(fO THE AUTHOR AT MOROCOCHA, PERU THE ADVENTURES OF A TROPICAL TRAMP BY HARRY L. FOSTFIB. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS TAKEN BY THE AUTHOR LONDON JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD, Ltd. 1922 < PBnrrzD ih u. B. A. Dedicated To MY MOTHER Who Waited Anxiously At Home As Mothers Usually Wait n2:r.>75 For permission to republish occasional por- tions of this narrative the author wishes to thank the editors of ''Leslie's Weekly," ''The South American Magazine," and "The West Coast Leader." Some of my experiences in South America have also been used as a basis for fiction published in "Munsey's," "Short Stories," "The Metropolitan," and other mag- azines. CONTENTS OHAPTSB "^ PAOl I The Lure of South America ..... 1 II Down the West Coast in the Steerage . ^ 9 III In the City of the Kings 21 IV Over the World's Highest Railway ... 31 V In an Andean Mining Camp 46 VI At the Peruvian Bull Ring 67 VII A Newspaper Correspondent on Muleback . 79 VIII Among the Chuncho Indians 99 IX The Burning of Paita 117 X In the Capital of the Incas 138 XI A War Correspondent Without a War . . 155 XII In the Diplomatic Service 178 XIII The Fourth of July in Lima 195 XIV Into the Jungle with Missionaries . . . 213 XV The Battle of Puerto Bermudez .... 239 XVI Canoeing Through the Wilderness . . . 261 XVII Down the Ucayali to the Amazon .... 286 XVIII In Peru's Most Isolated City 310 XIX Descending the Greatest of Rivers . . . 333 XX Among the Beachcombers in Brazil . . . 352 ILLUSTRATIONS The author at Morococha, Peru .... Frontispiece FAOINa PAOB Gatun locks, Panama Canal Zone ' 10 Native boatmen on the West Coast 10 Native house in the Andes 32 The highest and most picturesque railway in the world 32 The "gringo" camp at Morococha 48 One of the mines at Morococha ....... 48 The alcalde or mayor of a village 70 Myself with some of the Chunchos 82 The city gate at Tarma 82 The following morning we came to the real tropics 86 On the Chanchamayo Trail ........ 92 There is little to distinguish the male costume from the female among these Chunchos 100 Most interesting of all is the old fortress of Sacsa- huaman 146 Mt. Misti as seen from Arequipa 146 Everywhere in Cuzco one stumbles upon high smooth walls and battlements of HUGH ROCKS .... 150 Reed balsa or raft on Lake Titicaca 156 Sunday morning in the Plaza at La Paz . . . . 156 Where society gathers to strut up and down . . . 172 ILLUSTRATIONS TAOIKO PAQB STEAifER ON Lake Titicaca 172 Bolivian soldiers trained by Germans and wearing German uniforms 180 Peruvian machine gunners 180 It was the Sabbath of my missionary companions . 224 One of the missionaries with the Indians at a native hotel , . 224 The hotel at Bermudez 244 On our way down the river 244 Most of our hunting was done by Torpiro .... 270 Torpiro spears a fish 270 Before the rest of us were back from the chase he had it scraped and cleaned 276 An Indian home 288 A typical scene along the Ucayli 288 The lighter and tug anchor themselves by running UPON the muddy bank 306 In the dry season raging torrents become shallow streams f 306 The RAPID TRANSIT SYSTEM AT IqUITOS 318 The hotel where we occupied magnificent rooms for a dollar a day 318 On the lower deck op the Belem 334 Steamer Belem on the Amazon 334 Along the Amazon 344 Santarem on the Amazon 344 Para is an attractive city 356 The opera house at Para 356 THE ADVENTURES OF A TROPICAL TRAMP THE ADVENTURES OF A TROPICAL TRAMP CHAPTER ONE THE LUEE OF SOUTH AMEEICA w ^^'^ X" THY do you want to go to South America? Killed somebody T' The captain of the tramp steamer looked me over critically. It was on the big gov- ernment docks at Cristobal, in the Panama Canal Zone. I had just applied for a job as stoker, but a Palm Beach suit, a Panama hat, and a cane did not seem to be a convincing costume on the figure of an applicant for this position. **Ever shoveled coal before T' he demanded. '*No, sir.'' **Just looking for adventured *^Yes, sir/' His eyes became a little more kindly. ** Don't do it, son. Go home. South Amer- ica's full of adventurers. They're in every port along the coast — ^went down there to discover gold mines or start revolutions — all that kind of rot. Now they're begging alms, starving, down and out. They'd sell a wooden leg to get the 1 2 The Adventures of a Tropical Tramp price of a square meal — only they'd spend the money for rum instead/' This was a new idea. According to the hest fic- tion, they seemed to dig up huried treasure, shoot Mexican Pete or Greaser Mike, or whoever the lo- cal villain happened to be, marry the president's beautiful daughter, and live happily ever after. ''You're not the first one,** continued the cap- tain. '^ Every time I hit port a dozen fellows want to ship to South America. It's the war that did it. Those that got overseas want to see more of the world. Those that didn't get over feel that they've been cheated out of something, and they're looking for it now. I've taken lots of them to the tropics, and I've seen them a month later — on the beach, knocking cocoanuts ofi the trees for their dinner, just waiting for a boat to take them home. No, sir, you can't travel with me." That happened nearly two years ago. I was working at the time as a shoe-clerk in the Government Commissary at Cristobal, and while I had no illusions about the riches of the southern continent, I did feel that shoe-clerking was a painfully unromantic occupation. It was not my chosen profession. Seized by the same wanderlust that has led so many other ex-soldiers into foreign lands, I had drifted down through Mexico and Central America, calling my- self a free-lance magazine writer, but since the magazines seemed unanimous in declining to publish what I wrote, it had dawned upon me by The Lure of South America 3 the time I reached Cristobal that the first requis- ite for a magazine writer of my particular spe- cies was a steady job of some sort. And since the govenimont commissary was the first building I sighted upon landing in the Canal Zone, I had applied there. *^Do you know anytliing about shoes?'' the manager inquired. **Not a thing." **Good. I'll put you in charge of the depart- ment. I need a white man there to see that the niggers come to work on time." Thus began the most unromantic month of my life. The government commissary supplied not only the army and navy, but also the canal's civilian employees and their families. The average em- ployee's wife, like most women in the tropics where native servants are cheap, had few house- hold duties to occupy her time, and it appeared that her popular amusement on the Canal Zone was to call daily at the shoe department and try on the entire stock, meanwhile telling me how they hurt her feet, and finally departing with a pleasant, *^Good day; I'll be in again to- morrow." The men, mostly mechanics, seemed to be fairly rational beings, knowing what they wanted and taking it whether it was or not. But al- though I was young and susceptible, I soon began to wonder whether shoe-clerks ever marry. The sight of a woman entering- the shoe department 4 The Adventures of a Tropical Tramp sent cold shivers up my spine. There was only one woman on the whole Zone that our shoes seemed to please. She was a little girl who waited daily outside the door in order to be the first one in, and she usually remained until the pangs of hunger forced her to go home. Over each pair she would exclaim rapturously: * * Oh, that feels just too lovely ! Isn 't that just the nicestest 'ittle shoe? ^To-morrow I'm going to bring mama to buy it for me/' Bat to-morrow she would be waiting at the door again, without mama, to repeat the same performance. I never figured out whether she was a bug on the subject of slippers or whether she came merely to enjoy the ecstasy of having her toes pinched by male fingers. The shoe department seemed to be no place for a would-be writer of romance. Nor did the rest of the Canal Zone supply it. Since the com- pletion of the big ditch it had become an orderly well-regulated American community, where everything ran according to rule, under the direction of a paternal but strict and all-pow- erful American governor — just like a huge mili- tary camp. The big locks, with smooth green lawns beyond, looked as if they had always been there. The streets were mostly paved, bor- dered by rows of pahn trees, and backed by lines of emploj^ees' cottages, each exactly like its neighbor, even to the furniture inside. The Canal Zone was more highly regulated and better ordered than the United States itself. As an The Lure of South America 5 illustration of what Americans could do in the tropics, it was marvelous, but I wanted to see the big accompli slunents in the making. In the bachelors' quarters where I lived the riotous scenes of the construction period had dis- appeared. The men who now operated the locks were mostly unsentimental mechanics, who came home from their labor figuring in their minds the amount of overtime pay they were to receive for their twenty minutes' extra work. The host of swearing, fighting, drinking, sweating, working roughnecks who built the canal had moved on in search of new worlds to conquer. Only a few old-timers remained — old fellows, who had already roamed the earth until they had convinced themselves that there was nothing new left for them to ride, ^ght, see, smell, or taste. At night, as they gathered on the porch to rehash old memories, I caught strange snatches of their adventures : **Yep, an' standin' there, big as life, with 'is foot on the eight spiggotty cops, was old Guerilla 'Gallagher, with a beer bottle in 'is hand." Or again: **D'ye know, that cannibal chief hadn't never seen a blond before I hit the feast, an' he sez to me, sez he, speakin' the cannibal dialect, sez he, *If you'll stay here an' marry them eight daughters of mine ' " Sometimes it was adventure; frequently it was romance — of a kind. Those who spend their lives in the tropics sometimes adopt the native view- point, which may be described charitably as 6 The Adventures of a Tropical Tramp ** colorblind." One day Old Barnum came to me. We called him Old Barnum because he claimed to have given the well-known circus man the origi- nal idea about one being born every minute. He had practiced the theory himself to the extent of traveling around South America selling credulous natives autographed pictures of the saints, auto- graphing them himself with *^Love, from St. Peter," or similar inscriptions. *^The trouble with you, young fellow," said Barnum, *^is that you ain't mixin' none in society. Now you come out with me to-night. My gaPs got a peachy little sister." '^What nationality?" I inquired suspiciously. **I think it's French or something." Fortunately she happened to pass us on the street a few minutes later. ** French, did you say!" I demanded, for she was as black as carbon. **Yep. Comes from Martinique — French West Indies." Much that looks like romance when it appears in a book becomes merely sordid on closer acquaintance. Across the line in Colon, on Panamanian territory, were a few survivals of the old construction days. Here one found the Jamaican negro laborers of the building period, who had remained principally because they were too indolent to move elsewhere. Among their ramshackle dwellings were cabarets where painted women with hoarse, almost baritone voices, sang touching ballads about ^* Home" or ^^ Mother" The Lure of South America 7 when not drinking at the tables with the spec- tators. In fiction, these places had savored of the romantic and the picturesque; in real life they didn't. The wanderlust had brought me to Panama eight years too late. After a month, I wandered down to the dock, where the old sea captain refused my services. Possibly my make-up was wrong. I should have walked out to the mangrove swamps and rolled in muck before applying, but I had no extra suit of clothes. The captain's words were discouraging. I had planned to work my way around South America, and had supposed that this was an original scheme, but he informed me that several fellows with a similar idea wanted to go with him on every trip. ''Ain't you never heard of tropical tramps T' asked Barnum later. ''Lots of fellows — some of 'em college graduates — is doin' it regular. Big men, railroad superintendents an' everything — lots of 'em — but they just can't help the wan- derlust. ' ' As I walked back to the shoe department, I was almost reconciled to the job. At the entrance, the manager met me. "News for you, Foster," he announced. "Headquarters warehouse has just sent us two thousand pairs of women's shoes, and we're going to advertise a sale. Next week will be 'Ladies' Week' in the Shoe Department." 8 The Adventures of a Tropical Tramp Ladies' Week in the Shoe Department! The King's Birthday in Ireland! Old Home Week in Hades! I could not resign then without being a quitter. But I tendered my resignation to take effect at the end of the sale. Then I secured a map of South America, closed my eyes, and jabbed with a pin. The pin landed in Peru. When T collected my month's salary, minus deduc- tions, I had just about enough for deck passage on a native coasting steamer to Callao, the sea- port for the Peruvian capital. The steamship office was near the dock, and as T came out, I ran into the old sea captain. He shook his head solemnly. '*The young fools will go there. I don't un- derstand it." Not being a shoe-clerk, he probably couldn't. CHAPTER TWO DOWN THE WEST COAST IN TELE STEERAGE AS I came aboard the Peruvian steamer Mantaro at the Cristobal dock, a kinky- haired native steward seized my suit- case. ** Which stateroom, senor?" I showed him my ticket. He immediately dropped the suit-case. **You'll find the steerage deck back there." I did. The steamers of the Pacific Coast are of a peculiar type, designed by some Glasgow Scotchman laboring under the popular impression that the tropics are always warm. Not only are the first-class staterooms on deck, but the steer- age quarters are entirely so, and exposed to the four winds. On the wide open-spaced stern I sat on my suit-case and looked at the one other passenger. He was arrayed in a most glorious green-and- yellow checked suit, with a purple-striped silk shirt and a blue necktie, and his headpiece appeared to be a cross between a high hat and a derby. The costume excited my curiosity, but I hesitated to inquire if he, too, were traveling third-class, lest he prove to be the owner of the ship. So I sat there and twiddled my cane, and looked at him, 9 10 The Adventures of a Tropical Tramp and he sat there and twiddled his cane and looked at me. Finally I broke the silence — ^in English. *' Where are you going?'' He responded in the same language. **Veree well, zank you.'' Spanish brought better results. He came from Madrid, where he was a great bullfighter, and was now on his way to Lima to win fame and fortune. **So am I," I said. **What? Then the senor is also a great bull- fighter T' '*No; I'm a great writer." **But surely, do great writers travel third- class!" I explained that nothing I had written had ever been published. *^Ah, the seiior is like me. I have never killed the bull." The first-class cabins were filled up, but when the steamer pulled out into the Pacific, author and athlete alone occupied the back deck. At nightfall we called a steward to inquire where we were supposed to sleep, and learned that our tickets, which read **0n deck," were to be taken literally. A three days' run brought us to the northern coast of Peru — the driest spot on the Western Hemisphere. To the average American who thinks of South America as a land of tropical luxuriance, this Peruvian coast is always a sur- GATU^ LOCKS, PANAMA CANAL ZONE NATIVE BOATMEN ON THE WEST COAST Down the West Coast in Steerage 11 prise. The Pacific side of the continent really consists of three longitudinal strips of distinctly different country — a barren stretch of brown sand along the coast, as rainless as Sahara; a mountainous Andean chain behind it, as lofty and gloomy as Tibet; and finally in the far in- terior, the land of impenetrable jungle which the uninformed stranger fancies to comprise all South America. And of the three types of country, the coastal desert is quite the least attractive. Such cities as exist are merely ports for some fertile valley back in the interior, and even these valleys are fertile only as a result of irrigation. Such a port was Paita, where we made our first stop. Notices posted about the ship warned passengers that any one who went ashore would be quaran- tined afterwards for yellow fever and bubonic plague. The native pedlers who came alongside in small boats looked pallid and sickly. Most of them were selling Panama hats, which, despite their name, are made either in Ecuador or northern Peru, and take their title from the fact that most of them are sold in Panama. **How much for one of those hats?'' demanded a first-class passenger — in Spanish, of course. **Ten pounds, senor.'' Fifty dollars for a hat where the natives make them, when the same thing sells in the Canal Zone for ^vel But it was only due to the Peru- vian custom of first asking several times what the merchant expects to get. 12 The Adventures of a Tropical Tramp The notices posted ahout the ship threatening quarentine if we went ashore did not seem to de- bar local residents from coming on board the ship. Every man of real or fancied prominence in Paita came out to stroll around the deck, and have dinner in the dining saloon, and drink a few copitas of wine in the smoking-room. Many of them were bidding farewell to embarking passen- gers, for no Latin American goes on a journey Avithout ceremony, but most of them had come a- board merely from desire to see and be seen. The Latin loves to pose, and does so frequently with no expectation of convincing the onlookers, but merely because it amuses himself. When a ship arrives at one of these ports, all who can afford it come on board to strut around the deck in a white collar and yachting cap to make believe that they, too, are going on a journey. Finally, after a long day of rolling in the swells off Paita, our whistle sounded. The visitors be- gan to embrace the departing friends, resting the chin first on the right shoulder, then on the left, meanwhile administering the customary seven affectionate pats on each shoulder-blade. After that, they all decided that it was an occasion re- quiring one or more farewell round of drinks, and all retired to the smoking-room for another hour or two. The ship^s officers, also being Peruvians, and therefore too polite to ask visitors to leave their ship, stood by and said nothing. But the captain was an Irishman. Nearly all the native steamers are commanded by Anglo- Down the West Coast in Steerage 13 Saxons, since the owners are too famiUar with the easy-going ways of their fellow-countrymen to entrust them with the problems of navigation. Several times when the hat vendors were swariaci- ing up the ladder and obstructing the gang- way, the Irish captain had emerged from his cabin like an angry bull, and rushed them back into their tossing rowboats, kicking one of them into the water amid laughter and applause from the others. Finally, after repeated blowing of the whistle had accomplished nothing more than additional outbreaks of embracing and more re- tiring to the smoking-room for another sad fare- well toast, the captain dashed among the strut- ting visitors and drove them over the side. As the anchor chain began to rattle, the hat vendors were selling their ten-pound hats at one pound each. We continued south along the barren coast, now with the foothills of the Andes visible in the far background. The bullfighter and I no longer had the back deck to ourselves. A motley horde of choloSy the half-breed Indians of the sierra, had come on board, bringing with them all their family possessions, including live-stock. Blank- ets and bedding, boxes and crates, sacks and bun- dles, covered the floor, and upon this unsightly debris huddled a mass of greasy, dirt-caked natives. Fighting cocks tied to every stanchion were crowing arid flapping their wings, and straining to get at one another. Flea-bitten dogs shared the bedding with their similarly afflic- 14 The Adventures of a Tropical Tramp ted owners. Chickens escaped from their coops and were chased squawking across the huddled mass. The mongrel curs belonging to one family declared war upon those of another. A cow brought on board by some comparatively wealthy cholo lost its balance and stepped on some one else's sheep, while an aggressive he-goat broke loose and ran amuck through a crowd of scream- ing children. Compared to that back deck a pig- pen would have looked like a Dutch kitchen, for the natives, with their unspeakably filthy and primitive habits, were no more sanitary than the animals themselves. The Spaniard and I called a steward and pointed out that this was no place for distin- guished authors and bullfighters. He agreed. For ten American dollars he would smuggle us in- to a first-class stateroom and bring us first-class food. This would leave me practically penniless when I reached Lima, but after watching my fellow passengers scratch themselves and hunt in each other's hair, I agreed. **What are the chances of getting a job when I landf I asked a first-class passenger, an Eng- lishman who looked as though he might be an old-timer in Latin America. **You mean you have no contract?" He raised his eyebrows. ^'Eather bad, you know. Firms are inclined to be a bit suspicious. Always a lot of bally rotters wandering around the tropics — fugitives from justice and that sort of thing. I Down the West Coast in Steerage 15 suppose you're all right, but one cawn't tell from appearances, you know.'' He himself was a contract man — meaning that he had come to South America on a two-year agreement with some firm. Men of his class are invariably hostile to ** tramps," who drift down looking for employment. He had entered into conversation mth me under the supposition that I, too, was a first-class passenger, but upon dis- covering that I was not only ** steerage" but also a ** bally rotter" he promptly withdrew. We were glad to avail ourselves of the first- class cabin to which the steward smuggled us at nightfall. Having partaken of a first-class din- ner, which was first-class mainly by comparison with the stew we had eaten in the steerage, we propped our feet upon the bunk and smoked a pair of nefarioius black cigars from the bull- fighter's native land, in defiance of the **No smoking" sign on the wall. \ **This comfort is more befitting to men of our exalted professions," said he. ** Eight," said I. ' After which, the author who had never had anything published and the bullfighter who had never killed a bull, retired like a pair of million- aires. Sometime during the night a frightened stew- ard awakened us. **Get out quickly, senores." **What's wrong!" 16 The Adventures of a Tropical Tramp ''The captain has been drinking.'' **I should worry. I'm not a prohibition agent." ^^But when the captain drinks, he looks for trouble, and is coming this way." We had barely climbed into our clothes when a red face appeared in the door. **So it's here you are, is it? Get cut of here. Go back with the other cholos." "We went. The bullfighter, being a little slow, was assisted. It was a cold, cold night. I had always sup- posed the tropics to be warm, and we were almost on the equator, but the Antarctic current that comes up the Pacific Coast changes the climate in this particular spot. The native passengers had brought their bedding, and by huddling to- gether were comfortable. In my Palm Beach suit I envied them. For a while the athlete and I ran races around the deck. Finally, exhausted but still shivering, we crawled into the center of the mass of live-stock and humanity, out of the wind, and went to sleep. I awoke to discover that the numerous fleas which infested dogs and humans alike had hailed me as virgin soil. The bullfighter was already sitting up, scratching himself. *^Did you have a pleasant night T' I inquired. '^Carramba, no!" '^Fleas?" '* Fleas? No. I am accustomed to them." . *^What was the trouble then?" Down the West Coast in Steerage 17 **Tha't cow! It licked me in the face/* My grin must have offended him. **You laugh, senor, but you can not under- stand. You are not a bullfighter.'* For three more days we ran along the coast, stopping at Eten, Pacasmaio, and Salaverry, all of them mere collections of mud-and-cane houses on A desert beach. At these stopping-places barges were towed out alongside the steamer, and while we rolled and pitched in the heavy swells, cotton or cattle were taken on for Lima. Loading was difficult. As the barges rose and fell and bumped into the steamer's side, the cattle lost their balance and skidded back and forth across the slippery deck. The natives who did the loading usually attached their rope to the cow farthest from the ship, so that as the crane began to lift the animal it hurtled and crashed into its neighbors, knocking them down like so many ten-pins. Amused pass- engers lining the rail would cry out : **Set 'em up in the other alley." Watching embarking tourists leap from a toss- ing rowboat onto the ship's ladder was even more exciting. An old lady, supported by two husky boatmen, would stand upon the g-umvhale of the skiff, shivering with fright as she waited for the ladder, now high above water, to descend with the rolling ship to sea-level. As the ladder surged down in a foaming sea, the boatmen would lift her toward it. Sometimes she might grasp it and scramble up to safety, but more than once the 18 .The Adventures of a Tropical Tramp ladder, still on its descent, carried a passenger down to the knees in the rising wave. It was interesting to note what happened to the American manufactured goods consigned to these ports. Hoisted high into the air and then allowed to drop with a crash into the floor of the barge, many of the boxes and crates were broken. An American business man watch|>g the pro- ceedings became loud in his indignation. **No matter how you preach to the packers at home,'^ he exclaimed, **they can't understand the situation. ' ' He told a story about his efforts to have his firm's goods packed more securely. Once at the factory, he had gone to the manager of the pack- ing department. ** They 're packed strong enough now,'^ the manager had protested. **A11 right, I'll show you." The business man placed a crate on a hand- truck, ran with it, and dumped it over a balcony letting it fall thirty feet. The crate was broken. ''But you deliberately tried to break it!" pro- tested the packer. **Yes, you poor dub, I tried to break it. ' Let that sink through your dome. I tried to break it. There's many a stevedore down on the West Coast that will try to break it — so he can steal the contents." From Salaverry it was a straight run to Callao — a dreary, monotonous run along a brown shore inhabited only by pelicans and sea-gulls, Down the West Coast in Steerage 19 by immense flocks of sea-gulls that coursed above the waves in thousands, diving in unison when they sighted a school of fish and sending up tiny spouts of water as they disappeared for an in- stant below the surface, spouts that seemed to cover the whole ocean, so large were the flocks of these birds. The steward to whom we had paid ten dollars kept his bargain to the best of his ability by lodg- ing us in the forecastle with the crew. They were a bro^vn, ugly-looking lot, with matted black hair, and a cut-throat look, but the Peruvian is not inclined toward murder as a diversion, and we feared only for the safety of our suit-cases. *^Do not worry, seiiores," the steward assured us. *^They steal only from first-class passen- gers.'' We were relieved, nevertheless, when we finally entered the fog-wrapped harbor at Callao. Here a launch full of enthusiasts about the national sport met my bullfighter companion and carried him ashore with much cheering. After I had paid the boatman who rowed me ashore, I had twenty-two cents left. The *^ contract man*' saw me returning them to my pocket. * ^You'll 'ave a bloody fine time on that,'' he remarked with a note of satisfaction in his voice. Yet, as I walked out of the customs house into the city of Callao, I felt a pleasurable little thrill. At last I was an adventurer, practically penniless in a strange land. But it did not take me long to discover that I was by no means unique in my 20 The Adventures of a Tropical Tramp position. Callao, like most foreign ports, is filled with ^^beachcomhers.'' I had not walked a block through the narrow dusty streets of the city, be- tween rows of faded shops which advertised themselves in mixed Spanish and English as **The Mariners' Eest,'' or ''The American Bar,'' before I had encountered a dozen fellow-country- men of the sailor-without-a-ship-typ<^ — the down- and-outers of whom my old sea-captain had spoken. One of them, a burly fellow in ragged clothing, accosted me. ''Say, Jack, have you got the price of a square meal? I'm a sailor — got me papers to prove it — but I missed me ship, an' I ain't had — " "What's the fare to Lima?" I interrupted. "Twenty cents. I been starving now for — " Twenty from twenty-two left two. I offered him one cent. But he drew back, glaring at me. "Yuh big stiff! Quit kidding me, or I'll bust yuh one in the face. You can't get nothing to eat for one cent in this town. ' ' I hadn't thought about that! The truth of it took most of the pleasure from my thrill. CHAPTER THREE IN THE CITY OF THE KINGS LIMA, the capital of Peru, is situated but a few miles inland from Callao Harbor. in a comparatively fertile valley where the River Rimac trickles down from the Andean foothills. A very ordinary and unpicturesque trolley car- ried me out of the dusty port, across level green fields intersected by many ancient adobe walls, and dotted with occasional huts of mud and thatch, to deposit me — still hungry and with only two cents in my pocket — at the foot of Lima's principal thoroughfare. Lima, like all South American cities, may be described as a city of contrast. Its streets, laid out by the conquistador es, are extremely narrow; its houses, many of them built by the same conquistador es, are quaint and fronted with aged wooden balconies. Over the whole place hangs an atmosphere of the old Spanish days, an atmos- phere accentuated by many layers of dust which coat the entire city like the dust of ages. Its people, however, as though trying to live up to its historic title as *^The City of the Kings,'* array themselves like princes, affecting a degree of wealth and leisure which is truly regal. The 21 22 The Adventures of a Tropical Tramp young bloods who leaned upon their canes or strolled in groups upon the narrow sidewalks of the principal thoroughfare were immaculate in their starched linen and high collars, and al- though I was respectably dressed myself, they made me feel self-conscious. I tried to jingle the two cents in my pocket as though they repre- sented a million dollars, but the effort was futile. They merely clicked together in a tell-tale man- ner. No matter how the adventure-seeker may thrill at finding himself * ^ broke '^ in a foreign country, his Anglo-Saxon blood is apt to make him too keenly aware of the fact that he is unem- ployed and useless to the community. I did not know at the time that unemployment and uselessness were the unfailing marks of aris- tocracy in Lima, and that half of these young Peruvians, who looked and acted like the scions of wealth, had but little more real cash than I had. The early conquerors, who found in Peru a land of riches peopled by a race of docile Indians easily bullied into doing their work for them, have passed their traditions down to the present gen- eration. To-day, when Anglo-Saxon engineers and promoters are pouring into the country, eager to develop its riches, the Peruvian heir takes life easy in the capital. If he is so fortunate as to hold political office, he wears fine feathers. If he is not so fortunate, he wears fine feathers any- how, and waits for the happy day when a revolu- tion may put him in office and enable him to pay his tailor's bill. In the City of the Kings 23 Although quahfied by unemployment to be an aristocrat, my lack of either a political sinecure or temporary credit became increasingly appar- ent as lunch time receded and dinner time ap- proached. There was nothing to do but keep on walking. The siesta hour passed, and the crowd of young princes upon the sidewalk increased. The leading amusement for young men in Lima during the late afternoon seemed to consist in draping themselves upon their canes along the street and surveying the pretty senoritas who strolled by. The conquistador es evidently had not designed their sidewalks with this amusement in view, and walking at this hour was quite a problem. Peru- vians are noted for their politeness, but it appeared that this politeness took the form of extreme courtesy toward their immediate com- panions to the neglect of other pedestrians. A Peruvian family out for a stroll always in- sisted on strolling abreast, and to pass a twenty- foot-wide family on a six-foot-wide sidewalk called for all one's ingenuity. The most expedi- tious method, I learned later, was to smoke one's cigarette in a long holder and to cock it at such an angle that it would stick into the other fellow's eye if he did not step aside. Finally I reached the main plaza, a square park decorated with dust-laden palms, and surrounded by a huge cathedral on one side, a squatty govern- ment palace on another, and on the remaining sides by quaint buildings fronted by arches that 24 The Adventures of a Tropical Tramp came out over the sidewalk in true Moorish style. Not knowing exactly what else to do, I leaned on my cane, and admired feminine beauty, after the fashion of the other penniless princes. ** Hello, young fellow,^' exclaimed a familiar voice in English. I turned to see Judson, a mining engineer who had been on board my steamer. He was one of the tropical tramps who wander about these countries, and finding me an eager listener to his tales of adventure, he had wandered back to the steerage deck from time to time, during his more sober moments, to spin yarns. He seemed to guess my plight. ^^What hotel are you stopping atV\ he de- manded, **I haven't stopped at any yet. I'm debating whether to go to the Ritz or the Waldorf." He looked at me sharply. Undoubtedly he had found himself in the same condition on numerous occasions. * ^You'll be my gue^t until you're on your feet," he said. ^* I protested. *^No arguments, now, young fellow. I'm only doing what other tramps' have done for me. When you've got money and you meet another American that's hungry, you can pass it on." It was my first experience with the traditions of the road in South America. The informal fraternity of tropical tramps who drift from country to country in search of new scenes and In the City of the Kings 25 new adventures, includes any one from college graduate to illiterate, provided only that he pos- sess the common failing of wanderlust and the common virtue of helping a fellow T. T. in dis- tress. One must not confuse the Tropical Tramps with the Beachcombers. A tramp works for his living, and is called a tramp merely because his love of adventure keeps him from working long in one place. A beachcomber, on the other hand, does not work, but insists on the alms he can wheedle from his fellow-countrymen with hard- luck stories. Judson was not merely a T. T., but a very high class T. T., capable of holding well-paid engineering positions. He led me to the best hotel. Lima has just begun to develop from an old Moorish town into a modem city, and the best hotel is only a com- parative term. Two Americans had come down with the intention of putting up a real first-class hostelr^^, but petty red tape in getting a conces- sion from the city authorities had finally dis- gusted them and they had given up the project. An illuminating story is told of the present leading hotel. An American who had secured a room with bath at double the usual rate discov- ered that the water system would not work. He went down to the desk and complained. *'No," the clerk admitted. *^ After we put the tub in there, we found that the city's water pres- sure was not sufficient to pump water to the third floor/' 26 The Adventures of a Tropical Tramp '^That^s all right/' protested the American. **But you call it a room and bath, and you charge me extra for the bath.'' ** Certainly," said the clerk. *^Look at our trouble and expense in putting the tub in there." Except to the tourist, Lima is rather disap- pointing. It is in the intermediate stage between the ancient and the modern; it is losing its old- world charm, and is only beginning to acquire the modernity of Santiago, Rio, or Buenos Aires. Its attractiveness is still further handicapped by its climate. For six months in the year scarcely a drop of rain falls, and during this period the dust accumulates. For the other six months a clammy fog hovers over the city, and instead of washing away the dust, merely seems to soak it in. The title, ' ' The City of the Kings, ' ' further conjures up in the mind of the visitor an illusion of grandeur which the hollow pretense of Lima fails to satisfy. The tourist, however, who loves ancient carved doonvays and old churches and such tilings, may find the city interesting. In the old days Lima was the center of ecclesiastical as well as political power in Spanish America, and to-day the \dew of the city from the hills back of it shows a church tower rising from nearly every block. There are seventy of them altogether, and the principal Cathedral is still pronounced the largest in Latin America, although the cathedral in Mexico City disputes the claim. The Lima Cathedral In the City of the Kings 27 makes a further bid for distinction by keeping the bones of Pizarro in its cellar. Under Judson's guidance I did not visit these show-places, nor did I care to, never having un- derstood why tourists continually hunt relics of the past instead of seeing a country's life in the present. Judson, like all permanent residents of these countries, scorned the show-places. *^ Bones of Pizarro!^' he exclaimed. **IVe seen other bones, and I guess his aren't any differ- ent from anybody else's. Where do you plan to lookfor a jobr^ I suggested the copper mines in the Andes, to which he was going. *^A11 right. But I'd better stake you to some heavier clothes. You can't go up there in a Palm Beach suit. If the cold didn't kill you, the miners would." To my protests against accepting a loan, he added: ^^All right! All right! You can pay me when you get your wages. I'm only doing what any good tramp ought to do for an- other.'' There are plenty of stores in Lima. The mid- dle-class Latin American is by nature and dis- position a retail shop-keeper. His racial jeal- ousy and distrust of his fellow workers make im- possible that team-w^ork which is essential to large industries. Nearly every Peruvian be- tween the land-o^^^ling political class and the In- dian laboring class is a retail merchant. After looking over a multitude of shops, Jud- 28 The Adventures of a Tropical Tramp ^011 and I entered the one with the most promis- ing window display. **Have you any khaki shirts f inquired Jud- son. The clerk, who was staring out of the window at some passing senorita, shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. ^^No senor/' he replied absent-mindedly. Judson, having spent several years in Peru, waited until the disappearance of the girl around the corner left the clerk free to attend to cus- tomers. *^ Khaki shirts,'' he repeated. **Ah, yes, senor." *^How much are they?'* ** Twenty soles, senor.'' Judson looked at the price tag. *^It says fifteen soles/' **Yes, fifteen soles, seiior." He did not ask whether we desired anything else. In fact, he showed considerable annoyance upon learning that we did. Yet he was very polite, and finally convincing himself that we were determined to buy, he condescended to wait upon us. The man's attitude was by no means typical of Peru as a whole, but I learned by further ex- perience that it was very typical of Lima. To seek eagerly after trade is to betray to one's neighbors the fact that one is not so wealthy as he pretends to be. On the following morning, when we had secured In the City of the Kings 29 equipment in spite of the shop-keepers, Judson led me to the office of the Cerro de Pasco Copper Corporation, the largest American concern in Peru. Although in Panama I had secured a po- sition without difficulty, every one I had met assured me that this was quite exceptional, and warned me that employers in South America would be suspicious of men who just drifted in looking for work. An employee in the outer office, from his appearance a ** contract man,*' shook his head doubtfully. **You say you're just seeing the world and want to go up in the mining camps for a few months? I believe we do need office men on the Hill, but I don't think there's a chance for you." He ushered me into the office of the manager, who regarded me without enthusiasm as I regaled him with an exhaustive enumeration of my many good qualities. **Do you ever touch liquor?" he asked sharply. **Yes, sir." **Eh, what's that? I don't believe I heard you correctly. '' He leaned forward, his brow wrinkled in a puzzled frown. *'I want you to repeat that answer, speaking loudly and distinctly." Just as the sins of a dro^vning man's whole life are said to pass through his mind in rapid succession, so the list of my debts to Judson passed through mine — hotel room 10 soles, din- ner 6 soles, khaki shirt 15 soles, etc. — as I saw the likelihood of employment vanish. But it was too 30 The Adventures of a Tropical Tramp late to change my answer. I looked the manager in the eye, as George Washington would have done under similar circumstances. **Yes, sir.'' He pressed the button, and the contract man entered. ^* George, give this man a letter of introduction and a pass on the railroad.'' Then to me: *'Take Monday's train, and report to Clark at the Smelter. Good day and good luck to you." **Wait a minute," I interrupted. ^^Is drink- ing the principal qualification?" **No. Decidedly not. The young fools up there drink entirely too much. Up in the high altitudes, drink will kill a man. I hired you be- cause you're the first applicant that ever an- swered my question truthfully." CHAPTER FOUR OVER THE world's HIGHEST RAILWAY THE Central Railway of Peru, which car- ried me up into the Andes on the follow- ing morning, is reputed to be the highest and most picturesque railway in the world. Traveling toward the back country of South America was equivalent to viemng a motion picture of the continent's history — except that the film ran backward, taking one from the mod- ern to the Drimitive. Even before the cathedral towers of ima had disappeared behind the train, I looked 'om the car window to see bamboo huts, witn roofs of thatch, half-hidden among groves of banana trees. It was a country almost unchanged since the days of the conquerors. ,The ancient mud walls that intersected the landscape, the tumbled down, ruins of adobe villages, even the peasants toiling in the field, seemed to be of an age equal to that of the brown hills which lined the horizon. The track mounted swiftly toward the Andean heights. Within an hour and a half we were among the foothills of Chosica, Lima's select residential suburb; within another hour and a half Chosica 's altitude of 2,800 feet had been doubled, and we pulled into San Bartolome, Lima's fruit garden. 31 32 The Adventures of a Tropical Tramp The people of San Bartolome, it appeared, lived principally by picking oranges from the tree and then lying in wait for the railroad pas- sengers. Here I caught a glimpse of the moun- tain cholos, the descendants of the races domi- nated by the Incas. They lined the station plat- form, most of them women, all of them squatted cross-legged on the ground in native fashion, dressed in a super-abundance of clothes which left one in doubt as to whether they were fat or thin, their hair do^\Ti their backs in course, greasy braids, and on their heads white-felt mannish Panama-like hats. Their faces were Indian- featured, ruddy and red-cheeked from the cool mountain air, and their expressions solemn and unsmiling. , When they walked, it was with a Ion. swinging gallop, ungraceful and flat-footed — ^a system of locomotion inherited from their mountain-climb- ing ancestors, which, when transferred to the more level country of the foothills, gave one the ridiculous impression that they were still trying to skip from peak to peak. Every woman had a rain.bow-hued shawl over her shoulders, always with a heavy bundle behind the back. Frequently the bundle contained an in- fant, and invariably the infant was dressed ex- actly like its mother, with .the same super-abun- dance of voluminous gaudy skirts, the same greasy braids of jet black hair, and the same man- nish Panama hat. Its face wore the same solemn, unhappy but resigned expression, and I had the feeling that if it were put on the ground, it would NATIVE HOUSE IN THE ANDES THE HIGHEST AND MOST PICTURESQI'E RAILWAY IN THE WORLD Over the World's Highest Railway 33 go galloping away with the same flat-footed gaU lop. Leaving San Bartolome, with its one row of mud-plastered houses, the train backed away on the first of the line's 21 zig-zags or switchbacks. This style of railroad construction is necessary in the steep ascent which commences here, and from the time one leaves San Bartolome until one arrives at Ticlio at the top of the mountain range, one never knows whether he is going or comin.2:. The train is continually backing part way up the mountain, then running forward again, until after half an hour of steady riding one looks down at the same spot he saw several hundred feet higher. Occasionally for variety, one ascends a long quebrada, circles around, and comes back on the other side. It seems to the passenger as though the train were merely cut- ting geometric figures up and down the hillside, yet, it is always ascending, always getting a little closer to its objective. Our next stop was Surco, the flower garden of Lima. On the platform were more cJiolo women, mth dresses more voluminous than at San Bar- tolome, and possibly another layer of dirt on their faces, indicating that the increasing altitude not only encouraged more the wearing of cloth- ing, but discouraged more the taking of baths. The flowers which they sold, however, were beautiful. There were immense bouquets of violets, roses, and carnations, purchasable for a few soles when the train first arrived or for a few centavos just before the train departed. Every 34 The Adventures of a Tropical Tramp passenger on board purchased a bouquet or two, sweet and fragrant and dripping wet, and out of consideration for his friends in his own seat, hung his dripping purchase on an adjacent hat rack where it dripped on strangers in the seat be- hind. As we continued the ever-ascending journey, it was noticeable that with the growing coolness of the air the bamboo huts gave way to solid adobe structures. The flow^ers of Surco vanished from the landscape ; the bananas and sugar cane of the lower altitudes gave place to cactus — to the cor- rugated, misshapen trunks of the pitahaya or to the mde bluish leaves of the maguey. The country began to resemble the plateaus of central Mexico. At eleven o 'clock the train stopped at an adobe village called Matacana, where every one left the first-class coaches and rushed into the local hotel for almuerzo^ or lunch, or breakfast, or whatever the translator chooses to call it, for the Latin American drinks but a cup of coffee upon rising and takes his real breakfast at this hour. The arrival of the train was an exciting event in Matacana, not only for the natives, but also for the passengers. In the hotel there was but one T\^aiter to serve about sixty of us, a worried- looking little cholo w^ho tried vainly to listen to all of us at once. Before I could explain to him in my broken Spanish that I did not object to his fish soup but that I did object most strongly to his serving it with the fish's glassy-eyed head swimming around in it, I was interrupted by the Over the World's Highest Eailway 35 clanging of the station bell. This was but a warn- ing, but at its sound excitement increased. The guests all clamored for the waiter: ^'Carramha! Traiga cerveza!'^ ^^Carramha! No tengo arroz! No tengo nada!'^ Presently a second warning sounded, and the engine commenced to puff. The waiter himself had been puffing for some time, as he tried to comply with sixty excited demands for food. Now he rushed frantically about to collect his bills, while the guests rushed frantically to catch their train. Finally the bell rang for the third and last time. At this ultimatum some twenty passengers who had lingered upon the platform to receive the felicidades of friends outside made a concerted break for the steps of the car. Here they col- lided with some twenty friends from the outside who had entered the car to bid felicidades to passengers inside. During the confusion which ensued, the contending parties wished each other everything except felicidades. It was most interesting to watch a cholo board the second-class coach. Since no Andean native leaves his home even for five minutes without carrying his few possessions with him, each cholo had a bundle on his back several -times as bulky as his own shoulders, and after he had squeezed through a narrow opening between two other choloSy he invariably discovered that his bundle was tightly wedged between theirs. In the case of the women, instead of locking bundles, they 36 The Adventures of a Tropical Tramp sometimes locked babies, and in the tug-of-war that followed, a witness could but wonder how the infants survived. Above Matacana we struck more rugged moun- tain country. Even the cactus died out, and no vegetation remained to break the forlorn gran- deur of the mountains which towered far above the narrow cliffs to which our track clung pre- cariously. From Lima the road had followed the River Rimac. Now the river appeared as a tiny ribbon thousands of feet below us, white and foaming in swirling rapids or tumbling in sheer w^aterf alls for hundreds of feet. We began to plunge through a succession of tunnels. In the construction of this marvel of railroad engineering, it was necessary to cut some sixty-five of them, through solid rock, total- ling over ^ve miles in length, also to build an equal number of bridges over seemingly bottom- less ravines. From one of these bridges passen- gers on the rear platform could look down four hundred feet to where the rusted remains of an engine marked the spot where several American construction bosses lost their lives during the building of the road. Occasionally the bleak mountain ravines opened out into valleys, with sides cut into ter- races by the Incas, and an adobe town in the bot- tom — a motley town with mixed roofs of thatch and tin. At one of these to\\ms, San Mateo, we began to see large herds of llamas, the burden- bearing animals of the Andes which writers have Over the World's Highest Eailway 37 described as possessing heads Uke a camel, wool like a sheep, and legs like a deer. The llama is one of the few creatures that can survive the rigorous climate of the high altitudes, and its face seems to register great pride in the fact. Its camel-like countenance has a self-sat- isfied, sneering expression comparable only to the supercilious expression on a society woman's face when observing her neighbor in a last year's hat. The llama's countenance would be genuinely aristocratic except for the fact that the lower jaw wags continually as though chewing gum. These animals are remarkably docile. They sometimes fight among themselves, but never attack a man. They seldom wander from the spot where their keeper leaves them, and one may see them in large herds, untied and un- watched, awaiting the return of their master. Yet they are sullen creatures with a habit of lying down and refusing to move when given a load which they consider too heavy, and upon rare occasions will spit at a driver, causing very ir- ritating sores from the saliva, for llamas are natural siufferers from various skin and blood dis- eases. The drivers of these herds are typical moun- tain cholos, dirty and barefooted, the men draped with a picturesque ponclio made by cutting a neck- slit in a square piece of woolen cloth, the women hidden behind voluminous skirts, now increased with the growing cold of the altitudes to ten or 38 The Adventures of a Tropical Tramp twelve layers of gay petticoats. These Andean Indians, both male and female, were notably lack- ing in the splendid qualities which the reader of Prescott expects to find in the descendants of the Inca races. Filthy and forlorn-looking despite the gay costumes, they were both stolid and stupid, their eyes bleary with rum, and their cheeks distended with the ever-present chew of coca-leaves. Nor were their homes in keeping with the Inca traditions of grandeur. The only habitations to be seen between villages were tiny hovels of stones patched Avith moss, with roofs so low that the ^wner and his family had to crawl inside as an animal might crawl into its den. The interior of these hovels, as I was later to discover, was as unprepossessing as the exterior. In one corner three stones constituted a fireplace, a chimney- less fireplace with only dried llama dung for fuel ; in another corner a pile of frozen potatoes rep- resented the family larder; upon the frosted mud floor a few half-tanned, stinking hides of the llama's deceased relatives constituted carpet and bed; other furnishings were lacking. The gray masses of cloud whicn Covered above the bleak, cheerless landscape seemed strikingly in harmony with the people and their homes. It was a land of eternal gloom, inhabited by men and animals who both shared the same attitude toward life — men and animals that were sullen, docile, unimaginative, and unsentimental. When, late in the afternoon, the train crawled Over the World's Highest Eailway 39 around a mountain cliff and emerged into a valley among the belching smoke-stacks of Casapalca, the first of the mining camps, where crushers roared and red-faced American bosses shouted orders to cholo laborers, I felt much as a traveler in the desert feels when he stumbles unexpect- edly upon an oasis. There was an acitvity here and a throbbing of busy work that seemed out of place. Above Casapalca the air became genuinely cold. There was a stinging in the nostrils from the rarefied atmosphere, accompanied by a feeling of dizziness in the head which increased to a pro- nounced headache as we approached Ticlio, the highest point on this highest of railways. Ticlio proved to be a bleak httle tin station surrounded by snow-clad peaks barely discernible through a storm of hail. Just beyond the station loomed the vague form of Mount Meiggs, named after the famous American engineer who built the railway. This mountain was the real divide in the Cordil- lera. In the tunnel which pierces it, the traveler readies the highest point on the main line, at an altitude of 15,665 feet. Here the soroche, or mountain sickness, became general among the passengers. The women, brought out smelling salts and sniffed vigor- ously; while the men called for pisco, the native grape-brandy of Peru. The only genuine cure for this mountain sickness, however, is to let it wear off. With most people it lasts only two or three days, characterized by heavy pounding of 40 The Adventures of a Tropical Tramp the heart, pains in the head, and sleepless nights. Some escape it entirely. With others it lasts for weeks. During later days in the mining camp I met a woman whose only indication of it was a daily faint, from which she recovered in a few moments and felt nothing more until she fainted again on the following day. She fainted regu- larly every day for a month, after which she en- joyed excellent health. I had never experienced sea-sickness, and had scorned the idea of having soroche, yet I did feel it at Ticlio, and continued to feel it long after we had passed the highest point and were gliding downhill again through moss-grown valleys to the American mining camp at Oroya. At Oroya I changed to the mining corpora- tion's own railroad, and traveled across the dreary pampa for several hours more. It was night when I descended amid a cloud of sulphur- ous smoke at the company's smelter, and the red glow of the furnaces looked like Pittsburgh. Clark, a young man in khaki shirt, high leather leggins, and sombrero, who met me at the station, handed my suit-case to a cliolo with the remark that I would find myself too weak to carry it. I resented the imputation, for although I had felt a trifle dizzy whien passing the high point on the railroad, ,the quarters were only two hundred yards distant. But in the rarefied air of the high altitude, even walking proved to be hard work. **A good night's rest will ^ you up," he chuckled. Over the World's Highest Railway 41 It is usually many nights before a newcomer becomes sufficiently accUmated to enjoy a night ^s rest. I found sleep impossible. For hours I could hear my heart pumping like a steam-ham- mer as it tried to function in the scant air of two miles above sea-level. Employees are seldom •sent to **the hilP^ without a heart and lung test; nevertheless, it is not an infrequent occurrence for one to be rushed back to Lima on a special train, wdth a camp doctor pumping oxygen into him. Even old-timers, long after soroche has passed off, are unable to exert themselves vigorously, al- though the native-born Indians seem to gallop up or down hill, carrying tremendous loads on the back without effort. In the morning I had been warned to take things easy, but after the lazy life I had so far seen in Latin America, I wanted to see people working. The auditor took me to the office. Al- though superintendents in these camps work harder than at home, owing to the difficulty of getting work out of their Indian subordinates, I discovered that office men have much the same habits as the Latins themselves. **Do you need another man in here, GlenT* the auditor inquired. A tall Canadian cashier, engaged in chatting with three other khaki-shirted gringos, looked up. **Why, we have an even four for bridge now," he replied. **0f course, we can play poker in- stead — '* ** Never mind. Poker would lower the tone of 42 The Adventures of a Tropical Tramp the office work. 141 ship him up to Morococha/' They all looked pityingly at me. Morococha was still higher up in the mountains, with a gla- cier in its back yard. So I climbed on another train, rode back to the highest point on the main line of the railroad, and changed to a branch that led still higher into a land of Alpine beauty and Arctic temperature. After winding among icy peaks and chilly blue lakes, it came finally down upon another group of chimneys and mine towers, where another manager met me. The managers expect new em- ployees to arrive sick up here, and are very con- siderate of newcomers. *^I'd take you to the quarters in my automo- bile/' he explained, **but yesterday was pay-day, and I can't drive without running over the drunks. ' ' As we walked down through the straggling na- tive mud village toward the mines, cholos stag- gered stupidly out of our way, the more nearly sober ones raising their hats in salute, the rest staring at us in bleary-eyed impudence until pushed aside. Many of them lay in the road, half-buried in the mixture of mud and melting snow. Before one of the many shafts that dotted the valley below, like entrances to a huge ant-hill, the manager paused. **We41 take the subway to camp,'' he said. jThe subw'ay proved to be a mine cage, which shot us down into dripping blackness. Several Over the World's Highest Railway '43 hundred feet below, in a cavern lighted by flick- ering miners' lamps, we climbed into a small electric car, and were carried noisily through winding tunnels where water trickled upon us from the rocks close overhead. The gringo camp where the American employees lived was some two miles distant, but in a few minutes we shot into brilliant sunshine among a group of neat white buildings. Here the manager turned me over to a red- haired, freckle-faced man whom he addressed as ** Paddy,'' Paddy looked at me distrustfully. *'It's not English ye areT' he inquired. **No, I'm American." '^I'll give you a good room then.'' I learned later that it was Paddy's dislike for what he termed ** Lima- juicers," culminating in his posting about his home town in Cork some handbills warning them to take their feet off the neck of fair Ireland, that explained why he was now in Peru. Paddy, whose present capacity in the mines was that of ^* General Welfare Manager," con- ducted me to the club, and left me there while he went out to find Hving quarters. To one who had come to the Andes in search of strange local color, the club was disappointingly civiHzed. Viemng its big easy-chairs, its piano and victrola, and its books and magazines, one could imagine himself back in some Y. M. C. A. in New York. Even the miners were a trifle disappointing. I had expected to find a swaggering, quarrel- some crew of gunmen in these camps. Back at 44 The Adventures of a Tropical Tramp the smelter I had noticed that the two Smiths were identified by the titles ** Forty-four Smith'' and * ' Thirty-eight Smith ' ' according to the caUber of the gun in the hip pocket. But these fellows, although husky and red-faced and otherwise fill- ing all specifications, were quiet in manner, and spoke to each other with surprising courtesy. Presently, however, when Paddy announced that my room was ready, it was with a grin and a warning : *^Look out for the other fellow in there — he's a bit ugly." As I entered the door, an outburst of profanity from the occupant of one of the two beds gave hope that I had at last discovered a real mining- camp roughneck. **My name's Foster," I said quickly. I did not mention this with any expectation that the name would intimidate him. He seemed to be under the impression that I was the native room-bo3^, and I wanted to correct the mistake before he opened fire. His remarks, in English, promised that he was about to do something like that. *^My name's 'Grady," he snarled. ** You've heard of me." Unfortunately I had not. His close-cropped hair and bloodshot eyes were not familiar. I apologized for my ignorance, explaining that I had just reached the camp. ^^But you've heard of Michael Francis 'Grady?" Over the World's Highest Railway 45 *^ Don't you remember when he knocked out Kid Kelly r' ^^No.'^ **I guess you ain't from Boston then. Wisht I was there now. I just got here meself, an' I'm down with this damned soroche.^ ^ CHAPTER FIVE IN AN ANDEAN MINING CAMP ONE need not travel long in South America to realize that it is mainly a land for the big corporation. The riches of the southern continent are usually found not only in the distant interior, to which the corporation must build its own railroad, but also in the most unattractive part of the distant interior, in a region which taxes the company's ingenuity to make life livable for its employees. Such a place was Morococha. It was quite the gloomiest place I had ever seen. Surrounded by cold-looking lakes, from which the frosted mount- ain-sides rose to white peaks without a single bush or tree to break the gruesome bleakness of the landscape, under a lead-gray sky that gave prom- ise of a daily hail-storm, it was hard to believe that this was tropical South America. The Cerro de Pasco Company's camps, how- ever, were small modern cities. At Morococha proper, where the mines were situated, the robust gang bosses worked as they might have worked in Colorado. At Tuctu, the residential camp, we lived as comfortably as we might have lived in New York City. The visitor to these out-of-the-way camps is 46 In an Andean Mining Camp 47 always surprised to find that the gringo colony not only lives and works as at home but even ob- serves the same social distinctions. At many of the larger places, the gringos are even grouped in separate dining rooms according to their rela- tive salaries, cleanliness in dress, and ability to refrain from swearing in the presence of ladies. At Morococha and Tuctu these distinctions were a trifle less sharply drawn, partly because of the smaller size of the gringo colony and partly because of the greater isolation of the camp, yet the distinctions were not entirely lacking. During the day manager and shift-boss alike might wear khaki and call each other by the first name, but in the evening they fell into their sep- 'arate groups. The engineers and higher-paid employees, several of whom had their wives and families in camp, gave bridge parties and dances at which the men wore white collars and the women evening gowns, while the ^ * roughnecks, ' ' as the lower-paid employees frankly called them- selves, retired to the reading-room to play poker, or — still attired in the khaki working clothes — wandered up to the village to get drunk. My status as an office man and my desire to secure material for writing both inclined me toward the ** roughneck" class, but the fact that the camp victrola was broken and that I was the only man in camp that could rag the piano gave me the ready entree into all groups. The engineers of the upper strata were mostly contract men. The shift-bosses, gang bosses, 48 The Adventures of a Tropical Tramp and office men of the lower* strata were mostly tropical tramps — a conglomerate mixture of Americans, Englishmen and Canadians, with a sprinkling of Scotch, Irish, Welsh, Swedes, Aus- tralians, and even one or two Germans. Also, a few higher-class Peruvians who were not too proud to accept emplo^Tnent were housed with the gringos, but they were not welcomed in the upper set, and having the Latin American aver- sion for men who do not carry canes or wear white collars, they refused to mingle with the lower set, and formed a group by themselves. The tropical tramps of the roughneck division, disappointingly quiet from first impression, be- came more interesting upon closer acquaintance. Many of them were morose, silent men, who sel- dom spoke of their pasts, and to whom an inquiry regarding their reason for coming to the interior of South America would have proved an affront, but most of them had come merely to seek for- tune and adventure and had remained to enjoy the easy life. All of them had tasted adventure in many quarters of the globe, but most of them lacked the imagination to know an adventure when they tasted it. A few of them were college graduates; the majority were uneducated save by travel; a few were illiterate. To get the interesting tales of their experiences one had to dig. Even Judson, the little Texan who had assisted me in Lima and who presently arrived in Morococha, although he loved to tell me about his adventures, insisted upon being THE "gringo camp AT MOROCOCHA ONE OF THE :\riNES AT MOROCOCHA In an Andean Mining Camp 49 coaxed. Wlieii at dinner with me, he would re- mark suggestively, ^^This meat reminds me of ring-tailed Mexican spider monkey,^' after which he would wait patiently for me to ask, *^When did 3^ou eat ring-tailed Mexican spider monkey?'' After I had coaxed him for ten or fifteen minutes, he would start a series of reminiscences which would cover everything from a banquet with the sepia-colored president of a West Indian repub- lic to a dog-roast with th' savages of the Upper Orinoco. And w^hen he had finished, as though realizing that he had been immodest in gratify- ing his love of story-telling, he would wave his hand in depreciation of himself and conclude, **But that was nothing. '' Judson had killed three Mexican bandits in his time, although he was quite harmless in appear- ance, with washy blue eyes that squinted almost timidly through horn-rimmed glasses. **It wasn't any adventure,'' he explained, *4t was darned hard w^ork." Another man with an interesting history was Bolshevik, a big Australian construction boss with Greenwich Village ideas about life. He had never been to school, but had educated himself to some extent w^hile sailing before the mast, read- ing a peculiar mixture of Nietsche, Shakespeare, Milton, Jack London, and Elinor Glyn. Bolshevik was one of those bom rebels who seize eagerly upon every radical theory they dis- cover. He was ready at all times to argue about socialism, anarchism, spiritualism, pacifism, or 50 The Adventures of a Tropical Tramp free love, and when he argued he would uncon- sciously assume the oratorical manner of the soap-box labor agitator. His voice would boom even though he had but one listener, and his fists would pound upon the table as though he were addressing a multitude. And when he shifted from advocating the electrocution of John D. Eockefeller to the more poetic subject of free love, the same voice would soften to a whisper, and he would murmur romantically: **One should mate as the birds mate in the spring. '^ Bolshevik, who had wandered about the world as a general trouble-maker, had been kicked out of several countries, and was proud of it. **I once decided to make a record,'' he told me confidentially in the club-room. **I decided to become the first man who'd been kicked out of every country in the world. But I couldn't do it. After the war they began to create all them new states — Armenia, Georgia, Poland — ^^and I couldn't keep up with them. If a man could only live two or three hundred years, he could really accomplish something in this world." Yet even Bolshevik was quiet in Morococha. He had settled down to work efficiently and con- scientiously as a construction boss. Once in a while he did insist upon rising and making speeches to us in the club, but these outbrusts gradually subsided, for a new speaker had come to the camp. It was Michael Francis 'Grady, the ex-pug from Boston. O 'Grady's talks were entirely about himself. In an Andean Mining Camp 51 Having recovered from his soroche, and laid in a stock of whiskey, 'Grady had undertaken to be- come the camp bully, and was paving the way by telling us of his prowess. As I came into the club-room in the evening, I could hear his voice raised in a recital of how he walked straight into the arena and stuck his head in the lion's mouth, or something of that sort. At first the others en- couraged him with such comments* as: **You, certainly are a son-of -a-gun, ' ' but as the tales grew longer and wilder, the applause became bored silence. Offended at the lack of appreciation, 'Grady eventually confined his conversation to me. As his room-mate, I could not very well avoid him. He was an automobile mechanic, brought down on contract to repair several steam trucks which a former chauffeur, while intoxicated, had at- tempted to repair with an ax. When not de- scribing his conquest of Boston he would favor me with detailed accounts of the various ailments of these steam trucks. Finally he did remedy one to such an extent that it sometimes reached the mines two miles, away, although it was in- clined to stop somewhere on the mountain roads to belch flame and make noises like the battle of Verdun. The final perfecting of this car, however, gave 'Grady new troubles. The women of the camp, as is usual in most American colonies in South America, had nothing to do for amusement except to talk about each other, unless somebody's hus- 52 The Adventures of a Tropical Tramp band provided new conversational material by; falling down a shaft with a box of dynamite under his arm. As this happened very infre- quently, they overworked the usual topic until no two of them would sit at the same table in the dining room. Now they seized upon 'Grady *s steam truck as a means not only to visit the com- pany store, but also to pass the afternoon in motoring up and down the mountaili road to the mines, As 'Grady was the type of youth who thinks that any woman who does not habitually slap him in the face must be encouraging him, he began to scent trouble from several husbands. **Let 'em try it," he boasted to me. '* These would-be hard guys '11 find out how a certain little feller from Boston can use his mitts." Nevertheless, he decided to refute scandal by showing hi's aversion to the ladies, which he did by backing his car off a cliff into the lake, nearly drowning three of them. Even the roughnecks were loud in their condemnation of this act, and it was remarked in the Club that 'Grady ought to be tarred and feathered. Only Bolshevik defended him, and this was merely because Bol- shevik habitually sided with the minority. ** There ought not to be any wives up here, any- how," he argued. **If them engineers would mate as the birds mate in the spring — " My own daily routine was not so exciting as 'Grady's. One day was pretty much like an- other. At about 6 A. M., the clanging of a bell In an Andean Mining Camp 53 awakened me, and with a shiver, I would climb into my heavy working clothes — even the office men dressed in corduroy and woolen — and would emerge from my comfortable, steam-heated room to join the other men at the ** subway'' entrance, where we congregated in a motley group, all of us silent and ill-tempered after the manner of men who pass from the comfortable to the un- comfortable. Presently Franklin, the senior mine captain, growled **Vamos!'' and our little mine car went rattling away, wdth three or four late risers dodg- ing from their quarters and rushing wildly after us. The car swept around a shoulder of rock and plunged into the blackness of the tunnel. Huddled under our ponchos and rain-coats, we sped through the dark passage, with ice-water dripping upon us from the rocks above — rocks which barely missed our heads as we sped along. Cholo miners would suddenly appear out of the gloom, hugging the wall to avoid us, their flick- ering mine lamps throwing weird, fantastic shadows across our path. Sometimes in the distance could be heard the deep rumble of blast- ing powder, and our ear drums would throb -with the pressure, wliile great clouds of stifling smoke would fill the passage. Then, finally, we would come to a stop in a huge underground cavern, where, still silent and grouchy, we awaited our turns to ascend in the **cage.'' At the surface we scattered in various direc- tions, the gang foremen (who had breakfasted 54 The Adventures of a Tropical Tramp back at Tuctu) heading for their respective mines, the office men (who had slept until the final moment and missed breakfast) climbing pain- fully up the hill through snow and slush to the company ^s other dining room, where a little Jap- anese waiter gave us hot coffee. After our day's work, if the weather were unpleasant, as it usually was, we returned by the same route. But if the sun were shining, as it usually was not, we walked back to our quarters over a moiuntain road that led through the dirty native village, where every one stopped for a few drinks on the way. *^You need liquor up here,'' the miners always explained. ** You've got to have it to stand the altitude." As a matter of fact, there is no worse place in the world for drinking than in this altitude, but alcohol did make Morococha look more cheerful. By the time we reached Tuctu, our surroundings had brightened considerably, and the evening passed pleasantly, with all of us recovered from our morning's grouch and singing the popular songs of last year about the club piano or reading aged New York magazines before the open fire. Michael Francis 'Grady still continued to re- late the thrilling tale of his victory over Kid Kelly back in dear old South Boston, but no one would listen to it any longer except myself, and I listened mainly because I recognized 'Grady as good copy for stories. But this listening won me 'Grady's sincerest devotion, and as an in- In an Andean Mining Camp 55 dication of his good-will, he began to drive iip in his motor truck every afternoon to the company office to take me home in style to the residential camp. Since O^Grady had invariably stopped at the native village on his way up, and since the native village, with the exception of a few stores kept by Chinese merchants and a few brothels where dusky cliola maids beckoned alike to the white man or Indian, consisted entirely of grog-shops, he arrived usually in the pink of condition, and the ride home was always- pregnant with the possi- bilities of adventure. If a mongrel cur barked at us, 'Grady was quite apt to retaliate by pursuing the offending animal with his truck, turning abruptly into narrow side-streets or shooting off across the hills. If the chola maids, offended at our lack of interest, hurled an oath after us, 'Grady was quite likely to give his wheel a twist and send his truck crashing into the adobe front of their dwelling. Because I would risk a ride with him — and I did so merely because, having been a mollicoddle during the earlier years of my life, I felt that I had to live down that circumspect past — 'Grady pronounced me the one ** regular feller" in camp. ^^I'm going to make you!" he exclaimed one evening. ^^I'm going to give you a letter to Bud Fisher, and he'll make a writer out of you. You know Bud — the feller that draws them funny pictures. I took him home one night when I was drivin' taxis in Boston. He'll remjember me. 56 The Adventures of a Tropical Tramp Just tell him I'm the man that ran him off the bridge into the Charles River.'* Thereupon he dictated the following letter : **Dear Bud. The gink to who' I'm giving this note is a regular scout. He can write like the devil. He knows all about them South American countries. Also them Central American countries. Also them North American countries. I know you're a good scout, so I want you to introduce this bird to Hearst and the other boys. Yours till — freezes. Michael Francis 'Grady." As I had my doubts about 'Grady 's. influence in literary circles, I continued to pound out stories in my own way when my office duties per- mitted, and mailed them back to publishers, to receive only rejection slips in return. The work in the company office was* not ardu- ous. Most of the office men were Latins, they all smoked incessantly at* their labor, and were always ready to cease this labor when any excuse offered, as for example, when some engineer's wife passed our window in riding breeches, for no man of Spanish blood could possibly concen- trate with such a vision in sight. The office, perched (upon a hillside, gave us a remarkable view of the mine-dotted valleys below, of wooden towers, of tracks lined with ore cars, of huge piles of tailings, against which the diminutive cholo miners in their ponchos or oil-skins looked like tiny pigmies. The sound of activity — the creak of machinery, the puffing of engines, the shouts of the bosses — came to us in the steam-heated In an Andean Mining Camp 57 office as from a great distance, almost as from another world. There were two other gringos besides myself in the office — the American cashier, and a little cockney bookkeeper named Lansdowne. Lans- downe, who had served for four years with the British army, would spend most of his time with his chair tilted at a comfortable angle, while he grinned in my direction and sang ditties which he had composed about the American soldiers: Oh, the Yanks are ^aving" a bloody fine time, Drinking champagne be'ind the line." Wherefore it behooved me as a former Ameri- can soldier to cease my own work, tilt my own chair at a comfortable angle, and compose similar ditties about the British. Finally we would both postpone our work for another half hour while we translated our compositions into Spanish for the edification of the Peruvians. Both of us, although possibly no more efficient than these Peruvians, were paid much higher salaries — our reward for being Anglo-Saxons in an Anglo-Saxon company. Even from the native laborers we received more consideration. If we went into the company store, in which crowds of cholos were always struggling to reach the counter, the Peruvian clerks would iinmediately cease serving our predecessors to wait upon us. */ That's why anybody who comes 'ere from 'ome stys 'ere,'' Lansdowne once remarked, and he expressed a very big truth. **It's not only an easy life, but demmit, you're a White Man! 58 The Adventures of a Tropical Tramp You may not be worth a damn at ''ome, but 'ere you're as 'igh as the King 'imself !'' Once a month, when we sent reports, to New York to inform the owners how many million dollars we had made for them, our typewriters clicked until late into the night. At other times we loafed, and waited for pay-day. Then a big steel car, guarded by a squad of Peruvian sol- diers, rolled up to our front door, and for a day or two we sat at the window, with a revolver handy, and paid off the two thousand Indians who swarmed about the office. After that, there would be several days of idleness while they re- covered from their debauch. When sober, the Andean Indian is extremely docile. Descended from the ancient races dom.- inated by the Incas, later kicked about by the still more domineering Spanish conquerors, he slinks about in a hangdog manner, always making room for a white man, to whom he raises his hat in an apologetic manner upon being addressed. When drunk, however, the same Indian is apt to be ugly. His principal stimulant is a raw rum, called chacta, brought up in kegs by tinkling burro trains from the tropical valleys on the eastern slope of the mountains. It tastes like a mixture of molasses and alcohol, and instead of causing exhilaration, it merely makes the drinker ugly. Some two years ago, inspired by a revolution in the rest of Peru, the cholos went in a mob to the high cliffs overlooking the gringo icamp, and hurled sticks of dynamite at their Irr an Andean Mining Camp 59 American bosses below. Fortunately, they suc- ceeded only in blowing the flagpole off the man- ager's house. Drunkenness is general throughout the Andes, and the big companies prefer to let the natives concentrate their enjoyment of life in a once-a- month debauch rather than endure petty inter- ruptions to the work at more frequent intervals. Ordinarily the men work quite consistently be- tween pay-days. Once, however, we had an interesting inter- ruption in the visit of a gaunt, white-whiskered stranger who announced himself as St. Anthony, and preached the rapid coming of the millennium, which was to take place at 11 p. m. on the seven- teenth of December. The cholos, all of them re- ligious fanatics, immediately left the mines, and began parading the streets- of the mud village, carrying lighted candles., and drinking themselves maudlin on chad a taken by force from the shops on the theory that with the destruction of the world the bar-keepers would lose their whole stock anyway. The impostor went so far as to sell admission to heaven at the rate of one ck)llar- for a re- served seat and fifty centavos for standing-room. Ordinarily the company controls such outbreaks through- the local priests, to whom it pays regular ^^gratifijcations'* for their support, as it does also to the local political authorities. The village priest, however, happened to be out of town. Finally, after much urging, the police raided the 60 The Adventures of a Tropical Tramp impostor's meeting, and confiscating the box- office receipts, drove the prophet out of town. After that the police had a private .booze-party of their own on the proceeds. It is the unwritten law of the Andes that the White Man shall take no insolence from the In- dians. Several times during my stay in the min- ing camp, I saw an. American boss strike, a native who did not leap to .carry out his orders. This custom has been much criticized in Peruvian newspapers, which are always ready to comment on gringo *' brutality. "■ The bosses defended their conduct on the ground that the practice main- tains the White Man's authority and makes him safe in a crowd of drunken natives that outnum- ber him by a hundred to one. An American who submits tamely to impudence from the cholos is apt to be run out of camp by his own fellow- countrymen as a menace to the prestige of the rest. One must not leap to the conclusion that the big American companies exploit their labor. On the contrary, I found during many months in Peru that they pay higher wages and show much more consideration for the welfare of their native employees than do the Peruvian em- ployers. The trouble is that the cholo, ac- customed to his own way of living — ^usually in a hut of mud or stones patched with grass — resents any attempt to better his condition. Back at Oroya, where the company was constructing a smelter, it had established comfortable homes of In an Andean Mining Camp 61 wood and corrugated iron for the Indians, but they preferred to live in caves or in hovels down in the bed of the river with the sewage of the American camp on the bank above tumbling upon their thatched roofs. I later found that the camp which experienced the least trouble with its laborers was the oldest camp, Cerro de Pasco itself, which had solved the problem by leaving them alone. The mines here dated back to Pizarro, as did the old Spanish town where the natives lived. It has been called the highest and dirtiest city in the world. Here the company had permitted the Indians to squat on the chairless mud floor of their ancestral hovels and cook their scanty meal of frozen potatoes over their traditional fire of llama dung, and the Indians were contented. Altogether, the Cerro de Pasco Company employed about 10,000 native laborers, yet its growing mines could have used many more. One of the greatest problems faced by com- panies of any size in the interior of Peru is a scarcity of labor. Labor is cheap enough, but scarce. Strikes give less trouble than at home, because the government usually settles them with a battalion of troops. But in the interior, particularly in the Andes, there are not enough natives to work. Indians down in the tropics, who can live by the simple process of digging up wild roots and spearing a fish, refuse to go up into the mountains to work for wages. No Indian will remain in the bleak altitude, except one who 62 The Adventures of a Tropical Tramp is born there, and who supposes that the rest of the world is as gloomy and cold as his oavh home. Although every squaw in the Andes seems to have at least one baby strapped to her back, they are not being born fast enough to supply the growing American mines with labor. The company ^s coal mine at Goyllarisquisga was having the most trouble. Goyllarisquisga was situated at the edge of the mountains, where a series of steep valleys fell away toward the tropics, and the laborers had discovered that just over the hill was a land of plenty where men can live upon the fruits of the soil, instead of playing with dynamite in dark tunnels. The manager of the mine was building modem homes for them, with electricity, running water, and real stoves; at the company restaurant he sold them meals at half the cost of the food; he even served coffee and rolls free to the men in the mines — ^but he could not keep enough laborers. When, after spending three months in Moro- cocha — and I had come to South America with the resolve never to spend more than three months in -one place — I tendered my resignation, the management was not surprised. Most of the tramps employed in the Andes are wanderers, and drift continually from one camp to another. Even those who come on a two-year contract not infrequently jump the agreement. It is not the company's fault. It pays good wages, and provides everything that one can desire except cliniate. But life among eternal snow and slush, In an Andean Mining Camp 63 in an altitude where the least exertion leaves one gasping for breath, has little attraction except for the professional miner, who becomes accustomed to living in unattractive places. Yet these isolated mining-camps are the only places I found in South America where the aver- age young American can save money. He has no expenses here unless he drinks. Unfortunately, he usually does drink, and to excess. For that matter, the average American in Latin America shows a tendency toward the easy habits of the Latins, and with his greater Anglo-Saxon thor- oughness is apt to go to greater extremes in these habits. Particularly is this true in the dismal surroundings of a mining-camp. And even if he holds himself in check while in the mountains, when he goes down to Lima for his twice-yearly vacation, after six months in the Andes, he goes all primed for a wild time. My last day at Morococha was New Year's Day. On the evening before, we closed the office, and three of us strolled down to the native village, ostensibly to get a hair-cut in preparation for the evening's banquet. By the time we started on do^vn the mountain road toward camp, the hair-cut had developed into a game to see who could walk nearest to the edge of the thousand- foot cliff mthout falling over. I was referee, be- ing sober. It was a camp rule, enforced by all my companions, that on the day preceding a party, at which it would become my duty to bang the piano, I was to refrain from drinking. 64 The Adventures of a Tropical Tramp Lansdowne, who was to defend his champion- ship in the billiard tournament that night, and who always played his best when he could hardly stand upon his feet, led the way, improvising lustily: ' * Oh, the president of Peru, 'E didn't know what to do, So 'e went to the cupboard with old Mother Hubbard—'* Suddenly we heard a loud banging and clattering behind us, and 'Grady's steam truck came tear- ing around the bend. He was playing the same game. ** Bullfight!'' he shouted. "Cholos having a bullfight outside of town. Let's go. All aboard for Boston!" We climbed into the car and away we went. As O 'Grady's special confidant, I always shared the seat of honor beside him. **You'll get something to write about to-night, all right," he promised me as we went into tail- spins and nose-dives over the hills. 'Grady scorned the road wherever it was possible to drive across the river-bed and up the mountain- side. **You know this guy Sumner? Well, he says I been insultin' his wife. I'm goin' to cleai^ him up. You just keep your eyes on little Michael Francis 'Grady to-night." The bullfight was an amateur affair held in a temporary enclosure among a cluster of mud huts. As we arrived a number of drunken cholos were teasing a small he-calf, amid the shouts and In an Andean Mining Camp 65 laughter of a crowd of other natives. We made a few uncomplimentary remarks about the national sport, and were starting to go, when we overheard something said by a Peruvian : <