Although all of the plateau and mountain people are shy, those of western Bolivia on the edge of the cordillera are quite remarkably timid and suspicious, as we discovered the next day when we rode out of Llica southward along the edge of the mountains. A bold wall of lava here overlooks the salt basins. The floors of the little valleys that have been cut in the border of the mountain country are the sites of tiny settlements, On the first day we passed Canquilla. The village appeared com- pletely deserted as we approached it at midday. Almost at the outskirts of Suisigua, where we camped for the night, we saw a girl with a water jar on her head. She stood stock still at the sight of us and then disappeared. When we came to the top of the next rise we saw her running at top speed back to the vil- lage. We rode on into the town, past barred houses, without a sign of life until at last we reached an open door where our rapping brought out a very old woman who said at once and almost automatically ‘‘No hay” (there is none} to every ques- tion we asked about food for ourselves and forage for the beasts. Seeing a pile of green barley in a corral we helped our- selves to it with the thought of compensating the owner when he appeared, Darkness came on, and still there was no sign of life, neither voices nor lights. We had just prepared for bed when we were startled by a squeaky voice at the corral gate, and our guide came to tell us that the owner of the barley wanted to know if it was our intention to pay for it. We told him that we would pay him well if he also brought us eggs. When he returned we paid him and had him back the next morning to tell us where the next camp site could be found.
The next night we reached Laqueca. The village lies in an eastward-facing hollow where there is a stream to irrigate the green barley fields and supply the water jars of the houses. It is but a cluster of mud huts each a single story in height, with the customary grass thatch and windowless walls. The streets, if one may call them such, are narrow and unpaved. It is the home of a group of families that almost never see a white man pass. It was the same at Canquilla the day before. There are thirty or forty huts at Laqueca that appear quite deserted. We eventually found one old man and two children, but we
