bass
drums and blatant trumpets. In an eddy in the seething crowd was a
placid-faced Aymara, bedecked in the most tawdry manner with gewgaws
from Birmingham or Manchester, sedately playing a melancholy tune on
a rustic syrinx or Pan's pipe, charmingly made from little tubes of
bamboo from eastern Bolivia.

At the close of the festival, on a Sunday afternoon, the costumes
disappear and there occurs a bull-baiting. Strong temporary barriers
are erected at the comers of the plaza; householders bar their
doors. A riotous crowd, composed of hundreds of pleasure-seekers,
well fortified with Dutch courage, gathers for the fray. All are
ready to run helter-skelter in every direction should the bull take
it into his head to charge toward them. It is not a bullfight. There
are no picadors, armed with lances to prick the bull to madness; no
banderilleros, with barbed darts; no heroic matador, ready with shining
blade to give a mad and weary bull the coup de grace. Here all is fun
and frolic. To be sure, the bull is duly annoyed by boastful boys or
drunken Aymaras, who prod him with sticks and shake bright ponchos
in his face until he dashes after his tormentors and causes a mighty
scattering of some spectators, amid shrieks of delight from everybody
else. When one animal gets tired, another is brought on. There is
no chance of a bull being wounded or seriously hurt. At the time of
our visit the only animal who seemed at all anxious to do real damage
was let alone. He showed no disposition to charge at random into the
crowds. The spectators surrounded the plaza so thickly that he could
not distinguish any one particular enemy on whom to vent his rage. He
galloped madly after any individual who crossed the plaza. Five or
six bulls were let loose during the excitement, but no harm was done,
and every one had an uproariously good time.

Such is the spectacle of Copacabana, a mixture of business and
pleasure, pagan and Christian, Spain and Titicaca. Bedlam is not
pleasant to one's ears; yet to see the staid mountain herdsmen, attired
in plumes, petticoats, epaulets, and goggles, blowing mightily with
puffed-out lips on bamboo flageolets, is worth a long journey.

CHAPTER VI

The Vilcanota Country and the Peruvian Highlanders

In the northernmost part of the Titicaca Basin are the grassy foothills
of the Cordillera Vilcanota, where large herds of alpacas thrive on
the sweet, tender pasturage. Santa Rosa is the principal town.