Peru as It Is, Volume I (of 2)

CHAPTER III.

If the mildness of contagious epidemic diseases were to afford a fair test by which to judge of the climate of any particular locality, or the medical police of its community, that of Lima would surely rank as one of the most favourable. But, however open and spacious be the construction of the houses and site of this capital, and whatever may be said for or against the personal and domestic cleanliness of its inhabitants, and other circumstances affecting the health of individuals, it must be admitted that the salubrity of Lima, and the chances of life it affords, are materially diminished from the want of due attention to public cleanliness.

The aqueducts or canals, which run along all the principal streets in a direction from east to west, and give off branches for gardens and convents, &c. are, after they have passed the city, to some extent usefully distributed on fields between it and the sea-port. But, in general, agriculture, like every other branch of industry, is neglected since the revolution. The drains intended to convey the surplus water from the city over a gentle slope, to impart that moisture to the good soil which could not otherwise part with its nutritive properties, or support vegetation, are frequently in a ruinous condition. Thus, the water is suffered to stagnate in some parts, and run waste in others, without being applied to those beneficial purposes of tillage which should be the means of augmenting the health, population, and general resources of Lima and its environs. By the street-canals, are to be seen all day long the industrious vultures, (by far the most efficient agents of police,) gulping up the refuse cast into these receptacles of every sort of nuisance. When the water runs in small quantity, or is altogether stopped from neglect, the quantity of vegetable and animal deposit carelessly allowed to accumulate in these channels emits a profusion of gaseous volatile poison, more or less penetrating and pernicious, according to the season of the year and heat of the weather.

The manure conveyed from the pens and stables, (which might be applied so as richly to repay the farmer’s toil, and be made to beautify at the same time that it enriched to an incalculable extent the adjacent plains,)—this manure, when not thrown into the canals, is conveyed to the broad walls of the picturesque city, and there heaped up day after day; or, if not thus disposed of, it is carried to the river’s brink, where it is suffered to accumulate into fermenting mounds of daily increasing size. Here it absorbs moisture, and generates miasmata that taint the air breathed by the inhabitants; and so their sloth is chastised. We are persuaded that their own culpable inattention to the cleanliness and salubrity of their capital contributes largely to entail upon them a greater proportion of disease and mortality than could at first sight be expected from the features of the climate. Those natives, indeed, who have passed a life of well-regulated habits, are said to attain a cheerful old age in Lima; and there are instances of a few individuals exceeding a hundred years of age, who preserve considerable bodily activity and mental vivacity. There was living, when we left Lima in 1836, an active little Franciscan friar, said to be considerably above a hundred. A Spanish gentleman of the name of Pellicer, very remarkable for the acuteness and vigour of his mental powers and general health, died in our own day, at the age of a hundred and two or three; and some other instances of this sort might be mentioned. These, however, are exceptions. For it is worthy of particular remark, that, whatever be the causes that tend to produce the melancholy result, the truth is, that the general mortality in Lima is very great; a fact which the records of its Pantheon fully confirm, as may be seen from the annexed documents.

TABLE

Showing the number of Deaths in Lima and its Suburbs from the year 1826 to the year 1835, both inclusive.

Before we offer any remarks on the above table taken from a careful examination of the register-books belonging to the Pantheon, or public cemetery of Lima, it may not be amiss to premise what was the population of Lima when the last census was taken, just before the revolution broke out, and when that city is supposed to have been full of people and at its acme of prosperity. This census, taken by John Baso, one of the “oidores,” or judges of that period, and dated at Lima, September 30, 1818, concludes by the following summary:—“As is demonstrated by the preceding statement, the capital of Lima comprehends within its walls, huts and cottages contiguous to the city gates, and suburbs of San Lazaro, 54,098 persons of all sexes, castes, states, and conditions, which are distinguished minutely in the same statement, of which the total amount consists of 27,545 males, and 26,553 females.”

During the ten years embraced by the above table of mortality, the population of Lima is always estimated, by the best informed natives, as much under, as at the time of the census of Baso it was found to be above, 50,000; but no data, or census of later date, by which to verify this matter in a precise manner, exist in the hands of the patriots; therefore it is in some degree subject of conjecture, although from the number of houses that are now abandoned, and the great falling away of the agricultural and horticultural labourers, we are probably not far from the truth in calling the average population of the capital and suburbs during the last ten years 45,000; in which case the deaths in twenty years will, according to the above rate, as seen from 1826 to 1835, amount to 47,000,—a number greater than the whole population given.

It may not be irrelevant to notice that, in the year 1828, (twenty years after the Pantheon had been opened for interment,) the much lamented General La Mar, at that time president of Peru, visited the burying-ground, and desired, at the suggestion, we are told, of Don Mariano Castilla, a gentleman who had the honour to accompany his excellency on the occasion, one of the chaplains of the cemetery, to inform him, after referring to the proper archives, the total number of bodies interred for the twenty years it had then been open to the public; and we are assured that the result corresponded closely with the rate expressed in our present statement. The archives of Beneficencia, to which the chaplain had recourse, are now lost or mislaid; but the account he furnished General La Mar, after these documents, then extant, were consulted, was published in some one of the periodicals of that day, which, however, we ourselves have not seen. It appears from our table of mortality, from 1826 to 1835, both years inclusive, that during the last four years the number of deaths has augmented in proportion to those that took place during the preceding six. The most obvious reason for which, that we can assign, is, that the late administrator of the cemetery and keeper of its register, to whose charge the books were left during the first six years, was not attentive (as his books yet testify) to enter the number of espuestos,—in other words, corpses left secretly in exposed situations, as, for example, at the Pantheon, hospital, or convent gates; but his successor (Pasos) has, throughout the last four years specified, been very careful to insert a correct enumeration of these cast-away bodies, as the writer has had an opportunity of ascertaining in looking over the books of this obliging person, who lent his willing aid to procure the details whence are drawn the general results expressed in the table.

The number of the espuestos is almost incredible, and shows the prevalency of great poverty; for it is but charitable to think that no one would thus cast away a child’s remains who was not deprived of the ordinary means of covering the expense of an humble interment: but it is said that, in this business, much fraud is committed by the parents of the deceased, who, to avoid paying the regular funeral dues, give the hearse-men a few reals for picking up the exposed bodies, and carrying them to the cemetery to be buried. For these considerations, it will not be unwarrantable to infer that the increase of deaths during the last four years on the table has not been so much in reality as in appearance, from the omission of duly registering the espuestos. Nor does it appear from a document now before us, titled, “Guia politica, eclesiastica, y militar del Peru,” by the celebrated and praiseworthy Dr. D. H. Unanue, published in the year 1793, that the gross amount of deaths has altered, in proportion to the existing population, to that extent which many persons would incline to believe, in consequence of the great increase of poverty and demoralization which have been experienced since that period. In 1793 the population was quoted in the “Guia” at 52,627, and the number of deaths at 2795, not including such as occurred among nuns or ecclesiastics; all of whom, conjointly, formed a large item in the population of Lima, and must have had a good many deaths among their number to increase the real bill of mortality.[5]

It cannot be supposed either, that war had much share in swelling the Pantheon list of dead in these latter years, because, though civil broils were frequent since the year 1826, yet Lima itself was not the usual seat of conflict. Some troops there were always stationed in this city; but, should these be excluded from the estimate of the regular population of the place, still, however, any difference in the sum of mortality thus produced from soldiers dying in hospitals and registered at the cemetery would be, most likely, more than equalled by the default in the account of the espuestos, especially young children, whose remains were irregularly interred, and so not at all entered upon the books. And as for the Montonera troops, or others who met with violent death in or about town during the late noisy skirmishes, they were, upon the whole, too inconsiderable to merit much notice in this place, as appears very clearly from the various entries made in the register by Pasos, the present administrator and book-keeper of the cemetery.

CHAPTER IV.

As the degree of health, and vigour of constitution, enjoyed by individuals, depend in a great measure upon the diet, as well as on the air they breathe, climate, and caste, we shall offer a few general observations on the dietetic habits of the Limenians.

Besides maize, which is more generally cultivated than wheat, the latter being to a considerable extent an article of importation from Chili and other foreign parts, the staple food of the poor on the coast is derived from the camote and yuca, both of which roots are exceedingly nutritive and wholesome; but, in Lima, animal food is consumed in very large quantity. The quantity of poultry used here is incalculable; and a good reason for this is, that the sick, infirm, and convalescent,—always exceedingly numerous in this capital, as well in public hospitals as in private houses,—think themselves neglected in their diet if they have not, at least once a day, chicken or chicken soup. Geese and ducks are in low reputation as articles of aliment; but of pigeons and turkeys there is always a large supply in the daily market, held under sheds in convenient parts of the town. Fish is usually good and plentiful,—the fishermen, by the way, furnishing the best specimen we have seen of a robust form in the Indian family.

The number of fat pigs killed in the town has been, in the year 1835,—on occasion of imposing, for the support of the colleges, a duty of four reals, or about two shillings a-head, on each pig,—estimated considerably above twenty thousand yearly; and there is always so large a consumption of lard and fried pork, (“chicharones,”) that the trade of the “mantequero,” or lard and swine-dealer, is, after that of the baker and lottery-man, “suertero,” one of the most lucrative in the capital.

From forty to fifty head of oxen, and from three to four hundred sheep, are slaughtered daily for the Lima market: the beef is very good; the mutton of inferior quality. We were told by one of the principal beef contractors that, early in the year 1836, the slaughter of oxen in Lima was reduced to thirty or thirty-five head daily; a decrease from the usual number which he ascribed to the poverty peculiar to that particular period of misrule, disabling many families from buying beef, and partly also to a new military order relating to the soldiers’ rations.

Instead of his former allowance of meat, the soldier was now allowed two reals daily to provide for himself what food he pleased;—an injudicious alteration in his circumstances, for he either gave his ration-money for drink, or indulged his appetite in eating some unwholesome trash calculated to throw him too often on the sick-list.

Pastry and sweet-meat criers are seen everywhere in the Lima streets; and a sort of cook-stand, abounding in fried pork and fish, is to be found at the corner of every square. This practice gives some insight into the dietetic habits of the vulgar; and such poor families of genteel pretensions as from necessity hire out their slaves, are seldom at the trouble or expense of cooking at home when they can more easily call in from the street what little they may satisfy themselves with.

Masamorerias, or a sort of pap-shops, are very common in Lima. Of the sweet pap in vulgar use there are as many varieties as there are of meal and flour,—such as peas, beans, rice, maize flour, arrow-root, starch,—of which they have many varieties. Any of these boiled in water to a very soft consistence, with or without the addition of fruit or some vegetable acid, and sweetened exceedingly with sugar, molasses, or “chancaca,” (the latter, a coarse sort of brown sugar made up into cakes,) is what constitutes the great Limenian dish “masamora,” to which these sweet-mouthed people are as proverbially partial as the English are to roast-beef.

However salutary in itself may be the quality of the more substantial food of such Limenians as can afford to live well and generously, yet most of their dishes are so sodden in lard, that the common fowl, the pigeon, turkey, and that excellent family dish the “puchero,” consisting of a variety of fruit and vegetables, with pieces of meat of different kinds and quality, all boiled and presented in one great piece of plate,—are among the comparatively few which a simple palate can relish.

Their soups, together with a great variety of vegetable dishes, are so heated with agi-pepper, that the coats of the stomach would indeed require to be well greased to protect them against the piquant effects of this popular condiment. Useful and even necessary as this agi is found to be by those Indians of the valleys who cultivate it around their doors, and whose diet is nearly all vegetable, yet in a climate like that of Lima, and in constitutions so delicate as those of its inhabitants confessedly are, it must prove injurious to the organization of the stomach, and to the health in general, when freely and daily taken with a plentiful allowance of animal food, and a general mode of living sober but not temperate; for though the better classes deal sparingly in wine, yet, by partaking more or less of every dish at table, and these not a few, they usually eat more than the powers of digestion can comfortably apply to the support of the frame, not usually exposed by so indolent a people to great waste from athletic exertion.

The native dark races are indeed much more robust in form, and hardier in constitution, than strangers to their climate; and many of them drink “aguardiente,” or uncoloured cane spirits, in great quantity, and with less immediate ill effect than one would expect. Their constant use of such excitants as ardent spirits and fermented beverages called “chichas,” with animal food and agi, may possibly be a principal reason why these persons, whenever they are seized with inflammatory complaints, stand general bleeding better than others of their own caste fed upon sango, a name applied to a sort of mash made with maize-meal and sweet potatoes: but persons of European descent, with skin so much more delicate than the darker races in Peru, and endowed with a more susceptible nervous system, suffer much more readily from atmospherical vicissitudes; and their digestive organs and powers of assimilation being comparatively weak, those irregularities, borne by the negro and zambo with comparative impunity, are to the white man, whose organization is not so suitable as theirs for a warm and relaxing climate, the frequent cause of various disorders of the bowels, as indigestion, cholera morbus, or dysentery. The dietetics of the Limenians naturally induce frequent examples of impaired digestion; and worms, too usually the inmates of unhealthy bowels, are so remarkably common, and in acute febrile diseases are so generally expelled either dead or alive, that their appearance in such disorders is looked upon as a matter of course. What share the water, as a vehicle for ova, may have in propagating these worms, it may be difficult to assign; but as the aqueducts are much neglected, and proper filtering-stones not in general use, it is likely that some seeds of disease may thus enter the system; and it may be mentioned that, during the warm weather, a host of animalcules show themselves to the naked eye in the earthen jars, or “botijas,” which are kept in the culinary apartments as receptacles for water intended for ordinary domestic purposes; and even water, heated in hot baths to ninety or more degrees of Fahrenheit, if again allowed to cool, and stand over a few days, is seen crowded with myriads of playful animalcules.

Of water taken by the writer from the fountain of the great square in Lima, just as the river began to rise in January from the effects of the inland rains, he is happy to be able to furnish the following analysis by Dr. Thomson of Glasgow.

Sp. gr. 1·00028; purer than Clyde water: 1000 grains contained

Nature has supplied the Peruvians of the coast with fruits most suitable to their wants; and these, though often injurious when eaten in a state of immaturity, or when the stomach is not in a fit state to receive them, are yet, when used in season, most grateful to the taste, and salutary to the constitution, in the regions where they abound.

We shall, therefore, introduce in this place a list of the fruits produced in the orchards in and about Lima, with a specification of the months when they are in season. This we are happily able to do by presenting our readers with a list, obligingly given to us by Mr. Mathews, an English botanist, now making rich botanical collections in the interior of Peru; but whose occupation, as an horticulturist at Lima, afforded him the best opportunity for exact and practical information on the subject.

January.—Grapes begin to ripen; and also apricots, and a few pears.

February.—Grapes, pears in abundance, apricots; peaches begin to ripen; lucumas scarce; figs.

March.—Grapes in abundance; pears scarce; peaches in abundance; apples begin to ripen; lucumas in abundance; figs in abundance.

April.—Apples in abundance; quinces, ceruela de frayle (spondias dulcis), and cerasas (malpighia glandulosa), palillas (psidium lineatum), and guavas; figs scarce.

May.—The same as April; a few grapes are seen in the market, brought from the southward; cherimollas.

June.—Cherimollas and guanavanas; sweet and sour oranges; a few apples.

July.—The same as June, with the exception of apples and limes; sweet lemons and sour lemons begin to ripen.

August.—The same as July; but slight demand for oranges this month.

September.—Lucumas, paltas, and the fruits of the previous month.

October.—Same as September; but a great demand for limes and sweet lemons.

November and December.—During these two months there is a great demand for sweet and sour lemons, for “frescos” or cooling drinks. Sweet oranges rarely remain good after the middle of November.

Plantains produce all the year, but the greatest abundance is during the hot months. The pepino is also much eaten during December, January, and February. In the months of April and May, the pulp surrounding the seeds in the pod of the pacay are much eaten.

In addition to the above account by Mr. Mathews, we may notice that the melon and sandia, or musk and water-melon, are much cultivated in the neighbourhood of Lima; and are to be seen in large heaps by the bridge, and at the corners of streets, where they are bought up, and consumed with avidity, in the hot month of February. Olives too, and very good ones, grow in the Vale of Rimac, and arrive at maturity in February and March. During the late civil wars, several valuable olive plantations were wantonly cut down. Strawberries, and likewise “tunas,” or Indian figs, of inferior quality, grow in Lima; but the market is supplied with these fruits, and of the best quality, from the neighbouring valley of Sta. Ulaya. The pine-apple does not ripen spontaneously in Lima, though attempts are now making near the Callao gate of the city to cultivate it. The pine-apple eaten in Lima is usually brought from the eastern side of Peru, from the Montaña of Tarma and Guancayo, &c. Sometimes, also, a few pine-apples are carried from about Moro on the coast to the northward; but these often decay before they arrive in Lima.

CHAPTER V.

In Lima there are certain opinions and rules, relating to the nature and cure of diseases, so very popular and well received among the vulgar, and at the same time so habitually countenanced by many of the native practitioners, that, for any one who proposes to practise in that part of the world, and hopes to be honourably acquitted by the jury of nurses and attendants who are always numerous about the sick, it may be worth while to consider the tenor of the following remarks:

I. No conoce nuestro clima.—It is affirmed by native doctors, but not always acceded to by the vulgar, that there is something occult in the climate of Lima, which only a Limenian or Creole physician can sufficiently comprehend. Hence the prejudiced objection, “No conoce nuestro clima,”—that is, “he knows not our climate,”—is sanctioned by high professional authority; and this much hackneyed caveat is usually laid at the threshold of every European doctor who desires to make himself professionally useful in Lima.

Every one, we think, will admit that the practice of medicine must be modified, or considerably altered, according to the topography of any particular country; for it is observed, that difference of locality affects not only man, but plants and animals, in a striking degree as we extend from the Equator towards latitudes far to the north or south of it. Yet, if there be any who understand either the botany or zoology of Peru, or who endeavour to illustrate these subjects by their science and diligence, they are not Peruvians.

The only lover of natural history we have the honour to be acquainted with in that country is Don Mariano Rivero of Arequipa; and, though their tranquil sky might be imagined to allure Limenians of a philosophic turn of mind to the contemplation and study of the heavenly bodies, yet to Dr. Gregorio Paredes alone belongs, in the present day, the merit and high distinction of keeping the sublime vigils of the astronomer. Now this dearth of native science is not confined to these general branches of natural history and philosophy, but affects very sensibly the practice of medicine. The very manuals of primary medical instruction put into the hands of medical students in the capital of Peru are foreign and European. And thus it is plain that they have no peculiar and national digest of medical knowledge—no local and partial medical code, such as charlatans and public impostors would desire to insinuate when they talk of their own practice of physic, or what they call Medicina del pais.

It is indeed to be hoped that no respectable physician in Peru will hereafter indulge in the folly of maintaining that Europeans are neither fit to practise in that country, nor able to comprehend the peculiar influences of the climate of Lima. This climate, like every other on the known face of the globe, is open to the investigations of the meteorological observer, whether he be a native of the Old or New World.

The laws of physiology, we may further observe, like those of gravitation, are the same in Peru as in other parts of the world; and the aphorisms of Hippocrates, generally founded on accurate observations made more than two thousand years ago, are at this day equally true as when first embodied, and applicable to man’s physical constitution all over the globe. The medical treatment of diseases, whether conducted at home or abroad, must be conducted in conformity with the common and immutable laws of the animal economy, and with due attention to the constitution and temperament of individuals. The locality of the patient’s birth or residence, the influence of climate, diet, and habits, &c. are mere accidental circumstances, secondary and subordinate considerations, which every physician or medical officer of our fleets and armies, to whatever clime he be transported, should be able to survey and to estimate, like the skilful commander who, as he reconnoitres his ground, perceives the local character of a new field of action.

II. Tomar dulce para bever agua a las horas de la comida.—This is a standing dietetic rule observed at the close of a meal or repast, which means that sugar, or some sweet preserve, is to be taken to give relish to the water that it is customary to drink at this time, whether one feel thirsty or not: they therefore sweeten the palate to enjoy their simple drink.

Should a Limenian in perfect health, who thus drinks water at stated periods, feel thirsty shortly after a meal concluded, as usual, with sugar or some sweet-meat and water, he is taught to endure the inconvenience rather than bring on himself indisposition by indulging his thirst. To understand this, it is requisite to know, that, until three hours have elapsed after the taking of the last meal, no one is supposed to drink even water, which is the most common beverage of the natives; for to commit such an irregularity would, it is believed, be to occasion a fit of indigestion or to hazard health.

This may appear a ridiculous prejudice to those who are accustomed to quench their thirst, as often as it naturally arises, without regard to rules; but, on the coast of Peru, the neglect of this prophylactic rule of only drinking at stated periods, when it violates the established habits of an individual trained up in the observance of it, may be allowed to be injurious to the health, as it certainly disturbs the digestive functions. This strict attention to measured periods of drinking water is also countenanced in the hill-land of the interior, where digestion is usually so vigorous as not to require such nice precaution: but it is patronised by custom; and this, no doubt, the majority hold as a sufficient reason for the continuance of the practice.

When a person suffers from acute febrile disease, and is only allowed very spare and tenuous diet, such as chicken soup, panada, tapioca, or arrow-root, &c.; then, from one meal to another, the regular interval is five hours; three hours after each meal, water, or some medicated drink, is given; and, two hours after this drink, the allotted aliment, of whatever simple sort it may be, is again repeated. Thus food and drink are regularly alternated till the patient is considered to be in a state which requires the supply of solid food; and then, as when in ordinary health, the interval from meal to meal is understood to be seven hours. The solid food given to the convalescent generally consists of chicken, which, of all the items in the list of Limenian dietary, is that in most general requisition. Now, for the proper digestion of the chicken, five hours are allowed before any medicated drink is ordered after it; and the principle recognised in this method is, that drink, which too much dilutes and weakens the gastric juice in the stomach, cannot with propriety be taken before chymification is complete.

Nurses, and very kind and obliging friends, usually attend so strictly to the above order in giving food and drink, that, though the poor patient be burning with thirst, he can only have permission to quench it at the fixed and assigned hours; and, through a feeling of pure benevolence towards the sick, they interrupt a salutary sleep rather than fail in punctually giving either drink, nutriment, or medicine at the corresponding hours. Under the influence of an amiable sense of duty, the anxious mother is often heard to assure the doctor that she herself was attentive to give her child its drink or medicine at exact time, as announced from the nearest church spire by the striking of the clock; though it grieved her to interrupt its gentle slumber.

During the exacerbations of intermittent fevers, so prevalent in Peru, the state of the stomach is usually much disturbed; and in such circumstances, instead of alternating food and drink without regard to the condition of the digestive functions, we have taken pains to persuade the sick to deviate from the order established by custom, and allowed our patients the inexpressible comfort of drinking as often as thirst urged them, until there was obtained a solution of the febrile exacerbation.

III. Prepararse para tomar purga.—Many practitioners of the venerable Boerhaavian school have died in Lima in course of the last few years, but several of this stock are yet remaining; and, in their professional harangues at consultations, they are heard to talk learnedly of the malignant, adust, crude, and corrosive, &c. state of the humours of the human frame, without, as it always appeared to us, being able to affix any precise and practical ideas to these hypothetical expressions. And though the junior doctors of modernized opinions are generally found to indulge in some theory of the abstract solidists, yet they are obliged to respect the prejudices of the vulgar, and talk in a way that is agreeable to those whom it is their business to persuade. Patients, blinded by the received notions concerning the scorched blood, and displaced, corrupt, or perturbed and jumbled humours, reckon the daily visit of the physician indispensable under ordinary circumstances of indisposition. They do not expect that, day after day, active drugs are required; but, according to their own precognition of the case, they think it necessary for their safety that their medical adviser make his regular visits and observations, carefully examine the various excretions, and so be able to judge accurately of the character of the case, and prepare the patient by delay, diet, and diluents, &c. to take physic in due time, which is the meaning of the vernacular expression, “Prepararse para tomar purga.”

IV. Empacho.—This famous Limenian mischief-maker is supposed to lurk concealed under almost every form of chronic or intractable disease, and means, in the most usual acceptation of the word, a preternaturally loaded and torpid condition of the bowels: but, on other occasions, the same word is used to express the casual lodgement, in any part of the digestive passages, of some such matter as the fresh rind of a fig, grape, or date, keeping up local irritation and fever. Thus, at one time, the term empacho signifies a confined and inactive state of the bowels; and, at other times, indigestion of some foreign and adherent substance, frequently giving rise to quite a contrary condition of gastric disorder: the former is called simply empacho; the latter is called empacho pegado,—for the removal of which, a table-spoonful, or two, of the liquid fat of a fowl—the enjundia de gallina! is a popular remedy.

In a large proportion of cases where this cause of mischief is supposed to exist, it has, in fact, no place or existence except in the mind that conceives the notion of it; and, in itself, the fallacy is harmless so long as it is speculative: but the practice to which it leads is often mischievous, and it is with the latter that the practitioner has most to do.

It would, indeed, be a hopeless task for the regular practitioners in Peru to reason a Limenian doctress out of her reveries on the subject of empacho, which, when viewed by her as the exciting cause of disease, assumes a Protean character, and is visible to her imagination in mostly every case of ailment, which she, true to her favourite opinion, offers to cure in her own way.

The evil effects of a farrago of nostrums, or untimely and inappropriate medicaments applied by the help of the doctress, the educated physician is often called, but sometimes too late, to correct; and the fatal abuses thus arising have, on various occasions, called forth the public and earnest remonstrances of the highest medical tribunal of the country,—but all to no purpose, the practice being rooted in vulgar favour and prejudice.

So universal, indeed, is the credit of the Limeña quacks, or curanderas, of whom La Señora Dorotea is the chief, and so general is the use of the instrument called jeringa, (through the medium of which the principal ingredients of this señora’s materia medica are confidently applied,) that it constitutes an essential and conspicuous article of domestic utility. And the great consideration in which this auxiliary is held, as a sine quâ non in the treatment of empacho, and almost every disease, renders it a topic of never-failing conversation.

As a familiar example of the abuse of the jeringa, may be mentioned the vulgar practice of resorting to it in disorders attendant on dentition. Sometimes the increased action of the bowels is indiscreetly stopped by astringents thus adhibited, and a fatal determination of blood to the head ensues; but it more frequently happens that the contrary practice is pursued, and stimulant remedies are administered, which either increase the existing disease, or transmute it into a dysentery. On such occasions the skilful practitioner may endeavour in vain to convince the mother that her child’s gastric ailment does not proceed from the presence of the dire empacho. When, as often happens during the progress of teething, children are suffered to eat all sorts of sweets, fruit, and unwholesome diet, or permitted to partake of strong food used by adults, and ill-suited to the more delicate organs of the tender child, then, no doubt, empacho or indigestion may be traced, in many cases, as a co-existing cause of the irritation and disturbance in the bowels, to which the offspring of white parents are more particularly subject in Lima. Complicated cases of this nature demand a prudent modification in treatment. Yet such instances are not so frequent as others, independent of indigestion, and in which a moderate bowel complaint is so far from being injurious that it is most salutary, as a natural protection against affections of the head during the process of teething. It is a peculiarity connected with the religious belief and popular customs of the country, that diseases of infancy and early childhood are too lightly considered by the native physician. The reason assigned for this is the devout one, that little innocents are exempted from the pangs of Purgatory, which must be borne by adults for the purification of their souls; and that therefore, for the child, it is happiness to die.

We have heard the physician offer this consolation to a weeping mother in the higher ranks of society. He softly assured her that her pretty babe would pass through Purgatory to Paradise without as much as scorching a finger in the transit.

In the lower and middle ranks especially, this religious dogma seems to stifle the natural emotions of the heart; for, evidently forgetting that even “Jesus wept,” they celebrate with music and dancing the death of the dearest object of a fond parent’s affection, who, as her child is consigned to a niche in the Pantheon, bedecks her person, grown thin by previous care and watching, and now she smiles in her robes of white, as if these were indeed no emblems of torn affection!

V. Sangria sobre el empacho.—To bleed a patient affected with empacho is, by the common consent of the vulgar, declared to be a most unpardonable blunder; and this is the meaning of the expression, “Sangria sobre el empacho!” when ejaculated in the apartments of the sick.

It will be readily imagined that, in numerous instances coming under the vulgar denomination of empacho, the subtraction of blood will be a necessary measure before purgatives can be properly or safely resorted to, with a view to remove from the bowels the irritating cause lodged there, and affecting the general system.

But to avoid the unjust criticism of uncharitable members of the profession, who are always ready to turn to their private advantage, any popular prejudice which can be called in to humble the name of fellow-practitioners more respectable than themselves, and also as a mean either to acquire or to preserve the confidence of the sick, the prudent physician will not overlook the natural effects of any known prepossession regarding blood-letting. He will so far accommodate his practice to the ideas of those who are most interested in the issue of his treatment, as to order at least one enema, when the empacho is firmly believed to exist, before he proceed to the further discharge of his professional duty, and fulfilment of the indication of the case, by ordering the lancet to be applied.

No time or advantage is lost by such a concession to the preconceived and inflexible opinion, that bleeding is particularly hurtful in those cases of illness connected with undue accumulations in the bowels: but one very important end is gained by it; since, by agreeing with the sick and their friends on an indifferent point of practice, they will more willingly submit to the application of other remedies necessary for the safety of the patient.

VI. Cosas frias y calientes.—All articles of diet, and medicaments, are by the Peruvians vulgarly divided into cold and hot; or, as the words on which we are about to comment express it, into “cosas frias y calientes.”

When the physician prescribes any particular diet or physic to a patient in Lima, he must be ready to answer many inquiries regarding the qualities of the things prescribed.

Besides professed sick-tenders, zamba housekeepers or head-servants, some women in the middle and humbler ranks, such as manteras, chocolateras, tenderas, cigareras, picanteras, pulperas, changaneras,—that is, female shopkeepers, chocolate and cigar venders, with a subordinate gradation of publicans, &c.—are always ready to talk, with confounding fluency and volubility, without knowledge, concerning qualities and temperaments; and they display a natural acuteness of metaphysical capacity, with a truly peripatetic nicety of discrimination, when, in a moment of oratorical excitement, they assign to certain mixtures and drinks ideal measures and degrees of the elementary qualities. Women skilled in such mysteries, and omniscient charlatans, run over the various combinations of the cold and hot, dry and humid, and all their resulting modifications of temperature and temperament, with apparently unerring precision, and with a graduated exactness which no chemist in Europe, with every advantage of science and apparatus, can pretend to equal in his elaborate investigations into the qualities and elements of bodies either living or inanimate.

The particular temperament of the patient his intimate friends are supposed to know perfectly; and the doctor’s reply to any question that may be proposed to him on this subject will be considered, in many instances, as no bad test of his penetration and professional knowledge in other matters with which they do not presume to be themselves so well acquainted.

In conformity with such prevailing impressions, when nurses are to be selected for the children of delicate mothers, preference is given to the black women, as their blood and milk are believed to be cooler and more refreshing than the same fluids are in women of a different race. The Indian woman, on the other hand, is considered inferior to the negress as a nurse, because she is believed to be of a comparatively hot temperament and constitution. The effect of the quality of the nurse’s milk is conceived to influence the future temperament of the infant that hangs on her breast; and it is sometimes assigned as a reason why an individual is of an ardent temperament, that when a child he had been weaned, or deprived of the breast, by giving him wine,—se desteto con vino.

Colour is looked upon as an indication of constitutional temperament even in the lower animals. Thus, when one in town labours under hectic fever, or consumption, he is recommended to go to the country, and drink warm milk from a black cow, because it is allowed to be more cooling and febrifuge than the milk taken from a cow of any other colour.

In case of a rheumatic swelling of a joint,—the knee, for instance,—or some tumefaction in any of the glands, it is taken for granted, that, whatever other remedy be applied, the envelope for the limb or part affected must be of a medicinal colour, and consist of black wool, or something of a dark woollen texture. In short, so far has this general idea concerning the antiphlogistic nature of black been carried, that few natives dispute its accuracy: nor are we prepared to say that it may not have some foundation in fact and observation (though often laughed at by strangers as a puerile prejudice); for it is well known to scientific men, that the free radiation of heat is much influenced by the differences of colour in the radiating surfaces of bodies.

With respect to food and drink, the division into cold and hot is never overlooked.

A “traguito,” or little dram of Italia, a colourless brandy made on the coast, the old men consider as fresco, or cooling, when taken immediately after dinner; and when they take the “traguito,” which they do not every day, it will probably facilitate the digestion of the greasy food which they are commonly accustomed to eat, and in this manner deserve the name of a fresco. But, again, though at their entertainments they allow wine to be a safe and good drink after the “helados,” or ices, which they like exceedingly, still they use wine sparingly on other occasions, as they consider it too heating for general use. There are fruits after which the natives do not think it safe to drink either wine or spirits; of this sort is the short plantain, called “platano de guinea,” after which a mouthful of spirits would be considered quite poisonous. Foreigners do not seem to attend to this strict rule observed by the natives; nor is the violation of it, as far as we know, attended with any serious consequence to them.

Various kinds of fruit and vegetable juices, which are considered cool in their qualities, are not rarely most heating in their effects, according to the condition of the system when taken. The melon is in reputation for its cooling nature; but, though the impression made by it on our alimentary organs is at first very refreshing, the muleteer who journeys from the Cordillera to the coast, and has but once in his lifetime been attacked with a gastric tertian, in consequence of cooling his parched fauces by eating of the melon, can give a lively account of the internal heat, agitation, and oppression experienced by him on the occasion. There is no cooling fruit safer than the granadilla, which is most grateful and refreshing to the feverish patient, or thirsty traveller in the scorched and rock-bound ravines and narrow valleys of the interior, where this fruit is often abundant, as it is also on the coast in its proper season.

Fowls are reckoned to be infinitely cooler in their temperament than sheep or oxen, and their flesh is also considered as very safe and cooling; hence the almost universal use of the former, and prohibition or disuse of the latter, in the dietary of a delicate invalid. This distinction will appear still more strongly marked, when it is observed, that to prescribe beef-tea in any acute disease would be deemed an act of rashness and ignorance; but chicken-tea is held to be the most cooling of diluents, and very eligible in the most inflammatory diseases and in the warmest weather.

This chicken-tea, called “agua de pollo,” is commonly prepared in the proportions of three cupsfull of water to one half of a little unfledged chicken, with the addition of a mallow leaf or two, and the core of a lettuce, (cogollo de lechuga,) by which latter in particular its cooling properties are said to be exalted. After the ingredients are boiled together for a proper length of time, the clear decoction is poured off for use. The great efficacy of this drink is accredited by the undisputed consent of doctors of all colours, and matrons as well as nurses of all sorts and temperaments.

It is needless to remark that, in general, plain water or toast-water, or a ptisan of barley decocted with some of the subacid fruits of the country, would answer very agreeably the purpose of the agua de pollo; but when the latter is preferred, it should be remembered that in warm weather it decomposes rapidly, and then acquires irritating properties. As a purgative, in gastric disorders, the old physicians in Lima extol almond oil, which is often of inferior quality; and they take some pains to arm the minds of the credulous against the use of the best castor-oil of European preparation, by telling them that it is extracted from the seeds of the “higuerilla,” or castor-oil shrub, everywhere indigenous in the warm valleys of the interior; and these seeds are generally known to be excessively drastic when taken as the peasants use them, in the dose of two or three bruised, and then swallowed in substance. Now from the seeds the native apothecaries prepare an impure oil, which is sold in the shops under the name of “oil of higuerilla;” and as it is only used for burning in lamps, when the vulgar learn that castor-oil is but another name for the same, they naturally consider it as essentially hot, and most heating and improper for internal use. The vulgar should be advised by every ingenuous and intelligent member of the profession, that the fault is not in the remedy, but in the way of preparing it: and this remark may be extended to the delicate preparations from the mineral kingdom, which acquire a bad name when badly prepared, as is necessarily the case in Lima, where chemistry is so little cultivated or practised as a science.

VII. Los acidos son malos para el pecho.—No class of remedies is in more general use in Lima than vegetable acids in the bilious disorders of daily occurrence; but in affections of the chest, whether simply catarrhal, or of the more serious forms of pneumonia or phthisis, it is a generally received and settled opinion that acids of all sorts are injurious, which they make known by such expressions as these: “Los acidos son malos para el pecho,”—acids are bad for the breast; “Los acidos cierran el pecho,”—acids shut up the breast.

This opinion seems to have partly originated from a notion, once entertained by the doctors, that acids coagulate the animal fluids, and so produce obstructions and disease. It is made evident to our senses, that milk secreted from the blood is readily coagulated by acids; and thus they seem to conceive that something of the same process takes place in the circulating fluids of the body when acids are taken into the system.

Not only the vulgar, but some of the professional characters, appear to be impressed with the notion that the blood is thickened or curdled by acids, whether mineral or vegetable; and that the delicate circulation of the lungs is consequently impeded, and the respiratory pores clogged. This opinion appears to be expressed in the very common remark, “El enfermo tomo fresco de lemon, y con el acido se le ha tupido el pecho,” which means that the patient drank cold lemonade, and with the acid the breast was stopped up.

We are well persuaded that there are instances, especially among delicate females, where the respiratory organs are so susceptible of impressions, that the immediate refrigerating effects of cool acidulated drinks on the stomach of such persons extend rapidly, by sympathy, from the stomach to the surface of the body and lungs; and there produce a certain degree of constriction on the exhaling vessels, which disturbs their healthy action.

It is only in this manner we can account for the fact, as frequently stated to us by patients, that, as certainly as they did take anything cool and acidulated, they were speedily affected with a tightness about the chest, and felt as if they had actually caught cold. On such occasions their usual observation was, “El acido me ha cerrado el pecho,”—the acid has locked or closely shut the breast.

A complicated ailment which is vulgarly conceived to be seated in the chest, is often met with in Lima during the sultry months of January, February, and March. It is attended with a short and dry cough, a foul tongue, and evening fever, or restlessness, that chases away sleep. The patient becomes low-spirited and anxious; and dreads an approaching attack of consumption, or spitting of blood.

In such disorders, the gastric and hepatic functions may be suspected of some irregularity; and, when in any case this is explained to the patient, the disease may be treated as one seated in the organs of digestion, and frescos or cooling acidulated drinks often do wonders. Not only diluted in cold water, but with the addition of ice, the various vegetable acids of the season are given with the best results. They break up the whole chain of morbid symptoms; and the patient, thus encouraged and refreshed, completes convalescence by cold sea-bathing, and a few weeks’ residence at the neat village of Mira-flores, a few miles from the capital.

Throughout the entire year, but more particularly during the warmer months, great use, and no small abuse, is made of all sorts of frescos, or cooling and acidulated drinks, with or without the addition of ice, and other ingredients of a very opposite nature, as pimento and spices, which latter render the same drink heating to the stomach, that, by ice, is rendered cool on the lip.

There are no beverages which the vulgar misapply more than their frescos. The most approved of these, as tamarinds and whey, or the juice of the apple and quince, &c. diffused in water and sweetened with sugar, are sometimes so long continued with a view of cooling and purifying the blood, that they finally relax and weaken the stomach; of which there are heard many complaints. Again, iced water, or iced acidulated frescos, are frequently misapplied in the common acute diseases of the country when the patients are in a free sweat; for, by suddenly checking a salutary perspiration, very bad consequences may follow: but this, though a well-known fact, is too often overlooked.

VIII. Acido sobre la leche es malo.—It is particularly worthy of notice that, shortly before or after milk happens to be taken pure as a drink, or mixed up in some culinary form as an article of diet, it is believed that no acid can be safely received into the stomach; it being thought necessary that the interval between these incompatible ingredients should be seven hours at least.

In illustration of the fact here stated, it may be mentioned that we were once called to see a lady in Lima who had been ailing for about a twelvemonth; and, on inquiring why she had delayed her cure so long, her reply was,—

“A year ago, on my arrival from Valparaiso, I called in Dr. ——, a French physician, who ordered me to confine myself to a rice and milk diet alternated with lemonade. I felt so greatly shocked at this gentleman’s extraordinary error in prescribing such treatment, which every one knows to be most hurtful, not only to the infirm, but to the sound and healthy, that I resolved at the time to leave my complaints to nature, rather than expose my life to the greater indiscretion of some other doctor of less fame.”

In this instance the error, for which the French physician was blamed, consisted in his having overlooked the popular rule universal in Peru, and probably not unknown in Chile, that “acido sobre la leche es malo,” viz. that acid after milk is hurtful.

According to this rule in Peruvian dietetics, it would be considered little short of poisonous to use milk or cream with any sort of fruit, jam, or preserve containing the least quantity of acid. And here it may be noticed, that in their own preserves, they completely destroy the rich and distinguishing flavour of the fruit by an excess of sugar, just as they annihilate, in very bad taste, the peculiar and natural fragrance of their finest flowers by sprinkling upon them foreign and artificial perfumes.

IX. Los olores son malos para las recien paridas.—It is one of the social customs of Peru, sometimes attended with great inconvenience, that friends and visitors, moved by feelings of kindness, crowd into the rooms of the sick, when not perhaps in a fit state to enjoy company or conversation.

During their confinement ladies are not sufficiently exempted from this friendly intrusion, or neighbourly attention. The only restraint imposed upon those who visit a lady on such an occasion is, that they do not enter her apartment with flowers or perfumes; nor are the attendants permitted to introduce censers with the fumes of burning incense, as is customary at other times. Thus, it is acknowledged that “Los olores son malos para las recien paridas,” viz. that perfumes are injurious to women during their confinement; and they certainly are so, for they are frequently observed to give rise to fainting, convulsions, or other bad consequences. These precautions all who visit or wait upon the sick are strict in observing; and so much the more, as it is customary for females in every rank to use perfumes on their dress, and to decorate their heads with flowers for evening visits: a practice in which the woolly-haired negress and mulatta greatly excel, as they love to adorn their stunted curls with flowers of aroma and jessamine.

Parturient women are very subject to a sensation of languor and exhaustion at stomach, attended with a feeling of faintness, which they call “fatiga.” On ordinary occasions, when this feeling or sensation is experienced by females not similarly situated, it is usual to resort to cordials and odoriferous draughts containing lavender, hartshorn, &c. and also to stimulating embrocations applied over the seat of the stomach, which usually consist of a camphorated mixture, or perhaps Cologne water, and other such remedies applied in common cases of weakness and faintness referred to the stomach; but, under the circumstances to which our rule refers, all applications of this sort are inadmissible.

When there is a feeling of sickness and faintness, with a disconsolate sensation (called “un desconsuelo”) at the epigastrium or scrobiculus cordis, they are allowed on all occasions to apply to the stomach, as a popular remedy with the matrons, a bit of warm toast, or the breast of a fowl sprinkled over with powdered cinnamon and moistened with wine, or, as it is vernacularly expressed, “la pechuga de gallina con vino y canela;” and they agree that this application, which possesses a great deal of their confidence, commonly produces the best effects.

X. Tomar agua fria encima de colera.—To drink cold water immediately after a fit of anger, which is the meaning of the words in our text, is a frequent cause of ailment, and one which the practitioner every day hears of as the origin of the worst cases of visceral obstructions or hepatic disease. Unfortunately, the occasions of such attacks are of ordinary occurrence; for the temper of those who suffer from them is rarely under proper control, and, as a necessary consequence of the existing state of society, provocations to anger are common in every situation.

We were once consulted by a curate of an irritable disposition, and an epicure in his taste, on account of an induration and very prominent enlargement of the liver, which some time after ended in a fatal abscess. This gentleman assigned, as the exciting cause of his malady, his having drunk cold water when angry, or on occasion of a quarrel he had with his cook, a Zamba girl, who we may suppose must have spoiled some favourite sauce.

This was the first time we were consulted on an ailment said to arise from drinking cold water when angry. But afterwards, as we had engaged in more general practice, we were called upon to listen to very many statements of the same sort; and, on such multiplied and independent evidence, we are compelled to believe that this is indeed one of the usual causes of hepatic derangement very prevalent in Peru.

During these fits of anger the brain appears to be greatly excited, and the flow of blood to it increased; and the liver, which readily sympathises with the brain in our mental states of angry emotion, seems to be at the same time gorged with blood. Under these circumstances, we think a draught of cold water operates injuriously, by creating a sudden chill within, and inducing, through the channel of sympathy between the stomach and liver, contraction of the biliary excretories, which lays the foundation of more permanent congestion and consequent inflammation, by preventing the natural relief which should arise from a free flow of bile. That the ready flow or free outlet of bile is the natural and proper medium of relief in such cases, every one has an opportunity to judge; for fits of anger are so common in Lima, that a day never passes without witnessing or hearing of their ill consequences; and the most familiar and immediate effect is a bilious disorder of the bowels, or indigestion and subsequent vomiting,—just as the stomach happens to be occupied, or otherwise, during the period of mental perturbation.

We may remark, that ice and iced water are only considered safe (even by the vulgar, who use them daily with a view to restrain the excessive flow of bile consequent on an angry or choleric fit,) when they are given after the violence of the commotion is over, and after the stomach, if it happen to be loaded, has, by drinking warm water or otherwise, been freed of its contents; but in hot weather, when the skin is more relaxed, and the bilious secretion more plentiful and redundant than common, ices are much used, and iced water forms the usual drink at the hour of meals.

We meet with persons who never experience the smallest annoyance or approach to anger, without being affected by some corresponding movement in the bowels; and others are never known to get warm in earnest discussion without feeling some derangement at the stomach, or showing on the following day a white or furred tongue. In truth, the delicacy of the digestive organs, or that mobility by which their functions are so easily affected by mental emotions, is quite extraordinary; and, as the daily repair and due sustenance of the whole frame depends on the regular and healthy discharge of the digestive functions, it is not to be wondered at that, among a people by no means intellectual in their habits, the sword should often be observed to wear out its scabbard,—in other words, that the frequent agitations of passion should induce serious diseases, and easily wear out the frame in a country where the sympathy between the mind and chylopoetic organs is so very marked and influential. Hence the anxiety which experienced natives feel at the hour of awakening repentance, or the return of sober reflection, after a culpable indulgence of anger; and hence, too, the rigid abstinence or tenuous diet attended to after one has been fretful or out of temper, till the pulse is again observed to be natural, and the organs of digestion sufficiently composed: and to show how far these painful states of mind may affect the secretion of milk, we have only to recollect that the Limeña will hear her babe cry a whole day, rather than harm it by giving the breast till her own agitation, which she knows vitiates her milk, is quieted after one of those choleric movements which it has been either her fault or misfortune to suffer.

XI. Si se puede lavarse con agua fria.—In almost every case of lingering illness in either sex, it is vexatious to witness the reluctance to ablution that prevails in the capital; and this prejudice, with the dread of shaving connected with it, is particularly cherished among those who have been delicately nurtured; the male part of whom are often heard to ask “si se puede lavarse con agua fria o afeytarse?”—if it be safe to wash with cold water or to shave.

The Limenians are fond of seasonal bathing and the pleasures of a watering-place, which they know how to enjoy for three months in the year.

Chorrillos, three leagues to the south of Lima, is the favourite watering-place, much frequented during the sultry summer months by gambling parties, and persons of rank and fashion from town. It is only a small village of fishermen, and constructed of cane and mud. The Indian owners of the shades, and neatly constructed houses or ranchos, let them to the bathers at a high rate during the bathing season; and some persons either take these for a term of years, or construct other light summer houses for themselves, which they fit up very tastefully, and pass the summer months in them in the midst of gaiety and mirth. Chorrillos is sheltered from the south-western blast by an elevated promontory, called the Moro-Solar, which rises like a gigantic guaca overlooking the numerous monuments, or pagan temples, of this name, which are scattered over the naturally rich, but now in a great measure waste and desolate plain, that extends from Lima to Chorrillos.

During the raw, damp, and foggy months of July and August in Lima, Chorrillos enjoys a clear sky and a genial air. The south-westers laden with heavy clouds spend their strength on the friendly Moro-Solar, (on which burst the only thunder-storm witnessed by the Limenians in the memory of any one now living,) and divide into two currents: the one pursues the direction of the village of Mira-flores, and the other the hacienda of San Juan, leaving Chorrillos clear and serene between. Thus protected, the village of Chorrillos feels not the chilly mists of winter; and it is the great hospital of convalescence for agueish, asthmatic, dysenteric, rheumatic, and various other sorts of invalids from the capital during the misty season, when the clinking of dollars and noise of the die no longer disturb the repose of the sickly.

The salutary practice of bathing in the sea was in former times confined chiefly to those affected with cutaneous diseases; but within the last forty or fifty years, as we are told, sea-bathing has been preferred to river-bathing, or to the cold baths by the old Alameda, and fountain of Piedra-lisa. The women are usually cleanly in their persons; but, however congenial cleanliness may be to their sex, they, like the sick and bearded men, seem to be greatly afraid of ablution in hectic fever, and some thoracic diseases with which they are often visited.

Of the Indian in the interior we need not speak in the same breath with his brother in the capital, or with the maritime Indian, whose ordinary occupation in fishing, or more delicate engagement of safely conducting the ladies over the surf during the bathing season, especially at Chorrillos, necessarily leads to cleanliness. But the indigenous mountaineers never perhaps in the whole course of life wash their bodies thoroughly; and their skin (at least in the warm valleys) is habitually covered with a thick coating of perspirable matter and extraneous dirt, which it is not easy to wipe off.

In very many cases of acute disease, the warm bath is, with the natives of the coast, a favourite and most valuable remedy, rarely neglected; but its application is usually forbidden in affections of the chest.

It will be readily imagined that the frames of those who fly from impressions of cool air and hazy weather, which, with all their care to shun, they cannot entirely escape, easily become so sensitive as to render them more susceptible in proportion to their self-indulgence, and more liable to catarrhal affections, than those who, by free exposure of their persons, train their constitutions to greater hardihood.

As evidence of the evil results arising from the vain endeavour to avoid the impression of the common physical causes to which, through life, every one must be occasionally exposed, we would particularly notice the peculiar delicacy of the delicately reared Limenian. When somewhat weakened by bad health, or a slight indisposition which confines him to his apartments for a few days, should he happen to shave and wash the face with cold water, he is thereby put in danger of being visited by a spasmodic affection of one side of the mouth, or affected, as is more likely to take place, with a cold in the head; so that the inflammation thus induced in the nostrils and fauces may soon be observed to extend itself along the continuous mucous membrane, and through the windpipe into the cavity of the chest; and there it is hard to foretel what ravages it may commit.

We need not therefore be surprised to hear the often reiterated query of the convalescent in the words, “No me hara daño lavar y afeytarme?”—will it not do me harm to shave and wash? Nor should we indulge in a smile at his expense, as we see him gradually venture on the first degrees of ablution, by rubbing over the hands and face with a cloth dipped in tepid water sharpened with aguardiente, or the common spirits of the country.

XII.—Morir en regla. This expression, which means to die according to rule, is one which all good Catholics are most solicitous to realize for themselves and friends; and the custom it refers to is deemed of the utmost importance in a religious and professional point of view.

When a physician visits a patient, and finds him in a doubtful or critical state, he must never omit to warn the patient or his friends of his real situation, with a view to enable them to call a medical consultation, and allow time for testamentary preparations and spiritual confession. The neglect of this precautionary measure would, in the event of the disease terminating fatally, bring great blame on the physician; but, after he has notified what he considers to be the patient’s real condition, then, whether the parties interested in such communication choose to act upon his advice or not, he has acquitted himself properly; and when the patient, previously confessed and sacramented, dies with the benefit of a consultation, or duly assisted by a medical junta, he is said to die according to rule, that is, morir en regla.

The great medical juntas in Lima, by which we understand consultations where more than four or five doctors are met together, are remarkable occasions of oratorical display. The warmest discussion frequently turns on the dose, composition, or medicinal operation of some common drug; and all the learning, method, and criticism, sometimes discovered at these solemn debates, terminate not unfrequently in the most simple practice, by which the nurse is enjoined to have recourse to the jeringa, and the patient told he must drink “agua de pollo,” or chicken-tea, until the return of the junta. In former times such consultations were called oftener than necessary, because a great junta became a sort of ostentatious exhibition, in which all who could afford to cite a group of doctors desired to imitate the great and the wealthy.

A sample, on a little scale, of such fashionable follies, is familiar to the Limenian in the well-known local story of the two doctors, who, for a month or more, daily met in consultation at the house of a family in town, where, as they retired to the supposed privacy of a consulting-room, the one would clear his throat, and ask the other, “Come el enfermo hoy?”—May the patient eat to-day?—to which the second doctor would reply, “Como no? si, comera.”—Why not? yes, he shall eat. Thus, day after day, began and ended the consultation, as far at least as its topics of discussion concerned the patient; while the good old doctors spun out a regular allowance of time before they rejoined the patient, or his attendants, serenely to announce the well-matured result of their conference. A man of nous, accustomed to listen behind the scenes, at length broke in upon their consultation; and dismissed them one day by paying to each his usual fee, and telling them both how happy he was to find that he now knew as much as themselves, for that he could repeat as well as anybody, “Come el enfermo hoy?—Como no? si, comera.”

A medical junta in Lima is commonly continued morning and evening, and from day to day, till the patient is pronounced to be out of danger. As the junta breaks up after each separate meeting, it is customary for the president of the meeting, or one of the physicians, to say, as he leaves his seat, “Vamos a consolar al enfermo,”—Let us go to console the patient; and then all the doctors present re-enter the patient’s apartment to soothe and to console him; and after this one of the number steps forward to lay down the regimen—“a dar el regimen”—agreed upon in consultation, and which one or more nurses and attendants are now ready to receive from the mouth of the physician. After the formality of a junta is thought no longer necessary, it often happens that, by wish of the patient or his relatives, two or more of the medical advisers return at separate hours, but by mutual agreement, for several days, by way of further security to the sick, or as a source of satisfaction to his family.

After all the care possible bestowed on the part of doctors, it often happens that, when the patient recovers, San Antonio, or any other saint after whom the individual is named, has all the credit of the cure; but, when the case is unprosperous, then all the evil is ascribed to human agency.

In Lima, as elsewhere, it will readily enough be admitted in general terms that all must die; but regarding this proposition, when death strikes any one in particular, difficulties at once suggest themselves; for the surviving friends are ever ready to assign many reasons why they are quite sure the deceased might have escaped, had it not been for this or that physician that misunderstood his malady. Hence it may be said that it is only in well-regulated juntas, and in public hospitals, that the people of Lima are supposed to glide to their latter end by fair and natural means. Upon this subject we heard it remarked by a sagacious native, “Should a gambler lose at a cock-fight, he does not attribute the loss to any fault in the cock, but to some trick done to him; if a horse lose in a race, his owner never acknowledges the cause of the failure to be in the animal, but assigns it to some accident thrown in his way: and surely, when we know that on such comparatively trivial occasions men thus talk and think, it is but natural for them, in an affair of such moment and interest as life itself, never to believe that a friend or relative loses his existence from any fault of his own, or any defect in his organization, but rather that his demise should be charged, as we see it is, though often unjustly, on the blind and stumbling ignorance, or unpardonable carelessness and indifference of the physicians.”

One common consequence of this mode of thinking is, that, by a single fatal case in practice, all the former success of the practitioner is overlooked, at least for a time; from which it follows that various medical advisers are sure to replace one another often in those families where death is a frequent visitor.

We seldom meet in families that shyness or reserve in divulging bodily ailments which can render them reluctant to change their family physician; and no physician, though specially entrusted with a patient, can be sure that others of the profession do not, at secret interviews, tamper with his peculiar treatment. This baneful custom leads to professional jealousies and mutual distrust. We believe many families countenance it from motives of consideration for the doctor ostensibly in trust, whose self-love they propose to spare by this clandestine practice, when they think a more open manner of proceeding would be repulsive to his feelings. There is, however, another very obvious reason which lends its influence to this furtive system of visiting the sick; and it is, that by this means the opinion of several advisers may be had at comparatively little expense. Should only two individuals be called to meet at the bedside of the patient at an appointed hour to consult on his case, the meeting is a bonâ fide junta, and each member of it is entitled to his four or four and a half dollars; whereas the single visits are only valued at one dollar each, and such detached visits are in many instances not paid by the sick, but by the friends at whose request the professional calls are made. Here then is great economy; eight opinions (and if the patient be poor, so that he is only expected to pay a half dollar fee for a detached visit, sixteen opinions) may be procured for the standard price of two when given in consultation; and custom, as well as reason and prudence, require that several opinions should be taken in cases of hazard and difficulty.

Owing in a considerable degree to the comparative poverty of the present times, medical juntas are by no means so frequent as they used to be; but yet it is a common saying on serious occasions, where the assistance of more than one medical adviser is thought necessary, that more is seen by four eyes than by two.—“Mas se ve con cuatro ojos que con dos.” By multiplying skill according to this rule, a score of eyes may be assembled in one junta to search into the patient’s obscure malady, so as to point out the cause and the remedy; or, if there should be no other alternative, let him die according to rule.

CHAPTER VI.

Such is the influence which slave domestics exercise over the feelings and comfort of private families, and, we would even add, over the moral and physical features of the community, that it would be impossible to give a correct picture of the state of society in Lima without first cursorily viewing the condition of the slave population in Peru.

In article 152 of the Political Constitution of the Republic of Peru, it is declared that no one is born a slave in the republic, neither does any one enter from other countries who is not left free when he treads on Peruvian soil. Should any Peruvian be found guilty of importing slaves into the republic for the purposes of traffic, the constitution declares that he shall be deprived of his rights of citizenship. But the internal traffic of slaves still continues, though it is confined to buying and selling such slaves as existed in the country before the war of independence began, or to such of their offspring as were born before the year 1820, when Peru was no longer the acknowledged patrimony of Spaniards. With respect to the mere exterior appearance of negroes born in Peru of African parents, it is observed that they are influenced by the bleaching effects which the climate of the Peruvian coast is known to produce on the ruddy sons of our northern climes who reside for any length of time in Lima. The native negro therefore is lighter in colour, and possessed of finer, more expressive, and much more regular features than the jet-black and lacerated “Bozals” or African-born blacks, on whose countenance and breast are commonly seen deep and hideous scars that bespeak at once their more barbarous origin and their foreign importation.

The orderly discipline of the “Galpon,” or slave-barracks, appears, from the acknowledgments of the natives themselves, to have been very creditable to the humanity of the slave-holders in the days of Spanish sway over them,—a time when slaves are said to have shared in the felicity of their masters. Leniently dealt with, and in the abundant fruition of animal gratifications, they felt themselves happy, and forgot that they were not free.

The patriot legislators have enacted that it is illegal for any master to apply the whip or scourge, “azote,” in chastising his slave. The ordinary mode of punishment in the capital is to send the offender for correction to a “panaderia” or bakehouse, where his labour is increased or mitigated according to his conduct while there. In most ancient families, who have yet preserved sufficient fortune to allow them to keep up some retinue, we find a number of slave attendants whose progenitors served in the same family of distinction for a long series of years; and thus a mutual attachment has grown up between the parties, that makes them view each other with that sort of interest which we observe between masters and old servants at home. It is not unusual for a master on his death-bed to reward the fidelity of a faithful slave by granting him his liberty; and we have witnessed some very touching instances of gratitude shown by well-educated white women towards those female slaves, or, we might say, devoted friends, on whose willing services and attention they themselves often placed their confidence in the hour of sickness or adversity. These recollections are in our mind associated with those amiable traits of human nature which unite the great family of mankind; but it must be observed that from such instances, particularly creditable to the character of individuals, nothing can be argued in favour of slavery as such, which never can be otherwise than unjust and unchristian.

Since the triumphs of patriotism first cheered the hopes of the people, since the very slaves, intoxicated with aguardiente or momentary enthusiasm, joined aloud in the chants in praise of liberty, numberless families in the capital have gradually sunk into increasing poverty, of which a common consequence is, that individuals who can boast of the purity of their origin, or who, in native phrase, count it no plebeian privilege to say that their four quarters are Biscayan, now find themselves reduced to lend out their old domestic slaves on hire as a means of support; the slaves being obliged to pay a certain moderate proportion of their daily wages or earnings to their proper owners. A male slave, when thus hired out in Lima, is understood to pay his owner one real, or a sixpence, out of his day’s wages or earnings; and women, when hired out as nurses, are usually paid fifteen dollars a month; of which they pay four dollars to their proper owners, and the rest they may do what they please with: others again go out as cooks, or are employed as laundry-maids, &c.

The few agricultural slaves yet left in the country have usually allotted to them a tarea, or daily task, so light and easy, as far at least as we have had any opportunity of knowing, that it is soon executed; and whatever work any one of them does over and above this daily task, he is paid for as if he were a freeman. Were he indeed to value his personal freedom, he could thus secure it to himself by fair means, and at the cost of moderate industry. A few of the more ambitious of this class have really availed themselves of so good an opportunity to effect their own emancipation; but in general the slave population in Peru do not appear solicitous to change their circumstances, nor are they very conscious of anything abject in their condition. They well know that they enjoy a degree of liberty which they consider sufficient, and which they sometimes are pleased to exercise to suit their own convenience: for example, if you are assisted by a slave, it is not unlikely that, when least expected, he will tell you it is his desire, and he demands it as his right, that he be sold or transferred to a purchaser of his own choice and finding; and, should he once become restive, he is best got rid of quickly, as until that is the case no more good comes of him. If the servant should be not a slave, but a dusky freeman of slave descent, he is so accustomed to self-indulgence, that he must daily have his own hours of pleasure, whether his master will or not; and, if found fault with, he replies in the usual ejaculation, “Quien quiere matarse con trabajar?”—Who would kill himself with toil?

Those again who rely on the assistance of an Indian, (nominally free, though virtually a slave, working for a mere maintenance and some trifling gratuity,) reared up from childhood in their own houses and for their own particular service,—a very customary thing to do,—are commonly, in the long run, left in the lurch; for, when a good opportunity offers, away starts the cerrano or mountaineer, whether male or female, for Guamanga, Guamantanga, or some such mountain home. The Indian girl thus reared in some private family is commonly very useful until she attains the age of twelve or fifteen, when she looks out for a mate, with whom she can fly to the hills, to be happy in a smoky hut, and on a llama-skin couch; and the shrewd and quick-eyed Indian boy, with head and hands to conceive and execute, no sooner gets a little insight into good service or some handicraft, than he meditates upon and watches the opportunity for escaping to his native home, “mi tierra!” and, sooner or later, he is sure to effect his object. Yet, notwithstanding this disposition to desertion, where an Indian does become personally attached to his employer, which is not often, his fidelity and constancy are allowed to be unbounded.

The vexations so often caused by the Indians among the class of their Spanish employers, or white superiors, (who usually expect more from this oppressed order of citizens than they care to pay for,) gave rise to the proverbial complaint against the indigenous tribes:

The ladies, or females of Spanish blood in Lima, usually become mothers at too tender an age, and we think it is chiefly on this account that they are commonly found to be incapable of nursing with impunity; and, if they persist in attempts at nursing beyond what their constitution can bear, they are peremptorily warned to desist by the presence of symptoms that menace a decline or consumption.

Hence most ladies in Lima are under the necessity of employing black and brown nurses, who are usually slaves either purchased for milk-nurses or hired out for this purpose.

The skin of the negro appears to be cooler than that of the Indian or white race, and this may possibly have been the origin of the prevailing idea already alluded to, that the milk of the negress is more cooling and refreshing than that of the Indian woman,[6] who, though in other respects a healthy and proper person, is never considered eligible as a milk-nurse, when in this character a negress can be procured.

It unfortunately happens, however, that the predilection thus shown for negresses and those dark women who are nearest allied to the negro race, frequently exposes the white mother’s child to a series of evils, such as imperfect nutrition, contamination of blood, and permanent constitutional injury, all originating in the peculiar circumstances and individual character of milk-nurses; of whom a single child may have been so unfortunate as to have had as many as half a dozen, and to have suffered successively from the blemishes of each. When the young Don, thus nurtured in the very lap of bondage, comes to be fit for school, he goes to, and comes from it, in the company of a slave; and the young Miss, or Niña, who goes out to be educated, is, on her way to and from her parents’ house, attended by a sort of dueña, or experienced zamba. On the customary plea, that the evils of life come early enough, children of gentle blood, especially such as are “rubios,” or fair-complexioned, are allowed all manner of gusto, or indulgence; and in the morning, before they set out for school, they usually receive a real or medio,—sixpence or threepence,—either as pocket-money, or as a bribe to be obedient and to submit to be taught. In this way expensive habits are early acquired, and mere children made to do what is right and proper from pecuniary motives, rather than a laudable sense of duty.

Reviewing the effects of a close social union, from infancy upwards, between white children and their slave companions, who are seldom endowed with shame or modesty, we are led to remark that, without desiring to make any insinuations against the natural capacity for moral and intellectual improvement observable among all the races of mankind, or wishing in any degree to depreciate the merit of individuals of pure or mixed African and slave descent, we think it may be truly affirmed, that even minds of a naturally amiable and delicate bias, when led habitually to accommodate themselves to the grovelling feelings and propensities of the more degraded portion of our kind, undergo deterioration by degrees, and slide into a participation of the qualities of a baser nature, with which they inevitably amalgamate their own. The proper medium of domestic intimacy allowable between masters and slaves, may be a nice matter to determine with precision; but it may be said in general, that in proportion as this immediate intercourse may meliorate the condition, and quicken the intelligence, of the slave, it tends to lower the tone of morality in that society where slavery is tolerated. Thus, we doubt not, the standard of morals is lowered, and we conceive it may be owing to this very alloy of character that, until very lately, the sheer ruffian was seldom met with, even among the lowest of the dark septs in the voluptuous capital of Peru. Assassinations, it must be owned, have been rather frequent of late years, and these have been almost always perpetrated with impunity; but there is reason to believe that the agents concerned in such atrocious crimes were in many instances not sons of the soil, but outcasts and fugitives from neighbouring states. Money, not blood, is what the worst of the dark native vagabonds of the coast are generally in quest of; and he who does not offer resistance when accosted by the robber, but, instead of armour, carries a few dollars or a couple of doubloons for his ransom, may nine times in ten be suffered to escape with entire personal safety from the midst of the most lawless marauders and dreaded highwaymen, who are usually no other than renegade slaves.

CHAPTER VII.

Persons of sufficiently mature age in Lima never fail to acknowledge, and often delight to tell us, that before the great revolution, and during the tranquil period of their own early recollections, their fellow-citizens and countrymen were in general fair and upright in their ordinary dealings; and that good humour, happiness, and gaiety of heart were inseparable from their frequent public meetings and social recreations.

But this sound and amicable spirit, which indeed appears to have diffused itself pretty generally in the time of the Spanish dynasty, we may trace as emanating from the many estimable and courteous qualities of those more enlightened Europeans, by whose superior capacity and direction the then existing order of society was so long and quietly upheld in this and in other sections of the New World. The past state of things was nevertheless faulty in many respects. It involved an uncontrolled indulgence in sensual gratification, though the memory of many a disappointed patriot likes to dwell on it as on the flowery retrospect of his happiest days. But Lima is no longer a garden of roses, or a bower of delight. One day, in speaking of the change to the worse that the revolution had brought about in the social system of his country, a venerable old man remarked, “Formerly there was a heart to feel, and a hand to give; but now they have left us neither friendship nor pity: you find not whom to trust; and men, without regard to right or justice, keep all to themselves with the close unyielding grasp of the ape when she clasps her young to her bosom.”

An unbounded love of superficial display engages the minds of the people so fully as to have superseded, to a great extent, active benevolence, and sterling, honourable dealing between man and man; and we must confess that the yet inexperienced creoles, left to themselves, show, in the management of their own affairs, slender political discretion and no shining public virtue.

But yet, as a whole, the Peruvians, for whose manifold faults very great allowances should be made, have, in an eminent degree, the redeeming qualities of soft, attractive manners, and a mild, prepossessing address. These agreeable characteristics, not so frequently as could be wished associated with a manly openness and frankness of mind, sometimes serve, in the present evil times, as a ready cloak to exclude the ken of those whom they are willing to deceive.

If these secluded people, too long accustomed to servitude and ease during the luxurious dynasty of their European masters, were once induced—which, under good moral management, they easily might be,—to make honesty and industry more prevalent virtues than they are at present among the bulk of the population, then they might realize, more largely than they have yet done, the advantages of that unsettled freedom, which, with feelings of pardonable exultation, they pride themselves in possessing; and, with such an amendment on their moral features, their richly varied country, with all its natural superiorities and improvable resources, might soon be transformed into an earthly elysium. But the germ of true political liberty must be better cultivated than it has yet been among them, and protected by a steady, disinterested, and patriotic government, before the soil can be made to throw out its latent luxuriance, or generous and noble virtues freely unfold themselves in the heads and hearts of a newly independent, uninstructed, and heterogeneous population.

The common race of Spaniards from old Spain, who established themselves and reared families in Peru, appear to have been, as we formerly signified, men of strict commercial integrity, scarcely requiring written obligations or acknowledgements in their pecuniary transactions one with the other; they are reported to have been friendly and charitable, always ready to assist a poor adventurer from the old country, or a needy friend, whenever he presented himself.

The houses of the affluent teemed with idle domestics and laughing loiterers, whose coarse merriment bespoke contentment and plenty; and the beggar, who sat in the back-court and corridor (the walls of which are still beautified with painted flowers and landscapes) to enjoy the cool of the artificial fountain, or who rested himself on the benches of the tesselated porchway, laughing with the merry fellows that were about him, felt not the miseries of pauperism; for, wherever the Limenian mendicant seated himself, there he was happy, and partook cheerfully of the abundant surplus from the rich man’s table, which was liberally bestowed on the poor.

But, generally speaking, delicacy of sentiment or refinement of education did not belong to the Spanish colonists; and though they acquired wealth by their moderate industry, reared costly edifices and churches, endowed convents and monasteries, and paid for numberless masses; though they befriended the poor, and filled their welcome guest’s cup to overflowing in a land of milk and honey; yet, be it spoken with candour, their summum bonum seems to have been something like a good Mussulman’s paradise.

The natives of the country still avow, that though the Spaniard, who used to come to their shores as an adventurer soon to be incorporated into their domestic circle, was seldom a polished or intellectual character, nevertheless he was usually a man of integrity and some industry, or, to use their own words, “brusco, pero recto y trabajador.” Besides, the women, whom we in general allow to be good judges in every rank of life, continue to bear witness that the Spaniard makes a good husband and a kind father of a family,—“el Espanol es buen marido y buen padre de familia.” But, to merit this encomium from the fair sex on the shores of the Pacific, let it be borne in mind that austere virtue and severe self-denial are not always expected or required in the husband.

Those educated foreigners who frequent the rounds and “tertulias” of Limenian good company,—which we take as the best criterion of refinement in that country,—have had occasion to regret, that women of the most elegant manners, ladylike mien, and unimpeached character, are despoiled of no small share of the outward illusion of their charms, and appear to lose much of the moral loveliness of their sex, by an unconscious licence of speech, that cannot fail to appear faulty in the opinion of those to whom long habit has not yet rendered the style familiar.

We have pleasure in bearing our humble evidence in favour of the great pains, and cost, to which mothers now put themselves in educating their daughters; and it is incontrovertible, that the rising generation are about to come on the stage of active life, with many advantages of instruction which were not enjoyed by their parents. But, granting it to be true, that these interesting young ladies may have considerable advantages over their predecessors in the knowledge of French, geography, music, a little drawing, and a chaster fashion of dancing, still, we are apprehensive, that in more humble and useful domestic education not a little is wanting: and this important defect, we conceive, is not to be remedied by expensive teachers, or by the routine of boarding-schools; but, if we mistake not, by good example at home. To improve the domestic education in the female part of the community, it would be necessary to detach young ladies as much as possible from the customary attendance of old favourite “zambas;” who, there is much reason to believe, teach them at an early age to pry into the private weaknesses of their seniors, and excite in their quick, comprehensive minds a degree of attention and curiosity which, when indiscreetly called forth, seldom fail to bias their inclination to vices that may on some occasions be deemed hereditary; and thus open a door to a series of indulgences which, in the long-run, prove the bane of their own ill-sought happiness, as well as the wreck of many a fond parent’s hopes, too blindly placed on a daughter left to the daily tutorship of intriguing domestics.

The ladies when young, and long before they become marriageable, are taught to anticipate their own omnipotence at fifteen, which little girls of seven or eight years of age already reckon to be the approaching era of their perfect felicity; for the Spaniards say “No hay fea de quince,”—All are fair at fifteen. There is also among these gifted women, whose superiority, as a body, over their own countrymen is always admitted, a great “esprit de corps,” so that the greatest sinner among them is never left without a gentle voice to plead her cause, and palliate, when she cannot exculpate, a sister’s errors.

This forgiving system runs through every class and rank, from the highest to the lowest; but it is in the lofty circles that its influence is most worthy of particular notice. No one ventures to throw the first stone at the unfortunate; and there insensibly arises a gradation of vices and virtues, dove-tailing into each other so as to constitute a social whole, wherein the different degrees of moral deviation are all shaded by an overflowing charity. Pleasure and vice are nearly allied, and unhappily he who assumes the clerical habit and tonsure is not, in his own person, always a stranger to the voluptuous enjoyments of those around him; and the example of the man who rules the conscience of the people,—who grants them absolution, and allows them indulgences,[7]—will naturally be imitated: hence the indulgence of public opinion as regards individual and private character in Peru.

The slow and partial administration of justice is loudly complained of by those whose affairs require them to frequent courts of law in the Peruvian capital. The turbulent independence of the bad and disorderly, uncontrolled by any active and faithful police, is every day increasing, and already puts justice at defiance. The impudence, ill-acquired pecuniary influence, and intrigue of the false-hearted and boasting patriot, are daily seen to assume the embroidered insignia of “un benemerito de la patria!”—an honour which only in equity belongs to that rare character—the genuine patriot, who knows how to sacrifice his private convenience to the public good. The judges are often left without pecuniary means consistent with their honourable calling, because their salaries are not duly paid by the government; and if, under these circumstances, the balance of justice be disturbed in its equilibrium, the blame must not be all laid to the charge of those public functionaries who are the appointed ministers of the laws. The truth is, that, for a considerable time back, the sums that entered the national treasury were too scanty to support the pageantry of military array, together with the accumulated expences of a destructive and demoralizing warfare; and the pecuniary embarrassments arising from these circumstances, involved in their consequences some drawbacks in the civil administration of justice. But another popular cause, and that to which we would desire to draw the attention of the reader, for the unequal distribution of justice, is by common consent allowed to be, that in the best, as even now in the worst of times, the fair sex in Lima have enjoyed, from date immemorial, a more than regal prerogative, which the convulsions that effected what is called their political freedom, have in no essential particular obliterated or changed. It is called Empeño.

This tacitly constitutional instrument of clemency, although in the hands of women naturally inclined to mercy, may, when misguided, operate against the vital interests of the community; and by it the true ends of legislative enactments may, from time to time, be frustrated. This prerogative is put in practice especially by certain genteel-looking young women, who are neither married nor single, but who, in the language of the indulgent matrons of the country, are allowed to be, though not married, highly honourable and gifted,—“No es casada, pero muy honrada, muy prendada:” and a lady of this quality seldom loses favour, or a good place in society, so long as she has a calesa or carriage in Lima, and a rancho or bathing-lodge in Chorrillos. Let us now suppose that this lady, attired in her national, or rather Limenian, dress of saya and manto,[8] desires either to plead some advantage or indulgence for another, or a favour more particularly for herself,—and that for this purpose she employs the blandishments and flow of persuasive language at her command. The gentleman, thus softly assailed by so eloquent and attractive a being, unwisely listens until he is entirely at his magician’s bidding. This spell is what is vulgarly meant by the gigantic and overgrown prerogative termed in Peru empeño. But we must not forget to mention, that this ascendant power is very commonly promoted by a certain spiritual influence, in which both married and single partake,—namely, the sacred relation between god-fathers and god-mothers, the well-known “compadres y comadres” of that sunny land; and it will be at once perceived that an influence so remarkable in the ladies as this, which enables them, during their good pleasure, to deprive men of free-will, must have wide practical application, and be productive of great good or evil in that country, where it confessedly extends its sway to bench and altar, senate, palace, and camp. No old stager in Lima hears of a political or domestic altercation, or of any serious movement that causes a stir and sensation in the city, but he immediately inquires what woman can be at the bottom of this bullanga or hubbub; and if the affair should happen to concern himself, his friends, or political party, he does not long sit at ease until he finds out who that woman is, or discovers where the spiritual alliance rests, where dwells the comadre that rules the order of the day.[9]

The Peruvian highland girls have an ingenious way of contriving for themselves compadres, without the necessary interference of the priest, merely by sending the gentleman, whom any one of them in particular may desire to honour, a sweet cake made into the form of a doll, which they call “guawa,” the Indian name for baby. This offspring of a good-humoured regard which they desire should become mutual, they nicely dress, and accommodate on a couch made from a selection of the fresh flowers of the season, and forward it with their kindest wishes (con muchisimas expresiones), under their now adopted name of comadre, to the person on whom by this gracious act of partiality they confer the confidential title, expecting by his acceptance a return of the attentions and courtesy of the real compadre. On the coast, again, (in the capital,) on the anniversary of a lady’s birth-day, or saint’s day, celebrated in merry parties encouraged to assemble by the joint allurements of music, dancing, cooling repasts, and all that can render such meetings attractive, the drawing-room may be said to be converted into a flower-garden by the attention of compadres, comadres, and friends, who vie with each other in sending presents of fine flowers, sweet preserves, and other gifts; and, at the annual return of these joyful meetings, the friends of the family, and of the individual who is the object of the compliments of the day, have the best opportunity of expressing their friendship, by adding to the ornaments of a young lady’s toilet, or presenting her with any delicate mark of personal regard.

These meetings, not overlooked in the humblest dwellings, are seen to best advantage in the handsome “quadra,” or tertulia-room of the wealthy, where the large chandeliers are well reflected by spacious mirrors, in which are seen multiplied the groups of happy faces, to the delight of the party, all pleased with one another. Here and there are Guamanga baskets of filigree texture laden with spiced and perfumed fruits, sometimes ornamented with delicate threads of gold and silver, fancifully twined from peg to peg of the spice fixed in the fruit. Among them, too, are usually golden apples,—viz. apples coated with gold leaf,—many sweet fruits imbedded in aroma, and the sweetly-scented cheremolla or cheremoya, and orange blossoms, which are peculiarly welcome to the guests when distributed from the hands of the hostess, or her engaging daughters.

We may here observe, in passing, that handing a flower to a forenoon visitor, who, if a polished gentleman, accompanies his verbal salutation by raising his hand softly to his heart, is only a customary mark of polite attention, quite in character with the complacent manners and natural taste of the Limenian ladies, in this respect favoured by their balmy climate, in which odoriferous fruits and flowers are always within reach: and on leaving their house they almost invariably besprinkle their visitors with perfumes, and thus send them away redolent of hospitality. And while their corridors, in which they frequently swing in their hammocks, or enjoy the siesta, are scented with flower-gardens, and their “patios,” or courts, with roses and jessamine, sweet perfumes, and fragrant herbs are frequently used in their principal bed-chamber, when it is found convenient, for the sake of cheering the sick, to receive friends into this apartment, which is usually very gorgeously furnished, and communicates with the drawing-room or quadra. Our professional avocations have afforded us an intimate opportunity to know, and we feel a peculiar pleasure in proclaiming it, that it is by the bedside of sickness (where men are exceedingly helpless without the aid of the softer sex, at once more patient and serene, more dexterous and endearing in their assistance,) that the Limeña, be her rank, birth, or pretensions what they may, is seen to greatest advantage. Here the humblest and most faulty of these comforters shows the native goodness of her disposition, and is seen to rise superior to the drawbacks of her education, manifesting the angelic power of her sex to soothe pain and cheer the broken-hearted, by the exercise of that blessed charity which covereth a multitude of sins.

It is curious to notice that among the white women of Lima there are no menials, though they are subject to many of the privations and humiliations of poverty; but, a poor girl of unmixed Spanish blood, though of lowly birth, feels, however destitute in her circumstances, the impulse of what she deems nobility within her; and at nothing do her prejudices more strongly recoil, than at the idea of becoming the wife of a man of African or slave descent.

Comely countenances,—above all, a bright and beautiful eye,—and pretty figures, with an inimitably graceful walk, constitute the common inheritance of the European race, who, in their own forms, partake of the softness and fineness of the climate in which they were brought into being. These are, in common with their tawny and darker countrywomen, extremely attentive to the public and outward ordinances of their showy religion, which must strike every one with a feeling of solemnity as, at the stroke of a bell at twilight, every human being engages in one common act of public devotion. They retain the common Catholic spirit of pious display, fasting, and penance; the same faith in the efficacy of saintly images and influences; the same reliance on priestly absolution and indulgences; but they do not cherish the cruelty or stern religion of their ancestors, whose ardent zeal planted the cross on the now mouldering ruins of Pachacamac.[10] Though little versed in book-information, they are usually gifted with natural acuteness and intelligence; are seldom quite ignorant of the ways of the world, even when educated in convents; are hardly ever so overcome by their tender feelings, or so blind to their worldly interests, as to fall into the folly of a genuine love-marriage; and they are never at a loss for a sagacious observation or pertinent reply. They are indulgent to human passion and weakness; are agreeable, sometimes fascinating companions; and never fail to leave the buen mozo, (the good-looking young man,) if not delighted with them, at least highly pleased with himself. Their conversation is sprightly and unembarrassed; and though particularly indulged and caressed from childhood, accustomed to flattery and fond of admiration, they are as free from obtrusive levity and affectation of manner, as from blushing timidity or cold reserve; their filial love is the admiration of foreigners; and, when blessed with good husbands, they are faithful and affectionate wives.

Nothing in Lima can strike the attention of a stranger, who understands their language, more than the propriety and fluency with which serving-people express their thoughts, and this they commonly do with an agreeable seasoning of the ease and manner of the higher classes; a fact, no doubt, attributable to much native ability on their own part, and to their having been brought up on a footing of great familiarity with their superiors. This recommendatory trait in the humblest ranks of the community is, we regret, fast giving way to the intrusive manners of the unrestrained and rising aristocracy of a mongrel brood,—a dusky and bronzed brotherhood, whose very complexion indicates an incapacity to blush as apparent, at first sight, as among the white race used to be the long-honoured badge of the proud Spanish lineage,—the “sangre azul!” blue blood!—so called, by the inferior races, in consideration of the hue of the veins rising to view under the delicate tissue of a pure white skin.

Wit, not unknown among the white women, is a general attribute of the mestizo and zambo septs, as well male as female. These people of colour are too much addicted to sarcasm, and too fond of the ludicrous and fantastical. When in a bilious or choleric mood, they are outrageously passionate; but then, with chicha-piña (fermented juice of the pine-apple), and nieve (ice or iced-water), they soon drown or freeze their fury, and restore to themselves equanimity and mirth. Instances of death from impetuous gusts of passion are, we believe, rare among them; though we have had occasion to hear of some such, and we have witnessed severe nervous ailments that arose from the turbulent emotion of their savage anger. Such mixed castes are remarkable for a great deal of what is by themselves called “broma,”—a facetious kind of bantering, with noisy fun and sensual dalliance, which is most displayed at their “jarranas,” or merry meetings: they like the theatre, and they are passionately fond of bull-fights, cock-fights, religious processions, and that sort of song and music which inflame the passions and deprave the heart,—their feasts too often degenerate into debauchery, and their merriment into obscenity.

Boys of pure Spanish parentage or descent, in Lima, are usually animated and intelligent, like their sisters; but, as their bodily powers approach to maturity, their attention is engrossed with frivolous pleasures, which seem to enervate the mental faculties, and stint and vitiate their future expansion. It is, therefore, not unusual for hopeful boys to become childish and fickle, silly and fatuous men. The latter imbecility of mind we observe with striking frequency in the families of the suppressed nobility.

Those very few well-tempered spirits that have outgrown every obstacle to their full mental developement, have that inborn thirst after knowledge which even knowledge itself cannot quench; for, the more they learn, the more they aspire to know; and these men, with little external incitement to forward or nurture their literary tastes and pursuits, are like those plants on arid land, which only require a few fleeting showers to quicken their energies, develope their form, and unfold their beauty. Such choice persons are the delight of their friends, and worthy of that better state of society for which they daily sigh, as they see the best laws and institutions of their country trampled upon by military despots, whose nod they must obey, while they say in their hearts, “Vetitum est sceleri nihil!”

On the 24th of June, (Dia de San Juan,) all Lima annually assemble along the windings of the “Great Alamada,” and between orangeries now prettily laden with fruit, to the romantic mountain recess of “Amencaes,” only about one mile from town, and beautifully adapted for pleasure-grounds, if only supplied with water, which it might have at some expense. This spot commands a fine view of the capital, with its towering spires; of wide fields, innumerable orchards, the Rimac, and the fine lagoon at its mouth; the island of San Lorenzo, and the shipping at Callao; and it has, in its back-ground, a set-off in the acclivities newly clothed with vivid vegetation, among numerous crags and many a ridge and chasm. Here, on the day of San Juan,—a day of festivity and joy,—men, women, and children, of all ranks, all ages, and all colours and occupations, meet. Mirth is the object of one and all. Their horses, their asses, and even their own persons, are adorned in their best manner; and the rational as well as the irrational members of the ever-moving crowd are bedecked with the flower of Amencaes taken from the favourite clefts and nooks of these hills. In this place there are tents and sheds, that supply seats and refreshment for those who love the thoughtless and bawling mirth of the “jarrana.” There is at this exhibition a dunning confusion of musical discord kept up by drumming, piping, shouting, harping, and guitaring, singing, laughing, and dancing; but no fighting. Here too we may see the popular “paseo,” or promenade, of the “chuchumecas,” (women of immoral character,) who mingle freely and good-humouredly with the crowd, to the infinite amusement of the multitude. The national taste is on this, as on other occasions of festivity, eminently displayed by the loud and simultaneous laugh, or “carcajada,” of cheering voluptuaries when the samaqueca—a favourite dance—is exhibited in a free and masterly style.

The periodical rides and picnics of the Limenians to Las Huacas, Surco, and Lurin, are now dwindling away into neglect, as there is neither money nor public tranquillity for such happy scenes of customary gaiety. Carnival, with them, has lost its spirit; the Noche Buena, or Christmas-eve, is deprived of much of its revelry; and all that in their customs was most alluring and glittering is rapidly withering and dying away.

We may now, not unfrequently, observe more disposition to indulge in the gloomy and silent stillness of the “duelo,” or formal condolence for the dead, than in the hilarity of the golden times of these merry-making people, who were for generations most happy in the unconsciousness of defects, and in the conviction that no people on earth were superior to themselves in knowledge and civilization.

In all parts of the world there are criminally selfish and unprincipled men; and in Peru there may be found a set of rogues, called “Pillos,” rendered more numerous and troublesome from the circumstances of the times. Of these the capital presents two kinds, which has led to the distinction of “pillo” and “pillo-fino.” The first is a very common and plausible sort of rogue; but the latter is, as the name implies, a more refined cheat, not unfrequently enticed from distant parts by the fame of the numerous attractions of Lima, the paralysis of the laws, and consequent facility of escaping chastisement. The clink of hard dollars and doubloons, shoveled into “talegas,” or money-bags, and again thrown open at the gambling-table, are such sounds as are sure to allure the pillo-fine to that promiscuous society of Limenian gamblers, where the precious coin usually finds its way into the hands of the crafty. Whatever be the land of this animal’s nativity, he is but a vampire,—a human blood-sucker; but the simple pillo is a very different character, always plausible and pliable, an every-day and common-place member of society, who sponges on his neighbour, and whom all Englishmen courted for their generosity are sure to encounter. The ultimatum of this person’s milky adulation and very smiling policy is to procure a loan of money; and when he asks “plata prestada,” or money on loan, of any one, he assures that person, that applying to him is the greatest proof he can offer of his own friendly confidence and regard for the individual; but, while he is lavish of compliment, he takes care not to express his secret purpose, namely, never to reimburse whatever in this way he may hope to clutch.

It is a trite saying with the Spaniard,—“Es bueno conocer el amigo sin perderlo,” that is, It is well to know a professed friend, but not to lose him; and this will be found, like most Spanish adages, to convey in actual life a lesson of practical wisdom. The common pillo, of whom we take notice, never thinks the less of you for giving him a polite refusal; and, by so doing, you act in the spirit of the above saying, and preserve both your friend and your money; for, when civilly refused, he in good nature leaves you, and proceeds forthwith in search of some less wary dupe, and thinks to himself as he departs from you, “Ya este sabe,”—This one is up to our tricks.

Though Peru be a land of gold and silver, yet nowhere are the precious metals in greater requisition than in Lima, where the scarcity of circulating capital is shown by the revolting dealings of the common usurer, who extorts from the victims of his cupidity two or three per cent. a month on the advances he makes; and the current and regular rate of interest in that country is one per cent. a month, or twelve per cent. a year.

The “plata,” or money, covers more delinquencies than charity itself; hence we hear such expressions as these: “Nada es mala que gana la plata,” viz. Nothing is bad that wins the money. “Bien, le costo su plata!”—Very well, (what is it to us?) it cost him his money! “Porque no tener su gusto cuando le cuesta la plata?”—Why not have his pleasure when it costs him the money?—as if money, forsooth, could annihilate the moral turpitude of sinful enjoyment.

We cannot give the reader a better idea of the popular ethics of Peru in the present day, than in the words of a friend long resident in the country, who said that Peru had the advantage over every other country he had seen,—that in it “no one need ever be put out of countenance for anything he can say or do.” By so broad a statement as that conveyed in the expression now cited, we would only desire to represent the bad state of moral feeling prevalent among the bulk of a people not long since let loose to follow their own unrestrained wishes; without thereby meaning to deny the fact, that, in Lima more particularly, we often find that good natural dispositions and obliging manners do in no small degree supply, in the ordinary intercourse of life, the place of higher principle. And yet more: we would honourably except from this general description many individual examples of eminent virtue to be met in Peruvian society; striking instances of disinterested friendship and kindness (of which the writer himself has more than once been the favoured object); and the most generous, amiable, and praiseworthy bearing, which we have seen displayed by them in their domestic and social relations.

If we consider all things in the circumstances of the Peruvians, their story from first to last must awaken an interest in the mind of every inquirer into their past and present state, rather than dispose him to censure them indiscriminately for their errors. We may indeed wonder not to find fewer good qualities among them; and, on the other hand, not to see the fiercer passions that utterly brutalize human nature, and agitate every corner of society, more called into action among a medley of ignorant and discordant castes, passing without adequate preparation from one extreme of government to another, and from one civil broil into another of greater confusion and misrule.

But, as we have already had occasion to mention, there is among the entire mass of the people a natural aptness to please by a happy address; and no one can witness the external graces of the more enlightened and better classes, who are daily engaged in their customary rounds of social and courteous attentions, without desiring that these qualities, at least, should survive the overthrow of whatever is pernicious to a healthy state of society.

CHAPTER VIII.

Among a people who suffer so large a privation of moral discipline as the Peruvians, we naturally look for a corresponding prevalence of religious prejudices. Some years ago, when we lived in one of the most delightful climates in the interior of Peru, we were greatly annoyed by our neighbours of the two beautiful villages Ambo and Tomay-quichoa. The inhabitants of the former would insist that we drove from the estate of Andaguaylla, upon which we resided, the worshipful saints, (little painted images dressed in gaudy rags,) and withdrew the workmen, or “yanacones,”[11] from their little gods and religion. It was not till after we were accused by the alcalde of Ambo of being a kind of demon or goblin, that the people of the estate were scared into horror and desertion; or that we found out, through the kindness of our Spanish major-domo, that the alarmed men, women, and children on the estate had over-night rescued the saints from supposed danger, by piously carrying them away to a town about four leagues distant. Next morning we were left with only one workman; and he, being an old and maimed soldier, had but one hand.

This wanton and unjust attack took a legal form, and was parried off by legal measures with the timely interposition of that enlightened and benevolent citizen of the world, Doctor Don Antonio de Valdizan, himself a counsellor of state, a patron of learning, and one of the enterprising miners, and illustrious men of Peru. After this fray was finally settled in our behalf, the alcalde persecutor became our avowed and steady friend. But, on the other hand, the mestizos of Tomay-quichoa, nettled at the failure of the Ambinos, allowed us, with their usual malicious forethought, to go to great expense in fencing, building, and cultivating sugar-cane and other productions, before they showed their determination, without any provocation given by us, to baffle our labours, and ruin our fortune, by appropriating to their own use the water for irrigating the fields under crop, thus annihilating the young plantations.

We remonstrated against their unfair proceedings, but to no purpose. They fabricated false accusations, and involved us reluctantly in a law-suit of two years’ continuance, which, to the honour of the judge of the district, the learned and respected Dr. Mata, was ultimately terminated by an equitable sentence.

These good people believed we were but Jews, whom the Spaniards greatly abominate; and they conceived that, if they did not get rid of our neighbourhood in time, other Englishmen, and therefore, as they ignorantly supposed, other Jews, would settle there after us; and by proceeding to disgust us with the place, and scare us away in due season, they acted in the spirit of the proverb, “El prevenido nunca es vencido,”—The wary is never foiled. But it is a subject of deep interest to reflect on the practical example thus afforded of the working of that sovereign maxim, “No faith with heretics.” We here see, that although a perverted sense of religion did not extinguish the perception of an obvious right, yet it overcame the sense of wrong towards the imagined Jew, and in this respect suppressed the moral feeling of equity.

Such banefully erroneous views must gradually give way before the spreading light of civilization, and a more extended international intercourse. The bad moral effect of seeing men, influential and respected while living, consigned to the indignity of a canine grave when dead, cannot but be perceived and felt by the surviving friends and countrymen of the deceased, whose religious persuasions are distinct from those of the people of the land in which they are sojourners.

We may mention, that the first English gentleman’s remains we were called upon to accompany to an unhallowed burying-place, were those of one who died in an inland city remarkable for the hospitality and kindness of its inhabitants; and, after answering a few questions regarding the religious creed of the deceased, the price of the interment was settled, we think, at fifty dollars, and then the good-natured bishop, with a degree of liberality seldom exercised towards dissenters from the Romish ritual in Catholic countries, yielded his sanction to let the corpse have Christian burial. But, subsequently to this permission, a mob was collected in the night, and the body was cast out from the church to the middle of the street, where our obliging friend Don Mariano Sanches told us it lay. On the following morning, in a city where humanity was subdued by the ugly suggestions of superstition, there were only two good Samaritans. These gave their attendance at the stranger’s funeral, when the only two or three Britons at that time in the place accompanied the body outside the city, to find it a grave under the shelter of an orangery, where its mouldering bones could not by any chance come into contact with those of the pious agitators, who would fain persuade themselves that, while they live in harmony with the living heretic, the mere sight of the worm that nibbles at his interred remains is quite sufficient to endanger their own eternal condition.

In the capital of the republic a better example is at length given. Through the meritorious exertions of the British Consul-general, B. H. Wilson, Esq. the Peruvian government have ceded to the English a proper piece of cemetery-ground[12] at Bella Vista, an agreeable and convenient situation between Lima and the port of Callao. Formerly all the English, not Roman Catholics, who died in the capital or port, were interred in the barren island of San Lorenzo, where the bodies were exposed to the insults of the most vile of mankind,—miscreant convicts confined to the island for crimes that expel them from the society of honest men, and who believe that the English heretic, like the ancient Peruvian pagan, must needs have laid with him in the grave instruments or utensils of his avocation while living; and, therefore, they are led to expect that, our English merchant’s grave must be a place of deposit for a full share of those dollars he was seen always to handle, and to ship away in boxes to his native land. These outcasts were made to feel their own superiority, if not while in chains or in the galley, at least prospectively in their own cypress-shaded Pantheon, over the wealthiest, worthiest, and most respectable foreigners in their land, who, at the close of life, they might believe, exchanged situations with themselves,—that is, were sent in perpetuity to the arid and leafless San Lorenzo, while they themselves would be conveyed and suffered to rest in honoured ground until the last day. Let the worst befal them,—should they come to die on the “banquillo,” (a rude stool on which the criminal is placed at the hour of military execution,) yet they are not at the last discouraged like the stranger and Protestant. They have the aid of the priest when going to execution; and, when gone, their carnal remains may rest in sanctified earth. There will not probably be wanting on such occasions some godmother mas fea que la noche,—more ugly than night,—or some friend, who will remember the necessities of the departed highwayman whose days were closed in the Plaza, and will charitably pay the needy friar’s mass (value one dollar) to extricate his soul from perdition.

Our Consul-general, ever zealous in the discharge of his public duties, not only saw the inconvenience to his own countrymen, but the evil result of the former mode of interment in the island of San Lorenzo, and the great disadvantage that British subjects laboured under in having no place of public worship according to the forms of their own national church. These evils he endeavoured to counteract by procuring the grant of a cemetery as mentioned; and by having church-service read at the Consulate-general every Sunday, as is done by captains and commanders in such of Her Majesty’s vessels of war as have no chaplains on board them.

By this arrangement the most incredulous or prejudiced Peruvians have an opportunity of knowing that our Consul-general, and such of his countrymen as do not neglect the public homage offered at the Consulate to the Creator, do really feel an interest beyond the grave, and have a hope in Heaven as well as the deluded vulgar, who long believed (and the absurdity seems to have been inculcated as a political engine of some power by those who must have known better,) that the English were but a species of the ourang-outang, with tails like the lower animals; and consequently it was quite plain, on the alleged evidence of comparative anatomy, that their ultimate destination could not be higher than that of the beasts that perish.

The name of Drake, and the famous treasure-ship Caca-fuego, are now forgotten; but we are assured that in Payta the name of Anson is associated with sacrilegious recollections, and is mentioned by the lower class of natives with details that awaken feelings very hostile to our countrymen. At this sea-port, on the northern shores of Peru, on a certain festival and anniversary-day, when the image of the Virgin Mary is taken out in procession, we are told that it is shown with a patch of red wax on the neck, marking the wound once inflicted in this part by a sabre-blow from some disorderly sailor of Anson.

An amiable and well-informed Limeña, in whose house many of the literati daily meet, has laughed heartily at the good old times, when she related that, when a young girl, (and she is not yet more than middle-aged,) neither she herself, nor her playmates, ventured to approach a certain English sailor-boy without holding up their hands and making the sign of the cross with the fore-finger and thumb. This lady’s mother took a great interest in the sailor-boy, seeing that he was fair and handsome; and greatly regretted his not being a Christian, an expression by which she meant, of course, a Roman Catholic.

Some recollections of ancient feuds may still co-operate, in a greater or less degree, with religious prejudices to keep up no very warm feeling towards the English as a people; but it is gratifying to think that even on the distant shores of the Pacific, and among the glens of the Andes, there is a growing intelligence that tends rapidly to dissipate such unfriendly feelings. A nearer acquaintance with the English character, the insensible but gradual progress of knowledge, the general extension and assimilating tendency of commerce, the softening effects of time, and, in a word, the revolution itself, which opened up a channel for general improvement, are so many circumstances that conspire together to render the already widely extended connexion of Great Britain with Peru, every day more cordial in the minds of the natives of this important republic; and when the country becomes more settled under the direction of a wise government, such as its friends are now in expectation of enjoying under the protection of his excellency General Santa Cruz, it is to be hoped that, this international friendship may be rendered still more intimate, and mutually beneficial, than it is at present.

Should the projected plan of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company[13] be happily carried into execution, from which a high moral influence may be reasonably expected, and our commercial dealings with Peru be further extended, then will the religious wants of British residents become proportionably more deserving of public attention. The individual labour and exertions of these enterprising Britons, in a distant part of the globe, contribute to encourage manufactures and industry in their native land; and, though separated from their kindred and country by a wide-spreading ocean, they are rarely so happy as when they think of that home to which it is their daily wish to return, and never cease to feel that once their hearts and warmest sympathies were English. But, unhappily, to keep the heart pure in the midst of the greatest national relaxation of morals,—the strongest allurements to vice,—with few incitements to virtue, and no effective encouragement to religion,—is an achievement far too great for the average of mankind.

When young men destined for foreign countries leave home at an early age, they are naturally more defenceless against the insidious inroads of corruption, and more open to new impressions flowing in upon them from surrounding objects. Having arrived in Spanish America, they soon forsake the Protestant respect for the Sunday, and yet scorn the Catholic sacrifice of the mass; and then they insensibly enter upon the formation of new habits grafted on the manners and customs of the country, in which they are as yet but strangers.

The elder and more considerate British residents in Peru, we have reason to know, feel and regret the want of an established clergyman regularly and duly trained to discharge the duties of his vocation, and who should command a becoming degree of personal influence, arising from his professional character, learning, and piety. No individual of the commercial body—we would even venture to affirm, that no consular exertions in this spiritual department of duty—can provide for a regular attendance on church-service; because, on such topics, every counting-house clerk considers himself quite as knowing as the Consul, or any other secular reader of church-service, to whom as a divine they will not voluntarily accord much deference or attention, however distinguished that officiating individual may be for his high character, general intelligence, religious sincerity, and private virtue.

CHAPTER IX.

During the continuance of the royal authority in Peru, when military titles were only conferred on men of Spanish blood, the honour of the church and civil courts of judicature was pre-eminently fostered by the government, and the duties of those high vocations devolved on select individuals of white or Spanish race. If there were exceptions to so partial a distribution of favour, these appear to have been made in behalf of a few of the aborigines, or Indian people, whose blood to this day runs in the veins of some of the first families of that country.

The Peruvian clergy have ever been jealous of the dignity of their office, and consulted purity of blood in their august order with the same earnestness that they watched over the orthodoxy of their faith. They appear to have considered all mixture of African blood as a sort of test of spiritual contamination, and never suffered those tarnished with it to approach the altar, except as hearers or penitents,—never as ministers of the sanctuary. We may reasonably suppose that much of this partiality on the one hand, and rigorous exclusion on the other, was originally founded on considerations of political jealousy and distrust; but, be that as it may, the effects of this line of policy are still observable notwithstanding the liberalism that is afloat, for we do not meet with a single curate of negro or zambo progenitors, while in the law the majority of professors are of Spanish origin. The practice of medicine was looked upon as the proper occupation of those who, though possessed of some classical attainments, were deemed unworthy a place in the more distinguished departments of law and theology. But this order of things admitted of a few exceptions; for, as in the dregs of the legal profession there were certain tawny interlopers, so also in the higher walks of the medical department there was a proto-medico, and a few more physicians of European birth or descent. The great body of the profession, however, were raised from among the genuine black, or other more or less crossed Ethiopian castes, to whom, as is affirmed by Ayanque at page 43 of his celebrated satire, titled “Lima por dentro y fuera,” the healing art in all its branches, and especially surgery, was almost entirely intrusted. This arrangement, which involved consequences of vital interest to society, probably arose from inadequate ideas entertained by the Spaniards respecting the medical profession; viewing it less as a noble science than as a superior sort of handicraft. Certainly it did not arise from indifference about their own lives or personal safety; for no men are more careful of themselves when sick, or more ready to call in professional assistance, than the Spaniards of South America. An idea still prevalent is, that individuals selected from “la gente prieta,” or the sable people, are, on account of their more vigorous character and constitution, the best suited for the exercise of a laborious and active profession in the debilitating climate of Lima, where, in former days, young men of European parentage not in some government employment, or members of legal and ecclesiastical establishments, had an insuperable aversion, which they have not yet overcome, to work for their bread.

But, leaving these matters as we find them, we shall here give an extract from the well-known work, titled “Mercurio Peruano,” by which it will be seen what was the ancient state of medicine in Peru.

“In the sixteenth century, the taste of our nation leaned in favour of scholastic theology, the philosophy of Aristotle, and the civil law of the Romans; so that at the period of founding the university of Saint Mark, as well as for some time after, there were established for teaching each of the above branches of learning a competent number of well-endowed professorships; and, moreover, colleges were erected not only in Lima, but in all the principal cities within the viceroyalty of Peru, for teaching the same.

“For medicine two chairs were appointed or intended,—one (de prima) on the theory of medicine, and the other (de visperas) on pathology; but, no salaries being fixed, these fell to the ground. It is not therefore to be wondered at, that when, in the year 1637, they deliberated upon restoring the medical professorships, it was stated by Dr. Huerta, that in arts, laws, and theology, there had flourished a large number of doctors, enumerating about one hundred in Lima that very year, (seventy years from the foundation of the university,) but that in this lapse of time only three or four physicians were known among them, who, having studied in other parts, had incorporated themselves with the university.”

It was at the same time urged by Dr. Huerta (who was professor of the Quichua language) that the appointment of medical professors was quite useless, “as it was notorious that the Indians performed better cures than the physicians, recovering those whom the doctors had given up for lost; and, moreover, that many who were for some time in hospitals had from their own experience found out how to cure very successfully, without being professed doctors, like Martin Sanches and Juan Ximenes.”

Let no one suppose, from the date of the fact here stated, that the age of empiricism is passed away; for now, in the nineteenth century, we have hospital-dressers who take upon themselves the character of instructed practitioners, and are employed as such; while the famous curandera, or doctress, La Señora Dorotea, wants not among the opulent and best-informed persons of Lima warm defenders of her skill and superiority over the doctors of the university.

Before an anatomical amphitheatre was opened in Lima in the year 1792, the study of the healing art continued to be much neglected, as we are informed by the founder of this school, who, after some statements on this important subject,[14] observes, that the public instruction of medicine being wanting in the royal seminary, and having no colleges that might supply this deficiency, it followed as a consequence that in the medical profession those improvements had not been made that the importance of the art demanded,—a great detriment to the public health. Some years after the anatomical amphitheatre, or practical school of anatomy, was formed, its founder was raised to the head of the medical profession in Peru; and, desirous to advance medical science among his countrymen, he had further prevailed with the viceregal government to establish a college of medicine and surgery in Lima as an independent medical seminary, dedicated to San Fernando, in honour of their august sovereign Ferdinand VII. of Spain.[15] This college, as we are informed by one of its earliest inmates, was established in the year 1809, and in it different professorships were properly assigned. Here there was a professor of chemistry, but, for want of suitable apparatus, he had not yet opened an experimental course; a professor of botany, who really gave some practical lessons when walking out with his pupils in the neighbouring “potreros” or grazing parks. There were also professors of the practice of medicine and surgery, &c. all on a goodly plan, after the manner of European colleges. But, while these improvements were going on, the revolution came, to do evil that good might come; and then all the fair hopes from the college of San Fernando were nipped in the bud.

This seminary, which, at present, metaphorically represents the tree of knowledge, stripped of its green leaves and fair promise, under the shade of the wide-spreading tree of liberty, on which it is to be hoped that science ere long may be grafted, is, in its now blighted condition, under the nominal rectorship of Doctor Don Caietano Heredia, one of the earliest and most illustrious of the disciples educated in this school,—a gentleman who, to his infinite praise, caught no small portion of that love of knowledge, and desire to disseminate it, which so eminently distinguished the eloquent founder, Don Hipolito Unanue.

We may briefly remark that, at the period when the revolution broke out in Lima, there were in the medical profession some men of excellent classical knowledge, well versed in medical literature; and the valuable libraries which some of them have left behind them would, if only spared by the most destructive moth of that country, long stand as monuments of their professional scholarship. Among the junior physicians of the capital there is less ancient learning, but a better acquaintance with modern authors, especially French works, which are imported very freely; and the revolution, which so lately subverted the ancient form of government, may likewise be said to have opened up new sources of professional knowledge and improvement in medical practice.

At present, however, young men hardly acquire the rudiments of medical knowledge when they are hurried away to the army; and having never enjoyed the advantages of an early systematic education, and being thus hurried into practice, it is to be feared that many of them will be satisfied with the perusal of a few manuals or formularies, and never attain enlarged views of their profession. But the military surgeon has ample opportunities of using the knife; and surgery is now very much improved in Peru, where, till lately, the first principles of this branch of the profession were ill understood. The pharmacy of Lima consisted chiefly of herbs and simples, till English and French apothecaries’ stores were opened, and furnished the public with the best remedies, which were soon approved, and recommended by those native physicians who adopted a more active practice than their predecessors. In the present day nearly all the native physicians of any note order their prescriptions from the French apothecaries.

This leads us to remark, that in the well-known Memoirs of General Miller there is a lively account of the wandering practisers of physic of the aboriginal tribe of Callavayas or Yungeños, who, laden with barks, balsams, and herbs, are said to migrate periodically from the vicinity of La Paz, and “traverse the mountains of Peru, Quito, and Chile, and the Pampas of Buenos Ayres, exercising their vocation wherever their assistance is required, to the distance of five or six hundred leagues.” Some medicinal herbs collected on the mountains and in the valleys are always in requisition, and constitute the chief ingredients of the domestic medicine of those who inhabit the villages of the interior of Peru; but as French and English assortments of medicine have become so common of late, the Callavayas have ceased to visit such parts of that country as we are acquainted with. But there are still a set of quacks, generally men of swarthy and mixed race, in every town and village of general traffic or importance, who subsist on the credulity of mankind, and are appropriately distinguished by the name of Mata-sanos, or killers of the healthy.

No active measures have yet been adopted to suppress the flagrant abuses of the Mata-sanos, who infest the interior villages of Peru; where, we regret to say, even the regular practitioner is a kind of public extortioner, who, persuaded that the price of his services is never to be paid after pain and the sense of danger are removed from the sick, is accustomed to make his bargain, and withhold his remedy till he secures beforehand his fee: and the bargain is usually screwed up to the utmost when the patient is known to be rich, and believes his own life in danger. In consideration of the medical destitution of the interior of the republic, and the crying evil thus entailed on the community, it was suggested to the legitimate government in the year 1835, that, from every prefectorate of the republic, a certain number of disciples should be sent to be educated at the common expense, in the medical college at Lima; and that after these young men had completed their studies, and were found duly qualified to exercise the medical profession, they should be made to return as practitioners to their respective provinces. This proposal would probably have been carried into effect, had the country been left to enjoy public tranquillity; and it is obvious how easily, under such an arrangement, villages and districts of several thousand inhabitants could, by contributing an average annual sum of only a few reals from each individual, procure for themselves a salaried medical adviser, from the midst of their own Indian or mixed population, in every way the most fitted to pass his time usefully and agreeably among his native hills. But, as things are at present, it is almost impossible, even at great expense to individuals, to procure proper medical attendance in the time of need; for the variable climate and temperature of the interior changing from hill to dingle, and frequently from league to league, is peculiarly unfavourable and disagreeable to the constitution and habits of the medical gentlemen of the coast, (among whom there are some highly respectable and able men,) who are commonly of various gradations of caste, from the black through all the tints between this colour and white or European; so that we need not be surprised at the reluctance of these individuals to undertake the practice, or expose themselves to the privations of the frigid regions of the interior. But the people of the Sierra, or upland of Peru, being unprovided with medical teachers of their own, can only rely on the capital and coast (where there is no scarcity of doctors, both native and foreign,) for the supply of such regularly educated physicians or surgeons as are here and there found in the interior; and even these are not always stationary in one town or province, but often ambulate backwards and forwards as their interest or inclination happen to dictate. But, whether settled permanently in one locality or not, it usually happens that when the Sierra doctor is called upon to visit a patient, he rises from the card or diceing table; and the sort of prescription given for the cure of the sick will naturally depend on the state of mind in which the gambler happens to be at the time.

Having said so much on the state of the medical schools and practice of medicine, it may be expected that we should advert to the interesting subject of schools and education in general.

Small schools for reading, on the Lancasterian plan, are very common in the capital, and not unknown in the provincial and inland towns; and all—we think all—the white children are taught to read and write. The Bible too, as translated by Scio, is openly sold by book-dealers, and it is read by individuals in the Spanish language; but no Mr. Wood[16] is found among them, to carry forward the instruction of the pupils on the basis of the sacred writings.

Close to the public library at St. Pedro’s church, which contains a large and valuable collection of books, there is a Latin academy, which was intended to be a great national school after the declaration of Peruvian independence; but it is not, we believe, now in a flourishing state: and the colleges of San Carlos and San Toribio have dwindled away under the baneful influence of a succession of revolutions, and governments misnamed patriotic, which are as hostile to science, though on a different principle, as was the dark reign of the inquisition under the sway of old Spain.

Early in the nineteenth, as we have already shown to have been the case in the sixteenth century, the taste of the natives leaned to scholastic theology, the philosophy of Aristotle, and the civil law of the Romans.

Heineccius still preserves his authority within the cloisters of the Lima colleges, which are too often deserted for want of funds for their support,—one of the many evils consequent on frequent political commotions!

It has been long a subject of remark and regret, that, in these principal seminaries of learning, scarcely any of the scholars attended to their studies, except those who were sent from remote provinces, and who were not yet wedded to the idle and luxurious habits of the Limenian youth. Indeed, the expression “buen colegial” is proverbial in all Peru as peculiarly characteristic of young gentlemen devoted to gallantry, or who are observed to care more for their loves than their lessons.

A new school for law and philosophy was commenced in Lima, a few years ago, by Don Jose Joaquin de Mora, who for some time delivered lectures, and also published a text-book on the Scotch philosophy, which he taught with credit.

Mr. Mora, himself a native of Spain, has thus opened, in Peru and Bolivia, new sources of investigation in the departments of metaphysical and ethical science. As a civilian more especially, this indefatigable individual has acquired transcendent celebrity in those countries. Still, however, the blessing of well-directed instruction is confined to a very few; and the lower classes of dark race, as well as the Indian orders of the Peruvian people, have seldom any education except that which is necessarily acquired in the ordinary intercourse between man and man, without the medium of letters, and in the usual discharge of the common duties of life; for the exercise of which it should be the main object of education to prepare the individual, so as to fit him to act his part in society with dignity and usefulness, becoming a being of immortal nature.

But we need hardly remark, that in Lima the ornamental takes precedence of the useful; because there the chief aim of education is to train the young to please in company, by such accomplishments as music, dancing, and play, with only a very superficial acquaintance with more solid attainments. From what has been already stated in the course of the preceding pages, it may be inferred that female education, especially, is very much of the kind now alluded to; though among the fair sex there is a great abundance of excellent talent, which, if properly directed, could not fail to be productive of the best social results.

But it is not our purpose to speculate on plans of public instruction, or to point out what may be called the philosophy of education; into the secret of which, we think, an English friend, the father of four well-brought-up boys, has pretty well penetrated, when he enjoins, as a sine quâ non of good tuition, absolute obedience, under good example, in early life. How very little philosophy has to do with the present style of training youth in Peru, and Lima in particular, we think the general moral details of this book are well calculated to show; for early indulgence takes the place of obedience, and the influence of example is not always the best: yet upon the whole, when free from civil discord, they are pleased with themselves,

CHAPTER X.

The space enclosed between the gigantic ridges of the eastern and western Cordillera, or great and frigid mountain-chains of the Andes, is occupied by numerous table-lands yielding short fine grass, and extensive hilly pasture-ground, very like in general outline to the Highlands of Scotland, though destitute of heath: and over this very uneven surface are interspersed lagoons and rivers, and deep, warm, agricultural valleys, in the bottom of which grow the richest fruits and produce of the coast; while the summits of the hills, that rise from and enclose these fertile dales, are exposed to the violence of the tempest in the elevated regions of cold and barrenness.

From one of these glens, where we once resided for some time, we left a house at the door of which the lemon-tree was in perpetual fruit and blossom, and, in two or three hours thereafter, arrived at the rugged crags and peaks of the eastern Cordillera.

The lines of road from the western coast to the central Andes of Peru wind along narrow glens, sometimes contracting into mere ravines, edged by lofty hills or prodigious rocks that close in abruptly. The traveller thus journeys for days, leaving one hill behind, and meeting another rising before; but never arrives at that ideal spot, whence he may command a view from sea to sea,

The highest mountains in Britain, such as Ben-Nevis or Cruachan,[18] must appear very diminutive, when compared to the Andes, whose very vastness and extent preclude from the inland regions any view of the sun dipping under the waves of the Pacific, and whose magnitude limits the quickest sight to the groups of mountains, with their included dales, that go to form one stupendous pile of varied shape, production, and climate.

Many of the mountain roads, as they leave the bottom of the glens, and ascend, in more or less of a caracole, along the face of formidable steeps, seem to bear date of origin from the Quichua era, when the llama was the only beast of burden in the country. These animals, like their Indian owners, delight most in the cool of the hills; but, when laden and on the road, their slow and stately gait must not be hurried or interfered with, nor their burden increased beyond their liking, which seldom exceeds 70 or 80 lbs. weight on a long journey: the Indian understands their way, and rules them by gentleness. As the llamas are not for forced marches, and only make short stages of three or four leagues daily, the paths that lead through pasture-grounds are the best suited for them, and may have been considered by the ancient inhabitants of the land as a sufficient reason for striking off from a barren though less elevated or precipitous path, and climbing to eminences that yield an agreeable temperature and some herbage to the indigenous companions of their toil.

When a person has occasion to traverse these narrow and fatiguing roads, it is necessary for him to keep a good look-out, lest he should clash with some rider or cargo-beast coming in the opposite direction; for there are places where it would be utterly impossible to pass two a-breast; and there would be no small danger, on meeting an impatient animal or careless horseman, that either party would be hurled over the brink, and consigned to the condors and eaglets that nestle on the cliffs and in the dark chasms of the crags.

Such dangerous passes are at some places so contracted that the stirrup of the muleteer is seen to overhang the foaming stream, or project beyond the verge of the boldest precipice; and every now and then they are made more formidable by abrupt angles and insecure breast-work without parapets, hastily constructed when the rush of a sudden torrent from the hollow of a hill, or large stones rolling from the heights, have cleft the way so as to render it for a time impassable.

There are also many cuestas or rapid steeps, with here and there flights of steps, roughly cut in the hard rock. By the way-side, in tedious cuestas of several leagues in extent, recesses are, in numerous instances, worked out on the higher side of the road, which serve for the passengers to draw up while those from an opposite direction are allowed to pass on, or where muleteers stop their cattle to adjust their cargoes and tighten their lazos. But when a rock or shoulder of a cliff juts out from the road towards the lower or precipice side, leaving more or less room for a resting-place, then the little flat space is coarsely walled in with large fragments of rock and such smaller stones as may be at hand, giving the idea of a rude but commanding fortress.

The famous Cuesta of San Mateo, on the Tarma road from Lima, we passed in the year 1834, and could not but wonder how, without any very serious accident, an army of cavalry, destined to celebrate the “fraternal embrace of Maquenguaio,”[19] had been able to pass the same route a few months before, when the path and staircases were yet wet and slippery from occasional showers; and when the lower or proper post-road was unfortunately impassable, from the destruction of one of the ordinary rustic bridges on the river or torrent, that runs at the bottom of the rock-locked ravine through which the regular mule-way has been opened, and by which the waters rush foaming and raging in time of heavy inland rains. This stream, like all such impetuous torrents, during the force of the rainy season on the high mountains and table-lands, carries in its course a vast number of rolling stones, the thundering noise of which rises far above the roar of the white waters as these are thrown back, and resisted incessantly, by large blocks of rocky fragments that half-choke the narrow channel, which at this remarkable place is bordered by immense rocks looking as if they had been separated by violence, or rent to give descent to the concentrated and united body of rivulets that come from many a snowy peak, mountain lake, and marsh.

The hill along which runs the Cuesta road, rising on the face of the steep that overhangs this part of the stream, is of itself a grand object; but that which is seen opposite to it has the greatest elevation of any single mountain in these narrow glens: and nothing of the kind can be more strikingly magnificent than to behold it, girdled in verdure and capped in snow, from the summit of the Cuesta, where the traveller, tired with climbing, is invited to draw breath, and look around him from the cross planted here, as in almost every similar situation, by the pious among the natives, who love to decorate this emblem of their faith with wreaths of fresh and fragrant flowers. But from the better route, which winds by the river underneath, nothing of this sort is to be seen; for here the hills on each side shelve in towards their rugged foundations, until they come so close as completely to overshadow the stream. Here, too, the rider may strain his neck in looking overhead; but his eye only meets, besides a strip of the sky, pendulous succulents and tangling plants on the face of the incumbent ledge, with now and then a flower-enamoured “pica-flor,” (humming-bird,) as he fans, with a gracefully tremulous wing, the expanding blossoms that yield him delicate food and pastime.

These wilds of San Mateo reminded us forcibly of the miniature wilds of Glencoe, remarkable in Scottish history; and we thought, as we passed them, of the bard of Cona (Ossian), who, in honour of the orb which the Peruvians once adored, sung with sublimity and touching pathos,

“O thou that rollest above, round as the shield of my fathers, whence are thy beams, O Sun! thy everlasting light? Thou comest forth in thy awful beauty; the stars hide themselves in the sky; the moon, cold and pale, sinks in the western wave; but thou thyself movest alone. Who can be a companion of thy course?”

The Indian’s eyrie on the summit of some steep and lofty mountain, (seldom visited by a white man, save the curate,) may be easily passed many times unnoticed by a stranger, who has occasion to go over the usual routes in any of the principal ravines and valleys of the Sierra, and who may never be led to suspect its existence till he one day meets a swift-footed Indian, closely followed by a person on a well-accoutred and elegant mule, whose gear is all laden with silver ornaments; and the rider, who sits at his ease in a saddle of the country with a rich pellon, wears a large-brimmed hat, with a black silk cap emerging to view at the ears and temples. He has on at least a couple of ponchos (mantles) well-decorated and fringed; his black or brown stockings are of warm Vicuña wool; and the heel of a small shoe, half-concealed in a clumsy and costly, though wooden stirrup, is armed with a prodigiously disproportioned silver spur, with a large tinkling roller, used to keep his noble animal in mind that she is but the harbinger of death, and carries on her back the keeper of the sinner’s conscience.

This minister of peace to the miserable, hurries to save the soul of a dying Christian, whose abode, like the falcon’s, overlooks the ordinary path of wayfaring men; and which, when descried, seems, to the sight of an observer underneath, to be indeed the loftiest earthly point between the ground he himself stands upon and that heaven for which, it is believed, the anxious and fluttering spirit of the gasping Indian, only waits the curate’s absolution and blessing to wing its immortal flight. It occurs to us here to remark, that in the remote curacies of the hills no friars are to be seen, as on the coast or more genial climates; an important part of whose duty it is, wherever they locate themselves, to aid the Christian to die well, and to watch by his pillow, and exhort and comfort him, while the crucifix and taper are ever before his eyes, and the breath of life about to leave his animal frame. But, destitute of these helps, the curate or curate-substitute, whose calling renders him the most influential person and only spiritual comforter in an Indian village, makes, in the appearance we have offered to describe, his rapid way over hill and cliff, broken ravine and dangerous path, on a chosen traveller, whose movements are so gentle that she never wearies the rider. This mule seems not to make any trying exertion, while she leaves all ordinary beasts of her kind behind her on a day’s journey, and ascends a cuesta of three or four leagues without stopping once to draw breath, and again descends the same without missing a foot or slackening the “paso llano,” the best of all travelling paces; while, to her no small recommendation, where horse-shoers are not to be found, whether on hard ground or soft, in summer or in winter, she needs not a shoe on her massy and well-rounded hoof. The Sierra curates of a dreary pastoral district, or secluded Indian residence in the wheat-land temperatures, are men, at the age of forty, commonly much worn out in constitution. One of these gentlemen, to whom his home is irksome, is seen to read for weeks together on a stretch, merely to kill time; or he longs for the more refined “tertulia,” to which at one period he was no stranger; or he starts off, swayed by some sudden impulse, to the nearest town of white inhabitants, where he enjoys a finer climate and more gratifying company. He not unfrequently resorts to a mineral “pueblo” (village), under pretext perhaps of selling his “primicia” or first-fruits in grain, &c. which, to be sure, he does to some purpose; for ten to one he will gamble with the extravagant miners, day and night, till the product of the primicia is all swallowed up; and the poor residentiary returns to his cheerless manse involved in a debt which he cannot pay for the next six months, even should his curacy be worth four or five thousand dollars a year, though it oftener happens that the income is much less. In his mountain curacy, wherein he endures sad periods of ennui and long and frequent fasts,[20] that debilitate and break down the best constitution, (for before he can reach a distant church, and say mass, the day is often far advanced,) the curate complains of feeling himself an exile; and is easily led to seek refuge from his self-weariness in various indulgences that far overstep the barriers of self-denial, and plunge him into the outskirts of that moral darkness which he is sent to enlighten.

Here, if anywhere on earth, the drawbacks of involuntary celibacy are felt by the priest. For such canonical privations he usually searches compensation in the less amiable society of a favourite “sobrina,” or reputed niece, whose kindness hinges on a precarious friendship, and whose artful complacency

But while we regret the evils thus entailed on the curate by the established usage and Romish policy[21] of the sacred orders, we do with pleasure and grateful remembrance assure our readers that, from the individual curates spread over the hill-land of this thinly inhabited country, the foreigner and traveller is always sure to meet with the greatest kindness and hospitality. Further to illustrate the moral and physical aspect of the Sierra, we would mention that once, when on a journey in the interior, we had the good fortune to fall in with a clerical gentleman, whose vigour of mind was not to be overcome by the dreariness of his residence at Cauri, a puna village of cold and shivering aspect. This active and spirited person came up to us as we crossed the celebrated road-way of the Incas, on the heights of Huamalies, and we descended together towards the village of Jesus, only a few leagues distant; but before we could reach this place his fine mule began to trip, then tottered, and soon failed entirely in her hind-legs, as if struck by palsy. She was unsaddled, she immediately stretched herself on the ground, swelled out rapidly, struggled and groaned, and in less than half an hour died.

The priest, who on this occasion showed himself to be not at all unacquainted with practical farriery, felt like one who had lost a tried and valued companion. He soon, however, reconciled himself to a misfortune beyond his power to remedy; and ordering his Indian page to walk down hill, (after he had secured the saddle and trappings of the favourite animal here left to the hungry condors, on the back of the cargo-mule, or bed-mule, driven before us,) the jovial priest mounted the Indian’s little rough poney, and we all arrived safely at our destination early in the evening. The cattle—every hoof—were in distant pastures, and the priest could not be provided with another mule before next morning. We therefore passed the evening agreeably under the same roof, where a pretty-looking white mouse was caged, and kept as a precious remedy and charm against all diseases; and some such wizard power as this timid creature was supposed to possess, these poor mountaineers stood much in need of, as no surgeon or physician ever resides among them. At the village of Jesus we arrived in the dry season, when its nearest plains wore a stunted and withered aspect, and when there was no crop in the ground—not their ordinary potato crop, which indeed is their only one; and which in some years succeeds, while in other years it fails on account of the frost. But, during the rainy season, when frost is unknown in the deep ravines and lofty arable heights and acclivities of the inland country,—where the highest-perched houses are seen, on arriving at them, to have still higher back-grounds,—the Indians, each of whom cultivates his own patch of ground, drive all their cattle to the remotest pastures of their extensive common; because they cannot consent to have them feeding near their doors, and crops, which have no proper enclosures.

The Indians and curates have, for the most part, very opposite interests to support in worldly matters; and they are often seen contending with one another in hard bargains when arranging the business of first-fruits, (for tithes are collected by the state,) marriages, burials, and religious festivals, which latter are closely interwoven with the entire social system of the country. These contentions tend to lower the respectability and sacredness of the proper priestly character; and there are not wanting examples of the Indian carrying his ill-will so far as to desire to be revenged of his ghostly father in a sly way.

On one celebrated occasion the Indians of Huamantanga, situated on the western slope of the Andes, and not far inland from the capital, advised their curate that in a hamlet on a distant hill-top a man was dying; so that, if the curate did not use much haste to assist him, he would necessarily die without confession. The curate replied, “But how am I to reach him?—There is no mule at hand; they are all in the remote common.” An Indian promptly answered, “I will fetch one.” But the curate knew that at that time, on account of the numerous crops, no mule was or could be near. He therefore became suspicious respecting the good faith of those about him, for he was old, and had experience of the perverse and cunning disposition of Indians; but, when the man came to him with a very good-looking mule, he suppressed his sentiments, and asked if the animal was accustomed to be ridden by a curate. “Sabe la mula de cura?” The Indian replied, “La mula es buena,”—the mule is a good one. “Yes,” says the curate; “but let us see if she have acquaintance with a curate.” He now cast off his clerical habit, and, having dressed the Indian as a curate, he made the wily rogue mount the beast; when she reared, kicked, and flung violently, until she dashed him to the ground. To the crafty villager, now caught in his own snare, the churchman good-naturedly observed, “You feel, my man, that the mule, though a good one, yet knows nothing of a curate; and, as there is no other alternative, your friend must survive his present illness, or go down to the grave without confession.” But to the grave he went not on this occasion, for the whole was intended as a trick by which the curate might be deceived to his personal hurt or destruction; but, as far as we could judge, our jolly acquaintance at Jesus was quite a favoured individual, who had nothing to fear from the mule next morning brought for his service.

This gentleman had a great many occupations besides the ordinary professional duties of saying mass, hearing confessions, and absolving sins. He supplied his people with whisky, of which he was the only distiller, and they the principal consumers. He considered it a proud discovery, (of which few of his neighbours were in the secret,) that ardent spirits could be made from barley, reared on the hills at comparatively little expense for the grain-grower; while the usual sugar-cane spirit, or “agua ardiente,” extracted by the help of the inferior copper, or the still worse earthen stills of the interior, had no superiority over it. On the other hand, the “pisco,” or finer flavoured Italia, both of which are procured from the fermented juice of the grape, could only be got, and at great expense of land-carriage, from the coast. He therefore hoped to supersede by his whisky the use of the cane-spirit or pale rum, called “agua ardiente,” or “agua ardiente de caña,” because it was sometimes very expensive, and frequently bad; not from any pernicious quality in the saccharine juice, as some natives have imagined, but on account of the defective mode of distillation by poor people, who buy up from the sugar-growers molasses, and a coarse brown sugar, made into little cakes, called “chancaca,” for the purpose of being converted into “agua ardiente,” for which there is always great demand in the colder and mineral districts.

Our speculative priest had a farm in the temperate neighbourhood of a place and curacy called Caina, which lay convenient to his own spiritual flock. Here he cultivated abundance of grain, and possessed extensive pasture grounds. He purchased the “primicia” (first-fruits) of his brethren in Conchucos, and other mountain ranges and elevated districts, wherein church-rates are paid in cattle, as the staple commodity of lands chiefly fitted for pasturage. These cattle he placed on grass, when young and cheap; and when they became in high condition, drove them carefully along the least frequented paths on the verdant heights, to the clover or alfalfa fields in the headland vales of the coast, where they were in demand by the grazier and butcher. He also contracted for so many thousand arobes of sugar yearly, with the planters in Huailas; and by the aid of his Cauri friends and customers, had his sugar conducted to Cerro Pasco at a lower rate of land-carriage than any one else in this line of trade; and, dealing on a large scale, he believed that he could easily undersell the smaller trader.

The Cauri muleteers employed by the priest are staunch hearty fellows who swig off a bottle of whisky, or “agua ardiente,” as if it were less than a mouthful; for they call a bottle a “gota,” or a drop, which shows they hold it as too small a dose for their well-seasoned stomachs.

Our priest also engaged to supply mines, in the adjacent country, with salt for benefiting or preparing metals, which the Caurimen, with their little broad-backed and hardy nags, are used to convey from Huacho on the coasts of the Pacific, by the vale of Sayan, across the Cordillera. He was withal a watch-maker to the neighbouring villages within many leagues of his residence, and knew, if we forget not, how to put the church organ to rights when out of repair.

His people were apparently fond of so stirring and general a speculator; and as they can only grow for themselves, and that in the most sheltered corners, very bad potatoes, with frequent failures in the harvest, (though their common yields good pasture,) their pastor supplied them with maize, (as the miner in isolated localities supplies, at large profits, maize and clothing, &c. to his workmen,) on which, with potatoes, cheese, eggs, and guinea-pigs, they principally support themselves. Butter they rarely know how to churn; and, as the milk is chiefly used for making cheese, it is not often drunk as an article of nutriment, save by those who live in small round booths, that are ever and anon guarded by a host of noisy curs, with hair as shaggy and matted as that which covers the heads of the urchins that feed them. These pastoral huts are scattered over the distant plains and ranges of the mountains throughout the “estancias,” or tracts of hilly pasture-land allotted for rearing and feeding cattle and sheep. At such estancias and huts, the traveller in the interior of Peru has frequently to rest for the night.

The poor Indian owner of a few horned cattle, will rather languish with hunger than slaughter one head of his fold for his private consumption; but he who owns a small flock of sheep can more conveniently sustain himself on meat and “caldo,”—mutton tea, (for vegetables are commonly wanting to make that kind of broth which is to be found at the grain-grower’s,) especially when any traveller passes that way, who buys one of his small sheep—much smaller on the hills than in the warm valleys—for use on the road, and employs the Indian himself to butcher it. These inhabitants of the snowy range, or lofty dales of the Andes, we frequently met,—and they are easily known by their warm clothing, capacious chests, and ruddy complexions,—descending from the frigid regions to the temperate and grain valleys, to barter for the vegetable productions of the agriculturist fresh mutton, which, already skinned and free from offal, they carry on donkeys (animals which in the hands of the Indian escape the cruel stripes and goads inflicted on them by the merciless negro or zambo); and this meat, like beef, being previously dried in the sun, is laid up for use by the dweller of the warm and narrow glen overhung by scorched and rocky acclivities, who places it before the traveller, under the usual name of “charque,” of which we have often eaten with a good appetite.

But to return to our priest: it is to be hoped that, in contributing as much as he did to supply the temporal wants of the hardy attendants at his confessional, he did not irretrievably overlook their Christian and spiritual necessities. From the combined results of his various undertakings, he cherished a glowing expectation of realizing a fortune; but, as we never heard of his success, we think it allowable to suppose that, like other speculators, he must have experienced some severe reverse or serious disappointment, as is quite usual in that country.

When morning arrived, we had our good chupe,—a common and standard dish of the Sierra, consisting of potatoes sliced down and boiled in water or milk, with an addition of eggs, cheese, and, when very nice, butter; but, on many occasions, especially in Huamalies, the traveller only gets yaco-chupe, or water chupe, consisting merely of potatoes sliced and boiled in water, with the addition of a little salt, and a leaflet of wild mint, if at hand, as a useful antidote against flatulency and uneasiness at stomach.

After we had finished breakfast, and found our cattle in readiness, we were sorry to part with our agreeable acquaintance, whose presence and influence furnished us with better fare and accommodation than we usually experienced on our Sierra journeys. This remarkable person was a native of Quito; and whatever may be thought of his enterprise and commercial spirit, like all Quiteños we were acquainted with in Peru, he was distinguished for his native talent and ingenuity.

Our way now lay among the ruins of ancient buildings and small towns, with here and there, along the higher ridges, some detached and more stately-looking architectural remains. These relics of the olden times offer far finer samples of masonry than the dry stone and thatched houses of any modern Indian village. The old line of communication between Quito and Cuzco, where we met our Quitenian friend on the preceding day, is a wonderful monument of rude art and industry. This imperial road of the Incas is still perfect in many parts, where the stones appear well fitted and laid in good order, the pavement rising above the level of the plain, and being of a spacious breadth.[22]

We entered one of the houses in “Pueblo Viejo,” or ruins of an old town so called, by the way-side, not far from the celebrated ruins of the ancient city Leon de Huanuco, deemed by the natives as only second to Cuzco—the capital of the empire of the Incas—in the wonders of its masonry. We found the walls of this house, except where defaced by the mischievous hands of man, quite entire, and one angle of the building had yet retained the roof. The windows were small, but the outer door of good size. The walls were as perpendicular as plumb and line in our days could make them, though two stories high. These walls were built with small stones, mostly flags; and between them a thin layer of mud or clay cement. There were, within, stone partitions rising to the level of the outward walls, making the compartments of the house so confined that the roof was easily laid on by long and broad flags projecting from the sides, on which they were steadied by a top-weight, and, meeting at the centre, were so adjusted as to render the closing of the roof perfect. The same appeared to have been the manner in which the floor of the second story had been laid. At the roof, the flags were observed to shoot forwards to some extent outside the wall, doubtless with a view to preserve a perfect equilibrium,—as we have frequently seen on the smaller houses of ancient Indian architecture, which abound near the village of Ambo on the heights of Andaguaylla. The lofty and weather-worn peaks of this estate go to form the ridge of the eastern Cordillera, where the path from these summits descends towards the pueblo of Yuramarca on the verge of the Montaña, known in regal times as the asylum of the fugitive criminal.

This hacienda, partaking of the climate of the torrid and frigid zones, and consisting of successive table-lands and steep hills, has frigid summits and ever-blooming dales. Its lakes of Rumichaca, so named because their waters escape under a natural bridge of rock; its Indian moats and fortifications on the heights of Rucrun, and the ruins of which we have just made mention; its woods of alder and perejil; its bamboo thickets, numerous dingles, and silvery waterfalls; its rapacious puma; its herds of deer; its narrow pathways and slippery pastures, from whence the grazing ox so often rolls to the fathomless ravine,—are still present to our mind in one group, with the lovely conjunction of the cultivated vales of Huacar and Huaylas, and the watery cross formed by the confluence of their respective streams, where the river of Huanuco commences its gently winding course. All these crowd into our retrospect, as they are viewed by the imagination in one splendid landscape from the commanding eminences of this fine estate, in contrast with all the boundless mountain-scenery stretching to the west.

Of the houses of the Gentiles, as the natives usually call the antiquated buildings we would wish to describe, (and in the hiding-nooks of which treasure is sometimes found,) the roof is rounded or finished off by stones and clay or earth, so as to throw over the heavy rains that at certain seasons of the year fall in these places. This species of building, as it needed no timber, was naturally recommended in frigid woodless plains and almost inaccessible hill-tops, such as abound in the Sierra or mountain-land of Peru; but in situations like Andaguaylla, where wood surrounds the old Indian houses, they could only adhere to this form of building, on account of their higher perfection in masonry than carpentry, which required the use of tools and art that they evidently did not possess.

In the temperate climate of Tarma, situated in the centre of the Andes in an east-north-east direction from Lima, where the houses are generally tiled, and the better sorts of them neatly floored with gypsum or stucco-plaster, the older houses are still seen covered in with mud or red brick-clay, underlaid and supported with strong timbers and a coat of cane or wattling. The most antiquated of these roofs are made with a very slight declivity, with outlets like a ship’s scuttle-holes at the most pending angles, so as to give free exit to the rain when it falls heavily. The wall of this description of house they raise a foot or two higher than the roof, so as to give the latter the appearance of a little inclined plane and enclosure; and they leave triangular holes, like those of a dove-house, in this little parapet; within which, when the rains have passed away, and the crops are housed, the peasants stow peas, beans, and maize, until, by direct exposure to a bright sun, these articles are so dried up as to be unhusked without trouble or loss.[23] Tarma is the favourite place of resort of sickly persons from different parts, especially Lima, and the rigorous climate at the mineral works of Yauli, whence the rheumatic miners, after their own hot springs fail to cure them, flock to the Estrada, or to the ball and tertulia of the blooming Tarmenians. All its peaceful inhabitants are agriculturists; and mostly all the resident families emigrate during harvest-time to little farms in the vicinity of this pretty Cerrano town, which is considered one of the most agreeable and civilized in all the Sierra, and wherein the better classes, even as in the provincial towns on the coast, desire to adopt the manners of the capital as their standard. Near Tarma is a beautiful cascade, and many peach and apple orchards, with lanes lined with poplars, and perfumed with wild mint and many sweet and fragrant flowers in the wet season, when its hills are verdant, its air pure, and its people joyful. The population of the town and suburbs is estimated at eight thousand; yet with all the sickness to which, notwithstanding the general salubrity of its climate, so large a population as that of Tarma must be subjected, this retreat of convalescents from the coast and mineral districts is without a medical adviser of any consideration, except when chance throws among them one of the faculty of Lima, himself a confirmed invalid, or only in a state of recovery from consumption or spitting of blood.

When the people of Tarma have put the seed into the ground, they usually occupy an entire month in mutual visiting and festivity: and they say of their neighbours of Jauja (eight leagues to the south of them), whose rejoicing is at harvest-home, that they distrust Providence, while they themselves piously rejoice and rest their hope in the Giver of their harvest; hence, they infer the wheat crops of the Jaujinos (whose granaries are in favourable years the most plentifully stored in all Peru) are often blighted and frosted, while the Tarmenian barley always flourishes. We would not quarrel with these contented people for the moral of this anecdote to the prejudice of their neighbours; but we wish they would themselves make better use of their advantages, and prepare good barley-bread, of which they know not the use, instead of depending upon others for their flour and wheat,—for never did we eat such bad bread, made of putrid flour, as we did in Tarma. Perhaps the immediately preceding visitation of an armed force might have been the occasion of so bad a bread-market. But we can recommend their quails, too soon fatigued to escape by flight, and therefore taken by dogs and unarmed Indians; and their pine apples, and coffee from the near Montaña and hacienda of Vitoc, are both very good, the latter excellent.

The centre land of Peru abounds in streams and mountain torrents, subject at certain periods to sudden and tumultuous swells from the bursting of heavy thunder-clouds and continued pouring rain, or pelting hail and thick nocturnal snow-falls, which quickly melt before the shining sun, and fill the rivers to inundation. The consequence of this is, that though the weather may soon after become so fair and showerless as to invite the traveller to proceed on his journey, yet every now and then he may have deep rivers or foaming ravines to cross, where bridges of some sort become indispensable.

When the indigenous race in former times had to pass any river on their route, their engineers supplied, as best they could, the wants of science by that natural sagacity which belongs to their living posterity. When their particular course allowed, they placed their simple bridge near the origin of the stream, or outlet of the lake whence it happened to flow; as we see at the lakes of Lauricocha and Pomacocha. As the waters of the lake can never rise many feet above the usual level, the purpose of a more scientific bridge is served by the Indian method of laying down large stones at short intervals from bank to bank; and, as these stones rise high above the surface of the water, they serve as pillars or supporters, over which are laid transversely large flags, that form an even and safe path for the passage of men and cattle. At the places mentioned, the single stones, too wide apart for stepping-stones, are still to be seen firm in their places; though the transverse flags, probably removed by human hands, are no longer found; at least, at Pomacocha not a vestige of them remains.

A more ingenious bridge of ancient invention, and still used in Peru, is the swing or soga bridge. It is made by ropes twined from the pliable bejuco, twigs of willow, or any other flexible and vegetable filaments; and these are well secured at the ends on the opposite banks of the water: on these, bundles of maguey leaves, broom, or other long-branched and yielding shrubs, are laid crosswise, and bound very closely and firmly by tough ligaments or slips of the maguey leaf (“cabuia”), which answer as well as the best cordage. In this way the bridge is made of sufficient breadth for foot-passengers; and a hand-rope runs along each side of it, by which the traveller can steady himself while walking across. A specimen of this sort is the soga bridge of modern Huanuco. At Oroya also, over the river Jauja, is a very strong one of this kind for cargo-mules to cross upon. The ropes, or rather cables, extending from bank to bank, are made of bullock’s hide; and the cross-bars, bound down with thongs, are of squared pieces of wood, and broad enough to allow the animals to pass with confidence. As this bridge is kept up at unusual expense, and situated on the post-road to the interior, we paid toll at it for passing our saddle-beasts. The rope or swing-bridge is very convenient where the river is too broad to be spanned by any trees to be found in the neighbourhood; but where the stream is not much too wide to be crossed by long trees and beams, of which the temperate altitudes afford appropriate materials in the wood known by the name of perijil or roble, the natives manage to form a strong and pretty durable bridge, by constructing a large and massy stone breast-work on each side the water. In these bulwarks they fix strong timbers, which are made to project over the stream as far as may be required, while the larger portion of the same timbers is covered by a heavy weight of stones and earth: a tree of ordinary length is found sufficient to overlay the centre of the water; as, thus placed, it rests its ends on the projecting timbers already well secured in the midst of the masonry at the opposite banks. These, the most common of all Peruvian bridges, are constructed and kept in repair by order of the prefect of each department, who issues the same to sub-prefects or governors of provinces; and these again send out the entire community of adjacent villages to work under the direction of their respective alcaldes and regidores.

There yet remains a very curious and portable bridge to be mentioned, now falling into disuse, but of which a specimen may be yet seen at Viroy, on the river Huacar, in the department of Junin: this antique relic is named “Guaro.” It is constructed by extending a single strong lazo from one side of the stream to the other, which is well secured to the trunk of a tree, or any such fixture, on the opposite banks: from this a leathern bag, not unlike in appearance to a canvass draw-bucket used aboard ship, is suspended, so as to run easily on the lazo; the passenger sits in the bag, and slides himself quietly across. Bridges of this description are said to have been exceedingly useful to the Montonera, or irregular patriot troops, during the late war that ended in the separation of Peru from Spain.

Another contrivance for passing lakes and rivers in the Andes is the “balsa,” a very small canoe made of rushes. Its surface is level; and when the paddler and only one passenger steady themselves upon it, the canoe is pressed down into the water to within about an inch or two of its surface,—so, at least, was the only one we had occasion to enter; as, upon a journey during the floods of the wet season, we swam our cattle, and crossed ourselves in a balsa of rushes over the river of San Juan, on the plains of Bombon, near Pasco.

The water-courses of the ancient Peruvians are traced along the chasms of rocks and sides of arid eminences in the vicinity of the coast, and in the dry intermediate glens. These aqueducts sometimes appear marvellously constructed among the most rugged crags, and in some points are raised to an astonishing elevation. They are reared from very slender foundations here and there among the now receding, now approaching, shelves of the rocks and cliffs. These piles of irregular mason-work are fabricated with small and thin stones, or light flags, leaning upon every favourable projection along the steep against the front of which the fabric rises; and all the works thus constructed are so solidly and closely united, that after the lapse of ages, and in the land of earthquakes too, they are still in numberless instances nearly perfect.

One of the most striking of these aqueducts is about eight leagues from Lima, on the low road to Alcacota by Caballeros, on a high rocky acclivity, along the base of which runs the road, close by the winding of the river Chillon or Carabaillo, which descends from the Cordillera, by Obrajillo. It is also very usual in the temperate valleys, where the hills are flanked with soil, and clothed in vegetation, to meet here and there the ruins of small villages with files of successively rising platforms on the hollow side of a hill. These tiers of artificial flats, or gardens, are generally only a few yards in breadth; but in length greater or less, in proportion to the dimensions of the semi-circular sweep of the recess capable of cultivation.

In rearing up and constructing these gardens the one above the other, like the pews in the gallery of a church or boxes in a theatre, the ancient Indian must have begun his work by erecting a stone wall on the lower part of the slope, or more even ground, that formed the base of the series; and, as it was in process of rising to the desired height, the earth must have been scraped down from the side of the acclivity, to fill up the space thus partitioned off into a level bank or platform: then, behind this first level was raised another stony partition, and more earth again scraped down; and so on successively, till the uppermost and last tier of these little and tasteful gardens was completed.[24]

By such means these industrious natives always preserved deep soil, which they might dig up and turn over at pleasure, bringing a new surface of earth to yield a new crop without necessity of manure; and by the same contrivance they preserved from the washings of the frequent and heavy rains, the treasure of vegetable loam which they thus so laboriously and patiently amassed.

As we descend from the inner regions of the country, and get down among the arid and naked granite mountains near the coast, we see the ruins of Pagan dwellings showing themselves in the crevices of the rocks, where no plant is seen on the waste land, save a few scattered cacti, and no moving creature except the lizard that basks, and the kite that waits its motions, on the crumbling ruins and circumjacent blocks which have been rolled from their original seats on the face of the steep. And as we approach still nearer the capital, where Glen Rimac unfolds its wide and fertile acres of deep alluvial soil, we see that this goodly land, when denied water, puts on a look of desert sterility; but that it only requires irrigation—it needs no manure—to yield productive sugar-cane, and to throw forth choice lucern and Indian corn, that waves above the head of the overseer as he passes on horseback through the fields, superintending labourers.

As we enter these plains, susceptible of indefinite improvement and vast returns, we are everywhere surrounded with the vestiges of antiquity, particularly with the ruins of guacas, that at a distance look like little hills or knolls scattered over the open plains; but we think that they were once used as so many tombs of the Sun-worshippers of the land. In some of these mouldering monuments there are yet to be found internal chambers or sepulchral vaults, entered by very narrow openings; and, from these labyrinths, mummies, cloths of different colours, various domestic utensils, and sacred figures and idols, have been not unfrequently extracted. We have in our possession a neat silver idol in the figure of an Inca, with a llama of the same material and workmanship, procured from a guaca, and presented to us by our friend the Rev. Dr. Don Lucas Pellicer, an eminent and classical Limeño, of whose merits as a scholar and patriotic statesman his country feels justly proud. Many other curious relics of an ancient people are dug out from the same edifices, of which the assiduous Don Mariano Rivero has made the most extensive and interesting collection which is now extant in Peru; and with correct drawings and descriptions of these he has, for some time back, proposed to favour the public, and to enrich the history of his native country.

The tombs from which relics of this kind are usually taken are not, however, confined to the neighbourhood of Lima, Truxillo, or the coast in general, where their structure of moulded earth and sun-burnt clay is best preserved on account of the absence of rain. Such remains are still seen in some parts of the Sierra; and in speaking of the guacas, (which he conceives to have been temples) in his “Historia natural y moral de las Indias,” vol. ii. p. 128, Acosta tells us that “there were in Cuzco[25] more than four hundred temples of idols, looked upon as sacred earth, and all places were full of mysteries. As they” (the Incas) “went on with their conquests, so they introduced their own guacas and rites into all that state. The Great Being whom they adored was the Viracocha Pachayachic, who is the Creator of the world; and after him the Sun; and thus they said that the Sun, like all the other guacas, received virtue and being from the Creator, and that they were intercessors with him.”

CHAPTER XI.

We left Lima about noon, and rode along a broad and stony road-way by the skirts of the hills, now, in the month of January, dry and sterile masses of soil and rock. To our left extended the fine but neglected valley of Chillon, once highly cultivated, and susceptible of rich improvement. We passed several Indian edifices, constructed of mud cast in huge moulds, which yet in some degree preserve their forms, notwithstanding the ravages committed upon them by time and earthquakes. These always appear above the level of irrigated land, as if intended wisely to avoid the reach of marsh effluvia, so eminently pernicious to the health of the aborigines.

We arrived in good time at Caballeros, distant six leagues from Lima, and slept very soundly, in defiance of the ceaseless barking of dogs, tinkling of mules’ bells, and noisy chattering of negroes. On the morning following we started at an early hour, with a hope that before the sun came out in his strength we might get over the parched ground of the Rio-Seco. From the heights of this hill-bound recess,—so dreary to the eye, gloomy to the imagination, and everywhere strewed with blanched bones and skeletons of wearied, foundered, and famished animals, left here to perish,—there opens suddenly and at once on the traveller’s delighted vision an unexpected view of the irrigated enclosures of the village of Yanga, close to the winding river, whose banks are clothed in vivid verdure, and garnished with trees always shady and evergreen.

From this cheering eminence, in times of the greatest misrule, the traveller can indulge in the delightful feeling of security, as he casts a backward glance over the dark furnace of the Rio Seco, so appropriate for the infernal deeds of banditti for which it is celebrated, and then descends in good spirits to Alcacota and Yanga, congratulating himself on having got safely through a desolate and perilous route, where wayfarers are often plundered and abused, and, when they offer inefficient resistance, sacrificed and murdered.

Two leagues higher than Yanga are the church and ruins of Santa Rosa de Quive, overlooking the only habitable house of this stage, (a sort of tambo or tavern,) by the banks of a mountain torrent which descends to join the main river of the valley, from the high hills on the right, through an intersecting ravine. In the arid season on the upland, it is nearly dried up; but, in the wet, its turbid waters roll with impetuous course, hurling immense round stones along their channel, and sending forth sounds that may be heard by the traveller at the tambo,—telling him he cannot ford the stream till the river lowers, but must cross a bad bridge of pieces of timber with some earth and sticks, laid over a narrow part of the ravine, considerably higher up than the usual ford.

On the opposite side of this stream is Santa Rosa; here are several houses overlooking a small wooded plain between it and the main river, where men are always employed in cutting and charring wood, which is sent to Lima, fourteen leagues distant. The disease which the natives call Uta, a species of cancer well known among chimney-sweeps in England, prevails in this place. We have also seen here the most severe ague, originating at the season when it rains in the hills of the Cordillera (for here it never rains), and when the torrent alluded to inundates, and overspreads with large stones, sand, and slime, the flat ground near its disemboguement.

Four leagues higher up than Santa Rosa is a place called Yaso, once a flourishing hacienda, with a garden where lucumas, pacays, guayavas, and sour oranges are still seen; but where, in place of a flourishing estate, there are now but a few huts of cane and hurdles, partially bedaubed with mud, and furnished with open corridors, under which the muleteers and travellers stretch themselves to sleep: but as lucern is scarce, and as there is no natural pasture, few choose to pass the night here; though many call for a glass of chicha, or country beer made from maize, to quench their thirst while resting here at noon, when the sun is reflected powerfully from the towering and naked hills around.

The river water being always turbid in time of inland rains, the traveller is tempted to drink of a pure and crystalline stream that here issues from the rock; but the good-natured inmate of some wretched hut warns him of his danger, and assures him, if he drink that water, he will be seized with the severe disease called verrugas, or a painful warty eruption, peculiar to certain quebradas; and Yaso, it may be kept in mind, is one of the localities subject to this sore visitation. A couple of leagues still higher up the “quebrada,” or glen, is the resting-place—Huaramayo; a little green spot, with a few neat huts surrounded with plots of lucern, and many rugged fragments from the neighbouring steeps.

We observed that one of these humble dwellings, made of mud, cane, and wicker, was thatched with a sort of living lichen; a simple style of architecture, which of itself tells us that here the climate is still dry and warm, and the place sheltered from rude winds or storms.

We have seen the cottager, who occupied the hut immediately at the foot of the arduous ascent which here commences, look with indescribable complacency as we, from his little corridor, gazed up in admiration at beholding the rain pour in torrents a few hundred yards above us, while his own snug retreat was hardly reached by a gentle sprinkling, which a Limenian would call “agua bendita,” or holy water, which imparted softness and salubrity to the air, and gave longevity to the aged inmate of the cottage.

This now bent and year-worn, but still active and lively octogenarian, was in his youth a shoemaker in Lima; and being attacked with hæmoptysis, or spitting of blood, and pronounced incurable by the doctors, he sought for the benefit to be derived from change of climate, and found, after repeated trials, that as often as he returned to Lima his disease of the lungs was renewed, but again removed as often as he arrived at this elfin abode, twenty leagues from the capital. For these good reasons he resolved to settle here, a favoured site where even ague is unknown; and had, when we saw him, already attained a ripe yet energetic old age.

Were this spot a spacious plain like Glen-Rimac, enjoying the climate which it now does, it would be as calm and bright and beauteous as a druidical paradise, and we might even conceive how man might live in such a climate and on such a soil to an antediluvian measure of years.

From Yanga to Huaramayo, the glen through which lies the road to Cerro Pasco by Canta is extremely narrow and confined, except at Santa Rosa, where it is somewhat more open. The way often recedes from, though it is generally in sight of, the bed of the river; and is bound in on each side by lofty and sterile granite mountains, which, on the left side of the river as we ascend, are frequently intersected with narrow, perpendicular veins that arise from the level of the water to the very summit of the mountain, and, from the road, present a ferruginous appearance, suggesting the idea of grand conductors of the electric fluid. It is only by continued irrigation that the few patches and strips of soil, which at this distance here and there relieve the tedium of a rugged way, are compelled to throw forth their vegetable luxuriance.

At Huaramayo the temperature is intermediate between that of Sierra and the coast; and, as in the warm inland valleys in the centre of the Andes, so here, in a region of corresponding benignancy on the western acclivity of the same great mountain pile, we have the tree called molle, or mulli, in abundance along the river’s edge. This tree is much prized as fuel; and the sugar-refiners of the interior use the ashes from it, in preference to those from any other wood, on account of their higher alkaline properties, and consequent efficiency in purifying the cane juice while being boiled down to a proper consistence to be cast in moulds. The Inca tribe, as we learn from Garcilaso de la Vega,[26] made a highly valued and medicinal beer, which some of the Indians of the interior still occasionally prepare, from the clusters of small-grained fruit that hang gracefully and abundantly from this pretty tree. We have said that the climate here corresponds to that of the warm central valleys of the Andes; but though analogous in several respects, yet there is this marked difference, that at Huaramayo, and other headlands like Huaramayo, as, for example, Surco, on the San Mateo route to the Sierra from Lima, there is neither winter nor summer, but one perpetual spring. It does not rain here for several months in the year, as in the more inland vales; but it agrees with them in being out of the sphere of frosts, and exempted from the raw fogs and sultry heat of the coast. At Surco, Huaramayo, and other similar localities in narrow glens extending from the coast to the Cordilleras, the sun appears to rise late and to set early, for it is only for a few hours in the middle of the day that it shines strongly between the perpendicular and lofty hills of the valley; and the mid-day heat arising from the powerful reflection of the sun’s rays on the bare rocks is succeeded by a cool and agreeable evening. Here then the atmospherical currents of mountains and coast meet and neutralize each other,—the extremes of both disappear: and the result is a delicious climate for the convalescent, whose tender organs require a gentle uniform temperature, alike removed from the extremes of heat and cold, dryness and moisture; and he who has the precaution or prudence to keep in the shade while the sun crosses the vale in the middle of the day, may, in truth, enjoy undisturbed all the curative qualities of a delightful and renovating temperature. With this important fact the delicate inhabitants of Lima are perfectly acquainted, and they are accustomed to resort to the cabezadas, or headlands of valleys, where these verge on the joint air of mountains and coast; as, for example, Matucana, the favourite resting-place of phthisical and hæmoptic individuals, who find themselves obliged to retire from the capital, in order to recover health by visiting those celebrated sites of convalescence—Tarma and Jauja.

Close to Huaramayo, and by the old line of road, begin the steep ascents called the Paxaron, because of the number of paroquets always seen about this place. The path along their acclivity is narrow, fatiguing, and precipitous, to very near the village of Obrajillo, a distance of several leagues. On the airy hill-tops, that overlook this way and the ravine below it, are several villages which are only to be approached by a zigzag and arduous track; and hereabouts, if anywhere on the Canta route, are to be seen examples of the terrific in scenery, for those whose eyes are unaccustomed to the native ruggedness of bold and alpine regions. A young gentleman of our acquaintance, who was familiar with nothing but downs and lawns, was affected at the steeps of the Paxaron with a giddiness that, for some time after, disordered his imagination; and we have seen travellers clash at the worst passes with no small risk in the encounter, where the moving party on the outer verge of the declivity was obliged, for want of room, to brush rudely against the other party standing still on the higher and safer side of the road: and here too, when a weak or weary beast trips, the rider is in danger of toppling over the brink; and the want of parapets makes the road all but impracticable in a dark night.

Canta and Obrajillo are situated in the same opening among the mountains: the latter is entirely the residence of muleteers, whose strong and active women share in the labours of the field; while Canta, on an eminence, is a provincial town, and the seat of a governorship.

The village of Obrajillo is built in a sort of irregular hollow near the bed of a small river, surrounded by arable hills receding and expanding as they rise towards the loftier summits, and therefore affording better ventilation than is to be found in any part of the valley between this and Yanga.

From Yanga to Huaramayo, the hills, as we formerly stated, are doomed to perpetual sterility, and are all unacquainted with the genial influence of dew or rain; but across the summits of the Paxaron we meet with footsteps of that plentiful herbage, with which, at Canta and Obrajillo, the straths and steeps are richly covered.

As Canta is considered a sort of hospital for the ailing people from Lima, it may be proper to remark, that in a medical point of view, it is invested with a great deal of interest, and that it is built on a hill whose base skirts the village of Obrajillo; while, from the plaza of the lower village to the higher town, the ascent is no more than about thirty minutes’ walk. Canta, however, is considered to enjoy a far purer air than Obrajillo; and, as it is only twenty-five leagues from the capital, the hectic, phthisical, and slowly convalescent Limenians, are wont to prefer this to remoter districts. By the people of Obrajillo and Canta, alfalfa, or lucern, is everywhere cultivated near the river and in their little enclosures, and the surrounding hills are covered with pasture: the lower declivities and gentle slopes produce good crops of wheat, beans, potatoes, maize, &c.

Here the culen is one of the most common shrubs, and the natives make a tea of its leaves which is deemed an excellent stomachic. During the wet season flowers and flowering shrubs are spread abroad with liberal profusion; but the trees are too few to supply the wants of the inhabitants, whose houses are therefore constructed at great trouble; being obliged to convey timber from distant places and deep ravines. The stone or adobe walls and thatched roofs of the small villages or pueblos of the Sierra characterize, with only one exception, the buildings of Obrajillo. The dwelling-houses are employed for stowing potatoes, maize, and whatever eatables the residents may be blessed with; and, when the family retire to rest, most of them lie down on sheep-skins wherever they can find room in their disorderly apartments. We need hardly observe that every traveller on these roads must carry with him his own blanket or ponchos to repose on at night.

At Obrajillo there are in all about sixty families; and we saw a maudlin school-master among them with only six pupils, whom he taught, sub Jove, in an open corral.[27] He was looked upon as a savant by the villagers, some of whom found him useful in drawing up their accounts; and we observed that he spoke about the zoology of Aristotle when a friend of ours displayed his more practical zeal and science in collecting and preserving specimens of ornithology, in search of which he frequently waded the river, gun in hand; and a pretty sight it was to see the delicately plumaged diving ducks exhibit wonderful agility, in passing the most foaming rapids. This village of arrieros, or muleteers, is about half-way between Lima and that great source of mineral wealth the Cerro Pasco. From the capital to the Cerro a rider on a good traveller will arrive in four days without injury to himself or beast, and this is considered good work; but we have known the journey from the Cerro to Lima performed in about fifty hours: this again is a work of over-exertion for the man, who is very likely to incapacitate one or perhaps two animals in the undertaking. It may be said, in general, that on a rough and hilly road a league an hour is a fair rate of travelling for a fresh beast on any ordinary journey in the interior of Peru.

The traveller cannot have any dealing with the muleteers without discovering that he is entirely in their power; and that they will furnish him no cattle for his journey, unless he pay them money on account, or “adelantado,” beforehand. Of course he will have to advance some part of the mule-hire before he can budge on another man’s beast; but he should not be ignorant of the Peruvian rule on such occasions, which is, to suspect every man to be a cheat till very certain of the contrary,—a rule which is entirely indispensable. Acting upon the opposite English precept,—to believe every man honest till we find him a rogue,—we were once cheated by the military commandant of Junin, who, being paid “adelantado” for two beasts for the next morning’s journey, furnished one of them with only three legs, the fourth being so contracted that it could not reach the ground. He maintained—and, as he was the first authority in the place, he did so successfully—that as he only agreed to provide two beasts, without respect to quality, he would neither replace the lame nag, nor return our dollars.

The arrieros with cargoes usually take nine or ten days, and sometimes more, from Lima to Pasco, as they make short stages, consulting the ease of their cattle and convenience of lucern or pasture; and at Obrajillo they commonly rest a day at least, to refresh or perhaps relay some of their cattle, before they proceed to brave the toils of the Cordillera. From Obrajillo to Culluai, a small village near the foot of the Cordillera, there are three leagues; and the road leads through a rock-bound passage by the course of a river with a rugged bottom and ruffled stream. There are one or two bad passes to be surmounted in this part of the journey, from the summit of one of which a panting pony laden with part of our baggage once fell over, and broke his neck in the fall. This narrow quebrada or break, is not destitute of interest to the botanist; as in the rainy season, amongst the interspaces of the stones and crags, flowering shrubs of considerable beauty and variety present themselves: indeed, the highest Cordillera entrances are not without their hardy flowers amid the shelves of the rocks. We may remark that, between the cliffs in the neighbourhood of Culluai, may be seen samples of those tiers of gardens, built up one above the other on the face of the acclivity, to which we alluded in our preceding chapter, “on the general features of the Sierra,” as surviving proofs of the industry of the ancient Peruvians.

At this same altitude many susceptible persons begin to feel inconvenience from the rarefaction of the atmosphere, and from want of provision for the stomach, if they happen not to have their own alforjas, or saddle-bags, properly provided with necessaries for the journey. It is only in the puna and table-lands that meat is sure to be had, with, perhaps, potatoes and cancha or toasted maize; but, should the traveller ask for any thing else, he is told “Manam cancha”—there is none.

Between Culluai on one side, and Casacancha, an estancia with a mean hut or two, on the other side of the Cordillera, the distance is five leagues; and about a league or more from Culluai we begin to ascend by the Viuda, or Widow, a towering mountain that stands out as it were apart from the other great masses that at this point group together to form a portion of the great Western Cordillera: and it may be sometimes convenient to know, that on the right-hand side of the Viuda, as we ascend the road that winds round its flank, there is concealed in a recess close to the line of snow the Indian hamlet of Yantac.[28] Before the arriero attempts to ascend the Cordillera, he anoints, as we have seen him do, his cattle over the eyes and on the forehead with an unguent made of tallow, garlic, and wild marjoram, as a preventive against what he calls the veta; attributing the effects of atmospherical rarefaction to a subterraneous veta, or vein of a noxious ore or metal, which, he believes, diffuses in the air of the cold summits and heights its mephitic and poisonous particles.

The Cordillera crossed at noon, and in dry weather, is a grand sight. When we first crossed it the sun was out in full blaze; and, though the mountains of snow lay on every side of our way, we felt quite warm, but we observed that in the shade the cold was very chilling.

It was to us peculiarly exhilarating to gaze on so many snowy monuments reflected in all their sublimity from the green waters of the lakes beneath, thickly thronged with sportive ducks and cormorants. These reservoirs of rain and melted snow, which here and there challenge the traveller’s admiration, are like so many appropriate mirrors, successively disclosed to the eye among the concavities and basins that separate the majestic heads of the hoary Andes.

In a neighbouring and far grander part of the Cordillera, to which on another occasion we clambered by a narrow, rocky, and steep path, we were caught in a sudden fall of thick mist, which at once unrolled its folds, and threw over the broad light of a clear and frosty morning the dark obscurity of night. This transition was accompanied by no thunder or lightning, or sensible commotion of any kind; and after the darkness continued a few minutes, on looking upwards towards the firmament a scantling of rays began to shoot from among the clouds, and a certain though ill-defined body of light could be distinguished as the centre whence those rays seemed to emanate, when, in an instant after, the peak of a mountain—a crystallized pyramid of snow—glistened to view, and shone in the fullest blaze of brilliancy. With such celerity did the cloudy curtain drop and vanish on the face of the deep dark lake of Pomacocha, that the whole scene appeared but as a vision of enchantment.

But to return: we safely crossed the last rib of the Cordillera, and descended into the plain of Casacancha, where we did not stop, but pressed forward three leagues beyond this common halting-place to take up our night’s quarters at Palcomayo, another common stage or resting-place for travellers on this unprovided though much frequented thoroughfare.

But we had not left Casacancha far behind, when one of our fellow-travellers experienced the most distressing headache: his face became turgid, the temporal arteries throbbed with violence, the respiration was difficult, and it seemed to him as if the chest was too narrow for its contents. The other gentleman complained less; it was only a vexatious headache that disturbed him, but his eyes were blood-shot. The writer was still differently affected from either of his fellow-travellers. His headache was moderate; but his extremities soon became quite cold as the sun declined; the skin shrank, and then came on a sense of sickness and oppression about the stomach and heart, with a short, hurried, and panting respiration. His kind associates on this occasion forgot their own ailments in attending to his more urgent wants. They had him carefully wrapped in warm sheep-skins, which formed the usual bedding of the poor Indian family within, and renovated his strength by a cordial basin of hot tea. In this manner, and immersed at the time in the pungent smoke that filled the whole hut, the natural warmth of the extremities and surface was soon restored, so that he became comparatively easy, and passed a better night than either of his two obliging friends.

The servant intrusted with the cargo-mule dropped behind; and not being acquainted with the route, or able to keep sight of us, he went off the road, wandered into a neighbouring valley, Caraguacayan, and did not appear till morning. The gentlemen alluded to had, therefore, to shift for the night as less provided travellers usually do. Their alforjas (saddle-bags) served them as pillows, their pellons and saddle-cloths for beds, and their ponchos as their best covering. They thus lay cooped up on the floor of a dirty little hovel, too small to allow them to stretch their limbs without risk of burning their toes in the hot ashes around the fire-place. The sharp wind pierced through a hundred crevices of the rude wall, and was ill excluded from the low and narrow door-way by a tattered sheep-skin fitted with thongs into a hurdle-frame.

Restless, chirping guinea-pigs—constant inmates of every wretched hut,—persevered during the early part of the night in a bold attack on our bread magazines; pulling at our wallets, placed under our heads, and nibbling at their contents with a degree of boldness and fearlessness which we believe hunger only could inspire. These assailants had scarcely left us to repose in the silence of night, when the wakeful cock from a chink in the wall (originally occupied by an image or household saint) began his repeated crowing at unmeasured periods till well on towards grey morning, when all were in motion: the shepherd rounded his flock, guarded all night against the hostility of the fox and other enemies by the faithful dogs inseparable from the sheep; the muleteer shook himself in his poncho, and went to collect his mules; and the housewife left her sheep and llama-skin bed, and commenced her daily task of boiling the caldo, or soup, for breakfast, and smoking her guests from their uneasy couch.

With so many incitements to bestir ourselves, we were glad to turn out and breathe the fresh air, while things were getting ready for our departure on a fresh day’s journey, with only a headache left for our common annoyance.

The writer had frequent occasion afterwards to cross this same part of the Cordillera, and, profiting by his first lesson, he took care always to start early in the morning on his day’s journey, so as to arrive early in the evening at his quarters for the night. He got refreshment, and turned into bed as soon as possible after his arrival; and took care that he slept warm and dry. By thus avoiding cold and wet, which check perspiration and overload the deep-seated blood-vessels, he ever after on this route avoided the Cordillera sickness.

More than once we have witnessed the most affecting scenes of moaning and suffering, without the additional misery of the veta, when some wet and cold traveller arrived at Casacancha[29] at a late hour, and threw down as his couch his already half-soaked pellon on a damp mud floor, or earthen bench, and covered himself up for the night with his drenched ponchos. In the morning, a traveller so circumstanced may find his ponchos half-frozen over him; and when he arises, and looks out, he often sees the plain covered with snow which has locked up the herbage from the reach of the shivering cattle that stand fettered on the plain.

On these roads, especially at a season when there is reason to expect foul weather, it is best that the traveller should make use of a beast hired of the arriero, who is far more likely to take care of his own mule than of one belonging to another owner, and men are not always to be had to watch cattle let loose in these high pastures at night. The cold is almost sure to scare homeward any animal not seasoned to it; so that, if the cattle be left to themselves, a traveller in the morning may be disappointed by their escape, and unable to proceed on his journey. The arrieros usually encamp for the night wherever it best suits their cattle in the “puna,” near the huts of Casacancha or Palcomayo, and are so accustomed to it that they lie and slumber sweetly we will not say, but soundly enough, among bits of sheep-skin and jerga, or woollen sweating-cloths used to protect the backs and shoulders of the cattle, under whose “aparejos,” or pads, placed standing on the ground, they creep in and find shelter for the night; but in such lodgings no one of acute olfactory nerves could possibly be induced to remain for a minute.

From Palcomayo to Cerro Pasco is a roughly computed distance of fourteen or fifteen leagues, over hilly and frigid pasture-grounds, named “puna;” or over “pampas,” like the plains of Bombon, through part of which the road passes. This journey can rarely be performed in one day without inconvenience to man and beast, and therefore it is usually divided; and the traveller may put up at the village of Hualliay, or the hacienda of Diezmo,—each of these places being about seven leagues from Cerro Pasco, and separated from one another by a range of low hills, and some very remarkable-looking rocks, near the entrance into the table-land of Bombon, which are usually covered with cattle and fleecy flocks.

The higher, and, it is said, the shorter route from Palcomayo, is that by Hualliay, but it is fenny, and only practicable in the dry season; the other route by Diezmo, though somewhat longer, is the safest and best, and is usually followed by the arriero. By either direction, rivers are to be passed, deep and dark in times of flood. By the Hualliay way the ride is rendered interesting on account of the frequently-heard whistle of the vicuña, keeping watch over his fellows and giving warning of the traveller’s approach, when the whole herd leave their pasturage and bound away to more inaccessible heights. Geese, too, are very numerous; and there is a lake to be passed which is the favourite resort of the elegant flamingos. To see a flock of them upon wing is a magnificent sight.

FOOTNOTES

The most frequented route between Lima and Pasco is that which we have described in the foregoing chapter; but, before we offer any particular account of Cerro Pasco, we may hastily run over the road which is sometimes taken from this place to the capital during the heavy falls of the periodical rains in the inland mountains, when several of the rivers on the road by Canta are deep and dangerous rapids. This route across a pass of the Cordillera at Tucto, near Yauli, is occasionally preferred, as being shorter than the post-road by Tarma.

The traveller, who starts at an early hour from Cerro Pasco, passes by the villages of Old Pasco and Carhuamayo, and arrives in good time at the village of Junin, or Reyes. The ride is mostly by the lake of Chinchaycocha, and on pampa or nearly level ground. From Junin, he, on his second day’s journey, which is only counted as seven leagues, traverses the spacious plain of the same name, so justly memorable in the annals of South American independence, till he reaches that swampy ground, and crosses the very defile, where, in the year 1824, the Patriots were charged by the Spanish cavalry; and now, leaving this field of glory behind, he crosses to Huaypacha along a hilly pastoral district, with scarcely any regular footpath,—a circumstance which often renders a guide necessary. The silver ore of Huaypacha is too poor in the present day to allow its mines to be worked with spirit. Here the principal metalliferous works are on the mine estate of Olevegoya and the well-informed Don Miguel Otero; where also a considerable portion of alcaser, or green barley, is raised as fodder for the cattle employed at the works. The entrance into Huaypacha is highly picturesque, from the striking configuration of the limestone rocks in which the silver is deposited, and which overhang and everywhere surround this neat mining village.

From Huaypacha we cross the river Jauja, over a soga-bridge of the same sort of materials with another at Oroya formerly described.[30] The next day’s ride, of about the same length with the preceding, is made over hilly pasture-ground to Tucto by Pucara,—the latter place, now in ruins, being once a famous mining establishment belonging to Don Pedro Arriarte, the great miner of Peru. At Tucto several Indian huts, and some of them of ridiculously small dimensions, are to be seen near the road; but lower down, and situated near a lake at the base of the Cordillera, is a mining estate in good order, though its mines in these latter times have proved ruinous to the miner. The soil around this estate is of a yellowish tint, and is said to abound in gold (a gold mine being also close to the house); and the stones by the road-side are, in numerous instances, covered with crusts of iron pyrites, which impart to them a beautiful appearance, such as, in the imagination of many unacquainted with mineralogy, may serve to give a very flattering idea of the golden treasure of this place.

On the heights of Tucto, to the extent of about half a league along the Cordillera, the surrounding rocks appear like vast masses of rusty iron, which, however, when a specimen is taken up and broken, presents the character of porphyry; but, as we proceed onward towards the summit of the Cordillera, no rocks are to be seen on the acclivity along which we travel, except we look high up, where, in form of mouldering projections, they rise amidst the débris which covers this part of the Cordillera down to the verge of the lakes beneath. The mule-road is a sort of track across the flank of this mass of loose and shuffling fragments, which consist of porphyry, and extend a considerable way towards Antacona, or the ruins of a mining village so called, on the very highest ridge of this mountain-pass. From the extent of the vestiges of industry still remaining, and the ruins of human dwellings seen among the weather-beaten cliffs, we may infer that these mines, like many others, abandoned for want of proper hydraulic machinery, at one time yielded useful metals and rich returns. On the Antacona side of the pass there is no appearance of permanent snow, for here, as on the plains, though it fall, it soon melts away; but just opposite, parallel to the line of road, and only separated by a marshy hollow in which several little lakes are contained, there are mountains or summits perpetually covered with snow of great depth, and the marsh and lakes just mentioned are supplied by rills which descend from the snow. At the mouths of the mines of Antacona, which are interspersed among rocks of porphyry or porphyritic green-stone, a great quantity of rubbish, extracted at a remote period from under ground, is to be seen. Among this rubbish there appears a large quantity of iron pyrites with quartz, and there is also a considerable quantity of loose calcareous matter separated from the ore by partial decomposition. We may mention that the famous mine of Alpamina, wrought in the present day in this vicinity, is embedded in a matrix of limestone.

Having descended some way from the cross on the highest point of the pass of Antacona, the surrounding rock (probably a variety of porphyry) has a reddish appearance, and is continued for a considerable distance to the village of Casapalca; and the soil also, at this part of the way, is of the same colour with the rock. We may likewise remark, that about the road-side, and in the river or mountain-stream, which is derived from the contribution of the numberless rivulets issuing from the heights, we see for the distance of about two leagues numerous large and small pudding-stones of the same reddish appearance.

Casapalca, distant by common reckoning two long leagues from Tucto, is now considered as a village or pueblo, though it appears to have been originally merely a mining establishment. Here the attention is arrested by a pretty cascade, which, making a great perpendicular descent, is received into the interior of a jutting rock; and, after a subterranean passage of some extent, the concealed waters reappear, and in a gentle stream descend to join the river. From the foot of the Cordillera to Casapalca the llama thrives on the pasture, which it appears to find sweetest within a short distance of the snow-line.

From Casapalca to the next village below it, called Pomacancha or Chicle, there are two leagues of good road; and here green barley may be sometimes had to feed the hungry cattle, that are often nearly famished by the time they have arrived this far, after having crossed the Cordillera.

From Chicle to San Mateo, a distance of three leagues, there are two roads,—one by a famous steep or cuesta, and the other through a picturesque but rugged ravine along the windings of the river,—both of which we took notice of in describing the general features of the Sierra. San Mateo is a muleteer village like that of Obrajillo already described, and very much resembles it in climate and productions, though the temperature of the air may be a little colder here than at Obrajillo.

In crossing by the high mountain-path from Chicle to San Mateo, we observed that where the ascent commences on the higher side, or that nearest the Cordillera, the rock at the base of the mountain consists of porphyry; but, as we ascend the great cuesta, the precipice assumes the character of porphyritic green-stone. At the base of the descent on the lower, or San Mateo side of the mountain, there is by the road-side a projection of rock which has the appearance of mica-slate, but of which none of our travellers took up a specimen; as by this time the day was far gone, and both men and cattle were fatigued, and anxious to reach the lodgings for the night in time to provide convenient accommodation.

From San Mateo to the next stage, or the village of San Juan de Matucana, the distance is four very long leagues, mostly through a narrow and rock-bound ravine.

About a quarter of a league below San Mateo, green-stone rock discovers itself by the way-side; and, soon after we pass this crag, we cross the first of three bridges that are thrown over the river within the distance of little more than half a league between the first and last, on account of the narrowness of the ravine, that sometimes on the one side, sometimes on the other, hardly leaves space for a mule-road. Before crossing, in our descent, the first bridge, the rock is of limestone; but, on having at this place passed the water to the opposite side, the rock which presents itself is trap, and it continues nearly all the way from the first to the third or lowest bridge, where we meet with quartz, rising in very perpendicular and lofty masses. The rafters of the bridge rest on a projecting part of this towering cliff on the one side, and on the other on a corresponding projection of a formidable hill of porphyry opposed to it.

The next variety of rock is one of trap formation; it appears about half-way between San Mateo and Matucana, and throws off a great quantity of fragments of a slaty appearance. On the lower side it is flanked by a hill of porphyritic green-stone, which continues to within half a league of Matucana. This mass also throws off an immense quantity of débris. The porphyritic green-stone is followed by trachyte porphyry, the rock of which commences a short way above the village of Matucana, or San Juan de Matucana; but, before the junction of these rocks takes place, the road-way is intersected by a wedge or angle composed of syenetic green-stone, or porphyry with actynolite.

Having left Matucana (which is a considerable village enjoying a mild atmosphere, with some open ground around it,) for Surco, two or three leagues lower down, porphyry continues all the distance between these two villages. It throws off large fragments or masses, that nearly block up the road and bed of the river.

Surco is a small village, which possesses the temperature of Yaso on the Canta road; and, like it, is notorious for its waters producing the disease called verrugas, or warty excrescences. From Surco to a league and a half, or thereabouts, below it, we have trachyte porphyry; and, as we ride along, it becomes gradually coarser-grained, till each grain at length appears as large as a hazel-nut. It is succeeded by felspar porphyry, which extends along the side of the ravine in which we travel to the extent of about two leagues and a half, or a league below the village called Cocachacra, situated three leagues lower down the river or ravine than Surco. Cocachacra, within twelve leagues of the capital, is surrounded by fruit-trees; and here the traveller may recline at his ease in the grateful shade, while refreshment may be procured for man and beast.

From one league below Cocachacra we have syenite extending the distance of half a league by our way. It is followed by syenetic granite, and continues for some distance with a varying aspect, till it runs gradually into the coarse granite, which also appears in large loose blocks heaped on the face of the naked mountains between Saint Ana and Chaclacayo as we enter the headland of the Vale of Rimac.

The above-named villages of Chaclacayo (six leagues from the city), Cocachacra, Surco, Matucana, and San Mateo, afford successive stages, and gradations of changes of air and climate to invalids from Lima, who are too enfeebled, or otherwise find it not convenient, to proceed beyond San Mateo, or to cross the Cordillera by Yauli for Tarma, nineteen leagues to the north-east of San Mateo.

END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.

LONDON:
PRINTED BY SAMUEL BENTLEY,
Dorset Street, Fleet Street.