Evening Star Newspaper, June 25, 1898, Page 15

LAKE TITICACA. ABOVE THE CLOUDS Traveling by Steamboat Way Up in the Mountains. —— SOME WONDERS OF LAKE TITICACA —__+—__—_ A People Who Are Heavily in Debt to the Llamas. MADE OF BOATS STRAW | Special Correspondence of The Evening Star. (Copyrighted, 1898, by Frank G. Carpenter.) CHILILAYA, Bolivia, May 27, 1898. TEAMBOATING above the clouds. Floating calmly over the highest navigable waters of the globe. Sailing under the 2l snows of the t peaks of the so near the sky that heaven and earth meet close around you and make you think you ere on the very roof of the world. This is what I have been doirg for the last day and night upon Lake Titicaca. As you read this letter you will be sweltering under the hot sun of an American summer. It is al- Ways winter upon Lake Titicaca, a cold wet winter during half the year and a cold ary winter during the remainder. At some times the winds from the Andes sweep over the waters like a blizzard, and at others it is as calm as the Dead sea in mid- summer. The air is now as fresh as a sea breeze. It is cold and bracing, but so rare that I cannot walk fast without my heart jumping up into my throat. Some of you will soon be going to Mount Washington to avoid the heat of the city. This great lake is more than twice as high up irf the air @s the top of Mount Washington, and it 1s situated amid scenery which is infinitely more grand. Some of you will spend your vacations v . This lake is almost a Erie. It has a greater average depth than Lake Supenwur and its scenery is a combination of that of Lakes Lucern in Switzerland, and of our own beautiful Lake Champlain. Our great lakes freeze over during the win- ritten of the skies of the Andes. Those of Titicaca have all of the beauties of the Andean heavens, combined with oth- ers peculiarly their own. I cannot give rou the sense of loftiness one feels here. The clouds rise up about the shores of Titicaca like walls upon which a canvas of heavenly blue ‘its closely down, so that you feed that beyond those walis there are mighty depths and that if you should sail through them you would drop into space. The air ts so clear that you can see for mil Leaving Puno, Peru, I was shown the ed brue Island of Titicaca, fifty miles away, and soon other islands came into view, which seemed to float upen the waters as though they were balloons or balls and not the out- croppings of the highest mountain chain of our hemisphere. One island, I remember, se out of the waters in the shape of a gigantic mushroom of seft blue ve other looked like a mammoth whale whose head and tail stood out high above the water. These were optical illusions, due to the peculiarity of the atmosphere, but they Were phenomena which I have never seen upon other waters. An Unknown Inland Sea. You know of Lake Titicaca from your geographies. They tell you it lies in the Andes, about half way between the Isth- mus of Panama and Cape Horn, 12,50 feet above the sea. They represent the lake as oval in shape and state that it is 120 miles long, fifty-seven miles wide, and that it has an area of 5,000 square miles. Some of se statements are true. Others are all conjecture. The lake has in reality never been carefully surveyed. It has great bays which have never been sounded, and it winds in and out in places like a river, giv- ing a succession of beautiful scenes of is. lands, mounteins and coast. In crossing from Peru to Bolivi of 110 miles places, the we sailed a distance over water which was in many captain said, more than 1,000 PORT OF PUNO, the heavens. They sail at times in and out of the clouds, and they are nearest the sky of any craft on earth. Think of lift- ing an iron ship of 600 tons over a pass higher than the top of Pike's Peak! This is what was done with the steamer Choya, upen which I am now writing. The ship was made in Scotland and brought to Mol- lendo in pieces. Here it was loaded upon the cars and carried over the Andes to Puno. It was there put together, and it now sails as well and furnishes its passen- gers with as comfortable accommodations as any steamer of its size on American wa- ters. It is as beautiful as a gentleman's yacht, and it can make twelve knots an hour without trouble. It is propelled by a screw, and its fuel is Australian coal, which is brought over more than 7,000 miles of water and lifted on the railroad over the Andes to Puno, at the edge of the lake. By the time it reaches the Ship the coal costs about $25 in gold per ton, but the traffic on the lake is so great that the steamers. I am told, pay for themselves many times over. A large part of the freizht of Bolivia goes to the markets of the world via Chilllaya and Puno over Lake Titicaca and the railroad to the sea- port of Mollendo. Cargo is brought for hundreds of miles to this point upon mules, and on steamer days it is not uncommon to THE EVENING STAR, SATURDAY, JUNE 25, 1898—24 PAGES, blocks of black stone, each thirty inches thick. The stones, like those of the famed buildings of Cuzco, were fittted without mortar and were so carefully laid that it was impossible to insert a knife blade between them. From these ruins some of the most curlous archaeological relics have been.taken, many of the most valuable having “been secured by Prof. Adolfe Bandolier, who is spending his life in this region as the collector for the New York Museum. Prefessor Bandolier has made many new discoveries and investigations about Lake Titicaca and he ts inclined to believe that the most of what has been published about some parts of this region is almost pure fiction. He has spent months upon Titicaca Island, which some authorities claim was the Garden of Eden of the Inca mythology, the spot on which their Adam and Eve first lived upoa earth and from which they started out to found Cuzco and build up the race. According to this theory our first parents were the children of the sun. There were two of them, Manco Capac and Mama Oello, his sister-wife. On this account, so says Squier, wno is one of the authorities on Lake Titicaca, the Incas considered this lake and especially. Titicaca Island holy. ‘They built their temples here, / had wonderful palaces, and even brought soil to the island from the mainland in or- der that-corn might be grown upon the island. This corn, so says one of the clad chroniclers, who Professor Bandolier thinks had a very lively imagination, was con- sidered so sacred that when a grain of it was put in one of the public warehouses it sanctified and preserved all other grains, and it was also said that aaman-who could have as much as one grain of Titicaca Island corn in his storehouse would not lack for food during his Hfetime. There are teday many ruins-on Titicaca Isiand, and the very rock on which Manco Capac ard his sister-wife stepped when they first landed from the sun is shown. This rock, Says the same chronicler, was.once plated with gold and kept covered with a veil. ‘The inhabitants of the island are now chiefly Aymara Indians, who are said to be descendants of the tribes who were so numerous about Lake Titicaca years ago. They jive in little huts of mud or stone thatched with straw, and show no signs cf having kad gorgeous temples or the more extensive civilization which they possessed when the Incas were their masters. They are Catholics and are superstitious tn the extreme. Boats of Straw. How would you like to sail over Lake Erie in a boat made of straw. I can see a dozen straw boats from where I am writing. BOATS OF STRAW. see a thousand mules being loaded and un- loaded here. In 185 more than $1,000,000 worth of imports came into Bolivia by way ef Lake Titicaca, and more than £300,000 worth of Bolivian goods were shipped out. There are now steamers once a week from Puno to Chilflaya and return, and nearly all passengers and freight to and from La Paz, which is, you know, the biggest city and the commercial capital of Bolivia, go over this route. I am now on my way to La Paz. The city is about forty-five miles, or almost a day's ride by stage, from here, and all baggage, freight and’ passengers are carried there by horses or mules. The United States mail for Bolivia is brought across Lake Titicaca and carried, with other foreign mail, on a wagon to La Paz. I tried to bribe the mail carrier to take me with him today, but the weight of the mail bags was 1,600 pounds, and he said that this was all his eight-horse team could haul on the gallop, and that I must wait for the stage of tomorrow. Carried on Men's Backs. The ship in which I crossed Lake Titi- caca is the largest and finest of the fleet. There are three other steamers belonging to the Peruvian corporation or English syrdicate which has the monopoly of the traffic, and in aGdition they have little steamers which bring copper, silver and tin up the Desaguadero river from the rich mining regicn of Oruro. The Titicaca steamer line was founded by the Peruvian government as a part of its transportation em, which, as I have said before, was e most expensive ever planned or built. The first steamers cost more than their weight in silver. They were made in Eng- land and shipped to the Peruvian coast and thence carried on the backs of men and mules over the Andes. It was ten years after the ships were landed on the coast before they got to the lakes, and the En- glish engineers drew salaries during the delay while bossing the job. One of the larger ships was afterward cut in two aud # section of hull fifty feet long inserted. This work was done by the railroad shops at Arequipa, and the ship so lengthened is used on the lake today. The smaller steam- ers ply to and from the lesser ports. They visit most of the towns upon the coast and carry freight and passengers to the numer- cus islands. The Sacred Isles of Lake Titicaca. Lake Titicaca has many deautiful islands. The most of them are rocky, rag- ged mountain peaks, which have their bodies under the water and a thin coating of soil on the rocks above it. Eight of the islands are inkabited, and these are cultivated to the very tops of the moun- WPM p LAKE TITICACA. feet deep. Lake Superior has, I belfeve, an | tains. average depth of something like 600 fee Some parts of the bottom of Lake Titicaca have never been reached, and the captain told me that ff he should land upon certain parts of Titicaca Island he would have to cast his anchor high upon the rocky shores, as the waters which wash them are so deep that the grappling hooks could not reach the bottom. Think of a body of water like this at an altitude of more than two miles abov® the sea. Let it be more than 300 miles from the ocean in a basin which next to Thibet is the loftiest inhabited plateau of the world. Remember t you must cross a mighty desert and climb on the railroad over a pass which is nearly three miles ebove the sea to get to it and you have a slight idea of the wonders of Lake Titicaca. You must add, however, that while it is fed by the snows and glaciers of the Andes, it has itself no visible outlet to either ocean. Nine rivers flow into it, but only one earries off any part of its waters. This is the Desaguadero, which connects {t with its little sister lake, known as Lake Poopo, which lies about 280 miles further south in this same Bolivian plateau. The Desaguadero has in this distance a fall of Soo feet. It ts a rushing turbulent stream large enough to be navigated by steamers for a part of its length. It carries off a If the United States could be a carefully tilled as the parts of Peru through which I have traveled, where every available bit of land is used, it would, I believe, furnish enough food for all of the people of the world and leave erough grain left to glut the Chicago warkets during a corner on wheat. Patches of soll as big as a bed quilt are surround- ed with stones and carefully tilled. Bits of land between the rocks are green with scanty crops of potatoes, barley and quina, which are about the only things that will grow at this altitude, and you see people working on the sides of hills where they almost have to hold on with one hand while they use the rude little hoes of this part of the world with the other. This grubbing for a bare existence goes on over the greater part of the pla- teau in which Lake Titicaca lies. It is the plateau which formed the chief center of the Inca civilization which prevailed here when the Spaniards came. Lake Titicaca was the center of a civilization generations older than that of the Incas, and upon its shores sett stand raine. so old that the neas could not tell the ards anythin, about them, and only saia that the mighty monuments were made by a race of giants who lived about this lake before the sun large volume of water, but Lake Poopo has no outlet to the sea, and notwithstanding this drain Lake Titidaca remains at the same leve! whether the season be wet or @ry, year in and year out. The steamboats which sail upon Lake Titicaca might be called the steamers of appeared tn the heavens. These ruins are those which lie near the little town of Tia- huanaco. They cover an area of about three miles and consist of the remains of massive walls, terraced mounds and the ruins of a great edifice which is sometimes called the temple. This building covered about four acres, and it was made of great Some of them are filled with people and one has a mule, a donkey and a llama in it in addition to its* human freight. The captain of each boat is an Aymara Indian, who stands up as he poles the boat along. There is a boat over there which has a straw sail and which is skimming along over the waves. Those boats are of the curious craft known as balsas. They have been in use upon this lake for more than four hundred years and were found here when the Spaniards came. Until the steam- ers were brought in they carried all the freight on the lake, and they do a large business today. I can hardly imagine any- thing which looks more insecure. I tried a ride on one of them yesterday and was surprised to find that I was not turned out into the water. These balsas are made of reeds, which grow in great quantities on the banks of the lake, and they are, in fact, rafts formed of rolls of reeds so tied and woven together that they keep out the water. Only a roll of reeds about the top of the balsa keeps the passengers in, and they must sit flat on the floor. These reeds are also used for making bridges, ropes and baskets. The people roof their houses with them, and they are almost as impor- tant plants to them as the bamboo is to the Chinese. The Llamas of the Andes. Much of the freight that is brought to Lake Titicaca is on Mamas. The word is pronounced ‘“‘yahmah.” These animals are to a great extent the freight wagons of the Andes. You see them by the hundreds everywhere on this ‘Titicaca plateau. I found them loaded with silver ore at the mines in the mountains of central Peru and saw thousands of them feeding upon the pampas over which I crossed on my way here. They are the most graceful beasts I have ever seen. They walk along the road with their little heads high up in the air, and seem to tread as though they owned the earth. They have heads like a camel, bodies like a sheep and feet and legs much like a deer. They are not sulky logking, like the camel, and are far more aristocratic in their actions. When you load a camel he cries like a baby. The tears roll down his cheeks, and as he marches off he pouts and pouts and groans and groans. The lama carries his burden with a proud air and pricks up his ears for all the world like a skye terrier at every new thing he sees. He will carry only so much, and the usual load for a lama is 100 pounds. If you put on more he does not cry or groan, but calmly kneels down and will not move until the load is light- ened. If you make him angry he does not bite you, as does the camel. He merely shows his contempt’ by spit- ting upon you. I would rather be kicked by a government mule than te spat upon by a Mama. He chews his cud like a cow and has a special reservoir somewhere in his anatomy well stored for such an occs sien. A Ilama’s spittle smells worse than the weapon of the polecat. If once hit, it is almost impossible to get the scout out of yeur clothes, and no ene wants to be near you until you have had a bath and a change. I find, however, that most of the Mamas I have handled are gentle, and I have had good oppertunities to study them, Liamas, They are everywhere about me on this plateau. Some are almost snow white, scme are seal brown and a few black and spctted. Their wool is very long and beau- tiful rugs are made of it. The Indians are very fond of their llamas. They pet them and talk to them. They sometim2s dye their wool and often tie bright-colored rih- bons through holes in their ears. They al- ways walk beside them when on a journey, stopping from time to time to let the ani- mals graze upon the way. The wool of most of the ponchos which form the over- coats and shawls of the people of this plateau is from Hamas. It is spun by the women, who, whether tending the flocks or walking along the road, always have a spinning spool in their hands. They weave the wool themselves, and out of it make all of the clothes of the family. The Hama not only clothes and through the money re- ceived from him as a freight carrier feed3 these people, but he warms them as well. There is no ‘wood on this high, desolate Plateau. Wood all over the western part of Peru is very costly. In the markets of fate page each customer carries home a bundle of twigs or rather roots and bushes with his vegetables. and meats, and this forms the fuel for the day's meal No one thinks of using for anything a 15 but cooking, and none of the cities of this art of the world have chithneys, fiirnaces, ting ‘stoves-or ‘On the plateau of Boliviatin which Titi- caca lies there are bushes, and almost the sole fuek is posed of the droppings of the Mai ery hut has a pile of this fuel and the better classes of! houses have quarters for it. La. Raz, which is a city of nearly 50,000 people, depe: entirely on the Hamas fer its :and the steam which moves the dyfamos of the eléctric light plant of the city is o¥eated by a fire of llama manure. 8 ‘The flesh of the lama i of agreeable flavor. Still, if is eaten by the Indians and lama stew forms a favorite dish. There are othef anithals of the same class as the llama which live on these ipongy and not highlands, such as vicuna (pronounced vicunya), which rui wild, and which is not so large but more beautiful than the llama, and the alpate,; giewn chiefly for its wool, and which is herded in flocks as we herd our sheep. — . FRANK CARPENTER. DOCKING A BATTLE SHIP. Details of the Operations on the New Warship Alabama. From the Philadelphia Record. Visitors to the League Island navy yard during the past three days have considered themselves well pafd in being permitted to look upon the-half-finished battle ship Ala- bea, which was so closely. guarded from ptblic view while at Cramps" shipyard, but which now stands out boldly in the dry dock. The crowds have also been amazed by the fact that such a monster of ma- rine architecture could be heid so firmly in the dry dock by what look to be the frailest of supports, “consisting of 100 blocks, the majority of which are placed in a row under the vessel’s keel. Had the coming powerful sea fighter: toppled over before the eyes of the spectators it would have been in line with their expectations. The dock at Cramps’ shipyard not being large enough, the big government vessels must be taken to League Island in order to have work done on their bottoms. The navy yard dock {is the largest government dock next to the ones ‘at New York and Port Royal. It is egg shaped and is 500 feet long, 130 feet 4 inches wide at its widest part and 84 feet 8 inches across the top of the entrance gate. The dock slopes so that at the tottom the entrance is 52 feet wide, with the dock interior 50 feet wide cn the bottcm. The depth of the dock i 82 feet 8 inches. The docking ot a warship the size of the Alabama is an undertaking requiring great skill and care. The day before the arrival of the ship thirty-five men from Cramps’ appeared at the navy yard and prepared a resting place for the Alabama in the dry deck. They arranged the blocks upon which the vessel was to be placed accord ing to a plan of the ship’s bottom. When the workmen had finished the bottom of the dock was arranged with a row of blocks, several feet apart, down the cen- ter, which looked like the backbone of a human being; and a shorter row cn each side. To accommodste the Alabama the biccks, which ou the top are two feet by one foot in size, had to be raised to a height of four feet, and when in the dock in the position desired the vessel on each side was within a foot of touching the slop- ing sides of the dock. Had the ship been any cheavier, and cor- sequently drawirg mere water, she could not have been placed in the dock. Her Present weight is about 4,000 tons, making the weight on each of the blocks under ber about sixty tons. There are sixty-two blccks under the center ofthe ship, which is 380 feet-long, with nineteen blocks on each side. The latter are-placed under the Gocking keels, which extend down from the sides to a point evenvwith the bottom at the center. ThetAlabama is the first vessel with the docking keels that has~ been placed in the dry dock. She also hus the much-talked-of jbilge;deels, or rolling fins, which are to kpep her from rolling. With strong timbers; to keep her steady, the Alabama's supposts are complete. But she is better provided for than 1s usual, for mcst vessels while dockedido not have the side blocks under them, the entire strain being on the row down .the, middle. When the Alabama arrived at the navy yard she was in tow.of four tugs. These took her to the entrance of the dock, which bad been filled With"water after the work- men had finished sefting the blocks. The caisson at the entrance having been open- ed, ropes were attached to. the big- huil, and with men at fixe eapatans, one at the head of the dock and two on each side, the Alabama was slowly pulled into the dock, It was necessary ‘to walt for high tide, as at any other time the entrance to the dock would be too narrow, the ship being sev- enty-two feet wide ‘at its widest pamt. With her armor on and@ machinery in place the vessel, which would weigh about 11,000 tons, would be too low in the water and ee uid not come anywhere near entering the lock. The battle ship having been guided into the dock, the next thing in order was to pump out the water. The caisson at the entrance was closed by the efforts of a dozen men and two capstans, and then the pumps, which are located in'a brick house on the left of the dock, were set in :noi!un. When the dock is dry visitors to the yard can see at the bottom, near the entrance, a well coverel with a screen. This . well leads to a culvert which runs about 200 feet to the end of the wharf in front of the pump house, through which the water 1s pumped from the dock to the river. The Screen over the well’ keeps movable dock furnishings from getting into the culvert. There are three pumps connected with the dock, two with a ¢apacity of 48,000 gallons each ard the third able to force out 6,400 gallons a minute. The latter is called the drainage pump and is used pur- ticularly to attend to the leakage after tha dcck has been drained. All three pumps are put to work at once, and thus the wa- ter can be forced out at the rate of 102,400 gallons a minute. The record for pumping out the dock is seventy-two minutes. When the surface ‘of the water in the Process of pumping got close to the tops of the keel blocks, there was a slowing down, and the work: went on very slowly, while the dock workmen guided the big vessel so as to have her settle properly on the blocks. They were enabled to tell to a degree the position of the craft in relation to the blocks, having been kept informed by the guiding staffs that were erected in different positions, and which stuck out of the water. As the battle ship settlea down the shoring timbers were extended from the various steps on the sides of the dock to the yessel’s sides. Timbers were also so braced under the vessel in various other places to make assurance doubly sure, and then the work to be done on the ship's bot- tom was started. The work’ finished, the battle ship was made ready to be floated out this morning. There are eight holes, each two feet in dia- meter, in the caisson at the entrance of the dock, through which the water from the river pours. Over two hours are re- quired to fill the dock, and as the water rises so does the vessel, The shoring tim- bers fall away one by one, and when the dcck has been filled to the level of the river the battle ship is ready to be floated out. ——————_+e-+-___ “Deed no, sah, I don’ have to go to no wah.” “But you are lable! “Not much I ain't, gph. dedone fixed that. No, sah, it’s just unj pessiple for me to do any fightin’. I got.any. pid. woman to go ovah to de police cgit-am, put me unner bonds fer to keep de,peage. Bet your life dey don’t git no fightin’ oyt o” dis coon.”— Cleveland Plain Dealgr. 7; ~ TellgTalex (Copyright, 1898, generar Company.) cae oe “ THE GREAT BUBBLING SPRING NORTH OF TAMPA. Eleven pack-inule trains were located aronnd this spring. WITH THE LONG EARS Training the Mule Pack Trains for the Invasion of Cuba. THE BiG CORRAL AT TAMPA Selecting the Teams and Breaking in the Animals. THE FAMOUS DIAMOND HITCH —_——+—_—_—_ Correspondence of The Evening Star. | TAMPA, Fla., June 19, 1898. HE GOVERNMENT mule and his proverb- fal cussedness are with us again. The sight of the heavily laden wagon trains moving through the suffocating dust like fantastic serpents a mile long, or the gro- tesque —_ pack-mule trains shambling along with huge and bulging burdens on their backs, brings to mind the fact that the preparations for the war are on a stupendous scale. Everywhere in and out-of Tampa, for a radius of several miles, pack and wagon trains fill the roads in their struggles to meet the demands of the constantly mobilizing and concentrating army, which must have rations and the general munitions of war. It is a wonder- ful sight, this steady tramp, tramp of raw mule recruits, dragging the lumbering cov- ered wagons past the ever-playing military bands with cocked ears and quick and freakish steps, or through the white-tented cities of thousands of soldiers who are ear- nestly and enthusiastically preparing for what may be a frightful carnage in the tor- rid clime of Cuba. Mules by the Thousand. It has been, and yet is, for that matter, a herculean task for the corps of wagon masters, drivers and mule packers to shape the appalling multitude of long ears into line:and divide them up into pack trains, regimental, brigade, division and ambu- lance trains. Still all this has been accom- plished in a few short weeks, in spite of the * Throwing the Diamond Hitch. tremendous difficulties which confronted every man from the army quartermaster down to the wagon driver. Into the great mule markets of the west and south the buyers went, and there purchased every mule that could squeeze through the army standard. As fast as they were rounded up in the corrals, in bunches of several hun- dred, they were shipped to coast points, New Orleans, Mobile and Tampa, until now the army -has quite 10,000 mules at its dis- posal at points of disembarkation. The vast majority of these mules are as green as the pastures upon which they have fed, and the tug of mule war came with the breaking them in. Every bridle- wise animal, every one that understood the yank of a-headline, was instantly in demand, and the corrals were soon de- A ROW OF PACK SADDLES breaking-in of this immense contingent of raw mules. The newly assigned wagon- master walks through the corral and picks out animal after animal, team being selected, as nearly as may be, to match in weight and general appcar- arce, and he is at once put into the wagon to work. Psychologie mule studies don't go in the present crisis; therefore, a sin- gle team may be made up of the modest, the gentle, the malicious and the devilish at the outset, the whole to be leavened in t'me into a compact and harmonious unit by hard work, the black snake and the driver's lurid language, which ought to raise the hair of any tenderfoot mule. Twenty-five big wagons go with each regiment, when the full quota is allowed, though in Cuban campaigning the army will consider itself fortunate if it has half as many, or one wagon to a company. Each brigade has its wagon train, under a boss wagonmaster, and this is divided into regimental trains under wagonmasters. The brigade is the wagon train unit, and may consist of seventy-five wagons and nearly 500 mules, including the reserves, and the saddle animals for the wagonmaster, his assistants and the ccoks. Each wagon train has attached to it three mechanics—a blacksmith, a farrier each six-mule | Sr curacy a seeing mule can land his feet in> the pit of a packer’s stomach. The first few times a saddle touches one of these animated backs it flies through the alr like a bombshell, but it gets there in and stays there. “Cinching” or girthinz is done by two men; one takes in the slack of the strap, and the cther apparently tries, with his foot planted against th» mu! weak ribs, to cut him in two. He only partially succeeds, but the job is a good 9n>, and @ well-saddied mule always has a fascinating waist. In experimental packing, ae, grain bags or something else soft the: wule to roll on is used, and he makes use of his opportuni in nine cases wut of ten, There comes a time when all the work and worry and fuss are over and the train docilely allows iteelf to be 1 teking a stray kick on the anatomy packer now and then, to keep in But for all that, it is a well-behay ch animal ready to move with a pound pack twenty or thirty miles a day A packers’ cam» is quite as well disci- plined and orderly as a military camp. Tho men feed and carry the mules te curry them, pack them, take marches, unpack again, care for diery, and do a hundred things n close application and arduous, hard work on the part of every man in the corps. The Famous Diamond Hitch. The ability to throw well the diamond and double diamond hitch, with which the pack is held in position, is the crucial test for a new packer desiring a job. It can’t be explained, it has to be learned; but a pack well thrown and hitched wouldn't Study of the Diamond Hitch. came off a mule if it rolied off Pike's Peak itself. Two dificrent dies are used yhich the pack is placed; the “aps which coasists of two big rectangular | of leather, with little cross-sticks inside, arranged like a baby corduroy rord, to hold the bags out to their full distention, GETTING IN SHAPE. and a saddler—who are mounted, and, on the march, act as a small armed escort. A Ceaseless Round of Work. The men who belong to an army train Pave a ceaseless round of work from the | first glimmer of dawn until the soft bugle call of taps at night hushes the camps into slumber. Mules have to be fed and water- ed, harness kept in condition, wagons greased in the morn'tng before breakfast. When once this wagon train is in motion, with the wagonmaster as commander on & in the lead of the cavalcade, there i= no rest for men or mules until after sunset and the last wagon is packed at night, the niules fed and staked out for the night. It is then the tired men gather around the glow of a little campfire and tell marvel- ous tales of -wagoning days gone by, and ecmplacently pull their black pipes. Male Pack Traina. The most unique feature, in that ft is un- familiar to the general public, is the won derful mule pack trains which have been assembled for Cuban campaigning. Mule packing, in the iast ten years, has become an almost obsolete factor in the far moun- tainous wes*, where it once flourished. At Tampa there have been formed some twenty pack trains of over sixty mules each, all undergoing a systematic training to get them into proper form for packing over Cuba’s wet and almost impass roads. This adjinct to the army is a Pp of brilliant foresight on the part of War Department officials, for it not only makes it possible to move the army during the | rainy season, but it carries with it most of the hardest and best western rustlers in America and Mexico—men of years of ex- perience and hardships in the great mining regions of the west. They are a picturesque lot—brave, brawny and with sterling qualities which brand trem as rough diamonds. It ts true that most of them can, upon occasion, use choice and florid English, warranted to cause a pack train to walk straight into the mouths of Spanish cannon. The hardest work has been to get this ag- gregation of green animals so trained that they might be packed without turning back somersaults ev2ry time the cruel cinches were drawn up by powerful arms until the beasts looked like wasps with fairy w: and to get then to follow the lead of staid old bell mares, who head the long- —— pleted of all mules with a vestige of train- ing. Tie mass left consisted of mules who kicked, mules who tit, mules who didn’t know anything, and a small number of.the half Iame and blind. Every old westerner, mule packer and wagon-train master in the United States, and even down’ into Mexico, has_come to the front under the urgent call for men who know how to handle four-legged ani- mals, and who could pack with a diamond hitch, or drive big strings of six-mule wagons. Through the efforts of these griz- gied, sun-tanned westerners, working sl- most night and day, not only is the army of untrained animals becoming efficient, but the army itself has been shaped in such manner as to be ready to move any- where and at any moment. The big corrals, with their thousands of ear2d processions with quiet, dignified gait. At first each pack train was turned out bare-backed and driven over the surround- | ing country for miles, or through the tor- tuous streets of the now soldier town, with cowboys all around the animals to keep them in a semblance of decent behavior. Some funny things happend during this pre- liminary training, such as mules suddenly and without ceremony bolting into the front doors of stores, while the customers hur- iedly went out the back way. One drove went ov2r a poor Cuban's peanut and fruit Straw or hay is packed smoothly inside as a padding. The other saddle is known as the Moore pack saddle, and ts built on a tree; it is a heavy affair, but very effec- tive. The relative merits of each are earnestly disci the old timers ewear- ing, with many points to their advantage, on the aparejo, while the newer thinks there is nothing like the modern pack. War has brought together again “men who lived the wild life of scouts, of drivers, of packers and of cowboys in the early western days when every man's life depended on his prowess, his courage and the quickness of his finger on the trig- ger. They tell all the old stories, but they must have the wavering light of the camp- fire to be able to tell them. Going to war is the first eestatic pleasure they have had since the Injuns have behaved themselves, and the “wire-fence cutting” war over. The fire c: its glare over t lcng rows of silent, tethered mules, and again it lights up the fantastic and gro- tesque patterns painfully embroidered on the blankets by horny-handed men. They refill their pipes and sigh contentedly. are they not all together again in their heaven of muledom? D. os WHY THE SPANISH LIE. It Comes Natural to Them, and They Think They Are Trathful. From the Pittsburg Times. It may thus be entirely possible that those Spaniards who are telling about the victories at Manila and along the Cuban coast, and of the distress which the war is producing in this country, really think that they are telling the gospel truth and are lying with clear consciences, It is pretty hard for us to realize this, but anal+ ogous reasoning goes far to show that it is possible. What purports to be the his- tory of all ancient peoples is full of the bafdest and inost astonishing exaggerations and the most impossible assertions 10 their own prowess and the cowardice and reverses of their enemies. Nearly the whole business of the modern historian, who un- dertakes to present to us the facts of the past, is to eliminate the Hes. What is all mythology but a tissue of poetic lies, and what is all the history of the ancient nations but a series of chapters of hyperbole? Why, even in the books of Moses and in what we denominate the sa- cred writings of the prophets th slaughter which they all upon their enemies In the cons Israel against her enemies surp thing that ever occurred in modern times, though we have the advantage of improved Weapons, and though modern wers have been fought between countries of vastly greater population. Coming down even to the annals -of our own country, we find that in its earlier history lying about public affairs more prevalent than it is, now. hington is now regarded as a saint, but in his day he was lied about much more virulently than any modern statesman. It is related that on one occasion a friend of Gen. Grant read to him a particularly abusive article, which made the hero of Ap- pomattox wince, and caused him to wonder whether really, after all, he had rendered any worthy services to his country; but when he Icarned that it was written not about him, but about George Washington, he concluded that he might take some com- fort in the fact that the old-time liars were more virulent than those of his generation, it is true that the Spaniards bolster them- selves up with lies, and they are very sur- prising lies to us; but in measuring them we must bear in mind that they are built that way, that they have not arrived at that stage of enlightenment when they can realize that the sort of lying. they indulge in is useless, and that, moreover, there is that in their make-up which often leads them to imagine that to be the truth which they wish to be so. ———_+ e+ ____ Wallets for Soldiers. From Invention.