parts that the villagers have built to protect their precious acres from these “acts of God.” In the great hollows at the heads of the canyons are natural pastures, and there under the cliffs the traveler finds shelter from the cold down-valley winds of night.
Many leagues of dusty and stony trail must be traveled between oases, but there is scarcely a single valley of im-
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Fic, 3—Pack train in the desert above Pica in northern Chile.
portance that does not have commercial connection with distant places on the other side of the mountains in Bolivia and Argentina. In such a country every wayfarer is immensely interesting. One’s route and purpose must become known to all before the flood of questions subsides. The life of the village is turned inside out for you. If there seems to be only abound- ing hospitality it is no derogation of the native's spirit to say that the traveler pays for his hospitality in news. When there is nO morning paper to be had the stranger within the gates is a lively substitute. New York seems friendly and romantic only on the rarest occasions and in rare moods, and one of these is when the traveler returns from the wilderness. He can then appreciate what he himself means to the man in the desert or the distant mountain village when a strange pack train swings into the head of the one tiny strect that marks the order of a town.
The deserts of the world are not lifeless places, although lifeless tracts of more or less limited extent can be found in
