CHAPTER VII

THE GEOGRAPHIC BASIS OF REVOLUTIONS AND OF HUMAN CHARACTER IN THE PERUVIAN ANDES

Human character as a spontaneous development has always been a great factor in shaping historical events, but it is a striking fact that in the world of our day its influence is exerted chiefly in the lowest and highest types of humanity. The savage with his fetishes, his taboos, and his inherent childlikeness and suspicion needs only whim or a slight religious pretext to change his conduct. Likewise the really educated and the thoughtful act from motives often wholly unrelated to economic conditions or results. But the masses are deeply influenced by whatever affects their material welfare. A purely idealistic impulse may influence a people, but in time its effects are always displayed against an economic background.

There is a way whereby we may test this theory. In most places in the world we have history in the making, and through field studies we can get an intimate view of it. It is peculiarly the province of geography to study the present distribution and character of men in relation to their surroundings and these are the facts of mankind that must forever be the chief data of economic history. It is not vain repetition to say that this means, first of all, the study of the character of men in the fullest sense. It means, in the second place, that a large part of the character must be really understood. Whenever this is done there is found a geographic basis of human character that is capable of the clearest demonstration. It is in the geographic environment that the material motives of humanity have struck their deepest roots.

These conclusions might be illustrated from a hundred places in the field of study covered in this book. Almost every chapter of Part I contains facts of this character. I wish, however, to discuss the subject specifically and for that purpose now turn to the conditions of life in the remoter mountain valleys and to one or two aspects of the revolutions that occur now and then in Peru. The last one terminated only a few months before our arrival and it was a comparatively easy matter to study both causes and effects.

A caution is necessary however. It is a pity that we use the term “revolution” to designate these little disturbances. They affect sometimes a few, again a few hundred men. Rarely do they involve the whole country. A good many of them are on a scale much smaller than our big strikes. Most of them involve a loss of life smaller than that which accompanies a city riot. They are in a sense strikes against the government, marked by local disorders and a little violence.

Early in 1911 the Prefect of the Department of Abancay had crowned his long career by suppressing a revolution. He had been Subprefect at Andahuaylas, and when the rebels got control of the city of Abancay and destroyed some of the bridges on the principal trails, he promptly organized a military expedition, constructed rafts, floated his small force of men across the streams, and besieged the city. The rebel force was driven at last to take shelter in the city jail opposite the Prefectura. There, after the loss of half their number, they finally surrendered. Seventy-five of them were sent to the government penitentiary at Arequipa. Among the killed were sons from nearly half the best families of Abancay. All of the rebels were young men.

It would be difficult to give an adequate idea of the hatred felt by the townspeople toward the government. Every precaution was taken to prevent a renewal of the outbreak. Our coming was telegraphed ahead by government agents who looked with suspicion upon a party of men, well armed and provisioned, coming up from the Pasaje crossing of the Apurimac, three days’ journey north. The deep canyon affords shelter not only to game, but also to fugitives, rebels, and bandits. The government generally abandons pursuit on the upper edge of the canyon, for only a prolonged guerilla warfare could completely subdue an armed force scattered along its rugged walls and narrow floor. The owner of the hacienda at Pasaje is required to keep a record of all passengers rafted across the Apurimac, but he explains significantly that some who pass are too hurried to write their names in his book. Once he reaches the eastern wall of the canyon a fugitive may command a view of the entire western wall and note the approach of pursuers. Thence eastward he has the whole Cordillera Vilcapampa in which to hide. Pursuit is out of the question.

When we arrived, the venerable Prefect, a model of old-fashioned courtesy, greeted us with the utmost cordiality. He told us of our movements since leaving Pasaje, and laughingly explained that since we had sent him no friendly message and had come from a rebel retreat, he had taken it for granted that we intended to storm the town. I assured him that we were ready to join his troops, if necessary, whereupon, with a delightful frankness, he explained his method of keeping the situation in hand. Several troops of cavalry and two battalions of infantry were quartered at the government barracks. Every evening the old gentleman, a Colonel in the Peruvian army, mounted a powerful gray horse and rode, quite unattended, through the principal streets of the town. Several times I walked on foot behind him, again I preceded him, stopping in shops on the way to make trivial purchases, to find out what the people had to say about him and the government as he rode by. One old gentleman interested me particularly. He had only the day before called at the Prefectura to pay his respects. Although his manner was correct there was lacking to a noticeable degree the profusion of sentiment that is apt to be exhibited on such an occasion. He now sat on a bench in a shop. Both his own son and the shopkeeper’s son had been slain in the revolution. It was natural that they should be bitter. But the precise nature of their complaint was what interested me most. One said that he did not object to having his son lose his life for his country. But that his country’s officials should hire Indians to shoot his son seemed to him sheer murder. Later, at Lambrama, I talked with a rebel fugitive, and that was also his complaint. The young men drafted into the army are Indians, or mixed, never whites. White men, and men with a small amount of Indian blood, officer the army. When a revolutionary party organizes it is of course made up wholly of men of white and mixed blood, never Indians. The Indians have no more grievance against one white party than another. Both exploit him to the limit of law and beyond the limit of decency. He fights if he must, but never by choice.

Thus Indian troops killed the white rebels of Abancay.

“Tell me, Señor,” said the fugitive, “if you think that just. Tell me how many Indians you think a white man worth. Would a hundred dead Indians matter? But how replace a white man where there are so few? The government _assassinated_ my compatriots!”

“But,” I replied, “why did you fight the government? All of you were prosperous. Your fathers may have had a grievance against the government, but of what had you young men to complain?”

His reply was far from convincing. He was at first serious, but his long abstract statements about taxes and government wastefulness trailed off into vagueness, and he ended in a laughing mood, talking about adventure, the restless spirit of young men, and the rich booty of confiscated lands and property had the rebels won. He admitted that it was a reckless game, but when I called him a mere soldier of fortune he grew serious once more and reverted to the iniquitous taxation system of Peru. Further inquiry made it quite clear that the ill-fated revolution of Abancay was largely the work of idle young men looking for adventure. It seemed a pity that their splendid physical energy could not have been turned into useful channels. The land sorely needs engineers, progressive ranchmen and farmers, upright officials, and a spirit of respect for law and order. Old men talked of the unstable character of the young men of the time, but almost all of them had themselves been active participants in more than one revolution of earlier years.

Every night at dinner the Prefect sent off by government telegraph a long message to the President of the Republic on the state of the Department, and received similar messages from the central government about neighboring departments. These he read to us, and, curiously enough, to the entire party, made up of army officers and townsmen. I was surprised to find later that the company included one government official whose son had been among the imprisoned rebels at Arequipa. We met the young man a week later at a mountain village, a day after a general amnesty had been declared. His escape had been made from the prison a month before. He forcibly substituted the mess-boy’s clothing for his own, and thus passed out unnoticed. After a few days’ hiding in the city, he set out alone across the desert of Vitor, thence across the lofty volcanic country of the Maritime Andes, through some of the most deserted, inhospitable land in Peru, and at the end of three weeks had reached Lambrama, near Abancay, the picture of health!

Later I came to have a better notion of the economic basis of the revolution, for obviously the planters and the reckless young men must have had a mutual understanding. Somewhere the rebels had obtained the sinews of war. The planters did not take an open part in the revolution, but they financed it. When the rebels were crushed, the planters, at least outwardly, welcomed the government forces. Inwardly they cursed them for thwarting their scheme. The reasons have an interesting geographic basis. Abancay is the center of a sugar region. Great irrigated estates are spread out along the valley floor and the enormous alluvial fans built into the main valley at the mouths of the tributary streams. There is a heavy tax on sugar and on aguardiente (brandy) manufactured from cane juice. The _hacendados_ had dreamed of lighter taxes. The rebels offered the means of securing relief. But taxes were not the real reason for the unrest, for many other sugar producers pay the tax without serious complaint. Abancay is cut off from the rest of Peru by great mountains. Toward the west, _via_ Antabamba, Cotahuasi, and Chuquibamba, two hundred miles of trail separate its plantations from the Pacific. Twelve days’ hard riding is required to reach Lima over the old colonial trade route. It is three days to Cuzco at the end of the three-hundred-mile railway from the port of Mollendo. The trails to the Atlantic rivers are impossible for trading purposes. Deep sunk in a subtropical valley, the irrigable alluvial land of Abancay tempts the production of sugar.

But nature offers no easy route out of the valley. For centuries the product has been exported at almost prohibitive cost, as in the eastern valley of Santa Ana. The coastal valleys enjoy easy access to the sea. Each has its own port at the valley mouth, where ocean steamers call for cargo. Many have short railway lines from port to valley head. The eastern valleys and Abancay have been clamoring for railways, better trails, and wagon roads. From the public fund they get what is left. The realization of their hopes has been delayed too long. It would be both economic and military strategy to give them the desired railway. Revolutions in Peru always start in one of two ways: either by a _coup_ at Lima or an unchecked uprising in an interior province. Bolivia has shown the way out of this difficulty. Two of her four large centers--La Paz and Oruro--are connected by rail, and the line to Cochabamba lacks only a few kilometres of construction.[16] To Sucre a line has been long projected. Formerly a revolution at one of the four towns was exceedingly difficult to stamp out. Diaz had the same double motive in encouraging railway building in the remote desert provinces of Northern Mexico, where nine out of ten Mexican revolutions gather headway. Argentina has enjoyed a high degree of political unity since her railway system was extended to Córdoba and Tucumán. The last uprising, that of 1906, took place on her remotest northeastern frontier.

We had ample opportunity to see the hatred of the rebels. At nightfall of September 25th we rode into the courtyard of Hacienda Auquibamba. We had traveled under the worst possible circumstances. Our mules had been enfeebled by hot valley work at Santa Ana and the lower Urubamba and the cold mountain climate of the Cordillera Vilcapampa. The climb out of the Apurimac canyon, even without packs, left them completely exhausted. We were obliged to abandon one and actually to pull another along. It had been a hard day in spite of a prolonged noon rest. Everywhere our letters of introduction had won an outpouring of hospitality among a people to whom hospitality is one of the strongest of the unwritten laws of society. Our soldier escort rode ahead of the pack train.

As the clatter of his mules’ hoofs echoed through the dark buildings the manager rushed out, struck a light and demanded “Who’s there?” To the soldier’s cheerful “Buena noche, Señor,” he sneeringly replied “Halto! Guardia de la República, aqui hay nada para un soldado del gobierno.” Whereupon the soldier turned back to me and said we should not be able to stop here, and coming nearer me he whispered “He is a revolutionary.” I dismounted and approached the haughty manager, who was in a really terrible mood. Almost before I could begin to ask him for accommodations he rattled off that there was no pasture for our beasts, no food for us, and that we had better go on to the next hacienda. “Absolutamente nada!” he repeated over and over again, and at first I thought him drunk. Since it was then quite dark, with no moon, but instead heavy black clouds over the southern half of the sky and a brisk valley wind threatening rain, I mildly protested that we needed nothing more than shelter. Our food boxes would supply our wants, and our mules, even without fodder, could reach Abancay the next day. Still he stormed at the government and would have none of us. I reminded him that his fields were filled with sugar cane and that it was the staple forage for beasts during the part of the year when pasture was scarce. The cane was too valuable, he said. It was impossible to supply us. I was on the point of pitching camp beside the trail, for it was impossible to reach the next hacienda with an exhausted outfit.

Just then an older man stepped into the circle of light and amiably inquired the purpose of our journey. When it was explained, he turned to the other and said it was unthinkable that men should be treated so inhospitably in a strange land. Though he himself was a guest he urged that the host should remember the laws of hospitality, whereupon the latter at last grudgingly asked us to join him at his table and to turn our beasts over to his servants. It was an hour or more before he would exhibit any interest in us. When he had learned of our object in visiting Abancay he became somewhat more friendly, though his hostility still manifested itself. Nowhere else in South America have I seen exhibited such boorish conduct. Nevertheless the next morning I noticed that our mules had been well fed. He said good-by to us as if he were glad to be rid of any one in any way connected with the hostile government. Likewise the manager at Hacienda Pasaje held out almost until the last before he would consent to aid us with fresh beasts. Finally, after a day of courting I gave him a camp chair. He was so pleased that he not only gave us beasts, but also a letter of introduction to one of his caretakers on a farm at the top of the cuesta. Here on a cold, stormy night we found food and fuel and the shelter of a friendly roof.

A by-product of the revolution, as of all revolutions in thinly settled frontier regions, was the organization of small bands of outlaws who infested the lonely trails, stole beasts, and left their owners robbed and helpless far from settlements. We were cautioned to beware of them, both by Señor Gonzales, the Prefect at Abancay, and by the Subprefect of Antabamba. Since some of the bandits had been jailed, I could not doubt the accuracy of the reports, but I did doubt stories of murder and of raids by large companies of mountain bandits. As a matter of fact we were robbed by the Governor of Antabamba, but in a way that did not enable us to find redress in either law or lead. The story is worth telling because it illustrates two important facts: first, the vile so-called government that exists in some places in the really remote sections of South America, and second, the character of the mountain Indians.

The urgent letter from the Prefect of Abancay to the Subprefect of Antabamba quickly brought the latter from his distant home. When we arrived we found him drinking with the Governor. The Subprefect was most courteous. The Governor was good-natured, but his face exhibited a rare combination of cruelty and vice. We were offered quarters in the municipal building for the day or two that we were obliged to stop in the town. The delay enabled us to study the valley to which particular interest attaches because of its situation in the mountain zone between the lofty pastures of the Alpine country and the irrigated fields of the valley farmers.

Antabamba itself lies on a smooth, high-level shoulder of the youthful Antabamba Valley. The valley floor is narrow and rocky, and affords little cultivable land. On the valley sides are steep descents and narrow benches, chiefly structural in origin, over which there is scattered a growth of scrub, sufficient to screen the deer and the bear, and, more rarely, vagrant bands of vicuña that stray down from their accustomed haunts in the lofty Cordillera. Three thousand feet above the valley floor a broad shoulder begins (Fig. 60) and slopes gently up to the bases of the true mountains that surmount the broad rolling summit platform. Here are the great pasture lands of the Andes and their semi-nomadic shepherds. The highest habitation in the world is located here at 17,100 feet (5,210 m.), near a secondary pass only a few miles from the main axis of the western chain, and but 300 feet (91 m.) below it.

The people of Antabamba are both shepherds and farmers. The elevation is 12,000 feet (3,658 m.), too high and exposed for anything more than potatoes. Here is an Indian population pure-blooded, and in other respects, too, but little altered from its original condition. There is almost no communication with the outside world. A deep canyon fronts the town and a lofty mountain range forms the background.

At nightfall, one after another, the Indians came in from the field and doffed their caps as they passed our door. Finally came the “Teniente Gobernador,” or Lieutenant Governor. He had only a slight strain of white blood. His bearing was that of a sneak, and he confirmed this impression by his frank disdain for his full-blooded townsmen. “How ragged and ugly they are! You people must find them very stupid,” etc. When he found that we had little interest in his remarks, he asked us if we had ever seen Lima. We replied that we had, whereupon he said, “Do you see the gilded cross above the church yonder? I brought that on muleback all the way from Lima! Think of it! These ignorant people have never seen Lima!” His whole manner as he drew himself up and hit his breast was intended to make us think that he was vastly superior to his neighbors. The sequel shows that our first estimate of him was correct.

We made our arrangements with the Governor and departed. To inspire confidence, and at the Governor’s urgent request, we had paid in advance for our four Indians and our fresh beasts--and at double the usual rates, for it was still winter in the Cordillera. They were to stay with us until we reached Cotahuasi, in the next Department beyond the continental divide, where a fresh outfit could be secured. The Lieutenant Governor accompanied us to keep the party together. They appeared to need it. Like our Indian peons at Lambrama the week before, these had been taken from the village jail and represented the scum of the town. As usual they behaved well the first day. On the second night we reached the Alpine country where the vegetation is very scanty and camped at the only spot that offered fuel and water. The elevation was 16,000, and here we had the lowest temperature of the whole journey, +6° F. (-14.4° C.). Ice covered the brook near camp as soon as the sun went down and all night long the wind blew down from the lofty Cordillera above us, bringing flurries of snow and tormenting our unprotected beasts. It seemed to me doubtful if our Indians would remain. I discussed with the other members of the party the desirability of chaining the peons to the tent pole, but this appeared so extreme a measure that we abandoned the idea after warning the Teniente that he must not let them escape.

At daybreak I was alarmed at the unusual stillness about camp. A glance showed that half our hobbled beasts had drifted back toward Antabamba and no doubt were now miles away. The four Indian peons had left also, and their tracks, half buried by the last snowfall, showed that they had left hours before and that it was useless to try to overtake them. Furthermore we were making a topographic map across the Cordillera, and, in view of the likelihood of snow blockading the 17,600-foot (5,360 m.) pass which we had to cross, the work ought not to be delayed. With all these disturbing conditions to meet, and suffering acutely from mountain sickness, I could scarcely be expected to deal gently with our official. I drew out the sleeping Teniente and set him on his feet. To my inquiry as to the whereabouts of the Indians that he had promised to guard, he blinked uncertainly, and after a stupid “Quien sabe?” peered under the cover of a sheepskin near by as if the peons had been transformed into insects and had taken refuge under a blade of grass. I ordered him to get breakfast and after that to take upon his back the instruments that two men had carried up to that time, and accompany the topographer. Thus loaded, the Lieutenant Governor of Antabamba set out on foot a little ahead of the party. Hendriksen, the topographer, directed him to a 17,000-foot peak near camp, one of the highest stations occupied in the traverse. When the topographer reached the summit the instruments were there but the Teniente had fled. Hendriksen rapidly followed the tracks down over the steep snow-covered wall of a deeply recessed cirque, but after a half-hour’s search could not get sight of the runaway, whereupon he returned to his station and took his observations, reaching camp in the early afternoon.

In the meantime I had intercepted two Indians who had come from Cotahuasi driving a llama train loaded with corn. They held a long conversation at the top of the pass above camp and at first edged suspiciously away. But the rough ground turned them back into the trail and at last they came timidly along. They pretended not to understand Spanish and protested vigorously that they had to keep on with their llamas. I thought from the belligerent attitude of the older, which grew rapidly more threatening as he saw that I was alone, that I was in for trouble, but when I drew my revolver he quickly obeyed the order to sit down to breakfast, which consisted of soup, meat, and army biscuits. I also gave them coca and cigarettes, the two most desirable gifts one can make to a plateau Indian, and thereupon I thought I had gained their friendship, for they at last talked with me in broken Spanish. The older one now explained that he must at all hazards reach Matará by nightfall, but he would be glad to leave his son to help us. I agreed, and he set out forthwith. The _arriero_ (muleteer) had now returned with the lost mules and with the assistance of the Indian we soon struck camp and loaded our mules. I cautioned the arriero to keep close watch of the Indian, for at one time I had caught on his face an expression of hatred more intense than I had ever seen before. The plateau Indian of South America is usually so stupid and docile that the unexpectedly venomous look of the man after our friendly conversation and my good treatment alarmed me. At the last moment, and when our backs were turned, our Indian, under the screen of the packs, slipped away from us. The arriero called out to know where he had gone. It took us but a few moments to gain the top of a hill that commanded the valley. Fully a half-mile away and almost indistinguishable against the brown of the valley floor was our late assistant, running like a deer. No mule could follow over that broken ground at an elevation of 16,000 feet, and so he escaped.

Fortunately that afternoon we passed a half-grown boy riding back toward Antabamba and he promised to hand the Governor a note in Spanish, penciled on a leaf of my traverse book. I dropped all the polite phrases that are usually employed and wrote as follows:

“Señor Gobernador:

“Your Indians have escaped, likewise the Lieutenant Governor. They have taken two beasts. In the name of the Prefect of Abancay, I ask you immediately to bring a fresh supply of men and animals. We shall encamp near the first pass, three days west of Antabamba, until you come.”

We were now without Indians to carry the instruments, which had therefore to be strapped to the mules. Without guides we started westward along the trail. At the next pass the topographer rode to the summit of a bluff and asked which of the two trails I intended to follow. Just then a solitary Indian passed and I shouted back that I would engage the Indian and precede the party, and he could tell from my course at the fork of the trail how to direct his map and where to gain camp at nightfall. But the Indian refused to go with us. All my threatening was useless and I had to force myself to beat him into submission with my quirt. Several repetitions on the way, when he stubbornly refused to go further, kept our guide with us until we reached a camp site. I had offered him a week’s pay for two hours’ work, and had put coca and cigarettes into his hands. When these failed I had to resort to force. Now that he was about to leave I gave him double the amount I had promised him. He could scarcely believe his eyes. He rushed up to the side of my mule, and reaching around my waist embraced me and thanked me again and again. The plateau Indian is so often waylaid in the mountains and impressed for service, then turned loose without pay or actually robbed, that a _promise_ to pay holds no attraction for him. I had up to the last moment resembled this class of white. He was astonished to find that I really meant to pay him well.

Then he set out upon the return, faithfully delivering my note to the topographer about the course of the trail and the position of the camp. He had twelve miles to go to the first mountain hut, so that he could not have traveled less than that distance to reach shelter. The next morning a mantle of snow covered everything, yet when I pushed back the tent flap there stood my scantily clad Indian of the night before, shivering, with sandaled feet in the snow, saying that he had come back to work for me!

This camp was number thirteen out of Abancay, and here our topographer was laid up for three days. Heretofore the elevation had had no effect upon him, but the excessively lofty stations of the past few days and the hard climbing had finally prostrated him. We had decided to carry him out by the fourth day if he felt no better, but happily he recovered sufficiently to continue the work. The delay enabled the Governor to overtake us with a fresh outfit. On the morning of our third day in camp he overtook us with a small escort of soldiers accompanied by the fugitive Teniente. He said that he had come to arrest me on the charge of maltreating an official of Peru. A few packages of cigarettes and a handful of raisins and biscuits so stirred his gratitude that we parted the best of friends. Moreover he provided us with four fresh beasts and four new men, and thus equipped we set out for a rendezvous about ten miles away. But the faithless Governor turned off the trail and sought shelter at the huts of a company of mountain shepherds. That night his men slept on the ground in a bitter wind just outside our camp at 17,200 feet. They complained that they had no food. The Governor had promised to join us with llama meat for the peons. We fed them that night and also the next day. But we had by that time passed the crest of the western Cordillera and were outside the province of Antabamba. The next morning not only our four men but also our four beasts were missing. We were stranded and sick just under the pass. To add to our distress the surgeon, Dr. Erving, was obliged to leave us for the return home, taking the best saddle animal and the strongest pack mule. It was impossible to go on with the map. That morning I rode alone up a side valley until I reached a shepherd’s hut, where I could find only a broken-down, shuffling old mule, perfectly useless for our hard work.

Then there happened a piece of good luck that seems almost providential. A young man came down the trail with three pack mules loaded with llama meat. He had come from the Cotahuasi Valley the week before and knew the trail. I persuaded him to let us hire one of his mules. In this way and by leaving the instruments and part of our gear in the care of two Indian youths we managed to get to Cotahuasi for rest and a new outfit.

The young men who took charge of part of our outfit interested me very greatly. I had never seen elsewhere so independent and clear-eyed a pair of mountain Indians. At first they would have nothing to do with us. They refused us permission to store our goods in their hut. To them we were railroad engineers. They said that the railway might come and when it did it would depopulate the country. The railway was a curse. Natives were obliged to work for the company without pay. Their uncle had told them of frightful abuses over at Cuzco and had warned them not to help the railway people in any way. They had moved out here in a remote part of the mountains so that white men could not exploit them.

In the end, however, we got them to understand the nature of our work. Gifts of various sorts won their friendship, and they consented to guard the boxes we had to leave behind. Two weeks later, on his return, the topographer found everything unmolested.

I could not but feel that the spirit of those strong and independent young men was much better for Peru than the cringing, subservient spirit of most of the Indians that are serfs of the whites. The policy of the whites has been to suppress and exploit the natives, to abuse them, and to break their spirit. They say that it keeps down revolution; it keeps the Indian in his place. But certainly in other respects it is bad for the Indian and it is worse for the whites. Their brutality toward the natives is incredible. It is not so much the white himself as the vicious half-breed who is often allied with him as his agent.

I shall never forget the terror of two young girls driving a donkey before them when they came suddenly face to face with our party, and we at the same time hastily scrambled off our beasts to get a photograph of a magnificent view disclosed at the bend of the steep trail. They thought we had dismounted to attack them, and fled screaming in abject fear up the mountain side, abandoning the donkey and the pack of potatoes which must have represented a large part of the season’s product. It is a kind of highway robbery condoned because it is only robbing an Indian. He is considered to be lawful prey. His complaint goes unnoticed. In the past a revolution has offered him sporadic chances to wreak vengeance. More often it adds to his troubles by scattering through the mountain valleys the desperate refugees or lawless bands of marauders who kill the flocks of the mountain shepherds and despoil their women.

There are still considerable numbers of Indians who shun the white man and live in the most remote corners of the mountains. I have now and again come upon the most isolated huts, invisible from the valley trails. They were thatched with grass; the walls were of stone; the rafters though light must have required prodigious toil, for all timber stops at 12,000 feet on the mountain borders. The shy fugitive who perches his hut near the lip of a hanging valley far above the trail may look down himself unseen as an eagle from its nest. When the owner leaves on a journey, or to take his flock to new pastures, he buries his pottery or hides it in almost inaccessible caves. He locks the door or bars it, thankful if the spoiler spares rafters and thatch.

At length we reached Cotahuasi, a town sprawled out on a terrace just above the floor of a deep canyon (Fig. 29). Its flower gardens and pastures are watered by a multitude of branching canals lined with low willows. Its bright fields stretch up the lower slopes and alluvial fans of the canyon to the limits of irrigation where the desert begins. The fame of this charming oasis is widespread. The people of Antabamba and Lambrama and even the officials of Abancay spoke of Cotahuasi as practically the end of our journey. Fruits ripen and flowers blossom every month of the year. Where we first reached the canyon floor near Huaynacotas, elevation 11,500 feet (3,500 m.), there seemed to be acres of rose bushes. Only the day before at an elevation of 16,800 feet (5,120 m.) we had broken thick ice out of a mountain spring in order to get water; now we were wading a shallow river, and grateful for the shade along its banks. Thus we came to the town prepared to find the people far above their plateau neighbors in character. Yet, in spite of friendly priests and officials and courteous shopkeepers, there was a spirit strangely out of harmony with the pleasant landscape.

Inquiries showed that even here, where it seemed that only sylvan peace should reign, there had recently been let loose the spirit of barbarism. We shall turn to some of its manifestations and look at the reasons therefor.

In the revolution of 1911 a mob of drunken, riotous citizens gathered to storm the Cotahuasi barracks and the jail. A full-blooded Indian soldier, on duty at the entrance, ordered the rioters to stop and when they paid no heed he shot the leader and scattered the crowd. The captain thereupon ordered the soldier to Arequipa because his life was no longer safe outside the barracks. A few months later he was assigned to Professor Bingham’s Coropuna expedition. Professor Bingham reached the Cotahuasi Valley as I was about to leave it for the coast, and the soldier was turned over to me so that he might leave Cotahuasi at the earliest possible moment, for his enemies were plotting to kill him.

He did not sleep at all the last night of his stay and had us called at three in the morning. He told his friends that he was going to leave with us, but that they were to announce his leaving a day later. In addition, the Subprefect was to accompany us until daybreak so that no harm might befall me while under the protection of a soldier who expected to be shot from ambush.

At four o’clock our whispered arrangements were made, we opened the gates noiselessly, and our small cavalcade hurried through the pitch-black streets of the town. The soldier rode ahead, his rifle across his saddle, and directly behind him rode the Subprefect and myself. The pack mules were in the rear. We had almost reached the end of the street when a door opened suddenly and a shower of sparks flew out ahead of us. Instantly the soldier struck spurs into his mule and turned into a side street. The Subprefect drew his horse back savagely and when the next shower of sparks flew out pushed me against the wall and whispered: “Por Dios, quien es?” Then suddenly he shouted: “Sopla no mas, sopla no mas” (stop blowing).

Thereupon a shabby penitent man came to the door holding in his hand a large tailor’s flatiron. The base of it was filled with glowing charcoal and he was about to start his day’s work. The sparks were made in the process of blowing through the iron to start the smoldering coals. We greeted him with more than ordinary friendliness and passed on.

At daybreak we had reached the steep western wall of the canyon where the real ascent begins, and here the Subprefect turned back with many _felicidades_ for the journey and threats for the soldier if he did not look carefully after the pack train. From every angle of the zigzag trail that climbs the “cuesta” the soldier scanned the valley road and the trail below him. He was anxious lest news of his escape reach his enemies who had vowed to take his life. Half the day he rode turned in his saddle so as to see every traveler long before he was within harm’s reach. By nightfall we safely reached Salamanca, fifty miles away (Fig. 62).

The alertness of the soldier was unusual and I quite enjoyed his close attention to the beasts and his total abstinence, for an alert and sober soldier on detail is a rare phenomenon in the interior of Peru. But all Salamanca was drunk when we arrived--Governor, alcaldes, citizens. Even the peons drank up in brandy the money that we gave them for forage and let the beasts starve. The only sober person I saw was the white telegraph operator from Lima. He said that he had to stay sober, for the telegraph office--the outward sign of government--was the special object of attack of every drink-crazed gang of rioters. They had tried to break in a few nights before and he had fired his revolver point-blank through the door. The town offered no shelter but the dark filthy hut of the Gobernador and the tiny telegraph office. So I made up my bed beside that of the operator. We shared our meals and chatted until a late hour, he recounting the glories of Lima, to which he hoped to return at the earliest possible moment, and cursing the squalid town of Salamanca. His operator’s keys were old, the batteries feeble, and he was in continual anxiety lest a message could not be received. In the night he sprang out of bed shouting frantically:

“Estan llamando” (they are calling), only to stumble over my bed and awaken himself and offer apologies for walking in his sleep.

Meanwhile my soldier, having regained his courage, began drinking. It was with great difficulty that I got started, after a day’s delay, on the trail to Chuquibamba. There his thirst quite overcame him. To separate him from temptation it became necessary to lock him up in the village jail. This I did repeatedly on the way to Mollendo, except beyond Quilca, where we slept in the hot marshy valley out of reach of drink, and where the mosquitoes kept us so busy that either eating or drinking was almost out of the question.

The drunken rioters of Cotahuasi and their debauched brothers at Salamanca are chiefly natives of pure or nearly pure Indian blood. They are a part of the great plateau population of the Peruvian Andes. Have they degenerated to their present low state, or do they display merely the normal condition of the plateau people? Why are they so troublesome an element? To this as to so many questions that arise concerning the highland population we find our answer not chiefly in government, or religion, or inherited character, but in geography. I doubt very much if a greater relative difference would be seen if two groups of whites were set down, the one in the cold terrace lands of Salamanca, the other in the warm vineyards of Aplao, in the Majes Valley. The common people of these two towns were originally of the same race, but the lower valley now has a white element including even most of those having the rank of peons. Greater differences in character could scarcely be found between the Aztecs and the Iroquois. In the warm valley there is of coarse drunkenness, but it is far from general; there is stupidity, but the people are as a whole alert; and finally, the climate and soil produce grapes from which famous wines are made, they produce sugar cane, cotton, and alfalfa, so that the whites have come in, diluted the Indian blood, and raised the standard of life and behavior. Undoubtedly their influence would tend to have the same general effect if they mixed in equal numbers with the plateau groups. There is, however, a good reason for their not doing so.