THE GEOGRAPHIC BASIS OF HUMAN CHARACTER 101 



outfit. On the morning of our third day in camp he overtook us 

 with a small escort of soldiers accompanied by the fugitive 

 Teniente. He said that he had come to arrest me on the charge of 

 maltreating an official of Peru. A few packages of cigarettes and 

 a handful of raisins and biscuits so stirred his gratitude that we 

 parted the best of friends. Moreover he provided us with four 

 fresh beasts and four new men, and thus equipped we set out for 

 a rendezvous about ten miles away. But the faithless Governor 

 turned off the trail and sought shelter at the huts of a company 

 of mountain shepherds. That night his men slept on the ground 

 in a bitter wind just outside our camp at 17,200 feet. They com- 

 plained that they had do food. The Governor had promised to 

 join us with llama meat for the peons. We fed them that night 

 and also the next day. But we had by that time passed the crest 

 of the western Cordillera and were outside the province of Anta- 

 bamba. The next morning not only our four men but also our 

 four beasts were missing. We were stranded and sick just under 

 the pass. To add to our distress the surgeon, Dr. Erving, was 

 obliged to leave us for the return home, taking the best saddle 

 animal and the strongest pack mule. It was impossible to go on 

 with the map. That morning I rode alone up a side valley until 

 I reached a shepherd 's hut, where I could find only a broken-down, 

 shuffling old mule, perfectly useless for our hard work. 



Then there happened a piece of good luck that seems almost 

 providential. A young man came down the trail with three pack 

 mules loaded with llama meat. He had come from the Cptahuasi 

 Valley the week before and knew the trail. I persuaded him to 

 let us hire one of his mules. In this way and by leaving the in- 

 struments and part of our gear in the care of two Indian youths 

 .we managed to get to Cotahuasi for rest and a new outfit. 



The young men who took charge of part of our outfit interested 

 me very greatly. I had never seen elsewhere so independent and 

 clear-eyed a pair of mountain Indians. At first they would have 

 nothing to do with us. They refused us permission to store our 

 goods in their hut. To them we were railroad engineers. They 

 said that the railway might come and when it did it would depopu- 



