Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru | Page 8

the sun and wind. They are made of the canes that grow in the jungles of the larger river bottoms, or along the banks of irrigating ditches. On the roof the spaces between the canes are filled with adobe, sun-dried mud. It is not necessary to plaster the sides of the houses, for it is pleasant to let the air have free play, and it is amusing to look out through the cracks and see everything that is passing.
That evening we saddled in the moonlight. Slowly we climbed out of the valley, to spend the night jogging steadily, hour after hour, across the desert. As the moon was setting we entered a hilly region, and at sunrise found ourselves in the midst of a tumbled mass of enormous sand dunes--the result of hundreds of médanos blown across the pampa of Majes and deposited along the border of the valley. It took us three hours to wind slowly down from the level of the desert to a point where we could see the great canyon, a mile deep and two miles across. Its steep sides are of various colored rocks and sand. The bottom is a bright green oasis through which flows the rapid Majes River, too deep to be forded even in the dry season. A very large part of the flood plain of the unruly river is not cultivated, and consists of a wild jungle, difficult of access in the dry season and impossible when the river rises during the rainy months. The contrast between the gigantic hills of sand and the luxurious vegetation was very striking; but to us the most beautiful thing in the landscape was the long, glistening, white mass of Coropuna, now much larger and just visible above the opposite rim of the valley.
At eight o'clock in the morning, as we were wondering how long it would be before we could get down to the bottom of the valley and have some breakfast, we discovered, at a place called Pitas (or Cerro Colorado), a huge volcanic boulder covered with rude pictographs. Further search in the vicinity revealed about one hundred of these boulders, each with its quota of crude drawings. I did not notice any ruins of houses near the rocks. Neither of the Tejada brothers, who had been past here many times, nor any of the natives of this region appeared to have any idea of the origin or meaning of this singular collection of pictographic rocks. The drawings represented jaguars, birds, men, and dachshund-like dogs. They deserved careful study. Yet not even the interest and excitement of investigating the "rocas jeroglificos," as they are called here, could make us forget that we had had no food or sleep for a good many hours. So after taking a few pictures we hastened on and crossed the Majes River on a very shaky temporary bridge. It was built to last only during the dry season. To construct a bridge which would withstand floods is not feasible at present. We spent the day at Coriri, a pleasant little village where it was almost impossible to sleep, on account of the myriads of gnats.
The next day we had a short ride along the western side of the valley to the town of Aplao, the capital of the province of Castilla, called by its present inhabitants "Majes," although on Raimondi's map that name is applied only to the river and the neighboring desert. In 1865, at the time of his visit, it had a bad reputation for disease. Now it seems more healthy. The sub-prefect of Castilla had been informed by telegraph of our coming, and invited us to an excellent dinner.
The people of Majes are largely of mixed white and Indian ancestry. Many of them appeared to be unusually businesslike. The proprietor of one establishment was a great admirer of American shoes, the name of which he pronounced in a manner that puzzled us for a long time. "W" is unknown in Spanish and the letters "a," "l," and "k" are never found in juxtaposition. When he asked us what we thought of "Valluck-ofair'," accenting strongly the last syllable, we could not imagine what he meant. He was equally at a loss to understand how we could be so stupid as not to recognize immediately the well-advertised name of a widely known shoe.
At Majes we observed cotton, which is sent to the mills at Arequipa, alfalfa, highly prized as fodder for pack animals, sugar cane, from which aguardiente, or white rum, is made, and grapes. It is said that the Majes vineyards date back to the sixteenth century, and that some of the huge, buried, earthenware wine jars now in use were made as far back as the reign of Philip II. The presence of so much