uperstitious shepherds who lived
in scattered clusters of huts and declined to have strange gods set
up in their vicinity. Perhaps they thought their pastures were being
preempted. We saw hundreds of their sheep and cattle feeding on flat
lands formerly the bed of the lake. The hills of the Parinacochas
Basin are bare of trees, and offer some pasturage. In some places they
are covered with broken rock. The grass was kept closely cropped by
the degenerate descendants of sheep brought into the country during
Spanish colonial days. They were small in size and mostly white in
color, although there were many black ones. We were told that the
sheep were worth about fifty cents apiece here.

On our first arrival at Parinacochas we were left severely alone by the
shepherds; but two days later curiosity slowly overcame their shyness,
and a group of young shepherds and shepherdesses gradually brought
their grazing flocks nearer and nearer the camp, in order to gaze
stealthily on these strange visitors, who lived in a cloth house,
actually moved over the forbidding waters of the lake, and busied
themselves from day to day with strange magic, raising and lowering
a glittering glass eye on a tripod. The women wore dresses of heavy
material, the skirts reaching halfway from knee to ankle. In lieu of
hats they had small variegated shawls, made on hand looms, folded
so as to make a pointed bonnet over the head and protect the neck
and shoulders from sun and wind. Each woman was busily spinning with
a hand spindle, but carried her baby and its gear and blankets in a
hammock or sling attached to a tump-line that went over her head. These
sling carry-alls were neatly woven of soft wool and decorated with
attractive patterns. Both women and boys were barefooted. The boys
wore old felt hats of native manufacture, and coats and long trousers
much too large for them.

At one end of the upland basin rises the graceful cone of
Mt. Sarasara. The view of its snow-capped peak reflected in the
glassy waters of the lake in the early morning was one long to be
remembered. Sarasara must once have been much higher than it is at
present. Its volcanic cone has been sharply eroded by snow and ice. In
the days of its greater altitude, and consequently wider snow fields,
the melting snows probably served to make Parinacochas a very much
larger body of water. Although we were here at the beginning of summer,
the wind that came down from the mountain at nig