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THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



pack train. This also gave us an op- 

 portunity to see the country. 



The expedition left Sucre December 

 22 (1915). We had engaged an ade- 

 quate caravan of mules and burros and 

 a number of Quichua drivers for the 

 journey. All supplies had to be taken 

 with us, as very little in the way of 

 provisions may be had from the In- 

 dians who are virtually the sole inhabi- 

 tants of the cheerless highlands. There 

 are a number of villages, it is true, but 

 the person who relies upon them foi- 

 maintenance must either live on coca 

 and cliiclia, the native beer, or meet 

 with disaster. The country is rolling, 

 dry, and unproductive. In place- 

 there is a sparse growth of cacti and 

 thorny shrubbery, but vast areas are 

 rocky and barren of all vegetation. 

 We crossed ridge after ridge, the eleva- 

 tion of the trail varying between eight 

 thousand and twelve thousand feet. 

 Travel in this type of country is most 

 trying. Water is so scarce that long 

 distances must be covered in order to 

 find suitable camping sites; in one in- 

 stance we were compelled to ride 

 thirty-six miles in the course of a day, 

 between streams. The temperature 

 varies one hundred degrees each twen- 

 ty-four hours. At two in the after- 

 noon the thermometer registered 132° 

 F. in the sun; at night it dropped to 

 32°. 



After twelve days, two of which had 

 been spent in a Quichua village called 

 Puna, with every member of the party 

 suffering from sunburn or mountain 

 sickness, we reached Villazon on the 

 Bolivian side of the border. Villazon 

 contains about a score of scattered, 

 low, adobe buildings. We arrived on a 

 Sunday, when the custom house was 

 closed, but the officials in charge very 

 courteously permitted us to proceed on 

 our way. A brook three or four feet 



wide separates the two republics, and 

 stepping across this, we found our- 

 selves in La Quiaca, a village of Argen- 

 tina very similar to Villazon. 



This section of the Argentine is rich 

 in mines, and multitudes of llamas and 

 mules came down from the mountains 

 each daj', laden with copper, bismuth, 

 silver ore, and gold ore. They dis- 

 charged their burden at the railroad 

 station where it Avas loaded on cars to 

 be taken to the smelters in Buenos 

 Aires. 



Our object in coming to the Argen- 

 tine was to continue the biological sur- 

 vey we had carried on in Bolivia ; and 

 also to secure specimens of a species of 

 Scytalopus which was thought to exist 

 in the province of Salta. The acqui- 

 sition of this bird was most important 

 for the light it would tlirow on certain 

 problems of distribution. We there- 

 fore took the first available train and 

 started southward. 



From La Quiaca the railroad winds 

 u])ward through a narrow, rocky gorge 

 to the station Tres Cruces, the altitude 

 of which is 12,400 feet. Then it de- 

 scends at a steep grade — so steep in 

 fact that a rack and pinion are used 

 part of the distance. 



Our first headquarters were made at 

 Rosario de Lerma, near the city of 

 Salta. We had been informed that the 

 town was in the center of a heavily 

 forested region, but found upon our 

 arrival that it was surrounded by cul- 

 tivated fields, pastures, and a few 

 clumps of open, low woods. The at- 

 tractiveness of the region, however, can- 

 not be exaggerated, and the courtesy 

 of the inhabitants will always remain 

 one of the bright spots of our many 

 years' experience in South America. 

 Birds were most abundant also. They 

 were nesting, so that it was possible to 

 secure not onlv a large amount of un- 



