Up to the hour of sunset did these "cascarilleros" work--with only a few
minutes of interruption, while they went back to the hut, and ate a
hurried luncheon of ibex-meat--and just as the sun was sinking behind
the summit of the great Chumulari, they might have been seen trudging
homeward--each bearing a heavy bundle of bark, with Fritz following
gleefully at their heels.

The thicket from which they had taken their departure, gave evidence of
the industry with which they had been working all day long. Over a
space, of nearly half an acre in extent, the trees were seen standing,
each with its tiny trunk completely divested of bark: as if a whole gang
of goats had been browsing upon them!

On reaching the hovel, our bark-gatherers did not desist from their
labour. They only entered upon a new branch of industry: by becoming
_paper manufacturers_.

It was after night; and they had to work by the light of their torches
of cheel-pine, already prepared. But as these burnt with a clear steady
flame, they served quite as well as candles would have done.

The first process in the paper-making did not require much nicety in its
execution; and, moreover, it could be performed as well inside the hut
as in the largest room of a paper-mill. All they had to do was to pick
the bark to shreds. This occupied them the whole evening--during which
there was much conversation of a cheerful kind, with a joke or two about
oakum-picking in a prison; and of this, not only the task in which they
were engaged, but the situation in which they were executing it, did not
fail to remind them.

When they had finished, they ate their frugal supper and retired to
rest--full of the idea of continuing the paper manufacture in the
morning.

When morning came, they had not much to do: for the next process was one
which required the exercise of patience rather than of labour.

When the bark of the daphne has been thoroughly picked to pieces, it is
put into a large pot or cauldron filled with water. A lixivium of
wood-ashes is then thrown in along with it; and it is suffered to boil
for several hours.

As our manufacturers were without pot or cauldron of any kind, there
would have been here an interruption of an insurmountable kind: had it
not been that they had plenty of water already on the boil, and
perpetually boiling--in the hot-spring near the hut.

Apparently all they should have to do would be, to immerse the prepared
bark in the spri