ed themselves to sleep with a
conversation about the beauties and beatitudes of their wives, now
playing the part of Penelopes in their absence. To hear the eulogies of
the examinador, an angel fallen perpendicularly from heaven could hardly
have realized the physical and moral qualities of the spouse he had left
in Sorata. The Castilian tongue lent wonderful pomp and magnificence to
this portrait, and as the metaphors thickened and the superb phrases
lost themselves in hyperbole, one would have thought the lady in
question was about to fly back to her native stars on a pair of
resplendent wings. Colonel Perez furnished an equally elaborate
delineation of his own fair helpmate. As for the wife of Lorenzo, nobody
knew what she was like, and the panegyric from the lips of her faithful
lord rolled on in safety and success. But the personage called by Perez
"his Theresa" was a female whom anybody who had passed through the small
shopkeeping quarters of Cuzco might have seen every day, as well as
heard designated by her common nickname (given no one knows why) of
Malignant Quinsy; and, arguing in algebraic fashion from the known to
the unknown, it was not difficult to be convinced that the poetic
flights of the examinador were equally the work of fond flattery.

Surprised by a midnight storm, the camp was broken up before the early
daylight, and our explorers' caravan moved on without breakfast. This
necessary stop-gap was arranged for at the first pleasant spot on the
route. An old clearing soon appeared, provided with the welcome
accommodation of an _ajoupa_, or shed built upon four posts. At the
command of _Alto alli!_--"Halt there!"--uttered by Perez in the tone he
had formerly used in governing his troops, the whole band stopped as one
person; the porters dumped their bales with a significant _ugh!_ the
Bolivian bark-hunters laid down their axes; and the gentlemen arranged
themselves around the parallelogram of the hut, attending the
commissariat developments of Colonel Perez. The site which hazard had so
conveniently offered was named Chaupichaca. It was the scene of an
ancient wood-cutting, around which the trunks of the antique forests
showed themselves in a warm soft light, like the columns of a temple or
the shafts of a mosque.

A detail which struck the travelers in arriving was very characteristic
of these lands, filled so full of old traditions and inca customs.
Chaupichaca was marked with a square terminal pil