In the meantime, the family of the tipsy governor had sobered him up enough to make him realize that he had shown discourtesy to the bearer of a government passport and he came to the inn with profuse offers of entertainment which we unfortunately could not accept.
We left Bartolo early the next morning. The dust had been laid by thunder-showers in the night and the crisp mountain air was most refreshing. Occasionally we passed the ruins of a rude stone cairn erected in colonial days to measure the leagues between Sucre and Potosí. Fermin had never been beyond Potosí, so we were obliged to fall back upon the service of guides or _postillons_ from here on. They cannot be taken farther than from one _poste_ to another, generally six leagues or twenty miles. They receive a regular tariff of four cents per league, and a small gratuity besides.
For this munificent sum of a little over a cent a mile, they are supposed to assist in catching and saddling the animals, to hold the packs while they are being loaded, and then to run beside the trotting pack-animals, ready to help if the loads become loosened, constantly at hand, a willing slave to the _arriero_ and a guide to the traveller. Generally lightly clad with the regulation Quichua small clothes, that look as though made of meal-sacks, they march or lope along cheerily, now and then blowing lustily on an ox-horn, which they carry slung over the shoulder as a badge of their position.
The _postillons_ will not budge unless their tariff is paid in advance, for they have learned through centuries of experience that while the traveller with a stout whip, mounted on a good animal, with the authority of the government at his back, can force them to go the required distance after the fee has been paid, they have no means whatever of forcing him to pay after he has arrived at his destination and has no further need of their services. The first _postilion_ we had, recognizing the fact that our _arriero_ was a stranger in this part of the country and that we were foreigners, ran far ahead of the little caravan, and would have disappeared among the thorny shrubs of the arid hillside had we not galloped after him and threateningly ordered him to return to his post at the heels of the mules. The next one proved to be a good fellow and did his work well, notwithstanding the dust which was his portion during most of the day.