In mixing among the Aymaras, one of the first things he discovered was that, though himself an exceptionally good walker, he was a baby at such exercise when pitted against them. While staying at a native village on Lake Titicaca, he expressed a wish to visit a spot rather less attractive than the Sahara--the Atacama Desert, to wit, which lies between the coast and the Andes. Plenty of men were willing to guide him, though they cautioned him that they could not be spared for more than a day or two, because a general meeting of the tribe was about to take place. Now as the lake lies more than twelve thousand feet above the sea-level, and when this prodigious descent had been made, there would be several miles to traverse on foot, he wisely abandoned the project. Nevertheless, being curious to test the truth of the reports he had heard as to their long walks, he accompanied a party of Aymaras who were bound for the far end of the lake with loads of silver. They started at sunrise, and the mountain air being deliciously cool, he was not at first incommoded by the pace at which they went. But that pace was five miles an hour! He kept up easily the first two hours, and, with considerably more difficulty, the second two; five miles in one hour, and twenty in four hours, are however, not quite the same thing; and when he had walked the twenty-second mile, he was ready to drop from fatigue and hunger. Yet they showed no signs of being about to stop; and conversation was not easy, for only one of the number understood Spanish, and that very scantily; the language of the Aymaras being almost pure Quechuan, i.e. the tongue of the ancient Incas, who founded their wonderful empire when we English were vainly endeavouring to ward off invasion by the Normans. He explained that he was both tired and hungry, and, at last growing desperate, inquired where he could get a mule. Happily that article was obtainable at a village which they were now approaching, and, his curiosity thoroughly aroused as to how far they intended going, he ambled on after them (for they had not deigned to stop while he concluded his bargain), caught them, and kept up with them, though he was now almost too stiff to sit his mule and too tired to enjoy the food which he had brought with him.