coca, wood, sugar, fruit, are in such demand that their laborious and costly transportation from the valleys to the plateau is now carried on with at least some profit to the valley people. Improved transportation would promote travel and friendship and supply a basis for greater political unity.

A change in these conditions is imminent. Years ago the Peruvian government decreed the construction of a railway from Cuzco to Santa Ana and preliminary surveys were made but without any immediate practical effect. By June, 1914, 12.4 miles (20 km.) had been opened to traffic. The total length of the proposed line is 112 miles (180 km.), the gauge is to be only 2.46 feet (75 cm.),[8] and the proposed cost several millions of dollars. The financial problem may be solved either by a diversion of local revenues, derived from taxes on coca and alcohol, or by borrowed foreign capital guaranteed by local revenues.

A shrubby vegetation is scattered along the valley from the village of Urubamba, 12,000 feet (3,658 m.) above sea level, to the Canyon of Torontoy. It is local and of little value. Trees appear at Ollantaytambo, 11,000 feet (3,353 m.), and here too are more extensive wheat and maize fields besides throngs of cacti and great patches of wild geraniums. On our valley journey we camped in pleasant fields flanked by steep hills whose summits each morning were tipped with snow. Enormous alluvial fans have partly filled up the valleys and furnished broad tracts of fertile soil. The patient farmers have cleared away the stones on the flatter portions and built retaining walls for the smooth fields required for irrigation. In places the lower valley slopes are terraced in the most regular manner (Fig. 38). Some of the fans are too steep and stony for cultivation, exposing bare tracts which wash down and cover the fields. Here and there are stone walls built especially to retain the rush of mud and stones that the rains bring down. Many of them were overthrown or completely buried. Unless the stream channels on the fans are carefully watched and effective works kept up, the labor of years may be destroyed in a single slide from the head of a steep fan.

Each group of fans has a population proportioned to its size and fertility. If there are broad expanses a town like Urubamba or a great hacienda like Huadquiña is sure to be found. One group of huge stony fans below Urubamba (Fig. 180) has only a thin population, for the soil is coarse and infertile and the rivers deeply intrenched. In some places the tiny fans perched high upon the flanks of the mountains where little tributaries burst out of steep ravines are cultivated by distant owners who also till parts of the larger fans on the main valley floors. Between the fans of the valley bottoms and the smooth slopes of the high plateaus are the unoccupied lands--the steep canyon walls. Only in the most highly favored places where a small bench or a patch of alluvium occurs may one find even an isolated dwelling. The stair-like trails, in some places cut in solid rock, zigzag up the rocky slopes. An ascent of a thousand feet requires about an hour’s travel with fresh beasts. The valley people are therefore walled in. If they travel it is surely not for pleasure. Even business trips are reduced to the smallest number. The prosperity and happiness of the valley people are as well known among the plateau people as is their remarkable bread. Their climate has a combination of winter rain and winter cold with light frosts that is as favorable for good wheat as the continuous winter cold and snow cover of our northern Middle West. The colder grainfields of the plateau are sowed to barley chiefly, though there is also produced some wheat. Urubamba wheat and bread are exported in relatively large quantities, and the market demands greater quantities than the valley can supply. Oregon and Washington flour are imported at Cuzco, two days’ muleback journey from the wheat fields of Urubamba.

Such are the conditions in the upper Urubamba Valley. The lower valley, beginning at Huadquiña, is 8,000 feet (2,440 m.) above sea level and extends down to the two-thousand-foot contour at Rosalina and to one thousand feet (305 m.) at Pongo de Mainique. The upper and lower sections are only a score of miles (30 km.) apart between Huadquiña and Torontoy, but there is a difference in elevation of three thousand feet (915 m.) at just the level where the maximum contrasts are produced. The cold timber line is at 10,500 feet (3,200 m.).[9] Winter frosts are common at the one place; they are absent altogether at the other. Torontoy produces corn; Huadquiña produces sugar cane.

These contrasts are still further emphasized by the sharp topographic break between the two unlike portions of the valley. A few miles below Torontoy the Urubamba plunges into a mile-deep granite canyon. The walls are so close together that it is impossible from the canyon floor to get into one photograph the highest and steepest walls. At one place there is over a mile of descent in a horizontal distance of 2,000 feet. Huge granite slabs fall off along joint planes inclined but 15° from the vertical. The effect is stupendous. The canyon floor is littered with coarse waste and the gradient of the river greatly steepened. There is no cultivation. The trees cling with difficulty to patches of rock waste or to the less-inclined slopes. There is a thin crevice vegetation that outlines the joint pattern where seepage supplies the venturesome roots with moisture. Man has no foothold here, save at the top of the country, as at Machu Picchu, a typical fortress location safeguarded by the virtually inaccessible canyon wall and connected with the main ridge slopes only by an easily guarded narrow spur. Toward the lower end of the canyon a little finer alluvium appears and settlement begins. Finally, after a tumble of three thousand feet over countless rapids the river emerges at Colpani, where an enormous mass of alluvium has been dumped. The well-intrenched river has already cut a large part of it away. A little farther on is Huadquiña in the Salcantay Valley, where a tributary of the Urubamba has built up a sheet of alluvial land, bright green with cane. From the distant peaks of Salcantay and its neighbors well-fed streams descend to fill the irrigation channels. Thus the snow and rock-waste of the distant mountains are turned into corn and sugar on the valley lowlands.

The Cordillera Vilcapampa is a climatic as well as a topographic barrier. The southwestern aspect is dry; the northeastern aspect forested. The gap of the canyon, it should be noticed, comes at a critical level, for it falls just above the upper border of the zone of maximum precipitation. The result is that though mists are driven through the canyon by prolonged up-valley winds, they scatter on reaching the plateau or gather high up on the flanks of the valley or around the snowy peaks overlooking the trail between Ollantaytambo and Urubamba. The canyon walls are drenched with rains and even some of the lofty spurs are clothed with dense forest or scrub.

Farther down the valley winds about irregularly, now pushed to one side by a huge alluvial fan, now turned by some resistant spur of rock. Between the front range of the Andes and the Cordillera Vilcapampa there is a broad stretch of mountain country in the lee of the front range which rises to 7,000 feet (2,134 m.) at Abra Tocate (Fig. 15), and falls off to low hills about Rosalina. It is all very rough in that there are nowhere any flats except for the narrow playa strips along the streams. The dense forest adds to the difficulty of movement. In general appearance it is very much like the rugged Cascade country of Oregon except that the Peruvian forest is much more patchy and its trees are in many places loaded with dense dripping moss which gives the landscape a somber touch quite absent from most of the forests of the temperate zone.

The fertility of the eastern valleys of Peru--the result of a union of favorable climate and alluvial soil--has drawn the planter into this remote section of the country, but how can he dispose of his products? Even today with a railway to Cuzco from the coast it is almost impossible for him to get his sugar and cacao to the outside world.[10] How did he manage before even this railway was built? How could the eastern valley planter live before there were any railways at all in Peru? In part he has solved the problem as the moonshiner of Kentucky tried to solve it, and from cane juice makes aguardiente (brandy). The latter is a much more valuable product than sugar, hence (1) it will bear a higher rate of transportation, or (2) it will at the same rate of transportation yield a greater net profit. In a remote valley where sugar could not be exported on account of high freight rates brandy could still be profitably exported.

The same may be said for coca and cacao. They are condensed and valuable products. Both require more labor than sugar but are lighter in bulk and thus have to bear, in proportion to their value, a smaller share of the cost of transportation. At the end of three years coca produces over a ton of leaves per acre per year, and it can be made to produce as much as two tons to the acre. The leaves are picked four times a year. They are worth from eight to twelve cents gold a pound at the plantation or sixteen cents a pound at Cuzco. An orchard of well-cultivated and irrigated cacao trees will do even better. Once they begin to bear the trees require relatively little care except in keeping out weeds and brush and maintaining the water ditches. However, the pods must be gathered at just the right time, the seeds must be raked and dried with expert care, and after that comes the arduous labor of the grinding. This is done by hand on an inclined plane with a heavy round stone whose corners fit the hand. The chocolate must then be worked into cakes and dried, or it must be sacked in heavy cowhide and sewed so as to be practically air tight. When eight or ten years old the trees are mature and each may then bear a thousand pounds of seed.

If labor were cheap and abundant the whole trend of tropical agriculture in the eastern valleys would be toward intensive cultivation and the production of expensive exports. But labor is actually scarce. Every planter must have agents who can send men down from the plateau towns. And the planter himself must use his labor to the best advantage. Aguardiente requires less labor than cacao and coca. The cane costs about as much in labor the first year as the coca bush or the cacao tree, but after that much less. The manufacture of brandy from the cane juice requires little labor though much expensive machinery. For chocolate, a storehouse, a grinding stone, and a rake are all that are required. So the planter must work out his own salvation individually. He must take account of the return upon investments in machinery, of the number of hands he can command from among the “faena” or free Indians, of the cost and number of imported hands from the valley and plateau towns, and, finally, of the transportation rates dependent upon the number of mules in the neighborhood, and distance from the market. If in addition the labor is skilfully employed so as to have the tasks which the various products require fall at different periods of the year, then the planter may expect to make money upon his time and get a return upon his initial investment in the land.[11]

The type of tropical agriculture which we have outlined is profitable for the few planters who make up the white population of the valleys, but it has a deplorable effect upon the Indian population. Though the planters, one and all, complain bitterly of the drunken habits of their laborers, they themselves put into the hands of the Indians the means of debauchery. Practically the whole production of the eastern valleys is consumed in Peru. What the valleys do not take is sent to the plateau, where it is the chief cause of vicious conduct. Two-thirds of the prisoners in the city jails are drunkards, and, to be quite plain, they are virtually supplied with brandy by the planter, who could not otherwise make enough money. So although the planter wants more and better labor he is destroying the quality of the little there is, and, if not actually reducing the quantity of it, he is at least very certainly reducing the rate of increase.

The difficulties of the valley planter could be at least partly overcome in several ways. The railway will reduce transportation costs, especially when the playas of the valleys are all cleared and the exports increased. Moreover the eastern valleys are capable of producing things of greater utility than brandy and coca leaves. So far as profits are increased by cheaper transportation we may expect the planter to produce more rather than less of brandy and coca, his two most profitable exports, unless other products can be found that are still more profitable. The ratio of profits on sugar and brandy will still be the same unless the government increases the tax on brandy until it becomes no more profitable than sugar. That is what ought to be done for the good of the Indian population. It cannot be done safely without offering in its place the boon of cheaper railway transportation for the sugar crop. Furthermore, with railway improvements should go the blessings that agricultural experiments can bestow. A government farm in a suitable place would establish rice and cotton cultivation. Many of the playas or lower alluvial lands along the rivers can be irrigated. Only a small fraction of the water of the Rio Urubamba is now turned out upon the fields. For a large part of the year the natural rainfall would suffice to keep rice in good condition. Six tons a year are now grown on Hacienda Sahuayaco for local use on account of the heavy rate on rice imported on muleback from Cuzco, whither it comes by sea and by trail from distant coastal valleys. The lowland people also need rice and it could be sent to them down river by an easier route than that over which their supplies now come. It should be exported to the highlands, not imported therefrom. There are so many varieties adapted to so many kinds of soil and climate that large amounts should be produced at fair profits.

The cotton plant, on the other hand, is more particular about climate and especially the duration of dry and wet seasons; in spite of this its requirements are all met in the Santa Ana Valley. The rainfall is moderate and there is an abundance of dry warm soil. The plant could make most of its growth in the wet season, and the four months of cooler dry season with only occasional showers would favor both a bright staple and a good picking season. More labor would be required for cotton and rice and for the increased production of cacao than under the present system. This would not be a real difficulty if the existing labor supply were conserved by the practical abolition, through heavy taxation, of the brandy that is the chief cause of the laborer’s vicious habits. This is the first step in securing the best return upon the capital invested in a railway. Economic progress is here bound up with a very practical morality. Colonization in the eastern valleys, of which there have been but a few dismal attempts, will only extend the field of influence, it will not solve the real problem of bringing the people of the rich eastern territory of Peru into full and honorable possession of their natural wealth.

The value of the eastern valleys was known in Inca times, for their stone-faced terraces and coca-drying patios may still be seen at Echarati and on the border of the Chaupimayu Valley at Sahuayaco. Tradition has it that here were the imperial coca lands, that such of the forest Indians as were enslaved were obliged to work upon them, and that the leaves were sent to Cuzco over a paved road now covered with “montaña” or forest. The Indians still relate that at times a mysterious, wavering, white light appears on the terraces and hills where old treasure lies buried. Some of the Indians have gold and silver objects which they say were dug from the floors of hill caves. There appears to have been an early occupation of the best lands by the Spaniards, for the long extensions down them of Quechua population upon which the conquerors could depend no doubt combined with the special products of the valley to draw white colonists thither.[12] General Miller,[13] writing in 1836, mentions the villages of Incharate (Echarati) and Sant’ Ana (Santa Ana) but discourages the idea of colonization “... since the river ... has lofty mountains on either side of it, and is not navigable even for boats.”

In the “Itinerario de los viajes de Raimondi en el Peru”[14] there is an interesting account of the settlement by the Rueda family of the great estate still held by a Rueda, the wife of Señor Duque. José Rueda, in 1829, was a government deputy representative and took his pay in land, acquiring valuable territory on which there was nothing more than a mission. In 1830 Rueda ceded certain lands in “arriendo” (rent) and on these were founded the haciendas Pucamoco, Sahuayaco, etc.

Señor Gonzales, the present owner of Hacienda Sahuayaco, recently obtained his land--a princely estate, ten miles by forty--for 12,000 soles ($6,000). In a few years he has cleared the best tract, built several miles of canals, hewed out houses and furniture, planted coca, cacao, cane, coffee, rice, pepper, and cotton, and would not sell for $50,000. Moreover, instead of being a superintendent on a neighboring estate and keeping a shop in Cuzco, where his large family was a source of great expense, he has become a wealthy landowner. He has educated a son in the United States. He is importing machinery, such as a rice thresher and a distilling plant. His son is looking forward to the purchase of still more playa land down river. He pays a sol a day to each laborer, securing men from Cotabambas and Abancay, where there are many Indians, a low standard of wages, little unoccupied land, and a hot climate, so that the immigrants do not need to become acclimatized.

The deepest valleys in the Eastern Andes of Peru have a semi-arid climate which brings in its train a variety of unusual geographic relations. At first as one descends the valley the shady and sunny slopes show sharply contrasted vegetation.

The one is forested, the other grass-covered. Slopes that receive the noon and afternoon sun the greater part of the year are hottest and therefore driest. For places in 11° south latitude the sun is well to the north six months of the year, nearly overhead for about two months, and to the south four months. Northwesterly aspects are therefore driest and warmest, hence also grass-covered. In many places the line between grass and forest is developed so sharply that it seems to be the artificial edge of a cut-over tract. This is true especially if the relief is steep and the hill or ridge-crests sharp.[15]

At Santa Ana this feature is developed in an amazingly clear manner, and it is also combined with the dry timber line and with productivity in a way I have never seen equaled elsewhere. The diagram will explain the relation. It will be seen that the front range of the mountains is high enough to shut off a great deal of rainfall. The lower hills and ridges just within the front range are relatively dry. The deep valleys are much drier. Each broad expansion of a deep valley is therefore a dry pocket. Into it the sun pours even when all the surrounding hills and mountains are wrapped in cloud. The greater number of hours of sunshine hastens the rate of evaporation and still further increases the dryness. Under the spur of much sunlight and of ample irrigation water from the wetter hill slopes, the dry valley pockets produce huge crops of fruit and cane.

The influence of the local climate upon tree growth is striking. Every few days, even in the relatively dry winter season, clouds gather about the hills and there are local showers. The lower limit of the zone of clouds is sharply marked and at both Santa Ana and Echarati it is strikingly constant in elevation--about five thousand feet above sea level. From the upper mountains the forest descends, with only small patches of glade and prairie. At the lower edge of the zone of cloud it stops abruptly on the warmer and drier slopes that face the afternoon sun and continues on the moister slopes that face the forenoon sun or that slope away from the sun.

But this is not the only response the vegetation makes. The forest changes in character as well as in distribution. The forest in the wet zone is dense and the undergrowth luxuriant. In the selective slope forest below the zone of cloud the undergrowth is commonly thin or wanting and the trees grow in rather even-aged stands and by species. Finally, on the valley floor and the tributary fans, there is a distinct growth of scrub with bands of trees along the water courses. Local tracts of coarse soil, or less rain on account of a deep “hole” in a valley surrounded by steeper and higher mountains, or a change in the valley trend that brings it into less free communication with the prevailing winds, may still further increase the dryness and bring in a true xerophytic or drought-resisting vegetation. Cacti are common all through the Santa Ana Valley and below Sahuayaco there is a patch of tree cacti and similar forms several square miles in extent. Still farther down and about half-way between Sahuayaco and Pabellon are immense tracts of grass-covered mountain slopes (Fig. 53). These extend beyond Rosalina, the last of them terminating near Abra Tocate (Fig. 15). The sudden interruption is due to a turn in the valley giving freer access to the up-valley winds that sweep through the pass at Pongo de Mainique.

Northward from Abra Tocate (Fig. 55) the forest is practically continuous. The break between the two vegetal regions is emphasized by a corral for cattle and mules, the last outpost of the plateau herdsmen. Not three miles away, on the opposite forested slope of the valley, is the first of the Indian clearings where several families of Machigangas spend the wet season when the lower river is in flood (Fig. 21). The grass lands will not yield corn and coca because the soil is too thin, infertile, and dry. The Indian farms are therefore all in the forest and begin almost at its very edge. Here finally terminates a long peninsula of grass-covered country. Below this point the heat and humidity rapidly increase; the rains are heavier and more frequent; the country becomes almost uninhabitable for stock; transportation rates double. Here is the undisputed realm of the forest with new kinds of trees and products and a distinctive type of forest-dwelling Indian.

At the next low pass is the skull of an Italian who had murdered his companions and stolen a season’s picking of rubber, attempting to escape by canoe to the lower Urubamba from the Pongo de Mainique. The Machigangas overtook him in their swiftest dugouts, spent a night with him, and the next morning shot him in the back and returned with their rightful property--a harvest of rubber. For more than a decade foreigners have been coming down from the plateau to exploit them. They are an independent and free tribe and have simple yet correct ideas of right and wrong. Their chief, a man of great strength of character and one of the most likeable men I have known, told me that he placed the skull in the pass to warn away the whites who came to rob honest Indians.

The Santa Ana Valley between the Canyon of Torontoy and the heavy forest belt below Rosalina is typical of many of the eastern valleys of Peru, both in its physical setting and in its economic and labor systems. Westward are the outliers of the Vilcapampa range; on the east are the smaller ranges that front the tropical lowlands. Steep valleys descend from the higher country to join the main valley and at the mouth of every tributary is an alluvial fan. If the alluvium is coarse and steeply inclined there is only pasture on it or a growth of scrub. If fine and broad it is cleared and tilled. The sugar plantations begin at Huadquiña and end at Rosalina. Those of Santa Ana and Echarati are the most productive. It takes eighteen months for the cane to mature in the cooler weather at Huadquiña (8,000 feet). Less than a year is required at Santa Ana (3,400 feet). Patches of alluvium or playas, as they are locally called, continue as far as Santo Anato, but they are cultivated only as far as Rosalina. The last large plantation is Pabellon; the largest of all is Echarati. All are irrigated. In the wet months, December to March inclusive, there is little or no irrigation. In the four months of the dry season, June to September inclusive, there is frequent irrigation. Since the cane matures in about ten months the harvest seasons fall irregularly with respect to the seasons of rain. Therefore the land is cleared and planted at irregular intervals and labor distributed somewhat through the year. There is however a concentration of labor toward the end of the dry season when most of the cane is cut for grinding.

The combined freight rate and government tax on coca, sugar, and brandy take a large part of all that the planter can get for his crop. It is 120 miles (190 km.) from Santa Ana to Cuzco and it takes five days to make the journey. The freight rate on coca and sugar for mule carriage, the only kind to be had, is two cents per pound. The national tax is one cent per pound (0.45 kg.). The coca sells for twenty cents a pound. The cost of production is unknown, but the paid labor takes probably one-half this amount. The planter’s time, capital, and profit must come out of the rest. On brandy there is a national tax of seven cents per liter (0.26 gallon) and a municipal tax of two and a half cents. It costs five cents a liter for transport to Cuzco. The total in taxes and transport is fourteen and a half cents a liter. It sells for twenty cents a liter. Since brandy (aguardiente), cacao (for chocolate), and coca leaves (for cocaine) are the only precious substances which the valleys produce it takes but a moment’s inspection to see how onerous these taxes would be to the planter if labor did not, as usual, pay the penalty.

Much of the labor on the plantations is free of cost to the owner and is done by the so-called _faena_ or free Indians. These are Quechuas who have built their cabins on the hill lands of the planters, or on the floors of the smaller valleys. The disposition of their fields in relation to the valley plantations is full of geographic interest. Each plantation runs at right angles to the course of the valley. Hacienda Sahuayaco is ten miles (16 km.) in extent down valley and forty miles (64 km.) from end to end across the valley, and it is one of the smaller plantations! It follows that about ten square miles lie on the valley floor and half of this can ultimately be planted. The remaining three hundred and ninety square miles include some mountain country with possible stores of mineral wealth, and a great deal of “fells” country--grassy slopes, graded though steep, excellent for pasture, with here and there patches of arable land. But the hill country can be cultivated only by the small farmer who supplements his supply of food from cultivated plants like potatoes, corn, and vegetables, by keeping cattle, mules, pigs, and poultry, and by raising coca and fruit.

The Indian does not own any of the land he tills. He has the right merely to live on it and to cultivate it. In return he must work a certain number of days each year on the owner’s plantation. In many cases a small money payment is also made to the planter. The planter prefers labor to money, for hands are scarce throughout the whole eastern valley region. No Indian need work on the planter’s land without receiving pay directly therefor. Each also gets a small weekly allotment of aguardiente while in the planter’s employ.

The scene every Saturday night outside the office of the _contador_ (treasurer) of a plantation is a novel one. Several hundred Indians gather in the dark patio in front of the office. Within the circle of the feeble candlelight that reaches only the margin of the crowd one may see a pack of heavy, perspiring faces. Many are pock-marked from smallpox; here and there an eye is missing; only a few are jovial. A name is shouted through the open door and an Indian responds. He pulls off his cap and stands stupid and blinking, while the contador asks:

“Faena” (free)?

“Si, Señor,” he answers.

“Un sol” (one “sol” or fifty cents gold). The assistant hands over the money and the man gives way to the next one on the list. If he is a laborer in regular and constant employ he receives five soles (two fifty gold) per week. There are interruptions now and then. A ragged, half-drunken man has been leaning against the door post, suspiciously impatient to receive his money. Finally his name is called.

“Faena?” asks the contador.

“No, Señor, cinco (five) soles.”

At that the field _superintendente_ glances at his time card and speaks up in protest.

“You were the man that failed to show up on Friday and Saturday. You were drunk. You should receive nothing.”

“No, mi patrón,” the man contends, “I had to visit a sick cousin in the next valley. Oh, he was very sick, Señor,” and he coughs harshly as if he too were on the verge of prostration. The sick cousin, a faena Indian, has been at work in another cane field on the same plantation for two days and now calls out that he is present and has never had a sick day in his life. Those outside laugh uproariously. The contador throws down two soles and the drunkard is pushed back into the sweating crowd, jostled right and left, and jeered by all his neighbors as he slinks away grumbling.

Another Indian seems strangely shy. He scarcely raises his voice above a whisper. He too is a faena Indian. The contador finds fault.

“Why didn’t you come last month when I sent for you?”

The Indian fumbles his cap, shuffles his feet, and changes his coca cud from one bulging cheek to the other before he can answer. Then huskily:

“I started, Señor, but my woman overtook me an hour afterward and said that one of the ewes had dropped a lamb and needed care.”

“But your woman could have tended it!”

“No, Señor, she is sick.”

“How, then, could she have overtaken you?” he is asked.

“She ran only a little way and then shouted to me.”

“And what about the rest of the month?” persists the contador.

“The other lambs came, Señor, and I should have lost them all if I had left.”

The contador seems at the end of his complaint. The Indian promises to work overtime. His difficulties seem at an end, but the superintendent looks at his old record.

“He always makes the same excuse. Last year he was three weeks late.”

So the poor shepherd is fined a sol and admonished that his lands will be given to some one else if he does not respond more promptly to his patron’s call for work. He leaves behind him a promise and the rank mixed smell of coca and much unwashed woolen clothing.

It is not alone at the work that they grumble. There is malaria in the lower valleys. Some of them return to their lofty mountain homes prostrated with the unaccustomed heat and alternately shaking with chills and burning with fever. Without aid they may die or become so weakened that tuberculosis carries them off. Only their rugged strength enables the greater number to return in good health.

A plantation may be as large as a principality and draw its laborers from places fifty miles away. Some of the more distant Indians need not come to work in the canefields. Part of their flock is taken in place of work. Or they raise horses and mules and bring in a certain number each year to turn over to the patron. Hacienda Huadquiña (Fig. 46) takes in all the land from the snow-covered summits of the Cordillera Vilcapampa to the canefields of the Urubamba. Within the broad domain are half the climates and occupations characteristic of Peru. It is difficult to see how a thousand Indians can be held to even a mixed allegiance. It seems impossible that word can be got to them. However the native “telegraph” is even more perfect than that among the forest Indians. From one to the other runs the news that they are needed in the canefields. On the trail to and from a mountain village, in their ramblings from one high pasture to another, within the dark walls of their stone and mud huts when they gather for a feast or to exchange drinks of brandy and _chicha_--the word is passed that has come up from the valleys.

For every hundred faena Indians there are five or six regular laborers on the plantations, so with the short term passed by the faena Indians their number is generally half that of the total laborers at work at any one time. They live in huts provided for them by the planter, and in the houses of their friends among the regular laborers. Here there are almost nightly carousals. The regular laborer comes from the city or the valley town. The faena laborer is a small hill farmer or shepherd. They have much to exchange in the way of clothing, food, and news. I have frequently had their conversations interpreted for me. They ask about the flocks and the children, who passed along the trails, what accidents befell the people.

“Last year,” droned one to another over their chicha, “last year we lost three lambs in a hailstorm up in the high fields near the snow. It was very cold. My foot cracked open and, though I have bound it with wet coca leaves every night, it will not cure,” and he displays his heel, the skin of which is like horn for hardness and covered with a crust of dirt whose layers are a record of the weather and of the pools he has waded for years.

Their wanderings are the main basis of conversation. They know the mountains better than the condors do. We hired a small boy of twelve at Puquiura. He was to build our fires, carry water, and help drive the mules. He crossed the Cordillera Vilcapampa on foot with us. He scrambled down into the Apurimac canyon and up the ten thousand feet of ascent on the other side, twisted the tails of the mules, and shouted more vigorously then the arrieros. He was engaged to go with us to Pasaje, where his father would return with him in a month. But he climbed to Huascatay with us and said he wanted to see Abancay. When an Indian whom we pressed into service dropped the instruments on the trail and fled into the brush the boy packed them like a man. The soldier carried a tripod on his back. The boy, not to be outdone, insisted on carrying the plane table, and to his delight we called him a soldier too. He went with us to Huancarama. When I paid him he smiled at the large silver soles that I put into his hand; and when I doubled the amount for his willingness to work his joy was unbounded. Forthwith he set out, this time on muleback, on the return journey. The last I saw of him he was holding his precious soles in a handkerchief and kicking his beast with his bare heels, as light-hearted as a cavalier. Often I find myself wondering whether he returned safely with his money. I should very much like to see him again, for with him I associate cheerfulness in difficult places and many a pleasant camp-fire.