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Updated: June 24, 2025
His dress, which he often changed, was sometimes made of vicuña wool, sometimes of bats' skins, sleek as velvet. Nothing which he had worn could be used by another; when he laid it aside it was burned. To while away the time the Spaniards taught him to play chess, at which he became expert, spending upon it many of the tedious hours of his imprisonment.
On the other hand, when I was in Santa Rosa in 1915 some one had a tame vicuña which was perfectly willing to sneeze straight at any stranger who came within twenty feet of it, even if one's motive was nothing more annoying than scientific curiosity.
Humph!" mused the archaeologist, "I wonder why this particular mummy is dyed green, or rather why it is wrapped in green bandages. Yellow was the royal color of the ancient Peruvian monarchs. Vicuna wool dyed yellow. What do you think, Hope? It is strange." Archie shrugged his shoulders. "I can say nothing, because I know nothing," he said sharply.
On the other hand, the Guanacos and Vicunas are wild animals, and are eagerly hunted by the mountain tribes of Indians for their flesh and skins, but in the case of the vicuna for the very fine wool which it yields, and which commands an enormous price in the markets of Peru. The Cordilleras of the Andes, below the line of perpetual snow, is the region inhabited by these creatures.
In the afternoon he was suddenly called upon to do a big "royal" matinée, and this necessitated a run to his chambers in order to change from Harris tweed into vicuna and cashmere.
"The wool of the vicuna being so much in demand, it will be easily conceived that hunting the animal is a profitable pursuit; and so it is. In many parts of the Andes there are regular vicuna hunters, while, in other places, whole tribes of Peruvian Indians spend a part of every year in the chase of this animal and the guanaco.
Even the botanist, Don Pablo, could find no vegetable substance that was eatable, and they would have to sup upon the vicuña meat, without bread, potatoes, or other vegetables. Their stock of ocas, ullucas, and macas, was quite out. They had cooked the last of the macas for that morning's meal. Guapo here came to their relief.
In all there are four distinct species of them the Llama proper, the Paca or Alpaca, the Guanaco, and the Vicuna. The Llama and Paca are both held in a state of domestication; the former as a beast of burden, and the latter for its hair or wool.
Their heads were adorned with garlands of flowers, which, by their various colors, were emblematic of the clemency and goodness that should grace the character of every true warrior; and the leaves of an evergreen plant were mingled with the flowers, to show that these virtues should endure without end.30 The prince's head was further ornamented by a fillet, or tasselled fringe, of a yellow color, made of the fine threads of the vicuna wool, which encircled the forehead as the peculiar insignia of the heir apparent.
I have seen, in a collection of textiles found in their ancient burial places, the most elaborate and beautiful of cross-stitch borders, wrought into the fabrics which enriched Pizarro's shiploads of loot sent from Vicuna, Peru, to the court of Spain at the time of the wonderful and barbarous "Conquest."
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