Large copper tanks were filled with the eggs; those Indians who had come from a distance and could not borrow tanks, borrowed small canoes for the purpose, which seemed to do equally well; and the owners set to work to break the eggs, which they did by beating them with sticks, stones, paddles, or anything that came handy. In some cases the younger men and boys jumped into the tank and danced on them, as though they were treading a wine-press; and by and by the various receptacles were half full of a dirty yellow mash. The women now came toiling up from the river-bank with pots of water, which they poured into the tanks till the mixture rose nearly to the top. By this time the dinner and siesta-hour had come round, and the tanks were left to take care of themselves; good care, too, thought de Bonelli, as he walked round, an hour or two later, with the chief. While the workers slept, the sun had done their work for them; had warmed the tanks, freed the oleaginous particles contained in the eggs, and now the top of every tank was several inches deep in oil, which the Indians were preparing to skim off and bale into their cooking-pots; the skimming being done by means of large shells. By evening the whole village was dotted with small fires over which hung pots of oil; and the oil, thus clarified, was ultimately poured into earthenware pots, corked up, and ready to be exported to the towns for use in lamps, or carried up the river and across country to the hills, where the Aymaras were willing to pay high prices in silver for a product which could be used for fuel, light, or even food. CHAPTER XIV A SPORTING TRIP ACROSS THE PRAIRIES There is nothing extraordinary to the English reader in a man's making a sixteen-hundred-mile journey across lonesome prairies and mountain-ranges, where railways are almost unknown and fierce tribes of savages abound, merely for the sake of shooting big game; for if we do not take our pleasures sadly, we at least are proud to devote to our sports as much energy and self-discipline as another nation would bestow on its politics or monetary interests. After a good deal of rambling through the eastern States, Mr. Henry Coke, brother of the second Earl of Leicester, found himself wandering one morning, in the year 1850, about the streets of St. Louis, already sickened of town life and eager for something more wholesome and natural. Generally it is only in story-books that a happy coincidence suddenly arises to help a man out of a difficulty; but real life also has its chance meetings and its odd bits of luck, and so Mr. Coke thought when, on turning a corner, he found his arm seized by an old Cambridge chum of whom he had heard nothing for three years. "Why, man, what are you doing here?" he demanded.