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Updated: June 27, 2025
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.
"Martinez, one of the shepherds at Canterbury, Signor Charles, was with them for seven months; and Perez, one of Signor Jamieson's men, was longer still." Charles at once wrote notes asking that Perez and Martinez might accompany the expedition, and dispatched them by mounted peons. "And now, Lopez, what amount of charqui have we in store?"
Fifty or sixty thousand men encircled the part of the country that was to be hunted over, and drove all the wild animals by degrees towards some spacious plain. The beasts of prey they killed, and also the deer, the flesh of the latter being dried in strips and distributed among the people. This preparation, called 'charqui, was the only animal food of the lower classes in Peru.
One of the party did not touch it, and that was old Guapo. Why? Was he not hungry like the rest? Yes; as hungry as any of them. Why then did he not eat of the charqui and ocas? Simply because Guapo had a supper of a very different kind, which he carried in his pouch, and which he liked much better than the charqui stew. What was it? It was "coca."
But the pure cold air of the mountain soon produced its effect. All gradually recovered, and after cooking some charqui and ocas in the ravine, and making their breakfast upon these, they again felt light and fresh, and pursued their journey with renewed vigour.
After this process it is hard and strong, and by no means palatable; but it will keep for many months, and is the general food of the people. In large establishments it is usual to kill several animals at once, so as to lay in sufficient store of charqui to last for some time. "Terence, go up to the house and see what biscuit there is.
But the pure cold air of the mountain soon produced its effect. All gradually recovered, and after cooking some charqui and ocas in the ravine, and making their breakfast upon these, they again felt light and fresh, and pursued their journey with renewed vigour.
Those brigands of yours have stored sufficient food here for an army." Carrying a torch, I accompanied him round the cavern, gazing in wonder at the piles of Indian corn, the heaps of potatoes, and the strings of charqui, the last suspended from the walls. "Come," said I, "there is no need to starve in the midst of plenty. What shall we have? Roast potatoes and jerked beef?
The male deer and some of the coarser kind of the Peruvian sheep were slaughtered; their skins were reserved for the various useful manufactures to which they are ordinarily applied, and their flesh, cut into thin slices, was distributed among the people, who converted it into charqui, the dried meat of the country, which constituted then the sole, as it has since the principal, animal food of the lower classes of Peru.9
Out of the oca, then, and charqui, the supper must be made; and for the purpose of cooking it, a fire must be kindled with the wood of the mollé. For a long time there was a doubt about whether it would be safe to kindle this fire. The sun had not yet gone down, and the smoke might attract observation from the valley below.
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