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At this time the apires were bringing up the usual load twelve times in the day; that is 2400 pounds from eighty yards deep; and they were employed in the intervals in breaking and picking ore. These men, excepting from accidents, are healthy, and appear cheerful. Their bodies are not very muscular. They rarely eat meat once a week, and never oftener, and then only the hard dry charqui.
Peas? No maize. "Good!" ejaculated Guapo; "maize and macas! That with what is left of the charqui we shall not fast to-night." Guapo now backed himself out of the hut, and joyfully announced the discoveries he had made. The travellers dismounted. The horse and mule were picketed on lassoes on the plain. The llamas were left to go at will. They would not stray far from their owner.
In exchange for seven ready saddled horses of the Argentine breed, 100 pounds of CHARQUI, or dried meat, several measures of rice, and leather bottles for water, the Indians agreed to take twenty ounces of gold as they could not get wine or rum, which they would have preferred, though they were perfectly acquainted with the value of gold.
The miners who work in the mine itself have twenty-five shillings per month, and are allowed a little charqui. But these men come down from their bleak habitations only once in every fortnight or three weeks. During my stay here I thoroughly enjoyed scrambling about these huge mountains. The geology, as might have been expected, was very interesting.
"And the height of that sun reminds me of its being high time for us to do something in the same line, if I hadn't been already reminded of it by a hollow I feel here." He places his spread palm over the pit of his stomach, and then continues, "So we may as well dine now; though, sad to say, we haven't a morsel to make a meal upon but that juiceless charqui. Santissima! what am I thinking about?
In Peru, as we have stated, it is "charqui;" but mutton cured in this way is distinguished by the name "chalona." Now as the llamas are a species of sheep, it was "chalona" that Guapo was making out of their mutton. Where did they get their soap, for they had not brought so much as a single cake along with them?
Leaving my party to complete the process of drying and packing the charqui, I started with my two black companions to examine the country to the north-west.
Homely indeed were the additions thus made to their daily ration of charqui beef, horse-flesh or kangaroo. Let us dwell a moment upon the magnificent preparation for a banquet on the natal day of her Majesty Queen Victoria. "May 24.
The reason for so preserving it, is the scarcity of salt, which in the districts where charqui prevails, is difficult to be got at, and, in consequence, dear. Most of the beef imported from the La Plata, under the name of "jerked beef," is not charqui, but simply meat cured with salt.
This is charqui, or as it is called by English-speaking people "jerked beef;" in all likelihood a sailor's pseudonym, due to some slight resemblance, between the English word "jerked," and the Guarani Indian one charqui, as pronounced by South American people.
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