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Updated: June 24, 2025
During the day we saw several guanacos, and the track of the closely-allied species, the Vicuna: this latter animal is pre-eminently alpine in its habits; it seldom descends much below the limit of perpetual snow, and therefore haunts even a more lofty and sterile situation than the guanaco.
To these must be added the Paco, or Alpaca, and the Taruga, who are larger, and even swifter than the Vicuñas, and wander about singly, among steep and rocky places. M. Frederic Cuvier thinks there are but three species; the Guanaco, which, in a domestic state, is the Llama; the Paco, or Alpaca; and the Vicuña.
They had great proficiency in the arts of spinning, weaving, and dyeing. For their cloth they used cotton and the wool of four varieties of the llama, that of the vicuña being the finest. Some of their cloth had interwoven designs and ornaments very skillfully executed. Many of their fabrics had rare excellence in the eyes of the Spaniards.
But the Church levies its tax upon the "chacu," and the skins worth a dollar each have to be given up to the priest of the village. A good round sum this amounts to, as frequently four or five hundred vicuñas are taken at a single chacu. A good hunter is sometimes able to "approach" the vicuña. Guapo's friend was esteemed one of the best in all the Puna.
So we spent the day in conversation, and, which was more interesting to my companions, in exploring the maze of chambers and passages and winding galleries which the labour of many thousands of men had wrought out of the solid rock in the days of my ancestors, for you must know that in those days the fortress of the Sacsahuaman was crowned with a great palace, which was the strongest place in all the Land of the Four Regions, and so here were stored very great treasures, not only of gold and silver and precious stones, but also weapons and armour and most finely-woven cloths of the purest wool of the Vicuña, which is softer than silk, brilliantly dyed and embroidered with gems and threads of gold, and the imperial robes that had been worn by twenty generations of Incas, many sets of each, since nothing that had belonged to one Inca might ever be used by another after his death.
A tailor would have said that it was a "superb vicuna raglan sack." You and I would have called it, quite simply, a reach-me-down. Anyhow, the combined effect was unique.
As the deer or vicuna passes below, it launches itself on the doomed creature, and, drawing back its neck with its powerful claws, breaks the vertebra, and instantly kills it. Darwin states that he has frequently seen skeletons of huanucus with their necks thus dislocated. In the Amazonian forests the puma is not so common as the jaguar.
Cunning as is the Andes wolf this `scare' is sufficient to keep him off, as well as his ravenous associate, the condor. "It was quite night when we reached the Indian hut with our last load. Both of us were wearied and hungry, but a fresh vicuna cutlet, washed down by the Catalan, and followed by a cigarette, made us forget our fatigues.
This garment was confined at the waist by a massive belt of solid gold composed of square placques hinged together, and each elaborately sculptured with conventional representations of the sun. Over this was worn a long cloak, dyed blue, also woven of vicuna wool, but without ornament of any description.
But things must be brought to an issue forthwith. By eight o'clock in the evening, in a little dining-room in the Vicuna Hotel, Bognor, the crisis had come, and Jessie, flushed and angry in the face and with her heart sinking, faced him again for her last struggle with him. He had tricked her this time, effectually, and luck had been on his side. She was booked as Mrs. Beaumont.
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