there is
nothing hieroglyphic. The images are stiff and show no appreciation
of the beauty of the human form. Probably the ancient artists never
had an opportunity to study the human body. In Andean villages, even
little children do not go naked as they do among primitive peoples
who live in warm climates. The Highlanders of Peru and Bolivia are
always heavily clothed, day and night. Forced by their climate to
seek comfort in the amount and thickness of their apparel, they have
developed an excessive modesty in regard to bodily exposure which
is in striking contrast to people who live on the warm sands of the
South Seas. Inca sculptors and potters rarely employed the human
body as a motif. Tiahuanaco is pre-Inca, yet even here the images are
clothed. They were not represented as clothed in order to make easier
the work of the sculptor. His carving shows he had great skill, was
observant, and had true artistic feeling. Apparently the taboo against
"nakedness" was too much for him.

Among the thirty-six islands in Lake Titicaca, some belong to
Peru, others to Bolivia. Two of the latter, Titicaca and Koati,
were peculiarly venerated in Inca days. They are covered with
artificial terraces, most of which are still used by the Indian
farmers of to-day. On both islands there are ruins of important Inca
structures. On Titicaca Island I was shown two caves, out of which,
say the Indians, came the sun and moon at their creation. These caves
are not large enough for a man to stand upright, but to a people
who do not appreciate the size of the heavenly bodies it requires
no stretch of the imagination to believe that those bright disks
came forth from caves eight feet wide. The myth probably originated
with dwellers on the western shore of the lake who would often see
the sun or moon rise over this island. On an ancient road that runs
across the island my native guide pointed out the "footprints of the
sun and moon"--two curious effects of erosion which bear a distant
resemblance to the footprints of giants twenty or thirty feet tall.

The present-day Indians, known as Aymaras, seem to be hard-working and
fairly cheerful. The impression which Bandelier gives, in his "Islands
of Titicaca and Koati," of the degradation and surly character of these
Indians was not apparent at the time of my short visit in 1915. It is
quite possible, however, that if I had to live among the Indians, as
he did for several months, digging up their anci