140 THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU 



whence he had come produced such astonishing effects as to. make 

 a man talk about rain in a parched desert. We all fell to laugh- 

 ing and at our banter the stranger stopped his pack-train and 

 earnestly urged us to hurry, for, he said, the .rains beyond the pass 

 were exceptionally heavy this year. We rode on in a doubtful 

 state of mind. I had heard about the rains, but I could not be- 

 lieve that they fell in real showers ! 



About noon the cloud bank darkened and overhung the border 

 of the desert. Still the sky above us was clear. Then happened 

 what I can yet scarcely believe. We rode into the head of a tiny 

 valley that had cut right across the coast chain. A wisp of cloud, 

 an outlier of the main bank, lay directly ahead of us. There 

 were grass and bushes not a half-mile below the bare dry spot on 

 which we stood. We were riding down toward them when of a 

 sudden the wind freshened and the cloud wisp enveloped us, shut- 

 ting out the view, and ten minutes later the moisture had gath- 

 ered in little beads on the manes of our beasts and the trail be- 

 came slippery. In a half -hour it was raining and in an hour we 

 were in the midst of a heavy downpour. We stopped and pas- 

 tured our famished beasts in luxuriant clover. While they gorged 

 themselves a herd of cattle drifted along, and a startled band of 

 burros that suddenly confronted our beasts scampered out of sight 

 in the heavy mist. Later we passed a herdsman's hut and long 

 before we reached him he shouted to us to alter our course, for 

 just ahead the old trail was wet and treacherous at this time 

 of year. The warning came too late. Several of our beasts lost 

 their footing and half rolled, half slid, down hill. One turned com- 

 pletely over, pack and all, and lay in the soft mud calmly taking 

 advantage of the delay to pluck a few additional mouthfuls of 

 grass. We were glad to reach firmer ground on the other side of 

 the valley. 



The herdsmen were a hospitable lot. They had come from 

 Camana and rarely saw travelers. Their single-roomed hut was 

 mired so deeply that one found it hard to decide whether to take 

 shelter from the rain inside or escape the mud by standing in the 

 rain outside. They made a little so-called cheese, rounded up and 



