LAKE TITICACA 143 



dancing attendance on^ people who had collections of 

 antiquities, and I am sorry to say with no success. I never 

 saw such a set of people as the Peruvians are. They 

 themselves don't care a fig for anything they have ; they 

 have old crockery, ornaments, mummies, clothes of the 

 times of the Incas, lying round in all the corners of 

 their establishment, and when you go to see anything 

 you find them everywhere, even under the sofas, chairs, 

 in fact kicking about in all directions, much as George 

 and Max had their play-room while we were repairing 

 the Quincy Street house. Yet the moment you want any- 

 thing, it is impossible to get it either given to you or to 

 buy it. It at once becomes immensely valuable in their 

 eyes, and just when you think you have closed a good 

 bargain, off they go to consult their father, or aunt, or 

 sister, who are part owners, and when they return no- 

 thing more can be done, and all the progress you have 

 made is in vain, and you must start fresh. 



With our habit of saying yes or no and being able to 

 make up our mind one way or another, such a course of 

 vacillation is extremely aggravating, and I must say I 

 am heartily sick of it. Yet it is the only way to obtain 

 anything in this benighted country. Time evidently is 

 not money in this place, or anywhere else in South 

 America. I spent all one day at the coal mines of the 

 owner of Inca antiquities, hoping to get him good- 

 humoured, and while at the mine he promised all sorts 

 of things, but now that he has got of me what he wanted 

 he is not so anxious to fulfill his promises ; in fact if 

 the Peruvians kept all their promises they would be the 

 most generous people in the world. 



The bareness of the respectable houses is something as- 

 tonishing, no chairs, no tables, nothing of what we deem 



