It is in this country between La Paz and Cuzco that the llama is seen in greatest numbers—that remarkable animal which Mozans aptly describes as a creature with the legs of a deer, the body of a sheep, and the head and neck of a camel. They are larger than sheep, however, and far more docile and ornamental than the ugly, ungainly camel. Their coats are of several shades: white, brown, black or parti-colored; their wool is long and thick, and they are noted for their beautiful big, wistfully inquiring eyes. From time immemorial the natives had used them as burden-bearers, and the Spaniards, when they came, found them surer-footed and more enduring than mules or burros, proof against cold and acclimated in the rarefied atmosphere of the high table-lands, and able to go as long as a camel without food and water, and to maintain themselves by grazing along the waysides in parts of the country in which no other animal could live. It was on their backs that all the material that entered into the construction of the steamers on Lake Titicaca was hauled, and most of the mining machinery, and the caravans still compete with the railroads in carrying ores and coca to the coast and bringing back supplies for the mountain towns. In these days only the males are used for such purposes. It is said of them that when they are loaded with more than they feel that they can comfortably carry (about a hundred pounds), they lie right down in their tracks and refuse to budge for all the cajoling or in spite of the kicks and curses their tenders can bestow. The females are kept in pasture for breeding purposes and for their wool and milk, and in that region rank with cattle as a source of food supply, for their flesh resembles mutton and is quite as palatable and good to eat. It is much used in the native dish called _chupe_, a sort of thick soup which is made of the peculiar mountain potatoes grown in those parts, first frozen and dried, and then put into a pot and boiled with any other vegetables at hand and fragments of meat and fish, and seasoned with salt and red pepper. This, to the people of the mountains, is what rice is to the Chinese and macaroni to the Italians. Sometimes it is the only fare the traveler can get at the little _tambos_ or inns remote from the railroad; but even so, when properly prepared, as it usually is, with plenty of nourishing ingredients, it leaves little to be desired after a hard day’s climb.