for the moment. When Eric Boman reached the village of Susques in 1903 he found it quite deserted. He sent the gen- darme to examine all the huts without meeting a single person. He learned that the Indians came to the village only on feast days!
On passing the salar of Pastos Grandes we stopped at a typical shepherd's site such as occur not infrequently in the eastern and warmer half of the Puna de Atacama: an isolated settlement consisting of a few small stone corrals and a stone hut built integral with a steep lava cliff. It is occupied by two families throughout the entire year. The elevation is over 13,000 feet. Some of the huts elsewhere are of stone or earth stoutly made and thatched with ichu grass. The hut in Figure 113 stands at the edge of Ciénaga Grande, at 13,250 feet, just west of the eastern rim of the Puna. In places the houses are occupied during the summer months only and then merely as a base of supplies for the wide-ranging shepherds or as a gathering place with others on special occasions. The owners also leave for long carrying journeys or to winter in the villages of the warmer valleys where they have access to markets. ‘They bar the windows and lock the doors, leaving utensils and household goods behind except such as they can readily carry.
Settlements of a few houses and families which are insig- nificant from the standpoint of population have very great importance to the traveler, and it follows that they are widely known to all the traders and to the Indian cattle drivers and arrieros and the chinchilla hunters, yet they are really quite insignificant from the standpoint of the large currents of trade at the border of the mountains. In a few localities are mines, and from all the eastern line of salars salt of good quality is extracted to be carried to the villages and towns and the cattle ranches in the eastern valleys. Where they are most accessible the borax salars are worked, though to a very limited extent.
The Life of a Puna Village
The best description of the life of a Puna village is by Eric Boman in his excellent study, “‘Antiquités de la Région An-
