In 1545, an Indian called Hualpa was pursuing a vicuña up the mountainside. He grasped at the bushes as he scrambled up a steep cliff. One came up by the roots, which were hung with globules of silver. That particular vicuña hunt took place on a mountain called Potosí. The discoverer of the mine of Potosí was murdered by a Spaniard named Villarroel, who became its proprietor. The murder was an unnecessary precaution, however, since a mysterious voice had commanded the Indians to take no silver from this hill, which was destined for other owners. From that romantic mountain has flowed far “more silver than from all the mines of Mexico.” “Prior to 1593 the royal fifth had been paid on three hundred and ninety-six millions of silver.” The only difficulty the Spaniards encountered was in finding water enough to wash the silver. The hills about Potosí gleamed with as many as six thousand little fires, smelting furnaces belching horrid odors, scattering liquid silver pellets. They had to be carried where the wind blew, sometimes higher up and sometimes lower down. So this splendid Imperial City grew up in the subtle air, varied by icy winds and storm. The extraction of its prodigious wealth was a means of torture to those who worked in continual darkness without knowledge of day or night. Yet, even among the tops of the Andes, living things are adjusted to their environment, queer little animals of the heights giving the only human atmosphere there is. Leaping _viscachas_, with cat-like tails, carve through the frozen ground village burrows made to last forever, treacherous pitfalls for a traveler’s mule. With the finest, silkiest fur, valued by even the Incas, chinchillas sit in the shadows, never in the sun. They appear suddenly on the steep cliffs at dusk and nibble stiff grasses; then disappear like magic, leaving little chains of footprints in the snow. A small toad inhabits the boundaries of perpetual snow, and a nice little plant called _maca_ has its best flavor only above an altitude of thirteen thousand feet, where all flavoring ingredients have long been left behind. The wild gazelle of the Andes, with fur the color of dried roses, the graceful vicuña, creature of quickness and flight, lives upon the coldest heaths and in the most secluded fastnesses of the mighty Andes and seldom descends below the limit of perpetual snow. His back, burned tawny by the tropical sun, is covered with snow. Far in the distance a flock is grazing. The single male stands near by upon a rock. A foreign sight or sound, a quick movement of his foot, a short, shrill whistle vibrating through the clear, _puna_ air, a flash of golden brown, and the whole flock is lost in the wilderness of rocks, fleeing miles without stopping. It is said that if the male is wounded, the females surround him, allowing themselves to be shot down rather than leave.