108 THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU 



lation bears a close inverse proportion to the altitude, excepting 

 in the case of the largest valleys whose size brings together such 

 numbers as to tempt the commercial and exploiting whites to live 

 in them. Furthermore, we should find that high altitude, limited 

 size, and greater isolation are everywhere closely related to in- 

 creasing immorality or decreasing character among the whites. So 

 to the low Indian population there is thus added the lowest of the 

 white population. Moreover, because it yields the largest returns, 

 the chief business of these whites is the sale of coca and brandy 

 and the downright active debauchery of the Indian. This is all 

 the easier for them because the isolated Indian, like the average 

 isolated white, has only a low and provincial standard of morality 

 and gets no help from such stimulation as numbers usually excite. 



For example, the Anta basin at harvest time is one of the fair- 

 est sights in Peru. Sturdy laborers are working diligently. Their 

 faces are bright and happy, their skin clear, their manner eager 

 and animated. They sing at their work or gather about their mild 

 chicha and drink to the patron saints of the harvest. The huts are 

 filled with robust children ; all the yards are turned into threshing 

 floors; and from the stubbly hillslopes the shepherd blows shrill 

 notes upon his barley reeds and bamboo flute. There is drinking 

 but there is little disorder and there is always a sober remnant 

 that exercises a restraining influence upon the group. 



In the most remote places of all one may find mountain groups 

 of a high order of morality unaffected by the white man or actu- 

 ally shunning him. Clear-eyed, thick-limbed, independent, a fine, 

 sturdy type of man this highland shepherd may be. But in the 

 town he succumbs to the temptation of drink. Some writers have 

 tried to make him out a superior to the plains and low valley type. 

 He is not that. The well-regulated groups of the lower elevations 

 are far superior intellectually and morally in spite of the fact that 

 the poorly regulated groups may fall below the highland dweller 

 in morality. The coca-chewing highlander is a clod. Surely, as 

 a whole, the mixed breed of the coastal valleys is a far worthier 

 type, save in a few cases where a Chinese or negroid element or 

 both have led to local inferiority. And surely, also, that is the 



