406 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[September. 
morning’s work. This is making money quite too 
fast in a rural community, and a spasm of economy 
seizes the freeholders, and at the next town meet¬ 
ing the bounty is put down to a dollar, or with¬ 
drawn altogether. In two or three years the foxes 
are as numerous as ever, and many farmers give 
up raising turkeys, because of the insecurity of the 
crop. What is wanted in all our Northern States 
is a State bounty upon foxes of ten dollars or more, 
payable at each town treasury in which the foxes 
are caught. This bounty from the State should 
be kept on persistently, until the foxes are as 
scarce as bears or wolves. This would make poul¬ 
try raising comparatively secure, and greatly en¬ 
large the profits of every farming region. The 
interests to be protected are immense, and are as 
Fig. 2.— ALPACA IN FULL DRESS. 
great in the longest settled parts of the Eastern 
States as in newer sestions. Those legislators who 
read the American Ayriculturist should promote 
their own popularity by giving the matter early at¬ 
tention. We want fewer foxes and more turkeys. C. 
Alpaca Farming. 
ALFRED TRU31BLE. 
It was in a bitter wind storm, on the desolate 
table lands of the Peruvian Andes, that I first saw 
a ludicrously ungainly beast pop up from behind 
a rock, as the stumbling feet of my mule sent some 
loose stones rolling noisily down a precipice. The 
brute surveyed me for an instant, then shook his 
hairy head, gave a loud snort, and vanished. The 
echoes of the lonely pass bore to my ears a singular 
noise, as if an army of barefooted men was flying 
down the mountain. I had startled a herd of 
grazing Alpacas, and their sentry had warned them 
of my approach. The noise was the beating of 
their huge, cartilage-padded feet on the rocky 
ground. As I rode on, I saw flocks from time 
to time, grubbing the sparse grass from the 
rock-sprinkled levels and the steep declivities, 
which are such a peculiar feature of the heart of 
the Andes. There was always one big fellow 
perched on a rock, or at some other point of 
vantage, and at his snort the whole herd would 
turn tail and take to flight. Often I would see the 
sentry, without seeing his comrades, balanced far 
above me on some splintered pinnacle of stone, 
with his big, soft eyes fixed on me, ready to give 
the signal, as soon as he considered my proximity 
dangerous. It was a singular sensation, the meet¬ 
ing with this alert brute, the only living thing but 
myself and mule and an occasional condor, among 
these desolate mountains, whose peaks pierced 
the sky in a line of savage teeth, like a huge 
saw. That evening, on a rock-strewn plateau, 
without a bush and almost without a blade of 
grass around it, I halted at a dreary, stone built 
house, with a roof made of bundles of straw, held 
down with planks and stout saplings. Skulls and 
skeletons of horned cattle and other animals were 
scattered all around. From the wall of the house 
projected a couple of big bull’s horns, apparently 
cemented in the masonry for ornamental purposes. 
As I drew rein, a terrific snorting and scrambling 
broke out in a paddock, fenced with stout poles, 
behind the house. This was an Alpaca farm (fig. 1). 
The Alpaca, which many people confuse with the 
Llama, though very closely allied to it in form and 
characteristics, is the “ gold mine ” of the Indians 
of the Andes, especially those of Peru, Bolivia, and 
Chili. It is an extraordinary brute, in more senses 
than one. Its appearance, with its wool on (figure 
2), is supremely ridiculous. It is as large as a big 
sheep, with a neck like a small giraffe; a mere j 
bundle of hair carried around on four legs, termi¬ 
nated with feet resembling those of an ostrich. Its- 
legs are powerful, and inappropriately graceful, in ' 
comparison with the body they support and the- : 
feet in which they terminate. 
If the Alpaca is absurdly ugly with its hair on, it 
is a positive burlesque after it has been sheared 
(figure 3). It is sheared like a sheep, only its head 
is left covered. It is sometimes sheared once a 
year, yielding a six to eight-inch fleece, but the 
more provident Alpaca farmers only shear once in 
two or three years, when they get wool from fifteen 
to thirty inches long. The wool is found ranging: 
in color from white through gray, yellow, and. 
brown to black. The animal looks black, however, j 
as the fleece exudes an oil, and mats with the dust, 
of the mountain pastures in which it roams at- i 
large. The fleece is very fine in texture, metallic I 
in lustre when clean, and the fibre is far stronger 
than that of any sheep’s wool which I know. 
The Alpaca is allowed to graze at random, only 
being “ rounded in ” to be sheared. It can only be 
domesticated when young. An old Alpaca, sepa¬ 
rated from its flock, will lie down and die of pure 
stubbornness and grief. Young Alpacas are, how¬ 
ever, herded in paddocks, and become as familiar, 
quiet, and impudent as dogs. 
They are gentle brutes, unlike their cousins, the 1 
Llamas, which are often full of viciousness. The 
Alpaca never gets over its shy and timorous wild 
habits, and though it 6eems to know and not fear 
the farmer and his men, the mere sight of a. 
stranger in the distance will' stampede it. The age' j 
to which an Alpaca will produce valuable wool,, ; 
none of the farmers seem to know. When it ceases'- 
to be worth shearing, they kill and eat it. 
The Alpaca farmer leads a life little better than 
that of the brute he lives on. His home is desola¬ 
tion itself. His only amusement is eating and 
sleeping. He scarcely knows even the vice of 
drunkenness. Except a chance traveller, he never 
sees a soul from year’s end to year’s end but the 
priest, commonly an Indian like himself, who 
strays up now and then from his home in the lower 
Fig. 3.—ALPACA IN UNDRESS. 
regions to collect his mass money, and the wool 
trader who once a year makes the rounds with his 
peons, or Indian servants, and his train of pack 
Fig. 1.— AN ALPACA FARM. 
