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 shepherds come for the supplies of chuiio (dried potatoes), chanar, dried fruit, wheat, and flour. Their dependence on the town is so great that in many cases they construct two huts, one at the home oasis in a ravine miles away; another in the desert on the border of the gardens that surround San Pedro. They pasture their flocks on grasses and shrubs at the fringe of settlement, rest a few days, trade, and return. A few have even gone so far as to construct a third hut on some neglected patch of soil at the common border of desert and irrigated land and there plant a few grains and seeds to help out their slender resources.

Among the oasis products are a few of which they have grown very fond—chajiar (Fig. 22), for example, which may be ground up to make an ingredient for soup or made into a kind of bread or biscuit or roasted like a chestnut. Above all it is light in weight and may be carried with ease during mountain journeys. In very dry seasons the crop may be small and the owners unwilling to part with it. Then the nomads refuse to sell their ropes of twisted llama wool. Now the arrieros of the town must have these to hobble their beasts at night while on a journey across the desert. Leather thongs would chafe the legs of the mules and start troublesome sores. Moreover, they cannot be so securely tied, and the security of one’s beasts is a most important care in desert travel. If the shepherd will not sell his vauable lama wool ropes for money, the arriero must exchange for them something of less value to him. Thus he reluctantly parts with his crop of chafiar nuts, for which he may substitute wheat, rather than do without the wool ropes for which he has no substitute.

Once in two or three years it rains in the San Pedro region; at longer intervals (up to ten years) it rains a number of times a year, and in these wetter seasons grass springs up every- where; there is good pasture for sheep and cattle on wide stretches of pampa; and if flocks and herds are carefully dis- tributed the forage may last a year, which is a great relief to