Pangoan Diary

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Pangoan diary

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P A N G O A N DIARY

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THE LADY AND THE PANDA
THE BABY GIANT PANDA

PANGOAN
DIARY

CREATIVE AGE PRESS, INC.

Copyright, 194%, by Ruth Harkness.

All rights in this book are reserved. It may not b&
used for dramatic^ motion- or talking-picture, radio or
television purposes without written authorization from
the holder of these rights. Nor may the book or part
thereof be reproduced in any manner whatsoever with-
out permission in writing* For information address:
Creative Age Press f Inc., 11 East 44th Street,
New York, New York.

Printed in the United States of America

,
American Book-Stratford Press, Inc., New York

DESIGNED '" 'B T STEFAH S A L T E B.

Este libro pequeno dedico con afecto y carino
a ml amigo de la Selva Peruana, Don Esteban
Sandoval y Garrazatna mi amigo fiel y mi
gum en toda la busqueda para El Destmo.

A small part of the material of this book
has appeared in different form in HARPER'S
MAGAZINE and in the magazine TOMORROW.

PART I FROM THE A I/ G- O N a U I N TO

THE ANDES

Escape to the Tropics 2

The Young Moon Seeks a Lover 35

The Sentimental Indian 87

PART II LEAVES FROM A VAGRANT
DIARY

"How Have You Dawned?" 128

Ayahuasca 136

Lucho's Supper 147

Lucho and Harvard 155

The Chuchupi 167

Monkey Business 176

The Metal Bird 181

Visitors from Leandra 190

Yanco's Mirror 203

The House Party 220

Pedro and Rosita 229

"La Rueda de Cheecago" 240

La Navidad 246

PART III FEVER AND

Tonkinte the Thin One 258

Three Worlds 284

izt 0-4 <z^ll

FACISTG PAGE

Clouds over the Roof of the World %%

Hflamas : the Bearers of Mineral Treasure 70

A Family of Forest Dwellers 10

A Youth of the Campa Tribe 134

ILucho 150

Sandoval 150

Senor Toucan 18&
Typical Jungle Dwelling
The Women of a Campa Family

A Dweller of the Green Mansions 30

A Baby Tigrillo 62

Vicuna in the High Andes 78

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U

ESCAPE TO THE TROPICS

OFTEN PEOPLE ASK ME WHY I Went to South
America, and in particular why I chose
Peru. Sometimes I say I went because of
Jennifer, my black Persian cat. At other times I say
Jane sent me.

It is true that they both had something to do with
it Jane somewhat more than Jennifer. Jane, be-
sides being my literary agent, is a rare person who
takes me to lunch even when she cannot sell what I
write. And so it happened one bleak January day in
1940 that she gave me a beautiful and expensive
lunch at the Algonquin Hotel and then said, "Ruth,
that last manuscript is so terrible I can't even read
it. Why don't you go to South America?" Then she

outlined what she thought I might write there 5 which,
incidentally, was not Pangoan Diary.

So it was Jane who gave me the impetus to go
southward, but actually there were other factors in
the case. One of them was that sense of futility which
comes to me in New York when I am doing nothing;
another was that money does not go very far in a big
city, and still another and perhaps the most deci-
sive was the fact that a little civilization goes a
very long way with me.

If there is anything in the world a little more use-
less than another, it is an unemployed explorer. An
explorer should always be a very wealthy person;
but if he were wealthy, there would probably not be
the exploring urge. Riches and their attendant de-
mands would undoubtedly drown the desire for the
unknown. But in general, explorers are a poverty-
stricken lot who have to go begging at the courts of
the mighty (and usually unimaginative) for a pit-
tance with which to realize their dreams of discovery*
Sometimes they even get to the point where they
aren't quite sure what there is left to discover. Then
indeed is the world a bleak and unromantic sphere.

In such a mood I was that January day Jane in-
vited me for lunch. It seemed that my days of travel

to the far places of earth for enchanting and un-
known animals were over. I had little money left,
and I had found no niche for myself in the busy
world I had left behind when I had gone to China
and the Tibetan foothills. I went for a panda, which,
it was said, was the last, large, rare animal virtually
unknown to science.

On those long journeys over ancient caravan
routes, during which you ate coolie food when you
were hungry, and slept in tumble-down shacks or
Buddhist temples when night came, I knew the joys of
the gypsy life and I loved it. Friends still do not un-
derstand that the person they knew in New York,
who always took a taxi when she could, was capable
of scrambling thirty miles a day up and down rocky
mountains or fighting a way through dense bamboo
jungle if necessary. I try to explain it in this way:
that I have American Indian blood (not much to be
sure, but undeniably there) and that I am simply a
throwback to my untutored ancestors an explana-
tion which I consider as good as another for those
who feel the need for one.

In any case, the rhythm of what we ar<| pleased to
term civilized life does not suit me, nor does the
possession of things give me much satisfaction. My

Chinese friend Yang Di Lin, who was my guide on
the ventures to the Tibetan border, expressed it when
he said, "I do not like for long the life of cities; I
like the life of 'six to six. 5 " And by that he meant
the life of the trail, when you are off as soon as it is
light, and to sleep by the time darkness comes. I do
not know why one of my pleasantest memories is of a
night spent in a tiny cave with eight Chinese and
Tibetan hunters ; it was really a rather uncomfortable
night. I slept (or tried to) rolled in a blanket under
an overhanging rock on which I bumped my head
every time I moved unnecessarily. Once I woke to
find old Lao Tsang's flea-ridden head resting com-
fortably in the middle of my stomach. I might not
like that sort of life if there were no goal to be
reached, but certainly the quest for Su Lin, the baby
Giant Panda, had been worth the effort. I found her
the first panda to be brought alive out of China
to America.

There have been times, such as at the end of my
expedition in an attempt to find a mate for Little
Sister, the second panda, when I didn't think the
game was worth it. But that was because I had found
a third little panda, also female, who didn't like me.
And if an animal does not like me, it gives me a far

greater sense of inferiority than if a human being
does not. I lived through one sweltering Chinese sum-
mer with Su Sen, camped in an ancient garden in a
tumble-down summerhouse, trying to make her amen-
able to civilization; but she would have none of it.
All I had to show for my efforts was badly scratched
and infected arms and legs.

It seemed obvious to me that an unhappy baby
animal could be of no value scientifically, and much
less would she help the cause of raising money for aid
to China, which had been my dream. So the expedi-
tion was put in reverse, and with Wang, my cook,
we traveled back, up over the old caravan route that
has changed little since the time of Christ, and
plunged into the bamboo- jungled wilderness to leave
Su Sen at the exact spot where she had been cap-
tured. There we lived in a cave for a week, lingering
to see if she would come back for the food to which
we had accustomed her.

After days and nights of extreme discomfort
even misery, for I was ill she did come back, but it
was by mistake. The little black and white furry
youngster looked just once at civilization in the form
of Wang and me and ran as though all the demons
of hell were at her heels. Then it was that I won-

dered why anyone ever left the town in which she was
born to seek ont the unknown in the forests and jun-
gles far from all familiar things. I vowed then that
I would return to my own land and perhaps again
design fashionable and ugly clothes to be sold in
smart shops. I myself would wear them instead of
rough trousers and Chinese straw sandals. I would
have my straight Indian hair cut and curled, paint
my finger nails, wear high heels, and never step off a
pavement again. So I vowed.

It was in that mood that I had returned from Asia
for the third time with only Lady Jennifer, the two
shilling-sixpence cat acquired in Liverpool the sole
apparent result of an expensive and unsuccessful
expedition.

And it was more or less in the same mood that
Jennifer and I packed up our New York apartment
and set sail for the conquest of Peru. Just what we
could do there, aside from Jane's suggestion, neither
the black cat nor I knew, but I rather unhappily as-
sured myself that, in a primarily Indian country such
as is El Peru, in a tropic land where food is cheap
and the much-vaunted American standard of living
does not exist, my small capital would not melt quite
so rapidly and homing manuscripts would not be such

calamities. I thought vaguely of a little business in
native silver and handicrafts, but I think even Jen-
nifer knew that our lack of commercial instinct would
make that impossible.

In the ancient City of Kings we settled ourselves
in a pension kept by an American woman. We had a
charming little house in a great garden that blazed
with tropic color . . . blood-red poinsettia trees, arbors
over which flowering vines rioted in shades of pink
and rose, royal palms that were emerald against the
deep blue sky. We arrived in February, which is full
summer; the days were warm and languorous, the
nights cool with the Pacific breeze, and golden stars
hung low.

We should have been contented in Lima, but Jen-
nifer was as unhappy and unsettled as I. She spent
hours on the window sill, looking out at the beauti-
ful garden, denied her because of ^our, bouncing,

>

wire-haired terriers. Also Jennifer had reached the
point in her young life where no amount of feline
philosophy is a substitute for love. I unpacked my
typewriter and spent hours looking at blank paper
on which nothing seemed to materialize.

The story Jane had suggested I knew had possi-
bilities possibilities that were so near and yet so

fai*. The woman who kept the pension had lived in
South America for years and had traveled through
its forests and on its rivers as it is given to few
American women to journey. Hope Morris had gone,
as a young girl, to the land below the equator to
marry her geologist fiance and to share his wander-
ings on Standard Oil Company business. Their jour-
neys had taken them into many countries and to far
places, on muleback and in dugout canoes. Hope
told me tales of Indians and encampments, of her pet
monkeys and her beautiful toucans and parrots.
Hers was the story I tried to write, but which would
not take form on paper.

Time drifted by time in which I wandered
through the old Spanish city of Lima, city of
churches and cathedrals, of palm-lined avenues and
flowered parks, of museums rich with the treasures
of the Inca and pre-Inca people. Lima, since 1920,
has transformed itself from an Old World City of
cobbled streets, over which no motor car had ever
traveled, into a modern suburban metropolis con-
nected by avenues busy with traffic. The business sec-
tion of the capital has still much of Old Spain about
it narrow streets lined with great bronze-studded
doors through which you glimpse patios into which

great ladies and besworded gentlemen once rode in
their coaches; beautiful hand-wrought iron grills
and enclosed balconies through which sefioritas
could see and not be seen.

Pizarro's City of Kings lies on the desert coast
only a few miles from the blue Pacific. It is an oasis
which, because of the small but life-giving Bimac
River that comes down from the high Andes, blos-
soms winter and summer. But the backdrop for Lima
consists of barren forbidding hills which rise range
on range until their heights are tipped with eternal
snow, and in their rock embrasures lie ancient
glaciers.

One afternoon Hope drove me up into the hills
for a picnic tea, in the greenness that bordered a
narrow stream. On our way back in a flaming sunset,
just off the road we noticed Indians digging in the
sand. They were excavating (illegally) an ancient
graveyard, so we stayed to do a little illegal digging
ourselves. Heaven alone knows how old the mummies
wrapped in rough cloth were. They had lain there
for centuries, drying in the hot desert where rain
never falls. It was the graveyard of a people very
evidently poor ; the diggers found no gold or silver
ornaments or exquisitely woven mantles such as are

taken from the tombs of the nobles. I found in the
grave of a child a beautifully woven slingshot, a few
broken pieces of pottery, and an ear of yellow maize.
Later I planted the ear, but, contrary to all the
stories I had heard, it did not grow. Hope said that
along the coast or in the Western Andes there were
tombs to be found almost any place. I began to won-
der what mysteries of buried cities might be beyond
those barriers of forbidding mountains lost valleys,
perhaps lost peoples. And I thought, too, of the
jungles which lie far down on the Eastern Andean
slopes.

It was easy to drift into the social life of the
American colony in a place like Lima. If one plays
bridge (which I don't) one could spend many long
hours doing that; more playing golf and tennis. But
I'm bad at sports. I found that I was developing a
wonderful capacity for doing just nothing in that
soft and somewhat enervating tropic climate. I wasn't
even doing very much about studying Spanish, which
is most necessary, as relatively little English is
spoken outside the American and British colonies.
Most Peruvians of culture and education speak
French ; not very many have bothered to learn Eng~

lish. Until recently most South American cultural
and commercial ties have been with the Latin coun-
tries of Europe.

The lethargy which claimed me for my first month
in Peru was reaching alarming proportions. I ate
and slept . . . sometimes saw a moving picture at
the "vermouth,* 5 or six-thirty, showing. There were
cocktails at eight-thirty and dinner at nine with
friends. I began to think that Lady Jennifer and I
might as well have stayed in New York where we
could have done exactly the same thing as we seemed
to be doing in El Peru a rather elaborate nothing.

But I hadn't reckoned with Elsa my little Peru-
vian aristocrat.

Elsa came to teach me Spanish, but somehow we
always talked about everything under the sun but
Spanish verbs. While our one-hour lesson lengthened
into two or sometimes three hours, she told me of her
childhood spent in convents in South America and
France, and on her father's haciendas in the high
Andes where she rode like the wind with her small
Indian companions over the great uplands called
punas. I think our friendship was sealed the day I
told Elsa that I had American Indian blood.

In polite society in South America perhaps this

was not quite the correct thing to do. Pure white
blood is relatively scarce and therefore valued, and
one does not divulge the fact that he does not have it.
One estimate I heard for El Peru holds that there
are not more than thirty thousand people of pure
Spanish ancestry in the entire country. Elsa is one
of these, hers being an old and proud family de-
scended from the first conquistadores and a branch
of the French Royal House. Her name, Senorita
Elsa Paredes del Boy, is derived from the first of
her French ancestors in El Peru, a cousin of a king
of France, whose name had been De Boeuf. The
years have given it a more Spanish flavor.

A relatively large part of Peruvian society will
deny any strain of Indian blood, because of the very
large mixed mestizo population and the even larger
pure Indian proportion. I suppose that is merely
following the quaint superstition that pure "Aryan"
blood and the white race are superior to any other.
Elsa, however, is one who believes in the inherent
value of human beings, and who passionately believes
in the quality of those descendants of the Inca race.

The hours fled and the study of Spanish went un-
noticed while she told me tales of the Indian com-
panions of her childhood, of the Indian servants of

the great rambling house, and of the workmen who
tilled the fields and cared for the llamas and the herds
of sheep and cattle.

One such story of her childhood would be difficult
ever to forget. When Elsa was a very little girl ?
there was always a Christmas party for everyone on
the hacienda food and drink for all the adults and
a present for every small Indian child on the estate.
The fiestas were gay with Quechua music which*
though it is pentatonic like the Chinese and in minor
keys, is much more agreeable and understandable to
Occidental ears than is the far Oriental. Dance music
with native harps, guitars, tambores, and flutes of
bamboo, has a wild rhythm and swing difficult to
resist.

After the festivities of a certain Navidad were
over, Elsa discovered that one child had been forgot-
ten. A little girl lay ill in one of the servants' houses,
wasting away with the sickness the Indians know as
pachachay the illness of sorrow. An Indian doctor
had done what he could, but the child continued to
grow more wan and spiritless with every passing day.
Perhaps someone had cast the evil eye on her ; her
spirit was slowly leaving her body. The proper rites
were carried out; variously colored flowers were ar-

ranged in patterns, boiled in a clay pot, and her
body washed in the scented water all to no avail.

Elsa had been given a beautiful doll that Christ-
mas, all pink silk with real hair and eyes that opened
and closed. Perhaps the little Indiafi girl would like
that. Perhaps that might stay her sad spirit. So she
gave her precious doll to the dying child. The Indian
parents looked with wonder at their tiny daughter
who accepted the gift, not with the indifference they
had expected, but with new light in her almond eyes.
It was not long after that the father came to Elsa
with a gift for her something flat, wrapped in a
piece of rough homespun.

The gift for Elsa was a thin slab of soft, beaten
gold. "But have you stolen this? 55 she asked the man.
He was frightened by this question and begged her
to keep the gift secret. He had not stolen the gold ;
the Indians knew of ancient hidden stores . . . knowl-
edge handed down since the time of the Incas and
kept secret from the blancos whose passion for gold
had caused the conquest and downfall of the Inca
race.

Elsa accepted the gift, and years later, after the
death of her own father, the Indian 5 s gift helped
her, as the doll had helped his daughter.

I told Elsa tales of my journeys through Asia, and
she said surely I was going to make an expedition
into her country, so much of which was unexplored?
And I had emphatically denied this, insisting that I
was going to settle down in Lima.

Then she said a thing which I think of often.
"Senora, that is a pity, because some people have the
searching fingers." A little remark which I think has
in a great measure changed the pattern of my life.

At that time Elsa was teaching Greek at the an-
cient University of San Marcos, said to be the oldest
in the New World. But one day she came for our
Spanish lesson and said, "Something very funny has
happened. The Government has sent me to do some
work at the Museum of Natural History; I don't
know anything about zoology . . . but there must be
a reason for it. 55 She was not referring to the obvious
job of translation that she had been set to do, but .
to the broader meaning it might have in her life,
because Elsa believes, as all mystics do, that every-
thing that happens has a purpose, that every inci-
dent in some way follows unknown laws and eventu-
ally weaves a pattern.

Soon she came again to my little house in the
garden of the pension, her big, brown, pansy eyes

lie-]

shining, her long black braids, that she always
wore wound over her ears, somewhat disarranged.
a Senora, 5? she said, and her voice betrayed her ex-
citement, "I know now why it is that I was sent to
the Museum for that translation. 35 It seems that Elsa
had become intrigued with a large, black, stuffed
bear which the Museum had. I later saw him stand-
ing in a dim corner, trying to be rampant and not
carrying it off very well a somewhat dusty bear,
and just a little triste. But he had reminded Elsa o
the bears and animals in the immense unexplored
selva of Peru. That started a train of thought. How
was it possible that in all of the great continent of
South America there was only one species of bear
for one is* all that is known to science. So Elsa began
to make inquiries at the Museum and discovered that
long years ago a British scientist collecting butter-
flies in the jungles had once seen a little silver-gray
bear. Slight information was available, the scientist
had died several years before, and no one knew what
he had done with his notes.

That, however, did not seem to trouble Elsa. "You
must go to hunt for the little gray bear," she said
firmly. "1 am sure that you will find it, and that peo-
ple all over the world will love it just as they have

loved your baby pandas, and in a way it will be a
gift from Peru to the children of America. 55

I demurred on the grounds that I had come to
Peru for different reasons namely, to try to earn a
living that I couldn ? t afford to go chasing the rain-
bow again. To all of which she replied, "Nonsense ! 5 *
It would cost very little, she said. Living in the inte-
rior was a mere fraction of what it was in the capital,
and I would come to know and love her wonderful
country, and I must write about it.

In the following lessons, which of course had noth-
ing to do with the Spanish language, we discussed
the matter further, but I remained rather lukewarm
to the subject. Elsa 5 s first idea was that I should join
an expedition which the San Marcos University was
to send out some months later. She felt that it would
be a safe and interesting way to go, and that the
University scientists would be both charming and
useful to me.

But the Fates, with a good deal of assistance from
Elsa, decided differently. The next time I saw her,
she was coming up the garden path with another of
her pupils, just as I was going out. "Senora," she
ordered, "be at the Museum tomorrow morning at
eleven-thirty promptly. It is important. 35

[JW]

I kept the appointment, but not exactly in a mood
to talk about an expedition. Doing nothing in Lima
had kept me up very late the night before. At the
Museum, on the Avenida Salverry, I was briefly in-
troduced to the Director, but nothing definite was
said, about my joining the San Marcos expedition.
After he had left, Elsa went to the door and called
to someone in the other room, "Please come in."

"I want you to meet Don Esteban Sandoval y
Garrazatua," she said. Don Esteban bowed and as-
sured me in beautiful and courtly Spanish that he
was enchanted to meet me, that he was at my service,
and that his casa was my house.

It seemed to me that his impassive bronze face
and his quizzical gray eyes belied the formal Spanish.
My intuition told me that this man had probably
had few dealings with Gringos, and that he neither
liked nor trusted them.

In Spanish, Elsa said, "Don Esteban has agreed
to go with you to hunt for the little gray bear."

"Oh," was aE I could say in English or any other
language.

"He is going back to his village," she continued in
English, "in about a week. You of course will be
ready to go then?"

At that point I thought that matters were going
a little too rapidly, and I said firmly, "No, I can't
possibly go. Jennifer is going to have kittens."

That was also the result of Elsa's arranging. She
had been the go-between in the matter of Jennifer's
marriage a marriage which had been not without
incident. It had, in fact, almost caused an inter-
national situation; there had been an uprising of a
small Indian village, the police had been called out ;
three people had been taken to the hospital Lady
Jennifer herself had been injured but that, after
all, is another tale.

"Nonsense, 55 said Elsa, "if none of your friends
will take care of Jennifer for you, I will somehow
manage it myself," and she proceeded to tell me
about Sandoval. "He came into the Museum yester-
day morning, and I said to him immediately, *You
are a man from the mountains, aren't you?' " And
Elsa had gone on to tell him that she knew an Amer-
ican Senora who wanted to hunt a little gray bear*
and that he would certainly go with her? Sandoval
had not committed himself "to anything more than
meeting me, and had stated that, although he was a
naturalist ajid collected butterflies and insects for
the Museum, he had never heard of a little gray bear*

Elsa went on explaining the situation, in Spanish
to Sandoval and in English to me. Sandoval spoke
not a word of English and my Spanish at that point
was practically non-existent. It was rather strange
to discuss Sandoval in his own hearing as he sat with
hardly a flicker of expression in the gaze which I al-
ready surmised missed nothing.

Elsa quelled my -doubts about Sandoval's mistrust
of white people by merely saying, "He will eventu-
ally trust you; I told him that your mother was a
full-blooded Potawatomi Indian 5 ' a bit of informa-
tion which I am certain would surprise my Irish-
mother. I objected, too, on the grounds that I spoke
so little Spanish. Elsa countered that I hadn't been
able to speak Chinese either, had I?

And after an hour which for Sandoval must have
been a very puzzled one I asked him in very bad
and broken Spanish if he would care to accompany
me. He said he would come to my house the next day
and we would discuss the matter further, and with
that he rose, bowed, and left us.

"He is mostly Indian," explained Elsa, "but also-
of Basque origin. Consider that, Senora a mixture
of two very good races. He is a very fine man."

There seemed no retreating for me, so I said*

"When we discuss matters further tomorrow, what
do you think I should offer him as remuneration? I
can't pay very much, as you know, and I certainly
can't afford a long expedition."

"You must not offend him by offering him a
salary," said Elsa in a somewhat shocked voice.
"After all, although I know he is a poor man who
lives in a tiny village in the selva, he is also a proud
man and a scientist. You must, of course, pay ex-
penses, but aside from that, just wait and see. When
you get your little gray bear will be time enough."

Then she added thoughtfully, "I think you will get
it, but if you don't get that, Seiiora, you will find
soinething else. Who knows what you may discover
in El Peru?"

Thus it was that after a little more than two months
in the Peruvian capital Jennifer went to live with
friends in a luxurious house with an enormous gar-
den in which she could roam to her heart's content,
and I found myself at the railway station on a bright
morning in May, just before winter came to Lima,
with two small suitcases, my typewriter, and a camp
cot. Sandoval was there with his equally meager lug-
gage and two, small, olive-skinned sisters, Carmen
and Helena, to see him off. Elsa, bright-eyed and en-

thusiastic (more so, I think, than I then was) , came
bearing gifts. She had an enormous bag of fruit
chirrimoyas and platanos and also a bottle of old
Italian brandy. "It will be useful/ 5 she told me, "if
you have soroche, the mountain sickness, crossing the
high passes, or if you have a cold. If you get yellow
fever," she added, "you'd better come home quickly."

The little sisters and Elsa waved us away as our
train started up over the Andes, climbing, climbing,
up over the highest steel track in the world. Sando-
val, very self-contained but courteous, explained in
his low-pitched musical voice everything that we
passed : the exact height of every granite mountain,
the names and spelling of the villages anything that
I asked him. He volunteered nothing. He spoke
slowly, as Elsa had requested him to do, knowing that
rapid Spanish confused me.

The train puffed up through a world of barren
rock mountains whose muted colors of reds and pur-
ples, gold and mauve, are a painter's dream narrow
canyons whose walls at times you could have reached
out to touch; the rushing noisy river below with its
narrow green strip of vegetation. There were in-
numerable switchbacks, at which the nose of the en-
gine touched the side of the mountain, and then the

train backed up, climbing in the other direction.

Early in the afternoon we reached the highest
point on the railway, just under sixteen thousand
feet. Sandoval said that the motor road was higher.
We went through a long tunnel to emerge on the
altiplano with glaciers cradled in the rocky heights
in the midst of a flurry of snow. A copper-colored
Indian boy guarded a great herd of llamas.

Then we dropped rapidly down to the mining town
of Oroya, which lies in a valley at about twelve thou-
sand feet. Here the smokestacks of the Cerro de Pasco
mining company send up black plumes to stain the
turquoise sky. And it was there that an unfortunate
thing happened.

It was the same sort of thing that had happened
to me in China on several occasions, the sort of thing
that happens any place in the world, I suppose,
where there is a question of race and color. Several
times people, usually missionaries, had snubbed Yang
Di Lin, my friend and guide, until I was, I think, as
unhappy as he must have been. And I couldn't quite
explain offhand to people of my own race that in
many respects I considered my young Chinese friend
to be far superior to them. His education was in
every way certainly superior to mine; he spoke al-

most all of the many dialects of China, and very good
English besides. He had been educated in the col-
leges of his own country as well as at Yale-in-China*
He did not have a degree, he explained, because he
knew only forty thousand characters instead of the
required fifty thousand. Quentin (which was his Eng-
lish name) as modestly explained his family to me*
They weren't very old, he said. They had records for
only fifteen hundred years. In Chungking, when I
applied at a Christian mission for lodging for us
both, I was haughtily informed that of course they
could accept no Chinese.

This incident was similar in character. An Eng-
lish engineer who worked for Cerro de Pasco, and
whom I had known in Lima, boarded the train. I in-
troduced Sandoval, and the Englishman ignored the
presentation completely. This, I thought in despair*
is just the sort of thing that will ruin all hope of a
successful expedition, for by that time I was in dead
earnest about the little gray bear. Unless Sandoval
trusted me as a Gringa (and he had never known one
before) , I couldn ? t expect to have co-operation in the
search. And if people I knew treated him as an in-
ferior, it certainly would not help the situation. It
was, I think, nearly two years later, after Sandoval

and I had traveled many hundreds, even thousands,
of miles on our quest, that I got up enough courage
to try to explain the incident away.

By late afternoon we were in the fertile valley of
Jauja, twelve thousand feet above the Pacific, a
broad valley guarded by barren pink-tinged moun-
tains. As the sun sank, shadows slowly painted pastels
of blue and gray on the mountain summits. The train
ambled over the plain ribboned with lanes bordered
by tall eucalyptus trees and pale rose adobe walls.
By dark we were in the market town of Huancayo,
and by nine o'clock I was asleep in a hard but clean
bed with many Indian blankets against the cold of a
Sierra night.

The next morning I met Sandoval in the market
square where hundreds of gaily dressed Indians were
selling their wares little silver llamas, homespun
woolen blankets, objects carved of horn or wood,
wide belts patterned with formal designs of animals.
I bought a brilliant red one that had yellow cats with
a greek key for a tail. We sat on a bench in the fine
sunshine/ the air like crystal, and Sandoval told me
that he had gone to early mass in the cathedral on
the square. I asked him about his family, and he told
me that his wife had died a little more than a year

ago. That must, I thought, account for the sad ex-
pression I had sometimes glimpsed in his gray eyes.

Sitting there in that high Peruvian valley, it sud-
denly occurred to me that I was starting on heaven
only knew what mad venture, that I knew practically
nothing about Sandoval, and that he knew nothing
about me. I had let Jane send me to South America
and Elsa send me on an expedition. Then it occurred
to me that the whole thing must seem a little strange
to Sandoval. To make a perfectly innocent visit to the
Museum for which he occasionally collected butter-
flies, to be pounced upon by Elsa and summarily sent
off with me, certainly could not be the usual proceed-
ing in his life.

As well as I could in my limited Spanish, I ex-
plained that my husband had died in China and that
had set me off on my journeys to Asia. In Lima I
had shown him a book I had written about my first
panda expedition. Possibly the illustrations explained
a little, but even in English it would have been diffi-
cult to tell him the train of events which had brought
me to El Peru and had landed Sandoval and me
on that Sunday morning in Huancayo.

The more I thought about it the more it seemed
necessary to explain to this quiet dark man with the

sad eyes a little of my philosophy of life, to make
him understand that I thought every phase of human
endeavor was governed by laws that were not chance,
no matter how casual and how jumbled events might
seem at the moment. And Sandoval did understand a
little, more through his own intuition, I am sure, than
through my explanations. Often I think I would have
today a better command of the Castilian tongue if
Sandoval had not been so intuitive and intelligent.

In the very nearly two years of our association,
understanding grew, and my life, which in New York
and Lima had been so futile, took on a new meaning.
Sandoval began to feel, too, that this expedition was
not the mere whim of a Gringa this search for the
unknown. It also had a meaning in his life, the pat-
tern of which had been so rudely broken when his
Senora died. In some strange and tacit way the whole
thing became the pursuit of destiny.

But that morning, in the cathedral square, I knew
only that I was a Gringa, an American who would
have to overcome the distrust and prejudice that
rather generally exists in South America against
the Yanqui Imperialism, whether that prejudice is
held by a Spanish aristocrat or an Indian of Basque
blood. That Sandoval was no ordinary person was

obvious,, but that I should have to go carefully to win
his confidence was also evident.

On that fantastic journey down to Pangoa, which
was SandovaPs home, I tried to picture what it might
be like, who were his friends and relatives, what kind
of house he lived in. His silence and dignity might
have made almost anything possible.

Geography may not be a matter of happiness, but
it certainly can be instructive. An open truck waited
in the dark cold street before the little inn in the
neighboring village of Concepcion that Sunday
night. It was laden with cargo, with humanity I
could see but dimly, and I could not guess of what
mixtures of race they might be. There were also
crates of ducks, nondescript bundles and boxes, and
babies in blankets on their mothers' backs. At about
one-thirty, the loading and reloading finished, Sando-
val and I climbed into the front seat with the Indian
chauffeur, and we were off for Pangoa.

Through the darkness we roared up a rocky trail
that twisted and turned back on itself interminably
until we had crossed a fifteen-thousand-foot pass.
Then it snaked downward, and in the cold dawn the
truck stopped in a high narrow valley because of a
deflated tire. I might just as well, I thought, be in

[*]

Tibet, as I looked at the crude stone walls that en-
closed a few shaggy cattle and ponies. The impres-
sion was heightened by a leather-skinned bent man
with bare feet who passed, hugging about Mm his
brilliantly striped poncho. The cold was biting and
a ragged passenger offered me a swig of aguardiente
from his bottle.

At a tiny village which lay at about eight thou-
sand feet we breakfasted in a red-tiled, dirt-floored
inn, which might just as well have been in China.
Sometime early in the afternoon, when we had left a
fourteen-thousand-foot pass behind us and had roared
over an altiplano and passed glaciers, I knew we were
on the Roof of the World. AH afternoon we slithered
around hairpin turns where I held my breath, down,
down over the Eastern Andes, until we came to a
world of forest that had withheld its secrets from
men ever since time began.

As we sped ever downward, the jungle became more
and more dense and lush. The chauffeur stopped on
the tree-bordered road to deposit passengers, and a
file of people approached people whose like I had
never before seen. I could not tell whether they were
men or women: they all wore loose brownish robes
to their ankles ; their black hair hung to their shoul-

ders and was cut in square bangs across the forehead ;

their coppery faces were painted lacquer red. Some
t

carried bows and arrows.

"Who are these people? 55 I asked Sandoval in as-
tonishment. ,

"These are the salvages, the uncivilized dwellers of
the forests/ 5 he replied. I was learning that there are
Indians and Indians in El Peru. I remembered once
meeting^ casually with a friend in the Hotel Bolivar
lounge in Lima, a charming individual whom I took
to be Chinese. I was about to ask him something
about China when suddenly it occurred to me that he
might possibly be Japanese I hadn't heard his name.
After he had gone^ my friend told me that he was
Peruvian, and later Sandoval told me that the pure
Indian of the coastal region is often mistaken for
Chinese.

It seemed that in journeying to Pangoa one was
passing not only through several worlds those of
desert, fertile heights, snows and glaciers, high sparse
forests, and low dense jungles but through many
civilizations as well. One traveled in time as well as
space. Actually Pangoa is about three hundred miles
from Lima, and the journey, as nearly as I can re-
member, cost three dollars and thirty-nine cents.

C3

The shadows were lengthening as we completed the
final stretch of road that followed the course of a
swift river and ended in Pangoa. There was a large
ragged square of several acres and around it were
scattered thatch-roofed huts perhaps twenty of
them. We stopped in front of the tallest one, and
people gathered to greet Sandoval. I was introduced
to a frail and jaundiced-looking woman who gave
Sandoval an abrazo. She proved to be Leandra, his
sister-in-law, and the house was her inn. Of her and
her establishment I shall have something to say later.

Though on that evening the inhabitants of Pangoa
seemed to display no curiosity about the arrival of
Sandoval accompanied by a strange Gringa, long
afterward, when my Spanish had become more fluent,
I realized what a great amount of conjecture my
coming had caused. Even when we began to make in-
quiries about the little gray bear, I doubt if anyone
took that to be the real reason for my being in
Pangoa. At the time I did not realize it that they
did not understand that a Gringa woman could travel
anywhere in the world she pleased, and that she might
take it into her mad head to hunt for an animal that
no one of them had ever seen or ever heard of.

The following stories are of Pangoa, that village

in which I lived for a while. There were times in the
quest when we camped in places near Pangoa, and
there were times when we made long voyages hun-
dreds of miles to the headwaters of the Amazon,
pursuing vague information, even myths. We crossed
and recrossed the Andes, on foot, on mules, and in
planes, but that is another story.

If sometimes these stories seem to portray various
characters in different lights, or there is an element
of confusion, the impression will not be false, for they
were written in many places, in various stages of un-
derstanding of the people, of the country, and always
with a not too perfect knowledge of the Spanish
tongue. Some were written with high fever, some with
only a few degrees; some in deep jungle huts, some
in dugout canoes ; some in high mountains, others on
the sluggish Amazon ; and a few in hospitals in South
America and in North America.

If a great many of them seem to deal with food,
that is because I was often hungry. For weeks and
months we had no bread, no butter; the idea that
tropical jungle is riotous with foodstuffs is at least
not true of the ones I knew. I remember once almost
weeping for joy when I found an ancient tin of baked
beans in a village on a tributary of the Amazon ; it

[55]

must have been the great-grandfather of the Fifty-
Seven Varieties, but Sandoval has had a passion for
them ever since.

Nearly a year has passed since I have been in
Pangoa, a year of illness with jungle fevers, dreary
mo'iiths in hospitals, with operations for dangerous
infections, untold pain. What, I wonder, will eventu-
ally be the result of my escape from civilization?

I wonder about the strange impulse that sent me
to South America, the stranger one that led to know-
ing Elsa and Sandoval. That they still have faith in
what may seem to some a futile occupation in a war-
torn world, I do not doubt, for I too have faith. And
somewhere in the unknown forests of El Peru, Sando-
val continues to search for destiny in the shape of a
little silver-gray bear.

THE T U N G MOON SEEKS
A LOVER

' " HE CALENDAR SAID IT WAS MAY ; the residents
of Pangoa said it was winter because now
night came at six o'clock, and in summer it
remained light as late as a quarter to seven. But then,
when you are 10 degrees below the equator, almost
anything is likely to be upside down ; only the dark
slow-moving Indian population seems to have re-
tained its cosmic balance and to pursue inexorably
its own obscure destiny.

Pangoa is a jungle clearing, ringed first with
thatch-roofed houses about a ragged field where, of
a Sunday afternoon under a sun that would make
short work of a population less mixed with the dark
blood of all the world, the male youth of Pangoa

135}

play "futbol" a game much more like soccer than
the one for which it is named. Secondly, Pangoa is
ringed with hills, high hills, clothed in a living color
that would shame the finest emerald ever cut. And
for a cover, this deep green basin has a turquoise
sky with towering white pillars of cloud, beautifully
spaced, ever changing, carefully arranged by God.

Perhaps life for the native of Pangoa is difficult;
it seems leisurely. Perhaps it is complicated ; it seems
simple. When one is Gringo or Gringa, one never
really knows. But for me, the Gringa, life was a quiet
meandering stream enclosed by green walls of peace.
Even the harassing problem of finance had for the
time been solved. Leandra, the Indian duena of the
inn, had said that she usually charged two and a half
soles a day, but because I was so simpatica, she would
charge only two. When the purse is slim, it is a cheer-
ing thing to know that one's charm is worth fifty
centavos a day, even though that is only about seven
cents in American money.

Bed and board for thirty cents daily. It didn't
really matter very much that the bed was also board
with only a very thin corn-husk mattress, because one
was fed at times on rare and exotic foods. You could
ask what they were and be told a local Spanish or

Indian name that was soon forgotten and never un-
derstood, but that,, too, mattered little in the peace
and timelessness of Pangoa. Gradually, too, the fact
that war raged on the other side of the world became
unreal There were no headlines to present in ominous
black the latest tale of horror. There was no radio to
announce the newest invention of man to deal swift
death and destruction.

A little breeze swept through my palisaded cubicle,
rustling gently the dry palm thatch, high overhead.
The dirt floor had been freshly swept and a basin of
cool water from the glacier-fed river had been placed
on my table by the little Indian slave specially de-
tailed to look after me. I have 'already stated that
there are Indians and Indians in El Peru. There are
the civilizados and there are the salvajes. The family
in whose inn I was guest was civilized ; once upon a
time they had lived in Lima, had owned much prop-
erty and silver. But bad times come even to Indian
families of wealth, and they had come to the forests
of Peru, to Pangoa.

The terrain of this fairy-tale country which lies
below the equator is as sharply divided as its people*
It is both civilized and savage; there are both snow-
covered peaks and jungle. On the Eastern slopes of

[37]

the Andes the jungle is lord and master. Beginning
as scrubby growth clinging to barren rocks, on its
downward rush it gathers momentum, as do its rivers,
until it becomes a limitless sea stretching to the north,
to the south, and to the far Amazonas. What secrets
and treasures lie hidden in its vast green depths only
the forest knows, for here time has been turned back-
ward and here live the salvages, those strange people
who might have been the cousins of the Chinese six
thousand years ago. Lost in the jungles, civilization
has passed them by ; they do not know or care that
America has been discovered, that empires rise and
fall on the other side of the world. The jungle be-
longs to them and they belong to the jungle. But
sometimes even the jungle casts out her own, and
these become the slaves of the civilized Indians.

This is not a thing you can learn by being a tour-
ist or even by asking an Indian you know. But little
by little, with a question here and there, Sandoval
told me about the slaves in the household and various
tribes of Indians in the jungle, usually over our
lantern-lighted dinner. Sandoval. A magic name, a
name that conjures with castles in Spain and great
gentlemen with fine lace at their wrists. And under a
dark stoic exterior, there was magic in Sandoval, too.

There were manj unusual things about Sandoval
besides his name which, of course, had been taken
from some remote Spanish ancestor. He had Euro-
pean blood^ although he did not know how much, and
knew little of Its history. "How can we know how
much we have or have not? The conquerors did not
bring their women with them." But some long forgot-
ten Spanish conquistador must have been responsible
for his most un-Indlan eyes.

Thomas Beer once wrote a book called Sandoval.
The only thing I can remember about It now is a
character who was a gentleman. In fact, says Mr.
Beer, he'd tell you so. But the Indian Sandoval had
no need to announce the fact. It was obvious in his
always low-pitched and musical Spanish, in the half-
jesting manner in which he told the little slaves that
their faces were dirty, in his courtesy to me as a
stranger.

"There Is much witchcraft among the salvages,"
Sandoval had told me. "It is of a low order, not the
mysticism of the Sierra Indians. Among the Campas,
when an old Indian is about to die,, the witch doctors
come to determine the cause. They choose a house and
with a pointed stick go digging about the dirt floor.
Always there are bits of bone and feather and sticks

that have become burled. When they find these, they
say that this child or that one is possessed of an evil
spirit, or has made magic, and has caused the death
of the old Campa, and therefore must die. In some
cases they beat the child to death and leave it by the
river for the scavenger birds. In other cases these
children are rescued by the cvvilizados and brought
to the villages."

"And that is how you come to have these five chil-
dren?"

"Well, Marietta, who is now about fifteen, was
brought to us years ago when she was a little bit of a
thing, so badly beaten that she couldn't walk for
months. It took a great deal of care to keep her alive.
The little one, Amapola, too, was beaten. She has
been with us for only about three years. 55

It would have been impossible to guess that these
two obviously happy children had all but died at the
hands of witch doctors. Marietta 5 s happy giggling

JT XT / O OO O

was often to be heard through the thin split-cane
walls of the kitchen where she was busy most of the
day preparing and cooking food over a blaze of sticks
on a raised earthen platform. But then, Marietta was
in love and was soon to marry the shy boy who worked
for Sandoval, cutting timber in the forests. But Alma-

[.40-]

pola, too, the tiny girl who carried water all day long
from the river, was as contented a child as I have
ever seen. There was one other little girl, Urania. She
was as shy as a small jungle animal, disappearing at
the slightest provocation.

"She, 35 said Sandoval, "will probably disappear
into the forests one night when she is older when
the moon is new. And we shall never see her again. 5 *

"The others ?" I prompted.

"The boys? That is a different matter. There is a
story about them which I will tell you one day. The
little one, Lucho, is very intelligent ; when he is older,
I shall send him to Lima to be educated."

In this land of contrasts below the equator, Sando-
vaPs benevolent regard for the child slaves seemed
all of a piece with the upside-downness of everything,
as natural as the cool breeze that drifted through my
room as I washed my face in preparation for the
early luncheon, as inevitable as the blistering heat
that poured over me when I stepped out to go to the
main room that was living room, dining room, and
common meeting ground for all the village.

It had its own charm, that room. The kitchen,
partly partitioned, was at the rear; the front was all
open unless you took into consideration a sort of

[**]

fence with a gate that was never closed, permitting
entrance to the sundry population of Pangoa, includ-
ing the dogs, chickens, sometimes pigs, and once a
small burro that was promptly escorted to greener
fields. Its hard-packed earthen floor was always well-
swept, and a row of extravagant tropical flowers dec-
orated the fence.

On this particular day there was a new and strange
presence in this room that I had come to associate
only with dark skins, rapid, rippling Spanish, and
the music of SandovaFs guitar in the tropic night
a presence as strange as would have been a polar
bear in a palm tree. At the table set aside for Sando-
val and me sat a stranger a stranger whose pale
hair had become paler under a burning sky, whose
intense blue eyes were as startling as an electric shock.
He rose and bowed jerkily at my approach.

a Senora, 5? he said in thick guttural Spanish, "I am
Senor Pedro Corvizcki. I am Polish. I have not seen
you here before."

At that moment Sandoval appeared, greeted the
Pole, and quietly introduced me. Lucho brought
plates of salad made of alligator pear, hearts of pal-
metto tree, and black olives. The Pole ate quickly and

carelessly, interspersing the food with rapid conver-
sation that I found difficult to follow.

"Senor CorvizcM," explained Sandoval cour-
teously, "is, like me, an entomologist. He lives some
distance away, farther down the river."

"Yes," said the Pole, "I have a fine cJtacra there,
a good house, and many Campa Indians to collect
butterflies and insects for me. You must come to visit
me." His blue eyes shot interrogations at me. "Senor
Sandoval too must come," he added, it seemed as an
afterthought.

I glanced at Sandoval, whose revealing eyes were
as veiled as sometimes were the hills with mist in the
early mornings. His dark face, that carried the cop-
pery underglow of men who live much in the sun, was
expressionless.

"Why, thank you very much, Senor," I replied
after a long uncomfortable moment. "Yes, thank
you," murmured Sandoval.

"Very good," said the Pole in a tone of finality,
rubbing his big hands together, "I shall take you
with me the next time I come in for supplies, which
will be in about a week from now. I live all alone like
a Yogi," he laughed, "but I have a good house, a fine

house, and I can make you comfortable. You must
get a mule for the Sefiora to ride," he told Sandoval
in a rather peremptory tone. The Indian did not
reply.

Corvizcki's square peasant face beamed with evi-
dent pleasure, and he burst into a rapid flow of chat-
ter. He asked Sandoval about certain nocturnal in-
sects and moths that he had been unable to find and
about a rare species of luminous spider. He wanted
to know if this was my first visit to South America
and to Peru. He wanted to know in what I was inter-
ested; why I was in Pangoa. Was I a writer? It
seemed the simplest way out so I said "yes. 55 "Ah,
Senora, you will find much here to write about. You
must see my Indians. I will help you."

He called to a slight Campa boy who squatted out-
side the living room fence in a patch of shade, and
together they began to pack their purchases from the
village bodega in rough leather saddle bags and an
ill-assorted pair they were. The boy's coarse black
hair hung over his forehead and to his shoulders in a
long straight bob ; his copper face was smeared with
something that looked like Chinese red lacquer, and
his sole garment was a loose brown piece of cloth
sewed up at the sides. The slow but sure movements

of the Indian contrasted strangely with the quick
nervous gestures of the white-skinned master, and
his rich barbaric color made the stocky Pole's face
seem curiously naked. The electric blue eyes roved
over everything until the last item was tucked away
or strapped behind the saddle. Then he mounted,
waved his ragged straw hat, and called to Sandoval,
who stood in the gateway, to be ready when next he
came. The Indian boy flung the skirts of his long
garment over one arm, adjusted the pack on his back,
and padded after the mule.

That night at dinner I waited patiently for Sando-
val to say something about CorvizcM, but he talked
of other things. The food finished and the table
cleared, he left for a moment and came back with a
tiny cardboard box. "This, I think, will interest you, 5 '
he said as he extinguished the lantern. I could barely
see his shadowy hands as he removed the cover from
the box which he turned on its side. Slowly in the
darkness there emerged a miniature railway train
brilliantly lighted. The head was flaming red, and
dotted down its sides were windows of translucent
green; it made you think of the lights of Times
Square and subways. It crawled up and down the
table, an inch or so of living vibrant color until San-

doval lighted the lantern, and then there was only an
ordinary brown worm.

"Very little is known of the luminous nocturnal in-
sects of the Peruvian jungle/' remarked Sandoval as
he put the cover back on the box. "I am making a
study of them, but unfortunately I lack comparative
information on Asiatic insects. 95

"But," I said, seizing my opportunity to open the
subject, "why do you not ask Senor Corvizcki? From
what he said at luncheon I gather he has a rather
complete library."

Sandoval was silent for so long a moment that I
began to regret having tried to probe a matter which,
after all, was none of my business, and I was silently
furious with myself for my impertinent question.
When would I ever learn to wait, to let the sensitive
Indian nature give me what it would in its own good
time?

"The American Senora," said Sandoval slowly,
"understands this matter imperfectly. Corvizcki as a
white man, and I am an Indian. Often my way lies
past his chacra. If he sees me going by, he always
goes into his house and closes the door." He paused
for a moment and, when he again raised his eyes, the
thought behind them was as impenetrable as the long-

forgotten mysteries of Ms race. "It is strange that he
has now invited me to visit him/ 5 he said.

At that moment I thanked the gods of chance for
the appearance of two village youths who entered
through that always hospitable, wide-open gate,
guitars under their arms. "Music, music, Sandoval,"
they said. **We cannot make music without you.' 5
And Sandoval turning to me said, "With your per-
mission? 55 and rose to fetch his own guitar.

The sad rhythm of Incaic music throbbed in my
brain long after the guitars were silent; long after
my candle was extinguished. A wandering bat or two
brushed the dry thatch, and high through one open
corner In a little patch of midnight sky hung one
golden star- Sleep was a dim wandering among
shadowy Incas toiling up the broken path of their
life, ever watched by eyes that held a strange blue
light.

It couldn't have been many days after the Pole's
visit that Sandoval and I sat drinking coffee in the
gateway of the living room and munching the toasted
breadfruit that Marietta had prepared. A soldier
from the tiny cuartel came by with his tame j aguar
on a leash; he stopped to chat a moment and went on.

In another hour or so it would be dark and a cool
wind would drift down from the ice-capped Sierras*
In those few moments just before the tropic night
almost palpably settles over the land, an Indian boy
appeared out of nowhere and presented to Sandoval
a grimy and crumpled letter. He called Raphael to
bring a lantern, and by its light he read the pages. It
was a fairly long letter.

Finally he said, "My letter, Senora, is from Cor-
vizcki. He says that he has sprained an ankle and
will be unable to come in for his supplies . . . that
some preserving chemicals from Lima are awaiting
him here, and that he cannot continue his work until
he has them. He says also that his loss will be great
unless he has them soon, and asks that I bring them
to him." Sandoval spoke in an even and expression-
less tone. "With an Indian boy he has sent a mule
for the cargo." After a pause he continued, "Also a
mule especially for you."

"For me?" I asked stupidly, still trying to grasp
the full import of the audacity of such a request.

"Yes, he expects us to spend a few days with him,"

"But why, since he has sent one of his Indians with
the mules, can't the Indian take the stuff back to
him?"

"He says he cannot trust "his Indians. Also the
road is bad. 5 '

"But surely you have no intention of doing this?"

"Why, yes, Senora, I shall do as he asks. We In-
dians are accustomed to the extraordinary things
that white men expect of us. Sometimes, even, we are
amused. But you, Senora, you will not go."

SandovaPs inflection was not that of a question,
nor yet a statement. I wondered what it meant; but
also I wondered about that strange man who lived with

only salvajes for companions, who said he had a fine

/

house. My curiosity surged and I said, "Why not?"

"The road is bad," repeated Sandoval.

"I have traveled bad roads before this," I replied.

Lucho came to say that dinner was on the table,
and nothing more was said on the subject until I took
my candle to go to my room.

"Tomorrow, then, we shall go, Senora?" ques-
tioned Sandoval; I nodded. "Then I shall see that
everything for Senor Corvizcki is packed tonight, so
that we may go in the morning."

My candle flickered uncertainly upon the pages of
the book that I tried to read sitting cross-legged on
my bed. The wind down from the Sierra was un-
usually cool, and on all sides the jungle whispered to

itself. Insects collected about the light; spiders and
the huge tropical cockroaches rustled the paper with
which the rustic stockade-like walls were covered. All
living things seemed restless. Gradually the whisper
deepened until it sounded like a river rushing over a
stony bed; louder and louder it came until the rain
burst with a dull roar on the dry roof. The thatches
of Pangoa are well made, and it was with a friendly
feeling of protection that I extinguished the light
and pulled up my light blanket. The storm passed
quickly, and the only sound in the deep night was a
gentle dripping from the palm thatch.

The morning was chill and surcharged with damp-
ness ; even the two mules outside the door looked de-
jected and shivered a little. Sandoval and CorvizckPs
Indian were engaged in loading a variety of things
on the back of one. Precariously tied on top of every-
thing else was a ten-gallon gasoline tin with some-
thing in it that rattled. "Caramelos" explained
Sandoval. Caramelos are the cheap hard candies manu-
factured by the Japanese which it seemed Corvizcki
used as payment for his Indians. The other mule bore
on its back a contrivance of wood meant to be a sad-
dle. It had one good stirrup, and a bent piece of tin
for the other. Sandoval tied to the back of the saddle

my little bundle of the few necessities I had wrapped
in a blanket, and after a breakfast of fried plantains
and black coffee, we were ready.

"But you/ 5 I asked, "where is your mule? Didn't
CorvizcM send one for you?"

"No, but it doesn't matter. I could ride if I chose,
but always I prefer to walk," he replied as he started
off in that smooth Indian gait that devours the miles,
followed by the heavily laden mule and the Indian
boy. My beast and I brought up the rear.

We passed a ragged cJiacra or two, and then we
were in deep jungle following a path heavily over-
hung with all manner of branches, twisting lianas,
and creeping vines that brushed my face, and thorns
that tore at my hair and clothing. Sandoval, with
ever-ready machete, hacked away the worst, but at
times it was necessary to lie flat on the mule's neck to
avoid being hung up like Absalom from his Ass in
that narrow green tunnel.

The trail led to a noisy river with sandy banks.
The Campa boy without hesitation flung his long
robe over his shoulders, exposing a naked copper
body, and plunged through. Sandoval sat down on a
fallen tree to remove his boots, and then picked his
way carefully among the huge rocks. Slipping and

jerking, the mules followed. On the opposite bank
Sandoval rolled down his splashed and sodden trou-
sers, and sat down on a rock to put his boots on again.

Suddenly, with a lightning-like gesture, I saw him
pick up the machete at his side and slash at some-
thing in the sand. He stooped and picked up by the
tail a beautiful little dead snake brightly ringed with
deep pink against black. He smiled at me and said,
"Vibora coral," carefully putting away the deadly
thing in a box in his pocket.

"From here on, Senora, the trail is very dangerous ;
in this part many mules have been killed, so we must
go slowly and carefully. It will be worse now because
of the rain last night." And understanding but
vaguely what he meant, we again plunged into the
jungle whose light was like the depths of green and
unknown seas.

The trail followed the side of the sodden and drip-
ping hiU that rose precipitously from the river ; trail
it could be called only by courtesy, for it was a
muddy rock-strewn thread bordered on the one side
by giant trees leaning at precarious angles, and by
matted undergrowth; on the river side by a sheer
drop clothed in thorny bushes and a creeping net-

work of vines. Even a sure-footed animal like my
mule slipped and floundered over the rocks and sank
into the rich red mud up to her belly. One misstep in
places and there would be little to stop mule or rider
but the rocks by the river. In places where the trail
was too steep, Sandoval made me dismount and
clamber as best I could up over the slippery boulders,
being sucked down into the viscous mire, clinging to
vines that at a touch were loosened from the satu-
rated earth.

All morning long, and by this time mud-spattered
to my eyebrows, I climbed off and on my beast. At
one point; again newly mounted, I very unwisely at-
tempted to wipe some of the mud from my face. Just
then the mule found it necessary to negotiate a fallen
log, which I have no doubt she accomplished in a
graceful leap, but I am not really a competent judge,
for I arrived on the other side before she did, and lay
partially embedded in mud, half -entangled in thorns.

At my call both Sandoval and the Campa boy came
to extricate me and to help me remount. Perhaps the
pack mule was startled, or perhaps he was just being
a mule, but whatever the case, he took prompt advan-
tage of the situation to bolt and went scrambling and

slipping down the trail, the oil tin of caramelos rat-
tling and bouncing merrily up and down. The boy
splashed as rapidly as he could after him, and they
both disappeared around a bend in the trail.

A mule, I believe, must be an animal whose per-
ceptions take into account only one dimension one
that assumes the form of a straight line in front of
his nose. At any rate, the pack mule's moments of
freedom were short-lived, for a huge fallen tree lay
down the hill and over the trail, leaving only a mini-
mum of space under it. That the cargo on his back
would collide with the trunk apparently did not oc-
cur to the mule in his mad flight, and by the time
Sandoval and I arrived on the scene, boxes and
bundles were scattered in every direction, and the
little mule lay ignominiously in the mud, wedged
under the fallen forest giant.

"This is bad," said Sandoval. "The mule is not
hurt, but we will lose time." And it was well over an
hour before everything was gathered up and again
tied on the animal's back.

It was late afternoon, and already in the forest
depths the gloom of night had settled when we
reached the end of the last hill where a small trib-
utary stream entered the turbulent muddy river.

Sandoval mopped Ms mud-streaked face with a sod-
den handkerchief, while the Campa boy used the
simple expedient of flinging off his one garment and
sitting in the river.

"The way from here on isn't bad and not far,"
said Sandoval, "but we have lost so much time we
cannot possibly reach Corvizeki's house before dark."
He paused to light a cigarette, and my mind con-
jured dismal pictures of a night spent in mud-laden
boots and damp clothing in a black and dripping
jungle.

"The best thing we can do," continued Sandoval,
"is to spend the night near here where some Campas
live. It is not safe to go on in the darkness." Where-
upon the mules were driven from their browsing on
wild cane, and led into an obscure side-path that
followed the tributary stream.

Night had fallen swiftly and completely when the
Indian boy uttered a shrill and piercing bird : like call
which was answered from a little distance, and soon
through an opening in the trees there was flickering
firelight. We were in the Indian encampment. In a
moment the mules had been led away, and I was sit-
ting on a woven palm mat before the fire among a

[55]

dozen curious, chattering salvages who fingered my
clothing and manifested intense curiosity about my
mud-caked boots which I struggled to unlace.

Lighting a much-needed cigarette, I was promptly
besieged by outstretched hands. "Don't give them
many," said Sandoval approaching at that moment.
"They don't really want them ; it's only imitation of
what they see another doing." He was followed by
the chief of the camp whom Sandoval seemed to
know well. "This is Cayetano," he said, as with an
amiable grin the Indian dropped to the mat beside
me. He was not an unattractive looking man ; in fact
there was something rather engaging in the impu-
dent grin on his tattooed face and in his assured
swagger. He too wanted a cigarette, for which he
asked in bad and broken Spanish, and which he
puffed awkwardly for a few moments before wander-
ing off.

"I am sorry, Senora," said Sandoval, "that here
there is no food just now. These people never eat
regularly, but perhaps in the morning they will bring
us something." We sat smoking in silence.

The curiosity of the Indians was soon satisfied,
and they drifted off one by one to the other fires that
dotted the clearing. The savages of the jungle, un-

like the civilized descendants of the Incas who dwell
in the Sierra, are a laughter-loving people,, and their
voices in the jungle night were gay. "Later/ 5 Sando^-
val told me, "they will be even happier for they are
drinking masato. The moon is not yet half grown,
and this is their season for fiesta . . . and for making
love. Always the men and women eat separately,
sleep separately, except in this season. After a while
there will be music, perhaps dancing, and then they
will disappear two by two."

"Only in the first quarters of the moon?"
"Yes, the moon is feminine, with human passions ;
she is their deity, and when she is young . . ." Sando-
val paused as an Indian appeared in the circle of
flickering light that our fire made in the darkness.
He stooped to put on the ground a calabash shaped
like a jug, and, as he handed Sandoval a small cup-
shaped gourd, the firelight deepened the glistening
paint with which his face was covered. He might
have been a Chinese lacquered image.

Sandoval smiled faintly. "Would the Senora care
to drink masato?" he asked. "It is a sort of beer and
an excellent food." I hesitated for the fraction of a
second. "Many medicos say that these people all have
syphilis, but I have spent much time among them;

[57]

I doubt it." He filled the small gourd and handed It
to me.

"Thank you/* I said, and after sipping the rather
sour thick liquid, handed it back to Sandoval, who
drank deeply. Perhaps, although I am not sure, I
wouldn't have drunk any more of that masato if I
had known then how it was made ; perhaps I would
have, for I was hungry and Sandoval said it was
nourishing. But the next morning I caught an ironic
little gleam in his eyes, when he led me to Cayetano's
particular house, which consisted of four poles on
which was mounted a thatch, to show me the manu-
facture of Indian beer.

"These are Cayetano's wives," he said, indicating
three small women. Two of them looked no more than
children. They, with heavy wooden mallets, were
pounding a white pulp in a long wooden trough. The
other, an older woman, her face painted in elaborate
asymmetrical designs with the lacquer-red paste,
squatted in the dust, peeling off the heavy bark of
the yucca root.

"Yucca," Sandoval informed me, "ought to be
used shortly after the bark is removed because when
exposed to the air it develops prussic acid in small
quantities. "Enough," he said in answer to my in-

[5*]

quiry, "to make one rather ill. They cook it until
tender and, as you see, pound it until well mashed;
then they add water and allow it to ferment."

The two young wives, were bent industriously to
their task, their faces all but hidden by the red
squares of cloth they wore on their heads; one of
them had a tiny baby slung on her back. "Pic-
turesque, 55 I murmured, "but what are they eating? 55
as I caught a glimpse of their rhythmically moving
jaws.

"They are not eating anything, 55 answered Sando-
val. "They are chewing yucca for the masato" And
at that moment they both spat with gusto their
enormous mouthfuls of well-masticated paste back
into the trough, and with grimy hands scooped up
other generous amounts which they stuffed into their
mouths and again began to chew. "To make it fer-
ment, 35 he explained.

But that night I knew only that we had a friendly
fire and something to take the place of food; that
we were 'not in a jungle infested with jaguars,
panthers, and worst of all creeping, venomous
serpents. As I grew to know Sandoval, I realized,
too, that it was completely characteristic of him not
to tell me until after we had left the encampment

[5*]

that Cayetano was a notorious criminal whose ill
fame extended even to the Sierra. For Cayetano was
a dealer in slaves, and Ms slaves were not acquired
in the manner of SandovaFs. Such was the demand
that Cayetano made frequent raids on the outlying
encampments, falling on them at night, massacring
the adults and carrying off the children to sell.

But of that, too, I was blissfully unaware, as the
moon progressed on her silvery path across the
heavens, and a bamboo flute trilled over and over five
monotonous notes. The warmth of the fire, the fatigue
of the journey, and the Indian beer all made me
sleepy; I dozed and waked again, but When I finally
stretched out on the mat, I cannot remember. It was
morning before I realized that I had been covered
not only with my own light blanket, but also with
Sandoval's.

Dawns in the Peruvian jungle are chilly. Often
the tired and freighted clouds hang so low over the
land that you feel shipwrecked in a white and opaque
sea. The dampness of the night, together with sleep-
ing in wet clothing, had penetrated to the very mar-
row of my bones, and it was only the thought of the

civilized house we should soon reach that cheered the
morning.

Cayetano, chattering and scratching himself under
his loose dirty cushma, blew into a blaze the embers
by which I had slept, and by the time I returned
from the stream where I made rather futile attempts
at becoming somewhat cleaner, one of his wives had
yucca and green bananas roasting in the ashes. There
is something about a fire that can improve even the
most dismal of circumstances, and it was with relish
that Sandoval and I both ate the hot but tasteless
food, with Cayetano as an interested spectator.

He wanted to know where my home was and how
many children I had. He shook his head when I told
him I lived in the United States. Was it anywhere
near Huancayo in the Sierra? He had been once to
the mountains; he had even seen a moving picture.
"I, Senora," he announced with pride and satisfac-
tion, "am a Christian. I have received the water. 59 In
vain I tried to elicit more information about his
baptism but his attention had been distracted by my
lipstick. "Ah, Senora, I need that very much," he
said. "Will you give it to me?"

No matter how entertaining a savage Cayetano

was, I decided I couldn't part with my only lipstick.
I needed my paint just as much as lie did. Next his
attention was caught by the odds and ends I carried
in a little bag, and he pounced upon three safety
pins. "Ah, these, Senora, I need very much. They are
very pretty/ 5 he said, fondling them. Soap, too, you
have?"

"What would you do with soap?"

Cayetano grinned. "I would bathe all day in the
river. I, Senora, understand these things, for I have
received the water. I am a Christian."

"What will you give me for the soap and the
pins?"

"What does the Senora need?"

I thought for a few minutes and finally said, "I am
somewhat in need of arrows and a bow."

Cayetano shouted to his wives. Several times he
shouted instructions, and soon the old one came with
a bow that was taller than she and an armful of
arrows.

"The Senora has fish in her country?" he asked as
he handed me a slender spear-like arrow. It was a
beautiful thing and as light as the brilliant parrot
feathers with which it was tipped. The lance itself
was of palm wood and needle sharp.

"This one/* he explained, giving me another, "is
to capture birds to sing for you. 35 It had a light
wooden ball on the end with a slightly pointed tip
designed to stun a bird without injury. Another with
three prongs, a trident-like affair, was for wood
doves ; a large lance, wickedly pointed, was for game
such as wild boar, deer, tapir, panther, and jaguar,
or any other large animals I cared to hunt. The rest
were similar, but their tips had triple notches, and
were used for small animals and birds ; there were in
all, sixteen. I thanked him 9 and gave him the soap
and the three safety pins.

Sandoval had watched the transaction in silent
gravity, but I knew he was afnused by my purchase
for he was well aware of my total ignorance of any
kind of weapon. He was smiling to himself as he
went off to get the mules.

"But," I said to Cayetano as an afterthought,
mounting my mule, "you haven't given me a special
arrow in case I should want to hunt the animal that
walks on two feet." At which the savage burst into
uproarious laughter. "Ah, Senora, that is a different
matter that is dangerous," his eyes narrowed, "for
that you must have the gun."

Later Sandoval, walking beside my mule, told me

\_63-]

of Cayetano 5 s business as a slave dealer. It was true^
he said, that all through the immense territory of the
Peruvian forests people trafficked in slaves ; the white
people, who were few and far between, and all the
civilized Indians owned them.

"But/ 5 I questioned, "what is his tale of being a
Christian and having been baptized? 53

"Ah, that. A few days 5 journey from here there is
a settlement of Peruvian nuns who have a school for
the salvages. Cayetano has spent a few months there 9
has learned to count a little, and has been baptized.
Some people say that the nuns, too, buy and sell
slaves, but that I do not believe. It is said that, be-
cause they receive much aid from the State, they
frequently buy children to make a good showing
because many run away, and also that they sell guns
to the dealers. But I know them well; I think they
are good women.' 5

He walked in silence for a time, "You, Seiiora," he
said at length, "I believe, have made a friend ... at
least in the sense that Cayetano understands it. 55 He
paused and, glancing up at me, continued, "Some
people, simply because these Indians have no sense
of our values, or moral standards, underrate their

intelligence, but to civilizados like ourselves, they
can be good friends."

Later I was to consider the significance of his re-
mark in a different light, but just then I felt only a
warm glow of pleasure, for it seemed that, in a meas-
ure, I had been "accepted" not only by a civilized
Indian but by a salvaje as well. The discomfort of
the night was forgotten as we plodded on for the last
hour to the house of the Polish entomologist.

The jungle gave way to a path that led upward
through a grove of bananas, and there on the brow of
the hill, above a waving sea of ragged banana leaves,
stood the dwelling of CorvizcH. At first glance it
looked like any of the houses in Pangoa, but closer
inspection revealed roughly fashioned wooden walls
instead of the usual split cane ; it also had a raised
veranda on which stood two long wooden tables and
narrow benches. As a crowning glory, it had what no
other house in Pangoan territory had a corrugated
sheet-iron roof.

A black mongrel dog appeared out of the jungle
beside the house and barked at the mules. He too, at
first glance, looked like any other mongrel, and as I

[05]

dismounted he cautiously approached, tail tucked
between his legs, to sniff. Suddenly he looked up at
me and grinned. Now I have seen other dogs that
grinned, but they were cheerful pups that could
wave a joyous tail. This one looked at me with
troubled eyes, refused a pat, and slunk back into the
jungle.

Two Indian boys in dull brown cushmas falling to
their splayed leathery feet stood as impassively as
trees near the steps ; only their brilliant black eyes,
peeping through fringes of hair, seemed alive. The
vivid exotic red with which their faces were painted
gave the skin that heavy satin-like quality that some
flowers have. Perhaps, I thought idly, they are half-
plant, half-human.

The dog barked again, and then we heard Cor-
vizckPs voice. He was obviously startled, and ex-
claimed as he came toward us, "Senora, Senora, I am
delighted to see you and you, Senor Sandoval. A
thousand thanks for bringing me my supplies. But
how have you come to arrive at this hour?" Sandoval
explained in some detail that the road was in much
worse condition than he had ever seen it; that we
had found it necessary to spend the night at Caye-
tano's camp. Corvizcki seemed flustered and shouted

unnecessarily at the two tree-like Indians who came
slowly forward to lead the mules away. "Come,
come/' he said, starting toward the veranda, "sit
down and rest. 55

"I hope, Seiior Corvizcki, 55 said Sandoval with
slow and studied courtesy, "that your ankle is much
better. 35

"My what?" said the Pole, and then slowly flushed.
"Ah, yes, yes, thank you ; it is much better, in fact
it isn't as serious as I thought it was going to be
really quite slight, quite unimportant,' 5 and he
laughed rather nervously. After that he limped a
little when he could remember to do so.

"Seat yourselves, be comfortable, rest," he ex-
claimed, pointing to the long narrow benches. "Ex-
cuse me for a moment, and I will be with you. 55 He
took an enormous key from his pocket and unlocked
the door, entered, carefully closing it behind him. I
glanced at Sandoval, but he was gazing with faraway
eyes over the tattered green sea of bananas, murmur-
ing as if to himself, "Triste, triste, triste."

"Senora," said the Pole, appearing in the door-
way, "you must have much hunger. I am going to
prepare lunch for you now, 55 and he locked the door,
putting the key back in his pocket. "We shall eat the

wild turkey of the mountains that my Indians have
brought, and roast yucca. You see, I live like a Yogi 5
all alone; I do not even keep a cook. 55

"Some Campas make very good cooks/' I sug-
gested. "Marietta, in Senor SandovaPs household,
cooks very well indeed."

His blue eyes gazed fixedly at me. "But, Seiiora,
they are Indians, after all, savages, not to be trusted,
ever." With that he went off down a path that led to
the cook shed. The heat under the corrugated-iron
roof grew more intense, and phantom waves danced
before my eyes until they drifted off into the jungle
below. My head began to ache, and I wished desper-
ately that we could possibly leave and seek even the
shelter of Cayetano's palm thatches. My distant
room in Pangoa, a bath in the glacier-fed river, and
a fresh suit of linen slacks seemed the most desirable
heaven of which I had ever dreamed.

By the time Corvizcki appeared with tin basins of
soup, I had forgotten that I had ever been hungry.
He hurried about, putting a ragged unbleached cloth
on the long table, keeping up a running chatter of
guttural Spanish. His speech at any time was a little
difficult to follow, but now I couldn't even make an

attempt to understand. Once In a wliile I said "yes 59

or "no. 55

When we had finished the soup, he took away the
basins and brought them back full of dark slabs of
wild turkey and huge pieces of roasted yucca. I made
desultory inroads on the yuccia, but the turkey not
only defied my teeth, but also the implement that
served as a knife. Surreptitiously I gave the turkey
to the black dog, who peered at me uncertainly from
under the table, snapped at the meat, and fled. The
two men began to talk shop ; Corvizcki showed Sando-
val some cocoons he had in a screened cage in one
corner of the veranda. "These, I think, are rare
moths," he said, mentioning a scientific classification,
"but I do not know what they feed on. Perhaps,
Sefior Sandoval, you know?" But Senior Sandoval
was noncommittal. He told me afterward that when-
ever he questioned Corvizcki as to the habitat of cer-
tain butterflies or insects, the Pole unhesitatingly
gave him rather childishly false information.

Their conversation was interrupted by the arrival
of a straggling group of Indians who drifted rather
than climbed up the path to the veranda. One trailed
a dirty butterfly net, and the others brought, wrapped

in leaves, their various finds, which the Pole began
carefully to examine.

"Will you look at this ?" he exclaimed. He held up
an enormous butterfly of intense blue. "Morpho
lielena" murmured Sandoval. "Very rare and diffi-
cult to find in these regions," he explained for my
benefit.

"Caramba, yes," said the Pole. "I have never had
one before. Why, this will bring at least two dollars
gold in the United States." He chuckled happily, and
then looked at me with those strange hot eyes that
seemed to dart pale flame above the brilliant insect
that lay lifeless on the table. "You, Senora, have
brought me this magnificent luck. You must stay a
long time." Fumbling in his pockets, he turned to the
Indians. "For you, let me see, two, no, three cara-
melos each," and he doled out the cheap candies.
"Now," he said, "I must put my beautiful mariposa
away carefully very carefully," and he closed the
door after him.

I looked helplessly at Sandoval, who smiled a little
and shrugged his shoulders. I looked at the painted
faces beyond the veranda railing; for a moment they
were a row of poppies, brilliant satiny poppies with
black diamond eyes. But in that second, so fleeting

[70]

Llamas : the Haughty Bearers of Mineral Treasure

A few ounces over the accustomed load and these proud
animals lie down until the excess weight is removed.

that afterward I wondered If it had not been a
fantasy born of tropic heat, I glimpsed a withering
contempt leavened by amusement.

"Now," said the Pole, cheerfully slamming and
again locking the door, "you must come with me to
see my chacra, the huts where my Indians live, the
land I am clearing; I will show you many things."

"The Senora, 55 said Sandoval with a tone of final-
ity, "I believe, is very tired. She would, I am sure,
prefer to rest, but I will go with you. 5 *

"To be sure ; certainly. We will leave the Senora
to herself to rest; they are fine benches, are they
not? I made them myself excellent beds they are
nice and wide." He made a sweeping gesture as if to
indicate that all the magnificence I saw was at my
disposal.

My emotions as the two men went off into the with-
ering heat of the afternoon were somewhat mixed;
my head still throbbed, and I felt sorry for myself.
Why had I let myself get into such an outrageous
situation? Sandoval had as good as told me not to
come.

The Indians had drifted off again, and shame-
lessly I looked through the cracks of the ill-fitting
boards that made the walls of Corvizcki's house.

Even the windows were like cupboard doors that were
closed and locked. There were three rooms. One was
a sort of store-room with odds and ends. The middle
room, into which the door led, was obviously the
man's study ; it had a big board desk and chair, and
also a shelf of books. The other contained a home-
made chest of drawers and a bed draped in a volumi-
nous mosquito net. There was nothing else anywhere,
except a few outlying sheds that were no more than
thatches mounted on poles. A few chickens wandered
disconsolately or bathed themselves in the hot dust.

It was almost dark when Sandoval and the Pole
returned ; the latter almost immediately excused him-
self to prepare the dinner. Sandoval lighted a ciga-
rette and said, "I think tomorrow will be clear; we
can get an early start in the morning." The earlier
the better, I agreed.

Dinner was a repetition of the luncheon tough
wild turkey and yucca. The table was well lighted
by a gasoline lamp that threw a brilliant white light
in a wide circle. "Excellent lamp, is it not, Senora?"
said Corvizcki proudly. "You see, I am European
and I understand how to live well. Eleven years I
have lived in this place, building up my house and

[re]

collecting. I liave a fine life here, a good life/ 5 He
paused and laughed a little. "But it is like Yogi life,
sometimes rather lonely/ 5 and he looked directly at
me. Sandoval might have been a wooden image. I
pushed back my tin dish and walked to the steps.

"The moon is very bright tonight/ 5 1 said.

"Ah, yes, Senora, that is why there are no insects
around my lamp. Have you not noticed? 55 It was
true. The brilliant light had not attracted a single
moth to fray its delicate wings against the globe.

"Yesj it is so, 55 said Sandoval in answer to my ques-
tioning look. "Many times I have seen a lantern with
hundreds of insects about it, but with the rising of
the moon, they all fly away. 55

"Yes, yes, 55 exclaimed Corvizcki, "here in the jun-
gle the moon has strange powers. You know that the
Campas worship the moon ; some people even say that
at times they make sacrifices to the new moon, but
that I don 5 t believe just ignorant gossip." Sando-
val said nothing, but I wondered how much he knew.

The talk drifted to the habits and customs of the
forest dwellers, then to entomology. More than once
Corvizcki had occasion to refer to some correspond-
ence he had had, or to a scientific handbook. Always
he closed the door after him when he went to his

[73]

study, and always he locked it after him when he
returned to the veranda. What element of amuse-
ment there had been for me in this strange proceed-
ing had long since faded. I was very tired and ex-
ceedingly irritated, and I felt relieved when I saw
Corvizcki yawn and gather up his books and papers.

He brought a candle, lighted it, and stuck it in a
bottle on the table ; he picked up his beautiful gaso-
line lamp, and with his free hand made a sweeping
inclusive gesture. "Make yourselves comfortable," he
said, and adding a hearty "Buenas noches" went
into his study and locked himself in.

There was nothing to do but stretch out on the
narrow wooden benches. Sandoval made a little bun-
dle of a towel and a few odds and ends which he
offered to me as a pillow. "Mad, completely mad,
isn't he?" I murmured. "No," whispered Sandoval,
"only a little. I have seen others like him who came
to the jungle after the last war in Europe."

In thinking back over this strange visit which
seems now like something that must have happened
to someone else, I feel as though I should write a dis-
mal paragraph about a sleepless, dreary night, wait-
ing through the fearsome jungle darkness for the
dawn. But being a fairly veracious person, I shall

have to admit that I slept, and must have slept
rather well, for Sandoval said afterward that twice
in the night he had heard jaguars scream.

CorvizcM had been up with the first ray of light,
and he soon brought great mugs of strong black
coffee and the jungle substitute for bread boiled
green plantains. Over the coffee Sandoval asked,
since the road was bad, -that CorvizcM have the mule
saddled for me as soon as possible after breakfast,

"But why?" said the astonished Pole. "Surely,
Senora, you cannot go after so short a time? And,
you too, Senor Sandoval," he added.

Sandoval pleaded obligations, and I said that I
must return to Lima soon. At the time that was a
bare-faced lie, but one in which there was more truth
than I knew. CorvizcM, in a half-hearted manner,
again thanked Sandoval for his kindness in bringing
his supplies and, looking hopefully at me, suggested
that when I returned from Lima surely I would
come again? I glibly promised, and he went off to
bring the mule and an Indian boy to look after it.

Without the heavily laden cargo mule, the return
journey took less time; w6 pushed on steadily with-
out stopping, and four o'clock found us at the inn
in Pangoa. It was like being home again after a long

and weary absence; it was startling to realize that
we had been gone only two days and nights.

That evening, on one pretext or another, a large
portion of the population of Pangoa found occasion
to visit the inn, for curiosity about Corvizcki ran
high. From me no information was available for I
went to bed immediately after dinner, and I am sure
that the gossips obtained no satisfying morsels from
Sandoval for later rumination.

Again Pangoan days slipped lazily by. The sensa-
tion caused by our visit gradually died away, and
the questions became fewer and fewer. Between San-
doval and me the subject was brought up only once.
One morning when I had been to the river to bathe,
the sandy banks were alive with butterflies, clouds of
little yellow ones, brilliant blue ones with enormous
wing spread a jeweler's collection of fluttering, liv-
ing color. A great orange and maroon butterfly
floated lazily near me; I couldn't remember having
seen it before, so I caught it to take to Sandoval.

"Not exactly rare," he told me, "but I can use it
for one of my collections." A little later he came to
frie and, thanking me again for the butterfly, gravely
handed me two little paper-wrapped caramelos.

The event that completely obliterated the un-

precedented hospitality of the Pole from the minds
of the Pangoan public was the earthquake in Lima.
News came in a roundabout way, and was greatly
garbled. Some reports had it that the city was en-
tirely destroyed; others said, no, only Callao. There
were rumors of a tidal wave, but no one really knew
for certain.

Pangoa has a tiny, sleepy Marconi station that
occupies a corner of the room which is also the post
office. By this it is possible in a series of relays to
send a message to Lima. I composed four telegrams
which I sent to friends in the stricken city. At the
end of a week there had been no replies, nor had any-
one else in Pangoa received a message from friends or
relatives.

Besides having a few friends and numerous ac-
quaintances in the capital, I had left all of my per-
sonal belongings there except a couple of suitcases. I
began to wonder if the bank in which my money had
been deposited was a heap of rubble, and I thought
of Jennifer, too. All these worries made me decide to
go back to Lima.

It is one thing to decide to leave Pangoa, and an-
other to leave. In theory it is possible to go up over
the Andes on any Tuesday, Thursday, or Saturday,
and on the remaining days to come down from the

[77]

Sierra. The goat trail that is used as a motor road is*
you see, strictly a one-way arrangement. But on the
day that I decided to go, there was no truck, pre-
sumably as there had been neither cargo nor pas-
sengers; so two more days went by. It must have
been, I think, in the middle of a Monday night that
the truck finally, after much coughing and hacking*
stopped in front of the inn, and Sandoval, sleepily
wishing me a pleasant journey and speedy return*
helped me into the contraption and stowed away my
suitcase.

Through the night we roared ; that is, we made a
great show of speeding and roaring, but we stopped
at every hut that showed a light to pick up oranges*
or a crate of ducks, or a bag of alligator pears. How-
ever, those dots of civilization do not extend very
far from the colony of Pangoa, for the terrain rises
sharply, into the steep jungle-clad montana where
the only sign of civilization is the rude trail that
winds and twists and doubles and triples back on
itself for endless miles, ever and ever climbing.

In the chill dawn came a heavy tropical down-
pour. I was delighted not to have the seat with the
driver, for although the Andean trucks have excellent
American motors, the bodies are all home-made, and

the front seat had become a species of shower bath.
The luggage on top protected the rest of us. By
noontime we had left the last of the twisted vegeta-
tion that clings tenaciously to barren precipices and
were in a region of rock mountains that cradled in
their stark embrace white glaciers. A brief but blind-
ing blizzard obliterated the only sign of a trail, and
by what sense the Indian chauffeur continued his
mad flight over the Sierra only he knew. Pangoa lay
ten hours behind us and ten thousand feet below us.

We stopped for a brief luncheon in a tiny white
village that stretched itself along the ridge of a
mountain spur. Below, like steps cut into the hills,
were the andenes, or terraces, green with cultivation.,
Above, reaching to the sky, rose the tiny cultivated
shelves. The dim brown ones in the high distance,
I thought, must be those unused since the empire of
the Incas.

From the white village we fled, down, down a trail
that had on one side a wall of rock ; on the other, sheer
space. A little goat, startled from his dreaming in
the dust, leaped, bleating piteously, to flee. There
was no place to go except straight ahead, which he
did as fast as trembling legs could carry him ; on and
on he went pursued by the roaring monster that was

179]

guided by a cursing Indian. We were losing time,
and he had no desire to be caught in the Sierra at
night. An Indian ascending the path caught up the
Md in his arms and pressed himself into the side of
the mountain, and on we went.

By the late afternoon we had again climbed to the
heights. Around us was a broad plateau dotted with
cold blue glacier lakes; behind us in pure white
majesty, soared one Andean peak, remote, myste-
rious, and lonely.

A solitary Indian shepherded his flock of llamas
from the path of the oncoming motor; the animals,
with stately and unhurried tread, separated and
lined the road. The lead llama, his haughty head
encased in a red knitted hood, and yellow woolen tas-
sels in his ears, gazed with astonishment in his great
sweet eyes on the rude intrusion. The truck rocketed
on and, just before night, it stopped before an inn
in the village of Concepcion, which lies in the green
and fertile Jauja valley, ten thousand feet above
the Pacific.

There in Concepcion, just sixteen hours removed
from Pangoa in time, but separated by worlds of
mountains, you can fall into a civilized bed with
many blankets and sleep until you are awakened to

take the motor that will call for you at nine in the
morning to continue your flight in time and space
over the Andes.

By mid-afternoon you will know that you are
nearing the shores of the Pacific, for the desert foot-
hills will be wreathed in cloud, and Lima on the
coastal plain will lie in gloom below them. For this
is June, and it is winter, and dreary days pass in
the Peruvian capital without a glimpse of the sun,
although as the crow flies, a few minutes away, the
sun of the Incas beats fiercely on the desert, con-
quered land. But the shrouded coastal plain, over
which hover the clouds that are never relieved of their
burden, is like the ancient marquise of legend who
lived in the Lima of the conquistador es. She was
cursed with the inability ever to weep, and to her
favorite daughter and granddaughter there also
descended, with a fabulous gold and ruby necklace,
the same inability. Only for the few minutes before
death, came healing tears. If rain came to Lima, I
wondered, would it presage the death of the city?
Certainly it would be one form of destruction, for a
great part of the city is built of sun-dried adobe that
would simply melt away.

As the driver made his way through the narrow old

streets of the business section, it was evident that
earthquake damage had been relatively light; only
here and there a pile of debris gave mute testimony.
That night at dinner my fears for friends and ac-
quaintances were completely allayed; my bank was
intact, friends assured me, and the pension in which
I had been living, although badly cracked, was safe
enough. The arrogant Jennifer had become the lov-
ing mother of three non-Aryan gatitos, and she was
very much mistress of any situation she encountered.
The dogs of the household had been completely
cowed, and the kitchen cats relegated to their proper
sphere. "Like any English lady of birth, 55 murmured
the Irish governess as Jennifer, sleek as black velvet,
under a vase of drooping pink roses on the grand
piano, lazily washed a paw.

There seemed to be little for me to accomplish in
Lima, nothing except to fall back into the routine of
Gringo parties cocktails at eight, dinner at nine,
occasionally a moving picture at the late afternoon
showing. Or you listened to the steadily growing tales
of defeat and misery that the radio poured forth. I
packed my bags for Pangoa.

As it turned out, in this land where time has no

importance, I didn't go directly to Pangoa. Friends
with whom I spent the night in the mining town of
Oroya, invited me to visit the company's haciendas
with them. And so I passed days on horseback in the
high thin air, riding over lonely plateaus under a sun
that soon turns a white skin to Indian bronze ; looked
on immensities of earth and sky and silence, intensi-
fied only by an occasional Indian figure, broken only
by the plaintive cry of a bird ; spent cold nights be-
fore the dung fires of lonely ranch houses, in valleys
ringed by nameless snow-capped peaks.

\
It was at the hour when the parrots fly chattering

from tree to tree, discussing the events of the day
before quieting for the night, the hour when the
shadows are long over the ragged campo of Pangoa,
that finally I climbed stiffly from the Ford truck in
front of the inn. The duena, Leandra, even more
witch-like than I had remembered, greeted me effu-
sively and called to all the little slaves to take my
bag, to fill my pitcher with fresh water, and to bring
the Senora coffee. Sandoval put down his plane with
which he was smoothing out a piece of silvery wood,
and inquired how the journey had been, and in what

state I had found Lima. By dinner time it was diffi-
cult to believe that I had been away, high over the
Andes and down to the blue Pacific.

After dinner I brought to the table some photo-
graphs which I had had developed in Lima to show
Sandoval. Some of the Leica enlargements had turned
out very well; he was particularly delighted with
those of Cayetano's camp. "It would please him very
much, Senora, if you were to send him this one of
himself," he said.

"Of course, 33 I agreed, "and at the same time I
may as well send this one of Corvizcki to him, 33 hand-
ing him one that he hadn 3 t seen.

Sandoval looked at the picture for a long time,
then slowly raising his head, he looked at me with a
strange expression in his deeply shadowed eyes.
"Sefior Corvizcki, 33 he told me, "is dead. 33

"Dead? 33

"Yes, dead. When for some time he didn 3 t come in
for his supplies, the chief of the cuartel here sent two
soldiers to find out what was wrong. The place was
deserted except for a few Indians who remained in
the huts beyond the clearing. After some questioning
they made the police understand that Corvizcki had
died and that they had left his body by the river

bank for the vultures, as Is their custom. They will-
ingly guided the soldiers to the place and they found
what had once been a man, and a starving black
dog."

"But of what did he die? He seemed in good
enough health when we were there."

"The police spent a day questioning the Indians.
but, as you know, they understand little Spanish;
they just pointed to their stomachs and then to
some yucca roots."

"But do you think . . ."

"I have ceased to think about it, Senora ; I do not
know. Neither do the police. Nothing in his house
was disturbed, and it would be useless to take a
savage to a court of justice. As far as anyone knows,,
he had no friends or relatives and his property will
revert to the government ; the matter is finished."

Sandoval was silent for a long time ; his thin dark
fingers shredded a paper matchbox. At length, he
said, "Not long ago I spent the night in Cayetano'a
camp ; he gave me some rare moths he had found. He
often saves butterflies for me."

"Did he have anything to say about Corvizcki's-
death?" I ventured to ask, not without some hesita-
tion.

"Cayetano was very happy; lie was drinking
masato. He gave me masato too, and lie laughed and
lay on his mat and looked at the moon." Sandoval
paused and, when he looked at me again, his eyes
were as guileless as a child's. "Then Cayetano went
away for a while, and when he came back he brought
a girl with him. He said we must all drink much
masato because he had a new wife and the new moon
had a lover."

THE SENTIMENTAL
INDIAN

WINTER IN PANGOA DEEPENED, the
darkness came earlier, and the ragged
palm fronds rustled dryly in the
night wind down from the Sierra, because, as is well-
known, winter is the dry season. But in the land
below the equator, all things are comparative as else-
where. There were days when the clouds hung heav-
ily over the jungled hills, to their very feet, and the
atmosphere was laden with moisture and a strange
feeling of sadness. And there were nights when a slow
steady rain whispered on the thatched roofs.

Then there were days when the campo on which
my inn faced, danced crazily in the waves of tropic
heat, and one retreated to the nearby river to lie in

its babbling coolness, to listen to the tales it told of
the glaciers of which it was born. They are not so far
distant, it seemed to say if you were a bird you
could fly up and over the jungle, over the Andes,
and be there this afternoon. And you wondered, as
you walked back the little distance to the inn, along
the heavily overgrown path, why two such separate
worlds should lie so closely together. Below lies the
world of the jungles in which live the savages, the
serpents, the parrots, the jaguars, and all manner
of flying, stinging things, A few hours above looms
the world of naked Sierra, of lonely snow-clad peaks
around whose feet wander the fine-fleeced vicuna,
where great flocks of llamas are tended by the de-
scendants of the Incas, where on high plateaus there
are little stone houses and great rock corrals to guard
the cattle that grow long and shaggy coats against
the biting cold.

In the endless days that slipped by in Pangoa, it
Was easy to forget that there were austere heights
above, or cities on the coast, easy to become steeped
in the warm lazy atmosphere of the jungled hills
that region known in El Peru as the montana, and
which lies between the lofty Cordilleras and the flat
steamy Amazones. Lima, with its broad avenues,

[*]

parks, and hotels with running water, was gradually
forgotten, and the rest of the world became a distant
dream. The life that drifted irregularly across the
campo, or centered sometimes in the village bodega
over a glass of beer or chicfaa, became the only real-
ity ; the rest was phantom.

I fell in with the life of the inn, became endlessly
occupied with those who made their lives there, and
rather especially with Leandra.

Perhaps it is not exact to call Senora Leandra an
Indian. She, I am sure, would be highly resentful.
Just what mixture of blood was hers, it would be
impossible to ascertain, but in some distant era there
must have been a definite if shadowy European
ancestry, for hers was the high-bridged beaked nose
of a certain Castilian or Portuguese type. She was.
tiny, bent, and withered ; of what age one could only
guess. Her claw-like hands recalled vaguely child-
hood stories of witches a first impression not wholly
without basis, for much later I learned that Senora
Leandra had gathered from the forest dwellers a not
inconsiderable knowledge of poisonous herbs and oc-
cult practices.

Her skin was the color of very old ivory, her mouth
all but toothless. "Ay, ay," she sighed a dozen times

a day, "if only these people would pay what they
owe, I would go to Lima and buy new teeth." Then
she would chatter on of how much false teeth would
improve her health, or of the days when her family
had owned much land and silver and she had never
dreamed of the necessity of keeping an inn. She im-
plied that in her youth she had known leisure, wealth,
and culture.

At all times I found the affairs of the inn infinitely
engaging. The little slaves coming and going ; Mari-
etta, the oldest child, who was cook, giggling hap-
pily whenever her young lover appeared; Leandra's
neighbor women dropping in to chat, usually with an
infant tugging at a heavy breast, and anjndefinite
number of assorted-sized children trailing behind.
Quietly interwoven with these impressions were
Sandoval's activities. Sometimes he cut out a pair of
pants for one of the little boy servants, or mended
a cooking pot. At other times he made a bed or a
chair of silvery wood brought from the jungles, but
most often he worked over his collections of jewel-
hued butterflies at a long table in the sola.

But as definite as were all these personalities, there
was another, I at last realized, whose influence was
strangely subtle. Just when it was that I first became

aware of Rosa Aurora, I do not remember, but It
must have been in mid-winter, that is to say, sometime
in June, and it was her birthday. The day I remem-
ber distinctly because the clouds hung low and it was
almost cold. I even shivered a little as I got into my
clothes and went to the scda for morning coffee.

The table at which Sandoval and I usually had
our meals was completely covered with flowers. There
were red and pink roses, gardenias and frangi-pani,
long stems of tube roses, and orchids from the jun-
gle. There were many other kinds, all arranged in
stiff bunches. An old man, in trousers so ragged it
seemed impossible that more darning could hold
them together, was offering Sandoval a little wilted
bouquet of yellow roses. I wondered what could be
the occasion.

Sometime during the damp and sunless morning,
all the flowers disappeared, and at lunch I ate by my-
self. The food seemed soggy, my clothes clung clam-
mily to my body, and a general atmosphere of
depression pervaded the inn. I read an ancient maga-
zine for a time, but the stories were futile ; I went
to my room adjoining the sola and finally fell into a
troubled and restless sleep.

Night had fallen with a slight drizzle of rain when

I was roused by the throbbing music of a lightly
strumming guitar. It was an Incaic song, haunting,
pentatonic, a funeral dirge. I lay listening, listening
to the faint murmur of the river, to the whisper of
rain on the roof, and to the melancholy guitar. And
as I lay there, that underlying sense of the profound
sadness of the primeval forests, in which there is
such exuberant life ending in such swift decay, deep-
ened in my consciousness. Why am I here, I pon-
dered ; there are other happier places in the world.
And it was with a weary sense of depression, of
.nostalgia for I knew not what, that I went to the
main room for dinner.

Even the usually cheerful yellow lantern light was
dismal and I ate mechanically what was placed be-
fore me, unable to think of anything to say to Sando-
val.

At last he asked, "And you, Seiiora, why are you
so sad?"

"I don't know exactly," I replied, "but perhaps it
is this. Sometimes an intense sense of the deep and
ultimate loneliness of every human being suddenly
.grips me, and I am sad."

He was silent for a moment and then said, "Once
I had this dream. I was far above the earth, so far

above it that I could see It was round, see the oceans,
mountains, and lakes. There were no cities, no towns,
no people; there were forests and vast deserts. I saw
in one desert that seemed to stretch to infinity a tiny
solitary figure one man, an old Chinese in a long
blue cotton gown, with a queue that fell from a round
black cap to his waist, plodding, plodding across the
world. 55

There was something about Sandoval, or the place,
my mood I do not know which impelled me to say,
"That seems to me to sum up what my life has been
since my husband died wandering the lonely world.
Searching sometimes one thing, sometimes another.
Often it seems to me that I have lost my destiny and
am hunting to find it again."

Sandoval's eyes, which had been expressionless,
suddenly lifted with a far away look in them. "So it
is, 55 he said. "I, too, since Rosa Aurora died, have lost
my destiny. 55

"Rosa Aurora? 55

"My Senora, 55 he said. "Today is her birthday. 55

In Latin America little is made of Christmas in
gift-giving, but always there are festivities and pres-
ents for birthdays ; even, it seems, they are observed
with flowers after death. I tried to imagine what

Sandoval's wife had been like. Could she have re-
sembled the witchy Leandra?

"Was it very long ago?" I asked.

"Less," he said, "than seventeen months, but so
much has happened since that sometimes it seems
many years."

I wondered what, in this seemingly peaceful jun-
gle settlement, could have occurred. Finally, not be-
ing able to think of anything very suitable to say, I
asked if she were very young.

Sandoval lighted a cigarette, puffed a moment and
said rather shortly, "I don't know how old she was.' 5
His face was dark and uncommunicative.

Another mistake, I thought dismally; just when
I think these people have learned not to distrust
every Gringa y then I ask a question which makes
them close into themselves more than ever. I drank
the last of my coffee and started to rise.

"You usually take two cups, Senora," he said.
"Won't you drink another?" and he called to Mari-
etta in the kitchen to bring me fresh coffee.

"I am sorry I was brusque," he said. "And usually
I don't lie. Rosa Aurora was fourteen years older
than I am."

Fourteen years . . . why she must have been, I

[**]

thought in astonishment, an old woman, because San-
doval must have been about thirty-seven or thirty-
eight then. Apparently he divined my thought, be-
cause he said, "She didn't in the least look it. She
was very slight, girlish, very simpatica, not in the
least 5 * he lowered his voice until it was almost in-
audible,, "like Leandra." There was a faint expres-
sion of distaste in his usually immobile face.

His strong brown fingers toyed first with a pencil
and then with the Spanish-English dictionary which
was always on the table. Because as yet my Spanish
was far from perfect, with great patience and
courtesy Sandoval explained unaccustomed words
and phrases to me a thing sometimes difficult to do,
as he spoke no word of English* Absently he opened
the dictionary and began to write on the back cover.
The light was dim, but I could just see that he
wrote over and over again in long lines, Rosa Aurora,
Rosa Aurora. At length the fingers relaxed.

"In spite of that great difference, I loved her as I
had not known it was possible for a man to love a
woman. And she too loved me very greatly. "

She must have been an extraordinary woman I
thought then, and the impression was strengthened
by the subsequent things that I learned. I grew

gradually to know Rosa Aurora's taste In dress, in
food, that she could sew, that she could cook, that
she had an extraordinary knowledge of the medicinal
herbs of the jungle. But all this came slowly, some-
times because of an association in Sandoval's mind;
sometimes voluntarily, and sometimes with question-
ing.

Once when he was telling me some detail of his
life with Rosa Aurora, he suddenly looked at me in-
tently. "I don't know why I am telling you, a Gringa,
all this," he said. And somehow Gringa as he used
it then had a stigma, a scorn usually absent in
Sandoval's gentle speech.

But, bit by bit, as confidence grew, I learned that
Sandoval as a youth, in the hard times that followed
his father's death in Lima, became dissatisfied with
the precarious life of the city, doing whatever came
to hand. He at times worked in a factory that made
floor and roof tiles, at others he tuned pianos, and
once, when he was without work of any kind, he
painted water colors and sold them in the streets.
Water colors of the selva, of the forests he had never
seen. His was a deep desire, born of racial instinct,
to quit the city streets, and so when he learned of a
government colony being developed far over the

Andes, on their Eastern slopes, his decision was im-
mediate. He left Lima, crossed the high Sierra, and
came down to one of the last great frontiers of the
world.

a ln those days, 59 he said, a there was no road, just
a trail; it has been only in the last year that it has
been completed as far as Pangoa, and God only
knows when the government will undertake to push
it farther into the jungle. With only mules and
burros to make the long trip up and over the two
ranges of cordilleras, a dangerous journey in which
at times I have lost many pack animals over the
precipices, life was not easy. And the straggle with
the jungle was constant war against nature."

It seems that the colony in the years between 1920
and 1930 was a small one, mostly populated by peo-
ple who had come from the upper Amazonas regions.
And among these first settlers were Leandra, her
brother Felipe, and her sister Rosa Aurora. They
accepted the newcomer from Lima as a guest in their
house.

"That was in 1926," lie said. "I stayed in the
house of Rosa Aurora and Felipe for six months
Leandra already had the inn and in all that time
I had a slight antipathy for her. But the curious part

of it is that the first night I slept there three people
dreamed that one day Rosa Aurora and I would
marry the Campa Indian cook, Rosa Aurora^
and L My dream was very sad because I thought, I
am only twenty-five and I don't want to marry an
old woman. I want a young and healthy wife who
will bear me sons."

SandovaPs passion for children was a very great
one (he was almost Oriental in his desire for a son) ;
it was very evident in his treatment of Leandra's
child slaves. She left the entire management of the
inn in their hands, and abused them roundly, if only
vocally, when anything went wrong. It was Sandoval
who cut their hair, told them to wash their f aces^
bought them toothbrushes and taught them their use.
It was he who mended their ragged clothing and cut
out new little dresses and pants for the village dress-
maker to sew.

During the months in the house of Rosa Aurora,
he made his arrangements for the free land the gov-
ernment allotted, working with Felipe, growing to
know and to love the forests. Then, his own land
cleared, he went to Lima and eventually returned
with his mother, his brother Alejandro, and two

[**]

young sisters to Pangoa, where they began life anew
in their own thatched house.

Alejandro and Sandoval worked to clear more
land of the great trees and the almost impenetrable
network of lianas, vines, and undergrowth that defy
the muscles and machetes of men. The women made
bread to sell, raised chickens and pigs. The years
were hard, food sometimes scarce, and the few lux-
uries from Lima very, very dear. Sometimes they
were without shoes, and with much-mended clothing,
but, said Sandoval, "I was content. Our friendship
with the De Areas family grew. We saw much of
Rosa Aurora and Felipe, although their cJiacra lay
some nine kilometers from our land which adjoined
the village. In the times when the government was
giving each person one sol a day for food to promote
colonization, Leandra's business was enormous, we
all worked in her inn, cooking, preparing food, or
whatever there was to be done. We all shared in
those days, with each other, whatever we had.

"For the first two years,** he said dreamily, "I
didn't think much about Rosa Aurora, although I
Eked to be in her house. It was my custom to make
the journey to her chacra every Sunday to spend the

OP]

day, and I always took flowers or some small thing
. . . sometimes forest plants for her garden, and
sometimes orchids that I gathered by climbing to
the tops of the tall jungle trees. 55

After two years he realized that this was more
than friendship, that he loved Rosa Aurora, but that
he should ever marry her ever could marry a wom-
an so much older than he never crossed his mind.
Sandoval is one of those rare men whose feeling for
all womanhood is very profound; women are crea-
tures to be treated with all respect and consideration
in all circumstances. Once I asked him, if in the years
of their friendship he always addressed her with the
formal Usted, which literally means "Your Grace,"
or if he used the familiar tu.

"Why, of course not, Senora," he had replied.
"Not until we were formally engaged. It wouldn't
have been good form, do you think? Some of the
modern youth in Lima use tw after short acquaint-
ance, but," he said with distaste, "I think it denotes
a lack of culture."

Another year went by, and a not so happy one.
Rosa Aurora always was on his mind. He loved her;
almost he reverenced her. He considered this clever
woman, who had so much more formal education

1 100]

than he, to be above Mm in social standing. And
also, he was then only twenty-eight and she was
forty-two, and he wanted passionately his children*
But more than children even, he loved Rosa Aurora.

"Qnce, 5? he said, "on a Sunday morning after a
great storm I was going to visit her, carrying In one
hand some rare butterflies I had found. In those years
I was always studying, studying plants and insects,
and Rosa Aurora was always interested In my new
discoveries. In the other hand I had my machete and
was using It frequently, for the wind had blown the
branches of many trees across the footpath, and It
was necessary to cut them away in order to pass.
At one point, instead of using my machete, I grasped
one to throw it aside, very carelessly, without looking,
because I was thinking of Rosa Aurora. There was,
coiled on the branch, a long olive-green snake. We
call it jergon, because the Sierra Indians make a
crude woolen cloth of the same color. It struck me in
the wrist.

"I Immediately tied my handkerchief very tightly
below the elbow, and then with my pocket knife
slashed the wounds made by the teeth of the viper
and inserted a small quantity of potassium per-
manganate. Yes, I always carry it," he answered, in

reply to my question. "Then I looked for the snake.
The bushmaster and the jergon have this peculiar
habit after they have bitten a person they never go
far; sometimes they wait for seven or eight hours
near the same place, and of course it is dangerous for
other people passing. Once I killed a bushmaster
nearly nine hours after it had bitten a Campa In-
dian who was working for me."

"Did you find it?"

"Yes, beside the path. I broke its back with a stick,
and then killed it with my machete."

"And then?"

"I continued on the path to Rosa Aurora's house,
which was only another kilometer."

"But the arm?"

"It was very painful, greatly swollen, and had
turned black by the time I arrived. But," he smiled
at me rather shyly, "I must be rather sentimental.
Do you know what I was thinking? I thought what
happiness to have encountered that jergon. Now I
shall have to stay in her house for a time and she
will take care of me. She may even have to touch me,
and what felicity that will be."

It was then, in those days in her house, that he
knew that she too loved him, but as yet he said noth-

A Family of Forest Dwellers Entering Fangoa

Costumes of both men and women consist of a single loose
garment the cushma. In over four hundred years of
Spanish occupation, this is the only notable item of civilisa-
tion the Forest Dwellers have accepted.

ing ; the difference in age seemed insuperable. More-
over, he, as a newcomer, was desperately poor, while
Felipe and Rosa Aurora had a good chacra, with
many slaves, dozens of chickens and turkeys, mules
and pigs.

Then suddenly came the message that there would
be a fiesta in her house, a despedida, a going-away
party, that she was making the long journey to
Huancayo in the Sierra, and It was implied that the
reason was for some much-needed dentistry. The
journey was of the duration of many days, up and
up over treacherous trails on mule back, and Sando-
val was sad; he couldn't accompany her, because
that would have been improper, but her own Campas
would go with her.

The party was a large one, most of the colony was
there, for Rosa Aurora was much loved. Sandoval's
misery was deep, but taking courage, he asked her
to walk with him to a small pool they knew a little
distance in the adjoining forest. "It is a beautiful
spot," he said, "dark water with a fringe of over-
hanging vines. And Rosa Aurora's eyes were like
the pool, too. I kissed her. And she kissed me, pas-
sionately. And we both wept like children. I because
she was going on a long journey, and because I loved

[103]

her, and she, although I did not know it, because she
was going to Huancayo to enter a convent.

"She had been thinking all this time, 'I am an old
woman in love with a boy. There is nothing more for
me to do but become a nun. ? She had never been to
the Sierra before. She was born and brought up in
the flat Amazonas region, but she had a married
sister who lived there. She would stay with her for a
time, and then take the veil with the Franciscanas.

"And so I saw her off. I helped to strap her bag-
gage and food to the mules, and cautioned the mule
drivers to be careful to see that no harm come to her,
and then with a heavy heart I went back to my work."
In the heights of the Sierra, where lies the market
town of Huancayo, the days are warm with brilliant
sunshine, and intense blue skies. At night, in the rare-
fied air, the brilliant low-hanging stars seem almost
touchable, but the nights are cold. And to one born
in the steamy Amazonas, one with the germs of
malaria always present in the blood, those beautiful
nights are a misery, and the days even in hot sun-
shine a shivering torture.

When the daughter of the lowlands after her long
journey, with the discomfort of sleepless nights in
cold and draughty caves or in crude huts, arrived at

the busy market town, she could not find her sister.
In those days of little communication (mail now ar-
rives once a week in Pangoa) it was impossible to
know where she had gone. Possibly to Lima, but
Rosa Aurora had never been to the coast ; she was ter-
rified to make the journey by train, and moreover
she had not sufficient money. She was heart-sick for
her warm, timeless jungles. And for Sandoval.

"When the news came to me that she had re-
turned, 55 he said, "I vowed I would break this hope-
less relationship. I would not see her again. It was
easier in that time to stay away because Alejandro
was working the chacra and I was assisting Leandra
in the inn, and Sundays were our busy days. But
Rosa Aurora, on the pretext of helping too, which
was a very bold thing for her to do, came on a
Sunday a few weeks after her return. 55

Why, she inquired sadly, did not Sandoval come
to see her any more? And Sandoval had said, "I love
you with all my heart and soul, but do you love me
enough to marry a poor boy, and to brave the crit-
icism of all the colony of what everybody will
say? 55 And she, weeping, had said, "Yes, yes, against
the world if necessary. 55 And so their troth was
pledged in the kitchen of Leandra 5 s inn.

"But," said Sandoval, "when we announced the
engagement to our families and publicly, a war be-
gan. My family was very angry. Why, they said,
should I throw myself away on an old woman? My
mother wept for days, and all of her friends insin-
uated bad things about Rosa Aurora. They implied
things about her past in the Amazonas town of
Iquitos and her dead husband that no one really
knew much about."

I learned in a curious way much later that Sando-
vaFs mother who loved this son more than any of
her other five feared Rosa Aurora, feared that she
who had always lived with servants and slaves who
were salvajes from the jungles, knew, as did Leandra,
the savage secrets, the witchcraft of the selva. And
was her son bewitched? Who knows? Strange things
occur in the land below the equator.

The battle raged bitterly for months. Rosa Au-
rora's family, too, opposed the marriage, and the
whole colony was divided into two camps. Slander Was
rife and the lovers were miserable, seeing each other
but seldom. But Sandoval, now that the step had
finally been taken, stubbornly went to work to con-
struct their house. Those houses of the jungle seem,
at first glance, the utmost in rusticity and simplicity,

[.1061

but until one has seen a man laboring over the broken
terrain of the lush dense forests,, searching out the
proper kinds of palm fronds to roof Ms cottage,
climbing and cutting, one does not realize what a
labor of love and muscle even a small dwelling can be,

Before the house was finished, a traveling priest
came through Pangoa. Pangoa, the new raw colony
that had no house of worship in that most Catholic
land was not entirely forgotten by the Church, for at
rare intervals a mission sent a priest to hear con-
fessions, to perform the marriage rites, and to bap-
tize the children. Many, of course, went without
benefit of clergy, but such a procedure was for the
semi-salvajes, not for cvwlizados such as the De Areas
and the Sandovals.

Sandoval poured out his troubles in the kindly
ear of the old priest. "My son/' replied that saintly
man, "your love is a good one. I shall be here until
next Tuesday, and I will perform the ceremony."

When the families realized that nothing under
Heaven could prevent this union to which the Church
had given sanction, there were feeble protests about
the indecent haste, but the banns were published, and
there was great activity in the house of Rosa Aurora
and Felipe. In the general activity that ensued.

enmities were forgotten and everybody worked to
make the wedding an event in the colony. Sandoval
smiled an ironic little smile. "The villagers knew/ 9
he said, "that the festivities would include much good
food, that pigs and cows would be slaughtered* and
that Rosa Aurora and I would make large quantities
of pastries and biscuits.

"And so we were married/ 3 reflected Sandoval.
"For a time, until my house was finished, we lived
with Felipe, and every day I loved Rosa Aurora
more, and she worshiped me. Then we moved to
my house in the village, near Leandra's inn, and we
all worked together, sharing whatever we had. They
were hard years, but there were harder to come. In
the time of the world depression the Government of
President Leguia was overthrown, and the new gov-
ernment in Lima forgot the colony of Pangoa. There
was no more money from the state. With the change
of administration we were left in a bad way; the
old government still owed us thousands of soles"

There was, it seemed, much misery in those years.
The Sandovals had little; the old mother and the
sisters went back to Lima, leaving only Alejandro,
SandovaPs adoring younger brother, to help in the
grim struggle. Sometimes there were epidemics of

[ 108 ]

fever and, as there was no money to buy medicines,
many people died. Shoes became an unheard of
luxury, and even SandovaPs adored Rosa Aurora
had to go barefoot.

Sometimes during SandovaPs reminiscing it was a
little difficult to know just how much he idealized his
dead wife, leaving to the dim past all that had been
unpleasant, and remembering only that their love
had been great. From a remark dropped here and
there, in a story collected bit by bit, I sensed that
Rosa Aurora had been fiercely jealous an aging
woman married to a youth who had been much sought
after by the senoritas of Pangoa, a woman who could
not, or would not, give her husband what he longed
for, a son. She, because of her age, was terrified of
becoming pregnant. And always there was that gnaw-
ing fear that Sandoval might be unfaithful to the
point of having a mistress who would bear him. chil-
dren.

An aged woman of Pangoa once came to visit me.
She was a gossipy old crone who loved to relate long
tales of childbirth and the intimacies of all the col-
ony. "Rosa Aurora," she sighed. "Now, J think that
in spite of her age she could have had a child, but she
was cold, completely frigid . . . why Don Esteban

loved her so madly I never could see . . why he
couldn't have married my granddaughter," she grum-
bled. "But," she lowered her voice to a whisper, "who
knows what herbs she gathered from the jungles to
keep him faithful? Those Campa women know many
secrets." She grinned mysteriously, showing her
toothless gums. "They know the roots that produce
fecundity and the herbs that produce sterility. They
know which kind makes a woman sterile for six
months or a year, and another for all time. I think
Rosa Aurora knew too, because she told me once that
if she had a child she would die, but the baby would
live." She knew beyond a doubt, and there was no de-
tail in the village that escaped her watery old eyes,
that Sandoval had been faithful, even in those times
when Rosa Aurora's failing health kept her semi-
invalid for months at a time.

But the memories that remained in SandovaPs
mind were only of the most precious kind. That Rosa
Aurora had always herself made his shirts, that they
were always spotlessly clean, that she herself went to *
the river to wash them; that even when food was
scarce she could always surprise him with some little
delicacy. He remembered that they both worked hard,
and went to bed with the sun, and that often they

rose In the early dawn to see the bright planet Venus
riding down the skies In her Heavenly course. When
he thought of these things, his eyes grew dark with
nostalgia for the days that would never come again.

"In 1939, 5 * he said, "malaria was epidemic In Pan-
goa and many people died. Rosa Aurora had a recur-
rence of the fever and was miserable much of the
time ; moreover, she had a small tropical ulcer which
had troubled her for years, and I thought this might
be sapping her strength. The ulcer was becoming
more painful daily.

"The village was greatly pleased when a doctor ar-
rived, sent by the government In Lima. I immediately
brought him to see Rosa Aurora, and he assured me
that he could have her completely well again in a
short time, and gave her an Injection of sis cubic
centimeters of salvarsan. Now, I knew the use of neo-
salvarsan, but at that time I didn't know the other.
It was new In my experience. That was on the eighth
of July. He came the next day and gave her also in
an injection, four cubic centimeters of plasmoquina,
and for the three following days the same. On the
eleventh and twelfth her fever was very high, but by
the sixteenth she seemed a little better. On the eight-
eenth he repeated the salvarsan, six cubic centimeters,

[JUJ]

and once more the fever abated. But by the twenty-
first her condition was very grave ; her torso was cov-
ered with dark spots, and the liver and intestines
terribly swollen and congested.

"Naturally," he continued, "I was very much
alarmed, and I went to the doctor's office, only to be
informed that he had gone to Lima. His young son,
just a boy, was in the office ; he, of course, knew noth-
ing, but he gave me a booklet which fully explained
the uses of salvarsan. And as I read, I realized that
she had been poisoned, and that the antidote was
adrenalin. I procured that from the state medical
supply, and worked night and day to alleviate her
pain. By that time the terrible congestion caused by
too much salvarsan had brought on appendicitis.

"But by the twenty-fifth she was burning with
fever, and about her mouth the flesh grew dark. We
were using this room, 55 he said, indicating the wall
just behind him, "our own house was just then being
used to store the rice crop, and that night when she
had fallen into a light sleep, I lay beside her, hoping
that she might sleep the night through, and watch-
ing her as she slept. There was only the flickering
light of a candle that shone from the next room, and
shadows played across her white coverlet. Suddenly,

\_112]

just on her solar plexus, there appeared a shadow
that had the form of a skull ; I was startled and shook
the cover gently not to waken her, and it went away,
but even then I had no premonition of death. I had
faith in my own medical knowledge, and I thought I
could make her well again.

"But," he continued in a toneless voice, a voice
that seemed to echo with all the sadness of the world,
"It was useless. 59

He was silent for a long time. "She died in the
dawn of the twenty-eighth. I held her in my arms all
night long ; she seemed to sleep, but it was a stupor,
There was just beginning to be a little light when she
opened her eyes with great effort and looked at me.
Even In spite of the darkening spots on her face
her skin had always been lovely; it was almost
white " he said with just a trace of pride in his
voice, "she was beautiful. Her great dark eyes wand-
ered the room. She murmured, *Ya me llego la Tiora;
adios con todos*

"She closed her eyes, but in a few minutes she
opened them again and said, in an even fainter voice,
*Dios mio, receive my spirit.' Then there was that
awful minute of the death agony. . . ."

After a while Sandoval continued, "The twenty-

eighth of July is our National holiday, our day of in-
dependence, and for that reason there had been much
merry-making in the village* Just at that moment,
when I held Rosa Aurora dying in my arms, a
drunken reveler passed, obscenely shouting a song
that she had loved a very sad lover's song that be-
gins 'Your eyes are closed in death 5 . . . ."

In the tropics decomposition comes with horrify-
ing rapidity on the heels of the Reaper. In seven or
eight hours a body is unrecognizable, bloated, and dis-
colored. Burials are performed with all possible haste.

For two or three days after that, Sandoval kept to
the room in which Rosa Aurora had died, seeing no
one, with black rage and hatred in his heart for the
doctor who had killed his Senora. At that point in his
narrative he asked me rather hesitantly, "Do you be-
lieve in life after death?"

"Beyond the shadow of a doubt," I replied. "I was
in New York when my husband died in Shanghai, but
as soon as I could arrange my affairs I, too, went to
China with the purpose of carrying out his unfinished
expedition. I had the strange feeling when I arrived,
because I hadn't seen him in a coffin he was cre-
mated in China that it wouldn't cause me the least
surprise if I met him on the street or in a hotel lobby*

One night I suddenly wakened from a sound sleep for
no apparent reason, and there in the doorway stood
Bill. He was leaning against the door jamb in a char-
acteristic pose 3 dressed in a white linen suit. Why, I
thought, does he wear brown shoes when white ones
are so much more attractive? It was so natural that
I relaxed and went immediately to sleep."

SandovaPs eyes expressed his appreciation. "I
could feel Rosa Aurora's presence in that room for
about three days. After that she went away."

Then Sandoval paid a visit to Felipe. 4 *Lend me
your revolver," he said. "I am now going to kill that
doctor."

Felipe and Leandra and a few intimate friends
spent hours reasoning with him, telling him of the
consequences that would follow, the misery he would
suffer. Better they said to let the state punish the
doctor, let him suffer for his ignorance. Why not first
write to the authorities in Lima and also to the Pre-
fect in Jauja, and have justice properly done? So
Sandoval wrote his letters, and, with ever-growing
bitterness, waited. But no letters came.

"I shall go myself to Jauja and put the case per-
sonally before the authorities," thought Sandoval,
and packing a few things, he left by one of the di-

tils']

lapidated groaning trucks that make that extraordi-
nary journey over the Andes.

The jungles were left behind and the truck had
reached a litle village in the high barren Sierra when
It was hailed by four uniformed, armed Guardian
Cwiles. "Is there a Senor Esteban Sandoval y Gar-
razatua riding with you?" one asked of the Indian
driver, at the same time thumbing official papers
that he took from his breast pocket. The driver
scanned his passengers, looked blankly at Sandoval
and said, "No, he is not with me. Possibly he is riding
with the truck that comes later," and started his
motor, driving like one possessed until he came to a
bend in the road.

Sandoval descended; the chauffeur hurriedly
searched through the mass of boxes and bundles tied
on the top, and passed down his little suitcase^ whis-
pering, "Escape, man, escape, 55 and indicated a tiny
path that led from the main road.

All day long, for this was still early morning, San-
doval with his little suitcase strapped to his shoul-
ders, followed the rough trail up and up, over coun-
try completely unknown to him. By five in the
afternoon he had reached a high windy plateau at
an altitude of some twelve thousand feet, and with

the approach of night, he shivered in his Eght cloth-
ing. There were a few little scattered stone houses in
the distance, dwellings of the Quechua Indians. Be-
fore he reached the first one, he met a lad of perhaps
seventeen or eighteen years, and asked for shelter for
the night. The boy seemed friendly enough and took
him to his home, which he occupied with his old
mother. The mother looked suspiciously at the stran-
ger, and inquired who he was and what might be his
business.

There was nothing to do but say that he was flee-
ing from the police, and beg that the boy show him
how he might find his way down out of the Sierra,
down to Pangoa again, for to lose a path is also to
lose life in that forgotten world of tumbled granite
mountains. The old woman was frightened to keep a
fugitive in her house, but she was also sorry for the
young man with so grief -stricken a face. "But to go
over the mountains alone . * . ?" She shook her head.
"Have you no machete to defend yourself? It is dan-
gerous because farther down there are tigres. Also
there are the evil spirits that roam the lonely trails.' 5

It was finally agreed that for a small sum he might
spend the night and the boy would show him an al-
most forgotten trail early in the morning. The boy

said Sandoval might share his bed, of which he was
inordinately proud dried herbs covered with llama
skins harboring large colonies of lice.

Because of the vermin and fear of pursuit, San-
doyal could not sleep, and in the cold darkness of
four o'clock, with only a small amount o dried com
which the Quechuas could .give him, he and the boy
left, stumbling up a rocky trail, up and up to a
range that lies at an altitude of between fourteen and
fifteen thousand feet. Sandoval, whose blood was
thinned by many attacks of fever and the life of the
hot lower lands, shivered miserably in the gray dawn.
There, at the top of the divide, he could see stretch-
ing down endlessly into the blue distance a faint
thread of trail, used in bygone times by cargo mules,
but abandoned for many years.

For three days he walked over that impossible ter-
rain, soaked with rains, burning with fever, hungry,
exhausted, and praying for the safe passage of Rosa
Aurora's soul.

It was late in the afternoon of the third day that
he came on the first dwelling of the jungle Indians.
Here he begged for food. They had nothing but the
root of yucca, which he ate without salt, and con-
tinued on to the next encampment where he found a

Campa from Pangoa. As In China, there Is also the
"grapevine telegraph" In El Peru, and news had
reached Pangoa that Sandoval had fled from the
Guardia Civil and had taken the old mule-trail hack
home. Food had been sent to him and Instructions to
go to the chacra of the Rodriguez family that lay at
some distance across the river from the village proper
of Pangoa. Thus he spent the third night in the hut
of the forest Indians, continuing on the fourth day,
guided by the Campa from Pangoa, to the friendly
home of the Rodriguez family.

Felipe, Leandra, the chief of the little police
cuartel, and a few friends who could be trusted, gath-
ered In secret the next day in the Rodriguez house to
see what could be done. The police sergeant had re-
ceived official papers for Sandoval's arrest, but he
had assured the searching Guardias that Sandoval
had gone to the high Sierra, probably to Concepeion ;
he didn't know how they could have missed him on
the road. The papers stated that Sandoval was a dan-
gerous agitator, a communist, a menace to the peace-
ful community of Pangoa.

"Now we all know," said the Sergeant, "that this
is something instigated by the doctor against you in
Lima. He has influence in high places there, and has

seen the protests you have written to the government
on his criminal neglect in the death of Rosa Aiirora.
But what can we do? They will return to hunt you
here when they cannot find you in the Sierra. There
is nothing to do but flee to the forests."

By that time SandovaPs situation was an open
secret in the colony, and there was all sympathy for
him. Many were the mothers who remembered his
services to children burning with fever, the cuts
dressed, and his freely but carefully given advice
whenever sought. And the doctor, they were quick to
realize, knew nothing of medicine, but his political
influence was enormous. And they poor colonists all
but forgotten by the government what could they
do?

And so one night, with only a machete and a few
little belongings in a pack on his shoulders, Sandoval
slipped into the forests, bitterness in his heart, grief
in his soul, alone in the world, but praying always as
he went for the soul of Rosa Aurora. It is a beautiful
phrase in Spanish, "Andaba yo y rogaba."

For a time he lived in isolated spots with the
Campas in deep forest, but eventually he found his
way into the Gran Pajo7iaL 9 one of the least-known
provinces of El Peru an immense extent of primeval

forests In part, and for the rest, rolling hills covered
with the tall lush grass from which it takes its name.
Tribes of Indians live there with a fierce and prim-
itive hatred for any invader of their primeval domain.
To venture there is not a safe procedure at any time.

"Several days' journey into the Pajonal" San-
doval told me, "there is a mission of Franciscan
padres. I stayed with them. They are good men, and
they told me of a bridge being built over a river
where I could probably get wort. And so I went.
There were five peons cutting trees and dragging
them from the forest to make planks for the bridge. I
worked with them, slaving from dawn until dusk at
one end of a big cross-cut saw to make the boards, all
for a few cents a day.

"It was the life of an animal no, worse than that,
because no animal ever worked as we did. There was
never a scrap of anything to read ; we slept in crude
huts on the ground, and the food was rice and yucca,
yucca and rice, with occasionally a few boiled green
bananas. And I grew to hate with a bitter intensity
both man and God as the weary weeks and months
went by.

"But one night, just a few days before the bridge
was finished, I had a dream." He paused. "No/ 5 he

said, with his eyes fixed In the far distance, "It was a
vision. The Virgin Mary with her halo of pure white
light ; the sky behind her was deep, deep blue, pointed
with the bright light of myriads of stars. And she
smiled at me.

"Then Senora, I left, because the bridge was fin-
ished. I made confession to a Franciscan padre and
gradually the bitterness, but never the loneliness,
left me. When I arrived in Puerto Ocopa, on the Pan-
goa River, there were letters for me. There they get
mail once a month by canoe. I was free once more ;
friends in Lima too had been busy, and I had been
exonerated of the charge lodged against me. The
Prefect In Jauja who was a friend of the doctor had
been changed, and there was nothing more to fear. So
I went back to Pangoa, a ragged emaciated tramp,
scarcely able to walk' when I crossed the campo to
this inn."

At that point I hadn't the courage to ask him fur-
ther of the doctor, and I waited a more opportune
moment. It came sometime later when I, myself, was
journeying SandovaPs old trails too. Guided by his
deep knowledge of the jungles and rivers, we had
reached Puerto Ocopa where the kindly Peruvian

nuns had given us a long dugout canoe and sakvajes
to man It to the next village on the river, a hundred
miles away. A hundred miles of treacherous rushing
river, with rapids over which we shot with dizzying
speed, the menace of whirlpools to be avoided, but
greater than all these dangers were the submerged
logs which may snap these comparatively fragile
canoes in two like a matehstick.

Where in all this wilderness, I thought, could one
find refuge if such a thing should occur ? For endless
miles the river banks were a solid wall of emerald
green; behind them lay the mysteries of untrodden,
uncharted jungle. Sometimes there were flat sandy
beaches where tributary rivers joined the great one
that would after a thousand miles become a part of
the Amazonas at a point far from the Atlantic.

At such a place, we were skirting a heap of drift-
wood rubbish when our canoe was caught in a sudden
little whirlpool. The Indian in the bow shot over-
board into the shallow water and Sandoval yelled to
me to jump. The other Indians were overboard, fight-
ing to extricate the canoe to calmer waters, and San-
doval and I walked a stretch of sandy beach while
the Indians continued to pull the canoe past possible
points of danger.

"If," I asked Sandoval, "our canoe had been caught
in deeper water and lost with aH of our equipment,
what would becomes of us?"

"We might," he replied, "in a few days be picked
up by passing Indians ; it is hard to say, but I know
what happened to one man whose canoe struck a log
and was broken in two. It was somewhere near here,
and the man was the doctor who killed Rosa Aurora.

"For what reason he was making this voyage I do
not know, but his canoe was split in pieces ; he lost
everything, but he and his Indians escaped. They
landed on a sandy beach and went to work to gather
firewood and make a shelter for the night. Now the
palmera which is the best kind to make a good shelter
is also the kind in which the coral snake often lives.
The doctor, being new to the country, did not know
that, so when he grasped a palm frond he was bitten
in the arm by a coral snake coiled in it.

"Yes," he answered my question, "they were in a
few days picked up by Indians poling upstream, but
although we are now only one day from Puerto
Ocopa, it takes four days to get back against the cur-
rent. There, as you know, there is nothing but a few
Indians and the convent of nuns. Then too, as you
also know, there is the mule journey to Pangoa."

I dreaded to ask the question but I said, a DId he
live?"

"Yes, 55 said Sandoval, "lie lived. And as far as I

know, lie still lives, in Lima. He Is blind, he is deaf,
and he is also mad."

Jeavez Tt&ttt a 1/a.atant

' * H W E A 7 E YOU
DAWNED?'*

BJENOS BIAS, SENOEA. How have yon dawned?"
"Why, thank you," I said rolling over in
my camp-cot, "I have dawned practically all
night. My bed is full of fleas."

Sandoval grinned and scratched. "Mine, I believe,
is full of lice."

And so my day began. I am no longer living at
Leandra's inn; I have a little thatched-roof chalet
which lies in a jungle clearing, and I have rented it
from some Quechua Indians for sixty-seven cents a
month. That includes the services of the small slave
Lucho> who is very charming and useful except when
he eats all the butter. Butter is an entirely new ex-
perience in his young life (not to say scarce in mine

at the moment) for which he has a passion although
It gives him frightful Indigestion.

My house is always full of Indians of one kind or
another. Some of them work for me, helping to look
for the little bear. These Indians are the painted kind
salvages from the forests with long dresses and
bows and arrows and an enormous appetite for the
food the Gringa gives them. They are everywhere;
you stumble over them in the dark as they sleep on
the dirt floor of the kitchen or the drawing room
(which Is also my bedroom) or wherever they find
themselves when they happen to be sleepy.

Then there are the Quechuas from whom I rent
my cottage, drifting in and out there are no doors
because they have reserved one room in my house
to store the rice crop which at the moment they are
husking, an interesting process accomplished by dex-
terous use of the feet.

The life that passes through my house is varied.
Dozens of times a day Flora visits me with all her
numerous family. Flora is a speckled hen with out-
rageously degage tail feathers and more confidence
in her own personality than any mother of a large
family I have ever known. Then, too, there is Flora's
friend, who Is somewhat more shy, but very persist-

ent. She develops, every afternoon, an urgent desire
to lay an egg, and the best place to do It, in her opin-
ion, is in my bed (an old Inca custom) . She often de-
posits a much-needed egg there, thereby causing a
great question to arise in my mind. Do I want the
egg more or the lice less?

As yet no bushmasters have visited me, but perhaps
I shall have that pleasure. I learned, after taking my
cottage, that the owner had died three weeks pre-
viously of the bite of one encountered in the bath-
room. The bathroom is a stream which lies a few
yards from the house very pretty too. Sandoval,
every morning, makes the fire while I wash my face
in the bathroom.

Usually the painted Indians share the left-over
rice or beans or spaghetti of the night before for
breakfast, eked out by enormous quantities of ba-
nanas and yucca, roasted in ashes, but Sandoval, be-
ing the chief of the expedition, and I, who am more
or less civilized^ have a real breakfast with coffee.
The work is divided. Sandoval picks the cockroaches
out of the various bags of food, and I extricate the
ants from the sugar.

Recently we have had pancakes because I en-
countered in a village "bodega a rusty dusty old tin

[130']

of Royal bating powder, for which no one seemed to
know the use. I guard It caref ully, using only a spar-
ing amount, for I think perhaps I may never, never,
find another. The pancakes are sparkling gems of
culinary art.

At times I must admit that the quantity of both
animal and vegetable life in the land below the equa-
tor, and the rapid growth of both, is a little startling.
For example, you have to remove a large overnight
excrescence of toadstools from around the sink,
which is a ten-gallon Standard Oil tin.

But this morning, when I opened the precious tin
of Royal baking powder, I found that" it too had
grown. It was so completely full that it even had the
imprint of the lettering of the lid in reverse on the
powder. Now imagine a perfectly respectable can of
New England baking powder going haywire in the
tropics ! The thought is depressing.

Later, in the course of my household duties, I
stumbled over Tzongiri (his paint is a particularly
beautiful shade of Chinese lacquer red) so many
times that I sent him to market, that is to say, to the
jungles to hunt and bring meat for dinner. He had
just eaten a large kettle full of papaya jam I had
made. The jam hadn't turned out very well, but he

took his bow and arrows, tucked up Ms long gown and
disappeared.

During the morning one of my Quechua neighbor
women came to visit me and borrow fire ; hers had un-
fortunately gone out. She gathered the live coals ex-
pertly in her bare hands, enclosed them in dry corn
husks and trotted off . Later she returned with the gift
of a small squash ; this I cooked for supper.

The rest of my morning was occupied in making
more muslin bags in which to guard the food. I have
invented a system of hanging them to a wire to keep
out the insect life, but at times even that doesn't
work. A Fifth Columnist ant will tell another, "La
Grlnga is hoarding food, but I know a way to get at
it," and armies sneak up in the night.

Sandoval worked all morning in the bathroom, im-
proving the shower which is a waterfall conducted in
a hollow log to such a position that it falls conven-
iently on the shoulders. During the entire morning he
saw only one small snake, and it, he said, was not
poisonous.

After the bags were finished, I spent an hour or so
with a sterilized needle, picking small animals of the
burrowing kind from my toes. This is a very necessary
part of the daily tasks for, if left to their own devices,

they become permanent residents and result in infec-
tions.

Early in the afternoon Tzongiri appeared, looking
very pleased with himself. Had he brought meat? && Si
Senora, much meat ; good meat." He opened the bag
slung over his shoulder and produced, one by one,
five small monkeys. Brownish, grayish little creatures*
nocturnal animals that he had surprised in their
sleep. A whole family from the grandmother down to
the baby. I had instructed Mm to hunt armadillo,
which, when pot-roasted, is very palatable.

"What a barbarity ," said Sandoval, "but they are
a rather rare species ; I shall prepare their sMns for
the museum in Lima."

"I shall take a nap," I said firmly, which I did, and
I dreamed that I was a vegetarian who never, never
touched meat.

By the time I had finished my siesta, had my bath,
and dressed for dinner in a comparatively clean suit
of slacks, it was time to think about cooking again.

fii What shall we have for dinner?" I asked San-
dovaL "We have rice and beans and spaghetti. Which
do you prefer?"

"I am not very hungry," he grimaced as he dusted
arsenic powder on the last of the monkey skins to pre-

serve them. "Besides, the Indians are cooking just
now. 55 Three of them with their skirts tucked up
under them squatted by the burning logs on the
kitchen floor, roasting bananas and yucca.

"Well then," I said, "let's play rummy."

My luggage is carried in long cylindrical duffle
bags, and always the thing you want is at the bottom.
The playing cards were no exception. But in the ex-
ploration I encountered a bottle of Peruvian wine, the
cheap red kind that costs about twelve cents. So we
played rummy and drank the red wine until all the
Indians fell asleep on the floor.

"Now, 55 1 said, "we must really think about f ood."

iC We might have hot chocolate, 55 suggested San-
doval. "There isn't any more coffee. 55

"Also, we have squash, 55 1 remembered.

Sandoval went to the kitchen to revive the dying
fire.

**What 5 s in this pot? 55 he said, coming back to the
drawing room with, a kettle in one hand and the lan-
tern in the other.

I lifted the cover and looked. The effect would
probably have been the same had I seen my small
niece and nephew in it. Two whole monkeys^ nicely
browned.

A Youth of the Campa Tribe

The -feather-light arrows of cane have brought down
wood doves which he carries in the bag over his shoulder.

"Very well/* said Sandoval, <c the menu for tonight

seems to be In this order ; red wine, squash, hot choco-
late, and monkeys. 5 *

In all, an interesting day, I always look forward to
tomorrow.

ATAHUASCA

OTJXD YOU LIKE TO COME WITH ME,"

Wsaid Sandoval, "to visit some Indians,
some salvages who have their encamp-
ment about three kilometers the other side of the
river? They may have found some traces of your
bear/ 5

It was early morning and as yet not very hot, al-
though I doubt if it ever gets as hot in Pangoa as it
does, say, in New York City. So we started out, cross-
ing the little swinging bridge which is like those used
in the time of the Incas, and followed a heavily
overgrown trail down the noisy, babbling river. Every
now and then Sandoval caught a butterfly in his net,
said it was a papilla or a morpho paplrms, but the

[ JSff ]

great electric-blue ones which floated everywhere and
which are so beautiful, had, said he, no scientific
value whatever.

As we came nearer the encampment., the jungle
growth became heavier, and many times Sandoval
slashed at great thick lianas that overhung the patch.
"You see this one, Sefiora?" and he pointed to one he
had just cut which oozed a whitish liquid, "That is
called ayahuasca"

"Isn't that/ 5 I asked, "a Quechua word? What
does It mean?"

"The Rope of Death," answered Sandoval "I
think it is probably weE named ; it has very peculiar
properties."

"Such as ... ? 55 I said, sitting down on a log to
light a cigarette, but first making sure that no snakes
lurked near it.

"Well, 55 Sandoval began, "the salvages, as weE as
the Sierra Indians, make a brew of it which, with cer-
tain rites, they drink* They say it frees the soul from
the body to travel where it will and to discover what
it may. 55

"And what do they discover? 55

"Most often it is used to find lost or hidcten things.
Once, I remember, Santos, the mule driver who was

[1S7]

taking cargo and a mallbag between here and Atal-
aya, lost, somehow, the bag of mail, and he was wor-
ried because he earns a little every month from the
government. So he went to Tzongiri, who knows how
to use ayahuasca y and the nest day he told the mule
driver where the lost bag of mail was. And sure
enough, when Santos reached the spot Tzongiri had
indicated, there was the bag of mail deep in a cane-
brake, where it wouldn't have been found for months
and probably would have been washed away by the
rains, for it was near the river's edge. 55

"Ayahuasca" I said, "I should think is a most use-
ful preparation." I puffed on my cigarette for a
while. "Why couldn't you prepare it commercially
and sell It? You could probably make your fortune."

Sandoval looked at me strangely. "Ayatmasca is a
form of magic," he said. "It can be used either as
white or black magic, and I do not want to have the
consequences of its misuse on my soul."

I must have looked as I felt thoroughly rebuked,
for he too, lighted a cigarette and sat down. "It is
not well to deal with forces imperfectly known,
Senora. I once knew a man a bianco, too who med-
dled with aydhuasca"

A flock of brilliant toucans flew over, high above

\_138]

the forest giants, screaming raucously, I sat in si-
lence, hoping that Sandoval would continue the story
of the white man who had used, or misused, the rope
of death.

"This "bianco it was several years ago came to
Pangoa and stayed at Leandra's inn. I, too, was there,
and the bianco was very friendly to me, which made
me suspicious. 55 He smoked quietly a while, and I
pondered the age-old distrust of Orientals (for
Indians are Orientals) towards the whites. And I
thought, too, that Sandoval might well be suspicious.
Four hundred years in this timeless country are not
long enough to cause the depredations of the first
Spaniards to be forgotten. Pizarro's treachery in the
murder of Atahuallpa for his great room filled with
gold and a greater one filled with silver is still remem-
bered.

It was almost as if SandovaPs thought had been
transferred to me. "You know, too, that when, the
Spaniards became impatient and began to quarrel
among themselves, wanting to melt down the treasure
and divide it, Pizarro broke his sacred promise to the
Indian King and murdered him?* 5

Again I nodded. He continued, "At the time of the
death of Atahuallpa in Cajamarca there were thou-

sands and thousands of llama-loads of gold and silver
on their way there as part of the Inca's ransom.
What became of all this wealth, the Spaniards never
knew. Perhaps they did not care just then, for they
had more gold than they had ever dreamed existed."

"Do you think/' I said, "that perhaps the Indians
Md the gold in caves and under rocks in the high,
cold Sierra?" Sandoval said that he did, and 1 mur-
mured, "How fantastic."

"Not half so fantastic," he retorted, "as all the
gold you have buried in the United States." Then he
smiled and said, "However, this bianco stayed rather
a time in Pangoa, and went with me on collecting
trips for butterflies. Finally I discovered that some-
one had told him I knew how to prepare ayaJmasca;
it seems that he wanted to drink it and find out where
some of the hidden gold was."

"And do you know how to prepare it correctly?" I
asked.

"Why, yes," replied Sandoval. "I once cured Tzon-
giri of snake bite, and he, as a return favor, taught
me to prepare it ; but I have never used it. The bianco
offered me money to show him, but I refused."

"Why didn't he go to Tzongiri?"

"Because, Sefiora, it takes many years of living
here to gain the confidence of a salvaje sufficiently for
him to tell yon anything anything at all.' 3

"But he got it anyway?"

"Yes, there was another man, a cwilhado who had
lived among the salvajes^ recently come here from
Loreto, who knew the secret. He and the bianco bar-
gained. The bianco finally paid the price the Loretano
wanted in order to start a papaya plantation. He
bought with the money many hectares of land,, which
he cleared and planted, but when the first crop was
about to ripen^ a strange plague killed all the fruit.
His baby took the fever and died, and his wife ran
away and left him. He took to drinking a whole bottle
of aguardiente a day, and then two. He didn't live
long,"

"Did you ever hear of the bianco after he bought
the secret?"

"He came to Pangoa once again, dressed in very
good clothes, with money to gamble and to buy
aguardiente. You know Quiroz who keeps the bodega?
And how his fingers itch for money? Well, he had a
woman who liked money too, in fact better than she
did Quiroz ; so much so that she followed the bianco

to the Sierra where he lived- We never saw her after
that, but I believe she ended up in a bad house some-
place."

"Did the bianco ever tell you about finding the
hidden gold? 5 '

"Yes," said Sandoval slowly. "One night when he
was full of aguardiente, he boasted to me that after
he had drunk the ayahuasca he had seen a vision of
a cave and its exact location a treasure cave. He
talked very loudly that night, and said he was going
to drink more ayahuasca and become the richest man
in El Peru. He had come to the jungles to get more
of the vine."

We walked on slowly toward the encampment of
the salvages, and I waited patiently until Sandoval
saw fit to continue the story. There is a time to ask
questions and a time to be silent, that is, at least with
Indians.

"It happened," said Sandoval walking slowly and
swinging his machete, "that when the bianco was
ready to make the trip back up over the Andes, he
journeyed with me. In those days I had many mules
and I trafficked in coffee from the lowlands and
brought back manufactured products from the coast.
When we reached the little Sierra town where he

lived, there was a big fair in progress, a fiesta with
hundreds of Indians from miles around. AE the inns
were full, so the bianco invited me to stay in Ms
house. My business took me several days, but, as it
neared completion, the bianco came to me, asking a
favor. He wanted me to go on a hunting trip with
him, and as I had accepted his hospitality, I couldn't
very well refuse.

"So the next morning we started out with peons to
carry our food, blankets, and rifles. We rode up into
the Andes until late that afternoon when we reached
a narrow valley between barren crags. Glaciers were
above us, and the cold penetrated to the very marrow
of our bones. After we had finished our supper by
the fire the peons had made of llama dung, the bianco
said, *Now, Senor, we shaE do a little hunting. 9

"We left the two peons in camp, and he and I took
torches and started up the valley, I stumbling over
boulders in the dark and bruising myself against the
sheer rock walls. I knew then what kind of hunting
the bianco was doing, and that he -was afraid to go
alone. I also knew that he had asked me because there
wasn*t anyone else he could trust,

"We wormed our way through a rocky crevice and
up the side of a shaly crag. Dimly I could see the

chasm that fell away below us ; a misstep in the dark,
and one would fall into eternity. Yet the bianco
seemed to know the way as though it were engraved
on his mind. He crept along a narrow ledge, telling
me to follow him. It was hardly wide enough for a
cat. Then he stopped, said Wait 5 to me, and disap-
peared, it seemed, almost into solid rock. I shivered
there in the biting cold on the edge of God knows
what abyss til his torch reappeared from the cave.
'Help me, 5 he said. 'Hold this bag,' and he handed me
a large, rough cloth sack into which he began drop-
ping heavy things that clinked as they fell. He made
several trips into the cave and finaEy said, 'That's
all. We must go back.'

"The bag was very heavy, but he insisted on carry-
ing it himself. Once he uttered a muffled scream as he
lost Ms footing on the ledge and nearly fell, but at
last we stumbled over the last of that unholy trail
and came to the little camp where the peons were
sleeping, wrapped, head and all, in their blankets by
the dying fire.

" 'You shall see, Senor,' said the bianco, and he
opened the bag and began to spread out his loot.
Never, Senora, shall I hope to see again in this life such
things of exquisite beauty, even tarnished by age as

they were. There were sprays of flowers so delicate
and soft that they bent in the cold night wind. There
were all manner of animals and birds cunningly
wrought, and thin gold beaten disks that represented
the sun, and others of silver for the moon. There were
marvels beyond counting. 5 '

4C And the bianco," I said, "did he appreciate their
beauty? 59

"No, Senora, he saw only a metal he could melt
and sell for currency."

By that time, Sandoval and I had arrived at the
encampment of the salvages, their houses no more
than poles on which were high, thatched roofs in a
deep jungle clearing. The women were busy over the
cooking fires, steaming sweet yellow maize and yucca
root in great clay pots. The men lay on mats and
chewed coca leaves; babies and puppies sprawled
under foot in the dust. Brilliant tame parrots and
toucans flew everywhere.

The women, with shy almond-eyed glances, offered
us corn and yucca; tiny Oriental dolls they seemed
with their black page-boy hair, copper skin and
lacquer-red paint. A curiously soft people who drifted
through centuries of brilliant tropical sunshine,

changing only as the forest around them changed,
taking root, blossoming, bearing fruit and seed, re-
turning to parent earth to emerge in other forms
not for these dwellers of the green mansions were the
gold and silver of the austere and glaciered heights.

But the bianco, the bianco,, I wondered, what did
Tie do with the gold?

Sandoval ate the last of his corn and wiped his fin-
gers on a silky banana leaf, and then said, "I saw the
bianco only once after the 'hunting* trip. It was some
months afterward, on my next journey to the Sierra,
I went to his house as courtesy demands, and a serv-
ant showed me to his bedroom. A skull, with dried
yellow skin stretched over it, lay on a big white pil-
low. Sunken, feverish eyes gazed *at me, and a with-
ered mouth that had once been full and sensuous
mumbled something incomprehensible. The servant,
as he showed me out, murmured, *He Is dying, Senor.'
And of course he was right."

It was later in the afternoon when the brassy disk
of the sun was well on Its westward course, and San-
doval and I were again on the jungle path toward
Pangoa, that I asked, "Do you think the Sierra In-
dians know the secret places of Atahuallpa's hidden,
gold?"

"Si, Senora/ 5 he answered. "Not only do they
know those, but they also know many ancient hidden
mines worked long before the Spaniards came. For
years they have been carefully concealed from the
blancos until such a time as . . . 5?

Sandoval was silent for a long time. Finally he
said, "El Peru, Senora, is essentially an Indian coun-
try; the population of the Indians is increasing as
the small white proportion is not. Centuries may
pass, but one day when the white man and his greed
for gold are gone, Atahuallpa's treasures will again
shine in the light of the sun, and again will the mines
echo to the tread of workmen's feet, and again water
will run through silver channels and send its sprays
sparkling upward through golden fountains. Per-
haps even in the Temples of the Sun."

L U C H O * S SUPPER

The lice and the bushmasters in the little Quechua
cottage finally proved too depressing, so I have taken
a different house. This one also rents for sixty-seven
cents a month, but it is in the village proper of

Pangoa. It fronts on the a plaza," and I can see all
the village pass ; the cargo mules with bananas, the
painted Indians with their bows and arrows, and the
trucks that come, twice a week, down from the Andes,
and also the swift storms which come racing down
from the jungled hills.

My new house has three rooms and a separate
kitchen. The drawing room has only half-walls of
split cane. For that reason sometimes out-landers
think it is a store and come to buy two pennies worth
of salt or five centavos of green bananas, but on the
whole the advantages are enormous. The oranges are
just ripening in the small jungle in the rear. There
are mangoes, papayas, guavas, custard apples, and
of course bananas. The curious part about the
bananas is that, although they are a staple part of
the diet and the variety is great, I have not yet in all
of El Peru encountered the kind we eat in New York.

By some kind of pleasing magic I do not under-
stand, the same small slave that went with the
Quechua house seems to be included in this one too.
As I have said before, I/ucho is utterly charming and
at times very useful. He always addresses me as
Senora Cheena. That, I suppose, is because he has
heard me talking about China and has come to the

\_148~\

conclusion that I am Chinese. He the fires,

carries water from the river, and washes all the pots
and pans. He sleeps at present on the floor In the
drawing room.

As enchanting as Is Lucho, he has proved to be
something of a problem. For another sixty-seven
cents a month I could have a cook, but somehow I
cannot accustom myself to cockroaches In the soup
and ants in the coffee, so with Lucho's assistance I
do my own cooking. It Is true that I have lost caste
greatly in the village, but I prefer to lose caste rather
than more weight.

Last night, at what time I do not know my watch
long ago gave up the struggle against the damp, the
rust, and the mold the mosquito net which covers
my camp cot was gently shaken. "Senora Cheena,"
whispered Lucho, "there is something in the kitchen."

I sleepily found some shoes and the flashlight, and
together we braved the darkness of the kitchen. As
my house is Innocent of doors of any kind, one may
expect to find almost anything. I can't say that I
was exactly prepared for the placid face of the mule
that was thoughtfully munching a bag of potatoes,
but at the same time I was somewhat disturbed, be-
cause I did not know the exaf; w technlque of inviting

midnight mules out of the house. Lucho, however,
with more experience in such situations, pounced
upon a piece of fire wood and thumped Mm roundly
on the rump.

The mule departed, not, however, without protest,
knocking over the sink, which was completely full of
water. And also all of the pots and pans. This made
rather a noise in the quiet tropic night.

I rearranged my mosquito net and fell into a sound
sleep.

"Senora Cheena," whispered my small slave, "there
are, I think, people in the kitchen."

This time, in the shaft of light from my electric
torch, we saw a very small and nondescript puppy
worrying the dishcloth up and down the earthen floor
and through the small lake formed by the over-
turned sink.

It must have been somewhere near dawn when my
mosquito net was again gently shaken. "Senora
Cheena, I am sick very sick," said Lucho.

Again I went to the kitchen, but this time to look
in the butter tin* It was almost empty. I gave Lucho
two aspirin tablets, and somewhat sternly sent him
back to bed.

Later in the morning I repented of my harshness ;

I ISO]

Lucho, on the Balconv of Sandoval's Home in Lima

Sandoval and a Friend

the child probably hungry. At luncheon

the day before? I recalled that Lncho had disap-
peared before it was over, doubtlessly being some-
what bored serving it, and had to paddle in
the river or play with other Indians. His plate
in the kitchen was practically untouched.

The luncheon had been rather an occasion too, be-
cause I had had two guests. Sandoval and his brother
Alejandro, who were leaving for a ten days 3 expedi-
tion in the jungle, and 1 had worked to make it a
success. In Pangoa that is somewhat difficult. For
days at a time there is no bread, no potatoes, and
never any green things. Fortunately the day before
a box of groceries had arrived, sent by a thoughtful
friend in Lima. It had in it Vienna sausages via the
Swift Packing Company in the Argentine; it had
chocolate bars, a nice dry hunk of Parmesan cheese,
and a bag of gum drops. Manna from Heaven.

So, first we had bean soup, then the sausages with
creamed potatoes in cheese sauce, cooked with a few
onions (I can always find garlic and onions), and
then coffee (which grows in the back yard) , so in all
I considered my luncheon a success. My civilized
Indian guests expressed their appreciation by eating
everything, including all the gum drops.

Lucho scorned the creamed potatoes rich with
Parmesan cheese, and I believe although I do not
tnow that he fed the beautiful Vienna salchichm
to the next-door puppy.

Now Lucho is probably about ten years old. It is
impossible to know his exact age, for his parents
have long since disappeared. But I have my ideas
(never having had any children) about what a small
boy should have. Hot chocolate, for one thing. It has
to be made of condensed milk, and, with plenty of the
coarse brown sugar produced here, is very palatable.
Lucho prefers large mugs of black coffee. One morn-
ing I scrambled eggs for him; the puppy got those,
too. Once in a while he will eat a three-minute egg.

So this morning, after Lucho had breakfasted on
black coffee and an orange, I decided to consult my
next-door neighbor to ask what he fed his children.
Surely he must know because he has a great many.

This neighbor is a very friendly and engaging
person whom I know quite well because he is a mule
driver. I also am considerably acquainted with his
mules, having been catapulted from the back of one
into the mud on several occasions. The mule driver's
name is Gonzalo Francisco Diego Pizarro.

He received me very cordially and said, "Of course.

Sefiora, como no?" He could tell me everything I
needed to know. The first essential for every child is
plenty of yucca. Yucca is a small shrub-like tree
much cultivated here; it produces a very large edible
root covered with a tough bark. Very economical,
too, he told me, as it costs only forty centavos (about
five cents) for a hundred pounds. And plenty of rice,
which Is not so cheap but very necessary. And bananas.
He took me to his small jungle and showed me just
the right kind. I must pick them when they are green
and either boil them or roast them in ashes. Of course,
coffee three times a day, and once in a while a cup
of tea does no harm to a boy if it has plenty of sugar
in it.

Meat? Ah well, if I could afford it the best thing
to do was to buy, on the rare occasions when beef is
slaughtered in Pangoa, the parts with bones and
make soup, putting plenty of yucca in it. Or pituca,
which is another kind of immense root costing about
the same as yucca.

As I was leaving, he added that, as a great deli-
cacy, I might give him, once in a while, gmanos. He
explained at length in voluble Spanish and with many
gestures what guscmos are, but still I didn't under-
stand. Finally, in despair over the Gringa's stupid-

ity, he said magnanimously, "I myself will go to the
jungle this afternoon and bring some for you and
Lueho."

Of course, I immediately resorted to the dictionary
when I returned, but sometimes I find that ancient
English-Spanish volume leads me into great difficul-
ties. For instance, it says nothing about the much-
used English word witsful except that it is the past
definite tense of the verb wist, which leaves me in a
state of confusion to know what is the Spanish equiv-
alent. I might need to know sometime.

Once I was desperately trying to express "sticky 55
in the Spanish tongue and demonstrated with my
hands, which were somewhat spattered with the pan-
cakes I was making. "Yiscoso," said Sandoval, who
is a* person of much perception and is trying to learn
English. He thumbed through the dictionary and
said, "In English you call it 'Sizziness. 5 " So when
the dictionary said that gusanos were caterpillars, I
said to myself, "It lies in its teeth. 53

Late this afternoon, just as I was preparing to
peel the bark of an enormous yucca root to cook it
for Lucho, came Don Gonzalo Francisco Diego
Pizarro bearing in his hands a gourd covered with a
piece of green, banana leaf.

"Here," he said with a magnificent gesture, "Se-
fiora, are the gusanos. I myself hunted them in the
mountains/' and he whipped off the cover.

The gourd was half full of very fat, very large
white grubs that wriggled.

"But," I said somewhat faintly, "how do you pre-
pare them? 5 *

"Why/ 5 he said, "they are very good this way/ 5
and proceeded to bite the head from one, and with
very evident relish sucked Its contents, spitting out
the empty skin.

"Or," he said, "they are very good fried. Some-
what like nice fat pig- 3 '

The swift tropic night has fallen ; the moon rides
high over the jungle, and Lucho Is In the kitchen
frying Ms supper.

LUCHO AND H A R V A E D

"Muchas gracias 9 Senora Cheena/* said Lucho with
a tiny bow. "Gracias, Padrmo" he said to Sandoval.

Then he scampered off to play, forgetting that there
were luncheon dishes to wash.

In the face of such charm and grace of manner, I
found It a little difficult to scold him about anything
as prosaic as washing a few battered enameled plates.
Some of the ancient and courtly Spanish customs re-
duce me to a condition of uncomplaining acceptance
of whatever trifling inefficiency may accompany
them. I have never ceased to be left in a state of
dreamy-eyed enchantment when Lucho, having fin-
ished a meal, comes to my table to thank me par-
ticularly as he does not like my cooking.

On the day in question I walked over to the
smoothed-off tree trunk which serves as Lucho's table
and discovered that he had eaten practically nothing ;
apparently he had drunk many cups of strong black
coffee, as there was none left for Sandoval and me.
It had really been an acceptable luncheon too, I
thought. I had experimented with some dried beans ;
having soaked them overnight, I painstakingly re-
moved the skins and cooked them. Lucho helped with
the fire. The wood was somewhat damp, and that was
a morning's task.

The beans cooked with onions resolved themselves
into a wonderful consistency; with the addition of
soup stock from last night's monkey meat, I con-
sidered the result unique. But in the matter of food,

I adhere to the school which that texture is as

important as flavor. And the soup was, because of the
onions, somewhat lumpy. As my Andean jungle
household boasts no colander, I hit upon the idea of
using SandovaPs butterfly net to strain this gem of
soups.

This involved considerable strategy, with Lucho
holding the pole attached to the net over a basin I
had to put on the ground. Lucho is only ten or so,
and being very small for his age, could not reach the
table. It also involved considerable acrobatic activity
on my part. I had more or less to insert myself into
the net to stir its contents, and there was much bob-
bing up and down to scrape the oozing contents from
the outside of the rather fine net into the basin. After
an hour of this my back was lame.

But I thought the result justified the time spent in
the operation. Sandoval pronounced the reheated
mixture a culinary triumph, but Lucho, it seems, does
not care for thin soups.

Sometimes it seems to me that I shall have to give
up and hire a coot for Lucho. Just this week I could
have hired a well-recommended one for five soles a
month, which at the present rate of exchange is ex-
actly sixty-seven cents. But if she cooks for her-

self and Lucho, where shall I cook for Sandoval and
me? My adobe stove lias places for only two cooking
pots, and, furthermore, the pots and pans situation is
extremely limited. Of course we might build an addi-
tional fire in the middle of the floor, but that too has
Its inconveniences. I've often wished I had a volume
of Emily Post to help me over some of these difficult
spots,

"What," I inquired of Sandoval, "was Lucho ac-
customed to eat before he came to live with me?"

"Oh, chiefly soup and rice, 55 he answered. That
diet I knew only too well. The soup consisted of any-
thing that might be nearest the pot when the water
was put to boil. And rice. In spite of much time spent
in China, I have never become accustomed to a rice
diet, and certainly when Sandoval is in the village he
needs something more substantial. As for Lucho
I still have my ideas about what a small boy should
eat, +

"Sefiora," said Sandoval, "do not perplex your-
self too greatly over Lucho's food. I am sure, in spite
of the fact that he does not eat as children in your
country do, that he is sufficiently nourished. When
he first came to live with Rosa Aurora and me, he

would not eat we either. In fact, for a while
he would eat nothing with salt in it."

"Why was that?" 1 "1 thought everybody

liked salt."

"Xo," he replied. "There are some who

live so greatly isolated and so far from salt deposits
that they don't know its use and Lucho's first five
years were spent with the scdvajes"

"How does it happen, then, that you have Lucho ? 59

"I bought him," he replied, u for a machete and a
length of cotton cloth."

I must have looked a little startled for Sandoval
smiled and said, "That was a brusque way of putting
it, but it is true; his father deserted him and his
mother is dead, and he was captured in a raid."

The afternoon heat was at its height; waves of it
fairly quivered over the distant blue hills. I remem-
bered two precious bottles of beer I had put in a pail
of water to cool, and decided that perhaps under its
soothing influence Sandoval might tell me more of
Lucho's history. Nor was I wrong.

"As you know, Senora," he said, "there are many
magic herbs in the jungle. Some of them I know, and
what their effects are, but there are some about which

there are many stories and of which I do not prop-
erly know the truth. There Is one plant, a very rare
one, seldom encountered, which has a beautiful pale
blue flower. They say that if a woman wears this
flower, it will attract to her any man that she desires*
And also there is a plant for men." He smiled in a
rather deprecatory manner, half shyly as though he
feared almost that I might ridicule what he had to
say. But I solemnly sipped my beer and said I had
heard of such things in other parts of the world.

ic Lucho's mother, I remember, was a pretty young
Serrana," he continued, "who came down from the
high mountains with her family to settle in Pangoa.
They bought land and planted bananas, their yucca,
corn, and beans, and became a part of the community.
Josef a was extraordinarily pretty with her long black
braids ; she always wore a full red skirt and usually
a yellow blouse. She kept house for her father and
brothers as her mother was dead. She took care of her
men folk very well, too, and along with the other
women of the village washed their clothes in the

river.

"One day when she was beating clean their shirts
on the rocks, a saLvaje? a man who had recently been
in Pangoa although he did not live here, came by. He

stood watching Josef a but, according to the custom
of salvages, said nothing, although, unlike so many
of them, he spoke rather fluent Spanish, He went
away, but he came back to the village some days later
and traded some skins for fishhooks at the bodega.
He again went to the river where the women were
washing clothes. Josef a squatted on a rock* not know-
ing that Bayoki was watching her.

* 4 He walked toward her* making no noise on his
bare feet, and holding in Ms hands a bunch of herbs
which he lightly brushed across her shoulders. She
looked up, startled. Her eyes metBayoki's, and slowly
she put down the things she had been washing. With-
out a word, Bayoki turned and padded off with never
a glance behind him. Josef a rose, shook out her skirt,
and as silently followed him.

"That night, when she did not return, her father
and brothers were, of course, very much worried
about her, and after inquiries, were told by the women
of the village what had happened. They went the
next day to the encampment where it was known that
Bayoki stayed, a few kilometers from the village, and
there they found Josef a. But a different Josefa . . .
In vain they begged her and argued with her to re-
turn with them to her own people; Josefa turned a

deaf ear to all their pleadings, saying only that now
she was Bayoki's woman. 59

"Is It usual for the Sierra Indians to mix with the
sdlvajes?" I asked.

"Not unknown/ 5 Sandoval told me, "but unusual.
Not often does it happen because they are of entirely
different races and have far different degrees of cul-
ture. Possibly," he added, "it was frequent in the
time of the Incas when the rulers sent out armies to
conquer the forest tribes and sent them to different
parts of the kingdom to further the process of as-
similation, but in these times it is rare. In this case,
I think perhaps if Josefa had deliberately chosen a
salvaje, her family would not have objected, but the
circumstances were strange, and Bayoki was a man
who did not properly belong where he was staying.
He had come from the region of the Urrubamba and
no one knew much about him." ,

"What did the father and brothers do?"

"Nothing, Senora, there was nothing to do, so they
came back to Pangoa. Josefa was lost to them. Some-
time later they inherited property in their own pueblo
in the Sierra, so they sold their land here and went
away."

"And Josefa?"

[Iff*]

"She continued to live with BayoM in the camp of
the sdkvajes, seemingly contented as far as anyone
knew, but shortly before her baby was bom, BayoM
deserted her. Where he went no one knew, perhaps
back to his own people in the Urrubamba valley.
Josefa gave birth easily to the little boy who is
Lucho, but without BayoM her spirits drooped, and
she literally faded away. She did not live long after
the baby was bom. 55

a Did the salvages take care of the baby?"

"They didn*t have him long. Lucho was very tiny
when his mother died. There was no other woman
who could nurse him so they gave him to a woman of
another family whose baby had died. That tribe
moved to the far distant region of the Pajonal, and
so I heard nothing of Josefa's baby for a long time.
But you know, Senora, the curaca, the scHvaje chief-
tain Cayetano, the slave dealer who lives down near
the Rio Tambo? He made regular raids in the Pa-
jonal to capture children to sell, and in one of his
raids he captured nearly all the children of the tribe
that had taken little Lucho. Some of them he sold to
the civilizados in the Tainbo district, and several he
brought into Pangoa.

"Rosa Aurora and I took the last three Cayetano

lies']

had left. The two little girls that Leandra has now,
Amapola and Urania, were ours, too, but Rosa Au-
rora gave them to Leandra before she died. Only
Lucho remained to me.

"Rosa Aurora and I had a special interest in Lucho
because of Josef a, but we despaired not only of him,
but also of the two little girls for a long time; they
would eat little, and were like shy jungle animals.
They had to be taught all the ways of the civilizados
eating with forks and knives, wearing civilized
clothing instead of the loose cusJima, and to eat our
food. I used to catch fish for them which they ate raw
and without salt, until they became a little accus-
tomed to our food."

It was, however, evident that, in spite of SandovaPs
training and my best culinary efforts, Lucho did not
hold my cooking in great esteem. In spite of this blow
to my pride, I always succumb to Lucho's charm
when he thanks the Senora for every meal he eats.
With true Oriental passivity he makes no complaints,
but I fancy that he shares secret snacks of heaven-
knows-what with small friends.

That the upbringing of a small boy might enter
my life never crossed my mind when Sandoval and I
started our search many, many months ago. But now

1164

that the search has narrowed to the environs of Pan-
goa and my home is a small, thatched hut, and San-
doval has made me a gift of Lucho, I find that with
the "settled 55 life come responsibilities and complica-
tions. Not only do we struggle with the problems of'
straining soup through butterfly nets, but I have
begun to realize that it is high time that Lucho's
formal education should begin.

For a small boy of such natural charm and native
intelligence it would be thrice a pity to let him waste
in Pangoa, however fascinating in itself, but sepa-
rated from the world of cities, seas, and ships by the-
physical barriers of great mountain ranges, glaciered
heights and deserts, and by what spiritual barriers,,,
God alone knows.

I have investigated the hut in which a school mis-
tress holds forth, and if it were in deepest China, I
would understand that the dronings of the dozen or
so ragged bits of humanity were the Confucian
classics. But in Pangoa, it leaves me baffled. So I
think we shall send Lucho to school in Lima as a,
start. There he can live with SandovaPs family, and.
only time can tell what the future will bring.

Sometimes of a torrid silent afternoon, when the*
campo is deserted even by tail-switching donkeys, I,

186

sit in my little hut and look out over the blue-hazed
hills that ring Pangoa, and wonder if one could
transplant a child of the forest to a bleak New Eng-
land winter. Perhaps not even Harvard would be
worth it.

THE CHUCHUPI

A\w DAYS AGO just as night was falling over
the jungle, the lantern was lighted and
Lucho had begun to chop wood for the
supper fire. Sandoval's voice greeted us from the
doorway, "Hola!"

"Buenas nocfies," we replied, and I said, "What
kind of a day did you have in the monte?" peering at
him beyond the circle of the lantern's light.

"Not much luck," he returned. "I can't seem to
find any traces of your destiny,'* and he lowered a
pole which he carried over his shoulder.

"But you evidently have something," I said. "Bring
the lantern here, Lucho." A circle of yellow light fell
on the object that Sandoval had dropped to the
ground.

"God in Heaven!" I said. "What Is this?" Never
had I seen anything that seemed more the incarnation
of all evil.

"Chuchupi," piped up Lucho.

CJiucJiupi is the forest dweller's name for bushmas-
ter, that huge snake whose hypodermic teeth carry
swift poison and death to whatever they strike.

I looked at Sandoval's slight figure, and at the
thick body of the serpent which must have measured
at least seven feet in length. "How did you kill it? 55
I asked.

"With a stick," he said. "It's quite simple. You
must break his back before he comes within striking
distance. Can I be of any help with the supper? I'm
hungry."

Lucho and I went on with the supper while San-
doval took his towel and went off in the night to
bathe in the river. We put the yucca root to boil, the
pot containing the armadillo meat, which had been
previously cooked, to reheat, and set a lighted candle
on the rough table.

A little later, Lucho served the food on tin plates,
and Sandoval, after his long day in the jungle, began
to eat. I put salt on my yucca, but after the first bite
I found that all of my hunger had left me.

"Please, 55 1 said, pointing to the snake that still lay
where it had been dropped, "would you mind doing
something with that hideous object?"

With immediate courtesy Sandoval rose, apologiz-
ing. "Sefiora, I am sorry; I didn't think of it/ 5 he
said, a Toraorrow I want to prepare its skin to send
to the museum in Lima. 55 He found an old, wooden,
provision box, lowered the dark, glistening coils into
it carefully, and, throwing a canvas cover over it,
put it in the farthest and darkest corner.

Lucho brought the strong, good coffee, which we
ourselves had that afternoon roasted in a clay pot,
and then went off to play with his small Indian friends
in other huts. Sandoval lighted a cigarette and shuf-
fled the cards for rummy.

For a while we played in silence. Then Sandoval
said, "Senora, do you ever have a feeling in the
jungle of of an ambiente of brooding evil? 55

"At times, 55 I replied, "very definitely. There is
something so repelling in all this exuberant and riot-
ous beauty which is at the same time a magnet . . .
an attraction that I do not understand. 55

"Yes, it is so. When I walk the streets of Lima, I
long for the green tunnels of the forest, to be alone
in its beauty, no matter if there may be something

1169 ]

of evil in it. Sometimes/ 5 he said almost reluctantly 5
"it seems as if the old dark gods still rule the jungles."

"But the Sierra," I said, "that is different, is it
not?"

"Ah, surely, Senora. In the cold windswept heights,
there are different gods. 55

"This country, sometimes," I said, "makes me think
of China because it, too, has many gods. There is in
the far, far western part of China, where the moun-
tains rise, rank on rank, to the high altiplanos of
Tibet, which are so like those of your Andes, a holy
mountain which the Chinese call OmeL It is a great
mountain, and you can be carried to the top of it in
a palanquin by coolies along trails heavily over-
grown with bamboo, and bordered by innumerable
shrines and temples. The whole mountain is honey-
combed with shrines to Buddha."

"It must be very beautiful," murmured Sandoval.

"So they say. And travelers also say that, from the
top where the priests give wayfarers lodgings that
look out over precipices to the valleys far below, that
every night in these valleys, which are wild and un-
inhabited, and in which there are no trails for man
or beast, you can see processions of lights*"

"Lights? How can that be, if there are no tradls?"

[J70]

inquired Sandoval, who is a strange mixture of sci-
entist and mystic.

a l don't know. I have never seen them/* I replied.
"But the Chinese say that in very ancient days this
was the way over which Buddhism was brought to
China, and therefore it is guarded by good spirits."

"But you have never seen them?"

"Not there exactly, but in the mountains to the
north, one autumn I was making a journey, and my
coolies and I had occasion to spend the night in a tiny
hut on the edge of a precipice that overlooked a nar-
row barren valley through which rushed a torrent,
and on the other side of which towered a sheer, rocky
cliff. Just before the owner of the little inn put up the
wooden slats over the door, I went out into the night
which was blacker than any I have seen. And across
the valley, halfway up the cliff, where no man or ani-
mal could possibly have found a foothold, there
moved, in measured procession, lights vaguely tri-
angular and of a soft blue. 55

"What did you do?" asked Sandoval.

"I looked at them for a long time and then went
back to the room where my coolies were sleeping
around the fire, got into my camp cot, and I, too,
went to sleep* 5 *

"In the jungle I have seen many strange things,
but not ever anything like that, 55 said SandovaL

We continued our game of rummy in silence but
with little concentration on the cards. The candle
flickered in a soft warm breeze, and the dry palm
thatch whispered overhead. Gradually the breeze
strengthened and rain began to patter on the roof.
Shadows danced madly on the split-cane walls of the
tiny house, making weird shapes in the dark corners.
AU the jungle outside made faint moaning sounds;
the night was alive.

At last I said, "Lucho will get very wet coming
liome."

"Yes, 55 replied Sandoval, and he started to light a
cigarette. His hand, I thought, trembled a little, and
then a slight shiver seemed to run through his whole

body.

Now jungle nights are not cold, ever, but I, too,
felt a sudden chill in the atmosphere. The wind rose,
and the rain began to fall heavily. I glanced about
uneasily, with repugnance for the canvas-covered box
in the corner.

A cigarette I decided, and picking one up, leaned
over the wavering candle to light it. A sudden gust
of wind extinguished the blaze before my cigarette

had touched it. I could hear Sandoval fumbling for
matches, and then a dull thud as of something falling
on the dirt floor near the table.

I started at the noise of a match being scratched
on the box, and blinked when the candle was lighted.
SandovaPs bronzed hand gripped the candle. He
stooped and picked up from the ground a clod of
earth, a dry reddish-brown lump.

"Is that what fell? 3 ' I asked. "Where could it have
come from?"

Sandoval glanced at me strangely, Ms eyes dark
and troubled in the dim light. Before he could an-
swer, another gust of wind had again blown out the
candle, and a shower of thudding noises sounded on
the table.

"The lantern, Senora ! Where is it?' 5

"By the fire, 55 I answered, standing stock-still in
the darkness, my muscles tensing until they ached.

"There is really nothing to fear, Senora," said
Sandoval, as he touched a match to the lantern wick.
"I have known this to happen before, but no harm
will come to you."

"I am not exactly afraid," I said, "but I don't like
this strange, vibrant atmosphere."

He put the lantern on the table, but its light was

[J75]

feeble ; clearly it needed more oil, and I knew that the
kerosene bottle was empty. But by the faint light we
saw on the table and on the floor more lumps of the
reddish dry earth.

"But this," I said, "is more than strange. Where
can dry earth come from?" It had rained earlier in
the day; the ground was thoroughly saturated, and
now it would be muddy. Goose flesh crept up my arms
and prickled on my scalp.

"I think, Seiiora," said Sandoval, "I had better
try to borrow some kerosene from the inn. It will not
be pleasant to be all night without light/ 5 and, throw-
ing a waterproof sheet over his shoulders, disappeared
into the darkness.

The wind grew stronger, and the rain beat furi-
ously on the thatch. I tried to relight the candle, but
the flame of the match died almost as it was born. I
huddled wretchedly on the bench by the table and
hoped that it would not be too long before Sandoval
returned. My eyes strained through the darkness, but
I might as well have tried to look through black
velvet.

The wind must be blowing spider webs from the
thatch, I thought, as strands brushed my face and I
tried to remove them. But even with my handkerchief

I could not to remove the tingling irritation*

Minutes became agonies of time; the night was a
great with muscles taut, ready to spring.

And then came another shower of the dry clods of
earth. One struck my arm, and I put my hand across
my mouth to stifle the sob that rose to my throat. In-
stinctively I tucked my feet up under me and shrank
farther into the comer, while my eyes strained to-
ward the other comer In which I knew was the box
and its loathsome contents.

Then suddenly In the doorway there was cheerful
yellow light throwing shadows on SandovaPs dark
and anxious face. He set the lantern on the table and
said, "There were more?" I nodded.

a Lucho 5 5? I said. "I wonder where he is?"

"He Is at the Inn listening to Don Luis 9 guitar, He
is all right. But you, Sefiora? 5 *

"Yes, thank you. I'm all right, too, but I'm cold.
Let's make a fire and have tea. 3 *

Sandoval with his machete quickly cut sticks in
shavings and blew them Into a blaze, while I filled a
pan with water, and looked for the tea in the provi-
sion box.

We sat in silence by the fire, smoking. There was
no use to ask where those strange lumps of dry red-

dish earth had come from. If Sandoval knew, he
would have explained.

Against my will, my eyes turned toward the corner
where the box stood, turned as if drawn by a magnet.
"Perhaps, 5 * I said to Sandoval, "when you go to the
inn tonight to sleep, you would take the box with
you."

"Of course, Senora," answered Sandoval, and he,
too, glanced at the box. He puffed a few moments on
his cigarette, and then walked over to the box and
slowly pulled off the cover. He peered intently into it
and, as if not satisfied, lighted a match to hold over
it, bending low over the box.

He straightened, and, turning to me with an ex-
pressionless face and blank eyes, said, "The cJiucJiupi
is gone. 5 '

MONKEY BUSINESS

Yesterday, when we were walking in the jungle,
Sandoval and I saw a big black monkey which In-
dians, for some reason, call maquisappa. He was
hanging by his tail from a nearby branch, and he

leered at me in a most unpleasant manner. He also
said things which, I suspect, were not very polite.

"I don't like that monkey very much/ 5 I said to
Sandoval.

"He isn't very pretty/ 1 agreed Sandoval, "but he
has a magnificent tail. I wish I had one like it."

"It might be convenient/ 5 1 said.

"I've often thought/ 9 he continued, "that I might
take my machete and cut me one of those nice long
lianas and make a tail. 5 '

"Yes/ 5 1 said, "I think that would be a good idea.
When you are journeying in the jungle, you could
use it rather like a rope to wind around the pack you
have to carry on your shoulders. 55

"And at night/ 5 Sandoval added, "I could drape it
over my shoulder to carry the lantern to light my
way. That would leave both hands free for the ma-
chete and the basket of eggs. 55

"But/ 5 I suggested, "lanterns are a bit old-fash-
ioned, don 5 t you think? Why don 5 t you electrify the
tail? Then you could have a tail-light which would
be much better. 55

"Very well/ 5 he said, 6C L shall electrify my tail,
and then I won 5 t need to carry matches, which get
very damp in the rainy season and won't work. I shall

[177]

buy an electric lighter." He thought a moment and
then said, "That, of course, presents one difficulty ; I
shall have to pay the government a tax on my tail-
lighter because matches are a monopoly in El Peru."

I told him that I thought the convenience might be
worth the expense, and Sandoval was inclined to
agree with me.

"And do you know what else I should like?" he
went on. "I once saw in a magazine an advertisement
for electric razors. Do they really work?"

"I've never used one, but I think they do."

"Then I shall buy an electric razor, and think
what a convenience that will be. I can shave myself
with my tail as I read the morning newspaper. That
will be a great saving in time."

"You might buy a two-way plug and cook your
egg at the same time. But how about the toast?"

"I don't know yet how much current the tail will
take, but it might be possible to have a three-way
plug for the toaster. But it would be awfully incon-
venient if I were really very far in the jungle to have
all the fuses blow out, wouldn't it?"

"Perhaps it might be better," I suggested, "if you
had a small electric ice box. Just think, for example,
how pleasant right now a glass of cold beer would be."

\_178-]

"Do you know any good recipes for Ice cream?"
Sandoval asked.

"Chocolate or vanilla?"

"I like the kind that has almonds in it."

"I think I can find one for you," I said, "and then
you can sit and eat almond ice cream in the jungle,
and you could have an automatic fan too, and be
really comfortable."

"It also might be possible," he said, "to use my tail
when I play the guitar. Just think how beautiful
would be a Schubert serenade with a bass accompani-
ment by the tail."

Sandoval doesn't speak any English but he reads
a little. "Haven't you something in the United States
that you call a *rabo de gallo 9 ?" he asked.

"Well, yes," I said, "we have cocktails, but that's
something different. You might carry along one of
those marvelous little machines that mix everything
cake and biscuits and things. It must be getting
pretty near lunch time, don't you think? What do
you suppose the Indians at the encampment will have
to eat?"

**Yucca, perhaps rice; we'd better go see," said
Sandoval. So we went on through the forest.

"Senora," said Sandoval, stopping thoughtfully.

"I have just been thinking that after all I'd better
not electrify my tail. 55

"Why not?" I asked.

cc Well, It's because of these Indians/ 5 he explained.
"They might be jealous of me for having a tail that
can do so many things. And there is the danger that
they might not understand it ; they might kill me to
capture the magic tail, 55

I admitted I hadn't thought of that.

"Once/ 5 he told me, "I had a beautiful gold watch.
It was an old, old one, made of Spanish gold, that had
belonged to I think my great-grandfather the
one who was Basque and I always carried it. But
one day, when I was visiting some of the painted
Indians, I lost it out of my pocket. I went back over
the path to find it, looking and looking, and finally I
met an Indian with bow and arrows, and I said, 'Have
you seen my watch? 5 But I had to explain what a
watch was, because he had never seen one.

"He said 'No, 5 but that just a little way back he
had killed a strange kind of animal which he had never
before seen in all the jungle. 'I beat it with a stick, 5
he said, 'until it made no more noise, until it was dead,
and there was no danger that it would harm me.'

4C I still have the case/ 9 said Sandoval a little sadly*
a but it is very badly battered."

"Perhaps after all/ 9 1 said, a it would be better to
have just an old-fashioned monkey tail without mod-
em improvements.'*

THE METAL BIRD

Monday is the day when a rattletrap truck comes
roaring down from the high Andes bringing to Pan-
goa Sierra produce and the mail. Mail from Lima,
mail from the United States and a long time ago,
occasionally from China.

Yesterday was mail day, and Sandoval came from
the hut which is the post office with a sheaf of letters
for me and a lima newspaper for himself.

My letters started badly first came the refusal of
a story whose high literary merits I had felt sure
someone would appreciate. Then there were ancient
advertisements of events long since past. I had to
stop to think whether it was now winter or summer in
New York. In the timeless steady heat of equatorial
lands, weeks and months slip by unnoticed.

Then came a long communication from Peter
Quinn, my lawyer in New York City, telling me that
the law-suit against me for fifty thousand dollars
would soon come to trial, and that it would be much,
much better if I could be in New York then.

Sandoval, whose perceptions are such that no small
thing ever escapes his notice,, must have sensed my
mood for he put down his paper and said, "Que pasa,
Senora?"

Somewhat bitterly I said, "Someone who thinks I
am wealthy is suing me for fifty thousand dollars."

"But/ 5 he said in astonishment^ "y 011 haven't got
that much money, have you? How is this possible?"

Then I explained that in my country there were
people who thought that anyone who carried on "ex-
peditions" must necessarily be wealthy, and also that
there were people, who by chance bore the same name
that I do, who are very rich. The confusion of identi-
ties had resulted in fantastic litigations.

"I have never possessed a fraction of what these
people, on false charges, want from me," I told him.

For a time I became tangled up in an explanation
of things legal, but as my Spanish vocabulary is
more adequate for dealing with jungle life than the

Senor Toucan

Not anli/ does he believe in brilliant yellow, red, orange,
and green for his plummage, but he also has an unparalleled
sense of humor one of his favorite pastimes is biting
the 'puppy's tail to make him squeaL

intricacies of law, I'm sure Sandoval did not learn
much.

He gazed thoughtfully over the half -walls of the
little hut to the campo deserted in the somnolent
heat. Then he said, "It would seem that in New York
as well as in the jungles, there dwell wolves.*'

New York in some ways, I told him, did resemble a
jungle; that the fierce competitive struggle for ex-
istence in a great city has many aspects of forest life,
but there the parasites lacked the beauty of, say the
orchids, which are also parasites.

"Sometimes, 35 1 said, "I do not think much of what
civilization has so far accomplished. Often I dream
of how pleasant it would be just to disappear into the
jungles and never return. Do you think it would be
possible ? ??

"Of course, Seiiora," Sandoval replied. "Many
people have vanished into the jungles; some return;
some do not. Do you remember the old man we met
last year in the Amazonas? The one who said that he
had accompanied Teddy Roosevelt to the River of
Doubt?"

"Oh yes, and one of the party disappeared for two
years, and later returned to tell a tale of having been

kidnaped by the Indians. From all I could gather,
he'd had a very good time. 55

"If you really wanted to," Sandoval said, "I could
take you to live with friendly Indians in the Pajonal
as the crow flies, not far from here where you
could never be found."

"Interesting," I murmured.

"Yes/ 5 smiled Sandoval, "but I do not think you
would like it for long. After a time you would want
to return to your own land even though there are
wolves."

The train of thought persisted and at supper San-
doval said, "Have you ever heard of the Peruvian
Capitan Alvarino who was lost with a companion in
the jungles in 1933?"

"No," I said. "Who was he?"

"Alvarino," said Sandoval, "was a captain in the
Peruvian air force, and it happened that he had to
make the long flight from San Ramon to Iquitos on
the Amazonas. With him was a co-pilot, and as cargo
they carried the funds to pay the Peruvian army in
Loreto. But they never reached their destination."

"They crashed in the jungles?"

"As far as could be learned, the plane came down
somewhat north of the PajonaL. The government sent

out expeditions through unexplored country, but
they never found a trace of Alvarino, the plane,* or
his companion."

"Did the expeditions enlist the aid of the Indians
in the search?" I asked.

"Yes," replied Sandoval, "one encampment of In-
dians passed the searchers on to others, but the result
was nothing nothing at all."

The lantern guttered low^ and Sandoval went for
the kerosene bottle. The flame glowed up again, and
putting the bottle down, he said, < Would you like to
know the story I have heard?"

Sandoval knows full well that there is nothing I
love better than a tale, such as only he can tell, to
while away the hours of a jungle night. Sandoval's
low-pitched and beautiful Spanish, with a sparse ges-
ture now and then from his slim brown hands, can
lend a quality to a story, however simple, that would
be the envy of a professional raconteur. Sandoval,
curiously enough, considers himself Latin, but I must
remind myself constantly that he stems from the an-
cient Incas that the quality of his mind is not
Hindu, not Chinese, not Egyptian, but South Amer-
ican.

<c You know, Senora, that just before I met you at

the Museum In Lima, I had been living deep In the
Pajonal, after the death of my Senora Rosa Aurora.
Over Christmas of that year 5 I went to stay at the
mission of my friends, the Franciscan padres.

"Into the mission one day came a youth of about
sixteen or seventeen years. He bore all the evidences
of a long journey and he told the fathers, putting up
his bow and arrows in a corner of Fray Diego's living
quarters, that he had come to stay to work for the
padres and to learn the tongue of the civilizados
Spanish.

"He spoke only his native Campa, and, as I
understand it but Imperfectly, I had to rely upon
Fray Diego's version of the story which he later gave
me."

The youth, who was promptly given the good
Christian name of Juan, had a great curiosity con-
cerning the strange white people whom he had seen as
a boy some years before people whom his father had
guided in the search for the lost Alvarino. He wanted
to understand how they made the great metal birds
carry them swiftly over the forests. Now that his
father was dead, he was free to do as he pleased.

Fray Diego asked the lad if he had ever seen air-
planes. The boy held up two fingers. The first time

1*86]

one had flown high over his clan's forest clearings,
there had been a consultation of all the elders, and,
with the witch-doctor, they came to the conclusion
that this was the most dangerous of all the magic that
the distant unknown foreigners possessed.

So when the second plane, off Its course, and lost in
the clouds of a jungle storm, developed engine trouble
and crashed among the scattered fallen trees on his
father's cJiacra, the tribe lost no time In seizing their
war arrows and going to the spot where lay the crum-
pled metal bird.

Captain Alvarino was uninjured; Ms co-pilot had
a broken wrist. By sign language they tried to assure
the painted and frightened salvages that they were
friendly that their broken machine would not harm
them. Alvarino offered Juan's father his revolver as
a proof of his good-will.

The salvages' only answer consisted of taut bows
and death-dealing arrows. This was danger they did
not understand. The tigres of the selva and the poi-
sonous serpents, yes but this the arrows and spears
were let fly,

They put the bodies of the two Peruvian aviators
In the plane; hastily they gathered dry fuel and
brought torches lighted from the women's cooking

fires. All that the flames did not consume they cov-
ered with earth, and such is the exuberant growth of
the jungle that soon all evidence of the tragedy was
covered by lush green vegetation.

When many weeks later came the white searching
party with a Campa Indian interpreter, they stayed
the night in the huts of Juan's people. His father cour-
teously gave them corn and yucca ; together the cw%-
lizados and the salvages raised their gourds of ma-
sato in salutation.

But of information about the missing aviators
Juan's father had none. He suggested to the inter-
preter that two days' journey to the north lay an en-
campment of Campas where possibly they might learn
something. The interpreter and guide of the party
was a stranger in that country, so Juan's father him-
self, the next day guided the little expedition on its
way.

"Thus it is," said Sandoval, "that these people
guard their land their jungles which they love."

He flicked the ash from his cigarette and I said, "It
would seem as though their own forests also helped
them guard their secrets."

Time drifts by as effortlessly as do the white fleecy
clouds in the turquoise sky. Law-suits in New York

seem as far distant from Pangoa as do the battlefields
of China of all the war-torn world.

I still dream of disappearing into the green man-
sions, but Sandoval, who considers himself Latin, and
from whose lips issue words that might be those of a
Hindu sage, says, "Seiiora, to live always in the jun-
gles is not your destiny. One day you will return to
those of your own blood. Perhaps even, it may be that
the Fates will again send you to that great civiliza-
tion which is China. 5 '

VISITORS FROM
L E A N D R A

MY NOSE/' I said to Sandoval one day not
long ago, "is very sore." I fingered tenta-
tively that tender small part between my
nostrils, just above the lip.

"Let me see," he said, looking at the red spot. "It
may be the bite of a poisonous insect," he finally di-
agnosed. "Put some disinfectant on it."

I swabbed a little iodine on the sore place and went
about my household duties, aided and abetted by my
two Indians. Lucho swept the dirt floor very neatly,
and carried two ten-gallon gasoline tins of fresh
water from the river. He also built up the fire, looked
over the beans, and put them to boil. Sandoval cut
open several of those so useful ten-gallon Standard

Oil tins, and proceeded to hammer them into a length
of eaves to hang under the thatch of the kitchen. Al-
though it Is the dry season, we have sudden and tem-
pestuous storms which sweep over the tumbled jun-
gled hills of the Eastern Peruvian Andes. Then the
water which pours from the thatch makes a large re-
gion of mud pie of my kitchen floor. The eaves would
be useful, not only to keep the kitchen dry, but for
collecting rainwater as well.

Sometimes I consider my housekeeping duties very
light; there Is only one table to dust, three chairs,
and my camp cot to make up In the morning. The
kitchen table Is a large tree stump which was just left
conveniently near my adobe stove, and the kitchen
was built around it. Lucho scrubs that every day with
a swab made of palm fibers. But that particular
morning there was more work. I had left the table full
of papers and writing material, and these were all
dirtied by the droppings of birds. You see, my house
Is entirely innocent of such things as windows and
doors, and whatever jungle life feels attracted to my
domicile has free entry. Once I found curled up In a
corner of my parlor a beautiful little black and
bright-pink banded snake. Happily it was when San-
doval was about, and I asked him please to kill it,

thinking surely it was a coral snake. "No, it is not
coral/ 5 said he. "It's just a harmless pretty little
thing. On the wbora the banding is somewhat differ-
ent." He picked it up, and it wriggled in the palm
of his lean brown hand. Then he carried it to my
small private jungle, and released it.

But to get back to the droppings I had to clean
up from the table which is my desk, dining table, and
general roosting place of all odds and ends. I tried
to think of a mild expletive in Spanish, but, failing
that, I said, "Damn those birds," in English.

"What," inquired Sandoval, "does dahm mean in
that so barbarous English tongue?"

"It means," I said, "that I wish those birds would
have more consideration for my writing material."

Sandoval looked at the droppings. "Those are not
of birds," he said. "They are of bats, and bats are not
birds; they are mammals. Moreover, they may be
Demodus rotundus"

"Moreover," I said, "what might be Demodu&
rotundus?"

"Vampire bats in vulgar parlance," he answered*

"Oh," I said, "I am not fond of vampires."

"Have you been sleeping well recently?" he in-
quired, somewhat irrelevantly, I thought.

"Like a log/'

He called Lucho and asked Mm the same question.
The little boy said, "No, Padrino; the bats last night
flew in and out all night long. They left their drop-
pings on my face/*

"Senora, do you always lower your mosquito net
at night?" he inquired of me.

"Usually," I said, "but yesterday I gave it to the
old negress to wash ; it was very dirty. 35

SandovaPs face was grave. He cast a glance over
the three small rooms which comprise my hut.
"Where," he said to Lucho, "is the little red hen?"

"Perhaps outside," replied the small slave. "She
slept as usual under my bed last night."

Now the little red hen might be called a member
of the household also, although originally she had
been bought for the pot, but a salvage friend of San-
dovaPs had brought us a leg of wild boar which lasted
for a while, and in the meantime the gcdlina had suc-
ceeded in ingratiating herself to the extent that she
had become one of the family, so to speak.

Lucho, being helpful as always, looked under his
bed, which consists of four short posts driven into the
ground of the parlor floor and over which is stretched
palm bark. **Why, Padrmo," he exclaimed to San-

doval, "she is still here." And he held in his two small
copper-colored hands a Hmp bundle of red feathers,
to which he whispered in caressing Spanish.

Sandoval put her gently on the table. Her eyes
were glazed, but she was still alive. "Vampiros" he
murmured as though to himself and searched through
the feathers on her ruffled neck. "Not much blood
left."

"Let's give her a little aguardiente" I suggested.
"Maybe we can make her live." So we poured some
of the "ardent water" down her throat, and she shook
herself In feeble protest.

"But the vampiros," I asked, "aren't really dan-
gerous to people, are they?"

"Not very," said Sandoval, "but when they do
suck a human being's blood the puncture is often
hard to heal and sometimes develops into infections.
Let me look at your nose again, Senora."

"But," I protested, "how could I have been bitten
by a vampire bat without knowing it?"

"That is indeed a mystery, Senora. I don't know
why there isn't some motion of the wings to awaken
one, but I have known it to happen many times
people sleeping without protection of a mosquitero
frequently are bitten in the tender part of the nos-

trils, or more often In the under part of the toes. I was
once bitten there when I was sleeping in the jungle."

"Well, whether they bite me or not, I don't like
them. What can we do to keep them away?' 5 I said
rather helplessly, because the split-cane half -walls of
my house provide privacy from neither man nor
beast. The thatch is high to catch whatever cool
breeze there may be providing at the same time
convenient perches for birds and nests for spiders.

"This evening after supper/ 5 said Sandoval, "I
shall make a smudge in a big tin pail and hang it
from the rafters ; the smoke may keep them away. 35
So the rest of the morning he spent hammering out
the eaves and arranging a rope over the rafters to
draw up the tin pail. At intervals we administered
aguardiente to the little red hen, who showed signs of
reviving.

The afternoon I spent writing to friends in New
York, informing them that I had been bitten by a
vampire bat, adding just as an indication of my
wide knowledge of the subject the scientific Latin
name. They should, I thought, be very much im-
pressed. I could imagine stately Florence at a dinner
party hurling a conversational bomb: "Ruth, you
know, was recently bitten in the nose by a vampire

bat!" There would be a properly gratifying murmur
of horror.

Sandoval, as far as I knew, spent the afternoon at
Leandra's inn, probably discussing the affair of the
vampires. Lucho, apparently unimpressed, played
with miniature bows and arrows with his small Indian
friends.

The conversation that night over dinner returned
to the subject of the bats. "Sometimes they are a real
menace to livestock," said Sandoval, "particularly
when the cattle are always in the open. There is a
cattle hacienda up at Pampa Hermosa which had a
great deal of trouble a few years ago. There was a
great influx of hundreds of bats in that region one
summer, and they preyed on the cattle to such an ex-
tent that after a few weeks they were nothing but
skin and bones, and covered with raw open sores
which developed into dreadful infections. Whether
the bats themselves carry disease, I don't know
perhaps it is possible."

He told other tales of dogs being drained of blood,
until I shivered in spite of myself. A human being, I
thought, should be able to protect herself from any-
thing so relatively small. I watched with interest the
smudge Sandoval made in the tin pail and pulled up

with the rope to the highest part under the thatch. It
was a clever contrivance.

"I hope, Senora," he said later as he stood in the
doorway in the moonlight, "that you will sleep well
again tonight, but be sure to lower your net.' 5 He had
thoughtfully brought it to me that afternoon from
the laundress, still damp but clean, and had attached
it again to its poles. "Tomorrow," he said, "I shall
make one for Lucho." He glanced up at the deep blue
heavens, brilliant with stars. "There will probably be
many tonight ; it is the night of full moon."

Having suddenly become vampire conscious, it was
long after I had extinguished my candle before I
dozed. I wakened, I don't know how much later,
aware -of the soft swish of wings in the air. They can't
reach me, I thought, but the knowledge of their being
in my house was disturbing. Sleep finally left me
completely, and I reached under my pillow for the
flashlight.

Thrusting my feet Into slippers, I crept quietly
into the parlor and flashed the light on JLucho. His
body on the bed made a dark bundle ; even his head
was completely wrapped up in his blanket. I lighted
a cigarette, and sat outside the hut on a rough
wooden bench in the moonlight. Dark shadows flitted

above me, and in swift arcs flew in and out under the
roof. The smudge apparently made no difference to
them, and there were, I calculated, dozens of bats. It
must have been in the small hours of the night that I
again went to my cot to doze fitfully, dreaming of a
Dracula that sat on a rafter and leered hatefully at
me, sleeping.

For two nights after that, Sandoval made the
smudge as usual, but I was rather dark under the
eyes from lack of sleep. Protected I knew I was, and
Lucho also, but I slept uneasily and in snatches, wak-
ing to smoke midnight cigarettes.

"It is strange," I said to Sandoval, "that you have
none in the inn ; after all it is very near."

"I mentioned it to Leandra," he answered, "but
she just smiled and said nothing." He was silent for a
long time and his dark face was very serious, as were
his Somber eyes. "I haven't wanted to mention this^
Senora, but I do not trust Leandra very much . . .
ever since Rosa Aurora died, I do not like the way
she looks at me."

With slow and careful questioning I began to elicit
more bits of information. Sandoval hinted, rather
than stated, that Leandra might have strange pow-
ers. He told a story of a big male hog he had once

owned, "which grew very fierce and escaped to the
mountains. Because the animal was of a very valuable
breed, a hunt was organized,* the brute captured, and
brought back struggling to Pangoa. Leandra had
ordered the pig brought into the house and placed,
straining in its bonds, in the very room where she
slept. Sandoval had been repairing the broken pen
and had not seen all that happened, but he arrived in
time to see her combing the head of one of her small
slaves for lice. The vermin captured, she put them
into the animaPs ears.

"That boar followed her around like a dog after
that, 59 he said. His eyes darkened. " Just like Rieardo. 55

Ricardo was ostensibly a young nephew of Lean-
dra, but in the life of her inn he occupied a strange,
undefined position not guest, not relative, not
servant just a flabby creature who did Leandra's
bidding. I had seen his type before in other parts of
the world; a rather feminine swaying of Ms hips
when he walked ; elegant little gestures with his hands.
Sandoval looked at me. "Ricardo, when he was a boy,
was very rebelde" he said, "very much a little willful
man."

I could not bring myself to question him further,
but a definite implication of witchcraft lay in San-

[IPS]

dovaPs terse statements. Then he told me something
that I knew only too well: "Leandra does not like
you, 55 he said.

That I had known for a long time. Leandra hated
the fact that Sandoval had many of his meals with
Lucho and me; that he was gone much of the time in
the selva on his explorations for me. That flaccid
crone, wasted by tropical afflictions, was possessive
toward her numerous clan brothers, her sister, her
in-laws, her slaves, and the village of Pangoa in gen-
eral. She was a power not to be lightly dismissed;
hers was a will which emanated, in an unfathomable
manner, something sinister.

A little later, matters came swiftly to a head. San-
doval said, "Seiaora, I could not possibly prove, but
I am certain of witchcraft. The entire village is talk-
ing about the plague of bats in your house, and Le-
andra just smiles and says she wonders why they
should keep the Gringa awake of nights."

I could almost hear Leandra say "Gringa!" It
would hold the contempt that "f oreign devil" conveys
in China.

That afternoon Sandoval told me he would not eat
supper with Lucho and me, but would be at my house
late in the evening.

[000]

Lucho had been asleep for some time when the
shadowy figure of Sandoval appeared in the door-
way, followed by an old bent Indian. I knew him to be
the curaca of a band of uncivilized forest dwellers
who lived some distance away, deep in the jungle.
With nothing more than a greeting, Sandoval and
the savage crouched by the dying fire and began to
bind a long pole securely to SandovaPs strongest
butterfly net. I watched in fascination as it went
roofward to catch an unwary bat. The lantern light
had been extinguished, and very soon afterward a
frantically squeaking creature was brought to earth,
enveloped in the white folds of the net. The captive
thing squirmed abominably.

The curaca tucked the long folds of his dirty robe
under him, and with the struggling dark thing in one
hand, he produced from somewhere in his robe a small
object to which he proceeded to tie the vampire se-
curely with stout cord. I bent closer to see what it
might be; it was, I perceived, a small cross made by
binding two sticks together, the horizontal piece at
the top being shorter than the vertical piece.

The operation finished, Sandoval said, "Would
you like to come, Senora? 55

I nodded, and together we all left the hut and

walked toward the river In the bright moonlight. On
the banks of the noisy rushing river, on a little strip
of sandy beach, chequered by shadows from the over-
hanging trees, the curaca held the still squealing bat
out over the swift water. He muttered for some min-
utes a strange and unintelligible chant, and then
gently placed, the crucified bat on the river current,
which rapidly swept it out of sight.

When we returned to the hut, I heated coffee for
Sandoval, and we sat sipping it from our tin mugs,
and smoking on the bench before the hut. The silver
moon rose higher in the heavens, and dimmed to in-
visibility the surrounding stars.

Sandoval finished his cigarette and threw away the
butt, which glowed redly in the tall grass. "Buenas
nocJies, Sefiora," he said. "You will sleep well tonight.
I think it will be many years before the vampires
again come to this house."

And during all the time I lived in Pangoa, they
never did come again.

[202]

TANGO'S M I B E R

I HE OTHER BAy x GOT OUT m duffle |} a aB( j

inspected my wardrobe. I knew down to the
last button, of course, just what it con-
tained, but even if one does live in the Andean jungle,
sooner or later, one is bound to yield to that feminine
instinct about clothes.

The truth of the matter was, really, that I was sick
and tired of pants, and I longed for a skirt. Besides
all my slacks were a mess. It is the rainy season, and
they come back from the laundry in the river in just
about as unpleasant a condition as they go full of
red silt instead of cooking ashes and other marks of
the kitchen. But there was a serious problem involved.
The long pants are most necessary because of the

1

myriads of biting insects. As It Is, my legs are always
a mass of nasty red bites, and slacks are In a measure
some protection.

I inspected my two dresses of Chinese coolie cot-
ton, which, although faded to a very smart shade of
dull blue, alas, have only regulation length skirts. I
thought about it for a long time, and then reached a
rather daring decision. I would make myself a new
dress one both picturesque and practical.

When Sandoval drifted in that afternoon, I dis-
cussed the matter with him and showed him the sketch
I had made. I had decided on a modified Quechua In-
dian costume which has always entranced me. Just
where this dress originated seems to be lost in the dim
reaches of time, but as nearly as I can discover, the
Indian women^ after the conquering Spaniards came,
borrowed a few Ideas from the court of the Spanish
king. There is a very full ankle-length skirt of bril-
liant color, under which are worn many padded petti-
coats. When these women walk in their gliding Indian
gait, they look as though they were on wheels. The
skirt is topped with a sort of shirtwaist (which some-
times meets the skirt and sometimes doesn't), usually
of some violent color, and trimmed with various kinds
of braid and lace. Over .this is worn a little square

1*04]

shawl purely Indian and hand-woven in bright
stripes held at the throat, if the lady's husband is a
man of property, with a heavy silver spear-like pin.

My sketch called for a very full ankle-length skirt
gathered onto a short yoke, and a simple short-
sleeved blouse which tied in a little bow close at the
throat. The thing to do was to get the stuff to make it
of 5 and Sandoval graciously offered to accompany me
to the village bodega to see what we could find. There
was plenty of the stuff called twcuyo, the native un-
bleached muslin the mlvajes use for their loose
cmhmas, and three bolts of Japanese cotton. These
were of a flowery-chintzy pattern, the three identical,
but in different colors. After much discussion over a
glass of warm beer, we decided on the eggplant and
pink combination. It was reasonable in price only
eighty centavos a meter, roughly about eleven or
twelve cents. The pink cotton for the blouse was
National, and so cost even less.

The next day, after Lucho and I had tidied up the
house, I began my dressmaking, starting on the skirt,
which was simple because it was just straight gath-
ered lengths. Sandoval came in and said why didn't
Clemencia sew up the seams on her sewing machine?
It surprised me a little to know that there was a sew-

[05]

ing machine in Pangoa, although it really shouldn't
have. It is nothing short of marvelous the way Amer-
ican culture gets itself disseminated in the form of
Singer sewing machines ; once I saw one practically
on the Lhassa Trade Route ; a Tibetan sat in a small
grove of trees busily treadling away on what must
have been the grandfather of all Singers.

Now Clemencia, it must be understood, is the vil-
lage postmistress, and she earns twenty-five soles a
month less than three dollars and eighty-five cents
on which she supports her mother, a sister, and a
small son. Although Clemencia is a Senorita, it seems
that in time gone-by there had been an attachment.
It hadn't lasted very long, as far as the gentleman
was concerned, but it did leave Clemencia with a small
son whose name is Jesus. And so, in order to augment
the family income a little, Clemencia takes in sewing.
This she manages by putting her machine in such a
position that she can keep an eye on the post office
door. She goes across the campo to it when anyone
wants to buy a stamp. This occurs not so often as to
interrupt her sewing unduly.

So I carried my Japanese cotton to Clemencia to
stitch, thereby causing a certain amount of excite-
ment in the family. Jesus, in particular, was en-

chanted with the bright-colored stuff and wanted to
know if it was a wedding dress. In time, the whole
village knew that the Grmga was making herself a
dress and there was rather a lot of speculation about
it. No lady In Pangoa had ever worn trousers before,
so perhaps it meant that the Gringa was turning over
a new leaf. Maybe at last she was going to try to be
culta and correcta.

Then came the afternoon when it was all put to-
gether, almost finished. I retired to my curtained-off
cubicle to try it on, while Lucho and Sandoval waited
to pass judgment on the confeccion, which Is the
Spanish for the assembling of a dress. As well as I
could manage with a mirror four by six inches, I sur-
veyed my work of art, and then went into the draw-
ing room.

"Why, it's part gypsy and part Indian," said
Sandoval, but he said he liked it, and Lucho, not to
be outdone, said It was muy bonito.

But just at that moment almost at nightfall a
tall figure loomed in the doorway, bowing extrav-
agantly, waving in one hand a ragged straw hat and
in the other a bottle.

**Very very good evenings to you," he said to me,
and clapped Sandoval on the back, nearly knocking

[ 207 ]

him down. "Have a drink, amigo!" he roared at San-
doval, and almost forced some of the stuff down his
throat. Then he turned to me and, bowing deeply
again, he gave me the bottle and ordered me to drink
too. Being somewhat intimidated by this whirlwind
visit, I did as I was told. It was the first time the
Capitan had ever been in my house, but I had seen
him at a distance and wondered what manner of man
he was. Obviously he was, for the most part, Sierra
Indian, with definitely an air about him. Sandoval
explained that he was a retired captain of the Guardia
Civil who had bought land in Pangoa and lived near
the village with his wife and daughter. The Capitan
and his family were definitely tipper crust, the ar-
biters of social life in Pangoa. He was, it seemed,
very cultured and correct when he wasn't drinking
aguardiente.

Sandoval had said to me when I first took my cot-
tage in Pangoa, a Now there are few people who will
interest you here, but it may be well for you to know
the Capitan and his family," and then we sat a long
time discussing the etiquette of the meeting. I had an
idea that, because I was new in the village, they ought
to call on me first. But as time went on and they
didn't call, I thought, "Well, perhaps customs are

[808]

different here," and I sent to them by Sandoval an in-
vitation to come to my house and drink a glass of
beer.

I even bought one more tumbler for the occasion,
and kept the beer all day in a pail of water so it
would be reasonably cool. We waited but they never
came, and slowly it began to dawn on me that my so-
cial position in Pangoa was, to say the least, anom-
alous. After all, a Gringa who wore pants, had only
one small servant, and said she was looking for her
destiny in the form of an animal which no one had
ever seen and which, therefore, didn't exist a fine
story that ! Suspicion fell on Sandoval, too. He had
once been an honored citizen, secretary of the futbol
club, and sanitaria for a time. He had left all these
respectable pursuits to search the jungles for the
Gringa. And nobody really knew who she was. Maybe
she was a spy a Fifth Columnist perhaps worse.
Who could tell?

"Well," roared the Capitan, fiercely at Sandoval,
"aren't you going to introduce me to the lady?" San-
doval might have been a graven image for all his ex-
pression betrayed, but furious I knew he was. But the
Capitan evidently thought SandovaPs silence was a
good joke, for he clapped me violently on the shoul-

der and, lifting the bottle, said, "I will drink to you,
Senora. I shall drink your health. Caracho! I shall
drink the health of the beautiful lady. Never have I
seen anyone so beautiful." He wiped his mouth on
his sleeve and said solemnly, "You are more beautiful
than the Virgin Mary, by God."

Just then I decided it was necessary for Lucho and
me to go to the river to bring water before it became
too dark, and, by the time we had returned, Sandoval
was busy with the supper fire and the Capitan had
departed. We ate supper almost in silence. Sandoval
was hurt and embarrassed that his friend should have
been so discourteous to the Gringa, so I made con-
versation about other things. The new dress was as
good a topic as any, and Sandoval said again that it
was really most pintoresco, and that it suited me very
well. And I continued that I wished I had a long
mirror so I could see how it really looked, but that I
supposed there wasn't one short of several hundred
miles.

"No, Senora^ you are wrong. There is one that is
not too many miles from here. It is in a hut deep in
the forest, but it isn't used for reflecting new gypsy
dresses."

What a task it must have been, I thought, to bring

intact a large mirror over three ranges of Andes and
down Into the jungle. I also wondered why it had
been brought.

"Who," I asked, "owns this mirror and why did
he bring it to the jungle? Have you seen it?"

"Yes," replied Sandoval, "I have seen it once, and
I never want to see it again. It is used for black
magic."

The night was one of full moon, and its silver light
flooded the little hut, making unnecessary the light of
candle or lantern. My small private jungle mur-
mured softly to itself in the gentle breeze that came
down from the Sierra, and a ripe custard apple fell
with a thud on the thatch. Such a night as this was
made for strange tales and, according to the Chinese,
for drinking wine. So I sent Lucho to the 'bodega
with centavos to spend for himself and a sol for a
bottle of red wine.

Even through the thick glass of the tumbler, San-
dovaPs wine glowed with the fire of rubies as he held
it up to the bright moonlight. "It happened in this
fashion, 55 he said.

"M any years ago, when Leandra first came here
from Iquitos, she said that she was a widow, but even-
tually tales began to drift down the Ucayali, and

even to Pangoa,, that her husband had deserted her.
Even though Iquitos on the Amazonas is more than
a thousand miles away by mule and canoe and river
launch, gossip eventually catches up with people. It
was said that Leandra had been unfaithful to her
husband and that he would have no more of her.

"As you know, for a time after I married Le-
andra's sister, Rosa Aurora, we all lived together in
Leandra's inn, and naturally, as we were familia, I
began to understand Leandra's character. The fact
that she had been unfaithful to her husband meant
little to me, because for all I knew she may have had
plenty of reason to be bat these Latins are jealous
people, and sometimes full of curiosity, too.

"As time went on, Leandra fell more and more into
the habit of referring to Pancho, and at last she
dropped all pretense of being a widow. She was a de-
serted woman who could not forget the man she had
once loved. Nor could she quell her curiosity as to
whether he had another woman and who that woman
might be. She had neither sufficient money nor the in-
clination to make the long journey back to the scene
of her disgrace, if disgrace it was, but a desire to
know what Pancho was doing gnawed at her mind.

"Finally she came to me and said, *I am going to

ask a great favor of you. I want to go to Calabaza
and I want you to go with me. Will you arrange for
mules for the journey?* It so happened that I was
planning to go to Calabaza to see a man about some
cattle you remember the place, Senora? the one on
the trail that lies about eight thousand feet up,
closed in between the mountains so I agreed to take
her with me. The journey took two days, and it was
the night of the second day when we arrived. As you
know, there is nothing there but a few huts of the
Quechua Indians, but one family gave us food and
beds that were full of fleas.

"I went about my business the next morning, and
Leandra, too, went about hers. She took the little
trail that leads off up to the north, without telling
me where she was going or what she intended to do.
She came back late in the afternoon and said that she
wanted me to go with her to the house of Yanco that
night. But I said, 'Why, he is a brujo, a sorcerer;
what business have you with him? 5

"She was a little frightened, I think, but as long
as she had got that far and had paid him money, she
was going to go through with her plan. Yanco could
tell her about Pancho, but, he said, not until after
dark. There was nothing I could do but agree to ac-

company her. So we ate our supper of soup and
beans, and with the lantern we set out for the hut of
Yanco, deep in the forest and about a kilometer from
the mule trail. We went cautiously because of possible
snakes and the pumas which live in these forests.

"It was probably the blackest night I have ever
seen, and even the starlight didn't help much. In
about an hour we stumbled into the clearing where
Yanco's tiny hut lay. As nearly as I could tell, it con-
sisted of two rooms. One was his kitchen and sleeping
place; the other was curtained off by heavy black
stuff.

"We waited for a long time while Yanco did some-
thing or other in the curtained-off room, and Leandra
smoked cigarette after cigarette of black tobacco that
she rolled herself. I was uneasy, too, because the
whole place the black night, the forest, the hut, and
Yanco himself exuded something so sinister that it
was almost palpable. Yanco was a tall thin man, not
young, not old, with an unhealthy yellow skin and
heavy-lidded eyes that somehow made you think of a
snake's.

"Finally he came out of the other room and asked
Leandra if she were ready to see what he had to show
her. She nodded, and he warned her that he himself

- ?;. *>*:* - vt

Typical Jungle Dwelling

The Women of a Camp a Family

Always the women and children eat separately from the
men and after them.

did not know exactly what she would see 5 and more-
over that, when she had seen It, It would be useless to
ask questions concerning it. *The powers I serve/ he
said, 'are mysterious. 5 He lifted the black curtain and
we entered the room after him.

"The walls of the room were made, I suppose^ of
rough boards, but from top to bottom they were cov-
ered with black cloth. Not a breath of air entered.
There was a kind of raised altar on which burned two
tall red candles. There were some smaller things too,
but the only ones I remember are a black cross which
was upside down and a shrunken head. You've seen
them, Senora, the kind that come from the Amazonas
region. The Jivaro tribe reduce them, leaving the
long hair on, and sew up the lips and eyes."

"But," I said, "wasn't the mirror there?"

"Oh yes, but it too was draped with black cloth.
We didn't see that until later. Yanco made us kneel
some distance from the altar. He knelt and began
touching his forehead to the ground. One leg was
twisted up under him, and he bowed until he had
touched the earth not only with Ms forehead but also
with the center of his skull."

"That must have been difficult," I murmured, hav-
ing myself practiced a little of the kind of Yoga

which teaches certain body positions to release nervous
energy.

"I suppose it was, but we weren't thinking of that
just then ; by that time we were both so tense that our
muscles ached, and I wished I had never coine. But
finally, after a lot of prayers and invocations, not a
word of which I understood, Yanco reached up and
very slowly drew the cloth away from the mirror,
which hung above the altar in a forward-tilted posi-
tion. Just before he did it, he warned us not to make
a sound, for if we did the magic he had invoked would
be broken.

"At first the mirror seemed to be clouded and there
was nothing in it except the reflected light of the two
candles. But slowly, slowly, it cleared. We could first
distinguish what seemed to be deep forest, with enor-
mous trees of a poisonous green, with swamps from
which rose tenuous vapors, the whole hung with giant
lianas and creeping luxuriant vines of all descrip-
tions. Finally we could see that a faint path ran
through this lush jungle, which surely must have
been near the Amazonas, because I have seen just
such country near Iquitos.

"Then, in the distance, we could see two figures ap-
proaching, one following the other. Slowly they came

nearer. The first was a woman, a white woman. She
wore a printed cotton dress, and her hair hung down
about her face, of which we could catch only a
glimpse, enough to see that she was weeping bitterly.
Her hands were behind her back. Later we knew that
they were tied.

"And the man who followed her, I knew from Le~
andra's description, was Pancho. There was no mis-
taking the scar that ran diagonally across his temple.

"Pancho pushed the woman roughly from the faint
trail, and she stumbled through the jungle growth,
tripping over the heavy roots and vines, and falling
often, because it was hard to keep her balance with-
out the help of her arms. They came to a great tree
with spreading roots that writhed on the ground like
constrictors, and they stopped.

"Pancho roughly swung the woman around to face
him and caught her dress at the neckline. With one
swift jerk he tore it all the way down the front and
completely ripped it from her body. She stood there
at the foot of the tree among the twisted roots, com-
pletely naked, her head bowed and her black hair
falling over her face.

"Pancho then took a piece of rope from his pocket
and securely tied her ankles. The woman struggled

frantically to keep her feet free, but It was of no use.
Pancho was a powerfully built man. The strange
part about it was that his face was completely ex-
pressionless all this time, but now and then, when the
woman's hair was tossed back, we could see her face
was streaked with sweat and tears, and twisted into
such an expression of terror as I hope never to see
again.

"From his pocket he took a small jar, pushed the
woman to the ground and began to smear her all over
with its contents. When he had finished the operation,
I saw a few insects buzzing about. Then I knew it
was honey.

"By the time he had finished and wiped his hands
on a piece of rag, the air was full of wasps and hor-
nets, and Paneho, brushing one from his face, looked
at the woman just once and disappeared through the
trees.

"I stole a glance at Leandra ; her face was ghastly
in the candle light. She had put one hand tightly
over her mouth to prevent any sound escaping her
lips. The other for we were still kneeling dug its
nails into the earthen floor. I knew then that Leandra
had been unfaithful to Paneho.

"Again I looked up into the mirror. The woman's

body was already dotted with flies and insects, and
she threw herself first one way and then another in
torment. I could see a long black column of ants
crawling along the ground, slowly but relentlessly
approaching. They were the big inch-long kind, and
soon they were swarming over her shoulders and
breast.

"A slight movement among the huge roots of the
tree attracted my attention. At first I thought it was
just a shadow from the candle, but then I saw a
sinuous movement and a vile head with glittering eyes
raised itself almost imperceptibly from among the
roots which it so resembled. A forked tongue flickered
inquiringly.

"It was then that Leandra screamed, just once,
and crumpled on the floor in a faint. I jumped up,
and we found water in the other room to which Yanco
and I carried her. We dashed it on her face and
wrists, but it was some minutes before she opened her
eyes. She staggered to her feet and mumbled, 'Take
me away, take ine away. 5 "

Sandoval poured himself a last glass of wine, and
held it up to the moonlight where it sparkled softly
red.

He raised it to his lips and said, "Salud, Senora, I

think your new gypsy dress is bien bonito, but you
will not, I think, want to look at it in Yanco's

THE HOUSE PARTY

Last week I was hungry ; I was, in fact, very hun-
gry. Sandoyal and I hadn't had anything to eat but
boiled green bananas and yucca for several days.

It all came about through u visit to Shora a well-
known Indian who, Sandoval thought, might be able
to tell us something of the animals of the selva.

Ill luck went with us, for it is the rainy season and
halfway to Shora's camp we were caught in a sudden
storm. This one came down from the high Sierra with
growling thunder and a roaring wind that sent great
ancient trees crashing to earth in a welter of vines
and tangled lianas.

At such a time in the selva, the danger of being
trapped by blockaded trails, or even of being pinned
under the falling giants, is great. We made all haste
to an abandoned clearing, where in sodden discom-

fort we were forced to spend the night, continuing
our journey on the following day.

One result of the night in the open was that San-
doval contracted a heavy chest cold which soon de-
veloped into a high fever. For three days he lay help-
less in the camp of Shora. We were quartered under
a thatch on poles which was the communal center of
the family. The Indians drifted In and out, looked at
Sandoval tossing on his blankets, and with Oriental
passivity said nothing.

Because we had expected the visit to be short, we
traveled lightly ; we had brought no food but worst
of all, no medicine. When Sandoval became delirious,
I appealed to Shora and his brother (the women
spoke no Spanish), and their only suggestion was
that I put the juice of lemons and the leaves of the
lemon tree In very hot water and bathe Sandoval
with that.

During those days I lived, perforce, as the sal-
vages have lived for ten thousand years carrying
water from the river, washing Sandoval's sweat-
drenched clothing, cooking, tending the fire at night
that I might always have a hot lemon drink for the
sick man. When the fever broke, It was a weak and
embarrassed Sandoval who thanked his Gringo, pa-

trona for what she had done. And heaven knows, it
had been little enough*

Shora brought me the first of his new corn a few
small ears, which I cooked for Sandoval. The women
brought us steamed yucca and bananas, and Shora
and we shared them, sitting cross-legged on our palm
mats under the thatch. In the burning heat that lay
beyond the cool shadow of the roof, a flock of parrots
settled in a dead tree. Their brilliant plumage flashed
in the sunlight and their quarrelsome voices filled the
noon-day air.

Sandoval lighted a cigarette and said to Shora,
"Have you ever, when you were hunting, seen any
bears ?"

"Yes," replied Shora, applying a little more red-
lacquer paint to his face from a bamboo tube and sur-
veying the result in a small mirror I had given him.
He seemed much pleased with his reflection.

"Big ones ?" asked Sandoval.

"Grande," replied the salvaje. "Black ones."

The same old story I thought nothing but black
bears no silver ones to fulfill my destiny.

"But there are others?" continued Sandoval.

"Yes that color," replied Shora briefly, pointing
to SandovaPs brown blanket.

Sandoval blew smoke from Ms nostrils and said
nothing,

Shora's black almond eyes gazed dreamily into
space, through the sunlight and the quivering waves
of heat which rose from the golden dust, "Once/ 5 he
said, putting his make-up to one side, "I saw a little
bear, but it was far from here, high in the montana,
where there are lagoons. It had the color of " His
eyes searched the meager dwelling for a comparison.
"That, 55 he said, pointing to the cooking fire which
was ringed with silvery gray ashes.

My heart pounded. In Shora we had at last found
someone who had seen the elusive little animal we had
so long sought. Sandoval smiled quietly at me.

"You hunt often? 55 I inquired, hoping that my
voice did not quiver with suppressed excitement.

"Yes, 55 he said, "I go to hunt now. My friend San-
doval I think needs meat. 55 With that he rose,
tucked up his loose robe, and taking his bow and ar-
rows, disappeared into the green wall of the forest.

Sandoval dozed through the afternoon heat, and I
hopefully kept the fire alive and a pot of water boil-
ing for whatever game Shora might bring us. My im-
agination dwelt on wild turkey or a tender young
partridge.

The jungle darkness had come when, into the cir-
cle of firelight, stalked Shora. He was empty-handed,
but I asked no useless questions.

In disappointed silence 1 served him and Sandoval
ypcca and bananas hot from the ashes. We all ate in
silence. We drank strong black coffee, and Shora ac-
cepted an unaccustomed cigarette.

"There was game/ 5 he said, "but my arrows did
not want to leave the bow."

"What did you encounter?" asked Sandoval.

"There was a young mother monkey with her baby
on her back, sitting on the lower limb of a tree. I
thought she would be good roasted."

Shora scratched his back and called to a wife to
bring mas at o.

"But on a higher branch sat her husband a wise
old monkey. He made a face at me and said, 'What
do you want in my forests? 5 "

Shora wiped masato from his lips, spat, and con-
tinued. "The monkey said 'Caracho! This barbarian
is here for no good. Come, wife let us go quickly/
And the three monkeys went away."

Sandoval's gray eyes were bright with amusement
as he shot me a swift glance. After Shora had finished
his masato and retired to his sleeping mat, he turned

to me and said, "And we ^civilized* people call Shora
and his tribe 'savages. 5 "

Here, at the end of the earth, in a tiny jungle
clearing, with the wind softly whispering through
the dry thatch, with silver starlight beyond, there
was peace; the fact that we had not eaten well seemed
unimportant. And on the other side of the world
horror unimaginable.

Sandoval broke the reflective quiet. "Seiiora," he
said, "when we return to Pangoa, would you like to
give a house party?"

I thought it might be fun. "Whom should we in-
vite?" I asked.

"Shora, of course," he said. Then without a flicker
of expression on his thin dark face, he added, "I think
we should also invite Hitler, Hirohito, Mussolini
and perhaps Stalin."

"I see your point," I conceded, "but the Pangoan
house is somewhat limited. There would be a little
difficulty, what with only Lucho to serve, to help me
cook and then, what about sleeping arrangements?"

"The Japanese are accustomed to sleeping on floor
mats,, aren't they?" he said. "I'm sure I could build a
bed for Mussolini and Hitler, and we could swing a
hammock for Stalin."

"But the food, 55 I objected, "would be a greater
problem. We should have to serve our guests their
national dishes."

4 Very simple/ 5 said Sandoval firmly. "I could
catch raw fish for Hirohito ; there is always plenty of
spaghetti, and the Russians eat cabbage soup, don 5 t
they? 55

"But Hitler, 55 I said, "eats only raw salads and
drinks milk. 55

I thought I detected a faint gleam in SandovaPs
eye. "True, 55 he said, "that would be dangerous ; he
might get typhoid from the milk and dysentery from
the raw vegetables. If he stayed long enough, he ? d get
other parasites those long round worms that the
salvages get in their intestines. 55

That situation I well knew. Once I had seen an old
Indian woman, uncared for, who had vomited worms.
In the last stages, a parasite-ridden native, consumed
by pernicious hunger, will often eat the earth in an
attempt to satisfy his craving.

After a pause, I said, "I think that probably
Franklin Roosevelt would have more understanding
of Shora 5 s point of view than the others. 55

"What makes you think that? 55 he asked.

"Well, first because Mr. Roosevelt has suffered and

fought great illness when he was a grown man, and
that, for a truly great person, usually brings spir-
itual understanding,"

Sandoval was silent.

"Also, 55 1 continued, "because he once wrote a per-
sonal letter to a little dog. 5 *

SandovaPs incredulous eyes met mine. "The chief
of a great nation ?"

"Yes," I said, "it is true. Moreover," I added
somewhat defensively, "I know the little dog very
well."

"It's this way," I began to explain. "In the United
States we have a very famous Dutchman, Hendrik
Willem van Loon, who writes histories and things,
and his wife is a friend of mine. Sometimes they stay
at the Casa Blanca, and they always take their little
dog Noodle with them. Noodle is a ^sausage' dog."

Then I told Sandoval about Mr. Roosevelt's Scotty
who wanted to go to the President's third inaugura-
tion, and how downcast Fala is whenever he gets shut
out of his master's bedroom. Upon one such occasion
he visited around the White House until he found
Noodle's room, where they both happily curled up
together and spent the night on the foot of Senora
van Loon's bed.

When Noodle got home, he dictated a letter to
Fala, thanking him for his hospitality as any well-
bred dog should. Fala replied in the President's own
handwriting, inviting Noodle to visit the White
House soon again.

"I can even show you, when we get back to Pan-
goa," I said, "a letter from Senora van Loon telling
me all about it."

Sandoval put more wood on the fire; close to the
hut, an owl, hunting for his supper, hooted. From
afar came the faint scream of a tigre.

I offered Sandoval a cigarette and he courteously
lighted mine for me.

Softly he said, "JBZ Presidente de los Estados
Unidos would, I think, like and understand our 'sav-
age' friends."

\_228]

PEDRO AND E S I T A

IT WAS IIATE APTERXOON, at the hour of the long-
shadows the hour when the parrots fly scream-
ing home to their favorite dead trees that San-
doval appeared at the door of my hut, closely fol-
lowed by Tzongiri,

Almost a week had passed since I had last seen-
them, for they had gone on a journey of exploration
to find the lagoons deep in the jungle that all the vil-
lagers talked about, but which no one had ever seen*,
It was reported that there, far from the haunts of
men, dwelt the little silver-gray bear for which I
searched.

Both Indians, the civilized and the savage, carried 1
their own packs on their shoulders. Tzongiri's was^
lighter; naturally, a sdbuaje needs fewer things thai\

a cwilizado. Sandoval dumped his pack unceremo-
niously in the middle of the parlor floor, and sank
into a chair. Tzongiri handed me a bundle wrapped
in banana leaves. "Meat/ 5 he informed me.

"Lucho," I said, "we must start dinner at once.
Our friends must be very hungry/ 5 and I began an
inventory of the available food. There was a quantity
of thick bean soup left over from Lucho's and my
luncheon ; we had potatoes and cabbage that had that
morning arrived from the Sierra, and also oranges
and alligator pears which grew in the jungly back
yard. And Tzongiri had brought meat from the
forest.

<<What kind is it?" I asked Sandoval. The bundle
contained large pieces of white meat that looked
delicate in texture.

"Sacha-vaca," he replied*

"Sacha-vaca" I thought; vaca is a cow in Spanish
but what was sacha?

"Sacha-vaca is a mountain cow,'' smiled Sandoval.
That left me as much in the dark as ever, because as
far as I knew no wild cattle existed in the dense
jungle. " Which is to say, a tapir," he further
explained.

Ah, yes, I had seen their tracks many times, and

A Dweller of the Green Mansions

once a dimly seen dart form which Sandoval said was
tapir. "Big animals, you know, as big as a small
burro," he went on, '"with a sort of elongated nose;
it eats nothing but vegetation, and the meat is very
good. I wounded it this morning, and it tried to
charge us, but Tzongiri finished it off with one of his
spear arrows. 55

Having become somewhat ingenious in the matter
of jungle cooking on my little adobe stove with a very
limited amount of cooking utensils, I decided that we
could cut the meat in thin slices and bake it in ashes,
wrapped first in green banana leaves. Lucho cut some
of the long satiny leaves for me, and I toasted them
first over the flames so they wouldn't crack when
folded, and salting the meat, added a bit of garlic
which I knew Sandoval liked, and buried it in hot
ashes to roast.

By the time Sandoval had bathed in the river, and
appeared from Leandra's inn in fresh clothing, night
had come and our dinner table was ready. Sandoval
and I ate at our only small table ; Lucho and Tzon-
giri, who are of the same blood, squatted by the fire,
and roasted their favorite food yucca and green
bananas.

"The tapir is very good, 55 remarked Sandoval, tak-

ing Ms second helping. I thought so too, and over
coffee I asked him more about the animal. Were there
many in the jungles?

"Oh yes," he said, they were not uncommon and
then added, "I knew one quite well once."

"Just what do you mean by that? 55 1 asked.

"A tame one," he replied.

"Here in Pangoa?"

"No ... it was far from here, in the region known
as the Gran Pajonal many days' travel. You know I
spent a summer there working with the Franciscan
padres who have a mission for the salvajes."

It had happened that with Sandoval I had once
met one of the brown-robed and sandaled followers
of Saint Francis from that mission. Never had I met
a priest who had fascinated me so much. He was of
pure Indian blood, of the Quechuas who live in the
high Andes, and who speak the tongue of their Inca
ancestors. A descendant of the worshipers of the
Sun, a spiritual father to the jungle Indians who
worship the Moon, was Fray Diego Rojas one Ori-
ental teaching another the mystic Catholicism of El
Santo Francisco de Assisi, who was brother to the
wind and the wolves. Somehow it seemed to make
sense.

C4>G> I
&O& J

"TeU me something about the mission/ 9 I said
**and the tame tapir. 55

ce Well," he replied, "the mission is a tiny settle-
ment that lies in a world of its own. News of the out-
side world seldom seeps through. Fray Diego did not
know, for example, that there had been a war in
Europe until 1919. He knows of this one now, but in
Ms mission, among the so-called salvages, it must
seem to him as though anything as cruel and as civi-
lized as this present war must be taking place on
another planet. I have been in places near there where
the birds and smaE animals have no fear of man be-
cause they have never known the presence of a hunts-
man. The salvages, you know, don't really hunt very
much, for all that they always carry bows and arrows. 5 *

A picture came to my mind ; something I had once
seen on a dim trail in the deep forest. Suddenly, at a
bend in the narrow path, I had been confronted by a
band of the forest dwellers, padding silently along
on bare feet in single file. Their long loose robes
tucked up about their waists were of a reddish-bronze
color ; their copper skins were bright with achote, the
juice of the seed that is the color of Chinese lacquer.
Straight black hair fell to their shoulders and waa
cut in square bangs over the forehead. Some of them

[0S3]

wore long necklaces of dried berries, from which were
pendant the multi-colored feathers of birds. The
leader carried bow and arrows in one hand, and from
his shoulder, half -hidden in his long hair, peered the
bright eyes of a tiny monkey a soft little brown
monkey with drooping gray mustaches. Before I had
time to stand aside and let them pass, a toucan with a
bright orange bill flew down from a tree and preened
his jade green feathers on the other shoulder of the
savage, whose calm face almost expressed surprise at
seeing a pale stranger in his domain.

"Their tame birds often accompany them on jour-
neys, 55 Sandoval had explained. And I remembered
isolated huts I had visited, and the beautiful birds
and the small furry animals that shared the family
life.

"At the time I was staying in the mission," con-
tinued Sandoval, "Fray Diego was the only priest
there. His school had about twenty-five or thirty
scdvajes. There really is not much schooling, although
a few of them learn to speak a little Spanish; but
they are taught other things. There are gardens with
vegetables, the seeds of which were brought from the
coast; they have a few cattle and domestic fowl, and

lie taught them methods of caring for these. But the
important thing that he teaches is the new foods to
which he accustoms them. They like that, because with
a better diet their children are stronger and healthier,
and fewer of them die. Thus their clans are stronger
against the civilizados who may come to exploit them,
and against enemy tribes, too. The Peruvian govern-
ment is trying to protect them against abuses, be-
cause they know nothing of the civilization that we
try with colonization to transplant to the forests."

"It must in its way be a rather pleasant life, 55 1 re-
flected. Sun-drenched days, soft tropic starlight,
murmuring rivers, tiinelessness in a green world whose
vegetation knows but imperceptible changes of season,
dance rituals to the young silver moon, and a peace
innocent of the demands of machines.

"One of the things Fray Diego wanted to teach his
flock was the use of flour for bread.- Naturally, wheat
won't grow there, because it is too hot and fields can-
not be cleared of huge stumps, but corn will grow well
in any nook or cranny so he conceived the idea of
making a coarse maize flour. This was fairly simple,
for all he had to do was to build a water-wheel over
the river, and shape his mill stones to grind out the

meal. The summer I was there, they were making the
bricks for a big outdoor oven. And the tame tapir had
his share in the making of it."

"Can a tapir/ 3 I inquired a bit absent-mindedly,
"build an oven?" At the same time I was thinking of
a Clarence Day story which built up a world domi-
.nated by the big cats. (In it they, and not man, had
become highly evolved. One of the chief characters
in this feline world was Mrs. Vera Pantherbilt, who
had hot and cold running cream in her bathroom.)

"Not all by himself," replied Sandoval, "but his
contribution proved that he had at least as much
social sense as the salvages. It happened in this man-
ner. Much before I spent the summer there, one of
the Indians of the mission brought in a baby tapir
he had found in a nest, and gave it to Fray Diego as
-a present. It lived in the hut with the Padre as tame
as a kitten and followed him everywhere, even when
it was half -grown, and about the size of a small burro,
He loved Fray Diego, and it didn't matter whether
the Padre was digging in his garden or saying mass
the sacha-vaca was always there, putting his long
snout into everything. Once he drank some of the
-communion wine when nobody was looking. When it
came to making the bricks for the oven, he was also

]

present 3 getting In everybody's way, and puddling
with his horny cloven toes through the mud. Fray
Diego decided that if he really wanted to help, he
certainly wasn't going to stop him, so he made a wheel
and attached the tapir to it with a rope, and taught
him to plod round and round, puddling the clay for
the bricks. 55

"Didn't the sacha>~vaca resent that?"

"He didn't seem to, but then he didn't work very
long hours, and as far as I know there is no tapir
trade union in the jungle, so there were no agitators
to make him unhappy.

"After work was over he was free to go into the
jungle and browse for his food, or to eat the corn
which the Frayle gave him, and for which he had
developed an enormous appetite. He loved that sweet
yellow maize.

"But one night he didn't come back from his eve-
ning stroll. Pray Diego was very sad ; he missed his
pet very much. He even went to the jungle and called
to Pedro who knew his name very well but there
was no answer whatever. The days went by and the
Padre said to me, 'After all, he is half-grown, and he
probably went off to find himself a wife and raise a
family, which is only natural in all animals. 5 55

[237]

"What a pity," I murmured, thinking of the
Padre's thin gentle face, and his calm, tilted Eastern
eyes. "He must have felt very sad."

"But Pedro did come back," said Sandoval. "I
saw him early one morning, just as Fray Diego and
I were getting up. There he was, standing in the
doorway, sniffing with his long snout, and peering at
the Padre with his brilliant black eyes. It seemed to
me as though he were inordinately pleased with him-
self.

"The Frayle was as delighted as a child, and he
rubbed the coarse dark coat until the tapir wriggled
all over with pleasure. Then the sacha-vaca trotted
away, looking back over his shoulder several times.
Fray Diego thought maybe he had just come to pay
a call, and was going home again, so he followed
Pedro to the edge of the jungle to see which way he
went. I followed along too, because I wanted to see
what happened."

"Yes?" I said expectantly.

"Well, there was a sort of crashing around in the
underbrush, and Pedro went up to the thicket, and
began to talk into it. He snorted and squealed for a
while, and then there was an answering little squeak.
Fray Diego and I waited very quietly, and after a

[238"]

while the nose of another tapir came twitching into
sight. Then came her head and shoulders. She gave
us a startled glance, and backed into the thicket
again. So Pedro started his argument all over. This
went on for so long that we finally decided to let them
settle their own affairs ; but at noon time, just as the
Padre and I were about to eat our lunch, Pedro ap-
peared, followed by his shy young bride."

"Did Fray Diego do the honors and invite them to
lunch?" I wanted to know.

"Surely," replied SandovaL "He is, as you know,
most culto and correcto.

"We christened her Rosita, and she slept in the
house that night too. The nest morning the Padre
decided to have Pedro finish puddling the last of the
clay for the bricks. Rosita watched the performance
from a distance at first, and then she began to edge
closer and closer until, by the Name of the Virgin,
Senora, pretty soon Rosita wanted to help Pedro.,
Fray Diego put a rope around her neck and hitched
her to the other side of the wheel, and they happily
plodded around after each other."

I lighted a cigarette and offered one to SandovaL
There wasn't a trace of a smile on his face, and I
said, "Sandoval, is that story true?"

"By the Name of the Santissima Maria" he swore.

"Well then/' I said, "I feel almost as though we
had betrayed a trust. I'm sorry now that we ate tapir
for dinner."

''LA R U E D A D E
CHEECAGO*'

Yesterday was rather depressing. Nothing I did
pleased any of my Indians. It began with Lucho
when I asked him if he liked cauliflower. "What is
cauliflower? 55 he asked.

Of course the child couldn't be blamed for not
knowing. In fact, it was the first time I had ever seen
cauliflower in Pangoa, and I had pounced upon it. It
had arrived in a truck that had come down from the
Sierras. But I said cheerily, "Oh, cauliflower is a
little bit like spinach, and very good for small boys ;
I'm sure you'll like it." But he hadn't known what
spinach was either.

However, Lucho cut wood for the fire with a
machete almost as big as he is, and together we cooked
supper. Planning a menu sometimes is a bit difficult;

I haven't very many cooking pots,, and nowhere to
use them If I did have a lot. I have spoken of this
difficulty before, but I assure you that talking of it
does not make it grow less. Lucho and I made the
coffee first, and then put water to heat for the
spaghetti and the cauliflower. That left no room for
the onion sauce I was going to make for the spaghetti,
so I hit upon the idea of cooking the spaghetti and
the cauliflower together. They turned out pretty
well, though I suppose George Rector would die of
shock, if not of indigestion, at the mere idea of that
combination. I thought it rather a masterpiece. San-
do val, who drifted in just before dinner, said it was
very good and ate three plates full. Lucho carefully
picked out all the cauliflower.

"How was your day?" I said to Sandoval as we
were eating.

"Not very good/' he replied. "Those Indians don't
seem to know where your destiny is."

I'm getting rather accustomed to that, so it didn't
disturb me much.

"What have you been doing?" he wanted to know.

I told him that I had decided to become a colum-
nist and had been busy that afternoon writing my
first one. "Do you have columns in El Peru?" I asked.

"Oh yes," he said, "as a matter of fact I think,, at
the inn, there is an old Comerclo that has a column
in it." And he took the lantern and went off to find it.

My Spanish is improving daily (and high time it
did, for this is not a matter of culture, but of neces-
sity), but still there are a great many words I do not
understand. However, I gathered the drift of the
column. It was in the philosophical style, and it
mused on about the strange way of life we have in the
United States. It talked about the city of Babylon,
which I immediately recognized as New York, and
then it went to Chicago, where it philosophized about
the "rueda de Chicago."

"What," I asked, "is a 'ruedaT We got out the
dictionary. My volume, which is ancient Spanish and
doesn't go in for anything not strictly classic, said a
"rueda" was a small wheel or, Ichth., a molebwt. This
didn't help much. But Sandoval, who is something of
an artist, drew me a picture and explained that it was
a big wheel for an amusement park, and thus I
learned that the Loop of Chicago is a Ferris Wheel.

Then he wanted to know what sort of columns we
have in the United States.

I began on Dorothy Thompson, but I don't care
how hard you try to explain Dorothy Thompson to

an Indian it just can't be done. I couldn't do it in
English, much less in Spanish. I thought Westbrook
Pegler might be simpler. I explained that columnists
were not ordinary people, but people who said just
what they thought about everybody and everything
and devil take the hindmost Of course, I didn't
know how to say that in Spanish, but I conveyed the
impression with somewhat lengthy circumlocution.
Then, I concluded, they even poke fun sometimes at
our learned institutions.

"Do they dare do that?" he asked, and wanted to
know what sort of thing they said. Naturally, I
couldn't give him anything very up to date ; I haven't
seen a World Telegram or a Herald Tribune or a
Post for something like a year, but I tried.

"This is the sort of thing Westbrook Pegler says :
In one of his columns he said that for years scientific
expeditions had spent a lot of money to shoot a
panda, but that Ruth Harkness just went to the
jungle and said, 'Here kitty, kitty,' and came back
with a live baby one."

Now Sandoval has been looking for my phantom
bear in El Peru for almost a year, and he knows from
thorough experience how exploring is done. He
thought about Pegler's description of my methods,

ate a mouthful of spaghetti, and began to smile.
Next he chuckled a little and choked over the last bit
of cauliflower, and finally he laughed so hard that
tears ran down his face.

When he was able, he said, "So ail I have to do
now when I go hunting in the jungle is to say, f Ven
misclii, mischi, 9 " We both giggled about that, and I
began to think that the day was turning out all right
after all.

Next Sandoval wanted to know what sort of thing
I was writing and what I called it. As well as I could,
I explained Mrs. Roosevelt's My Day. That was diffi-
cult, too, because here in Pangoa I don't even know
if she writes it any more.

His face grew rather stern as I floundered on in
my explanation. "You are even using her title? 55 he
asked, and I had to admit that I was.

"You could be sued for plagiarism for that and
you told me not long ago you had just got out of one
mess of being sued. 59

To which I could think of no reply other than, "I
really don't believe Eleanor would sue me."

"Oh," he said, a little suspiciously, "La Primera
Senora de los Estados Unidos is a friend of yours?"

"Why, no," I admitted, "IVe never met her, but I

have some friends who have but then," I said, rather
lamely, "everybody sort of knows Eleanor, and most
people like her very much."

"I consider it a lack of respect to call La Primera
Senora by her first name, 55 he said firmly, "and, more-
over, I don't think it ethical to use the name of her
column, even if she doesn't sue you."

Then he went into a lengthy dissertation on the
ethics of Spinoza, which left me rather at sea because,
I must admit, I find Spinoza awfully hard reading.

And at last Sandoval said, or rather he didn't say,
that he thought all Yanquis completely incompre-
hensible, but picking up the Comercio of Lima, he
concluded with an endearing gravity, "I really prefer
this type of column in spite of its little mistake about
La Rueda de Cheecago"

\_245'}

1 L A N A V I T> A D

UN MIL GRACIAS, Senora ; I am enchanted to
have this translation," smiled Sandoval,
"and I appreciate deeply the work you
have done for me. It will give me much pleasure."

"Oh, it is nothing," I replied, "particularly in
comparison to what you are doing for me; it isn't
everybody who would help a Gringa try to find her
destiny in the jungles."

"Ah, but Senora, while I am looking for yours,
perhaps I shall find mine also. God alone knows what
we may eventually encounter in the selva."

The thing for which Sandoval was so graciously
thanking me was a translation into Spanish of an
article about the San Bias Indians; it was in The

National Geographic Magazine. Sandoval reads little
English, and lie had particularly wanted to know
what the text which accompanied the bright Indian
pictures said. So ? I had spent my time with a dic-
tionary. And if I live to be a very old woman. The
National Geographic will always remain to me a
magic carpet to transport me to a hut deep in the
Andean jungle, and to a Christmas Eve spent where
the dwellers in the green mansions do not know or
care that America was discovered four hundred years
ago, or that a Man whose name was Jesus was born
nearly two thousand years before.

It happened in this wise. Sandoval, Tzongiri, and
I had gone into the selva not far from Pangoa, to
be sure, but far enough in such a land as this as to
make Pangoa almost inaccessible. We had stayed on
there at our deep jungle encampment, making far-
ther sorties from time to time in search of traces of
the elusive gray bear. And thus it was that, imper-
ceptibly and without too great caring, Christmas
came to us. It seemed not to matter ; the commercial
opportunities of exploiting the birthday of El Cristo
have been neglected in Peru. No great department
stores take on a thousand extra clerks for the Christ-
mas rush, with a pink slip of dismissal in the Christ-

mas Eve pay envelopes of the exhausted people who
have contributed to the spirit of the Christmas holi-
days. Strangely enough, down here no one seems to
think much about giving anybody a present ; in this
most Catholic country one goes to mass instead.

As I say, I hadn't thought I cared too much about
celebrating Christmas. But, occasionally, remem-
brance of winters past had come to me. One November
afternpon, while I was still in Pangoa, I went to the
little stream nearby my house to bathe in the bril-
liant tropical sunshine which filtered through the
jungle green. A quick nostalgia for dead leaves and
sudden gusts of snow swept me. A white New Eng-
land Christmas not a lush, exuberant tropical one.
I must do something to make it Christmas, I thought.
I could think of only one thing to do, and that was
to give Sandoval a present. But what? In the jungles
one needs little and wants less.

Back in the house, my eyes had fallen on a dog-
eared copy of The National Geographic which San-
doval had treasured for many a year. It was, I think,
a 1926 copy. So I sat down and wrote to Anne, in
New York City. Anne is a young thing of almost
seventy summers who will do practically anything
for me except accompany me to the far corners of the

earth. Would she please, instead of sending me a
Christmas gift, send Sandoval a subscription to The
National Geographic, the pictures of which he loved?

So my letter had been sent off to Anne, and then,
the next month, we had left the village and moved out
into the selva to our jungle base. Sandoval made long
trips from there, often for many days at a time,
coming back, thin and exhausted from the cruel work
of making a way through the trackless jungle, very
much in need of nourishing food.

Food that greatest of the problems of the jungle.
We had, of course, the diet which our sparse and
scattered savage neighbors had, but the last tin of
American food had been used some time before, and
I wished desperately that we might have something
special just for Christmas.

On the morning of the twenty-fourth, Sandoval
said, "Senora, we have little food left ; today I shall
go to the village, to Pangoa, to bring more. And to
see if there is any mail for you."

"Tonight," I said, '"will be Christmas Eve; you
probably would like to spend tomorrow with your
friends in Pangoa."

"No, Senora, it is not that. Since Rosa Aurora died,
there is little in the village to interest me. I shall

travel rapidly and be back this evening before dark."
And so he went early, through the thick wall of the
jungle which surrounded the little hut 5 with one
Indian accompanying him to help carry back the
Christmas food. Only Tzongiri remained in the little
camp with me through the long day that quivered
with heat until the late afternoon when, over the
narrow valley, dark and angry rain clouds closed in
and water fell in torrents.

Under the thatched roof I crouched over the blaz-
ing logs on the ground, cooking the supper of beans
and onions and thinking of Sandoval, whom no hard-
ship of wilderness seemed to daunt. The trail, I
thought, will be very dangerous now with the heavy
rain.

After a long time the storm passed, and the bril-
liant stars hung low in the deep sky. The forest whis-
pered to itself in the night, and I wondered from
time to time how late the hour might be. Tzongiri
sat impassively on a log by the fire, the flames making
more brilliant his red paint and copper skin. Finally
he said, "Sandoval no viene" Knowing that he was
hungry, I filled a basin for him from the bubbling
pot, but I could not bring myself to eat until the last
hope of Sandoval's coming had passed. Christmas

[ 250 ]

Eve. Perhaps there would have been letters from
friends and family. Sandoval had said he would come,
and never in all the months we had searched the
jungles together had he failed his word. My mind re-
fused to stop thinking of the tigres which dwell in the
forests; the poisonous serpents which, in the rainy
season, are uncertain of temper because it is also
their mating period. A thousand things might befall
a man on a jungle trail at night.

The lantern flickered low, and Tzongiri dozed ; he
rose to wrap himself in his blanket for the night.
Christmas Eve for him held no centuries-old connota-
tion. An owl hooted close to the hut, and a bat swiftly
circled under the high thatch. Far, far in the dis-
tance, some night-prowling animal uttered a faint cry.
Or was it a jungle animal? I listened intently. Never
had I realized before what a symphony of sounds the
night could produce. Again it came, fainter than
before.

"Tzongiri, Tzongiri," I said. "Listen. Is it an
animal?"

His face did not change expression, but he rose
and reached for the lantern. "It is human," he said,
and disappeared into the night.

For a long time I sat straining my eyes through

the darkness for tlie returning gleam of the lantern.
I mistook luminous insects, which light their lamps at
night, for the lantern. But as their lights were sud-
denly extinguished by the closing of their wings, I
knew that they pertained to nothing human. I was
the only human thing in that deep well of unbroken
black and green.

At last the lantern flickered through the trees and
stopped by the fire. There was Tzongiri, putting a
heavy bag on the ground, and just behind him stood
Sandoval a Sandoval almost unrecognizable. To his
waist he was covered with slime ; his bronzed face and
even his jet hair were encrusted with red mud. From
out of a cloth, tied Indian-fashion on his back, there
peered the head of a small red hen who squawked
over his shoulder. Sandoval rubbed his arm over his
muddy face and handed me a stained handkerchief in
which something was tied.

"Eggs," I breathed.

Cradled in the handkerchief were seven eggs. I
clumsily untied the knots and put the eggs in a plate,
but in the doing I broke one. Sandoval had carried
them many kilometers from the village, but I ...

To cover my confusion, I said, "But where is the
Indian you took with you to carry the pack?"

"Drunk, very drunk, in Pangoa," Sandoval an-
swered briefly,

"And you carried all these things?" I asked, spill-
ing packages out of the bag.

"It would have been nothing, 5 ' he answered, "ex-
cept for the heavy rain. About a kilometer from here,
I slipped and fell into the mud up to my waist. With
the pack on my back I could not pull my legs out.
The mud kept sucking me down. It was/' he said, "a
long time before Tzongiri heard my cry."

"I had almost concluded that you were spending
the holiday in Pangoa. Tzongiri thought so."

"But Senora," he said reprovingly, "it is Christ-
mas Eve, and I said I would return. There are letters
for you," he smiled, "and also something for me."
His gray eyes shone. "I must go now to the stream to
bathe, but you shall see when I return." And he
tethered the hen to a log on the floor and took his
soap and towel. "The little gcHlina" he told me over
his shoulder, "is for Christmas dinner."

I looked closely at the hen. For a disconcerting
moment I thought it was our own little red gallina
from Pangoa. But I should have had greater faith
in Sandoval ; this one proved to be a stranger, though
she was of the same Peruvian red.

Tzongiri blew the fire into a blaze, and I gave Mm
another large basin of supper. The salvajes have a
bottomless pit where civilized people have a stomach.
I unwrapped more things from the bag. There were
the usual beans and spaghetti, but there was also
fresh bread from Quiroz' brick oven, and marvel
of marvels ! a half kilo of butter. There were sugar
and coffee and tea, dried meat, and a few tins of
salmon and sardines. Deep in the bottom of the bag
was a bottle of Peruvian red wine. It was Christmas
Eve!

Sandoval appeared, changed into fresh shirt and
slacks, Ms black hair gleaming wet, Ms dark face
shining from a hard soaping. The fragrance of coffee
drifted under the thatched roof and mingled with the
pungent odor of strong Peruvian cigarette smoke.
Even Tzongiri, ordinarily so stolid^ seemed to have
caught a little of this strange festivity of the civili-
zados.

Sandoval opened the wine, and we said "Salud a
La Navidad," and drank from enameled mugs. Then
he opened the mud-stained package that contained
the mail the precious letters from home. There was
one from Mother, one from Margaret, one from Jean
enclosing a Christmas handkerchief; there was one

from Anne, and with It a lovely card with snowy
sheep guarded by a shepherd whose eyes were on the
Christmas heaven.

And for Sandoval there was Anne's gift The
National Geographic! We ate the beans cooked with
onions, sitting on a log by the fire, and over our
coffee we shared the magazine. "Princely India" in
lavish color spilled over the pages. All the pomp and
glory of the Orient were there for Christmas. Some
of the places I had seen for myself, and those which I
knew I explained to Sandoval. We pored over them
far into the night long after Tzongiri had taken his
blanket and rolled up for sleep.

Outside, ghostly arms of mist floated through trees
and disappeared into the river valley. The Southern
Cross lay on the tips of the palm fronds.

Sandoval looked at the heavens and said, "It is now
no longer the Eve of Christmas, it is the Birthday of
El Cristo ... A happy Christmas to you, Senora."

And to him I returned the age-old greeting in the
Spanish tongue. As one of a northern land and of
different blood, I shall probably never know exactly
what mystic wisdom lay in the depths of his heart
through which flows the blood of two mysterious races
but to him, as to me, it was now Christmas.

On the following day Sandoval took pen and paper
and wrote to Anne, to the unknown Gringa who had
sent him a beautiful gift. It was a carefully and
beautifully written letter in courtly Spanish. The
salutation read: "Lady of All My Consideration."
Many weeks later Anne wrote, "I have received Senor
SandovaPs letter, and if I had sent him bags of dia-
monds and rubies, I should still be in debt to him for
the most beautiful letter I have ever received."

<zz/eve*c

TONKINTE THE THIN

ONE

T

HERE WILL BE THOSE WHO WILL DOUBT the
veracity of this tale, but I swear by the hun-
dred names of God inscribed in the Taj
Mahal and by Sandoval's honor that it is true.

My first knowledge of Tonkinte came in a startling
and horrible form came to me deep, deep in the
jungles many months ago when Sandoval and I were
making a journey. We were on our way to visit
Kaninahuanti a man who lived far from Pangoa
far even from his own kind. A man, Sandoval assured
me, who was quite different from any of the salvages
I knew, a man who might possibly be able to tell us
where we could find my destiny.

It was a two-day journey through the jungled hills

from Pangoa. Sandoval as usual preferred to walk,
always going ahead of my mule and the pack animal
that carried our provisions and blankets. SandovaPs
machete was seldom idle; there were the usual lianas
and twisting creepers of every sort thorn trees that
tore at face, arms, and legs, and had to be cut away.

By late afternoon of the first day, our slow prog-
ress became even more snail-like; the trail grew
fainter and fainter, until finally we were in a density
of undergrowth in which there was no vestige of path.

Sandoval turned an anxious face to me and said,
"Senora, I am afraid we have lost our way. 55

There was nothing to do but retrace our path and
hunt for a way around the impenetrable growth.
Sandoval was obviously worried for it was late and
here night drops like a ripe fruit from the sky. It is
not pleasant to be caught in the tropic night without
a suitable place to camp, without water, and without
a cheerful fire.

Sandoval hacked vigorously, and the mules slithered
between close-set trees like cats, while I stumbled and
tripped in the rear. Soon the growth thinned, and we
were in a small glade through which ran a crystal
clear stream. "We cannot possibly go farther today, 95
said Sandoval. **We must make camp here and in the

morning search, for the trail we have somehow missed. 5 *

He offered me a cigarette and was about to strike
a match to light it, when he suddenly stopped, his
action frozen. His eyes, with an expression I had
never before seen in them, were fixed on something
over my shoulder.

I turned and I too saw it.

At the far end of the glade, just distinguishable In
the fast-fading light, suspended from the horizontal
limb of a tree, hung a thing which had once been a
human body.

In horror, I turned to Sandoval, my mind, my lips
congealed. His dark face might truly have been a
bronze, for it was drained of all expression. But of
one accord, we slowly walked toward it.

A faint breeze drifted down the glade and the body
revolved slowly a slight and horribly charred body.
The dank odor of wet ashes rose from beneath it. A
long green liana bound the slender wrists and held
suspended the body of what must have once been a
young woman. Even the hair had been burned away,
but the tough green vine had withstood the fire.

Minutes passed and I thought numbly, why doesn't
Sandoval say something? The little breeze had died;
the body again hung motionless. It was that hour

[*?]

before the night symphony of the jungle begins, and
the silence of the green jungles beat in rhythmic-
waves against my ears.

"This," Sandoval finally said in an almost inau-
dible voice, "must be witchcraft. God alone knows
what she may have suffered before the flames." His
dark face settled into heavy lines, and his sad eyes
were haunted by a nameless emotion. Slowly he added,,
"It may have been Tonkinte."

Suddenly he almost shouted, "Senora, Senora, we
must hurry. We shall be in the darkness in mere mo-
ments."

That, I knew, meant a fire quickly a matter soon
solved, as a heap of dry sticks and branches lay close
to the dead ashes mute testimony that too much
fuel had been gathered. Together we carried them
some distance away, and shortly red flames made a
bright little circle, an oasis in the terrible night.

Sandoval unsaddled the mules and turned them-
loose to browse on green branches. He dumped the
blankets and luggage by the fire, brought water from
the stream while I unpacked our cooking pots. Deftly
he arranged my camp cot and blankets, cut sticks to
rig a waterproof sheet over it in case of rain. He him-
self disdained such civilized comfort; his custom was;

\_261~]

merely to roll himself In an old blanket and sleep close
to the fire.

The camp roughly settled, Sandoval said, almost
with formality, "Senora, now we have other work. We
cannot leave Tier like this. We must do what we can as
a burial."

I nodded agreement ; it seemed no time for words.
Sandoval took the lantern and searched through the
little glade for a possible place to bury the unseen
thing that dangled so horribly in the darkness.

When he returned he said, "I have found an old
uprooted tree. There is a rather large hole with loose
dirt which can be filled in. Will you help me?"

My hand was very unsteady and my arm ached
from holding the lantern aloft while Sandoval climbed
the tree and edged himself out on the branch to cut
loose the body. The liana, although scorched, was
tough, and he chopped several times before it gave
way and let the black charred thing fall with a soft
thud into the ashes.

Sandoval wiped the sweat from his glistening face
and I said, "We must find something to wrap it in."

He thought for a moment and then said, "We shall
use the cloth we were taking to Kaninahuanti as a
present."

[ 868 ]

Curiosity

A baby tigrillo of the selva wonders what he hears in
the undergrowth. If captured sufficiently young, lie makes
a charming pet.

We had to hunt because our packing had been a
little careless perhaps, I thought in sudden panic,
we had forgotten it. Dear Lord, I prayed, let us find
it and let us do this tiling quickly, because I was
haunted by another burial in another forest on the
other side of the world. The burial of a little box of
ashes that were those of my husband who had died
in Shanghai ; ashes I had carried two thousand miles
through China to bury in the Tibetan foothills where
the gods had given me a baby Giant Panda. Yang Di
Lin, my Chinese friend and guide, had planted a slen-
der silvery bamboo over the little place. I thought of
that and I had great need of haste.

Sandoval must have known what were my thoughts
because, the cloth found, we wasted no time. In the
yellow lantern light, SandovaPs slim hands gently
gathered up the slight crumpled body, now gray
with ashes, and wrapped it in the cloth. From a
pocket he produced stout cord and tied it securely.

He rose from his work and, glancing at me, made
the sign of the cross, murmuring as he did so the
beautiful Spanish words, "En el nombre del Padre,
por la senal de la Santa Cruz, y del Hi jo, del Es~
piritu, de nuestros enemigos, libranos Senor Dios
nuestro. Amen."

[363']

It must have been a very light burden, for lie car-
ried it effortlessly to the gaping hole left by the fallen
tree while I lighted the way. Putting it carefully on
the ground, he said softly, "You, Senora, had better
go back and put more wood on the fire while I finish
this. Perhaps you would make some coffee for us?"

By the time Sandoval returned, the coffee was
ready and I had half-heartedly started to prepare
food. "Let's don't bother with that just now, Senora, 55
he said. "Perhaps later. 55 He rummaged in his duffle
bag and produced a small bottle of aguardiente.
"This just now will be better. 55 So we sat and sipped
the raw but comforting ardent water, drank scalding
black coffee, and smoked endless cigarettes.

At length I said, "You think the victim of witch-
craft may have been Tonkinte. Who was she? 55

"It is a long story, Senora, and it all started many
years ago. 55 He smiled at me. "Long before you ever
heard of a village called Pangoa. It began with Ka-
ninahuanti in whose camp, Ojala (which means God
willing) , we shall be tomorrow night. Would you like
to hear it? 55

And this is the story Sandoval told me.

Years ago when Sandoval first came to Pangoa
{.2641

from Lima as a colonist, there had been many occa-
sions when he spent the night in the isolated encamp-
ment of Kaninahuanti. He, with the help of his young
wife Anake, had cleared the land, and they had made
a better farm in the deep selva than any that Sando-
val had ever seen. Never did Anake lack cotton to
weave cushmas for herself and her rapidly increasing
family. There was always plenty of good sweet maize,
yucca, and bananas, and more than that, Kanina-
huanti was a powerful hunter. He had two trained
dogs which helped him in the chase, so Anake never
lacked game from her husband's arrows.

Kaninahuanti differed in many ways from others
of the Campa tribe in his industry, his seriousness,
but chiefly in that, unlike the others, he had only one
wife. He appeared to have no desire for another.

But every year added another baby to the family,
and Kaninahuanti knew that to raise strong healthy
sons his wife should be relieved of the burden of so
much work in the fields. He did not demean himself
with anything so lowly.

So one day Kaninahuanti announced to Afiake that
he was going on a journey to buy one or two, if
possible young slaves to lighten her labors. And
taking his bow and arrows, accompanied by his two

good hunting dogs which were the envy of many, he
departed for the upper regions of the Ene River
where young girls could be acquired cheaply. To this
end he had traded with the civilized colonists of
Pangoa, exchanging the game he brought down for
cloth, fishhooks,, small mirrors, and such things as
the salvajes value.

He traveled far and visited many people known to
him, but of slaves to be purchased he found none. As
a last resort he visited the camp of Piori, a Campa
known to be lazy and shiftless, a man of no family
pride quite unlike Kaninahuanti.

In the camp of Piori a poor place with little food
Kaninahuanti spent two days, ostensibly visiting.
In the thatched hut the two men drank masato, sur-
rounded by the usual tumbling of babies and the
leisurely activities of the wives.

On a dirty palm-leaf mat in a dark corner lay what
at first appeared to be a heap of refuse carelessly
thrown aside. But now and again it moved ; a second
glance showed that it was an animated skeleton to
which Piori's wives occasionally threw scraps of left-
over food. Although it moved, no sound issued from
the lips of Tonkinte, a child then of about ten who

had been captured long moons before from a neigh-
boring tribe.

Kaninahuanti, apparently observing nothing, saw
everything. Perhaps with a little care and such good
food as he produced on his chacra, the skeleton might
be salvaged.

The night before he was to leave, Kaninahuanti,
over the masato, said to Piori in a tone of complete
indifference, "Will you sell me that girl?"

Firelight flickered over Pior?s expressionless
acJiote-p&inted face. He was silent for a long time.

"What will you give me for her? 55 he finally said.

With equal thoughtfulness, Kaninahuanti said, "I
have cloth, and fishhooks."

Again there was silence.

Piori at last replied, "I do not need those. 55

"I have also mirrors and red handkerchiefs, 55 ad-
mitted Kaninahuanti.

"I do not need those. 55

"Of what does Piori have need? 55 inquired Kanina-
huanti.

"I need a good hunting dog. 55

"I accept, 55 said Kaninahuanti, without hesitation,
"but now give me food not scraps for her that she

may be strong enough to travel for three days." He
carried the food to her and said, "Eat. Tomorrow
you go with me."

With complete indifference, with Oriental fatalism,
Tonkinte obeyed him then, as she did in the early
dawn, when he said, "Rise, little one, we must be on
our way."

How the skeleton that was Tonkinte, so named be-
cause in the Campa tongue it means "the thin one,"
managed to travel three days, Sandoval did not know,
but he did know that when she finally arrived at
Kaninahuanti's clean and spacious hut, Anake busied
herself with the sick child. She gathered herbs from
the forests to cure her sores, and made various brews
and tonics such as only the salvage women know.

Under ASake's care, Tonkinte improved, but the
spirit of the little Indian maid seemed utterly broken.
It was not that she did not serve faithfully ; she car-
ried the babies to the river and washed them, she
cooked and cultivated the corn and yucca, but al-
ways she was silent. She obeyed but she never an-
swered. No gleam of interest lightened her eyes, and
when other work was finished, she sat apathetically
in a corner and prepared raw cotton for weaving.

And always she was true to her name "the thin one 55
a little and unprepossessing girl who was trying to
grow up.

All this took place in the years when there had
been immigration from Germany and Austria of
people who, for many reasons, wanted to hew them-
selves a farm from the virgin jungles, and start life
anew in the Peruvian selva.

Among this group of colonists were an elderly
couple, Maria and Isaac Steiner, and their son Kurt.
No one asked their reasons for leaving Germany, for
they brought with them goods and money ; they were
good colonists. It could not be said that they were
liked by the dark-skinned population of Pangoa, but
they were tolerated at first, and even envied, for they
built themselves a fine large house with the tallest
thatch in the colony. Their menage created a new
standard of luxury.

The villagers felt vaguely uneasy whenever they
felt themselves the object of the cold blue gaze of
Kurt Steiner. He was a man who bore himself
proudly, even arrogantly, and was often heard to
speak slightingly of blood that was not pure Aryan.

Sandoval frequented the Steiner chacra and, to use
the Spanish expression, was a persona de conficmza.

\_269~}

Maria Steiner told him stories of her native German
village and of her family. Her household, as nearly
as she could manage it, was patterned on the spotless
middle-class home of her native village. Maria was
tall ? slender, and handsome, with only a little gray
in her neatly arranged, heavy blonde hair. Her blue-
gray eyes were kindly, but they were also capable of
withering contempt. No doubt that Maria was pure
Aryan in fact, she often spoke of it and of the New
Order in Germany.

The place of honor in the Steiner household
was occupied by a large and highly colored picture
of Hitler, and on other walls were portraits of
Goebbels and Goering. On the rough homemade table
in the sola there were always piles of handsomely
printed magazines, the text in the most beautiful of
literary Spanish, and the photographs clearly illus-
trated the magnificence of modern Alemania. There
were booklets extolling the marvelous social system
and the beneficence of Der Fuehrer. Any chance visi-
tor hungry for literature, of which there was little
but an occasional newspaper in Pangoa, could carry
away with him any that suited his taste.

When visitors were few and they became very
scarce indeed Kurt himself carried them to the vil-

[070]

lage bodega, and there, over a glass of beer with the
ragged colonists, he sang the praises of Hitler and
condemned the Jews as the originators of all the evils
of the world. All of which somewhat puzzled the
colonists, to whom it was obvious that his father, old
Isaac Steiner, was a Jew of the Jews.

How it happened that she who was the proud and
Aryan Maria Wolfe, had married a man and a Jew
many years her senior, nobody knew, but everyone
was well aware that old Isaac was merely tolerated in
his own household. He was old, bald, and sunk in
senility. When he removed his false teeth, his great
hooked nose almost met his lips, and he slobbered
dreadfully with his soft-cooked food.

Then were the cold blue eyes of Kurt even more
icy, and the usually kind expression in Maria's
faded. Conversation between mother and son would
then turn with nostalgia to the beautiful homeland
so far away, to the glories of Hitler and the New
Order ; often it became hot with recriminations against
the Jews and their heinous plots to ruin the brave
new world.

At such times old Isaac mumbled agreement into
Ms mush. Yes, the Jews were evil, at all costs they
must be suppressed.

When Kurt was not occupied with the supervision
of his well-kept farm, it was his wont to take his rifle,
pack food, and go to the jungles for a few days' hunt-
ing. It was on such an expedition that he came to the
chacra of Kaninahuanti.

And such are the laws of hospitality of the salvages*
that even though they hate with a great intensity all
civilizados who threaten the freedom of their forests,
a guest is always safe in their huts, and in a measure
even sacred. Thus it was that Kurt and Kanina-
huanti sat on Anake's carefully woven mats while she
served them gourds of fresh mas at o.

Nothing escaped Kurt's cold eyes; especially did
he note Tonkinte. She was then perhaps sixteen years
old still a sad and skinny little servant who silently
did Anake's hidding.

"Win you sell me that girl?" asked Kurt.

Kaninahuanti glanced at the German with black
unrevealing eyes, sipped his masato, and did not
deign to reply. Kurt enumerated the number of small
objects that he would be willing to give in exchange
for Tonkinte, and was met with stony silence.

But in the following days Kaninahuanti gave the
matter much thought. He had noted well that this
pale colonist knew how to raise good fat cattle and

pigs. It would be well if he could do likewise, for
he was growing older and the hunt was not so pleas-
urable as it had been. Also, his one good hunting
dog had died long ago.

Therefore it was that sometime later the tall proud
salvaje suddenly appeared in the doorway of the
Steiner home and announced briefly to Kurt, "I want
a pig."

will you pay me?"

"Whatever you want," replied Kaninahuanti.

"Give me Tonkinte," said Kurt.

Kaninahuanti lapsed into reflective silence; the
German also remained impassive.

Said the salvage pensively, "I need a good fat pig,
a sow that can give me good litters of small ones."
He stopped and waited for Kurt to speak.

With equal thoughtfulness and paucity of words,
Kurt replied, "I have a sow that I could give you,
but she's very thin ; Tonkinte is also thin."

The black Oriental eyes of Kaninahuanti met
Kurt's cold blue ones. Kurt added, "When this thin
pig needs a boar, bring her here."

In all truth, thought Kaninahuanti, these pale
skins know little of business. I can give the thin pig
plenty of good corn, yucca, bananas; she will have

many little ones and in a short time I will have good
trade within the tribe.

Kaninahuanti rose and stalked to the door. Over
his shoulder he said, "Bring me the thin pig; take
Tonkinte."

And so it was that the frail little Indian maid
came to serve in the household of the German Steiners.

Tonkinte took the strange situation with the same
passivity and fatalism with which she accepted her
bleak and empty destiny in complete silence. She
spoke no word of Spanish, only her native Campa
tongue; the guttural German of the Steiners meant
nothing to her. Life itself meant nothing to her.

Old Isaac grumbled. What did his wife propose to
do with this little savage, this little skeleton?

But Maria had definite ideas. Her son had brought
her a serving-maid. She would train her to be such a
servant as she had had in her native village.

"First, I shall give her a good German name, 55
said Maria.

"Hagar," mumbled the old Jew, "would be an ap-
propriate name for your slave. 55 But Tonkinte never
lost the name which meant "the thin one. 55

Two years passed in which Sandoval saw a miracle

wrought by the Aryan Maria. For the first time in
her young life Tonkinte knew human kindness ; she
knew the luxury of well-prepared food, new and clean
clothing. Like a sponge she absorbed Maria's training
and the German language. As she gained in weight,
she acquired a new and lovely grace; in the simple
white uniform Maria made for her, and with the crisp
ruffled cap on her shiny blue-black hair, she was a
blossom of Indian maidenhood. Gone was the apathy,
and the listless gaze into unfathomable space. Under
the copper of her skin appeared a faint rosy glow,
and the light of devotion for Maria grew in the once
lusterless black eyes.

The good bourgeoise German woman had re-
claimed a skeleton; Tonkinte served a blonde and
Aryan goddess.

"We must guard her against contamination from
these colonists," said Kurt, "and also from her own
tribe 55 a thing difficult to do because many Campa
men worked on the Steiner farm. Kurt and Maria
came to the conclusion that one way in which to safe-
guard their treasure was to forbid her any knowledge
of the Spanish tongue. Most of the forest dwellers
who came in contact with the civilizados of Pangoa
spoke enough Castilian to barter or to be useful as

laborers. But if TonMnte were forbidden the com-
pany of Spanish-speaking people and only taught
German, she could never have any interest in the
affairs of Pangoa; she might even forget her own
tongue. And to Tonkinte, Maria's word was law.

And for this reason the rare visits of the colonists
to the Steiner household stopped altogether. Even
Sandoval received a cold greeting which was an insult
to his proud and sensitive nature. From that time on
his only information of Tonldnte was by hearsay
from village gossip, and in the few remarks heard in
the outlying huts of the salvages.

It was common knowledge in Pangoa that Kurt's
Nazi activities were increasing. No stranger ever
passed unnoticed in the colony, and well noted in
particular was a blonde young German who often
came from Lima to visit in the Steiner household. He
was known by all the village as the "Fifth Calumny"
"La quinta Calumnia."

But sinister to Sandoval's ears had been the sparse
words of the Campas themselves ; there were mutter-
ings of witchcraft about Tonkinte. Anyone from the
tribe who refused to speak her own language, and who
rebuffed the advances of the personable young males
of her own blood, must be suspect. Moreover, she now

spoke German fluently, and, as all tlie savages knew,
those pale-faced colonists were possessed of much
magic all black.

More than that, Sandoval told me, just about a
month before, the youngest wife of the curaca, the
chieftain of all the Campas, had died most mysteri-
ously, it was said. Sandoval privately believed it
was caused by malignant malaria, of which there was
much in the colony, but no Campa would credit that.
Someone had put an evil spirit in the woman; she
had died and someone must pay.

"And because of what you have heard," I ques-
tioned, "you believe the body you buried is that of
Tonkinte?"

"It may be," he said, putting another stick on the
fire, "f or no one has seen Tonkinte for two weeks or
more. Just yesterday in the bodega, I asked one of
the Steiner Campas about her, but he was evasive. I
could leam nothing/'

For the time being that was all of Tonkinte's history
I could learn. The next night, by the fire in Kanina-
huanti's camp, over gourds of sour masalo* Sandoval
adroitly questioned our host. His eyes flickered, and
he answered curtly, "No se"

But Sandoval still thought that he knew the iden-
tity of that pathetic charred body that he had buried
for the soul of which I knew he had said a prayer.

Some days later, in Pangoa, Sandoval reported
that the. Guardia Civil had gone to the Steiner ckacra
to question Kurt. He of the cold blue eyes, whose God
was Hitler, assured the civilized Indian policeman
that Tonkinte was in safe hands that he had sent
her to Lima. As there is Spanish law for the civilizados
who can understand it, and none for the salvajes who
comprehend only that their immemorial lands are
threatened, nothing more was said, nothing more was
done.

One morning soon after our journey to Kanina-
huanti's camp, Sandoval came to my house. For a
week or more I had not felt well, and this morning he
found me shaking and chattering with violent chills.
Lucho was valiantly attempting, with little success,
to make coffee.

"Sefiora," Sandoval said with pity in his voice, "it
is the malaria. There is no medicine here ; the supply
of quinine and atebrina has run out. You must make
all haste to get to Lima."

So Lucho and Sandoval packed the meager equip-
ment of my Pangoan house and in the early dawn,

]

o
O

lib
3:

after a night of brilliant moonlight, the three of us
climbed into a heavily laden truck for the journey
over the ranges of mountains and down to Lima on
the coast.

That fever-ridden journey with chills in the hot
lowlands and cold perspiration up where the great
glaciers lie was something I shall not soon forget.
But the end of that trip was to be Lima and it was
not till I had been there some days that I learned the
rest of Tonkinte's sorry little story.

Sandoval came faithfully to visit me while I lay
with fever in the Clinica Americana in the port of
Callao, which is near Lima. One day he came carrying
a great spray of small white chrysanthemums, and in
his manner there was an air of suppressed excitement.

"Tonkinte is in Lima," he told me.

"Then you were wrong. It was not her body that
we buried in the selva?"

"No, 55 said Sandoval, "she serves in the small res-
taurant of him who was known in Pangoa as f La
quinta CcHumnia. 9 "

"Caramba," was all I could manage to say.

"Yes, 55 he said, "I have a friend who speaks Ger-
man and who frequents the restaurant to report on
activities of Nazi agents in El Peru."

[279]

"But what of Tonkinte?"

"He says that because of her excellent knowledge
of German, she is sent on strange errands, errands
to places where it is suspected that there are Germans
who are not faithful to the fatherland, to the New
Order, and to Der Fuehrer. Because she is just a
little Indiacita, she can go unsuspected any place.' 5

"But does she realize that this is ?"

"Probably not, and anyway poor little Tonkinte is
beyond caring," said Sandoval. "How my friend
pieced together the story I do not know, but last
night we sat late drinking pisco in a little cafe, and
what he said had the sound of truth in it."

And when Sandoval had finished the tale, to me
also it rang true.

After the death of the young wife of the Campa
chieftain, there appeared one day at the house of the
Steiners, asking for work, a tall, strong, young
salvaje. Maria, with a woman's intuition, felt that he
was not to be trusted, but Kurt needed just such a
man, and so he stayed to work in the fields.

Maria's judgment proved to be right, for shortly
Kurt observed that the handsome young Campa took
every possible opportunity to waylay Tonkinte, al-

though she did her utmost to avoid him. In anger he
dismissed the youth.

No sooner had his anger died than he realized that
he had made a great mistake. The insulted salvaje
might take revenge; and it may have been that Kurt
had heard rumors of the fact that some Campa must
die to pay for the death of the curaca's young and
valuable wife.

He consulted with Maria and his Nazi colleague
who was then visiting the Steiners. The discussion as
to what they should do was long. Finally, although it
grieved Maria to lose her serving-maid to whom she
was genuinely attached, it was agreed that she should
be sent to Lima ; there she could serve the Cause. Old
Isaac, who had never particularly liked Tonkinte,
agreed with the rest; she must be sacrificed for the
New Order. The doddering old Jew did not see the
contemptuous glances of the other three.

Tonkinte was summoned to the sola.

There was sadness in Maria's voice when she said,
"Make ready your things, little one. We must send
you away."

Tonkinte stood motionless. "I do not understand,"
she said, "what it is my mistress wishes me to do. 55

"We must send you far away," said Maria. "Here

there is danger, and In Lima is work which, you must
do."

Tonkinte's expression did not change, but her eyes
went suddenly blank.

"Have I not served you well?"

"It is not that," said Maria. "It is " But after
all, how could she explain to Tonkinte, whose world
was the jungle, what lay beyond three mountain
ranges? No more could she explain their fears for
her at the hands of either the civilizados or her own
people.

Kindly Aryan Maria who lived in the jungles, but
was not of it, could not know that she had passed the
death sentence on Tonkinte. She, who had received
in her home a skeleton, had transformed it into a hu-
man being with good German kindness, was now
destroying the statue she had carved.

Tonkinte stood like something wrought of hard
and copper-colored granite. Tonkinte understood.
This was death. There was no other world than that
of the forest the burning sunshine, and the nights
when some age-old instinct sent her soul to worship
the moon that hung over the jungle, a luminous silver
circle.

Like a flower wilting, her head drooped, and she

walked toward the door. At the threshold she paused;
she turned, and in her eyes lay all of the hatred of
race for race that has ever existed since time began.
She uttered but one word: "Jews."

The Steiners had taught her better than they knew.

Sandoval looked at me. In his gray eyes that could
light so quickly with the comprehension of all things,
lay unutterable sadness.

"And you," I asked softly, "have you seen Ton-
kinte?"

"Yes," he answered wearily, "I have. Today I
lunched in the Nazi restaurant. I sought Tonkinte
out but I do not speak German, and she does not
speak Spanish."

His slender dark hands made a little gesture of
defeat.

"Here, we are in winter, Senora. One never sees
the sun, the moon. Soon Tonkinte will die. Even now
she is once more 'the thin one.' "

[883]

THREE WORLDS

SOMETIMES I THINK THAT PANGOA does not He
in the Blue Cordillera of the Andean jungle,
shut off from the world by great barriers of
rock mountains and ancient glaciers. When I think
of the days that go by uncounted there, when I see in
my mind's eye the stray population drift slowly
across the campo as in a dream, then I am certain
that Pangoa belongs to Time and the Fourth Dimen-
sion.

The fact that I had been feeling the incipient
effects of fever may have had something to do with
the sense of unreality that grew in my mind during
the last days I spent in Pangoa. Hours passed in
which I did nothing more than watch the blue haze
which always veils the green and tangled hills. Was

1*84]

it all, as the Orientals say, Maya illusion? However
that may be, my illness forced me to go.

The breaking-up of my Pangoan household was a
brief business. The old black crone who was the
laundress came to carry away left-over food ; Santos,
the mule driver, accepted with alacrity our unused
pile of firewood.

Moonlight flooded the little house, making unneces-
sary lantern or candle. Finally everything was dis-
posed of except the little red hen who slept peacefully
in a corner of the sola. Lucho carried her as a present
to a neighbor.

Everything at last finished, an unaccountable sad-
ness swept me. I would sometime return to Pangoa,
but in Lima there would be, I knew, nostalgia for the
sound of the babbling river in the night, the red glow
of the supper fire. Life in Lima would be in another
dimension.

As I started to tell in the story of Tonkinte, we
waited through the night for the heavily laden truck
to leave. Dawn came, and at last the open truck
rattled and groaned, and with half the population of
Pangoa to see us off, we left on the long journey up
over the Sierra.

Lucho and Sandoval, along with other passengers,

sat on the piled-up bundles and boxes in the rear. I
was fortunate; I shared the front seat, wedged be-
tween the Indian chauffeur and the village judge,
who had business in a Sierra town.

We roared along the ever-climbing, twisting jungle
road; rivers were in flood, and every time we came to
a crude log bridge the truck stopped to unload pas-
sengers and part of the cargo. Then it edged care-
fully across the swaying structure, and the loading
began again. The delays were interminable and it
seemed to me that never before had the jungles been
so hot.

We couldn't have been more than two hours out of
Pangoa when we stopped to refuel. On this long jour-
ney up over the Andes, gasoline sufficient for at least
two days' travel is always carried. The chauffeur
opened a ten-gallon tin and started to pour the vola-
tile fluid into the tank under the front seat.

A vague uneasiness crept over me and I climbed
out to talk to Sandoval. Without warning my knees
buckled like things made of soft rubber and my hands
shook violently. My lips trembled and, in spite of all
I could do, I moaned.

Sandoval looked at me, his eyes dark with fear for
me, and said, "It is the fever again, Senora."

[ 886 ]

He hurriedly rummaged among the cargo for my
duffle bag to find blankets ; by the time he had un-
packed them, I had crumpled on a fallen log by the
roadside a chattering, shivering, moaning thing.
He wrapped me in a blanket and I wept.

That malignant malaria was epidemic in Pangoa I
knew, for the colonists had appealed to Lama for a
doctor and medicine ; but that I might contract it had
never occurred to me. The passengers looked pity-
ingly at me, but there was nothing anyone could do,
to help.

I struggled to my feet to crawl back into the front
of the truck. "Give me a cigarette," I begged San-
doval. That might, I thought, help me to stop the
half -moans, half-sobs I could by no effort of will
suppress.

"Even the most stoic of the Campas do that," said
Sandoval, "when the fever chills come."

He handed me the lighted cigarette, and I stum-
bled back to the truck. My hands shook so violently
that the cigarette dropped to the ground. Dully I
noticed that it had missed by mere inches a half -open
tin of gasoline. This was the thirteenth time I was
crossing the Andes.

The Indian chauffeur started his machine, and

[ 287 ]

again we roared on. When I collapsed against his
shoulder, he said without looking at me, "I too have
had the fever, Senora,"

My muscles grew taut and aching from the chills ;
the cold of death settled in my bones. This, I told
myself ? is what it must be like to die. That lasted for
about two hours, and then I babbled with fever. Only
dimly I remember being helped over the wooden
bridges weakened by torrential rains white water
poured through deep gullies and spray drenched us.
Waterfalls roared over high precipices.

Night fell when we had reached an altitude of
about nine thousand feet. We stopped at a settle-
ment of three or four tumbled-down huts in which
dwelt Quechua Indians, deep in the folds of a narrow
and forbidding valley. They brought us soup and
beans, but I could not eat. The fever had passed, but
I shivered in my sweat-drenched cotton slacks in the
cold night wind down from the unseen snows. "This,"
I said, "is like Asia."

Sandoval brought me a tin cup of raw aguardiente
which burned my throat but warmed my shivering
body. I went to the room where all of the passengers
slept on rough straw mattresses in bunks, and San-
doval covered me with blankets. There was no ques-

tion of even taking one's shoes off of privacy, there
was none.

Vaguely I remember tossing on the flea-ridden mat-
tress and weeping bitterly in my sleep. The village
judge and Sandoval stood over me, and Sandoval
said, "Senora, Senora," in a pity-filled voice.

At what hour we left the hut I do not know, but the
full silver moon rode high and the truck, under the
guidance of the Indian who drove as though the
hounds of heaven or hell were on his heels, roared on
up over the twisting goat track through seas of for-
ests. Often we crept along rock ledges with the thun-
der of water below us in our ears.

Always on the ever-soaring path, on the hairpin
turns, an Indian boy stood ready to jump out of the
truck to put a block under the rear tires, in order
that, in the backing and filling, the truck would not
simply roll over the edge into space and eternity.

Moonlight bathed the now thinning forests of the
high Andes in an unearthly beauty. At times I dozed
on the Indian's shoulder, and I dreamed strange
dreams. I was not a fever-stricken Gringa in a truck
laden with miscellaneous jungle cargo and dark-
skinned humanity ; I was the rider on a white horse
a rider with bow and arrows.

Perhaps I was riding swiftly on an errand for the
King of all the Incas. It was of such a nature that
not Life, nor Death, nor Destiny could stop me. The
truck jolted to a stop and I roused myself, thinking:
I am confused; the Incas did not have horses; the
Spanish brought them.

In the cold gray morning light on the high puna
the earth lay bleak and barren immensities of space
guarded by glaciers and one brooding snow-capped
peak. On the eastern horizon appeared the blood-red
disk of the sun ; in the west the pale moon slowly sank
over the edge of earth. The f ourteen-thousand-f oot
pass was .behind us.

cc Water, 5!> I begged of Sandoval for my parched
throat, and he brought me a cup filled from a glacier
stream.

By ten o'clock we had descended to a little white
village that sprawled on the spur of a mountain at an
altitude of about eight thousand feet. Again there
were forests, but above these, on barren peaks, the
ancient terraces of the Incas clung at crazy angles.

The passengers all ate breakfast in a dirt-floored
room. Sandoval brought me black coffee, but again
the cycle of malarial germs in my blood had been
completed. They had fed well on red corpuscles, and

now were starting a new blitzkrieg millions upon
millions of them sought new corpuscles to devour.

A herd of llamas passed, and it seemed to me that
they looked pityingly with their great sweet eyes at
the shivering blanket-wrapped object that sat on the
running board. Sandoval and Lucho stood helplessly

by-

Late that afternoon we had left behind the fifteen-
thousand-foot pass, and descended to a tableland
over which raged a blizzard a mixture of rain and
snow. By that time the fever had again passed, and
the cold winds penetrated my thin and perspiration-
wet blankets. At a stop to refuel, the passengers
stamped their feet, walking up and down to keep
warm. Sandoval was wrapped in my old yellow wool
dressing gown, and Lucho trailed a gaily striped
Mexican serape. His little copper face was pinched
and miserable with the unaccustomed cold.

In Huancayo, which lies in the high and beautiful
valley of Jauja, the desk clerk of the modest little
hotel gazed in astonishment at the ragged, strangely
dressed trio but he gave us rooms. Lucho did his
best to unpack my scanty belongings while Sandoval
hunted medicine and further transportation.

He came back with atebrina, which he carefully in-

jected into a vein in my arm. "This will cut tlie fever
for a time, Senora, but tomorrow morning at four
o'clock I shall give you another to make sure that you
will not have fever on the way to Lima. But if you
should have another attack, you must make an effort
not to chatter or moan, because these private cars
will not carry people with fever if they know it."

In the cold darkness of early morning we were
again on our way; gone was the world of the jungle.
Swiftly we sped over the beautiful roads of the great
Black Cordillera, where one's breath is short in the
even higher passes, and down to the civilization of the
desert Pacific Coast.

There our ways parted ; Sandoval and Lucho went
to his mother's house, and I went to stay with friends.

In a few days Sandoval came to visit me. It hap-
pened that I was wearing an old and very beautiful em-
broidered coat that had once belonged to a Chinese
Empress. Because I have a small degree of North
American Indian blood, I am often told that I look
somewhat Oriental. And Sandoval said, "You are a
CJiinita" a little Chinese.

So it came to be that Sandoval relaxed a little his
formal Spanish courtesy and began to address me as

Chinita dropping the title of Senora, Sandoval
talked a little of Ms mother, and then we discussed
Lucho's schooling and what we should do about the
continuation of the search for the rare little silver
bear.

But temporarily, at least, the Fates wove a pattern
that was not of our design, for a few days later I was
in the Clinica Americana again, with high fever and a
complicated collection of jungle infections which
nothing but the surgeon's knife and hospitalization
could alleviate.

Sandoval looked utterly worn the evening he came
to see me before Dr. Devault was to operate. "You
are worried about our search," he said, **but after this
is over, I shall go back to Pangoa and carry on while
you recover."

Pain dims the memory of the following weeks, but
I do remember well that Sandoval came daily to visit
his Gringa patrona who lay so ill. And I remember
that one late afternoon when he came to see me, and
learned that the following morning I was again to go
under ether, he looked unutterably sad and quietly
made the sign of the cross. He realized much better
than I what the danger was.

My last conscious thought the next morning was :
I must not die; I cannot die because it is my destiny
to find a little silver-gray bear. Then I wandered in
a strange dim place where there were many people
unknown to me. These people will not help me, I
thought in desperation, what shall I do? One face was
in deep shadow; I appealed to it. The answer came
from darkness "Chinita, have faith; we will yet find
Destiny. 55

Later, much later, I learned that Sandoval had at
that moment been at the little shrine known as El
Cristo de Zamudio a shrine visited by all manner
of people dark Indian women with black braids,
aristocratic Spanish, and all of the mixture of races
that make El Peru what it is, because it is well known
that this is the shrine of miracles.

When I saw it, a new and deeper understanding
came to me of the country in which I had so narrowly
escaped death. The shrine stood in a tiny patio which
was the entrance to a place of business ; its Spanish
sign announced that broken dolls could be mended.
El Cristo with His crown of thorns was hung with
silver and gold ornaments, tokens of gratitude given
by those who knew His miracles. Bright artificial
flowers filled the little place, and people wandered in

{.294}

and out to light candles or to stand silently for a few
minutes before making the sign of the cross and
leaving.

It would be useless to say that this is Christian
that this is Oriental or Spanish ; it is universal, and
also South American.

When or if I shall return to that other world which
is Pangoa, I do not know. But Sandoval has gone,
and this I do know that if in this thing we call Life,
there is a pattern of Destiny, nothing is lost and
nothing has been futile, and that the slight and gal-
lant figure which is Sandoval will continue the search
for the fabulous little silver bear which by some
strange alchemy of that strange land has come to
mean Destiny.

America in February 1940, she went to
rest, and possibly to live quietly and
lazily for the rest of her life. But in spite
of her resolution to do nothing but loaf,
she was inveigled into another hunt for
a mysterious and "lost" animal. The day-
by-day story of her struggle with the heat
and discomfort of the jungle, her fascina-
tion with the Indian life she discovered
deep in Pangoa, and her delight with the
color and sound of the plant and animal
life flourishing around her make the
background for these sometimes humor-
ous, sometimes awesome experiences.

These are intimate, delightful, grip-
ping stories, told with freshness and an
unspoiled taste for the mystery and
beauty of the strange land of unexplored
Peru. This is a South America few people
know, "the Peruvians, least of all," says
Ruth Harkness. Sandoval and Lucho are
characters the reader comes to love and
to remember long after the last page has
been read and the book closed. Here is
strange adventure, a dose of black magic,
a brilliant picture of primitive lives,
never before described in any book.

Pangoan Diary 517 pages, illustrated

1 34 064