92 THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU 



state of the Department, and received similar messages from the 

 central government about neighboring departments. These he 

 read to us, and, curiously enough, to the entire party, made up 

 of army officers and townsmen. I was surprised to find later that 

 the company included one government official whose son had been 

 among the imprisoned rebels at Arequipa. We met the young 

 man a week later at a mountain village, a day after a general 

 amnesty had been declared. His escape had been made from the 

 prison a month before. He forcibly substituted the mess-boy's 

 clothing for his own, and thus passed out unnoticed. After a few 

 days ' hiding in the city, he set out alone across the desert of Vitor, 

 thence across the lofty volcanic country of the Maritime Andes, 

 through some of the most deserted, inhospitable land in Peru, and 

 at the end of three weeks had reached Lambrama, near Abancay, 

 the picture of health ! 



Later I came to have a better notion of the economic basis of 

 the revolution, for obviously the planters and the reckless young 

 men must have had a mutual understanding. Somewhere the 

 rebels had obtained the sinews of war. The planters did not take 

 an open part in the revolution, but they financed it. When the 

 rebels were crushed, the planters, at least outwardly, welcomed 

 the government forces. Inwardly they cursed them for thwart- 

 ing their scheme. The reasons have an interesting geographic 

 basis. Abancay is the center of a sugar region. Great irrigated 

 estates are spread out along the valley floor and the enormous al- 

 luvial fans built into the main valley at the mouths of the tribu- 

 tary streams. There is a heavy tax on sugar and on aguardiente 

 (brandy) manufactured from cane juice. The hacendados had 

 dreamed of lighter taxes. The rebels offered the means of secur- 

 ing relief. But taxes were not the real reason for the unrest, for 

 many other sugar producers pay the tax without serious com- 

 plaint. Abancay is cut off from the rest of Peru by great moun- 

 tains. Toward the west, via Antabamba, Cotahuasi, and Chuqui- 

 bamba, two hundred miles of trail separate its plantations from 

 the Pacific. Twelve days' hard riding is required to reach Lima 

 over the old colonial trade route. It is three days to Cuzco at the 



