In the eastern United States one sees guinea pigs only as pets or laboratory victims; never as an article of food.  In spite of the celebrated dogma that “Pigs is Pigs,” this form of “pork” has never found its way to our kitchens, even though these “pigs” live on a very clean, vegetable diet.  Incidentally guinea pigs do not come from Guinea and are in no way related to pigs—­Mr. Ellis Parker Butler to the contrary notwithstanding!  They belong rather to the same family as rabbits and Belgian hares and have long been a highly prized article of food in the Andes of Peru.  The wild species are of a grayish brown color, which enables them to escape observation in their natural habitat.  The domestic varieties, which one sees in the huts of the Indians, are piebald, black, white, and tawny, varying from one another in color as much as do the llamas, which were also domesticated by the same race of people thousands of years ago.  Although Anglo-Saxon “folkways,” as Professor Sumner would say, permit us to eat and enjoy long-eared rabbits, we draw the line at short-eared rabbits, yet they were bred to be eaten.

I am willing to admit that this was the first time that I had ever knowingly tasted their delicate flesh, although once in the capital of Bolivia I thought the hotel kitchen had a diminishing supply!  Had I not been very hungry, I might never have known how delicious a roast guinea pig can be.  The meat is not unlike squab.  To the Indians whose supply of animal food is small, whose fowls are treasured for their eggs, and whose thin sheep are more valuable as wool bearers than as mutton, the succulent guinea pig, “most prolific of mammals,” as was discovered by Mr. Butler’s hero, is a highly valued article of food, reserved for special occasions.  The North American housewife keeps a few tins of sardines and cans of preserves on hand for emergencies.  Her sister in the Andes similarly relies on fat little cuys.

After lunch, Condore and Mogrovejo divided the extensive rolling countryside between them and each rode quietly from one lonesome farm to another, looking for men to engage as bearers.  When they were so fortunate as to find the man of the house at home or working in his little chacra they greeted him pleasantly.  When he came forward to shake hands, in the usual Indian manner, a silver dollar was un-suspectingly slipped into the palm of his right hand and he was informed that he had accepted pay for services which must now be performed.  It seemed hard, but this was the only way in which it was possible to secure carriers.

During Inca times the Indians never received pay for their labor.  A paternal government saw to it that they were properly fed and clothed and either given abundant opportunity to provide for their own necessities or else permitted to draw on official stores.  In colonial days a more greedy and less paternal government took advantage of the ancient system and enforced it without taking pains to see that it should not