adre. Happy land,
whose disputes are like the disputes of an opera company, and where
people are recommended for business on the strength of their musical
execution!

Aragon quickly understood that his friend in the expedition was not
Colonel Perez, who had insultingly dubbed him the Second Fiddle (or
Charango). He attached himself therefore with the fidelity of a spaniel
to Mr. Marcoy, walking alongside and resting his arm on the pommel of
his saddle. After an hour's traverse of a comparatively desert plateau
called the Pedregal, covered with rocks and smelling of the
patchouli-scented flowers of the mimosa, Aragon pointed out the straw
sheds and grassy plaza of Chile-Chile. This rustic metropolis is not
indicated on many maps, but for the travelers it had a special
importance, bearing upon the inca history and etymological roots of
Peru, for it was the residence of their interpreter-in-chief, Pepe
Garcia.

Introduced by the latter, our explorers made a kind of triumphal entry
into the village. The old Indian women dropped their spinning, the naked
children ceased to play with the pigs and began to play with the
garments and equipage of the visitors, and a couple of blind men, who
were leading each other, remarked that they were glad to see them.

Garcia the polyglot, radiant with importance, lost no time in dragging
his guests toward his own residence, a large straw thatch surmounting
walls of open-work, which took the fancy of the travelers from the
singular trophy attached above the door. This trophy was composed of the
heads of bucks and rams, with those of the fox and the ounce, where the
shrunken skin displayed the pointed _sierra_ of the teeth, while the
horns of oxen and goats, set end to end around the borders, formed dark
and rigid festoons: all vacancies were filled up with the forms of bats,
spread-eagled and nailed fast, from the smallest variety to the large,
man-attacking _vespertilio_. As a contrast to this exterior decoration,
the inside was severely simple: it was even a little bare. A partition
of bamboo divided the hut into kitchen and bed-room, and that was all.
Into the latter of these apartments Pepe Garcia dragged the saddles of
his guests, and in the former his two twin-daughters, melancholy little
half-breeds in ragged petticoats, assisted their father to prepare for
the wanderers a hunter's supper.

Every moment, in a dark corner or behind the backs of the company,
Garcia was observed ca