70 Naturalist at Large 



shores with the keenest anticipation. On this day I took 

 the precaution of rolling a stone over on the reins of my 

 mule — because the day before, high up on a mountain to 

 the south of Puente del Inca, my mule had walked away 

 from me down a rocky slope so precipitous that I expected 

 him to go head over heels at any moment. Luckily our guide 

 appeared on the scene and spurred his own magnificent an- 

 imal after my beast lickity gallop down this same slope. 

 He caught my mule and brought it back to me with a 

 smile as if he had done nothing, but I had learned my lesson. 



On this occasion I was praying under my breath that I 

 might see a tiny brown lizard about five inches long and 

 quite nondescript as to form and color. I had happened to 

 read Fitzgerald's account of climbing Mount Aconcagua 

 not long before we started for South America and I re- 

 membered that in the appendix of the book Dr. G. A. Bou- 

 lenger of the British Museum had described a lizard, which 

 he called LiolaeTmis fitzgeraldi, and that it came from within 

 a few hundred yards of where I stood. In the winking of 

 an eye I spotted one resting on a stone in the sun, but 

 catching him was quite another matter. I am big and clumsy 

 — and clumsier still when I am at 14,000 feet above sea level. 

 My puffs and grunts as I lunged in vain amused Rosamond 

 and Archie Coolidge hugely. In time patience had its re- 

 ward and I ended up with seven or eight of the little devils, 

 which I suspect no one but Fitzgerald and I had ever 

 caught. This locality may not be the highest spot in the 

 world where lizards live but it certainly is one of them. 



While this chase was going on, the great condors kept 

 sweeping by in majestic flight. No one of the carrion-eating 

 birds is so clean-looking and attractive, except possibly the 



