Here in these high, inclement uplands, I have pitched my tent, and my Indians are now preparing a meal around the camp-fire, made of the dry grass or some scanty _leña_ or firewood, or possibly we may have come across a "colony" of the curious _yareta_, a huge mushroom-like woody growth, perhaps three feet in diameter, full of resin, which burns fiercely: a product only of the Peruvian and Bolivian heights. Failing these matters, the fire must be of dry llama dung, or _taquia_, a useful fuel in the Andes, from which even the ores of silver, in places, are smelted. [Illustration: PERU: LLAMAS AND ALPACAS.] [Illustration: PERU: NATIVE BLANKET WEAVER IN THE ANDES. Vol. I. To face p. 260. ] Here on the roof of the world we mark the rays of the setting sun tinting a rosy red the eternal pinnacles of the Andes, and the last glow gone, we must seek the tent and draw the ponchos about us; the Indians throwing themselves upon the ground outside. Simple and faithful souls are these children of the uplands, full of gratitude to the _patron_ who treats them fairly; resourceful and industrious. And the _Ingles_, of course, treat them well and justly. Is not an Englishman's word his bond? Further, are not his pockets invariably lined with silver! Months have I spent in these wilds, without any other companions than the Quechua Indians and the Cholos, our only language Spanish and what smattering of Quechua it was possible for me to acquire. Or perhaps I have formed camp in some abandoned Inca ruins, and the evening meal has been cooked in the ruined stone fireplace of folk departed these many centuries: my seat a cube of stone neatly fashioned--one of those which strew the ground around--by some ancient mason. There one may ponder upon the strange folk, who built massive temples and megalithic walls--in a region where there is no timber and where corn does not grow. Why did these folk establish themselves in these high places? Are there any other mountains in the world where Nature brought forth a dominating culture so near the clouds as that whose progenitors went forth, as we are told, from the mysterious island of Titicaca?