📸 Photo

shotgun.’ One small boy beat the rest of them to it, came back with the shotgun, and collected his coin.

The people were very friendly. They came up and talked to us. The women and children watched us curiously but without fear in their eyes. They had no doubt that we had come to prospect for gold.

After they had offered us sweet bananas and ripe papayas, Karl asked if his friend Don Jorge was in the village. The man’s brother was among the crowd, and he led us straight down the bank of the Tuichi to Don Jorge’s home.

Asriamas is a small, relatively new village. About ten years earlier the government had allotted the land to the campesinos from the alti-plano (high plains). They had gone into the jungle, put in an enormous amount of work, cut paths through the foliage, cleared trees from their fields, built huts, and planted banana groves. They had brought in cattle, sheep, and horses and raised vegetables and large quantities of rice. They sold their rice to wholesalers in Apolo. Don Jorge’s was the oldest and wealthiest of the families in Asriamas. His family enjoyed the status of founders.

After walking alongside the Tuichi for an hour, we came to an enormous clearing in the jungle, carpeted with green grass. Papaya trees, heavy with fruit, were planted here and there, and huts of bamboo and clay stood about the clearing. Karl