An email to a friend on Bowen Island ...
I wonder if the people up the road from you who have the llamas would be amused by the following excerpt, translated from the Spanish "Perigrinaciones de una Paria" (Pilgrimages of a Pariah), itself translated from the original French in 1942, written by Flora Tristan (1803 - 1844). She was a disinherited French woman who travelled to Peru seeking the protection of an uncle, a general in the Spanish colony, Arequipa. She was also a grandmother of Paul Gaugin.
The llama is the pack animal of the cordillera. The Indian uses them for all cargo transport and for trading in the valleys. This animal is very interesting to study. It is the only domestic animal that men have not managed to debase. The llama does not permit itself to be beaten or maltreated; it allows itself to be useful but on the condition that it be asked, rather than ordered, to work. These animals travel together in troops, accompanied by Indians who walk far ahead of them. If the troop feels tired, it stops and the Indian stops too. If the stop becomes prolonged and the Indian becomes restless seeing the lowering sun, he decides, after having taken every kind of care, to ask his beasts to continue on their way. He stands fifty or sixty paces from the troop, adopts a humble attitude, makes a most caressing gesture with his hand to the llamas, directs tender looks to them and at the same time calls with a sweet voice and patient look that I can not tire of admiring: ic-ic-ic-ic. If the llamas are disposed to get under way they follow the Indian in good order, at his pace and very lightly because their feet are very big; but if they are in a poor humor they do not turn their heads toward the voice that calls them with such love and patience. They remain unmoving, one pressed against the other, already lying down or gazing at the sky with such tenderness and melancholy that one would truly think that these admirable creatures have a consciousness of another life. Their long necks that they carry with gracious majesty, the long silk of their manes, always clean and shining, their flexible and timid movements give these animals an expression of nobility and sensitivity that inspires respect. It must be this way since the llamas are the only animals in the service of men that they do not dare to beat. If it happens, a very rare thing, that an Indian in his anger demands by force or even by threat something that the llama does not want to do voluntarily, and if the animal feels maltreated by words or gestures, it lifts its head with dignity, not trying to run to escape the bad treatment (the llama is never tied or yoked), lies on the ground, directs its gaze to the sky, thick tears fall abundantly from its beautiful eyes, sighs escape from its breast and it expires in the space of a half hour or at most three quarters of an hour. Happy creatures! They seem to not have accepted life except on the condition that it be sweet.