THE ROAD TO BOLIVIA 



221 



degrees in the temperature of the shade and the sunshine. Water 

 will freeze in the shade, while in the sunshine twenty feet away men 

 may be working in their shirt-sleeves. 



The natives seem to be entirely inured to cold, and go about bare- 

 footed and barelegged over the ice and stones, and have a way ol 

 heaping blankets on their heads and wrapping up their faces to keep 

 the pure air out of their throats and nostrils. The women who herd 

 the flocks are often out on the moun- 

 tains for weeks at a time without a 

 shelter or anything to eat except 

 parched corn, strips of dried meat, 

 and cocoa leaves, which are the most 

 powerful of nerve stimulants. 



From Crucero Alto, the highest 

 town in the world, the southern i-ail- 

 road of Peru drops into the Lagu- 

 nillas, the lake region of the Cordil- 

 lera, where, 14,250 feet above the sea, 

 is a group of large lakes of ver}^ cold 

 pure water, without inlet or outlet, 

 that receive the drainage of a large 

 area and conceal it somewhere, l)ut 

 there is no visible means of its escape. 

 A fringe of ice forms around the 

 edges of the lake ever}'- night the 

 3' ear round. 



A curious phenomenon about tlie 

 lakes is that they keep the same 

 level all the time, regai'dless of the 

 dry and rainy seasons. No amount 

 of rain will make any difference in 

 their depth, which, however, in the 

 center is unknown : and this adds to the awe and mystery with 

 which they are regarded l)y the Indians. There are no boats upon 

 the lakes except a few small balsas or rafts made of bundles of straw, 

 which keep very close to the shore for fear of being drawn into whirl- 

 pools that are said to exist in the center. There is some foundation 

 for this fear, for only two or three years ago a balsa containing five 

 men disappeared in the darkness and was never heard of again. 



iNH.ir.NTiAi. <'nr/.K.\ iiF akkihita 



