The retail merchants of Cuzco follow the very old custom of congregating by classes.  In one street are the dealers in hats; in another those who sell coca.  The dressmakers and tailors are nearly all in one long arcade in a score or more of dark little shops.  Their light seems to come entirely from the front door.  The occupants are operators of American sewing-machines who not only make clothing to order, but always have on hand a large assortment of standard sizes and patterns.  In another arcade are the shops of those who specialize in everything which appeals to the eye and the pocketbook of the arriero:  richly decorated halters, which are intended to avert the Evil Eye from his best mules; leather knapsacks in which to carry his coca or other valuable articles; cloth cinches and leather bridles; rawhide lassos, with which he is more likely to make a diamond hitch than to rope a mule; flutes to while away the weary hours of his journey, and candles to be burned before his patron saint as he starts for some distant village; in a word, all the paraphernalia of his profession.

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Figure

Map of Peru and view of Cuzco

From the “Speculum Orbis Terrarum,” Antwerp, 1578.
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In order to learn more about the picturesque Quichuas who throng the streets of Cuzco it was felt to be important to secure anthropometric measurements of a hundred Indians.  Accordingly, Surgeon Nelson set up a laboratory in the Hotel Central.  His subjects were the unwilling victims of friendly gendarmes who went out into the streets with orders to bring for examination only pure-blooded Quichuas.  Most of the Indians showed no resentment and were in the end pleased and surprised to find themselves the recipients of a small silver coin as compensation for loss of time.

One might have supposed that a large proportion of Dr. Nelson’s subjects would have claimed Cuzco as their native place, but this was not the case.  Actually fewer Indians came from the city itself than from relatively small towns like Anta, Huaracondo, and Maras.  This may have been due to a number of causes.  In the first place, the gendarmes may have preferred to arrest strangers from distant villages, who would submit more willingly.  Secondly, the city folk were presumably more likely to be in their shops attending to their business or watching their wares in the plaza, an occupation which the gendarmes could not interrupt.  On the other hand it is also probably true that the residents of Cuzco are of more mixed descent than those of remote villages, where even to-day one cannot find more than two or three individuals who speak Spanish.  Furthermore, the attention of the gendarmes might have been drawn more easily to the quaintly caparisoned Indians temporarily in from the country, where city fashions do not prevail, than to those who through long residence in the city had learned to adopt a costume more in accordance with European notions.  In 1870, according to Squier, seven eighths of the population of Cuzco were still pure Indian.  Even to-day a large proportion of the individuals whom one sees in the streets appears to be of pure aboriginal ancestry.  Of these we found that many are visitors from outlying villages.  Cuzco is the Mecca of the most densely populated part of the Andes.