The Top of the Andes. 421 



The nights are dewless. Many herds of alpacas and wild 

 vicunas were feeding on these boggy highlands — their nat- 

 ural home.* The rearing of the " Peruvian sheep " is the 

 chief business of the mountaineers. Shearing-time is the 

 beginning of the wet season, December 15th. And now, 

 descending and winding among the hills, no longer volcan- 

 ic, but built of fiercely contorted conglomerate, sandstone, 

 slate, and limestone strata of Jurassic age and easterly dip, 

 the road passed between two brackish lakes,f along the banks 

 of the Maravillas to Taya-taya (meaning the place twice 

 cold, a match for Oriiro, in Bolivia, which means the place 

 twice wet), and then to Juliaca, where, for the first time since 

 leaving Arequipa, I saw signs of cultivation. Terraced 

 hill-sides and furrowed plains, the relics of an historic na- 

 tion, told me that I was on classic soil. Ere long the clear 

 waters of Titicaca flashed back the rays of the settiug sun ; 

 and I gazed, rapt in thought, upon that lake brimful of 

 history, and over it into Bolivia, where rose, in majestic 

 splendor, the crown of America — the Nevado de Sorata. 

 This was the historic centre of the continent. Here, said 

 Humboldt, was the theatre of the ancient American civil- 

 ization. Out of Titicaca was born, like a water-god, Manco 

 Capae, the first of the Incas, who founded an empire great- 

 er than that of Charlemagne. All around this mysterious 

 lake, whose surface lies level with the tops of lofty mount- 

 ains, are monuments which none but a thrifty and civilized 

 people would or could have left behind them. 



* Llamas and alpacas are domesticated ; gnanacos and vicunas are wild. 

 The finest wool in the market is, fiom a cross between the alpaca and vicuna, 

 called paco-vicuna. Vicunas are most abundant between Galea and Rumihua- 

 si. They are fawn-colored, and graceful as gazelles. The hair, especially 

 about the neck, is very soft and silky. They go in flocks of a dozen or more, 

 led by a male, who keeps watch. At Iiis signal of danger — stamping with his 

 forefeet, and uttering a ciy — off they go like the wind. 



t The Lagunillas. Rivero made their altitude 15,255 feet! What a ba- 

 rometer ! 



