Food is hard to get.  Few crops can be grown at 12,500 feet.  Some barley is raised, but the soil is lacking in nitrogen.  The principal crop is the bitter white potato, which, after being frozen and dried, becomes the insipid chuno, chief reliance of the poorer families.  The Inca system of bringing guano from the islands of the Pacific coast has long since been abandoned.  There is no money to pay for modern fertilizers.  Consequently, crops are poor.  On Titicaca Island I saw native women, who had just harvested their maize, engaged in shucking and drying ears of corn which varied in length from one to three inches.  To be sure this miniature corn has the advantage of maturing in sixty days, but good soil and fertilizers would double its size and productiveness.

Naturally these Indians always feel themselves at the mercy of the elements.  Either a long rainy season or a drought may cause acute hunger and extreme suffering.  Consequently, one must not blame the Bolivian or Peruvian Highlander if he frequently appears to be sullen and morose.  On the other hand, one ought not to praise Samoans for being happy, hospitable, and light-hearted.  Those fortunate Polynesians are surrounded by warm waters in which they can always enjoy a swim, trees from which delicious food can always be obtained, and cocoanuts from which cooling drinks are secured without cost.  Who could not develop cheerfulness under such conditions?

On the small island, Koati, some of the Inca stonework is remarkably good, and has several unusual features, such as the elaboration of the large, reentrant, ceremonial niches formed by step-topped arches, one within the other.  Small ornamental niches are used to break the space between these recesses and the upper corners of the whole rectangle containing them.  Also unusual are the niches between the doorways, made in the form of an elaborate quadrate cross.  It might seem at first glance as though this feature showed Spanish influence, since a Papal cross is created by the shadow cast in the intervening recessed courses within their design.  As a matter of fact, the cross nowy quadrant is a natural outcome of using for ornamental purposes the step-shaped design, both erect and inverted.  All over the land of the Incas one finds flights of steps or terraces used repeatedly for ornamental or ceremonial purposes.  Some stairs are large enough to be used by man; others are in miniature.  Frequently the steps were cut into the sacred boulders consecrated to ancestor worship.  It was easy for an Inca architect, accustomed to the stairway motif, to have conceived these curious doorways on Koati and also the cross-like niches between them, even if he had never seen any representation of a Papal cross, or a cross nowy quadrant.  My friend, Mr. Bancel La Farge, has also suggested a striking resemblance which the sedilia-like niches bear to Arabic or Moorish architecture, as shown, for instance, in the Court of the Lions in the Alhambra.  The step-topped arch is distinctly Oriental in form, yet flights of steps or terraces are also thoroughly Incaic.