By half-past seven dishes were washed, the tent taken down, knapsacks and bundles packed, and they started, with a compass as a guide, toward the northeast, between two mountain peaks—for in that direction lay the Montaña. It was easy walking, llama trains having made a pathway, and the country soon became more regular, for they had passed the region of gorges, precipices, and chasms; although still among the mountains, the high peaks towered behind, those in front becoming lower as they progressed.
They were travelling a down grade, and as they pushed on there were continual signs of change in the vegetable world. At the point where they had encamped for the night grew only a few shrubs and dwarf trees, whose gnarled branches told of a rigorous climate. But soon cacti thrust their ungainly shapes above ground, the trees became of larger size, and a long grass commenced to appear. And as above they had walked upon a gravel, which had crumbled from the rocky mountain side, so further down appeared a soil richer in alluvium as they proceeded. By eleven o’clock all the towering mountain peaks were behind them. They were nearing the table-land country and were among the foothills of the first spurs of the eastern slope.
“O for a luncheon with potato salad!” exclaimed Harvey.
“Sighing for potatoes in Peru is like sighing for coals in Newcastle,” said Hope-Jones.
“Because Peru is the home of the potato. It was first discovered here. Didn’t you know that?”
“Yes, but I had forgotten it for the moment. One is so accustomed to terming them ‘Irish potatoes.’”
“Who discovered the vegetable in Peru?” asked Ferguson.
“The Spaniards, in the seventeenth century. Large tracts of land in the Montaña country were covered with potato fields, and the Indians could not recall when they had not formed a staple of diet.”
“How did the term Irish potato originate?”
“Sir Walter Raleigh is responsible for that, I believe. The potato was planted on his estate near Cork and flourished better in that soil than in any other of Europe.”
The noon hour having arrived and the conversation tending to increase their hunger, the three adventurers looked about for a spring, and in the distance seeing a clump of willows and verdure of unusual brightness, they hastened to the spot and found a little mountain stream rippling over pebbles. As they approached a number of parakeets flew away, chattering, their brilliant plumage causing them to appear as rainbow darts above their heads.