| By Author | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Title | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Language |
|
Download this book: [ ASCII ] Look for this book on Amazon Tweet |
Title: Peru as It Is, Volume II (of 2) - A Residence in Lima, and Other Parts of the Peruvian Republic, Comprising an Account of the Social and Physical Features of That Country
Author: Smith, Archibald
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.
*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Peru as It Is, Volume II (of 2) - A Residence in Lima, and Other Parts of the Peruvian Republic, Comprising an Account of the Social and Physical Features of That Country" ***
available by HathiTrust Digital Library (https://www.hathitrust.org/)
Note: Images of the original pages are available through
HathiTrust Digital Library. See
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=yale.39002088372710
PERU AS IT IS:
A RESIDENCE IN LIMA,
AND OTHER PARTS OF THE PERUVIAN REPUBLIC,
COMPRISING
AN ACCOUNT OF THE SOCIAL AND PHYSICAL FEATURES
OF THAT COUNTRY.
BY ARCHIBALD SMITH, M.D.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET,
Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty.
1839.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY SAMUEL BENTLEY,
Dorset Street, Fleet Street.
CONTENTS OF THE SECOND VOLUME.
CHAPTER I.
Site, population, and climate of Cerro Pasco.—Houses.—Coal,
and other kinds of fuel.—Timber for use of
the mines, &c.—Where brought from.—Fruit and
provisions.—Mines.—Mantadas.—Boliches.—Habilitador.—Mint.
—Returns of the mines.—Banks of Rescate.—Pasco foundery. Page 1
CHAPTER II.
Descent from Pasco to Huanuco.—Succession of
works for grinding and amalgamating silver
ore.—Quinoa.—Cajamarquilla.—Huariaca.—San Rafael.—Ambo.—Vale
of Huanuco; its beauties and advantages.—State of agriculture
in this vale, and traffic with Pasco.—The College named La
Virtud Peruana.—Steam navigation on the river Huallaga, and
civilization of the wild Indians of the Montaña.—Natural
productions of the Montaña. 28
CHAPTER III.
The Department of Junin.—The river Marañon.—General
sketch of the form of internal Government of
Peru.—Particular account of the Prefectorate or Department
of Junin.—Mines.—Agriculture.—Manufactures.—Public
Instruction.—Hospitals and Charitable
Asylums.—Vaccination.—Junta of Health.—Public
Baths.—Police.—Pantheons.—Roads.—Posts.—Public Treasury at
Pasco.—Administration of Justice.—National Militia. 65
CHAPTER IV.
Missionary College of Ocopa.—Its foundation, utility, downfall,
and decree for its restoration.—Introduction of Christianity
along the rivers Marañon, Huallaga, and Ucayali, &c. by the
Jesuits and Franciscans.—Letter from Friar Manuel Plaza, the
last great missionary of Ocopa, to the prefect of Junin. 113
CHAPTER V.
Christianized Indians of the Interior.—Their condition and
character.—Hardships imposed on them.—Desire of revenge. 143
CHAPTER VI.
War of Independence.—Unsettled state of the country
at the close of 1835 and early in 1836.—Gamarra’s
Government.—Insurrections.—Guerilla and Freebooters.—Foreign
Marines.—Lima invaded from the castles of Callao, under
command of Solar.—Orbegoso enters Lima.—Castles of Callao
taken by assault.—Battle of Socabaya.—Salaverry taken
prisoner.—Execution.—Public tranquillity hoped for under the
protection of Santa-Cruz. 169
CHAPTER VII.
On Climate and Disease.—Panama, Guayaquil, Peru, and Chile. 196
APPENDIX.
On the Zoology of Western Peru 237
Geognostic description of the country in the environs of
Arequipa, with an Analysis of the Mineral Waters in the
vicinity of the same city 266
Steam Navigation 286
Ecclesiastical Jubilee 291
Adieu to Lima 303
ERRATA.
Page 13, line 9, _for_ polv_e_rilla and ma_ssis_a _read_ polv_o_rilla
and ma_ciz_a.
128, ” 17, and in all other instances, _for_ Pozu_r_o _read_
Pozu_z_o.
187, ” 2, _for_ reali_s_e _read_ reali_z_e.
239, ” 6, _for_ the aborigines _read_ those.
Transcriber’s Note: The errata have been corrected but otherwise the
original spelling (in both English and Spanish) has been preserved.
PERU AS IT IS.
CHAPTER I.
Site, population, and climate of Cerro
Pasco.—Houses.—Coal, and other kinds of fuel.—Timber
for use of the mines, &c.—Where brought from.—Fruit and
provisions.—Mines.—Mantadas.—Boliches.—Habilitador.—Mint.—Returns
of the mines.—Banks of Rescate.—Pasco foundery.
The town of Cerro Pasco, about fourteen thousand feet above the level of
the sea, has its site in an irregular hollow on the northern side of a
group of small hills, which commence at Old Pasco on the north-east limit
of the high table-land of Bombon.
Cerro Pasco is thus situated at nearly equal distances, or about
twenty leagues, from Tarma on the south and Huanaco on the north,
both after their kind fertile and productive. It has the fine lake
of Chinchaycocha, near old Pasco on its south; and, on the north, the
outskirts of the town almost reach to a funnel-mouthed gullet which leads
with a rapid descent to the village of Quinoa, three leagues distant. Its
eastern and western aspects are bounded in the view by the respective
ridges of the eastern and western Cordillera; and the intervening spaces
between this bed of Peruvian treasure, and the stupendous barriers
presented by these commanding summits, forming a grand amphitheatre,
are enlivened throughout much of their extent by the innumerable herds
of sheep and folds of cattle that roam and flourish upon them. Here and
there are seen groups of the tame llama and shy vicuña; whilst the whole
landscape is variegated with lakes, rivulets, and marshes, whose surfaces
are ever rippled by the fluttering flocks of geese, ducks, snipes,
plovers, water-hens, herons, yanavicas, flamingos, &c. which at their
proper and appropriate seasons animate and adorn this wide expanse. Nor
should we omit to mention that far towards the west, and skirting the
limits of the great plains, are seen from the surrounding heights strange
fragments of rock, as in the neighbourhood of Huallay, that assume to the
distant eye the appearance of dark pine-trees rising under the shade of
the adjacent mountains.
The waters of this mineral district are partly carried off by the famous
Adit of Quiullacocha, and a considerable portion of these naturally
percolate northward into the hollow of Rumillana near to Cerro, from
whence starts the spring Puceoyaco, the source of the river Huallaga.
The population of Cerro Pasco is in a great degree migratory, for it
increases and diminishes according as the mines are highly productive,
or in a state of poverty and inundation for want of proper drainage:
were the drainage perfect, the treasure that might be extracted would
be incalculable. The number of inhabitants is never, perhaps, under
four or five thousand, and it has been known to swell up to thrice this
amount,—the most active hands happily finding accommodation under ground.
When the mines were thus productive, the abode of the master-miner rang
with the clink of hard dollars, as the die was kept in constant motion;
and the fair sex crowded from the more genial vales, and enlivened the
miners’ home with the song, guitar, and dance.
The climate of Cerro Pasco is for nearly one half the year, or from the
end of November to May, exceedingly gloomy and variable. In the course of
a few hours, the wind is often observed to take the round of the compass;
and in the same time it changes from fair to rain, from rain to sleet,
snow, hail, and rain again. The lanes, for streets they merit not to be
termed, are during the greater part of these months wet and miry. The
thermometer of Fahrenheit, during this period, rarely rises above 44° in
the shade, and seldom falls so low as the freezing point.
But during the dry season, which reigns from May to November, it is much
otherwise; and then, though the sun at noon shines forth with great power
in the face of a cloudless canopy, the frosts at night are intense, and
the evenings and the mornings are keenly piercing and cold. In the course
of the month of August the air is so remarkably dry that the nose and
fauces become parched and painful. The writer suffered so much from this
troublesome affection as to find it necessary to seek a more temperate
air a few leagues off, when the ailment disappeared immediately.
The severity of the climate of Cerro Pasco had little to mitigate its
effects in the manner wherein houses were constructed in the time of
the Spaniards. The dwellings are covered with thatch, and this is the
unfortunate cause of frequent and destructive fires breaking out in the
town. To avoid such accidents, one or two houses have been lately covered
with lead.
It was not until the arrival of the Peruvian Mining Company, in December
1825, that the inhabitants were taught how to mitigate the evils of their
inclement home by the construction of chimneys and proper fire-places, as
well as glazed windows; and for the introduction of these comforts to the
dwellings and firesides of the miners we have heard the company blessed,
long after its agents had to forsake those regions of subterranean
wealth. Though this rich district has not the natural advantages of a
favourable climate, yet it possesses that by which its rigour may be
softened and its effects meliorated; it has abundance of coal.
Within five miles or thereabouts of Cerro Pasco, is a coal-mine of
rather inferior quality, from which Captain Hodge, a distinguished miner
from Cornwall, used to supply his customers. The coal burnt at the
steam-engine was conveyed about five or six miles from the coal-mine,
near the pueblo of Rancas, called “La mina de las Maquinas,” and is
of very superior quality. The fuel, however, which is most common in
Cerro Pasco, as well as all over the frigid districts of the Sierra, is
“_champa_” a turf (not peat) cut from the surface of the marsh-land.
Charcoal becomes very expensive; and the large _braseros_ or pans, in
which the rich miners once used to burn it, (though not always with
impunity, because of the deleterious effect of the carbonic acid gas
evolved,) are fortunately out of fashion since the advantages of the
chimneys and grates have become known.
For smelting purposes, at different mining situations in the Sierra, the
ordure of quadrupeds is collected on the plains in the dry season, and
used as fuel with rushes and long grass which grow on the pasture-grounds.
Heavy timber for the use of the mines and mineral haciendas, and lighter
timber for house-building in Cerro Pasco, is dragged a distance of sixty
miles, and over bad and uneven road, by men and oxen, from the woods of
Paucartambo, at the entrance into the Montaña, to the south-east of Pasco.
Fodder is sometimes exceedingly scarce and dear in Cerro Pasco. It
frequently takes six reals, or one dollar (3_s._ or 4_s._), daily, to
feed a mule or horse with “alcaser” or barley-straw cut down when green,
and conducted on beasts’ backs from the small villages in adjoining
glens; and it is therefore customary for those who come to Pasco on
business, and have several mules or horses, to send them away to the
nearest convenient pastures until required to renew their journey.
Indeed, in Cerro Pasco itself are to be seen in the wet season small
patches of barley which never ripens, and is cut down green; but the
quantity grown is too trifling to deserve notice, except in so far as it
goes to show the sort of climate in this locality. Potatoes and “alcaser”
are the principal productions of Quinoa; for, though its pastures are
good, the temperature of the place is too cold to produce maize: but a
league or two lower down, at a village called Cajamarquilla, wheat may be
grown, but in small quantity for want of sufficient arable land. At this
place are numerous little gardens carefully cultivated, whence onions,
cabbages, lettuces, and flowers for the use of churches and chapels, &c.
are taken, and sold in Pasco market-place, which throughout the year
is well supplied with a variety of fruits, plenty of good fresh meat
and other provisions in abundance, from the warm and temperate valleys
beneath, and lakes and plains around the mines.[1]
“No one is ignorant,” says the intelligent and active prefect, Don
Francisco Quiros, in his report to the departmental junta of his
jurisdiction of Junin, assembled in Huanuco in 1833,—“No one is ignorant
that the richest fountain of our national wealth this day is concentrated
in the immense treasures of the mineral of Pasco. Its works, conducted
with intelligence and managed with economy, would be more than enough
to spread abroad abundance in all the republic, enough to draw towards
us the productions of the whole universe, and to increase incalculably
the delights and comforts of life. But the fatality which too often
persecutes what is good, has plunged us in misery. Avaricious hands,
desiring to enrich themselves in a moment, have for years back paralysed
our best exertions; and by the indiscreet liberality of our mineral
statute, ‘ordenanza,’ permitting the labouring miners to be paid in
ore, and thereby violating more and more the principles of subterranean
architecture, it would seem that instead of supporting the ample domes
with solid pillars, pains had been taken to bring them down. There, as in
a sepulchre, our most flattering hopes will be interred, if with a strong
hand abuses so enormous shall not be checked,—if a wholesome severity may
not be able to restrain the scandalous practice of thieving, as well as
the irregular mode of subterranean labour.”
The mine labourer can choose for himself, by the laws of the mineral
district, one of two sorts of payment. He can have four reals, or two
shillings, daily as a fixed hire; or he may choose to retain a certain
proportion of the ore, which he breaks down from the mine and carries,
(panting loudly under his burden, contained in a leathern bag or
_capacho_,) to the surface, where the division takes place by established
measure; and the women, with a pot of chicha in hand, eagerly grasped at
by the overheated and half-exhausted _capachero_ or carrier, commonly
stand by the mouth of the mine to carry home the miner’s share,—a bundle
of ore called “mantada.” A common workman’s daily share of metal may be
worth a great deal of money, or it may be worth little or nothing. When
the former is the case, the mine is said to be in “boya” or “bolla,”
namely, a state of rich production, when the common labourer naturally
insists upon being paid in metal; and again, when the mine does not
produce good ore, or such as pays well, the labourer, who throws away his
all on the pageantry of religious festivals and processions, claims his
four reals per day’s work, and will have no share in his employer’s bad
bargain.
At the mouth of the great mine, called the King’s mine,—“La mina del
Rey,”—which rendered the family of Yjura so famous and so wealthy,—a
labourer has been known in our own day to refuse eighty dollars for his
mantada, which abounded in pieces of polvorilla and maciza, or ore rich
in native and nearly pure silver. Native and massive silver is, however,
necessarily rare, and only occurs in small and scattered portions among
other metals of good quality. The better the quality of the ore, so much
greater is the damage and loss from robbery sustained by the mine and
master miner; and it often happens that the cost of raising the ore,
extracting the silver, paying government and local duties, the repair
of the underground works, supply of salt and quicksilver, together with
all the expense of major-domos, and wear and tear of mining utensils,
loss on cargo-mules and llamas, &c. exceed the whole returns of the mine.
Hence, we have known a most intelligent, active, and distinguished master
miner of Pasco, four or five of whose mines yielded mostly all the rich
ore extracted from that mineral in the years 1827 and 1828, declare that,
after having put about two millions of dollars in circulation from the
produce of these mines, he himself was rather a loser than a gainer,
notwithstanding such abundant returns.
The number of mines at Cerro usually at work since they have fallen
into the hands of the Patriots are comparatively few: though in the
different districts or sections of this place, known under the names
Santa Rosa, Yauricocha, Caya, Yanacancha, Cheupimarca, and Matagente,
there are several hundred well-known mines from which silver has been,
and yet may be, plentifully dug out, provided a perfect drainage should
ever be effected. The mines of late actually productive in Cerro Pasco
may be said generally to amount to about thirty in number, and to be at
work for about eight months in the year. Some of these are of course of
inferior quality; but the metals which, by assay or experiment on the
small scale, only yield six or seven _marcs_ per _cajon_ or box, (the
marc being eight ounces, and the cajon twenty-five mules’ load of ten
arrobes, or two hundred and fifty pounds each,) are found to be worth
the working, provided the ore be not very difficult to extract, either
on account of the character of the vein, or the depth of the workings.
The metals of Santa Rosa, when they yield ten marcs of silver per cajon,
and when quicksilver is at a moderate price, pay the miner better than
richer ores, because they do not tempt the cupidity of the labourers, who
are therefore contented with the fixed sum of four reals wages per day,
instead of the mantadas or bundles of metal already mentioned.
These mantadas are purchased by a class of men called bolicheros, or
owners of boliches. This boliche is, to the common grinding-mills on the
mine-estates or haciendas, what the hand-mill of the Israelites was to
the modern corn-mills moved by machinery: it is a kind of rocking-stone,
placed on the concave surface of a larger stone well accommodated
underneath. Metal, in comparatively small quantities, is ground between
these two stones by a man who, with the help of a long pole, balances
himself on the upper roundish and heavy stone, which by the weight and
motion of his own body he keeps rocking incessantly. The metal, or ore,
thus ground, is the very richest; poor or ordinary ore could not pay on
this small scale: but the ore bought of the labouring miners usually
enriches the bolichero, who, tempted by the prospects of a ready fortune,
does not hesitate to encourage the thieving practices complained of in
the departmental report of our friend the prefect of Junin, himself a
native of Cerro Pasco.
The town of Cerro Pasco—of which the very “adobes,” or unburnt bricks,
partly used in some of the houses, contain silver—is itself so burrowed
under, that one is really in no small danger of inadvertently, and
especially at night, falling into old mines, or rather pits,—sometimes
superficial, sometimes deep and fathomless, and half filled with water.
The mines are irregularly wrought under ground; and the experienced hands
burrow like rabbits through holes not commonly known, and so come at
rich metals by stealth, to be immediately exchanged for dollars at the
bolicheros. The best way to prevent such plunder would be to prohibit
boliches. While this species of robbery goes on, Cerro Pasco, though
removed from the sphere of the earthquakes that infest the coast, is in
risk of being swallowed up by the falling-in of the arches of the mines,
supported on pillars frequently consisting of rich ore. The thieves
pilfer from these pillars, and so weaken the supports of the whole
underground fabric, that now and then entire arches fall in, sometimes
producing a sacrifice of lives or other disastrous consequences.
We see the Pasco miners always in the midst of riches, and always
embarrassed: they are kept in a state of continued tantalization. The
miner, it is true, sometimes has immense and rapid gains, in spite of
rogues and plunderers everywhere about him, at comparatively little
expense of time or money; and this occasional success leads others
to indulge in a hope of similar good fortune, which hurries the
majority of speculators in this channel into pecuniary difficulties:
for, as we have seen, the necessary outlay is often great without any
compensation; and when the capital is too limited, though in the main
the undertaking be a good one, ruin is near. Shopkeepers and dealers in
plata-piña are tempted, by prospects of commercial advantage, to lend
money to the harassed mine-owner to enable him to forward his works,
and to repay the loan in piña[2] at so much per marc. Such a lender
is called “habilitador:” but it unluckily happens for this capitalist
that, by the custom and usage of the miner, the last “habilitador” has
a claim to be first paid, which leads to the worst practical results.
The miner is generally a reckless gambler, who spends money as fast
as it comes to him, not in improving his mines, but in indulging his
vices; and in this manner the interest of the first habilitadors may be
successively postponed to the claims of the most recent, who frequently
is disappointed in his turn; while the difficulties of the miner are not
removed, but merely prolonged, and he is involved in everlasting disputes
and litigation.
The risk, expense, and delay occasioned at all times, and more
particularly in days of civil broil, by the necessity of forwarding
the bars of silver from Pasco to Lima for the purpose of coinage, are
felt as so many real grievances by the miner; and it is known that these
causes, with the desire to avoid the payment of the established duties,
have led to a contraband trade across the by-ways of the mountains to
the coast, which no number of custom-house officers could prevent, even
on the extravagant supposition of their being proof against bribery and
corruption. The evils attendant on the existing arrangements led the
legislature to pass a law for the establishment of a mint at the mines
of Pasco; but this desirable object has not yet been carried into effect
in a proper and efficient manner, though we understood that the prefect
Quiros employed a native tradesman to erect some rude machinery by which
a few hundred dollars were thrown off daily.
An extract from a memoir presented in the year 1832 to the congress
in Lima by Mr. Tudela, the Peruvian minister of “Hacienda” or home
affairs, may give an idea of the returns of the mines. “To animate mining
industry,” says he, “one most essential thing is the convenient supply
of quicksilver, with which our metals are generally extracted from
their ores; because smelting is not suited for the greater number of
these, neither is it used for those ores to the refining of which it is
adapted.[3] The price of the quicksilver determines the profit or loss on
the poorer metals; and neither exemption from duties of _cobos_[4] and
tithes, nor any other protection which the law dispenses to the mining
corporation, compensate for the expense of this article.
“In Huancavelica, Peru possesses one of the richest quicksilver mines
on earth,—a mine which comprehends forty-one hills, examined and found
intersected with veins, of which one part alone, that of Saint Barbara,
called the “Great,” yielded five thousand quintals of quicksilver per
annum for two centuries. It was, therefore, a matter of importance to
inquire if it could be conveniently worked; and it has been found that,
with moderate support and certain arrangements, quicksilver may be
procured at sixty-five dollars per quintal.[5]
“The operations of the mints concur in proving the necessity of banks:
for, granting the mint of Lima has stamped in the last three years
4,902,762 dollars, and the mint at Cuzco, in the years 1829 and 1831,
969,939 dollars, the augmentation of coinage does not correspond to
that which should result from the abolition of the duties of cobos and
tithes since the 26th February 1830, and the increase in the coinage at
Cuzco proceeds from other causes. When these duties” (viz. cobos and
tithes) “were yet exacted, in the Lima mint alone, in the year 1827,
more than 2,700,000 dollars were coined; but in that year, in addition
to the beneficial drainage of the Pasco mines, the contraband trade had
not extended itself as afterwards it did. To diminish the evils produced
by contraband trade in mining places or in their immediate environs,
funds, in addition to banks of ‘Rescate,’ are necessary in the houses of
coinage; with which being provided, neither the holders of bullion shall
be deterred from presenting it because of the delay they experience in
being paid its value, nor, if this delay be shortened, shall the treasury
suffer the severe losses to which it is actually subjected. One hundred
thousand dollars in the Lima mint, and fifty thousand in the mint of
Cuzco, should prove sufficient to meet all difficulties.”
We may remark, that the want of such mint deposits as are alluded to by
Mr. Tudela is one of the principal sources of mistrust in revolutionary
times; as the possessor of bullion will rather run the risk of smuggling,
than the chance either of losing all his capital, or of being long
deprived of its value in hard dollars, if he carries it in the regular
channel to the Lima mint. The banks of Rescate to which Mr. Tudela
refers, now so much desired in Peru, are only funds deposited in certain
situations, and under proper superintendence, for the miner to be thereby
enabled to exchange his piña at a fixed and just value in current money,
by which he is put in possession of dollars as soon as his piña is ready
for the market. And this, we may venture to say, is the only sort of bank
calculated to be of real service to the dissolute miner; as it encourages
his industry, without putting it in his power to outrun his credit with
the bank, or of ruining himself and family, and kindling the worst of
passions in consequence of forfeiting his mines, which would frequently
be the case if these were accepted in security for cash advances, to be
spent probably in feasts, frolics, cards, and dicing, instead of being
applied to the professed purpose of working his mines or improving his
property.
The number of marcs[6] of silver reduced to bars, in the foundery at
Cerro Pasco, from the year 1825 to 1836 inclusive, is, according to the
best information, as follows:—
_Years._ _Marcs._
1825 56,971
1826 163,852
1827 221,707
1828 201,330
1829 82,031
1830 95,265
1831 135,134
1832 219,378
1833 257,669
1834 272,558
1835 246,820
1836 237,840
---------
2,190,555
CHAPTER II.
Descent from Pasco to Huanuco.—Succession of
works for grinding and amalgamating silver
ore.—Quinoa.—Cajamarquilla.—Huariaca.—San Rafael.—Ambo.—Vale
of Huanuco; its beauties and advantages.—State of agriculture
in this vale, and traffic with Pasco.—The College named La
Virtud Peruana.—Steam navigation on the river Huallaga, and
civilization of the wild Indians of the Montaña.—Natural
productions of the Montaña.
Some of the valleys in Peru, like that by Obrajillo and Canta, extend
from the coast to the Cordillera: some are only a few leagues of rapid
descent from the puna or lofty table-land, as Tarma, for example, from
the heights of Junin; but others sink deeply into the bosom of the
central Andes, or dip under the brow of the Montaña, as, for example,
Guarrigancha and Huanuco, of the latter of which we purpose to offer a
more particular account.
Huanuco is not to be confounded with the ancient town called Leon de
Guanuco, of which the remarkable remains are still well worth visiting on
the high pasture-land of Huamalies: for the city now called Huanuco, or,
as some write it, Guanuco, is in a delightful valley, twenty-two leagues
in a north-easterly direction from the mines of Cerro Pasco, with a
descent of about seven thousand feet; thus situated, as nearly as may be,
half-way in respect to altitude between Cerro Pasco and the ocean.
In the first three leagues of our descent from the mines to the vale, we
pass by a number of mills for grinding metal, preparatory to its being
mixed with salt and quicksilver for the purpose of amalgamation. These
are situated in a narrow rocky glen; the rugged road through it lying
often along the bed of the stream that wanders down it, putting a great
many mills successively in motion as it is directed into troughs or
canals leading to the clumsy machinery of the haciendas, to which the
ore is conducted at great trouble and expense, on the backs of mules,
donkeys, and llamas.
From the village of Quinoa, only three leagues from Cerro, and once
celebrated for its gold mine, to the village of Cajamarquilla, two
leagues lower down, the road is furrowed, deep, and miry during the wet
season; but the pasture-grounds are good, and upon these the cattle of
the miners are sent to feed at small expense. From two to three leagues
below Cajamarquilla, of which we took notice in our account of Cerro
Pasco, is Huariaca, a small town with a large plaza, or square, and very
good houses. This town is the centre of a curacy and seat of a governor,
with a climate analogous to that of Obrajillo on the road between Lima
and Cerro, or Cerro Pasco, formerly noticed. Its artificial productions
are also the same as we formerly mentioned, viz. maize, wheat, beans,
potatoes, &c.; but here natural vegetation is more luxuriant, and the
air exceedingly benign: the frosts are seldom so keen as to blight or
wither the parks of lucern, and troublesome heat is unknown. Huariaca is
endeared to the memory of many a Cornish miner, who lost his health in
Cerro Pasco, and at this rendezvous for convalescence rejoiced in the
smiling aspect of nature, and enjoyed the delightful feeling of returning
health. The writer, in common with several of his countrymen, has to
lament the premature death of the curate of this place, Dr. Don Pablo de
Marticurena; whose intelligence, hospitality, and amiable disposition
rendered him an object of love and respect, while his house was the home
of the traveller, and the abode of charity, without distinction of creed
or country. A league below Huariaca, we cross a bridge placed over the
small river of Cono or Pallanchacra, a short distance above which is the
famous tepid mineral well of Cono; to which, as it is in a temperate
little glen, the sick have frequent recourse. On the banks of this stream
we have peaches in perfection and plenty; and as we approach towards
the village of Saint Rafael, a few leagues lower down, we are amused by
looking up at heights topped with Indian hamlets, and at little flats and
declivities under crop of wheat and potatoes, &c. and, near the river,
maize. The temperature of Saint Rafael is delicious, and this locality is
free from any endemic disease.
From Saint Rafael to Ambo is a distance of several leagues of hard road,
sometimes running close to the river’s edge, often running along the
steep, and with its rocky staircases and narrow passes subjected in time
of rains to be blocked up by large stones and small trees, carried down
by the mountain torrents. Where the glen expands towards the hill-tops,
but closes so narrowly below as only to give room for the channel of
the river, we find the road at certain narrows carried along the face
of the rock; and here the craggy projections serve as supporters for
poles or rafters extending along the intervening gaps, and covered with
flags or brushwood laid on and coated with a little earth, thus forming
an extremely awkward and narrow bridgeway suspended over the stream. At
Ambo, nine leagues lower down than Huariaca, the aspect of the country
is changed. Here the loud chirping (for it cannot be called croaking) of
little frogs heard by night—the granadilla in elegant flowering festoons
seen by day on the pacay and lucuma tree, tell the warm and thirsty
traveller that he has come to the land of “guarapo,”[7] where he may
enjoy the cool of the corridor, and cast off the load of his Sierra
ponchos and heavy clothing.
From Ambo to the city of Huanuco we have five leagues of a charming ride;
and from Ambo downwards, the Vale of Huanuco may be said to commence.
In this vale the writer resided for three years. The year is, as usual,
divided into the wet and dry seasons, observing the same periods of
change as we have already noticed to belong to the seasons on the high
Sierra. In this valley, however, snow never falls, except on the summits
of the highest hills; and the thermometer of Fahrenheit is seldom seen to
rise above 72° in the shade of the veranda, or wide-spreading fig-tree.
In the hottest day, when every little stone on the surface of the
newly-turned field glistens in the sunbeams, so as to torment the sight,
the thermometer rises very high on being exposed in the open air to the
direct rays of the sun; but, upon being removed into the shade, it again
falls to a very few degrees above 70°; and scarcely ever throughout
the whole year is it seen to sink under 66° of the night thermometer
placed within doors,—thus manifesting an equability of atmospherical
temperature altogether as extraordinary as it is benignant. So small,
then, is the range of the thermometer in this fine locality, that the
state of the internal circulation of our frame is but little disturbed
by sudden changes induced by vicissitudes of temperature. To the uniform
mildness of its atmosphere it may be principally owing that pulmonary
consumption is as little a disease of this favoured locality as ague;[8]
for we never, during the period of three years that we resided here, had
occasion to know of a single instance in which this disease originated
in the valley; but those who, by residing in other situations, had
their lungs nearly wasted by consumption and spitting of blood, have, in
different parts of this valley, found a temporary asylum which afforded
a prolongation of life when entire restoration to health was physically
impossible. The climate is sometimes complained of as too dry, it being
only during the rainy months that the perspiration commonly becomes
sensible on moderate exertion. During the greater part of the year the
reflected rays of the sun on the sides of the valley would render it
intolerably hot, were it not for the daily breeze that, from about 11
A.M. to 3 P.M. comes with uniform regularity from the Montaña, through
the aperture in the mountains along which the river of Huanuco rolls
towards the Huallaga and great Marañon.
In August and September, no perceptible dew falls; but during these
months, when vegetation among the small neighbouring dales becomes
scanty, the deer often steal in herds to the thickets near the river;
and we have stalked them at midnight in the midst of the fields, without
discovering a trace of moisture on the alfalfa leaf. The nights are
always delightful; and the sky, when it does not rain, is pure, bright,
and beautiful. The hills on the eastern side of the valley are clothed
with pastures, have perennial springs and wood in their dingles and
corries, and are capable of grazing cattle all the year: but opposite
to these, on the western side, the hills, like those of the coast, are
dull arid masses for nine months in the year, only furnishing a sparse
growth of flowering shrubs and weeds on their sides; whilst their
elevated tops alone throw forth a denser crop of sweet herbage, on which
folds of cattle regale themselves in the months of January, February,
and March,—at a season, as we have seen, when the uncultivated heights
near the coast are scorched, and stripped of all vegetation except cacti
and some bulbous plants. But the plains that spread round the base of
the hills and mountains that go to form the Vale of Huanuco, are never
allowed to take upon them the withered face of winter. By the aid of
rivulets from the mountains, sometimes diverted from their natural
channels by art, and carried, by circuitous aqueducts of many miles in
extent, the numerous flats among the recesses of the heights and slopes,
frequently elevated much above the lower plains, are kept ever verdant
and productive, in like manner as the fields and enclosures in the bottom
of the vale are fertilized by canals from the river. The best sugar-cane
comes to maturity in about eighteen months or two years, and yields
several cuttings of after-growth. The lucern or alfalfa, without the aid
of top-dressing, gives six crops annually for an indefinite number of
years; and in some favoured spots it yields a cutting in six weeks, and
therefore gives eight crops yearly. The writer had a plot that yielded,
at this rate, alfalfa of about a yard in height, and in good flower. The
plantain, both long and short, and the richest tuna, or Indian fig, grow
in abundance; the finest pineapples are brought from the neighbouring
Montaña, where vegetation is much more rapid and vigorous than in the
Vale of Huanuco. In this vale, however, the palta and cheremoya mellow on
the branches in their native soil. The maguey, coffee, cotton, and vine,
the pomegranate and orange, the citron, lemon, and lime, &c. flourish
here; and the meanest villager, as well as the humblest lodger under a
cane-roofed shed, inhales with every breath the odours of never-failing
blossoms. As the morning sun gilds the high ridges of this happy valley,
its inhabitants are animated to the daily labours of the field by the
cheerful voice of the prettily-plumaged inmates of their well-shaded
bowers. Such, then, are some of the more prominent beauties and natural
advantages of the Vale of Huanuco: and we may here mention, that the
city of Huanuco is the principal seat of recreation for him who wastes
his strength and frets his temper in the too often delusive pursuit of
wealth in Cerro Pasco, and other inclement mining localities in the
neighbourhood. In spite of their vexations and misfortunes, few can have
invested themselves with a mood so sad or so cynic as not to enjoy and
partake of the enthusiastic glee and antiquated gambols of a carnival
feast in Huanuco.
The agriculture of Huanuco,—though alluring to the eye of the ordinary
traveller, who only glances at its rich and waving fields, enclosed
within tapias or fences of mud, and hedges of the Indian fig, and aloe
or maguey plants,—is in every way defective as a branch of industry. The
fields owe their luxuriance to nature rather than to man, except in the
single advantage of water, which he often directs and supplies to them.
Manure is a thing never thought of; and the ground seldom requires it,
though we see the same spot year after year under crop: but much of the
soil which is considered poor might be rendered fertile, in so favourable
a climate, if the people would only take the trouble of cleaning out
their large cattle-pens once a year; but this would be to diverge from
their accustomed routine, which they dislike to forsake. The implements
of husbandry are of the rudest kind. The plough, which is slight and
single-handed, is constructed merely of wood, without mould-board, which
we have seen a one-handed person manage with perfect dexterity. The
ploughshare is a thick iron blade, only tied when required for use by a
piece of thong, or lasso, on the point of the plough, which divides the
earth very superficially. Where the iron is not at hand, as frequently
happens, we understand that the poor peasant uses, instead, a share made
of hard iron-wood that grows in the Montaña. Harrows they have, properly
speaking, none: if we remember well, they sometimes use, instead, large
clumsy rakes; and we have seen them use a green bough of a tree dragged
over the sown ground, with a weight upon it to make it scratch the soil.
In room of the roller, of which they never experienced the advantage,
they break down the earth in the field intended for cane-plants, after it
has got eight or ten ploughings and cross-ploughings, with the heel of
a short-handled hoe which they call “lampa;” a tool which they use with
great dexterity in weeding the cane-fields and clearing aqueducts. For
smoothing down the clods of earth, we have seen some Indians use a more
antiquated instrument. It consisted of a soft, flat, and round stone,
about the size of a small cheese, which had a hole beaten through its
centre by dint of blows with a harder and pointed stone. To the stone
thus perforated they fixed a long handle, and, as they swung it about,
they did great execution in the work of “cuspiando” or field-levelling.
Lucern or alfalfa is daily cut down, and used green, as scores of cattle
and the working oxen for the plough and sugar-mills are to be fed by
it; yet the scythe is not in use among the great planters, who find it
necessary to keep two or three individuals at the sickle to cut down food
for herds, in the daytime fed on irrigated pastures, but at night fed in
corrals or pens.
Potato-ground they are accustomed to break up on the face of steeps with
deep narrow spades, to which long handles are attached, that afford good
leverage. In the same manner the soil is turned up by those who have
neither plough nor oxen, but who yet sow maize on the temperate flats on
the hill-sides, and in the midst of thickets by mountain streams, where
the soil is usually fertile, and materials for fencing are at hand.
People thus circumstanced make holes in the ground with a sharp-pointed
stick, where they bury the seed secure, that it may not be taken up by
the fowls of the air; and that, when dropped in virgin soil, it may yield
a luxuriant crop and plentiful harvest. The Indian sows the white-grained
maize in preference to the yellow, (morocho,) as he considers that when
toasted it makes the best “cancha,” which the poor Indian everywhere uses
instead of bread; and that when boiled it makes the blandest “mote,”
for so they call the simply boiled maize: it has moreover the credit of
making the most savoury chicha, or beer, which they home-brew whenever
they have a little surplus grain at their command. They also, as we were
given to understand, make a kind of beer from the fermented juice of the
maize-stalks compressed between small rollers of wood moved with the
hand. The usual application of dry maize-leaves and stubble is to feed
cattle, and for this purpose it is considered more fattening than either
alfalfa or sugar-cane tops.
Agi, or pimento, is cultivated around the little Indian houses and
gardens in the Vale of Huanuco; and without this condiment the natives
hardly relish any kind of food.
The sugar-mills in this valley are, the greater number of them, made of
wood, and moved by oxen. On the larger estates small brass rollers are
used; but with a single exception, on the estate of Andaguaylla, where
we were concerned in erecting a water-mill for the purpose of grinding
sugar-cane, the proprietors adhere to the old practice of working with
oxen by day and by night throughout the year, barring accidents, and
feasts or holy-days.
The beautiful hacienda or estate of Quicacan, Colonel Lucar’s, is a
model of industry and method after the fashion of the country; and the
most distinguished family of Echegoyen have, in Colpa-grande, the finest
cane-estate, as far as we know, in the interior of Peru. It extends for
nine or ten miles along the fertile banks of the river, from the city of
Huanuco towards the ascents that lead into the Montaña.
Respecting Huanuco, although the principal city or capital of the
department to which it belongs, we have to observe, that the consumption
of its agricultural produce, as well as its own internal prosperity,
depends on the mineral seat of Cerro Pasco. When the population of
the Cerro rises to ten or twelve thousand, every article of Huanuco
produce is in high demand; but when, from any cause, the mines are not
wrought, or when these are inundated from defective drainage, and the
hands employed in working them are fewer in number, the Huanuqueños and
other neighbouring agriculturists are greatly discouraged or actually
ruined; because, deprived of this outlet for their produce, they cannot
undertake the expense of sending sugar and spirits on mules to the
coast. The consequence is, that they are frequently poor in the midst
of plenty; like the owners of extensive herds of sheep on the high
pasture-lands, whose wool is of little value to them, as it cannot pay
for mule or llama carriage to the coast; and the scanty produce of the
looms of the interior have little estimation, as the ruined “obrages,” or
manufactories, now amply testify. The shuttle is, moreover, nearly put at
rest by the cheaper articles of warm woollen as well as cotton clothing
continually introduced from the stores of our English manufacturers.
A staple article of Huanuco commerce with Cerro Pasco is the coca-leaf,
from their Montaña, only distant about fifteen leagues from the city; an
article of which they have several crops yearly. The indigo growers in
the contiguous Montaña have, we believe, forsaken their enterprise, for
want of funds to proceed with the manufacture of what, from the samples
produced, was considered a good article.
Much of the fruit of the Huanuco orchards is eaten at the tables of
the Pasqueños, or inhabitants of Cerro; and in the convents are made
excellent sweet preserves, which are highly valued, and circulated in
the surrounding country as nice and most welcome presents rather than as
formal articles of commerce.
Several lands formerly belonging to convents are now appropriated as
endowments of the college of Huanuco, named _La Virtud Peruana_, which is
the only school of its kind at present open in the department of Junin.
This temple of Peruvian virtue, for so the Lyceum, which was formerly a
convent, has been emphatically called, was installed in May 1829, under
the rectorship of Doctor Don Gregorio de Cartagena; and the writer would
now desire from his native country to offer to this acute and enlightened
gentleman his grateful acknowledgments for the generous hospitality of
which he was himself the object, when, pilgrim and stranger as he was,
he knocked at the gates of the “Temple of Peruvian Virtue.” Doctor Don
Gregorio de Cartagena, jointly with his distinguished relative Doctor
Don Manuel Antonio de Valdizan, has the honour of being considered the
founder of this college in his native city, as we learn from the speech
of Doctor Don Buena Ventura Lopez, delivered in the college chapel on
the day of installation, and published, with other harangues made on
the same occasion, in the periodical then commenced as the first-fruits
of the Huanuco press, under the very happy title of “The Echo of the
Montaña.”
In the speech of Dr. Lopez, he encourages the rising generation to take
the best advantage of the new path to knowledge, virtue, and honourable
distinction now freely opened to them by the meritorious exertions of
two of the most eminent natives of Huanuco. He exhorts his young hearers
never to forget how much they owe to these patriots and benefactors:
“And you,” says he, “fortunate young men, in possession of advantages
which were denied to your forefathers, let the names of your indulgent
friends Valdizan and Cartagena, coupled with the obligations of this
day, sink deep into your hearts: warmed as they are with feelings of the
purest delight, they will readily receive the generous impression, ay,
and retain it for ever.”
The kind and affable inhabitants of this city in the bosom of the Andes
have their imaginations excited with the hopes of their rising glories,
and their own happy valley is too narrow for their expanding desires.
So full are their literati of the flattering idea that an English
colony on the river Huallaga may extend its industry and enterprise to
the cultivation of the great pampa del Sacramento, that they already
fancy proper depôts and harbours selected, docks prepared, and ships
building from the timber of their own Montaña, to carry them a voyage
of pleasure and profit round the world. They imagine little steamers
up to _Playa-grande_, or even to the falls at Casapi, or the port of
Cuchero on the river Chinchao, within a couple of days’ journey of their
city; and, when their wishes are realized, they calculate that their
now useless and neglected copper mines shall be more precious, and
draw in upon them more wealth than ever did brilliants or diamonds on
their distant neighbours of Brazil. And no wonder that the natives of
this Elysian valley should be overjoyed at such prospects; since their
long-continued communication with the canoe-men of the Huallaga on the
one side, and in former times with those of the missionaries at the port
or settlement of Mayro on the other, familiarise them with the notion
of navigating the Huallaga and Ucayali; while the intervening plains of
Sacramento they consider to be naturally the richest and most capable of
improvement of any in the world. Even the miner of Cerro Pasco finds his
fancy warmed when he reflects on the prospect of a steam navigation on
the Marañon. Don Jose Lago y Lemus, one of the most distinguished of the
veteran miners of Pasco, published in 1831 a pamphlet in illustration of
the advantages that might accrue to the republic from this navigation.
In this pamphlet he endeavours to show that the portions of Peruvian
territory hitherto occupied, and consisting of arid coasts and rugged
mountainous districts, are not to be compared, in point of natural
interest or national importance, with the immense plains and fertile
Montaña or wooded deserts on the eastern frontier; and he manifests a
laudable and patriotic zeal in endeavouring to arouse the attention of
his countrymen to this most momentous subject.
Don Jose expresses himself thus:
“The undersigned, being convinced of the truths he lays before the
public, and at the same time anxiously desiring, in virtue of his
appointment, both the welfare of the department and the province which
he represents, he proposes to the most honourable Junta,” (viz. the
departmental Junta of Junin, assembled in the city of Huanuco,) “a
project of the grandest magnitude, capable of making the entire republic
prosper, and of placing her in the rank and circumstances to compete
with, and be the envy of, the most powerful states in the world. It will
be said truly, that we were not heretofore ignorant of the treasures
and riches of the actual productions in the Montañas of the Peruvian
territory; it is equally certain that the want of hands, capital, and
men of enterprise, have been powerful causes why we were unable to
enjoy these natural advantages. If this be our state of weakness—if its
commencement be traceable to our colonial condition, and that Providence
has reserved the remedy till the epoch of our freedom and an age of
intellectual light, let us make every effort to reap such incalculable
benefits. Commercial relations are those that enlighten the people; by
this powerful magic friendships are acquired, and with the most remote
inhabitants of the globe bonds of brotherhood are established. Let,
then, the grand canal of the Marañon be rendered navigable for steam
vessels; so that, by the diverse and lesser streams that form this great
river, we may procure them entrance to the immediate environs of our
cities, towns, and villages, situated on the banks of the Huallaga.
“Ah, gentlemen! What a sudden and extraordinary emotion this idea excites
in my mind! My imagination already combines the ideas that suggest
themselves respecting this privileged city of Huanuco. Now its spacious
fields are held worthy of higher cultivation and care; its abandoned
streets I see crowded with useful citizens; the banks of its ample river
Huallaga present a varied and charming perspective of shipping, newly
elevated towns, open tracts of woodland, and cultivated lawns. Allured
by the novelty of this scene, innumerable tribes of the wild Indians
will unite themselves with us; they are our brethren, and, when thus
intimately brought into contact with us, they may frankly discover to our
knowledge those hidden treasures of our forests which their ignorance and
barbarism hitherto concealed; and, as integral parts of Peru, they will
conduce to its grandeur and respectability. Gentlemen, the most vivid
imagination is lost in this contemplation, and finds itself overwhelmed
by the number and vastness of the objects which crowd into its thoughts.”
The above patriotic effusion, very worthy of a departmental deputy
of Junin, may appear to the reader to paint in too glowing terms the
capabilities and importance of the Montaña on the confines of Huanuco.
But, considering the extent and fertility of the territory, the navigable
nature of its principal rivers, and the generally salubrious character
of its climate, we believe that he who attempts to depict its various
superiorities and advantages is more likely to come short of his object,
than to overrate the reality which in imagination he may desire to trace.
Those regions in the Montaña which are watered by the Huallaga, Ucayali,
and Marañon, with various subsidiary rivers interspersed among the
intervening grounds, have as yet been but inadequately explored, and
therefore only a very imperfect account can be offered of their aspect
and natural productions.
From May to November the sun shines very powerfully in the Montaña, and
consequently the soil, where it is cleared of wood,—for example, in the
valley of Chinchao—becomes so parched that its surface opens in chinks;
but underneath it always preserves humidity, and therefore needs no
irrigation. From November to May it rains much, sometimes for six or
seven days without intermission.
In the rivers, alligators, tortoises, and a variety of fish are found;
and these also swarm in the ponds or lakes formed during the inundations
of the rainy season. The most remarkable inhabitant of these waters is
the manati, sometimes called pexebuey,[9] from its supposed resemblance
to the cow or ox. Like the cetaceous family to which it belongs, it
suckles its young, and also feeds among the grass on the banks of the
rivers.
The trees of the forest are inhabited by parrots, tanagers, and
a surprising variety of birds, whose exquisite plumage vies with
butterflies and flowers in the beauty, delicacy, and combination of their
tints. Monkeys are so numerous as to form a chief article of animal
food for the Indian hunter, dexterous in the use of the bow and arrow,
or of the cerbatána, a long and hollow piece of wood through which he
blows a small arrow, and hits his mark, at short distances, with fatal
precision. There are very many venomous serpents. Wild-boars, deer,
pumas, bears, tigers, and tapirs, frequent these forests, and are objects
of the chase.
The vegetable productions of the Montaña, here considered as articles
of commerce, or adopted for economical uses, are numerous. Among the
valuable woods are cedar, and chonta or ebony, mahogany, walnut, and
almond-tree. Edible herbs and roots, except the potato and yuca, are
little cultivated; but coffee, plantains, and sugar-cane, of which a
variety called the blue or azul is very luxuriant, are reared with some
care, where nature indeed requires but little aid from the hand of man.
The sugar-cane comes to maturity earlier than in other parts of Peru, and
yields an annual crop at very little cost of production.
In the fertile vale of Chinchao, famous for its coca plantations, a few
proprietors of Huanuco cultivate frijoles, or beans, for the use of
the coca-gatherers: rice is also grown by the humid banks of the great
rivers, and maize is everywhere sown as a necessary of life.
In the Montaña, chicha is made from maize, as in other parts of Peru;
but the natives here make a drink called _masata_, not known in more
civilized parts of the country, produced by chewing the yuca or maize,
&c. and then leaving it to ferment, when, according to the quantity of
water added to it, the fermented juice will be found of greater or less
intoxicating power.
Indigo, as we have before noticed, is of Montaña growth, as is also
tobacco.
Cotton, spun and wove into cloths of various texture by the Indians,
requires no artificial assistance for its luxuriant growth. Lemons,
limes, oranges, citrons, and other cooling fruit, are also productions of
those parts.
The pine-apple is very abundant, as well as of delicious flavour, though
it grows wild: and among the articles of spontaneous growth in the
Montaña contiguous to Huanuco we may enumerate cacao or cocoa, cinnamon,
guaiacum, vanilla, black wax, storax, dragon’s blood, oil of Maria, gum
caraña, balsam of copaiba, copal, and many other gums, balsams, and
resins. Cinchona and sarsaparilla abound in great quantity.
For the following account of medicinal plants, collected during a journey
down the river Huallaga, and through part of Maynas, we are indebted to
the kindness of Mr. Mathews, an English botanist, formerly mentioned.
1. _Machagui huasca_ is a _bejuco_ or climber, the trunk and
branches of which are intensely bitter. It grows at Tarapoto,
and is used as a febrifuge.
2. _Diabolo huasca_[10] grows at Tarapoto, and is used
medicinally as a purgative.
3. _Uchu sanango._—This is a species of taberna-montana, which
grows at Tarapoto and Moyobamba. It is very piquant; produces a
sensible degree of heat, and is used as a remedy in colds and
rheumatic affections of the joints.
It is also said to be used in the preparation of the _pucuna_
poison.—(See Humboldt.)
4. _Chiri sanango._—Said to be contrary in its effects to the
above; the natives hold it in some dread.
5. _Calentura huasca_, or _shiyintu_.—This is violent in its
effects: it swells the gullet; produces quick, full pulse, and
high fever; and in twenty-four hours after the fever the skin
begins to peel off.
This remedy is taken for various complaints. The patient
generally retires to his _chacra_, or country-house, to take
medicine, where he is not liable to be molested; generally
keeps his bed for eight days, and on the fifteenth day bathes.
For four months it is necessary for those who take this remedy
to diet themselves. On some men it produces no sensible effects.
The part of this plant used medicinally is the stem, which is
roasted, pounded, and then taken in warm water or guarapo.
6. _Zuquilla._—This is a thick-rooted variety of sarsaparilla.
7. _Guaco_ grows about Tarapoto.
8. _Piñon_, or _croton tiglium_.—Three seeds of it eaten act as
a drastic medicine.
9. _Carpuña._—A few leaves (two or three) of this plant, put
into warm spirit and water, act as a sudorific, which is
employed in colds and rheumatic pains.
10. _Huyusa._—The leaves of the huyusa are also used in small
quantity, in form of infusion; and this remedy has the same
virtues with the carpuña.
11. _Tapia bark._—This is pounded into powder, and taken in
cold water. It acts as a powerful emetic.
12. _Yerba de San Martin._—The infusion from this plant is used
for the same purpose as cubebs, or balsam of copaiba.
CHAPTER III.
The Department of Junin.—The river Marañon.—General
sketch of the form of internal Government of
Peru.—Particular account of the Prefectorate or Department
of Junin.—Mines.—Agriculture.—Manufactures.—Public
Instruction.—Hospitals and Charitable
Asylums.—Vaccination.—Junta of Health.—Public
Baths.—Police.—Pantheons.—Roads.—Posts.—Public Treasury at
Pasco.—Administration of Justice.—National Militia.
Of the three inland departments of Peru, namely, Cuzco, Ayacucho, and
Junin, the latter is peculiarly distinguished by its mineral riches, and
the rise of the great river Marañon, in the lake of Lauricocha, in the
neighbourhood of Cerro Pasco. The length of this river, all its windings
included, has been reckoned not less than one thousand one hundred
leagues, of which nine hundred have been found to be navigable; and, at
the distance of several hundred miles before it reaches the ocean, (where
its mouth is one hundred and seventy or eighty miles wide,) the effect of
the tides may be distinctly marked on its banks. For a very long way—some
say two hundred miles or more—after it has entered the sea, it still
continues fresh to the taste, or, at least, to a great degree unmingled
with the retiring waters of the ocean, which it rolls back before the
unsubdued force of its own mighty stream.
The provinces of this department are Jauja, Tarma, Pasco, Cajatambo,
Huari, Huaylas, Huamalies, Conchucos, and Huanuco. Besides the precious
metals, (and quicksilver, which for some time back has been regularly
extracted from the mines of Jonta in Huamalies,) these provinces yield
a great variety of cattle and vegetable produce. Huanuco, the principal
city of the province of the same name, though no longer the seat of
opulence or aristocracy, was once one of the chief cities of Peru
under the ancient conquerors, and is at present chiefly distinguished
as the capital of the whole department of Junin. The prefect of this
jurisdiction extends his authority as far as the country of Maynas on
the north, and to the banks of the river Paro, or Beni, on the east,
passing through the intervening wilds of the Pajonal and pampa del
Sacramento, &c. along windings of the forest best known to holy fathers
and half-converted Indians. These wilds are inhabited on the south, and
in the environs of the rivers Apurimac, Mantaro, Pangoa, Perene, Camar,
and Sampoya, &c. by Campas, Piros, Mochobos, Ruanaguas, and other Indian
tribes no longer invited to share of the blessings of Christianity; and
to the north-east of the plain, or pampa of Sacramento, is the very
important missionary settlement of Sarayacu, still annexed to the
department of Junin. Neither of these outskirts of an ill-sustained
civil jurisdiction, nor the territories which thus lie very wide and
uncultivated to the east of the main provinces, ever appear to have
constituted a part of the ancient empire of the Incas. And not only by
the rugged barriers of the eastern Cordillera, but by a difference of
language, the untutored Indians of the Montaña are to this day separated
from the true children of the Sun, whose common language, as the reader
knows, is the Quichua, while the savages hitherto discovered speak almost
as many tongues as there have appeared distinct tribes among them, except
on the banks of the Ucayali, and in the vicinity of the chief missionary
settlement there, where the Pano is the general or prevailing language of
the somewhat christianized natives.
The government of Peru is, by its constitution, pronounced to be a
popular, representative government; and in theory at least, though not
in fact, the sovereignty emanates from the people, who are supposed to
delegate its exercise to the legislative, executive, and judicial powers
of the republic. It is not, however, now our intention to enter upon an
account of the general government, as we only desire to enumerate some of
the more important functions of the internal government.
OF THE OFFICE OF PREFECTS AND GOVERNORS, &C.
The superior political government of every _department_ is vested in a
prefect, under immediate subordination to the president of the republic;
that of every province is entrusted to a sub-prefect, who is immediately
subordinate to the prefect; that of the districts to a governor, who
acknowledges the sub-prefect as his superior; and in every town, or
Indian village, there is a still humbler officer called _alcalde_, who
acts under the orders of the governor of his district, and is entrusted
with the ordinary routine of local police.
To fill the appointment of prefect, sub-prefect, or governor, it is
required that the candidate should be an active citizen, not under thirty
years of age, and a man eminent for his probity.
The duties of such functionaries are,
1. To maintain public security and order in their respective territories.
2. To cause the articles of the political constitution, the laws enacted
by congress, and the decrees and commands of the executive power, to be
duly carried into effect.
3. To enforce the completion of sentences pronounced by the different
tribunals and courts of justice.
4. To take care that the functionaries subordinate to each of them shall
faithfully discharge their proper duties.
The prefects are also charged with the economical administration of
the affairs of state within their respective departments. But they are
restrained,
1. From interfering with, or in any degree interrupting, the course of
popular elections.
2. From preventing the reunion of the departmental juntas, or interfering
with these in the free exercise of their functions.
3. From taking any cognizance in judicial cases; but, should public
tranquillity urgently require that any individual should be taken up, a
prefect may command his immediate arrest,—transferring the delinquent,
accompanied with the grounds of having taken him into custody, to the
judicial magistrate or judge, within the precise term of forty-eight
hours.
DEPARTMENTAL JUNTAS.
In the capital of every department there is a junta, composed of two
members from each province. The object of these juntas is to promote
the interest of the provinces in particular, and of the departments in
general. The members are elected after the same manner with those of the
Congress or Chamber of Deputies.[11]
The prefects of the departments have to open the annual sessions of the
juntas, to report to them in writing on the state of the public affairs
of their respective jurisdictions, and to suggest such measures as appear
to them calculated to promote the general advantage of the departments.
Among the functions of this political body we may enumerate—
1. To propose, discuss, and agree about the best means of promoting the
agricultural, mining, and other branches of industry in their respective
provinces.—2. To forward public education and instruction according to
the method approved by Congress.—3. To watch over and promote charitable
institutions; and, in general, all that relates to the interior police
of the departments, except that of public security.—4. To proportion
among the provinces the amount of the assessments of each department;
and to ascertain, in case of complaint, the exact amount raised in
the particular towns by their respective municipal authorities.—5. To
determine the number of recruits for the service of the army and navy
which each province and district should provide.—6. To take care that the
chiefs of the national militia keep up good discipline in their corps,
and have them always ready for service.—7. To see that the municipal
corporations discharge their duties, and to inform the prefects of any
abuses they may detect in them.—8. To examine the accounts which it
is incumbent on the municipalities to render annually respecting the
particular funds of the towns and villages.—9. To draw up every five
years a statistical report of the departments.—10. To provide for the
reduction and civilization of the indigenous tribes on the frontiers of
any particular department, and to make it an object of special concern
to allure them within the pale of civilized society by soothing and
persuasive means.—11. To take cognizance of the imports and exports
of the departments, and to transmit their observations thereon to the
Minister of the Home Department, or _Hacienda_.—12. To apprise the
Congress of any infraction of the constitution; and further, to elect
_senators_ from the lists presented by the provincial electoral colleges.
But, to mention no more of the peculiar functions of the departmental
juntas, we may conclude by observing, that such of their proceedings as
hinge on the exercise of the powers or functions now enumerated, are
transmitted through the medium and with the remarks of the prefects to
the executive power, by whom again they are forwarded to the Congress as
matters of legislative deliberation.[12]
Having premised the above articles relative to the internal government
of the country in general, we shall now make some observations on the
state of the very important department of Junin in particular; being able
to do so, partly from personal knowledge, and partly from the report
presented by the prefect of Junin, upon opening, in 1833, the session
of the departmental junta in Huanuco; an official document whence we
consider it incumbent upon us to draw much of the substance of the
following observations, since they refer to topics with which none can be
supposed to be more conversant than the head of the local government.
MINES.
We shall here pass over the subject of mines, regarding which we have
said enough under the head of Cerro Pasco; though there is no province in
the whole department in which silver and even gold mines are not to be
found; but the chief source of production at present is Cerro Pasco.
AGRICULTURE.
Of the agriculture of the Vale of Huanuco we have already treated;
and, from what has been said, enough may be conceived of the general
state of agriculture in the Sierra. We have also alluded to Jauja, in
the preceding pages, as most productive in wheat; and abounding, as it
does, in maize, lucern, peas, beans, &c. it is considered not only as
the granary of the department to which it belongs, but also of all the
central Sierra of Peru between the two great chains of the Andes. In the
Vale of Jauja, as on the plains of Cajamarca,[13] vegetation is subject
to blight from hoar-frost, which in some years is much more destructive
to the crops than in others; but, upon the whole, the average wheat
crops are very good and abundant. Huaylas, again, like Huanuco, produces
excellent sugar; nay, that of Huaylas appears to be the finer-grained and
purer of the two; for, though the sugar-refiners in Huanuco are generally
brought from Huaylas, yet, in the hands of the same workmen, the sugar of
the former locality does not equal that of the latter in the beauty of
its crystallization.
MANUFACTURES.
The manufactures, we may cursorily remark, are in a very backward state;
and though the natives, especially of Huanuco, have shown no small
share of ingenuity in some of their mechanical contrivances, yet they
want proper masters; and, however we may admire the progress they have
made with such slender means of instruction, we cannot compare their
performances with those of Europeans in the same line. In Tarma they make
_ponchos_, or loose cloaks, of great beauty and fineness; and, on the
colder table-lands, warm but coarse blankets and ponchos, &c. are still
made by the Indians. In the valleys, goat-skins are made into cordovans;
cow-hide is made into saddle-bags, and almofrezes, or travelling-cases
for bed and bedding; mats too are manufactured from rushes, and are
very generally used as carpeting under the name of _esteras_. But the
work of silversmiths is generally in a rude state even in Pasco; for
the fine filigree work, for which inland Peru is celebrated, is made,
not in the department of Junin, but at Guamanga, in the department
of Ayacucho,—where the natives have also shown a decided talent for
sculpture, though their works cannot be said to exhibit, as yet, much
elegance or expression.
PUBLIC INSTRUCTION.
Without the aid of science, the arts of active life cannot duly advance
in the career of improvement, and thus society remains a stranger to
the higher refinements of civilization: hence, as the prefect of Junin
well observes, the education of youth becomes a leading object of
national interest and desire. But though in the department of Junin
there are three colleges, that of Huanuco alone fulfils its purpose of
instruction to a limited number of pupils; and there is reason to fear
that it will soon share the fate of the other colleges in Huaras and
Jauja, and be shut up for want of the necessary funds to defray its
very moderate expenses. We are assured that the masters and professors
of this recent institution, upon the foundation of which such bright
hopes have been raised, are badly remunerated for their services; and
have to contend against the perverseness of young persons whose early
habits of self-indulgence while under the parental roof, ill prepared
them to submit to the necessary restraints of a college, where the
conscientiousness of the teacher, less pliant than parental fondness,
will not sacrifice useful education to idle or vicious amusement, by
imprudently winking at the errors and misdemeanors of the scholar.
Such being the inauspicious account of the only college of the department
at present in exercise, the schools of elementary instruction do not seem
to be in a more flattering position, though official measures have been
taken to diffuse instruction among every class of the community. To the
credit of the chief of the department, commands were issued by him for
the erection of schools of elementary instruction in all the provinces,
with orders that proper reports concerning their condition should be
regularly forwarded to the prefectorate at Pasco.
To these important subjects the prefect in the _mensage_, or report, to
which we have already alluded, endeavoured to awaken the attention of the
departmental junta assembled in the city of Huanuco; when it was declared
that the method of _mutual instruction_, adopted in that capital of local
jurisdiction, in no way corresponded in its advantages or results to the
time devoted to it by the pupils, or to the hopes at first entertained of
its higher practical utility as a system.
The failure implied on this occasion may possibly have been less the
fault of the system than of those who offered to apply it; for it was
remarked as very worthy the consideration of the honourable junta, that,
in reference to many of the schools intended for the improvement of the
indigenous or Indian race, wherein they were merely taught a jargon of
Spanish which they could not comprehend, it were better for them to be
left in an untutored state of mind than to be placed under the melancholy
influence of such teachers as presided over them. These were represented
to be so imbecile, and so unacquainted with the merest rudiments of
reading, or so abandoned and drowned in vice, as to be persons utterly
unfit to guide the mind of infancy and innocence into a proper path.
The junta were therefore called upon by their prefect to appoint some
better means of instruction, which might at once serve to improve the
virtuous feelings of the individual, and promote the national cause of
civilization.
HOSPITALS AND CHARITABLE ASYLUMS.
It is affecting to think that, notwithstanding the wealth of which this
department is the seat, the sick and invalid in general cannot find a
home or place of assistance under their sufferings.
In Huaras, as well as in Huanuco, there were formerly well-endowed
hospitals, but these are now fallen into such decay for want of funds
for their support, that few indeed are the sick who can be accommodated
or relieved in them; and, consequently, those in charge of these once
useful establishments are daily put to the pain of refusing admission to
a great many distressed persons, who are induced to seek their protection
in the hope of being cured of their ailments, or, if not, at least to
breathe their last in the bosom of kindness and charity.
We are told by the prefect that an asylum or house of relief for the
distressed poor never existed in the department: but, in his report
to the departmental junta, he urges with an earnestness honourable
to his feelings, that humanity calls for the immediate institution
of establishments of this kind on behalf of the wretched victims of
misfortune, whose very misery plunges them into despair. He also holds
it to be a matter of public expediency to find a fixed home, and steady
occupation, for those abandoned objects of compassion, who make traffic
of their degradation and a boast of their debasement.
VACCINATION.
In the year 1832, it was found that the small-pox had just left dismal
traces of its ravages in the department: fathers mourned their children
now dead, or so disfigured and mutilated as to become unfit for the
active business of life; the widow, too, wept for her lost husband, and
the offspring of a mutual affection were left to feel the want of a
father’s care.
Curates, and municipal bodies, most particularly intrusted with the
frequently repeated charge of preserving the vaccine fluid, unhappily
neglected a trust so important; and the heads of families, who joined
in the same carelessness, did not consider, until the fatal epidemic
swept their children from their arms, that they were ever to taste the
bitter fruit of their own improvident indifference. But to avoid the
recurrence, on any future occasion, of so dreadful and destructive a
malady, the prefect caused a supply of the precious vaccine matter to be
procured from Lima; which, if carefully propagated, may yet save victims
without number from adding to that depopulation which incessant warfare
has, of late years, caused among his fellow countrymen.
JUNTAS OF HEALTH.
It has been proposed by the same active and intelligent prefect, Don
Francisco Quiros, that juntas of health should be established in the
capitals or principal towns of the provinces of his jurisdiction, with
a view to prevent the spread of contagious diseases;—to ascertain, and
if possible correct, those physical causes and sources of disorder which
are hostile to the healthy operations of the vital functions, and
destructive to the growth of population.
It is, as we have seen, the duty of the departmental deputies to create
these institutions, to frame rules for their regulation, and appoint fit
persons for their management; while it would be the proper business of
the prefect to see the resolutions of the junta carried into execution.
We only point to such proposals as the present, to show the reader
how much such institutions are really wanted in Peru: not at all to
mislead his judgment by inducing him to believe that there is the least
appearance of their being established for a long time to come, unless,
indeed, public tranquillity be soon restored; but people must perceive
their wants before they desire to remove them, and the agitation of
questions of civil amendment may ultimately lead to real improvement in
their social condition.
PUBLIC BATHS.
In the dry and equable climate of Huanuco, bathing is not so necessary
either to cool or to refresh the body as it is found to be in more humid
and warm situations; for there is a bracing property in the dry air,
which carries off the natural perspiration almost as rapidly as it is
produced, and prevents that languor and discomfort experienced in a
sultry atmosphere, where one perspires more than the air readily absorbs.
The inhabitants of this interesting province, and especially of the
town of Huanuco, feel so little desire for the cold bath, that it is
proverbial among them, that they only bathe in the river, or the canals
of their delightful orchards, once in every year,—that is, on the day of
San Juan, the 24th of June, the same on which the inhabitants of Lima
celebrate their annual festival of Amencaes.
In the jurisdiction of Junin, however, natural warm and hot springs are
exceedingly common, as well on the mountain plains, (which are in many
places, as at Hualliay, covered with a saline incrustation,) as in the
warmer valleys; and of these none are more resorted to, by invalids and
convalescents, than the ferruginous and tepid waters of the well-known
baths of Cono, near Huariaca, and the still more celebrated sulphurous
waters of Villo, in the district of Yanahuanca. Here there are two
streams, of which the one is cold and the other hot; and being received
into a reservoir in due proportions, baths may be always provided easily
and cheaply, of any degree of temperature desired.
To make the medicinal waters of Villo—situated in a mild climate about
one day’s journey from Cerro Pasco on the one hand, and the city of
Huanuco on the other,—as available as possible to the public, the
patriotic prefect has recently taken measures to fit up convenient baths
at this place. The well-known efficacy of the sulphurous waters in
numberless instances of impaired health, the benignity of the climate in
which nature has placed them, and the vicinity of this favoured spot to
Cerro Pasco, have been the chief inducements to undertake this public
work; which must prove of the utmost importance to the neighbourhood at
large, and especially to miners and residents in the rigorous climate of
Cerro, where health is more easily lost than regained, and where good
medical attendance is rarely found.
POLICE.
Few of the municipalities of the department possess public rents and
revenues calculated to answer the purpose to which they should be
applied. But, in the absence of adequate funds and resources to forward
all the objects of a general and well-regulated municipal police, there
exists a valuable decree, which is very worthy of proper observance;
for, in virtue of it, blasphemers, and those who, by their habitual
indulgence in vice and vicious language, insult the better feelings of
the community, are consigned to labour at public works, or compelled to
sweep the streets, as the penalty of their infamous conduct. With further
view to public order, the prefect has resolved to stigmatize, when he
cannot hope at once to remove, the vice of drunkenness, in which the
lower orders in general freely indulge in days of religious processions
which are consecrated to sanctifying ends; but which the poor miner and
uneducated villager think well observed by hearing mass in a morning, and
contributing to the decoration of the saints clothed in tinselled and
showy dresses, and surrounded by waxen lights without number.
On great religious days pavilions are not unfrequently erected in
convenient situations for the reception of the effigies of the Virgin,
our Saviour, and Cross, around which all sorts of silver and other
ornaments are placed in fanciful confusion. The entrances into the
churches and chapels, even in the rigid climate of Cerro and the adjacent
_haciendas_, are lavishly adorned with beautiful lilies conveyed from
the valleys; and wreaths and festoons of flowers hang over and around
the doors of the pavilions and churches, which, when good metals are
abundant, display a richness which only a mining country can be supposed
to put within reach of the very humblest of the people. On such occasions
the labouring miner often exhibits his person bedecked in the most
gorgeous and expensive fashion; while he farcically dances, ankle-deep
(if it happen to be the wet season) in mud, as gay and as merry as a
London chimney-sweep on a May morning.
So marked is the taste for flowers among the poorest tenants of a
mud-and-cane booth in the Vale of Huanuco, that on the festival of Corpus
Christi,—a day of joy to the agricultural Indian, who always eats meat
on this day, even should he have passed the rest of the year, like an
anchorite, on vegetable diet,—the poor women and children on the sugar
estates approach the house of their _patron_ with hats, hands, and
mantles full of the sweetest blossoms, which they strew before his door,
and along his hall and corridor, as a sign of respect and rejoicing. To
such expressions of good feeling he courteously responds by ordering the
_tinaja_, or large jar of guarapo, to be placed at their disposal, under
the direction of a major-domo or corporal of the field; and then with
guitar and harp they engage in festive frolics.
But however desirous of enforcing a stricter observance of the days
devoted to the service of the church, it has not been the aim of the
prefect to check or discontinue the more innocent amusements of music
and dance, or those of bull-fights and fire-works, in which the Indian
also delights. He has struck at the principal cause of alienation from
the house of God, namely, drunkenness, by condemning all those who are
convicted of rioting or breaking the peace to sweep the streets for three
successive days; or, should this be considered too light a correction,
to labour for the same number of days in some other work of public
utility.[14]
Idle vagabonds, without useful occupation or property, and even without
country, are pronounced by the civil authorities to be found in all parts
disseminating immorality and disorder; and seeing that to temporise with
obnoxious characters of this sort is, in effect, to promote the cause
of libertinism and idleness, it has been resolved at the prefectorate
of Junin to persecute and exterminate, if they cannot amend, all such
vicious intruders on society.
PANTHEONS OR CEMETERIES.
It has been long an established practice in Peru to bury the dead within
the churches; a practice which, on the coast more especially, gave
rise to a heavy exhalation, which very naturally rendered the incense
burnt on the altar, independently of its mystical virtue, an agreeable
and seasonable corrective for the sepulchral vapours of the rich and
well-adorned temples of the metropolis.
This very unwholesome and improper custom has ceased in Lima since the
erection of its Pantheon, and the example of the great capital has
been followed in the remote departments. With few, if any, exceptions,
cemeteries are now formed in all the provinces of Junin. But in Cerro
Pasco, however, the burying-place was so very circumscribed and
neglected, that, on the arrival of Don Francisco Quiros as chief of the
department in the year 1832, there was not earth enough to cover the dead
within the Pantheon walls, which altogether presented a very loathsome
appearance. He caused the cemetery to be sufficiently enlarged, so that
there should be nothing to render this place of rest offensive. Indeed,
he expresses himself strongly on the urgency there was for the execution
of this work: and though the stinted flowers of Pasco common do not
always furnish a supply of fresh blossoms to be daily renewed over the
graves of the departed,—and though no acacia, cypress, nor willow, no yew
nor myrtle, can endure its elevated site,—Mr. Quiros enjoys the praise
and the pleasure of having raised, in this inclement region of silver
beds, a place of rest for his countrymen, which not even avarice can
disturb; and glad would he be to see the children of the deceased steal
to the graves of their fathers, there to pray over the remains of their
kindred, and thus habitually cherish feelings of piety, humility, and
hope.[15]
ROADS OF JUNIN.
Regarding the roads of the Sierra in general, enough has been said in
the preceding pages; but of Junin, in particular, it remains for us to
observe that very laudable efforts have been lately made for improving
the roads of this department: yet no regular post-houses, with suitable
accommodations for the traveller, are anywhere established; and the
communication between the more remote provinces and Pasco is exceedingly
bad. This is a great hinderance to commerce, and leads to inevitable
delay and inconvenience in the transport of goods. However discreditable
the fact may be to the corporation of miners, so little enterprise have
they shown for the improvement of a place from which so much specie has
been sent all over the world, that it is not without great difficulty,
and loss of time and cattle, that they are able to convey the ore from
the mines to the mills in the environs of Cerro; and all because of the
miserable tracks which they use as roads. By the stream of Sacrafamilia
alone, in the immediate neighbourhood of the mines, there are no fewer
than eighty-eight ingenios or mills for grinding ore, some of which
during the dry season are at a stand-still on account of the scarcity
of water, and others at all seasons are interrupted in their work from
the irregular supply of ore consequent on the bad means of conveyance.
To obviate these great drawbacks on the industry of the miners, and
general resources of the department, the prefect, some time since,
commenced a cart-road, over which the ore might be conducted by oxen
from the mines to the mills specified, through a tract neither extensive
nor precipitous; but the undertaking was a great and a novel one for
that part of the world in the year 1833, so little had such works of
general advantage hitherto called up the attention and energies of the
inhabitants.
POSTS.
The inhabitants of Cerro Pasco have the advantage of a weekly post
between their town and the capital of the republic; and a direct
correspondence twice a month with Huanuco, the capital of the department.
By these arrangements an immediate communication is also held with the
government, and the spirit of mercantile enterprise is thereby increased;
Cerro being, as the reader may readily imagine, when the mines are highly
productive, a most stirring place, visited by men of all climes, and full
of traffic and speculation.
PUBLIC TREASURY AT PASCO.
The prefects in general are, as we have seen, not only entrusted with
the maintenance of public order and security, but they are also at the
head of financial affairs in their respective departments. In times of
intestine warfare it has always happened that the Patriot government
has exceeded the natural resources of the country, crippled as they are
in all their branches by want of security, and consequently of capital.
Thus there were, at the commencement of the year 1834 particularly,
heavy arrears owing to the army, navy, and civil list. The supplies
from the mint and custom-house were deeply pledged for sums advanced to
the government; demands for payments, beyond what they could liquidate,
were made upon the local treasuries of all the departments:[16] and the
treasury of Junin had to bear its share of all the demands of a needy
government. By the report of the prefect to the departmental junta, of
session 1833, it appears that, while in office for the previous year,
he removed several abuses, regulated the accounts, and struck a fair
balance of the ingress and egress of the Pasco treasury. He does not,
however, state the amount of the departmental funds in this report, or
present any data by which we are to form an estimate of the separate or
aggregate revenue arising from the different provinces. All data of this
sort the Patriot government is deficient in; and the real rental of the
state can hardly at any time be clearly ascertained. A natural result
of this fundamental defect in their statistics is, that, not knowing
the precise extent of the population or pecuniary resources of the
departments, the annual contributions cannot be laid in a well-regulated
and just proportion to the means of each town, parish, and province. The
difficulties and obscurities in which every branch of the public revenue,
and especially of his own department, was involved, led the prefect of
Junin publicly to declare his doubts concerning the integrity of the
officers of the executive intrusted with the collection of imposts; and
he broadly hints, that, in gratifying their self-love and interest,
they forget the higher duties of the citizen. He therefore exhorts
the honourable junta to discountenance all favouritism, to exercise
a stern patriotism, and by fair inquiry to resolve the important
questions,—namely, Whether or not more be annually exacted of the
provinces than they, without injury to themselves or the state, have the
power to contribute? Whether or not they do really pay more than can be
legitimately required of them?
OF THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE.
Justice, in all the departments, is administered in the name of the
republic; and in every town there are justices of the peace, whose
business it is to hear both sides of the question at issue, and to
endeavour to bring about an amicable termination without going formally
to law: no demand, civil or criminal, save fiscal cases and others
excepted by law, being admitted, unless this essential preliminary
attempt at reconciliation has been put into practice.
In some of the provinces of the Junin department, as those of Huaylas and
Huamalies, they have not judges duly learned and qualified in judicial
proceedings; and consequently, in those parts, the office of the judge
devolves upon the sub-prefects, who are alike ignorant of the law and
its forms of application. Hence we may suppose they must be very unfit
surrogates in such delicate matters as affect the person and property of
individuals, and the good order of society.
Justice in the civil department is ill administered in Cerro Pasco, for
which the prefect assigns a good reason; namely, that here criminal suits
continually occur to engross the time and attention of the judge, so
that it is impossible for him without assistance to attend to the ready
despatch of merely civil causes, which are less urgent. The public are
great sufferers from this imperfect judicial arrangement; and not only
an additional judge, but several more notaries public, are required for
Cerro in these times, when through the excellent management of Mr. Quiros
in superintending the drainage of the mines and general interests of the
place, rich ore shows itself more and more abundantly. The concourse of
people being increased, a greater number of interests clash together, and
civil as well as criminal suits crowd into court.
NATIONAL MILITIA.
By the articles of the political constitution of Peru, there are supposed
to be in every province bodies of national militia as the guarantee of
the internal order of the state; but, by the same constitution, the armed
force of the nation has no power of political deliberation, as it is
declared to be _essentially obedient_. Happy, indeed, might the state
be, if its army of the line and naval squadron were always obedient to
the laws, and were proof against the influence of corruption, the wily
leaders of faction, and the evils of frequent insurrection!
But in the greater part of the provinces a national militia can hardly be
said to exist, except in name; though men titled captains and colonels of
such corps are scattered about the country, and strut with their insignia
of military importance in hamlets and villages.
In a neighbourhood where the writer resided for several years in the
department of Junin, there was a villager of no small local pretension,
who held at one time, in his own person, the offices of governor and
captain of militia of his district, and, if we remember well, of
alcalde also (he being alcalde on the death of the governor whom he
succeeded); and in this way he became invested with all the authority of
a petty dictator. The province was that of Huanuco, where, through the
praiseworthy zeal of Colonel Lucar and Don Pepe (now Colonel) Echegoyen,
a troop of cavalry was always kept up in some sort of military order:
and the workmen of the different larger estates and little farms around,
were called upon to assemble on Sundays under their respective captains;
and, at assigned places, to go through some of the simplest military
evolutions, using, however, no arms or particular uniform.
These Sunday exercises were generally ill attended; and, of ten or twelve
young men on an agricultural estate, it would be usually enough if two or
three appeared at one time in the ranks. Upon one occasion, however, when
the captain of local militia in the village of Ambo had the honour of
having the additional appointment of governor conferred on him, he called
upon the writer when indisposed and in bed, and, with great appearance
of sympathy and confidential cordiality, congratulated himself upon his
promotion, because it would afford him the power, as he had the will, to
serve his neighbour. With many such smooth expressions and assurances of
kind and honest intentions, calculated to put even a misanthrope off his
guard, he ended his visit by requesting that, as it was most desirable
to keep up the military spirit of the district, he would expect of the
writer that he should use his influence in persuading the young men
on his hacienda to attend regularly at the military exercises in the
adjacent village; a proposition to which he readily acceded, as it was
agreeable to the established laws of the country. On the first or second
Sunday following, six fine young men went to attend the exercises at
Ambo; and were seized and put into prison, with many others, under strong
guard, to be marched off next day as recruits for the line.
The provincial prisons of Peru are in general very bad and insecure, and
they are less frequently used than they should be for any better purpose
than that already mentioned, viz. confining the useful and industrious
husbandman—thus diminishing a race already too scanty, and yet a race on
which the prosperity of the country mainly depends:
“Princes and lords may flourish or may fade,
A breath can make them, as a breath has made.
But a _bold peasantry_, their _country’s pride_,
When once destroyed can never be supplied.”
Upon this occasion, we are glad to say, that the new governor’s deceitful
conduct towards us did not serve his turn as he wished.
The writer galloped to the capital of the department, where he found
Colonel Lucar reviewing and selecting the recruits to be sent off from
Huanuco to fill up the vacancies in the army of the line; and he must
ever feel obliged to the politeness of the colonel, who instantly
despatched a peremptory order to the said captain and governor to put
our men of Andaguaylla at liberty, and to replace them from the list of
idle vagrants, and not of useful husbandmen, within the term of a very
few hours,—an order more easily given than executed, as by this time the
rumour of imprisonment and seizure for the army had gone abroad, and
young men, alarmed for their fate, fled to their woods and lurking-places.
Thus it appears that the real use of this mock militia is not to
guarantee the internal order of the department, (which would be best
secured by the absence of all troops, as the Indian population are never
so well managed as by their own local magistrates of Indian family,)
but to serve as a mask, under which to facilitate the means of raising
soldiers for the general service. The governor’s wily attempt to deceive
us under the assurances of friendship is not peculiar, for such unworthy
conduct does not disgrace one of these petty tyrants in the eyes of his
countrymen.
CHAPTER IV.
Missionary College of Ocopa.—Its foundation, utility, downfall,
and decree for its restoration.—Introduction of Christianity
along the rivers Marañon, Huallaga, and Ucayali, &c. by the
Jesuits and Franciscans.—Letter from Friar Manuel Plaza, the
last great missionary of Ocopa, to the prefect of Junin.
Could the department of Junin boast of no other advantages than those
which arise from the quantity of precious metal which it annually
furnishes, it would be sufficient to substantiate its superior claim to
the attention, not of the Peruvian government alone, but to that of all
other countries in friendly and commercial relations with Peru.
Higher sympathies, however, than such as emanate from mere pecuniary
considerations, must be awakened when it is remembered, that from a
corner of this department the voice of Christianity has penetrated into
vast regions of heathen and savage tribes, and reached the unsettled
wanderers among the thickest entanglements of the woods, which occupy a
great portion of the widely extended missionary territory of Peru. From
Ocopa issued forth those zealous, persevering, self-denying, and enduring
men, the great object of whose lives it has been, in the midst of danger,
and in the name of the Saviour, to add to the faith of the church—and
to civilized society—beings whose spirits were as dark and uncultivated
as the woods they occupied from the confines of the rivers Mantaro and
Apurimac on the south, to the river Marañon or Amazons on the north, and
from the frontier provinces of the department of Junin on the west, to
the great river Ucayali on the east. The missionary college of Ocopa
is situated in latitude 12° 2´ south, in the province of Jauja, and at
the distance of about twelve leagues to the south-east of Tarma. It was
founded in the year 1725 by the commissary of the missionaries, Frater
Francisco de San Joseph, with the intention of establishing missions for
the conversion of the Indians, who ranged the wild frontier-land we have
just alluded to. In the years 1757-8, it was erected by a bull of his
Holiness Clement XIII. and schedule of his Majesty Ferdinand VI. into a
college _De Propagandâ Fide_.[17]
This college has attached to it a church built of stone; and we are
told that great numbers flocked there in former days, when its altars
were decorated with rich donations, and its ecclesiastics celebrated
for their saintly character. The missionaries of this college had
subordinate religious settlements, or asylums, in other provinces of
the department; as, for example, Huaylas, Huanuco, and also Tarma, at
a place called Vitoc, at the entrance of the Montaña. The college was
originally constructed to accommodate forty monks, and towards the close
of the eighteenth century, when it was under the guardianship of R. P.
Fr. Manuel Sobreviela, their number was eighty-four; part of them being
distributed in the different settlements, and also in the villages of the
neophytes among the wilds beyond the eastern summits of the Andes. The
seminary, being under royal protection, was allowed from government six
thousand dollars a-year as a charity. The great revolution, which wrested
the country from the hands of the Spaniards, also deprived the college
of its best support. The Patriots, in the midst of war, proscriptions,
confiscations, and persecutions, spared not even this useful institution;
the monks dispersed when deprived of government support, and only a few
hoary brethren can now be traced among the number of these fugitive
fathers. One of them, barefooted and bareheaded, we sometimes visited in
his humble cell at San Francisco in Lima. His thoughts, abstracted from
the scenes around him, usually dwelt among the tribes of the Huallaga
and Ucayali; and with an enthusiasm which brightened up the eye of
venerable age, he would point out, in the aisles and cloisters of this
great conventual church of his order, the paintings that commemorated the
martyrdom of such of his brotherhood as fell victims to the violence of
savages whom they piously laboured to turn to Christianity.
The Patriots having at length seen the national loss likely to result
from neglecting the territory of the missions, and allowing the
half-converted Indians to glide back again into their former savage and
independent condition, for the want of officiating priests or zealous
monks to continue the work of civilization, in which the Spaniards
had engaged with so much spirit and success, it was resolved by the
government of Peru, in March 1836, to annul the decree which, in November
1824, was passed to convert this religious college into a common school
or academy of general instruction; which, however, was never established
on a permanent footing. Besides other reasons of less moment which were
assigned in the preamble of the decree for restoring the college to its
ancient functions, it was stated that the civilization of the savage
tribes of the interior, and their conversion to the holy Catholic faith,
was an enterprise worthy of the intellectual light of the age we live in,
and acceptable in the sight of the Almighty; that only for this purpose
was the college intended at the period of its foundation; that measures
had actually been taken by the government to induce missionaries to come
from Europe for the re-establishment of this pious institution, and that
therefore it was decreed that the missionary college of Ocopa should
be placed precisely on the same footing as before the revolution, or
the decree of the 1st of November 1824; that all its rents and property
should be restored, and that whatever sums were assigned for the academy
alluded to should be transferred to this missionary college; that the
Archbishop should appoint a fit person to take charge of the college
and receive all its revenues, and to pay from this fund the expenses of
repairing the buildings and the passage-money of the expected European
monks, whose arrival the Very Reverend Archbishop was required to
encourage, while he superintended the necessary repairs of the college,
and made such reforms in its regulations and rules as should best
harmonize with the republican form of government. Nothing can better
prove the decay of the missionary cause, and, we might perhaps add, the
decay of practical religion in Peru, (since its own clergy want zeal
and enterprise to act as missionaries,) than this document; and though
the invitation be more immediately addressed to Spanish ecclesiastics,
yet the decree is in that spirit which seems to open the door to any
company or association, who, adhering to the Catholic form of religious
instruction, may be pleased to extend their benevolence and Christianity
to the fertile regions of the Amazons, where they may fulfil their
mission far removed from the scenes of political anarchy or misrule,
and far beyond the pale of all hostile influence which could impede the
exercise of their sacred calling. Experience has long since sufficiently
shown that these Indians of eastern Peru are neither incapable of
intellectual improvement, nor deficient in those moral elements which
form the groundwork of the social edifice; and if ever they should be
instructed, and guided, and disciplined in the way of life, according to
the Gospel, by active, honest, and enlightened teachers, who know that
faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God, there may yet be
exhibited on the banks of Ucayali, and on the fine plain del Sacramento,
a great and virtuous people, concerned to know and to do their respective
duties, where now cruel barbarism and savage superstition hold their
cheerless sway.
To give a full historical account of the transactions of the missionaries
of Ocopa, their various expeditions by different routes and with varying
success,—or to enter into the interior economy of their college, and
details of its discipline,—would be too copious a matter for the narrow
space we have allotted for this subject, which in itself is one of no
ordinary interest. And, to detach the history of the missionary exertions
of the Jesuits of Quito and San Borja from the labours of the Franciscans
of Lima and Ocopa,—to define the precise limits of the conversions by
each of these religious orders independently of the other,—would not be
free of intricacy; nor does it appear to be necessary to establish the
degree of honour due to each, for they both toiled in the same thorny
vineyard, and the latter creditably continued what the former had happily
commenced. But, to give an idea of the origin of these missions, it may
be well to refer back to the discovery of those regions in which they
were planted.
The mouth of the Marañon was discovered by Vicente Yanes Pinzon, at the
close of the fifteenth century; but Orellana, the Lieutenant-general
of Gonzalo Pizarro, Governor of Quito, was the first to sail down its
stream, from the point where the Napo joins it, to the ocean, in an armed
vessel built at the place of embarkation on the latter river by order of
Pizarro, who had himself undergone great hardships, and sacrificed most
of his followers on an expedition of inland discovery. Orellana commenced
this voyage in the year 1540 or 1541.
Some of the natives were friendly towards him, and others in canoes
opposed his progress; and, as the men of one particular tribe were aided
by their women in the combat, the Spanish captain gave their female
warriors the name of Amazonas,—whence the appellation “Amazons,” which
this great river still retains.
Another expedition, under Pedro de Ursua, was undertaken in 1560; but
he and most of his followers fell victims to an ambuscade laid for them
by the Indians. In 1602, Father Rafael Ferrier, a Jesuit missionary,
descended the Marañon to the river Napo, which Orellana had navigated
about sixty years before; and on his return to Quito, communicated his
discoveries, and his ideas concerning the natives he had seen.
In the year 1616, some Spanish soldiers, stationed on the frontiers
of Quito, pursued some Indians into their canoes on the Marañon; in
the pursuit they descended this river till they came to the Maynas,—a
tribe of Indians who showed such a disposition to amity and to become
Christians, that, on the return of the soldiers to the frontier station
of Santiago de las Montañas, so favourable a report was made of them to
the Viceroy of Peru, that in 1618 he appointed Don Diego Baca de Vega as
Governor of Maynas and Marañon; who was the first to subdue the people of
these territories, and subject them to the dominion of Spain.
In 1638, according to Alçedo, the Jesuit fathers, Gaspar Cuxia and Lucas
de la Cueva, settled several missions in the country of Maynas on both
shores of the Marañon, which continued to flourish until the abolition
of the useful society of Jesuits in 1767.[18]
At first the capital of Maynas was San Francisco de Borja, which,
according to Ulloa, is situated in latitude 4° 28´ south, and 1° 54´
east, of the meridian of Quito. In this city an insurrection of the
native Indians took place in the year 1635, which was happily quelled by
the indefatigable Jesuits: but afterwards the town of Laguna on the east
bank of the Huallaga, in latitude 5° 13´ south, became the principal seat
or capital of the missions of Maynas, which extend from St. Borja along
both sides of the river Marañon, embracing many villages or settlements,
to the frontier possessions of Brazil at Tabatingo. From the Marañon the
patriarchal government of the missionaries extended southward along
the river Ucayali, and among several of the tribes on its banks, or in
the adjacent woods, such as the Cocamas, Piros, and Conibos or Conivos
Indians, whom the Jesuits of Quito had in a great measure converted
to the faith; but they again revolted, and returned to their original
wandering and savage mode of life, having put their pastors to death.
After this unfortunate event, several fruitless efforts—especially in the
year 1695, and also in 1764,—were made to reconvert these tribes, till at
length the Franciscan missionaries of the college of Ocopa succeeded to a
great extent in this hazardous undertaking.
But long before the establishment of this college of their order, two
Franciscans,—the Fathers Andres de Toledo and Domingo Breda, both bent on
making converts to the faith,—left Quito in the year 1636, and, having
surmounted the greatest hardships by land and water, arrived at Para.
They reported their arrival and discoveries to Santiago Raimundo de
Noroña, Governor of San Luis de Marañon, in the united service of Spain
and Portugal, for both countries were then under the sovereignty of the
crown of Spain. The result of the intelligence thus derived was a further
survey up the river, under the command of the Portuguese captain, Texera:
and an account of the whole of these proceedings being transmitted from
the _Audiencia_ at Quito to the Count of Chinchon, Viceroy of Peru, he in
the year 1639 sent back the flotilla of Texera to Para, conveying thither
the Fathers Christoval de Acuña, and Andres de Artieda, Jesuits of Quito,
and other able men, commissioning them, among other things, to survey
minutely the river Marañon and its banks, and, having done so, to embark
for Spain, and lay their account before the Council of the Indies; all
which they accomplished in a creditable manner.
As early as the year 1631, Franciscan missionaries visited the environs
of the river Huallaga, made converts, and entered the country of the
Panataguas. Contiguous to Huanuco, and probably within the territorial
limits of this ancient tribe, is situated at present the important and
civilized Indian town called Panao, which is included in the curacy of
Santa Maria del Valle.
From the Panataguas are supposed to have sprung several other tribes
of distinct denominations, which had spread over the adjacent country,
wherein Christianity had made but slow progress.
From the city of Huanuco the fathers of Ocopa penetrated, by Panao, Muña,
and Pozuzo, to the port on the river Mayro, where they formed one of
their earliest settlements: from this place they appear to have descended
in canoes to the rivers Pachitea and Ucayali. This course is well marked
on the map of those parts, published in Lima, in the year 1791, by the
literary society entitled “Sociedad de Amantes del Pais de Lima.” This
excellent map of the territory of the missions in Peru was dedicated
to his Catholic Majesty, Charles the Fourth, Emperor of the Indies, by
the said society, and the reverend fathers of the missionary college
of Ocopa; whose superior or guardian, Fr. Manuel Sobreviela, enriched
it with a plan of the rivers Huallaga and Ucayali, and of the pampa
del Sacramento. In the above route from Huanuco, the Franciscans from
the time they left their last christianized settlement, Pozuzu, (some
years ago depopulated by the small-pox,) had to contend with the Amajes,
Carapachos, Callisecas, and other savage tribes, occupying the territory
between Pozuzo and the mouth of the Pachitea. From this spot, namely,
where the Pachitea joins the Ucayali, to the river Sarayacu, which enters
the Ucayali in latitude 6° 45´ south, several streams descend from
the plains of Sacramento to join the Ucayali,—such as the Aguaytia, De
Sipivos, and Manoa, the environs of which are inhabited or frequented by
various tribes of Indians known by the names Sipivos, Conibos, Manoas,
and Serebos, &c. Among these they made some converts; but the principal
nation are the Panos, who inhabit the neighbourhood of the Sarayacu, and
form a great part of the population of the town of the same name, which
is the superior, or rather, at present, the only seat of the Franciscan
missions on the Ucayali. This mission, founded by the Franciscan, Father
Girbal, in 1791, was visited in February 1835 by Lieutenant W. Smyth and
Mr. F. Lowe, in their journey “undertaken with a view of ascertaining
the practicability of a navigable communication with the Atlantic by
the rivers Pachitea, Ucayali, and Amazon.” They found it under the
guardianship of the venerable Father Manuel Plaza, whose account of
these parts forms an interesting document in the Mercurio Peruano. The
climate of Sarayacu is described by this excellent missionary as more
free from ague and dysentery than the settlements in low, sultry, and
humid situations on the banks of the river Marañon; and Lieutenant Smyth
and Mr. Lowe, who give an interesting account of the actual state of
the mission, observe that “the climate seems very much like that of the
island of Madeira;” and, like the city of Huanuco on the Huallaga, it is
refreshed in the dry season by breezes that blow along the river.
All the other missionary settlements in these parts having been abandoned
since the downfall of the college of Ocopa, the consequence has been,
that the Indians of those settlements have collected round their only
remaining spiritual father and friend, Padre Plaza, at Sarayacu, where
the population has thus been swelled to the number of about two
thousand; and these semi-barbarous tribes honour their faithful pastor,
and are very attentive to the service of their church, which is performed
partly in the Latin and partly in the Pano tongue. Lieutenant Smyth and
Mr. Lowe not being able to realize the object of their expedition by
entering the Montaña at Pozuzo, and descending by the Mayro, returned
to Huanuco, and descended by the river Huallaga, till they arrived at
the river Chipurana, in the province of Maynas, which, according to the
missionaries, enters the Huallaga in latitude 6° 30´ south. They ascended
the Chipurana as far as they found it navigable; and thence, partly by
land and partly by water, they proceeded to Sarayacu, in expectation
of being able, through the guidance of Padre Plaza, to effect their
expedition up the Pachitea,—an undertaking in which they unfortunately
did not succeed, on account of the inundation of the rivers during the
wet season, which lasts from November to May, and also for want of a
sufficient supply of effects to exchange for the provisions necessary
for the support of an escort of the mission Indians, without which
the enterprise is not safe, nor indeed practicable, at any season.
Nevertheless, Padre Plaza, before the visit of Lieutenant Smyth and
Mr. Lowe, wrote to advise the government of his opinion regarding the
communication with the district of his mission by the port of Mayro;
and his letter on this subject was published at Cerro Pasco, after
accounts had been received of the failure of the expedition undertaken
by the gentlemen now mentioned, in company with the Peruvians, Major
Beltran and Lieutenant Azcarate. It is to be feared that this reverend
monk is too much stricken in years to be much longer able to preserve
his usefulness; and, what is yet more to be lamented, at his death it
is probable that all the labours of himself and his predecessors in
the same field of conversion and civilization will have been thrown
away. Friar Manuel Plaza is not likely to have a successor from the
school of Ocopa, notwithstanding the decree respecting its restoration,
while Peru continues to exhaust its best resources in war, either civil
or defensive, against neighbouring states. To enable that country
to consolidate its internal strength, and attend to the practical
improvements of civil and religious institutions, it must have what the
majority of its citizens sincerely long for,—an interval of quiet. Until
domestic peace be acquired, the peace of the Gospel is not likely to be
sent forth afresh to subdue the turbulent spirit of the Cashivo, or to
replant and renew the settlements and friendships that were formerly
established by the emissaries from Ocopa; friendships now for the most
part forgotten, and settlements no longer to be traced, except on the map
of their wide-spreading mission-land, already alluded to as dedicated
by their order and the literati of Lima to the King of Spain. But since
then the dynasty of kings has been destroyed; and zeal for the missionary
cause, except in name and speculation, has almost vanished from the land,
where it would appear that patriotism can only thrive on the ruins of
all the best institutions of former days: and when the writer of the
following letter shall be no more, the name of king and Saviour, if not
also of friend[19] and patriot, may soon cease to be heard or honoured
among the woods and glades in the now isolated and forlorn mission of the
Ucayali.
“Peruvian Republic.—Mission of the Ucayali.
”Sarayacu, 14th December 1834.
“To the Sub-prefect of Huanuco.
“On the 20th of November last, I replied to the prefect,
D. Francisco Quiros, regarding the project of the Supreme
Government, which was sent to me by you, 24th September of this
present year; and I answered, with the least possible delay, by
the Moyobamba post. But, lest that letter should have been in
any way mislaid or lost, I think it advisable, as it related to
an affair of so much importance, to forward a duplicate of the
same, which is as follows:—
“RESPECTED SIR,
“This very day came to my hands your note of the 18th of
September of the present year; and having carefully perused
it, I have to inform your honour, (Vuesa Señoria,) with the
greatest sincerity, that the project adopted by the Supreme
Government, of penetrating to the river of Pachitea by the
port of Mayro, is the best and safest plan, because of the
advantages that would accrue to the republic from opening the
navigation of that river; for, from its junction with the
Ucayali, up the stream to Mayro, is only a passage of seven
or eight days; and from the latter place to Pozuzo, by land,
is but an intermediate distance of fourteen leagues.[20]
But there is one obstacle which, as long as it exists, will
almost certainly interfere with the enjoyment of a safe
traffic on the river Pachitea; namely, that on its banks are
situated the pagan Cashivos, cruel cannibals who live on human
flesh,—sometimes availing themselves of much cunning and
artifice to deceive passengers; and at other times, with all
the fierceness of the wild beasts of the forest, fearlessly
attacking them, as was proved in two expeditions undertaken
from this place by Father Girbal, who the first time only
advanced to the nearest huts, when he was compelled to return
on account of the scarcity of arms, and the small escort given
him by the government. He afterwards advanced to their last
encampments (_rancherias_), whence he returned without having
realized his purpose of striking the Mayro, where people waited
his arrival with provisions and whatever else was required: and
since this last expedition, which was made in the year 1797, no
further active measures have been attempted.
“The neighbouring nations of Conivos and Sipivos, who reside
by the inland streams of the Ucayali, though they constantly
endeavour to drive away these cruel enemies, have never
succeeded; for so far is it otherwise, that they suddenly
break into the houses, and, not satisfied with putting their
inmates to death, carry off the dead bodies to celebrate their
banquets with, for the Cashivos have an innate appetite for
human flesh.[21] The project of entering by the Mayro is the
most attainable of any other, because, in descending the water,
the vessels keep the centre of the river, so that they cannot
be reached by the arrows from the banks at point-blank shot:
besides, by merely discharging a few fire-arms, they disperse;
and as, happily, they do not use canoes, they cannot intercept
the passage, or do us material injury. And further, the descent
to this point is accomplished in two days only; for which
reason it is very necessary that I should have seasonable
advice, the time being as nearly as possible fixed, to prevent
any disappointment as to our meeting; when, according to the
plan proposed by the commissioners, an expedition may be
made with every precaution from this point, for the purpose
of clearing the passage of so destructive and indomitable a
people; and in this way the frontier towns may be able to
proceed in extracting from the Montaña its precious productions.
“Actuated by this desire, and that of rendering happy the
inhabitants of the Ucayali, I have now, for the space of
thirty-four years, felt it my duty to live in these missions;
and God grant that my eyes may yet see the prosperity of these
regions, since my expedition to the Pangoa failed of producing
the advantages expected from it.[22]
“This expedition I undertook merely to please the fathers
of Ocopa; but that the intercourse thus commenced would
be of short duration, it was easy to conjecture from
the great distance which separated the mission from the
college; the difficult and dangerous navigation of the
head-streams—_cabezeras_—of the Ucayali; and lastly, the
discordant opinions of the European fathers.
“But the day has now arrived when my wishes will be verified
through the skilful arrangements of the Supreme Government; and
to the best of my power I will contribute to the success of the
enterprise, not only by assisting the commissioners, but also
by accompanying them on the expedition, old as I am.
“All the above considerations I submit to your notice for your
information and government.—God protect your Honour!
“As the letter which I have alluded to may possibly have
miscarried, it will give me great satisfaction to know that
this has come to your hands.
“God protect you!
“FRAY MANUEL PLAZA.”
CHAPTER V.
Christianized Indians of the Interior.—Their condition and
character.—Hardships imposed on them.—Desire of revenge.
Tangur, in the curacy of Caina, and department of Junin, is one of those
villages so common on the elevated slopes which overlook temperate
valleys in the interior of Peru. In this small village, as we are
informed by a gentleman who for several years visited it in the character
of curate, there are two distinct municipalities, each possessing its
separate church and magistrates.
These separate people, who speak the same Quichua language, do not
associate together, nor do they even hold their religious festivals
on the same day. The origin of this separation of interests, tradition
informs us, is as far back as the time of the Incas, when some convicts,
ordered from Quito, settled at this place, and formed a distinct family;
which has here subsisted since that remote period, without ever mingling
its blood with that of its neighbours, or entering into communion or
alliance with any other people. This is the more remarkable, as it is
the ordinary practice in other remote villages of the interior for the
whole body of men to co-operate in any great work, such as constructing
bridges for their common good, or building houses for the convenience
of individuals; on which occasions one party conducts stones and turf,
another builds the walls, a third conveys timber from the distant
woods,[23] and a fourth cuts and lays on the thatch &c. The unanimity
in this case, and the want of it in that of Tangur, are equally
characteristic of that love which the Indian entertains for the usages of
his predecessors in all things. In nothing does he approve of innovation;
in his condition he has not yet known any durable or real amelioration,
and in nothing does he desire change. In his local prejudices, habits,
and daily pursuits, he only thinks, feels, and acts just as others did
before him. If the general revolution has been in any degree useful
to the poor uninformed Indian of Peru, who has already sunk from the
short-lived excitement of patriotic enthusiasm into the dejection of a
military despotism,—if it has really improved his prospects, it has been
by rousing him, for a while at least, from his wonted apathy to the
general concerns and conveniences of life; opening to his view a wider
range of imitation and desire, and thus breaking in upon the hereditary
routine of his customs and habits, to which, till now, he has adhered
with the unvarying constancy of mere instinct.
The christianized Indians of the Inca dynasty, whose native tongue
is Quichua,—for we do not at present speak of the savage, or
half-christianized Pano, and other yet unsettled tribes of the
Montaña,—are said to be an indolent race; but we have had the opportunity
of knowing that their exertions will increase as the prospect of
bettering their condition expands, and that in general their labour
is only conducted in a slothful manner when it is compulsory, or to
themselves unproductive. We have had ample opportunity to know, that
when they labour by “_tarea_” or piece-work, and are sure of their
wages, they work remarkably well. On their own little farms they are
truly hard labourers; and, if they were not so often pounced upon by
enemies to industry, the fruit of it would be seen in their growing
prosperity. It is those who tyrannize over them who accuse them of
laziness, duplicity, and natural perverseness of disposition. Of such
persons we may be allowed to ask, Have they ever afforded the Indian any
rational encouragement to honesty and industry? Have they ever, by fair
dealing, persevered in the experiment of deserving the confidence, of
conciliating the affections, or of calling forth the kindly sympathies of
these humbler sons of the soil? What virtue, except patience, were they
permitted to disclose under Spanish oppression—(would it were mitigated
under the patriot system!)—when their masters supplied them with the
necessaries of life just on what terms they pleased, and when the Indians
could realize no property, however much they redoubled their toil, for
in general the fruit of their labour was not their own?
The Indians for the most part are an agricultural people, for more
live by tillage than mere pasturage or any other occupation. Many of
the modern villages in the temperate climate of the interior were, not
many years ago, large farms, possessed by Europeans or their creole
descendants; but the labourers, set free at the revolution in consequence
of the confiscation of the goods and property of their fugitive or ruined
masters, have continued to cultivate the land for their own maintenance,
till by degrees their families have swelled into villages, and at length
assumed the important character of municipalities. With a few years of
undisturbed peace, and exemption from undue exactions, small villages
may thus arise and become considerable towns, wherever the locality
happens to afford sufficient scope for cultivation. But as it often
occurs that the Indian hamlet is erected on a pinnacle, or on the brow
of a hill, around which there is but little suitable soil for the spread
of agricultural industry, the consequence is that the father divides
and subdivides the same piece of ground among the rising members of his
progeny, till at length the means of subsistence become too scanty for
the support of the whole family, and, the supernumeraries must seek
employment in the mines or elsewhere, as they best may.
The mechanic arts are little needed by Indians who construct their
own huts, and, with the exception of their coarse felt-hats, shape
their own dress, which in warm situations consists of sandals of raw
hide, wide trowsers or breeches open at the knee, a shirt, vest, and
sometimes a jacket, and over all a poncho. In cold exposed localities,
as Cerro Pasco, they always wear warm woollen stockings and a jacket;
not omitting the poncho, which is the indispensable covering by day
as well as by night throughout the Sierra. Besides such drawbacks on
the growth of Indian population as arise from the want of efficient
medical assistance, and the occasionally destructive effects of epidemic
diseases, other causes have been frequently assigned, and especially an
excessive passion for intoxicating liquors. This propensity operates
strongly with the miner, stationed, as he is, in high and frigid
localities, where he is much exposed to wet under ground, and to
nocturnal frost or snow above it. Here the action of intoxicating drink,
particularly when indulged in by those not born in very elevated regions,
superadded to the usual effects of a highly rarefied atmosphere, and
other causes of a less general character, tend greatly to shorten human
life. But in the warm and temperate valleys which intervene between the
coast and the Cordilleras this vice is by no means so prevalent as at
the mines, where money circulates freely, and all manner of temptation is
to be encountered. For though agua-ardiente, guarapo, and chicha usually
abound in such places, yet it must not be forgotten that the peones or
day-labourers of these favoured climates seldom have reals to spend; and
that, when they have no money, their credit does not usually extend so
far as to enable them to be often intoxicated. For about three years we
had seldom less than a score, and frequently as many as fifty or sixty of
these Indians, working under the eye of a major-domo; and, except upon
some saint-day or festival, we do not recollect having any complaint made
to us on the score of drunkenness. Licentiousness is usually stated as
a further source of depopulation among all classes and castes in Peru:
but, whatever be the true explanation of the fact, we think that evils
springing from such fountains of impurity show themselves comparatively
little in the Indian constitution; and though strict regularity of
conduct cannot be claimed on the part of the Indian family, yet the
modesty of their ancient mamaconas is still remembered among them; and
it is a characteristic which to this day honourably distinguishes the
Indians from their more cultivated masters, that with them conjugal
infidelity is discouraged, punished, and felt to be a crime.
Incessant warfare and intestine broils, by keeping up continued
agitation, are at this day as destructive and desolating to the
aborigines of Peru, and to the general industry and prosperity of the
country, as was formerly the compulsory system of working in the mines,
and manufactories or “obrages,” under the Spanish conquerors. The
factious and seditious spirit which has gone abroad in the republic is
an excuse for a standing army, which in its turn becomes the fertile
nursery, or, at least, frequent instrument of faction; and, what is
worse, military licence is rapidly pervading all classes of society,
and destroying the only true sources of population, which are domestic
virtues, domestic habits, and simplicity of life. We shall dwell no
longer on such causes, already too well known as principal sources of
depopulation in Peru; but, before we quit the subject, it occurs to us to
mention that during a litigation, in which the question at issue was to
be partly determined by the evidence of tradition and ancient usage, a
number of witnesses of the most advanced age in the Vale of Huanuco were
called in to give their testimony, of whom several were from seventy to
ninety years of age, and, with only one exception, in which the blindness
of age came on in an European by birth, all of them were hale old people,
and generally of Indian race.
We would remark of these Indians, that although for centuries they
have endured oppression with the mute meekness of the lamb bound for
sacrifice, they are by no means dead to feelings of domestic tenderness,
or insensible to the natural ties of kindred or of country, whence they
are violently torn when led away as recruits. Wanderers from their native
soil, wherever the public service or the will of an usurper leads, they
brood over the loss of the genial freedom, simple habits, and peaceful
enjoyments that once were their own, when they herded their flocks or
cultivated their corn and pumpkins. In an hospital, on the coast, we
have seen some of these poor fellows unable to speak a sentence of
Spanish to the physician who prescribed for their relief; and, in a
few extreme instances, despair sunk the powers of life, and a hopeless
love of home exhausted their spirits. We have seen one very young lad
thus affected who refused food and medicine, until in silent sorrow
he expired, a victim to nostalgia, or a love of home, and a broken
heart. These hapless beings, whose devotedness to early attachments and
associations bespeaks the warmth and fidelity of their affections, though
cherished under a cold and apparently a passionless exterior, we found
to be indeed reserved, but sagacious; and, when not under any unusual
excitement, their minds, though not cheerful, were serene. Their exterior
mien always struck us as solemn, and even sad; but this may be partly
the effect of the awfully grand and sublime scenery so familiar to their
view, which imparts a solemn and contemplative turn to the thoughts of
the mountaineer, and influences his moral feelings in such a manner as
stamps a certain air of mental gravity on his general deportment and
expression. As an individual, the Indian is timid, and he will sooner
take a cuff than give one; but, when they assemble for mutual support,
then indeed they are seen to fight most valiantly, and like tame oxen,
when the blood of one of their number is shed, they all become fearfully
courageous. Bold and bloody battles we have seen between strong parties
of the native miners in Cerro Pasco, armed for the combat with slings,
stones, and clubs. At festivals, too, when roused by drink or enraged by
jealousy, they lacerate and maul each other: and the meek-looking, dumpy,
Indian woman becomes equally exasperated and vehement if in her quarrels
any one should cut away a tress of her long and coarse black hair; for
the cutting of these tresses is an odious mark of female dishonour, to
which women of every caste in the land,—except the woolly-headed blacks
and mulattas, on whom nature has not bestowed these ornaments,—are most
acutely and painfully sensitive.[24]
From the beagle-courage of the Indian, who, like these gentle animals,
fights better in company with others than singly, his military character
stands very high; and a regiment of Indians when conducted by gallant
officers, as was the case during the war of Peruvian independence, are
sure to prove indomitably brave and hardy. The dark and zambo soldier
of the coast, when urged forward on a rapid Sierra march, is very apt
to sink under the pressure of fatigue, conjoined with pinching cold and
inevitable privations, to which he has been little accustomed in the
warm and humid “potreros” or enclosures near the sea. But the Indian
foot-soldier is superior to such obstacles; and with only the support
of a pouch of coca, and a bag of toasted maize, he will continue his
march wherever the llama can keep its footing over ledges of rock, and
rugged recesses so wild and so land-locked, that, as the dwellers in
these solitudes say, it would seem difficult for the birds of the air to
escape from them. But though, when engaged on long and forced marches
over savage mountains and glens, one of these all-enduring and active
natives hardly ever falls behind from mere fatigue, yet he has not so
far forgotten the shade of his fig-tree in the bosom of the vale, or his
airy home on some distant eyrie, from whence he was dragged in bonds, as
not secretly to pant for his native nest; and, on long inland marches,
the general or commander who is not singularly vigilant, or uncommonly
beloved, has more to fear that the Indian may desert him on the journey
than when engaged with the enemy.
In every village of the intermediate valleys, the white vagabond and
roguish mestizo have “padrinos,” or protecting friends of their own caste
in petty authority, holding the commission of captain of volunteers,
governor, or alcalde, or something more subordinate still; but the more
industrious Indian, who tills his own piece of ground, and peaceably
labours to rear his little group of helpless children, is constantly
the victim of oppression. This useful citizen, who happens not to owe
a dollar to any man of influence whose interest it may therefore be
to interpose with the colonel or sub-prefect of the district in his
behalf, has, to use his own pathetic expression, no “arrimo” or powerful
support, neither friend nor protector to plead his cause with the local
authorities, who, though they are enjoined by the government to enlist
none but idle and vicious characters, are daily seen to sacrifice,
with insolence and impunity, justice and duty to malice and caprice.
The native inhabitants are therefore searched out and dragged from
their houses, or from the caves and fastnesses where they have sought
concealment. Torn from their forlorn and destitute families, carried
away as recruits on every new levy of conscripts, they are bound like
galley-slaves, and then driven along, a spiritless crew, hopeless and
helpless, from the recesses and glens of the interior to the coast,
or elsewhere, as circumstances may require, there to die of ague or
dysentery, or, if they survive the usual effects of great changes of
climate and diet, to be harshly trained for the exercise of war.
It is a law of the country, contained in article 6th of the Constitution,
that the common rights of citizenship be suspended towards the
notoriously vagrant, the gambler, the drunkard, and the married man who
without cause abandons his wife, or who is divorced on account of his own
misconduct. The rich and influential can, when they please, easily evade
such laws as these; but, among the peculiar hardships imposed upon the
Indian of the interior, it is not the least that he may be seized for a
soldier on the alleged ground of his being “mal-casado,” or habitually
cohabiting with a woman to whom he has not been previously bound by the
bonds of regular marriage. It is not impartial justice that he should
be punished in this manner for a delinquency which is almost authorized
by the practice of his superiors. These poor people pair together
naturally, and at an early age; and would, we think, frequently render
their union more binding by marriage, if they could afford it. That this
may be understood, it is necessary to say that the curate’s fees for the
performance of matrimonial and burial service vary in amount with the
caste and complexion of the parties. The fee for marrying an Indian is
lower than that assigned for the marriage of a mestizo, and the white
man pays more than either. One consequence of this arrangement is, that
it is often difficult to ascertain the class of the proposed bridegroom;
and the curate may sometimes be induced to raise the beardless Indian
to the rank of the scanty-bearded mestizo, and the latter has in his
own person great ambition to be thought an “hombre blanco” or white man.
The poor agricultural Indian of the Sierra has commonly enough to do to
provide himself with his coca,[25] a hoe, and a chopping-knife, the tools
that he usually works with; and seldom indeed has he got on hand as many
dollars as would enable him to pay even the lowest rate of marriage fees.
Now, he who cannot pay without difficulty the priest for marrying him
in a Christian manner, thinks it can be no great harm to imitate others
around him whose example ought to be worthy of imitation; and, ignorant
of the language which Scripture addresses to his conscience, he contracts
a marriage sanctioned by custom, though not by religion.
Another hardship in the Indian’s situation is, that he has often great
trouble to pay the customary tribute or capitation tax, from which even
the superannuated are not always exempt, though the Treasury professes
not to receive contributions from the aged. When we resided in the Vale
of Huanuco, men have come to us from the distant province of Conchucos,
imploring work, to be paid for not in produce but in money, which is
scarce in Conchucos, that they might be enabled to return with a few
dollars to satisfy the collector of revenue, not less inexorable in his
demands than the corregidor used to be in exacting the royal tribute, of
which this vestige yet remains. On the coast, a day-labourer’s wages may
be six reals or a dollar, according to circumstances; but in remote parts
of the interior, as in the province to which we have referred, wages are
very low,—for example, a real or sixpence per day. In Huanuco, wages
are nominally three reals a day: but here the native planters usually
run accounts with their workmen, whom they supply with such articles as
clothes, spirits, maize, coca, and perhaps tobacco; though the cigar is
more used by the natives of the coast, and such as use not the coca,
than by the agricultural Indian. By this mode of management the poor man
is commonly precipitated, before he is aware of it, into his employer’s
debt, and very often remains involved, and virtually a slave, for the
remainder of his life; while his sons after him are made to take upon
themselves the burden under which the father sank to his grave. But the
same grinding system involves even the better sort of men who are looked
upon with respect in their own humble sphere, and permitted to prefix
Don as a shining handle to their name,—they also are victims to ruinous
custom and superstitious rites; for they are called upon in their turn
to bear the expense of being the major-domos of the feasts which are
celebrated in honour of the tutelar saint of the village to which they
belong.
To defray the expense of these public entertainments, the major-domos
have in most instances not only to spend all their savings, but to
borrow, and to run up their credit with the sellers of fruit and
preserves, the butcher, the baker, the distiller, and _chicheras_, or
women that make the country beer, and sell the malt, called _jorra_,
made of maize. In short, a major-domo of a festival in a village of any
consideration gets well off if one hundred and fifty or two or three
hundred dollars, pay his share of the anniversary feast and procession.
To sustain the pageantry of one day of drunken and profligate religious
enthusiasm in honour of a favourite saint, these men foolishly entangle
themselves and families in the miseries of debt and embarrassments that
destroy both ease and independence, and lead to a multitude of evils
naturally arising out of such degraded circumstances. We have ourselves
employed in weeding our cane-fields an honest and industrious family thus
reduced to great privation; from which the children could never expect to
emerge, after the death of an industrious father, except by the utmost
prudence, perseverance, and industry on their own part, and friendly
support on the part of their employer.
To conclude these remarks on the Indian’s condition, we have shown that
evil example in high places, religious abuses, the exactions of the
collector of revenue, and also of the priest, (whom, by the by, the
state should deliver from this degrading necessity, by giving him an
adequate income out of the tithes which it has appropriated to itself,)
the arbitrariness of petty governors, alcaldes, and village captains,
together with the restless and overweening ambition of military despots
that allow their country no repose,—we have shown that these causes,
collectively, tend to render the Indian race—which forms the bulk of the
Peruvian nation—insecure in their persons and property, distrustful and
cringing in their character, degraded in their morals, and heirs direct
to civil and religious bondage.
The curates who reside in the mountain glens and deep corries feel
assured, from the well-known feelings cherished by their flocks, that
when the day arrives when these uneducated men of the hills shall
understand what are their own political rights and physical strength,
and shall be commanded by bold and sagacious leaders of their own
blood and kind, they will fearfully and cruelly avenge their wrongs on
all “advenedizos,” all exotics!—on their white oppressors and sable
interlopers![26]
CHAPTER VI.
War of Independence.—Unsettled state of the country
at the close of 1835 and early in 1836.—Gamarra’s
Government.—Insurrections.—Guerilla and Freebooters.—Foreign
Marines.—Lima invaded from the castles of Callao, under
command of Solar.—Orbegoso enters Lima.—Castles of Callao
taken by assault.—Battle of Socabaya.—Salaverry taken
prisoner.—Execution.—Public tranquillity hoped for under the
protection of Santa-Cruz.
Having in the preceding chapters attempted to give a correct idea of the
general aspect of Peru, and of the social condition of its inhabitants,
we will subjoin a brief sketch of the anarchy into which it fell about
the close of the year 1835 and beginning of 1836.
From the year 1810, when first the Patriot flag was triumphantly carried
into upper Peru by the spirited Buenos-Ayreans, the natives of lower
Peru, or that which is now called the Peruvian Republic, had the path
to freedom boldly pointed out to their view. But in Lima, where Spanish
influence and loyalty were strongly concentrated, it was not until 1819,
when Lord Cochrane appeared with a liberating squadron on the shores of
Peru, and the Chilean and Buenos-Ayrean forces in the year following
landed on the same coast under the command of General San Martin, that
the national spirit of the Peruvian people declared itself in that joyful
welcome, and effective support of their proposed deliverers and fellow
patriots, which struck dismay into the councils, and confusion into the
operations of their proud oppressors. Then, indeed, were kindled all the
horrors of civil strife and warfare in this once opulent and peaceful
country; and these sanguinary struggles never ceased, until, aided by
the Colombian troops, and the directing mind of the great Liberator
Bolivar, the Peruvians were at length enabled to throw off the chains
of despotism which for more than three centuries they had submissively
worn,—chains of which they will long bear evident marks on their national
and domestic character; for the battle of Ayacucho, which was gloriously
fought and won by the Patriots on the 9th day of December 1824, and which
terminated the great liberating campaigns of Peru, has not yet secured
prosperity to that distracted country. But the Peruvians, having thrown
off the tameness of bondage, and assumed the name of freemen, have yet
harder work before them than the expulsion of the Spaniards: they have
to finish their own work of regeneration; to surmount all the intestine
difficulties and reconcile all the discordant elements which originate
among themselves; they have to free their community of noisy demagogues
that poison the public press, and discontented agitators who, affecting
the purest zeal for the commonwealth, have an eye only to their own
interest, and whose object is change—they care not what, so long as it
may benefit themselves. How far they are yet from having realized the
final advantages they proposed to derive from their great, and, so far,
successful revolutionary struggle, is plainly discovered in times of
public disturbance, when all classes suffer more or less severely from
grinding contributions and wanton exactions.
The wealth of the “hacendado,” or landed proprietor, is dissipated in
every turmoil; and the less affluent farmer, or “chacarero,” is arrested
in his labour, and has his arm paralysed by indigence and violence.
Predatory troops, as well as government hirelings, seize and drive off
his cattle, lead astray his slaves, press or frighten away his free
labourers, destroy his crops, and pillage his granaries; and should
the spoliated countryman, or country gentleman, be able to rally his
spirits and renew his exertions so as to recover the shock of one year’s
depredation, the repetition of the like violence, or an aggression
yet more destructive, on the following year, consigns him to hopeless
beggary. The miners likewise, though a greatly privileged corporation,
are for the most part destitute of real capital; yet, in these times,
misnamed patriotic, they are a prey to unjust collectors of tribute,
who, on fixing any particular miner’s contribution at a certain sum in
current money, which he is unable to pay, take care to recover the amount
in piña. Now, the extortioner asserts that the miner’s piña, though
truly excellent, is very badly purified,—that it is of “mucha merma,” or
sustains great loss of weight in fusion; and, under this false pretence,
again comes upon the miner, and obliges him to make up the alleged
deficiency: this, in fact, is a surplus, over and above the demands of
the government, which swaggering colonels, or other such commissioned
pilferers, appropriate without scruple to their own unworthy purposes.
Such acts of violence and villany in times of petty revolutions lead
to the worst consequences; for they not only occasion great private
distress, but create such a general distrust in the government and its
rapacious agents, as frequently prevents the miners from remitting silver
bars to Lima, when otherwise it might be their interest to do so; and
this oppression causes a contraband trade, for which, indeed, the open
coasts of the country afford all imaginable facility. Nor should it be
here overlooked that, as a common consequence of the frequent public
broils in this republic, the small merchant or retail dealer often
feigns, on the convenient plea of bad times, an utter incapacity to pay
the wholesale foreigner in Lima who credits him with goods. Should a
person of this character once get into the interior with a respectable
stock on hand, he is sure to play the part of a gentleman in feasting and
dancing, &c.; and it may take some trouble not only to get him to render
fair accounts, but to hunt him out of the town or village where, under
the pretext of transacting business, he is pleased to locate himself. In
short, so great is the disorder in every department of the social and
political system in Peru, that, to express the sentiments of a friend of
ours, and a distinguished Peruvian statesman, “In Peru there cannot for
a long time to come be any other than a military government; every state
pretends to regulate itself by a moral government; but, as we have little
or no morality in our land, the bayonet must inevitably direct us. Here
we have no industry; there is not more than one man in ten that labours
for his bread: and putting out of the question the ‘empleados,’ or those
who fill public stations under government, and who are supported at the
cost of the state, there is not one in thirty of those mannikins who
are daily seen loitering about the streets that live by their own proper
industry. Give to the Indian, in whose arm rests our physical strength,
an idea of his wants; let him know the conveniences of civilized life;
in short, enlighten the mass of our people so as to let them understand
something at least of the nature and end of government, and then we shall
not have daily revolutions. But, situated as we are at present, we have
neither capital, industry, nor private security. All is insecure; all is
loose and common, unhinged, unprotected, and without order. Good men have
nothing to hope for: the few individuals who have access to our rulers
are guided by none but the most sordid motives. It is the ruin of my
lacerated country, that no man looks beyond his personal interest; that
no one attaches himself to the government with sound intentions, or with
any view except that of plunder.”
The mountain Indian in particular, whose knowledge and usefulness
our patriotic friend would fain improve and enlarge, long inured to
servitude, and only acquainted with the rudest arts of life, has never
arrived at a correct idea of the extent of his privations, or of the
nature of those primary political rights which, by skilful combination
and promises, (though himself too ignorant to reason on the merits of
the cause,) he was at length goaded forward to assert, and for some
time to sustain with manly energy. Thus have the meekest and most
submissive of men, through vigorous exertions on the part of the few who
conceived and originated the plan of their independence, been stirred
up to despite their unjust rulers, and trained to the use of fire-arms,
at the very sight of which they formerly trembled. The effect of such
education must for some time be productive of disorder; for, to apply a
homely illustration, the fire that is lit by the husbandman to destroy
overgrown and noxious weeds, cannot always be checked before it scorches
the cane or the corn field; and so it is with hostile passions, which
when once excited, though for a good and patriotic purpose, cannot
always be quelled at pleasure, or at once restrained within the limits
of perfect order and rational liberty. Of this the recent history of
Peru affords ample evidence, for, since the close of General Gamarra’s
troubled government, there has scarcely been a lull of temporary peace
in that ill-fated country.[27] It is asserted by those who best knew
this influential man’s counsels, that, during his four years’ rule, he
crushed no fewer than fourteen conspiracies more or less matured against
his person or government: yet at the expiration of his lawful term of
presidentship, to which dignity his artful schemes conducted him on the
ruin of his predecessor, the beloved General La Mar, he had scarcely
relinquished his high office in January 1834, when he was seen to rear
the standard of rebellion, and hasten the downfall of his country by
authorizing insurrection with his example. Although frustrated in this
shameful revolt, in the year following he was again at the head of an
armed faction, and in open and sanguinary rebellion. But finally, after
the disastrous battle of Yanacocha, and total dispersion of his surviving
partisans, he came to Lima for refuge against the united and victorious
force of his legitimate foes, the Peruvian president Orbegoso, with his
Bolivian ally, Santa-Cruz. And here in the capital, while receiving the
condolence of his mortified friends, and mourning the loss of his heroic
wife, the renowned Panchita,[28] whose heart in his utmost adversity was
presented to him by a confidential female friend, enclosed in a glass,—he
had little leisure to weep over it. Ere his awakened sorrow was soothed,
he was arrested on a rough military warrant, and, in company with several
of his friends or adherents, once more hurried away into banishment by
the stern orders of the impetuous General Salaverry, a rival leader, less
artful and wary, but more active and daring than himself.
Lest anything should be wanting to crown the accumulated miseries of
a distracted and afflicted people, his excellency the provisional
president of the republic, Don Jose Louis Orbegoso, in his address to
the Peruvians, dated Tarma, January 4th, 1836, and published in the
Redactor of Lima on the 9th day of the same month, solemnly affirmed
and promulgated that “the very laws, dictated with the pure intention
of securing happiness to the commonwealth, had concentrated within
themselves the elements of her destruction. These laws had proved a
safeguard to the seditious, and had been the bulwarks of rebellion.
Through their operation the executive had been forced to feel the volcano
at its feet, though unable to prevent an eruption. Yes, under the
overseeing eye of the government, the revolutions had been hatched and
brought forth, reared and strengthened into maturity.”
This acknowledgment, from a president duly invested with extraordinary
or dictatorial powers, renounced every rational idea of government, and
virtually declared the incapacity of the supreme authority to protect the
person, property, or rights of the citizen, or to sustain the necessary
subordination of society. By this government, which so frankly declared
its own imbecility, men either faithless or inept were, perhaps for want
of better, appointed to fill offices of high trust and power; and in
this way was kindled the train of that sanguinary revolution, which, in
the year 1835, burst forth like the flaming combustibles and poisonous
eructations of an overwhelming volcano; spreading consternation, outrage,
and desolation over the wide range of its fearful sweep. But, during the
whole of this tumultuous period, the Limenian mob, made up, though it
be, of mixed and most variegated castes, illustrated by their example
how slow the mind is to cast off early and deeply rooted habits; for,
after the lapse of so many years of civil dissension, they showed that,
as a whole, they still retained the feelings of public subjection
(unfortunately not turned to account by any steady government) to
which, in olden times, they were habituated under the jurisdiction of
the Spaniards. For several days during this period there was no sort of
police in the capital. The government and garrison had abandoned it, and
shut themselves up within the fortress and castles of Callao; but yet the
populace showed a singular measure of forbearance, and the instances of
outrage and pillage committed in the streets were exceedingly few.
At this conjuncture of danger and uncertainty, foreign property in the
capital was guarded by marines, English, French, and American, from
their respective vessels of war on the station: but, for several months
previously to these days of general panic and dismay, the capital had
been the theatre of daily broils; the banditti and soldiery being engaged
in ceaseless though irregular contest for the mastery both within and
without the walls. The inhabitants were affected with a sort of nervous
infirmity, or morbid susceptibility of impression, proceeding from the
unsubdued feeling of impending danger.
E l’aspettar del male è mal peggiore
Forse, che non parrebbe il mal presente:
Pende, ad ogn’aura incerta di romore,
Ogni orecchia sospesa ed ogni mente;
E un confuso bisbiglio entro e di fuore
Trascorre i campi e la città dolente.
TASSO.
A pillar of dust rising in the distance, or the smoke of burning weeds
in the neighbouring farms, were sure to be attributed by the anxious
spectator in the city to the less harmless fire of musketry and
skirmishers. On the appearance of any such sign, notice was immediately
given from the lofty steeple of La Merced, or the arcade of the bridge
opposite the palace balconies. If a playful black boy was seen to
gallop on his donkey by the trees of the old Alameda, or suburbs of
Malambo, then some mercachifle or pregonero[29] would instantly give the
alarm, which was conveyed by the vocal brotherhood with the rapidity
of lightning—and “Hay viene el negro Escobar y los ladrones!” (Here
comes the negro Escobar and the robbers!) was soon ringing through
all parts of the city—whereupon in every direction would follow the
running tumult of “Cierra puertas!”—shut doors!—and then the creaking
and heavy clash of massy doors, and the jarring of chains and bolts,
as every street and area entrance were closed and barricaded. During
these moments of self-imprisonment, suspense, and anxiety, the streets
were entirely abandoned by the unarmed populace; and the noise from
the pavement, caused by the gently progressive motion of an ambling
hack, was exaggerated in fancy, so as to imitate the clang and tread
of a hundred horses. It produced the same startling effect in the
over-excited imagination of those within, (who, to see what passed
without, hardly ventured to peep through a key-hole, or from the corner
of a latticed balcony,) as the unwelcome rattling of a wheeled carriage
or the dull Pantheon car, on the morning succeeding a desolating
earthquake, never fails to produce on sensitive frames while under the
still abiding influence of recent alarm. Under such circumstances of
general consternation it was that the timely arrival of irregular troops,
“_montonera_,” under the command of a Patriot general, Vidal, delivered
Lima out of the hands of a formidable band of freebooters under the
celebrated negro Escobar, who had already begun the work of depredation,
and whose sanguinary disposition, if excited by drink or excess,
threatened to realize the worst anticipations of the dismayed citizens.
In this very condition of infuriated exultation and inebriety, being in
the act of plundering a house in open day, he was surprised, and in less
than an hour afterwards shot in the plaza; where, only the day before,
he had showed off very proudly under the balconies of the archbishop’s
palace, mounted on a magnificent black steed, which he had taken by force
from the prelate’s own stable. But now in his last moments his only
intelligible prayer was said to be that he might receive forgiveness from
the archbishop, whose sacred dignity he had so recently insulted; and,
probably, of all the unhappy Peruvians who are brought to suffer death at
the “banquillo,” there falls not one but shows some mysterious respect
for the church; and the greatest criminal among them is never, perhaps,
entirely forgetful of his tutelar saint. Whatever their career of life
may have been, their faith, well or ill founded, yields them hope at the
last hour; and it is allowed by those who witness their tragic end, that
they generally die the death of the wicked with the composure of martyrs.
On the day that General Vidal, with his orderly montonera, entered at
the invitation of the municipality—“cabildo,”—for the protection of the
terrified city, it was interesting to observe the contrast presented by
the negro Cimarones, when arrayed in the cathedral square of the capital
by the side of the freemen of Huamantanga, and the poor but independent
Indians of Yuyos, who, of all their tribe and fellow aborigines, are
the least passive under political oppression. In the laughing negroes,
the perpetual motion of their long and dangling limbs, never at rest
in the saddle, betokened an exuberance and locomotive waste of nervous
energy; while, on the other hand, the contemplative-looking and compact
little Indian, mounted on his hardy nag, just emerged from the solitary
and rugged wilds of the mountains, though surrounded with the novelty
and excitement of a great city in confusion, never for a moment lost
the composure and serenity of his countenance and demeanour.[30] These
highland bands, together with a few other brave but undisciplined
volunteers, inspired the lower orders of the Limenians with that
transient enthusiasm to which, on extraordinary occasions, they have more
than once shown themselves capable of being raised; and simultaneously
they rushed to arms as the bells from every spire tolling the solemn
“llamada a fuego,” or the alarm of conflagration, summoned them to the
defence of their beloved Lima, which was menaced and ultimately attacked
by a formidable sortie from the castles of Callao. The assailants were
led on by Solar the governor, and cousin to the spurious president,
Salaverry, whose illegitimate cause, now on the eve of being lost for
ever, his less energetic relative but faintly sustained. It is worthy
of remark, that even on this momentous occasion, the spirit-stirring
6th of January 1836, the patrician youth—“los hijos de familia”—took no
active part. Educated with the utmost tenderness of indulgence, they are
more inclined to love than arms. In short, the business of their life is
pleasure.
Until the last memorable rally and sanguinary struggle at Socabaya,
near Arequipa, under that Limenian _lusus naturæ_, General Felipe
Santiago Salaverry, the military name of the Patriot officers of Peru
had been rapidly sinking into utter contempt. By far the greater number
of their spirited and intelligent country-women decried the turncoat
fraternity, and regretted that they themselves were not born to carry
arms, that they might redeem the fallen honour of their country. These
degenerate officers seemed to take pleasure in calling every now and then
the attention of the public to their vile “pronunciamientos,” or open
abjuration of honourable allegiance to those placed in just authority
over them. Such vain and faithless vaunters, whose proudest achievements
were but to forsake their duty, bind their chiefs, and desolate their
native land, became the objects of public scorn, and were despised even
by the softer sex, as being fitter to wield the distaff than the sword.
But Salaverry, a man of vast though ill-directed energy and reckless
spirit, made the sky re-echo to his shout of war to the death! And such
complete ascendency did he acquire over the minds of his countrymen, by
his almost insane impetuosity and appalling executions,[31] that he not
only constrained them to a state of awe and submission, but, what is more
remarkable, inspired them, when he pleased, with martial ardour, and
made them emulate the deeds of Zepita, Junin, and Ayacucho. During the
gloomy reign of the black banner, and continuance of the revolution of
Salaverry, the Limenian women, uneasy beneath the accumulating evils of
political oppression, made their way into the ranks of the insurgents.
Disguised in their mysterious “mantos,” they circulated patriotic
proclamations, and whispered abroad the low and solemn murmur of public
opinion; until at length, on the famous 6th of January 1836, when the
populace rushed to the walls, it was shouted aloud from every mouth,—ay,
the cannon’s mouth,—to the confusion of rapacious upstarts struggling
for ascendency. And still the women played their part—as they raised the
whirlwind, so they rode on it; for, without any metaphor, they were to be
seen armed and on horseback amidst the crowd.
Two days after this display of popular feeling so unusual in Lima,
the provisional president made his entrance into the city amid loud
rejoicings that nothing could exceed. A few weeks after this event, the
eminently brave General Moran by a gallant assault forced the castles of
Callao, then under the command of the insurgent Solar, to capitulate;
and, on the 7th of February, General Salaverry lost the hard-contested
battle of Socabaya, also called Altos de la Luna, or Heights of the Moon,
a name singularly in character with that high and lunatic excitement
which hurried to his doom this enthusiastic child of ambition. He escaped
from the field of action with many of his officers, and the remainder
of his wearied troops; and, when nearly in sight of their shipping at
Islay, they were taken prisoners by our countryman, General Miller, under
circumstances which demanded on the part of this very distinguished
officer the exercise of that active vigilance, coolness, intrepidity,
and self-possession, for which he has been so remarkable throughout his
honourable military career.
On Thursday, February 18, 1836, General Salaverry, and eight of his
principal officers, were by sentence of court-martial condemned to death;
and, accordingly, were publicly shot in the great square of Arequipa.
This event, though lamented by a few, was matter of rejoicing to the
many, who now looked forwards to the re-organization of the political
state of Peru under the protection of General Santa Cruz, the President
of Bolivia.
CHAPTER VII.
On Climate and Disease.—Panama, Guayaquil, Peru, and Chile.
For those who propose to cross the Isthmus of Panama, or visit the
shores of the Pacific, it may be interesting to be made in some degree
acquainted with the influence of particular climates, and the sort
of illness which they are most likely to experience at the principal
commercial ports, particularly to the south of the line. On this account
the author now offers some general hints on these subjects, having it
in view to publish as a separate treatise a practical account of the
diseases of Peru, described as they occur at different altitudes, in the
diversified climate of that country.
The seasons at Panama are divided into wet and dry: the rainy season
begins towards the latter end of May, and continues till November; and
from November to June, or the latter end of May, is the dry season. At
Panama, agues, fevers, bilious and gastric complaints are common in the
wet season; but the yellow fever, or “_Vomito negro_,” very rarely has
been known to pass the mountain barriers which separate the Atlantic
from the Pacific. At Cruces the traveller may enjoy a better and safer
climate, during the wet and unhealthy months, (when the thermometer
never, perhaps, falls below 90°,) than either at Panama or Chagres.
To the north of the Isthmus, along the shores of Central America and
Mexico, as far at least as the northern tropic, the climate is considered
“malsano,” or exceedingly unhealthy; a fact well known to those who trade
with Realejo, San Blas, and Mazatlan, where very dangerous remittent
fevers prevail.
To the southward of the Isthmus on the shores of Colombia, in about 2°
south latitude, we find the port and city of Guayaquil, of well-known
commercial importance. Here, the climate is considered unhealthy during
the wet season, when the air is sultry and oppressive; but in the dry
season Guayaquil is not reckoned particularly sickly. The rain commences
in light showers in December, is very heavy in February, and dwindles
away in April. From May to December is the dry season.
The wet season, being the hottest, would naturally be considered as
summer; but here, as in other places of seasonal or periodical rains, the
wet season is called “invierno,” or winter, and the dry season “verano,”
or summer; yet the latter is cooler than the former, and allows one to
wear warmer clothing than would be agreeable in the rainy months.
In the rainy season the thermometer ascends to 90° or 96° Fahrenheit;
but, during the dry season, it ranges from 65° to 85°, being 65° at
night, and rarely exceeding 80°, though it sometimes reaches 85° during
the day. The rain usually falls in the afternoon or night, seldom in
the forenoon, when the sun is often so powerful as nearly to dry up
the pools and streets before the evening rain comes on again; however,
there are days when no rain falls. The houses being covered with tiles,
and furnished with arcades, are sufficiently defended against sun and
rain. The plain extending between mountain and sea is, for ten or twelve
leagues inland, well wooded, and intersected here and there with smaller
rivers which the natives call esteros or lakes, in allusion probably to
their appearance during the wet season, when, teeming with alligators,
they inundate the beautiful meadows round about; so that the term “river”
is only applied, by way of distinction, to the great navigable river
of the city, which is so influenced by the tide, at least in the dry
season, as to be quite briny to the taste. Here the natives bathe all the
year round,—a practice, we believe, which conduces not a little to the
general health and fair and stately form of the Guayaquilenian ladies,
who are said to be fonder of town, and the ease of their hammocks, than
of country air and exercise. The streets of Guayaquil, being steeped in
rain, become contaminated for want of police; insects swarm on every
side, and vegetable and animal emanations pollute the atmosphere: malaria
abounds; and fevers, dysenteries, and various gastric disorders attack
the inhabitants, and especially the imprudent stranger, who, trusting in
his youth and strength, and not considering that difference of climate
demands corresponding difference of life, perseveres in the same habits
under every parallel of latitude through which he passes from one
temperate zone to the other.
In warm and humid situations, such as Guayaquil, surrounded by rivers,
stagnant pools, lagoons, and exuberant vegetation, atmospherical heat may
operate in causing disease, not merely by promoting the production of
miasmata, but also by increasing the irritability of the organs of the
body, so as to predispose to severe attacks of illness. The affection of
the skin commonly known under the name of “prickly heat” is very likely
to arise from profuse perspiration while in Guayaquil; and all excess in
the cuticular secretion should be avoided by every proper means, such as
suitable clothing, temperate living, and moderate bodily exertion, &c.
The contrary practice, of encouraging sweat by heating drinks, has a bad
tendency, both moral and physical:—physically, it produces, sooner or
later, gastric and hepatic diseases;—morally, it furnishes a pretext
and excuse for deep potations;—and the end of all is a broken down
constitution, and a mind impaired in its noblest powers. In another point
of view, without supposing that the fevers which on the shores of the
Pacific are termed putrid arise from the want of a due quantity of saline
ingredients in the blood, it is not improbable that, when perspiration
is excessive and too long continued, it may indeed carry off from the
circulation more of these saline portions than can be quite compatible
with a state of perfect health. We have sometimes observed horses, when
hard pressed on a hot day along the sandy plains of Peru, lie down
exhausted and overcome by excessive sweat and muscular exertion; and, on
being unsaddled and allowed to cool, the poor animals on such occasions
would appear as if covered with hoar-frost, from the quantity of saline
matter left behind from the fluids perspired and evaporated.
Moderate transpiration, however, is a cooling process, and a necessary
one to the natural condition of the system, when the circulation of
the blood is much increased, as is the case under high atmospherical
temperature, though at the same time muscular vigour usually becomes
much diminished under such circumstances. The functions of the stomach
often grow languid as the relaxation of the skin has been great and long
continued; but, while the appetite is thus diminished, the flow of bile
is apt to be increased, and the bowels often become irregular,—sometimes
too lax and irritable, at other times torpid and costive.
In one we may observe that, when the bowels are lax from an overflow of
bile, the skin is dry, and that for months together; while in another,
exposed to the same changes of climate, the skin is always soft, while
the secretion from the kidneys is scanty, and the intestines appear
to lack their wonted moisture, and become sluggish, as if deprived of
their muscular power of healthy action. But it more usually occurs,
on being transported from a cold to a warm and humid climate, that a
very notable alteration and increase is observed in both secretions—the
biliary and cutaneous, of the liver and of the skin. The state of the
bowels therefore requires to be attended to very particularly in all
great transitions of climate; because, from undue accumulations in the
intestinal passages during warm and sultry weather, irritation and
fever may ensue, and a bilious disorder of the bowels, if neglected, or
ill-treated, will too readily decline into a fatal dysentery.
Having in the first chapter of the first volume of this work given a
sufficiently minute account of the climate of the Peruvian coast, it
will now be enough for us to remark that, at its northern extremity,
though bordering on the verdant country of the Equatorial Republic, the
air of the coast of Peru is less humid than it is at its southern limit,
where it joins the desert of Atacama.
The peculiar dryness of the province of Piura is not explained by the
fact that in this part of the coast the Andes retire farther inland than
in many others; for, from Piura, we have only to pass the river Tumbez,
when, as formerly mentioned, the face of nature is quite changed, and
the plains of Guayaquil, though at their lower and more maritime parts
far distant from the inland piles of mountains, are nevertheless deluged
in rain during the wet season; whereas Payta, the sea-port of Piura, has
(as we have been informed by a native of those parts, our enlightened
and public-spirited friend, Don Santiago Tabara,) not unfrequently, for
years in succession,—sometimes as many as ten or twelve years,—not a
shower to give life to a single blade of grass.
At Truxillo, again, the capital of a Peruvian province, situated on the
coast in lat. 8° 8´ south, the air is much drier than at Lima or Callao
in 12° 2´ of south latitude: yet Truxillo is in the vicinity of lofty
mountains which run parallel to the coast; and Huanchaco, its sea-port,
is situated at the foot of the lofty Bell Mountains. But, to enumerate no
more particulars, we think it will be found true as a general proposition
that, from the desert of Atacama to the landing-place of Pizarro on
the banks of the Tumbez,—from the southern tropic to close upon the
line,—there is a progressive diminution of atmospherical humidity.
The difference thus marked in the state of the air appears to influence
very materially the character of several diseases, as intermittent fevers
or _tercianas_, which on the northern coast of Peru, or what is called
_costa de abajo_, and more particularly in the eminently dry province
of Piura, are of milder type than along the shores of the southern and
maritime departments of Peru, known under the name of _los intermedios_.
The Indian population of Piura are a hardy and healthy race of people,
naturally inclined to corpulency; and, indeed, the Indians of Peru in
general are constitutionally disposed to a sleek rotundity of form, which
it would only require ease and good generous diet to call into full
developement, so as to render the bulk of this race _as fat as Caciques_.
Most of the chronic diseases of the Piuranos are said to result from
leaving all to nature in the earlier stages of their complaints; and,
among these northern provincialists, phthisis, dysentery, tercianas or
agues, and typhus mitior,[32] are endemic. The same sort of complaints,
varying however in the intensity of attendant symptoms, are met with all
along the maritime valleys of the coast; and in the list of prevalent
diseases at Lima and elsewhere, visceral obstructions, intestinal
hæmorrhage, disorders of the heart, and asthma, deserve particular
notice. There are also a variety of cutaneous eruptions and nervous
diseases of frequent occurrence, upon the nature and cure of which it is
not at present our purpose to enlarge.
In consumption, which, in all its various forms, is a common disease on
the coast of Peru, a portion of the lungs becoming by degrees ulcerated
and destroyed, there is consequently an interruption to the proper
discharge of the pulmonary functions, accompanied with nocturnal
increase of fever and excessive perspiration. But, even in this advanced
stage of the disease, changing the air of the coast for that of the
mountains or temperate valleys of the Sierra, is found to produce great
relief and prolongation of life.
Spitting of blood from the lungs seems in most instances to depend on
the presence of tubercular phthisis, or on an inherent constitutional
tendency to this disease; and any accidental excitement, as that from
cold or undue exposure to atmospherical vicissitudes, may hurry on cases
of pulmonary hæmorrhage to a fatal termination. Suckling, in particular,
is known to be apt to occasion spitting of blood, which, if not cured in
time, usually ends in those symptoms which characterise consumption of
the lungs.
It is curious to observe that, in the warm climates of the coast, cold
is the exciting cause of most of the diseases which present themselves,
such as catarrh, phthisis, bowel complaints, rheumatism, and even the
intermittent and remittent fevers; for we believe that the baneful
influence of malaria would not be nearly so often experienced, were its
operation in the developement of fever not aided by some check to the
perspiration, or what the natives call _resfrio_.
It is a subject of remark on the sugar estates of Cañete, and other parts
of the coast, that the slave population, though they work in the humid
cane-fields, are yet by no means so liable to ague as either the white
man or Indian. One reason for this difference appears to be that the
sebaceous glands of the dark races, and especially the negro, keep their
skin smooth and soft with a supply of unctuous or oily matter, of rather
offensive odour, but admirably fitted to guard against the evil effects
of atmospherical vicissitudes.
As black surfaces radiate heat better than those of lighter tints, it
might be expected that the body of the negro would be excessively chilled
when exposed to the night air: but the negroes of the coast of Peru
often sleep in the open air, without interrupting the healthy action of
the dermal system. This is a fact which we are disposed to refer to the
preservative effect of the unctuous exudation, because all oily matters
being bad conductors prevent the excessive radiation of internal, and the
too rapid communication of external heat; and therefore, by this natural
inunction of the negro and zambo skin, nature provides a remedy against
the extremes of cold or heat under ordinary circumstances.
We thus learn that flannels or woollens, being bad conductors, are,
when worn next the skin, very valuable as preservatives of an equal
circulation, and therefore of general health, particularly for the
European of finer and unanointed skin when subjected to the influence of
tropical climates.
During the hot months of January and February, on the coast of Peru,
the irritability of the whole system is increased, and particularly of
the mucous membrane of the alimentary passages; and cholera morbus thus
becomes an exceedingly common disease, for which the standard remedy is
ice, or iced water.
The privilege of selling ice in the capital of Peru belongs to the
government, who usually let it out for a term of years to the highest
bidder. The empresario, or lessee, conveys the ice on mules from the
nearest snow-clad mountains at the back of Lima; and is bound to have
always on hand a sufficient quantity for the supply of the capital, and
be ready to deliver it at all hours of the day and night. In form of
frescos, or cooling drinks, every one uses ice in warm summer weather;
and it is considered not merely a luxury or a remedy, but a necessary of
life, indispensable for the due preservation of the public health.
The facility of procuring ice renders cholera morbus a disease of easy
cure, according to the popular practice of the natives. In the first
stage of this malady they administer diluents, such as warm water,
linseed or mallow water, with or without a little seasoning of cream of
tartar or tamarinds; and these simple drinks they continue to give until
they consider that the patient has vomited and voided enough, that is,
until all undigested matters be thrown off, and the bowels well unloaded;
and then they administer iced water, which produces a powerfully sedative
effect.
The death-like coldness of the patient deters neither the vulgar nor the
regular practitioner (who sometimes conjoins opiates and iced drinks)
from giving this remedy with confidence; and the general consequence of
the seasonable use of ice and iced water in this fearful disorder is,
that the stage of external coldness is shortened by the early removal of
internal heat; and thus the exhausting career of the disease is quickly
arrested.
Under this vulgar but satisfactory and long-established treatment of
cholera morbus in Lima, where the disease is endemic, though more
prevalent in the hot months, vomiting, hiccup, and cramps disappear;
reaction is so mild and favourable as never to require the lancet: yet
recovery is almost always certain, though cases appear from time to time
so intense as to assume the aspect of what is called Asiatic cholera,
during which, as a native physician expresses it, the patient is a horrid
image of death.
At Ica and various other points to the southward, where vineyards abound,
it is observed in vintage-time that to eat freely of the grape on an
empty stomach, or without eating bread with the fruit, is one of the
most frequent causes of dysentery, which disease is more appalling and
fatal on the shores of the Pacific than the cholera morbus to which we
have just alluded. It is, however, gratifying to know that, in the form
of dysentery which commonly prevails, the calomel and opium plan of
treatment, when discreetly conducted, is assuredly the safest and best
yet adopted, whether in Lima or in the interior of the country.
Moquegua, which lies a considerable way inwards towards the mountains
behind the sea-port of Ilo, is not less famous for its wine and its
grapes, than for its dysenteries and violent agues; but Tacna, on the
other hand, about seven leagues inward from the port of Arica, is so
healthy as to be a place of resort to the people of the port during the
_terciana_, or aguish season, which, over all the coast, is about the
vernal and more particularly the autumnal equinox.
The salubrity of climate for which Tacna is distinguished is considered
to be partly owing to its vicinity to the cold of the mountains, (for the
snowy pass of the Cordillera, which leads to upper Peru, is within four
hours’ ride of this town,) and still more to a fine dry plain between
it and the sea, which only wants water to become rich in agricultural
produce.[33] But in its present state it is free from that malaria which
the humidity attendant on irrigation would not fail to engender here
as well as in other parts of the coast. In its environs cotton grows
spontaneously; and the native women collect it, and make thread from it
by means of the _spindle_, just as we have often seen done in some of the
warmer inland valleys, where the cotton is indigenous. It is a fact, not
perhaps undeserving of notice, that a bud cut off a cotton-tree in the
neighbourhood of Arica or Tacna was hung up in the cabin of an English
merchant-ship, preserved its vitality in the navigation round Cape Horn,
and opened when about half-way between Peru and England.
The whole coast of upper Peru—now called Bolivia—is arid and desert;
so much so, that the celebrated president Santa Cruz—who, much to the
prejudice of Arica,[34] made Cobija a free port for the introduction of
merchandise,—found that he could not, by sinking pits in the deep sands
of Cobija, come at a supply of good water.[35] For want of water and
lucern, mules from the interior of Bolivia often die at the sea-port of
Cobija; for there is no vegetation within a great distance from this
place. The little water that is obtained at Cobija is brackish, like
that in the pozo or well of the great castle at Callao,[36] which has
invariably been observed to give disorder of the bowels to the soldiers,
who, during the sieges which that fortress has sustained, were obliged
to drink of it. The same has been observed at Cobija, and therefore
there are boats kept there for the purpose of conveying water to it from
Paquisa and other distant parts, which makes it an expensive necessary of
life.
On several parts of the coast of Peru, water, even for domestic uses, is
very scarce; and in the dry season wells are often dug in the beds of
dried-up rivers, or in other places in the neighbourhood of irrigated
lands. At Port Bermejo and Casma, between nine and ten degrees of south
latitude, we are told by the Spanish coasting pilots that, dig where you
will, at ten or twelve paces from the sea, you are sure of finding water
at the depth of half a fathom that is not very brackish. Wells or pits,
however, thus opened in different parts of the coast, are often found to
dry up as they do in Lima (where they are common enough) during the dry
season, which is the time when they are most required.
In northern Peru the practice of digging pits for water in the beds
of rivers is very common; and such is the scarcity of fresh water at
the sea-port of Payta, that it is carried to the city on mules, from
the distance of several leagues. But on the contrary, at the sea-port
of Arica, in southern Peru, good water is found wherever a pit is
dug for it; and within two leagues of this port is the fine vale of
Asapa, abounding in vines, olives, lucern, corn, &c. and affording a
more convenient and copious supply of fresh provisions for shipping
than either Payta or Cobija. These facts are of value not only in an
economical but medical point of view; since on the quality of the
water, as well as of the condition of the atmosphere, in any particular
situation, must greatly depend the health of its inhabitants. Thus, in
Arequipa, of which Quilca was the old, and Islay the present sea-port,
the river-water is said to contain some salts in solution, which render
it unwholesome until it is boiled; and this is known to be one of the
causes of dysentery, which is a prevalent disease in that city.
The peasantry, who travel with asses between Bolivia and Chile across the
deserts of Atacama, pitch their tents by day, to avoid the extreme heat
of the sun reflected from the burning sand, and proceed on their journey
by night; carrying with them all the water and provisions necessary for
the journey. And it may be remarked that the soldiers, sent by order of
General Salaverry to invade Cobija, had to march from the landing-place
at Iquique over desert sands like these, when under their gallant leader
Quirroga they took by surprise the port of Bolivia. These coast marches
usually fall to the lot of the Indian infantry, and these hardy natives
of the mountains generally prefer performing them between sun-down and
sun-rise; for not being constituted, like the sable races, to live in
very warm climates, they are more liable to fever when posting over sandy
plains during the noon-tide heat; and, if they do but meet with musk or
water-melons on their way, they devour them so greedily that they are
sure to fall victims to sundry disorders—as intermittents, remittents,
dysentery, &c.
In Chile, Nature puts on a different appearance from what she wears in
Peru and Bolivia; there, however, as in these countries, the year is
divided into wet and dry—the winter and summer. But in Chile it rains,
as in Colombia and the Equatorial Republic, at the same season on the
mountains and coast; in which respect it differs altogether from Peru
and Bolivia. In the southern extremity of this republic, at about 40° of
south latitude, the rains are heavier, and of longer continuance, than in
the northernmost part, where it joins the great desert of Atacama. On the
coast of Chile very severe gales are experienced, when the coast of Peru
is only refreshed by light and gentle breezes.
During summer, the sun at noon is felt very powerfully at the capital of
Chile, and it is requisite to guard against the risks of insolation; just
as happens in Lima in the month of May, when the mornings and evenings
are cool and cloudy, but the mid-day so excessively hot that it has
become proverbial, and children and others are at this season warned by
the older and more wary Limenians to keep out of the sun in these words,
“Quitese de este sol que madura duraznos!”—Get out of this sun, hot
enough to ripen peaches! an expression probably used in reference to the
mode of ripening fruit of various sorts in Lima, by having it stoved. We
understand that this is done chiefly to prevent the birds from eating the
fruit, which they would not fail to do if it were left to ripen naturally
on the tree. The cheremoya is the fruit most commonly stoved.
In July and August the snow sometimes falls around Santiago, when the
native of Lima who visits this Chilean capital is peculiarly struck with
the novel appearance of the orange-trees in the “_patios_” or court-yards
of the houses, bending under the double weight of fruit and congealed
snow; the green leaves forming a remarkable contrast with the sparkling
crystals, like the jewel garden of the Incas.[37] It rarely snows in the
valleys; but in the winter of 1834, as we were told, a postman and his
horse perished in the snow on the road between Santiago and its sea-port
Valparaiso,[38] where in the months of June, July, August, and September,
it rains a great deal. But during the dry season, though sometimes foggy
in the morning, the sky upon the whole is clear, and the climate healthy
and agreeable.
In giving an account of the climate and progress of vegetation on the
coast of the middle provinces of Chile, it is stated, on good authority,
that “the rainy season, as already mentioned, begins in May, and
continues to October; the heaviest rains are in June and July. After a
few days of rain, there is an interval of fine weather for at least one
or two weeks; and the quantity that falls during the season is small,
varying from twelve to sixteen inches. In summer the atmosphere is
excessively arid, and there is little or no dew. The temperature at noon,
in the middle of the rainy season, is generally about 60°; at night,
seldom under 40°, though there is occasionally a little frost. In summer
the thermometer at noon stands between 70° and 75°; but, during the
night, in clear weather, it frequently falls more than 20°.
“During the latter part of summer, vegetation is almost dormant, and
scarcely a plant of any kind is to be seen in flower; but, in a very few
weeks after the first rains, every part of the country is clothed with
verdure.
“In the south of Chile the heavy rains render the road almost impassable;
and, as vegetation does not advance so rapidly there as in the north,
he” (_the naturalist_) “can botanise in October, November, December, and
January.”[39]
The following observations on atmospherical vicissitudes and miasmatous
matter, with the rationale of their effects in the production of disease
among the inhabitants of Santiago of Chile, we have pleasure in being
able to offer in the form of a translation from an essay in Spanish,[40]
published in the year 1828, by Doctor William C. Blest; upon whom,
though an Englishman, the Government of Chile conferred the highest
professional honours, by nominating him to the protomedical chair, which
he fills with credit in that republic.
Dr. Blest, in endeavouring to rouse the attention of those functionaries
who preside over the destinies of the republic, to the neglected state
of its municipal police, says of Santiago that “The streets, with a few
exceptions, have either very bad pavement, or none at all. The canals
or water-courses, (las acequias,) which, without doubt, were originally
intended to refresh and purify the city, are at present receptacles
of every sort of nuisance; and, not having free exit, they terminate
in stagnant pools around the city, which are so many laboratories of
putrefaction. The cross streets are left in so shameful a state of
neglect, that it is impossible to pass along their narrow foot-paths
without being shocked at every step.
“The suburbs, where the poorer and more numerous class of the community
reside, are so full of dirt and mud, that even on horseback it is
difficult to pass through them. In almost every street there are small
and confined apartments, without air or light, except that which enters
at the door, and these are occupied by whole families of artisans; so
that it is not uncommon to see seven or eight persons crowded together in
one wretched abode, where dogs and cats add to the nuisance, and still
further crowd the family group.
“Such is a true picture of the police of Santiago; and, to convince the
curious reader of its accuracy, we need only refer to the aqueducts which
pass through the streets and houses,—to the heaps of putrid matter in
the cross streets,—to the deep deposits of mire and marshes,—and to the
crowded and unventilated dwellings of the poor and labouring classes....
“It is too well and generally known that at all seasons, and for days
together in every week, the aqueducts which pass through the houses are
so completely blocked up with the quantity of vegetable matter and dead
animals collected in them, that they cannot transmit even the smallest
stream of water. The subordinate or cross streets, and many of the
principal ones, are not less filthy; and any stranger who visits Santiago
will be inclined to believe that, of all the towns of South America, it
is the dirtiest.[41]
“Sad experience, and especially in recent times, has taught, that during
the decomposition of organized matter, whether animal or vegetable,
under the action of heat and moisture, certain exhalations take place,
which possess properties in the highest degree injurious to the health
of man. This is a truth which is attested by a multitude of medical
authors. It is the good fortune of the inhabitants of Santiago, that the
atmosphere in which they breathe does not so readily absorb, or act upon
substances undergoing the process of putrefaction, as to engender those
dreadful epidemics, which have carried off millions of lives, and are
still reaping their harvest of mortality in various parts of Spain, North
America, India, Mexico, Panama, Vera Cruz,[42] and many other regions of
the Old and New World.
“Were they not thus favoured by the natural salubrity of their
atmosphere, the church-bells of the Chilean capital would be daily heard
to toll the mournful knell of death, and every home would present the
tearful scene of grief and lamentation.
“But although in Santiago the action of the atmospheric air on substances
in a state of putrefaction is not so active as to produce such epidemics
as those alluded to, yet it cannot be denied that it is capable of
acquiring such properties as make it exercise a most baneful influence
on the public health: inducing attacks of dysentery, typhus and other
fevers, which, from time to time, appear epidemically. In truth, to some
general cause of this nature we must attribute those violent and fatal
dysenteries which were so very prevalent in the year 1826, and which
recurred in the months of March and April of the present year (1828). To
a similar cause must be referred that vexatious sort of puerperal fever
which in the year 1827 attacked such a number of women; and also those
cases of typhus or _chabalongo_ which abound, with few exceptions, every
year.
“Reasoning on the generally received principle that air at a high
temperature occasions a greater degree of exhalation from bodies than
cool air does, and from what we know the influence of summer heat to be
in other countries, we should suppose that diseases caused by miasmatous
matter should be here more common in summer than in winter; but our
acquaintance with this climate induces us to think differently on this
subject.
“Here, in summer, the air of the atmosphere is uniformly clear and
cloudless; and the emanations from the earth’s surface, meeting
neither clouds nor mists to impede their ascent, mingle with the other
atmospherical ingredients, and diffuse themselves freely through the
regions of space. The opposite of this takes place in winter. The
heat of the sun is always very considerable, or at least sufficient to
disengage from heaps of nastiness and rubbish the noxious vapours which
putrefaction has generated in them. At sunset these vapours come in
contact with the clouds that gather around us, and soon meet the cold
air of the approaching night; the consequence of which is, that they
are precipitated into the lower strata of the atmosphere, and wafted
on the nocturnal breeze into the interior of our habitations. Thus a
satisfactory and rational explanation is given, why there should be
more sickness in winter than in summer; and by associating this view of
the matter with the bad ventilation in the houses of the poor, who from
their inability to provide themselves with fuel[43] and warm clothing,
are compelled to exclude the free admission of air, we may perceive the
reason why at this season the poor are more obnoxious to disease than
those whose pecuniary circumstances enable them to protect their homes
from the severities of winter by better means than the utter exclusion of
the air.
“The generality of persons, overlooking the course of atmospherical
changes, imagine that the diminution in the number of cases of sporadic
fever observable in summer is owing to the abundant consumption of the
fruits of this season. We will not deny that the use of fruit may improve
to a considerable extent the health of those persons who in winter and
spring have been nourished with strong and stimulating aliment, such as
is calculated to disorder the digestive functions; but we are far from
thinking that to the use of fruits alone are to be assigned all the good
effects which the vulgar fancy they derive from them. We know that in
other countries not less bounteously supplied with fruit than Chile,
though not favoured with so benign a climate, epidemic diseases prevail
more in summer than in winter. For these, and many other reasons which
it would be superfluous to detail, we consider ourselves authorized to
dissent from public opinion on this subject, and to assign the diminution
in the diseases of the character alluded to, during the summer months,
to causes more in conformity with medical philosophy: namely, the
benign state of the atmosphere in summer; the bodily exercise which the
different classes of the community indulge in every summer evening; and
the wholesome ventilation which they enjoy at this season, their doors
being constantly open, and many of them choosing to sleep even in the
open air.”
APPENDIX
ON THE ZOOLOGY OF WESTERN PERU.
Under the head of the zoology of western Peru we beg leave to present
to the reader a translation of a chapter on the influence of climate on
animals, especially on domestic animals, taken from the work of the late
Dr. Don Hipolito Unanue, entitled “Observaciones sobre el Clima de Lima.”
Dr. Unanue was an ornament to society, and honoured by his country, as
well under the Spanish as the Patriot government: by the former, as the
reader already knows, he was appointed chief of the medical tribunal of
Peru; by the latter, president of that republic.
TRANSLATION.
The horrid picture of America which has been drawn by some ultramarine
philosophers does not apply to Peru, and can only be viewed as the
production of their own excited imaginations. Where else, indeed, could
they have found those dark and unfriendly dies which enabled them to
depict these happy regions under a repulsive aspect?—as so many dark
spots in the creation denied the blessing of Providence,—as the dismal
abode of serpents, crocodiles, and venomous monsters.[44]
Quale portentum neque militaris
Daunia in latis alit esculetis;
Nec Jubæ tellus generat, leonum
Arida nutrix.
HOR.
The learned Count Buffon laid down and wished to establish the four
following propositions: 1st, that of the animals common to the old and
new continents, the breed is larger in the former than in the latter;
2d, that the animals indigenous to the new are less than those of the
old hemisphere; 3d, that the species of domestic animals which have
been transplanted from Europe, have degenerated in America; 4th, that
this part of the earth furnishes but few races of animals peculiar to
itself. But the inaccuracy of these propositions has been demonstrated
by the illustrious President Jefferson[45] in comparative tables of
the existing animals on both continents. This, however, seems to be
certain, that, as animals depend for their support on the productions
of the vegetable kingdom, their number and growth will be in proportion
to the luxuriance of vegetation; and therefore, there being in the one
hemisphere as well as in the other very extensive plains covered with
abundant pastures, and likewise poor and sterile regions that yield
little or no nutriment, either hemisphere will exceed the other in the
size, number, and beauty of its animals, wherever it happens to exceed
the other in the fertility and extent of its woods and meadows.
Peru is by no means well fitted to maintain the numerous species of
indigenous animals which inhabit the forests of North America, nor
calculated for the multiplication of those which may be transplanted from
Europe, to that prodigious extent which is observed on the broad plains
and exuberant pastures of Chile and Parana. Still, however, this country,
in its coast, its mountain ranges, and Montaña, comprises upon the whole
a vast and beautiful variety, with which the pages of natural history
will be one day enriched; but it is only our object at present to offer
observations on some of the most remarkable of these, as they appear to
be influenced by our climate.
INDIGENOUS QUADRUPEDS.
Of the families of quadrupeds found in Peru at the period of its
discovery and conquest, the following are the chief.
_Paco._[46]—_Camelus Peruvianus_, Linn. Syst. Nat.;—Molina, Histor. de
Chile, Part I.
_Alco._—_Canis Americanus_, Linn.; _Kiltho_,—_Thegua_, Mol.
_Puma._—_Felis puma_, Linn.; _Pagi_, Mol.
_Uturuncu._—_Felis onsa_, Linn.; _Felis gigna_, Molin.—is found in the
west of Peru; and by the same name is designated the yaguar of Azara,
plate IX. which inhabits the woods and thickets on the eastern side of
the country.
_Ucumari._—_Ursus Americanus_, Linn.
_Tarúca._—_Elaphus_, Linn. ast corpore minor.
Providence, which has everywhere supplied its rational creatures with
means of maintenance, and of executing the labours to which they are by
nature destined, conferred on the native of the Andes an inestimable
boon in the _paco_; by whose wool he is clothed, by whose flesh he is
nourished. The fleet huanaco and the timid vicuña afford him amusement
and pastime in the chase; and the llama and alpaca convey his goods with
safety through the rough and narrow pathways of his native mountains. The
long and upraised neck of these animals, their full and expressive eyes,
the _urcu_, or tuft which adorns their foreheads, and the dignified air
with which they look around them, as with composed and solemn step they
march along in a right line like disciplined troops, form altogether a
picture of such peculiar and striking beauty as must always be admired,
and never can be forgotten.
The _alco_ is the most faithful companion of the Indian: it is of middle
size; and its body is commonly covered with black wool, all except at the
breast and tail, where it is grey. These dogs are endowed with singularly
acute powers of perception, their bark never fails to give notice of
anything new that happens about the hut or dwelling, and they also attack
strangers with great ferocity. Of this race there is a small breed
like our lapdogs, which the Indian women carry on their _quipes_,[47]
and cherish in their bosoms; and, as these pet-dogs are taciturn, this
peculiarity has made some persons suppose that the alcos do not bark, and
therefore belong not to the dog species.
The pacos and alcos inhabit the Sierra or highlands. Such of them as are
domesticated descend with their masters to the coast, where they stay
but a short time, and then return; for in the heat of the coast they
soon fall victims to the _caracha_ or itch,—the consequence of increased
excitement and circulation on the surface of the body, and a want of
perspiration occasioned by the thickness of the skin. Not more remarkable
for their beauty are the eyes of the llamas and tarúcas in the Sierra,
than are the aborigines of the same mountains for the smallness of their
eyes and their inclination outwards towards the external angle: an useful
structure, for it adjusts their sight to their situation, and, by giving
them a side-long view of objects, often prevents them from falling over
precipices when crossing the wild passes of the mountains. The same
peculiarity of structure also defends them from the bad effects of the
sun’s reflection from the snow, which in white people and the natives of
the coast, whose eyes are full and large, induces _zurumpe_, which is a
troublesome ophthalmia.
The _tarúca_ or deer, and the _puma_ or lion, being fitted to endure the
temperature of the Sierra and of the coast, pass backwards and forwards
from one climate to the other: the deer go about in flocks; but the
little lions wander in solitude, apart from others of their kind. The
deer are of a middle size, and have pretty horns.[48] They are fleet,
and afford amusement to those who are fond of coursing. The _otorunco_ or
tiger, and the _ucumari_ or bear, do not frequent this side of the Andes,
but they inhabit the regions eastward of these mountains, where there are
many other animals of prey.
FOREIGN QUADRUPEDS.
The sheep transported from Europe have increased to an amazing degree on
the great commons or pastures of _ichu_[49] which abound in the heights
of the Andes; and in the wide-spreading provinces of Collao the quality
of the wool is particularly superior.
In the high and Cordillera ranges, horses, asses, and black cattle are,
like man, of small size, because their growth is stinted by cold: they
are covered with hair which has the softness, length, and consistence
of wool; by means of which Nature protects them against the inclemency
of those bleak and frozen wastes, even as she does the flowers of such
shrubs[50] as grow on the same frigid heights.
On the other hand, in the valleys and on the coast, where the heat
is sufficient to enable the various members of the body to develope
themselves freely, those very quadrupeds are of good size, spirited, and
showy. The donkey[51] is strong, and in Lima the most serviceable of
the domestic animals; as he is also at the sugar-works, where he carries
on his back a great weight of cane from the field to the mill: the horse
is graceful and spirited: the bulls are powerful; and in the valleys of
Chincha and Cañete, where a certain wild breed are carefully reared for
the bull-ring, these animals are most ferocious.
The black cattle of the Sierra do not endure the climate of the coast:
immediately that they descend from their native mountains, to use the
vulgar expression, they become _touched_; that is, they become stupified,
and die with amazing rapidity. On examining the entrails of cattle thus
cut off, the liver, which has a broiled appearance, is observed to be
indurated. I conceive that these animals are affected by transition of
climate in the same manner as the human species; for, as soon as bullocks
from the high and cold regions of the Andes arrive on the warm coast, the
circulation of their blood is unusually accelerated and directed to the
surface; but, as the skin which covers them is too thick and unyielding
to allow of proper transpiration, the consequence is that there arises
an ardent fever which destroys them. In beeves this fever is more
violent and burning than it is in the paco or alco, because the skin
of the latter, being of thinner texture than that of oxen, offers less
resistance to the outlet of the humours; so that in the animals of finer
skin there comes out a salutary eruption, which saves them; while in
black cattle nothing of this sort occurs, and therefore they perish with
incredible celerity.[52]
The butchers have not yet found out a remedy for this disorder. They only
know from experience that the mortality among the cattle is greater in
summer than in winter: a fact confirmatory of our conjectures as to the
nature of the distemper: and therefore it is during the winter, or misty
season on the coast, that cattle are driven down from the mountains to
supply the Lima market.
Should we compare the dogs reared in this city with those allowed equal
freedom in the cities of Upper Peru, it will be found that the former are
most indolent and indifferent to everything, so that any one, though an
entire stranger, may step over them without the least molestation; but
the latter surly curs it is necessary to approach with caution, because
they attack all persons with whom they are not well acquainted and on
friendly terms.
These animals are subject, especially in spring, to catarrhal epidemics
which are peculiar to themselves; and they are also liable to influenzas
by which mankind are affected, it being among them that the fatal
epidemic commenced in the Trojan army.
Neither in Peru, nor in the neighbouring sections of South America, were
dogs ever known to be attacked by hydrophobia prior to 1803; but about
this time the malady broke out, during the heat of summer, in the valleys
of the northern coast, from whence it extended southward along the
maritime plains; having arrived at the city of Arequipa in the spring of
1807, while in Lima it was observed between the summer and autumn of the
same year.
Having collected all the necessary data for disclosing the origin of
this disorder, and consulted in writing the physicians and well-informed
persons who had witnessed its symptoms, I have clearly learned,—1st.
That this disease arose spontaneously from the increased atmospherical
temperature of the years 1803 and 1804. It commenced on the northern
coast, commonly called _Costa Abajo_, where the air was so heated that
Reaumur’s thermometer indicated the temperature of 30° in some of the
valleys: the calms were extreme, without the lightest breeze that could
ripple the surface of the ocean; animals rushed into lakes and pools of
still water to relieve themselves from the sensation of excessive heat;
so that the season described by Horace was fully realized:
Jam Procyon furit,
Et stella vesani Leonis:
... caretque
Ripa taciturna ventis.
2. This disorder affected every sort of quadruped without distinction:
and such was the degree of phrensy excited by it, that some animals in
their fury bit and tore themselves to pieces; and, in situations where
the heat was extreme, several men fell ill with all the symptoms of
hydrophobia without having been bit.
3. The malady attached itself more especially to dogs, and some of them
suffered so mild an attack that their bite was not mortal; but the
greater number were severely affected, and propagated the infection to
their kind, to other quadrupeds, and to man.
The mean and niggardly overseer of a sugar-estate had distributed among
his negroes, though advised not to do so, some head of cattle that died
rabid; which he did under the impression that they were only _tocado_, or
touched with that disease which in hot weather usually affects cattle
from the mountains: and the result was, that of the poor negroes who had
partaken of this meat, many died with symptoms of hydrophobia.
4. In the towns of Ica and Arequipa the number of individuals who died,
after having been bit by mad dogs, was greater, and their cases less
equivocal than the preceding.
In Ica a single rabid bitch bit fourteen persons in one night, of whom
eight were in one house; some sleeping _al fresco_, or in the open air;
others were variously occupied; and the remaining six were among those
who, on hearing the alarm, ran to assist in killing the bitch. The
surgeon of the place, Don Mariano Estrada, wished to persuade them to
submit to be cured; but they rejected his proposal, saying the will of
God should be done; and all died with the exception of two men, the one
twenty-eight and the other fifty years of age, who agreed to be placed
under medical treatment. The physician cured them, happily, on the safest
plan; which consists in applying a blister on the part bitten, with a
view to promote suppuration from it, and in exciting salivation by means
of mercurial inunction.
In the city of Arequipa it was much disputed whether or not the malady
was a legitimate hydrophobia, and very learned papers _pro_ and _con_
were written by the Doctors Rosas and Salvani. In this paper-war much
time was lost that should have been taken advantage of for resisting the
progress of the malady. True it is, that in many cases those disorders,
which by frightened imaginations were represented to be real examples
of hydrophobia, were, in point of fact, no such thing; and the alarming
misconceptions thus induced were soothed down and removed by persuasive
means. Hence, this circumstance, which was the natural consequence of
the general panic existing at the time, led Professor Salvani to think
that it was precisely the same in all instances, until at length a
succession of melancholy results declared the real nature of the disease.
Immediately upon being made acquainted that the epidemic hydrophobia
approached the capital, the Viceroy of Peru, Abascal, ordered all the
dogs in the place to be killed,[53] by means of which he liberated
Lima from the impending scourge; for though a very few hydrophobic
patients entered, during this period, into the hospitals, they were not
inhabitants of the city, but some individuals who had come in from the
neighbouring farms and valleys.
5. When this calamitous epidemic commenced in the valleys of _Costa
Abajo_, Don Jose Figueroa, Bachelor of Arts, wrote me to say, that “the
dogs went about with their tails between their feet; they slavered much;
hid themselves from human sight; howled lustily; and presently they fell
down and moved no more:—as remedies in these cases, cutting off the ears
and giving oil were tried in vain. The cats, with their hair on end, ran
about the house-tops. Horses and asses got enraged the one against the
other; they threw themselves on the ground, rolled about, and instantly
on being dead they swelled and putrefied. Black cattle—roaring and
lowing—bounded about, fought with each other, in the contest even broke
their horns, and they died quickly.”
6. Professor Estrada confidently stated, that of forty-two individuals
who died in the city of Ica, after having been bit by mad dogs, the
greater number were cut off from twelve to ninety days after the
accident. The symptoms which followed the ingraftment of the poison
disclosed themselves in the form of convulsions, oppression at the
breast, sighs, sadness, laborious breathing, horror at liquids and
shining objects, fury, vomiting of dark bilious matter, and an incessant
urgent call on the part of the patients that the assistants should
depart from them, because they felt themselves impelled to attack, bite,
and tear them to pieces: none in this state survived beyond the term of
five days.
Since the year 1808 this terrible epidemic has been disappearing. From
time to time, however, a dog may be seen running violently hither and
thither, and biting all whom he may happen to meet, in the same way as is
done by the really mad dog.—But, in the examples wherein no bad results
arise from the bite, they may be considered of the same character with
the disorder observed by Mr. Colombier, which attacks dogs, renders them
furious, and excites them to bite, but has, nevertheless, nothing at all
of hydrophobia in it;—still, however, the safest way is to kill the dogs
thus affected, and to implore the Father of mercies that these regions
may never again experience so severe a visitation.
Canis ore timendo,
Ore vomit flammam.
GERMAN ARAT.
BIRDS.
The shores of the South Sea are covered with myriads of birds, among
which are distinguished, for their incalculable number, the Huanaes;
from whose ordure, as some believe, is produced that red-coloured
earth or manure (huano[54]), of a penetrating and alkaline smell, which
enriches the land so much as to make it yield triple or quadruple the
produce it could do without this dressing: a discovery made by the
ancient Indians, who were most skilful agriculturists.
Gulls, herons, ducks, and some other families of the feathered class,
descend during autumn from the mountain lakes to the coast, where they
remain until the commencement of summer, when they again return to the
Sierra.
In undertaking this journey, they take their flight in the morning in
large flocks; and, as they soon come in contact with lofty barriers of
mountains which oblige them to change their course, they ascend the
higher regions in a winding and spiral manner, till, after numberless
evolutions and gyrations, they have risen above the loftiest peaks of
the Cordillera, and find themselves again at liberty to pursue their
journey in a direct line.
The condor[55] often stations himself in the middle of the spires,[56]
either as acting the part of a guide, or to boast in proud display the
strength of wing by which the most vigorous and powerful of birds can
soar above all the rest of the feathered race.
In his outward aspect the male bird bears upon him many marks of dignity
which distinguish him from the female: such is the crest which serves him
as the emblem of monarchy,—a crown; the blackish and loose skin which in
folds covers the head, and gathering up behind, after the manner of curls
or frizzled hair, resembles a wig; and the white of the wings, when the
bird stands erect, gives his shoulders the appearance of being covered
with a mantle or cloak.—See the excellent Memoir of Messrs. Humboldt and
Bonpland on the Natural History of the Condor, printed in Paris in the
year 1807.
Santiago Cardenas, better known by the name of Santiago _el Volador_,
or Flier, for many years watched the flight of the condor, with the
intention of imitating him; and he left a quarto volume written on this
subject, which I have deposited in the library of the College of San
Fernando. In this work he describes three different kinds of condor.
1. Moromoro with ruff (golilla) and mantle of the colour of ashes.—It has
of “_embregadura_,” or length, from the point of one wing to that of the
other, from thirteen to fifteen feet.
This, of all the condors, is the strongest; and he takes ostentatious
delight in combating against the wind, and balancing himself on extended
but flutterless wing in the most imposing and majestic manner. It has
been said of the moromoro, that, seizing the newly-born lamb, he throws
it over his shoulder, where he keeps it steadily fixed; and, having thus
secured his prey, rises on the wing, and betakes himself to flight.[57]
2. Condor of ruff and mantle of the colour of clear coffee.—He has of
_embregadura_ from eleven to thirteen feet, and he is swift and daring.
3. Condor with white mantle and ruff.—He has expanse of wing, or
_embregadura_, from nine to eleven feet; and this is the most abundant
and beautiful species. The condor inhabits the steep rocks of the Andes;
and, according to the observations of Santiago, he makes every day two
journeys to the coast in search of food, which shows his prodigious
velocity.
In our dissection of this bird, we met with no air-vessel which could
maintain a communication between the lungs and the spongy substance of
the clavicles, nor any communication between the crop and windpipe. The
internal cavity of the chest is lined by a fine and transparent membrane
or pleura, which forms various little cells; the lungs descend as low as
the abdomen, and adhere, at their posterior extremity, to the spine and
ribs, which have perforations at the points of adhesion, communicating
with the interior of their spongy body. The texture of the lungs is
porous, so that, as soon as they are blown into and inflated through
the windpipe, they freely supply with air all the recesses or concealed
crevices, great and small, that are about them; and they also fill with
air the cavities of the ribs and sternum.
Condor-grease is considered excellent for resolving and dissipating hard
glandular tumours of the breast and other parts of the body; and the
Peruvians attribute to it as many other virtues as the Europeans do to
the kid, of which it is said by one of their physicians that _totus est
medicamentosus_—all is medicinal.
INSECTS.
It is well known that warm and humid countries are infested with
swarms of small insects, as flies, mosquitos, zancudos, fleas, &c.;
and a certain traveller has asserted that, on this account, Lima was
insupportable as a place of residence: but the statement is erroneous,
for such insects do not flourish in the midst of population and
cleanliness.
Notwithstanding the mildness of winter in Lima, it is sufficient to
annihilate the flies and zancudos: mosquitos are not within doors at
any season of the year. The flies and zancudos multiply in summer; and
the latter are very annoying, especially at night, for they prevent
sleep by the buzzing of their wings. But by taking care that no water be
left in the house till it become nearly putrid, this little insect will
not be allowed to grow troublesome; for the zancudos are the offspring
of the animalcules which are produced in water tending to a state of
decomposition: neither do the flies prove troublesome by their numbers in
the houses where cleanliness is not neglected.
The pediculus may be said to be sterile on the coast, but most highly
prolific in the Sierra: insects of this and the cimex kind persecute man
wherever he sojourns, and Lima does not appear to be more infested or
overstocked with such vermin than certain European cities. In Paris alone
there are seventy-seven species of the cimex.[58]
The most intrusive, the most vexatious insect of the torrid zone, is
the _pique_ or _chigre_, which in other parts is known by the name of
_nigua_. Uncleanly in the extreme, it searches the _corrales_, or pens,
where pigs are enclosed, and multiplies infinitely in dirty situations.
The heaps of rubbish, or sweepings and refuse from streets and houses,
&c. are, as it were, in a state of effervescence with _piques_, which
also follow the footsteps of man, pursuing relentlessly those with
overgrown nails, and others who neglect cleanliness. Less than the flea,
but of the same colour, it contrives to introduce itself inside shoes and
stockings, and to lodge in the tenderest part of the foot,—in the sole,
or under the nails: there it fixes itself, causing as much pain as would
be occasioned by the point of a needle, and it secures its position so
well as to render it very difficult of being detached. In attempting to
remove it, the soft parts are often ill-treated by the instrument, which
is either a needle or pin, commonly used for its extraction; and when,
during the operation, the part acted upon becomes tinged with blood, the
end of the matter is, that the _pique_, instead of being removed entire,
is lacerated, and, the one-half only being taken away, the other is
still left inserted under the skin, and there occasions more pain than
at first. For this reason, those persons who are accustomed to _piques_
keep very quiet when they observe that one of them has fixed itself
under the epidermis or outer skin, and leave it undisturbed for a day or
two: here it forms its nest; and is gradually metamorphosed into a white
globe, of the appearance of a moderately-sized pearl. It holds on fast
to the skin, by its mouth, at the point where it first adhered. Having
attained maturity, it is in fact nothing else than a group of innumerable
little eggs united by a white glutinous matter, and covered by a common
envelope which encloses the whole. While growing, the _pique_ scarcely
causes inconvenience; but instantly it has acquired its due size, if
not extracted, it gives rise to very stinging pain. Two or three days
after its introduction it will have attained a sufficient growth for
being removed. In the performance of this operation the negroes are
most expert, on account of the constant practice they have in operating
on themselves. With the point of a pin they carefully separate the
epidermis under which the _nigua_ is fixed, leaving it still attached by
its reddish mouth; and then they thread or transfix it, and extract it
in its globular form. Great care should be taken not to burst the bag
or envelope of the insect at the time of extracting it, for otherwise
several ova, equivalent to so many parasitic insects, are left to infest
the foot; and besides, should part of the bag be left behind, pain and
inflammation will supervene, followed by suppuration to cast off the
foreign body. The hollow left after the _pique_ is abstracted, is to be
filled with snuff or the ashes of a cigar; as it stops any oozing of
blood from the little wound, and assists in promoting the separation, or
absorption, of any fragments of the envelope of the insect that may have
remained behind; and by this means the pain is avoided which otherwise
might arise if these parts were left to themselves, and allowed to slough
off.
Without having recourse to the process of extraction, the _piques_ may be
destroyed by rubbing the spot where they nestle with mercurial ointment,
or with a mixture of soap and oil: in either way they are killed, and
consequently fall off in form of crust. Tepid oil applied to the parts
injured during the extraction of the _pique_ or _nigua_ affords relief;
and it is requisite that the person who has been operated upon take great
care not to put his feet in cold water until the incision made in the
skin be entirely healed; for otherwise there would be risk of inducing
that fearful disease—locked jaw.
EXTINCT ANIMALS.
Notwithstanding the vast distance from one another at which different
nations of the earth have been planted, it may yet be traced in their
traditions that one great and glorious object had been seen in common
by their forefathers, the image of which had been so impressed on their
minds, that, when placed in analogous circumstances, it often recurred
to their thoughts, and was always referred to, though under different
appellations. Thus, in midst of the solemn and sublime apparatus of
thunder and lightning, Jehovah descends to the summit of Sinai to give
law to the Hebrews. This august and majestic image of the greatness of
Divine power is soon after applied to Jupiter darting thunderbolts from
the peak of Ida against the armies of Greece; and the _Great Man_[59]
appears in like manner on the mountains of Ohio to exterminate with his
darts a fierce animal, which desolated the fertile plains. So also, in
former times, the _Heavenly Angel_ came down to the summit of Santa
Helena in Southern America, to crush and overwhelm a fierce and polluted
race of giants, who, having entered these harbours from some unknown
clime, devastated the land.[60]
The Indians of the one and the other hemisphere corroborate the truth
of their traditions by being able to present the great molar teeth, or
grinders, which are found under the surface of the earth in the places
alluded to. In Peru, these teeth, with other bones of enormous magnitude,
are found in the province of Chichas, near the tropic of Capricorn; and
in Chile there are not wanting vestiges of the same sort of organic
remains.
I have had in my possession four of these molar teeth, of which I yet
preserve one in the library of the Medical College of San Fernando. When
compared among themselves, I have judged, from their configuration, that
they did not belong to the same fossil elephant; but, rather, that three
pertained to the mammoth, and that one had belonged to the mastodonton
of Cuvier: from which it is to be inferred that those very bulky animals,
which in remote ages lived in Siberia and North America, had penetrated
into Southern America, where they have left the natives, in the relics
of their destruction, or fossil remains, a memorial of the existence and
punishment of antediluvian giants.
The bony fragments which are considered to be parts of this gigantic
race, may they not rather consist of earthy petrifactions in water
impregnated with lime? Between the villages of Chorrillos and Miraflores,
in the locality named _Calera_, water impregnated with lime is observed
to percolate at the foot of the _barranco_, or broken bluff-land; and it
deposits on the stones, over which it drips or passes, certain crusts or
laminæ, which have the same appearance with the bony laminæ of the human
skull.[61]
GEOGNOSTIC DESCRIPTION OF THE COUNTRY IN THE ENVIRONS OF AREQUIPA, WITH
AN ANALYSIS OF THE MINERAL WATERS IN THE VICINITY OF THE SAME CITY.
According to the “Guia Politica, Eclesiastica, y Militar del Peru,”
edited by Dr. Unanue of Lima, the city of Arequipa is situated at 16°
13´ 20´´ south latitude; and it stands at the distance of about thirty
leagues from its present sea-port, Islay. In making from seaward to the
port of Chule, the burning mountain of Arequipa, (which now emits no
smoke,) described as resembling a sugar-loaf with the top broken off,
used to be taken as a landmark by the Spanish pilots on the South-Sea
coasts. The population is estimated at about twenty thousand, among
whom there are exceedingly few negroes or pardos. Towards the end of
the twelfth century, Maita Capac, fourth sovereign of Peru, colonized
the valley of Arequipa with three thousand families chosen from the
neighbouring provinces; and some refer the origin of the name Arequipa
to this early period, as in the Indian language the word Arequipa means,
“Remain as you are, if you like it,”—in allusion to the permission given
by the Inca to such of his captains as were inclined to settle in this
garden in the midst of the desert.
By order of Don Francisco Pizarro, the city was founded in the year 1540.
It suffered severely from the great earthquakes of the years 1582, 1600,
1604, 1687, 1715, and 1784.[62] All about Arequipa is a volcanic country,
of which the natural history is very interesting, as may be learned
from the following account, taken from an essay originally written and
published in Spanish by Don Mariano Rivero, director-general of the
mining department in Peru. This essay is deficient in minute chemical
analysis; but it has the recommendation of being the only one, so far as
we know, that has been written by a native Peruvian on the subjects which
it embraces.
TRANSLATION.
GEOGNOSTIC DESCRIPTION.
All the environs of the city of Arequipa are composed of volcanic
products; so much is this the case that its edifices are constructed of
a white and very light rock, rough to the touch, which contains pieces
of pumice-stone and lava. It is called in the country _piedra sillar_,
and, in fact, is a real trachyte (traquito). It is met with in different
places, at the distance of several leagues from the city,—as, for
example, in the glen through which passes the road of Islay. In the route
which leads to the glen of Yura, over and above the loose pieces and
sand, we meet the trachyte porphyry, not only in large detached masses,
but also forming portions of the soil. The principal mass is compact,
of a greyish black colour, with crystals of white vitreous felspar, and
spangles of bronzed mica; it passes by decomposition into an ash-coloured
trachyte, less hard than the first, and very rough to the touch: the
crystals of felspar and mica suffer no decomposition.
The adjacent hills are formed of rocks such as these, without presenting
a decided stratification. At various points there appears a rock which,
from its grain, its little hardness, the pieces of trachyte it contains,
and its reddish colour, would seem to be a conglomerate of aqueous
formation.
The waters which run through rocky passes give rise to deep excavations,
and with much good reason these parts (along which there is a road) are
denominated _narrows_,—for they are only a yard and a half broad. The way
is intersected at various points by ravines, (quebradas,) through which
several small streams descend from the snowy mountain called Chachani.
About a league before we reach Yura, and on the opposite side of the
glen, there is an horizontal stratification which extends towards the
west, presenting an interesting contrast with the Cordillera on the east,
and the hills on the side of the valley along which we pass to Yura.
It is not less worthy the admiration of a geologist to behold, amid so
much arid nakedness, the bottom of the deep glen of Yura clothed with
pure green and cheering verdure, which comforts the pilgrim, and serves
as a soothing restorative to the sick who, sacrificing their domestic
comforts and the pleasures of society, go in search of health to the
baths situated in this solitary spot.
The glen of Yura, which stretches in the direction of from east to west,
is in many parts extremely narrow, as at the site of the baths: but
towards the Calera it opens up; and its inhabitants take advantage of
this space to cultivate lucern, and collect the sub-carbonate of soda,
improperly called saltpetre, which they use in manufacturing the soap
consumed in Arequipa.[63]
Having passed the distance of one thousand yards, the glen again becomes
narrow, until it joins with the ravine of the river of Yura, which flows
from the north-east to south-west. From this place it becomes deeper
and narrower, and immediately follows a westerly direction. A rivulet
formed by the junction of the smaller streamlets which arise in the hill
called Horqueta irrigates some land in the strath beneath; and, pursuing
its course to the baths, passes them at a yard’s distance, (now ceasing
to be pure water,) to unite itself with the many jets that spring up a
little above the baths, as I have seen in a ditch recently opened. This
rivulet follows the course of the glen; and its waters, being impregnated
with saline ingredients, irrigate the lucern fields, and contribute
to increase the supply of the carbonate of soda. It at length joins
the river of Yura, which during the periodical rains is in the highest
degree dangerous to ford, on account of its strong current, and the many
stones it carries along its impetuous stream. In the glen of Yura, as
well as in the ravine alluded to, the different sorts of earth are of
volcanic and transition formation: the first extend to a hundred paces
beyond the ferruginous baths; the prevailing rock is trachyte, of a light
ash-colour, with pieces of white felspar half decomposed, pumice-stone,
and scales of black mica.
In some detached masses are seen in globules the substance called
_perlita_, (little pearl,) and black pieces, which, from their general
appearance and concavities, look like lava. Ascending a little higher
than the sulphurous baths, porphyry is met with; the principal mass of
which is compact and black, its fracture conchoidal, and it contains
crystals of white felspar. By decomposition it has partly become an
ash-coloured rock, less hard and more asperate, in which is found the
conduit which emits sulphurous vapours; and in my opinion it is an
ancient crater. On the walls of this crater, sulphur is deposited in
well-defined, acute, octahedral crystals; and, in some pieces in my
possession, the pure sulphur exists in its massive state. These rocks
cover a sandy ground, which from its coarse grain, composition, reddish
colour, and the fragments of volcanic rocks which it contains, appears to
be a sandy conglomerate; it is sufficiently consistent to admit of being
cut, and to serve for architectural purposes: there are certain places,
as in the Calera, and near the baths, where it is many yards thick: this
earth reposes on the transition series.
The earths, or mineral substances last mentioned, occupy all the parts
to the north and west: they are composed of _gres_, (a stone abounding
in sand,) semi-compact in some layers, and in others it has a fine
grain; its colour is a dirty white, inclining to green, and it passes to
a lightish black when it is near to the layers of the black “_esquito
hojoso_,” (foliated schist,) with which it alternates: it contains small
spangles of mica. The natives extract laminæ of this _gres_ of more than
a yard in length, and of a quarter in breadth, which serve to line the
upper part of the boilers wherein soap is made. The black “_esquito_”
also divides itself into laminæ of good size; but, for the most part, it
breaks very easily, forming small pieces which fall down to the bottom
of the glen. A heavy substance of dark colour, which separates in large
pieces, and effervesces when brought into contact with the acids, is
found in the “_esquito_,” and near to the layers of _gres_: it appears to
be a carbonate of iron, (_carbonato de hierro litoideo_,) like that which
is met with in the coal-mines of England and France. In the “_esquito_”
I have observed impressions of plants, vestiges of coal, crystals, and
small plates of gypsum.
The transition formation extends to the north and to the west, at great
distances. I am also assured that coal is met with near to the village of
Yura. Over the horizontal bed of _gres_, the direction of which is from
east to west, with an inclination northward, may be observed the white,
compact, fibrous gypsum of Synchita, distant six leagues from the glen,
which, as I conceive, belongs to the gypsum of the vale of Vitor.[64]
On the south side of the river Yura, in the locality called Calera, is
found in layers or coats of considerable thickness, but of little extent,
a limestone of a cellular and porous structure, composed in a great
degree of very small and delicate tubes: their colour is a dirty white,
and by all their signs and characters they appear to owe their origin
to infiltration. From this stone is made the lime which is consumed in
Arequipa and its neighbourhood.
ANALYSIS OF THE MINERAL WATERS OF YURA.
Mineral waters are distinguishable from common water by their taste,
particular smell, colour, temperature more or less raised, and by their
not being applicable to domestic purposes. They are found in different
parts of the world in springs and wells: sometimes they are of the same
temperature with the soil through which they pass, and at other times
their temperature rises to the boiling point of water,—and then they are
called thermal waters. In the countries where these waters appear, they
had attracted the attention of the inhabitants since very remote times,
and were medicinally employed internally as well as externally; but,
since their component parts were but imperfectly known, they were often
applied injudiciously, and they did not always obtain the reputation they
merited, for their effects were sometimes contrary to those which the
physicians desired to produce.
At the close of the seventeenth century chemists began to discover the
substances to which mineral waters owed their peculiar properties; and,
since this happy era, they have made such rapid progress in science, that
in the present day we are acquainted with many of these substances. This
knowledge we owe to simple and more exact methods of analysis. Nature
appears to have favoured in an especial manner the environs of Arequipa
with thermal springs to cure those maladies to which its inhabitants are
subject. This is, however, no more than might be expected, considering
the variety of medicinal ingredients with which the waters become
impregnated as they slowly percolate through beds of lava, or issue from
the deep recesses of burning mountains.
The baths of Yura are situated in a small and narrow glen, several
leagues to the N.N.W. of the city, and only one league from the village
of the same name,—which, according to my measurement, is one hundred and
seventy Spanish yards (varas) above the square of Arequipa.[65]
The road to the baths is very bad, and, above all, the declivities are
so; for the number of stones and narrow windings render it in the highest
degree disagreeable, to which the dull uniformity of the landscape also
contributes. To the right, all that presents itself to the traveller’s
view is the lofty volcano, the contiguous hills being denuded of every
blade of vegetation except the cactus Peruvianus, of melancholy aspect,
seen here and there along the surrounding slopes; and, if he turn his eye
to the left, he looks upon sterile plains cut up by mountain torrents,
or a group of hills perfectly arid, of greater or less elevation, and in
parts covered with white sand.
The analysis of the waters of Yura was attempted by the celebrated
naturalist Haenk in the year ’96; but, this philosopher not having
ascertained their constituent parts, I have now the honour of presenting
to the public the result of my investigations regarding these waters,
and several others which are used by the inhabitants of the city. In the
narrow glen of Yura there are two situations in which springs of thermal
water present themselves, and the one is distant from the other about
one hundred and fifty yards. The first, called _agua de hierro_, or
ferruginous water, is on the left-hand side of the road as we come from
the Calera; and those springs which are higher up are denominated _agua
de azufre_, or sulphurous water. I will begin by giving an account of the
_agua de hierro_.
THE FERRUGINOUS WATER.
From a little plane covered with grass, distant from the rivulet three
yards, and four from the ash-coloured trachytic rock, water bubbles up at
various points, forming large globules, as if boiling. Its temperature
is 94° of Fahrenheit, that of the air being 68°. In the corner where
these jets are found, there are at short distances small wells of equal
temperature, except one at 67°, which is found at the distance of a
yard from the principal jet; and it is the more worthy of notice, as it
happens to be very near to the water which indicates higher temperature.
All these little wells render tribute to the principal one, and to the
rivulet; their banks, and the bottom of one of the baths, contain a very
fine yellow substance, which is the true oxide of iron. These waters
are very transparent, without smell, and with taste half acidulated
and astringent; they disengage a gas which, passed through lime-water,
or a solution of the acetate of lead, throws down precipitates soluble
with effervescence in acetic acid. They redden the tincture of violets
and blue paper, which loses its colour on drying, and this proves the
existence of a free acid; being agitated, an air is disengaged with
noise: all the acids, weak and strong, produce effervescence with these
waters. The prussiate of potash, when a little of any acid is added to
it, causes in the ferruginous water a blue precipitate, which is the
prussiate of iron. Iron-water being boiled, it loses the property of
effervescing with the acids, of forming a precipitate with the prussiate
of potash, and also its astringency. A bottle of water being evaporated
affords, during the operation, a light, white precipitate, and its
surface becomes covered with a most delicate film. The operation, if
continued to dryness, yields sixteen grains of salts, which I have
analyzed. It appeared from the analysis that the iron-water is composed
of the following ingredients and proportions.
One bottle, or a pound and a half, of water afforded
Carbonic acid 10½ grains.
Muriatic acid 2
Sulphuric acid ¼
A hundred grains of the salts were composed of
Carbonate of magnesia 26 grains.
Carbonate of lime 6
Muriate of soda 15
Bicarbonate of soda 40
Sulphate of iron 3
Insoluble matter, consisting of
silex and sulphate of lime 8
---
98
---
This water greatly resembles, in its contents, that of Selz, Spa, and
Carlsbad. The exact quantity of carbonic acid which it disengages could
not be ascertained, for want of proper instruments for the purpose. The
carbonic acid of the saline parts is sufficient to saturate the lime,
magnesia, and soda.
MEDICINAL VIRTUES OF THE FERRUGINOUS WATER OF YURA.
The ferruginous waters are stated by Mr. Rivero, on the authority of
Haenk, and of Dr. Vargas of Arequipa, to be tonic, deobstruent, laxative,
diuretic, &c.; and, therefore, well calculated to remove general
debility, certain forms of hypochondriasis, dyspepsia, and weakness
consequent on debauchery.
THE SULPHUROUS WATER.
The jets (los ojos) of this water, as we formerly noticed, are placed
above the ferruginous baths, situated in a narrow part formed by the
trachyte rock on one hand, and on the opposite side by the _gres_, or
sandy soil, which furnishes the carbonate of soda. An oblique fissure,
extending to the base of the trachyte rock, serves as a conduit to this
thermal water, which unites itself with that which flows from the bottom
of the bath named Tigre. A short way from this jet there are others which
flow from other clefts, at almost the same degree of temperature.
It is observed that the source of these waters is at some distance in
the interior of the rock, and, according to my notions, they hold
communication with the _crater_, which emits sulphurous vapours, situated
a few paces from the water underneath the very house where the sick
repose. With respect to the water, having filled a small well situated
at the base of the rock where people drink from, the chief object is to
have it conducted to the bathing-pits, or basins. The superfluous water
not needed for the baths flows out from them by a small channel; and it
goes to join the rivulet, which passes within three yards of the bathing
apartment.
The sulphurous water flows out in good quantity, making a peculiar noise,
and emitting a smell of sulphuretted hydrogen gas, like that of rotten
eggs; which is perceptible at the distance of many paces from the place,
when the winds are from the east and west. The disengagement of carbonic
acid gas occasions the noise alluded to, through the innumerable bubbles
which rise on the surface; and at the same time it occasions a shower of
aqueous particles, mixed with sulphuretted hydrogen and carbonic acid
gas; its colour is whitish, transparent; and on the walls and canals of
the baths, it leaves a whitish substance, somewhat dirty, very fine,
which when examined proves to be impure sulphur; its taste is at the same
time sweetish and acidulated, but it leaves on the palate the taste of
rotten eggs.
In the bathing apartment there are four large reservoirs, or basins,
constructed with stone and lime; they are equal in size, communicate the
one with the other, and are named Tigre, Sepultura, Desague, and Vejeto:
in these reservoirs, however, the temperature of the water is not equal:
the first indicates on the thermometer of Fahrenheit 90°, the second
89°, the third 88°, and the fourth 87°; the air of the habitation being
70°. In the place where this water was first discovered, it at present
indicates as many as 90°: Haenk, in the year in which he instituted
his analysis, observed that it was only 86°, which proves that the
temperature has since then increased.
The gas which arises from this water, when collected, extinguishes
flame; produces in lime-water a precipitate which dissolves in acetic
acid with effervescence; and it precipitates the acetate of lead, of a
dirty yellow colour. The water reddens blue paper; but, on drying, it
recovers its original colour, a circumstance which proves that there is
a free acid: turmeric paper it does not change the colour of, unless its
volume has been decreased by evaporation. A few drops of any acid produce
effervescence. The nitrate of silver gives a violet-colour precipitate,
the acetate of lead a dirty yellow, the muriate of barytes a white,
but it is necessary to add to it a few drops of acid; the prussiate
of potash produces a blue precipitate, using the precaution to reduce
the water, and of adding to it some drops of nitric or muriatic acid.
Liquid ammonia renders it turbid, which shows that it contains magnesia;
corrosive sublimate produces a half obscure precipitate, which afterwards
effervesces with an acid; it instantly coagulates milk, renders wine
and the water of peaches or pears turbid, giving rise to effervescence
with the three last. A piece of clean silver, if placed in it for some
minutes, becomes somewhat black; when agitated, it disengages carbonic
acid with precipitation, and all the water is filled with bubbles; when
boiled, it loses its smell, it disengages all the free acid, and it no
longer reddens blue paper.
Four bottles of this water, when evaporated, have given forty-three
grains of salts: during the evaporation the surface became coated with a
white film, and a light white substance was precipitated, which consisted
of the carbonate of magnesia and lime, abandoned by the carbonic acid
which had held them in a state of solution.
One hundred grains, obtained by evaporation, yielded
Insoluble matter composed of silica
and sulphate of lime 10 grains.
Carbonate of magnesia 28
Muriate of soda 14
Carbonate of lime 7
Sulphate of iron,—indications of
Bicarbonate of soda 39-98
The sulphuretted hydrogen gas, and the carbonic acid disengaged, could
not be ascertained, for want of proper apparatus.
The water of the four baths fitted up for the sick is of the same quality
with the one here analyzed; with the difference that in the three last
its temperature is less, and that it does not disengage in such quantity
the sulphuretted hydrogen nor the carbonic acid.
The _new water_ of Haenk, and that from another jet or source which has
been more recently discovered, possess the same qualities with those
of the baths; differing, however, in this respect, that they do not
disengage sulphuretted hydrogen gas. The water recently discovered,
of which the temperature is 91°, contains more iron, but not in such
quantity as the waters of the ferruginous bath. It is of a somewhat
sweetish acidulated taste, and it leaves a certain asperity on the
palate. Reagents act upon these in the same way as they do on the
sulphurous water.
PECULIARITIES OBSERVABLE IN THE SULPHUROUS WATER BATHS.
Shortly after having entered the bath, the whole body becomes covered
with numberless air-globules of a pearly appearance. Some degree of heat
and pungency is felt all over the skin; and, soon after immersion in the
water, the smell from it ceases to be perceived. It occasions a slight
degree of uneasiness in respiration, arising from the large quantity of
carbonic acid and sulphuretted hydrogen which arises from its surface.
MEDICINAL EFFECTS OF THE SULPHUROUS WATER.
According to Dr. Don Jose Maria Adriasola y Arve of Arequipa, it has been
found by experience, that, since times of remote antiquity, the baths
of the sulphurous waters of Yura have produced the most salutary and
specific effects in a great variety of cutaneous diseases. In various
instances of chronic disorder of the bowels, and dysentery attended with
intestinal ulceration and wasting of the general system, or what has been
improperly termed intestinal consumption, Dr. Vargas found that these
waters restored the healthy action of the digestive organs, kept up a
proper cuticular discharge, and radically cured such apparently hopeless
cases.
This same water is also allowed to be excellent for the cure of chronic
rheumatism, certain deep-seated pains, and contracted joints, &c.
Mr. Rivero gives the following method as that by which invalids are to
profit by the use of the sulphurous baths of Yura.
The first four or six baths must be taken in the bathing-places named
Desague or Sepultura, which emit less gas and are of lower temperature;
for by entering the bath called Tigre, which is the most active, the
body experiences a very disagreeable sensation, and at the same time the
breast is peculiarly affected.
To be in a fit condition for enjoying the advantages of the bath,
the individual must have the stomach empty, be free from fatigue,
perspiration, as well as mental emotion of every sort. The bath should
not be continued above three quarters of an hour, and in the Tigre one
should not remain above twenty or thirty minutes. Should the nature of
the disease so require, the invalids may bathe twice a day. A purgative
of cream of tartar or Epsom salts should be taken as a preparative
for bathing in these baths. Strict attention to diet, daily exercise
to favour perspiration, and great care to avoid exposure to damp or
chills during the time of taking exercise, or coming from the bath, are
requisite precautions.
The effects of these waters are slow of manifesting themselves, and, for
this reason, their continued use in many cases is necessary; to their
perseverance and constancy in this respect many individuals, now in the
enjoyment of perfect health, owe their recovery.
STEAM NAVIGATION.
We have in Vol. I. p. 173, alluded to the prospects of a Steam Navigation
along the shores of the Pacific Ocean; and we are now happily able to
subjoin a few statements on this subject, for the perusal of such of our
readers as may not have seen the report of the British merchants and
residents at Lima and Callao, upon the subject of opening through Panama
a direct communication between Great Britain and the western coast of
South America.[66]
The first meeting on this interesting subject was held in Lima on the
12th of August 1836; and on the 7th of September, at a public meeting,
the report of the British Merchant Committee was unanimously approved,
and ordered to be printed and circulated in English and Spanish. From a
pamphlet, accompanied with documents which detail the general plan of the
intended operations of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company, printed by
J. M. Masias, in Lima, we extract the following authentic information
regarding the “Statistics of Trade, and the favourable influence of Steam
Navigation.”
“It is only since the dynasty of Spain ceased to exist in South America,
that the shores of the Pacific have been thrown open to foreign commerce;
and, when it is considered how much these countries have suffered from
continued revolutionary convulsions, the rapid advance of commerce and
trade is somewhat extraordinary. The following statement of imports is
from the best data which could be obtained.
British 12,000,000 dollars.
North American 2,500,000
French 1,500,000
Peninsular 1,000,000
Germany, and other places on the
continent 1,250,000
China, Bengal, and Manilla 750,000
Brazil and Buenos Ayres 300,000
----------
Total 19,300,000 dollars.
----------
“Of which there is consumed
In Chile 4,500,000 dollars.
Peru and Bolivia 7,500,000
Equador and New Granada 1,500,000
Central America 2,000,000
Mexico and California 3,800,000
----------
Total 19,300,000 dollars.
----------
“The whale fishery of the Pacific may be estimated as follows:
North American 12,500,000 dollars.
British 5,000,000
French 3,000,000
----------
Total 20,500,000 dollars.
----------
“The whole interest involved, including the Pacific whale fishery,
amounts to nearly forty millions of dollars.
“The beneficial influence of steam navigation along the shores of the
Pacific, and the opening a communication with Europe and North America,
_viâ_ Panama, are subjects of deep interest, not only to those engaged in
commerce with the Pacific, but also to the whole commercial world.
“The present state of communication is long and tedious between Peru and
Great Britain; it may be averaged at about four months; while, by the
proposed route, it will be reduced to little more than one-third that
period, viz.
Lima to Panama 6 days.
Pacific to Atlantic 1
Isthmus to Jamaica, by steam, 3
Jamaica to England 36
--
Total number of days 46
--
“By substituting steam navigation between Jamaica and England, the
voyage from Great Britain to Peru could be performed in little more than
a month.
“The security which will be given to commerce by this prompt
communication, the facilities afforded to merchants in realizing the
proceeds of their shipments, the consequent increase of trade, the
regularity of advices along the shores of the Pacific, so desirable for
British commerce,—are points of universal interest. To the squadrons
stationed in those seas an immense advantage will also be gained by
the facility of communication and the increased efficiency of their
operations. The moral influence to be effected will tend to strengthen
and sustain the governments of the respective states against the
usurpation of revolutionary demagogues.”
We further beg leave to add, on the same very good authority, the
following valuable remarks for the information of those who are
unacquainted with the localities of Panama, and the difficulties and
facilities to be met with in crossing the Isthmus.
“The seasons are distinguished by rainy season and dry season. From June
to November constitutes the former; from November to June the latter.
During the rainy season, the journey from the Pacific to the Atlantic
can be performed in two days; while, in the dry season, twenty-four
hours only are necessary: from the Atlantic to the Pacific, during the
rainy season, three days are required; and in the dry season it can
be accomplished in two days. This difference is owing to the swelling
of the river produced by rains. The journey from Panama to Cruces is
performed on mules, being a distance of twenty-one miles, over a bad but
not a dangerous road. In Cruces, there are canoes of all sizes always in
readiness, in which passengers embark, and descend the river to Chagres,
the sea-port of the Isthmus, where they re-embark on board the first
vessel which suits their convenience.
“The transit of the Isthmus during the dry season is neither inconvenient
nor unpleasant: the canoes are covered; provisions, fruits, &c. are
abundant along the banks of the river; the temperature, though warm,
is perfectly healthy, and there is always personal security. During
the rains you are subject to great exposure and consequent illness;
but were a good road once opened, and a steamer on the river, there
would be no danger at any season, and the journey from sea to sea
could be accomplished in _eight or nine hours_, without the slightest
inconvenience.”
ECCLESIASTICAL JUBILEE.
The following authentic document we have carefully translated from the
Spanish; and, having already referred to it, (vol. i. p. 132,) we now
offer no comment on its contents.
We, Dr. Don Jorje de Benavente, Archbishop Elect of Lima, &c. to our
clergy, religious communities, and all the faithful residing in and
inhabiting this our diocese.
Forasmuch as our most holy father Gregory XVI, Roman Pontiff, and
visible head of the Universal Church, moved by the pastoral vigilance
and paternal love becoming a successor of St. Peter, has condescended to
grant a general jubilee to the whole Catholic world, with a view that the
common penitence and prayer of the faithful may obtain from the Father
of Mercies and God of all consolation the cessation of the weighty ills
that affect the spouse of J. C.; the supreme government of this republic,
always zealous for the exact observance of the holy religion which we
profess, has given the corresponding pass to the Brief, which with this
object his Holiness has despatched, of which the tenor is as follows:
The Pontiff Gregory XVI. to all the faithful Christians
who shall see the present letters, health and apostolical
benediction.
After having taken solemn possession of the pontificate in
the Basilic of the Lateran, we have written many times to our
venerable brothers the patriarchs, archbishops, and bishops,
concerning the calamities of the Church; encouraging them to
oppose with all their might, like walls of Israel, those snares
with which, to our great sorrow, she is beset. For the same
purpose, also, we have admonished them that they should raise
their eyes and hands to the mountain from whence we expect
assistance; certain that, with the favour of Him who governs
the winds and the sea, tranquillity will be procured, and that
the divine mercy descends when the humble prayer ascends to God.
But seeing that the conspiracy of the wicked everywhere gains
ground, and that the tempest even increases, we have resolved
that in all the Church prayers be publicly offered; by this
means opening up the treasure of celestial gifts, to the
end that the consciences being regulated and purified in a
holy manner from the uncleanness of transgressions, prayers
themselves may be rendered more agreeable and acceptable to
God, ascending to his presence as a delicate perfume.
It has been an ancient custom of the Romish Church, observed by
our predecessors, not only in the commencement of their supreme
pontificate, but always when the Lord chastened his people, to
resort to the prayers of the community, and to rouse all to
penitence by freely opening for them the sacred treasury of the
indulgences; with a view that, detesting their iniquities, and
humbly making confession of them, they should with confidence
draw near to the Throne of Grace, that is to God, who is
magnanimous to pardon, and refuses not his mercies even when
he is provoked. With this example before us, we, after calling
on the Father of Mercies with constant and fervent prayer,
promulgate throughout the whole Catholic world an indulgence
in the form of a general jubilee; cheerfully hoping that the
Author of all comfort shall shorten the days of tribulation, so
that, the storm having entirely ceased, the peace of the Church
may be firmly established, and public happiness everywhere
restored.
Hence, confiding in the mercy of Almighty God, and in the
authority of the blessed Apostles St. Peter and St. Paul,—and
exercising the power to bind and unbind, which, though of
ourselves unworthy, the Lord conceded to us,—we have resolved
to concede, and we do grant by the tenor of these presents,
full indulgence (such as it has been customary to concede on
the year of jubilee) of all their sins to all and to each
of the Christians of both sexes residing in and entering
into this our capital (Rome), who in the term of three weeks
current from the fourth Sunday of Advent,—that is, from the
23rd day of this month, December, till the 13th inclusive of
the following January, on which falls the first Sunday after
the Epiphany,—and on the eighth day of the same, shall have
twice visited the Basilics of St. John of Lateran, of the
chief of the Apostles, and of St. Mary la Mayor, or one of
these at least, and there will have devoutly prayed for some
time, and fasted Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday of one of
the said weeks; and within the same period, having confessed
their sins, will have received the most holy sacrament of the
Eucharist, and may have given the poor some charity, as to
each individual his devotion may dictate: moreover to all the
faithful Christians existing in all parts without our capital
we concede plenary indulgence, provided they shall have twice
visited all or some one of the churches, which may be assigned
to them by the local ordinaries, or their vicars or officers,
or others under their orders; and, in their default, by the
curates of souls, after these our letters may have reached
their notice;—it being further required that they should have
practised with devotion the other foresaid works in the space
of three weeks, to be fixed upon by the churches.
In like manner we concede that voyagers and travellers may
enjoy the same indulgence immediately that, on returning to
their homes, they put in practice the above-named works,
and visit twice the cathedral church, either the greater or
parochial, of the place of their residence. We also grant to
the regulars of both sexes who live in perpetual seclusion, and
all laical persons who, from being in gaols or prisons, or on
account of corporeal infirmity, or any other impediment, shall
not be able to practise all or any of the works mentioned, that
a confessor of those actually approved by the local ordinaries
may commute these works into others of a pious kind, or
prorogue them to some other early period, and impose on them
those which the penitents themselves can exercise; and that
he may also dispense the communion to children who shall have
never communicated.
We further concede licence and authority to all and to each
of the faithful Christians, seculars or regulars, of whatever
order or institute, though the particular denomination should
be specified, that they may choose, for the expressed object,
any confessor, secular or regular, of those actually approved
by the ordinaries, (as also to the nuns, who may choose any
confessor of those approved for them, whether the nun be a
novitiate or a profesa,) who can absolve them, and liberate
them at the tribunal of conscience, and for this time only,
from the censures of excommunication, suspension, and other
ecclesiastical penalties, for whatever reason enjoined or
imposed, either _jure vel ab homine_; and also from all their
sins, excesses, crimes, and delinquencies, however grave and
enormous they may be, even when they shall have been especially
reserved to the local ordinaries, or to us and the apostolical
chair, and whose absolution on the other hand should not be
considered as granted in the most ample concession; moreover,
they may commute into other pious and salutary works all manner
of vows, though these may have been made with an oath, and the
power of dispensation regarding them reserved to the apostolic
chair,—always excepting the vow of religion and chastity, and
the bonds (obligatorios) accepted by a third person, or from
the commutation of which an injury would follow to another,
as also those penal acts which are called preservatives from
sin,—unless the future commutation be presumed to be not less
sufficient to separate from sin than the first matter of the
vow, imposing salutary penance in the above-said cases, and
such other particulars as the confessor may be pleased to
enjoin.
But not on this account is it our pleasure to give dispensation
by these presents in any other public or private irregularity,
nor in any defect, stigma, incapacity, or ineptitude, in
whatever way contracted; or to confer authority of dispensation
therein, or to qualify and restore such delinquents to their
former state, even in the tribunal of conscience; nor to
derogate the constitution, _sacramentum penitentiæ_, published
with its corresponding explanation by our predecessor of happy
memory, Benedict XIV; nor that these letters can or ought to
avail in any way those who by us and the apostolic chair, or by
any prelate or ecclesiastical judge, may have been expressly
excommunicated, suspended, interdicted, or publicly denounced
as liable to spiritual animadversion,—unless within the term of
the three specified weeks they give satisfaction to, or come to
an understanding with, the parties concerned.
Thus then, by the tenor of these presents, and the ineluctable
obligation of holy obedience, we strictly enjoin all our
venerable brethren, the patriarchs, archbishops, bishops,
and all other prelates in the churches, and all ordinaries
wheresoever, their vicars and officers, and failing of these,
the curates of souls, to the end that when they receive
transcripts of these letters, or printed copies thereof, and
moved by circumstances of time and place, find it convenient
in the Lord to publish the same, they may so publish and cause
them to be published in their churches, dioceses, provinces,
cities, towns, territories, and places; and having, as far
as in them lies, prepared the minds of the people by the
preaching of the divine word, may designate the churches and
the time whereat and wherein this jubilee may be obtained;
all constitutions and apostolical briefs to the contrary
notwithstanding,—especially those in which the power of
absolution in the cases therein expressed is reserved to the
R. P. for the time being,—so that the concessions of such
like indulgences and powers, or of any other kind, may be of
use to no one, unless express mention or special derogation
be made thereof: notwithstanding, moreover, the rule of not
conceding indulgences after the manner of this letter, and the
statutes and customs of any order, congregation, or institute
whatsoever, although the same should be corroborated by oath
and apostolic confirmation, or any other form of stability
whatsoever; notwithstanding, moreover, the privileges and
pardons in whatever way conceded, approved, and renewed by
apostolic letters in favour of the said orders, congregations,
institutes, and individuals thereunto belonging. For as much
as touching all and each of the above, (and notwithstanding
that express and special mention should be made thereof and
the tenor thereof, and not by general expressions to the same
effect, or that some other particular form ought to be used
with regard to them,) holding their tenor to be sufficiently
expressed in these letters, and the prescriptions thereof
duly observed, we do for this particular time nominally and
expressly annul and derogate them, as well as everything that
may appear to the contrary, to the end that the foregoing
concession may have its due effect.
And with a view that these letters, which cannot be forwarded
to every situation, may yet easily reach the notice of all, we
desire that to their transcripts, or printed copies, provided
they be signed by some notary public, and sealed with the seal
of some person constituted in ecclesiastical dignity, may be
given in all parts, and by all, the same credit as to the
originals, if these shall be shown to them.
Given at St. Peter’s in Rome, sealed with the ring of the
Sovereign Pontiff, on the 2nd December 1832, the second year of
our pontificate.
For Cardinal ALBANO,
A. PICHONI, Substitute.
Lima, September 5th, 1834.—Examined with the exposition of the council of
state on the 3rd instant. If the Metropolitan doubts not the authenticity
of this brief, he shall cause it to be published in this diocese and
the other bishoprics, with this express qualification, namely—without
prejudice of the jurisdiction and innate powers of the episcopate.—To
this effect let it be returned, retaining a certified copy.—A rubric of
his excellency P. O. and of the secretary of state—Leon.
For the reasons expressed,—satisfied of the authenticity of the said
brief, and in fulfilment of what is therein ordained, we order it to be
published, and in effect we do publish it with due solemnity, as well
in this capital as in all the curacies or parishes of our diocese; and
we ordain and command that from the 2nd of October first, till the 7th
of December, spiritual exercises shall be successively performed in
the churches of Santo Domingo, San Pedro, San Agustin, La Merced, San
Francisco, San Lazaro, and Santuario de Cocharcas, the distribution of
which will be separately assigned, so that the faithful may be prepared
to gain the holy jubilee according to and in the manner expressed in the
proclaimed brief.
The jubilee will be opened and commence on the second Sunday of Advent;
on which occasion will be said in this holy cathedral church a solemn
mass, with a sermon, at which all the clergy and religious community will
assist; after the conclusion of which the hymn, Veni Creator, will be
sung: and from this day to the 27th of December inclusive, will expire
the three weeks designated by his Holiness for gaining the jubilee, which
shall be concluded with a solemn mass as an act of thanks, which will be
said in the same manner as the first; and the same will be practised in
the other churches as best may be.
To gain the jubilee in this capital, we fix upon the churches of the
Cathedral, Santo Domingo, San Francisco, San Pedro, San Agustin, La
Merced, and La Parroquia de San Lazaro, which the faithful shall visit
twice, or at least one of the said churches, during the three weeks
indicated; at the same time putting in practice whatever else the brief
requires.
In the suburbs the jubilee will be published, and it will be gained on
the same days as in this capital.
In the other parishes of this archbishopric, the three weeks of the
jubilee will run from Passion Sunday to Saturday _in Albis_ inclusive, of
1835; in consideration that this is the most proper time, for, during it,
all the faithful congregate in the parochial capitals to comply with the
annual precept of the Church.
To gain the jubilee in the suburbs and other parishes of the
archbishopric, we assign the parochial churches, which the faithful shall
visit twice, taking care to do whatever else his Holiness prescribes.
With respect to the religious communities of either sex, the sick,
imprisoned, voyagers and travellers, it will be according to the literal
tenor of the brief cited. And that it may come to the notice of all the
faithful of this archbishopric, this our edict shall be fixed on all the
doors of the churches; and the necessary copies shall be remitted to all
the prelates and parish priests of the archbishopric.
Given in Lima, sealed with the seal of our office, and countersigned by
our secretary, on the 26th September 1834.
Signed,
JORJE (George), Archbishop elect, of Lima.
DR. MANUEL GARATE, Secretary.
LANCE’S ADIEU TO LIMA.
The following lines, with the notes annexed, were written under
circumstances of great bodily and mental suffering in the year 1833, when
the learned and very accomplished gentleman who penned them proposed to
return to his native country. They were inscribed by him to his friends,
among whom it has long been the author’s happiness to have occupied a
favoured place. The notes are not only illustrative of the “Adieu to
Lima,” but also of several incidental remarks contained in the preceding
pages—especially of the interesting ruins of Pachacamac alluded to in
vol. i. page 144.
I.
Welcome, thou heaving dark blue Sea!
Thy luckless child am I;
Thine island-child was nurs’d by thee
Beneath the northern sky;
II.
In that proud land—baptiz’d of old
To freedom in thy waves—
Confirm’d in glory—steel-ribb’d hold
Of men who’ll ne’er be slaves.
III.
On southern shores I’ve linger’d long,
My life is waning fast;
And Sorrow, with her forked tongue,
Has struck me down at last.
IV.
I’ll fling me on my mother’s breast,
The sweeping dark blue Sea:
O bear me to my island-nest,
To die among the free!
V.
Land of the Incas, fare thee well!
Thy valé soon is told:
I would no longer in thee dwell
For Huascar’s chain of gold![67]
VI.
Thy sceptre erst was sway’d by kings,—
They could not hold it firm;—
But now thy children crouch to things
More worthless than the worm.
VII.
Away! I will not stop to mourn
Thy sorrows or thy shame;
Nor tell what anguish I have borne
Since to thy shores I came.
VIII.
Let Indian pipe, so meek and low,[68]
Bemoan thine Incas’ fall;
And Indian maid, with garb of woe,[69]
Her country’s wrongs recall:
IX.
And, sadder still, the cuculi[70]
Complain in ev’ry vale,
When ev’ning with her dewy eye
Brings round the hour of wail.
X.
I’ll fling me on my mother’s breast,
The sweeping dark blue Sea:
O bear me to my island-nest,
To die among the free!
XI.
Like silver bells, yon snowy peaks[71]
Are hung upon the clouds!
’Tis sweet to see when morning breaks,
And strips them of their shrouds.
XII.
’Tis sweet to see ’midst orange rows
The spires of Lima wind;
But sweeter far than these or those,
To leave them all behind!
XIII.
Then wherefore does my bosom heave?
Why starts th’ unbidden tear?
Some scenes there are ’tis hard to leave,
Some friends my soul holds dear!
XIV.
Thou good-man’s eyrie, on the rock![72]
From thee I’m loth to part!
With names belov’d in mem’ry’s book
Sure thou recorded art!
XV.
There, with my friend, full many an hour
Of cank’ring care I’d cheat;
Or range the ample corridor,
The balmy breeze to greet!
XVI.
Or gaze on Pachacamac’s height,[73]
As peal’d the evening gun;
And see its mystic form dilate
Against the setting sun!
XVII.
And thou, dear Garden, ’neath thy bowers[74]
How swift the moments flew!
They pass’d the sweetness of thy flowers,
Though steep’d in evening dew!
XVIII.
Like stars that seek each other’s light,[75]
To form, as poets sing,
A path for gods, and o’er the night
Their mingled radiance fling:
XIX.
E’en so we cluster’d there, with souls
That friendship made but one:—
But hark! my knell of parting tolls,—
Sweet friends, I must be gone.
XX.
I’ll fling me on my mother’s breast,
The sweeping dark blue sea:
O bear me to my island-nest,
To die among the free!
FOOTNOTES
[1] Wheat and flour are principally supplied from Jauja, and barley from
Tarma; fruit from Huanuco, and sugar from Huanuco and Huaylas.
[2] Plata-piña, or simply piña, is the name given to silver not
entirely purified from the mercury which adheres to it in the process
of amalgamation. Amalgamation is effected by mixing the ore, after it
has been ground, with salt and quicksilver; treading the whole together
by men or cattle; then allowing it to repose in _cerco_, or in the
enclosure in which it has been trodden, for a month or six weeks. At the
expiration of this time the quicksilver is supposed to have combined with
all the silver in the mass, and to have formed a perfect amalgam, called
_pella_, which is separated by washing away the mud and refuse of the
ore. The pella, thus procured, is white, and so liquid that, by putting
it into a strong bag a considerable quantity of the mercury is made, by
pressure, to escape, leaving the amalgam of a solid consistence. It is
decomposed by a red heat; and the mercury being distilled, it may again
be applied to the same purpose as before. In this process, however, there
is usually a great waste of quicksilver on account of the bad apparatus
employed; and the fixed metal or silver which remains is what is called
piña. This piña is usually sold by the miner in round masses larger than
cannon-balls; and these balls of silver are, by the trader who does not
venture on smuggling, carried to the government smelter stationed at the
mines, (an office for many years back honourably filled at Cerro Pasco
by a learned and good man, Don Toribio de Oyorzabal,) by whom they are
cast into the foundery, and, being there melted down and sufficiently
purified, are now cast into bars, which are stamped as being of a proper
_ley_ or standard purity: after which they may be conveyed to the mint
for coinage.
[3] At Huallianca, Hualliay, and several other parts of the rich
department of Junin, smelting is used for the extraction of silver:
but in Cerro Pasco smelting is little practised. In the district of
Yauricocha, and especially in the great or King’s mine, the ores are
found to contain a considerable portion of the sulphuret of lead; and,
also, of the sulphurets of copper, of iron, and of silver.
Such is the quantity of sulphuric acid distributed among the mines of
Cerro Pasco, which are placed among limestone hills, that the water which
they contain is observed to corrode the iron machinery exposed to its
continued action.
[4] “_Cobos._”—This was a duty of one and a half per cent. on the metals
extracted from the mines. Its origin, as we are informed, was a grant to
this amount, made by the Spanish government in favour of an individual of
the name of Cobo. This became a permanent tax which, like the tithes of
the metals, afterwards fell into the hands of the government, until both
were abolished a few years ago, as alluded to in the text.
[5] We have lately learned that during the years 1837 and early in 1838,
quicksilver became so scarce in Peru, that it cost 200 or 220 dollars
per quintal. The consequence has been that a private company, under the
auspices of the Protector, Santa Cruz, was formed by the enterprising
General Otero and others, to clear out the Socabon, or adit, and re-work
the long neglected and abandoned mines of Huancavelica—which are distant
from Cerro Pasco sixty-six leagues, by the route of Tarma, Jauja, and
Iscuchaca. This company has made some progress in the works; but the
quantity of quicksilver yet extracted by them cannot be said to have had
any sensible influence on the price of this valuable metal, which, in
consequence of the large shipments lately made of it, has fallen to about
one-half the above enormous price. During the period referred to,—though
the drainage and works at Cerro were considerably improved,—no mines
of second or third rate could cover the expense of amalgamation; and,
therefore, the metal extracted from them was allowed to accumulate in
heaps, (constantly guarded by Indian watchmen, called “tapacos,”) to the
estimated value of three millions of dollars.
[6] The product of a marc of silver of standard purity is eight dollars
four reals, or 1_l._ 14_s._ sterling.
[7] “Guarapo” is the name for the fermented cane-juice used as drink.
[8] “Coto,” or goitre, is common among the inhabitants of Huanuco; but it
is a disease very rarely seen on the western side of the Andes.
[9] From _pexe_, fish; _buey_, ox.
[10] Though Mr. Mathews omits to mention its botanical character, it is
probable from the name _huasca_ (which means rope) that this, like the
former plant, is a pliable bejuco. The bejucos are commonly used in Peru
as cordage, for the purpose of constructing bridges and fences.
[11] The Chamber of Deputies is composed of representatives elected
by the electoral colleges of provinces and parishes. The parochial
electoral colleges are composed of all the citizens resident in the
parish, congregated according to law. For every two hundred individuals
in a parish an elector is nominated; and in every village whose numbers
entitle them to name an elector, or have a parochial college, a
municipal body is established with a right to superintend its own local
interests, consistently with the laws and public good,—and subject to
the approbation of the departmental juntas. The electoral colleges of
provinces are composed of parochial electors constituted according to
law, and they elect deputies to Congress in the proportion of one for
every twenty thousand inhabitants, or for a fractional number which
exceeds ten thousand. But the province in which the whole population does
not come up to ten thousand inhabitants, will nevertheless name a deputy.
[12] See “La Constitucion Politica de la Republica Peruana,” published in
1828.
[13] Cajamarca lies to the eastward of the city of Truxillo, in northern
Peru, and, by the post-road, about forty-five leagues inland from the
shores of the Pacific. It is the principal town in the province of
Cajamarca, and is remarkable in the history of Peru as a seat of the
Incas; their baths and palace are yet to be seen, though in ruins. Here
the magnanimous Prince Atahualpa, who had purchased his freedom by an
immense ransom of gold and silver, fell a victim to the insatiable
cupidity and treachery of Pizarro.
[14] In dry weather sweeping the streets can hardly be considered as a
serious punishment; but in the rainy season, when it is customary for the
inhabitants to walk with wooden clogs, called _zuecos_, the scavenger’s
task could not fail to be of very difficult performance in the Cerro.
[15] The practice, common among Catholics, of visiting the tombs of their
family, and honouring the spot where the remains of their relatives or
friends rest, is not an ostentatious ceremony, but an humble act of
devotion, in which we must believe that the heart of the supplicant is
deeply engaged. In the niches of the Pantheon at Lima, the renewal of
flowers week after week, and even year after year, bears witness that
filial or conjugal affection is still cherished in the heart long after
the object of endearment has been removed from those who only survive
to deplore their own loss, and with tender sorrow pray for the spirit
of the departed. Whoever has visited the cemetery of _Père la Chaise_,
in Paris, must have been struck by the attention of the living to the
dead,—the daily decorations of the grave, and the prayer offered up by
pious friends; nor can we suppose any person capable of viewing with cold
indifference the flowery neatness which surrounds those monumental tombs,
which in _Père la Chaise_ seem to triumph over the silence of the grave.
[16] See Memoria, por Jose Villa, Ministro de Hacienda; Lima, 1834.
[17] Guia Politica, Ecles. y Militar, 1793.
[18] One of the greatest Jesuit missionaries was Father Samuel Fritz, a
German, who, in 1686, preached the Gospel, and converted many tribes in
Maynas. He drew a map of the Marañon and its tributary rivers, which was
published in Quito in the year 1707.
[19] “Amigo” or friend, is the first word of Spanish which the mission
Indian is taught to speak.
[20] The road which formerly existed between Pozuzo and Mayro is now so
overgrown with brushwood as to render it impassable without the aid of
the chopping-knife, with the use of which the Indians of Huanuco are well
acquainted. By this road the journey from Mayro to Pozuzo was usually
performed in two days, and the journey from Pozuzo to the city of Huanuco
in three: in all, five days from Mayro to Huanuco.
[21] It might be imagined that this custom of carrying away and eating
the dead was a good reason for the ancient practice, still in use among
the Indians of the Ucayali, of burying their dead in their houses, as
affording some protection against this rage of cannibalism; but among the
Inca race of Indians the practice also appears to have existed of old,
though without reference to so shocking a cause.
[22] As a comment on this part of Friar Plaza’s letter, we cannot do
better than introduce a passage illustrative of the allusion here made,
translated from a paper of his own in the Merc. Per. and cited by
Lieutenant Smyth and Mr. Lowe in the Introduction to their Narrative of a
Journey from Lima to Para.
“The three entrances to this district (Ucayali) are by Huanuco and the
port of Mayro, by Tarma and the river Chanchamayo, and by the Jauja and
Andamarca, taking the direction of Pangoa, which is passable, and has
been so since the year 1815, when I crossed from the plains of Sacramento
to Pangoa, where I formed a friendship with various nations on the way;
and by this route for seven years the mission has received all its
supplies. In this expedition I explored all that was remarkable from
Sarayacu, which is fifteen days’ distance up the river from the Marañon,
and ascended from thence as far as the river Pachitea, in twenty days
more.” It may be remarked, that the communication with Sarayacu by the
rivers Huallaga and Chipurana is so circuitous, that Fr. Plaza does not
even mention it as one of the routes to the mission; though this was the
route pursued by the late expedition in 1834-5, after the attempt to
enter by the Mayro had failed. The Sub-prefect’s letter, too, took near
three months to reach the mission through the country of Maynas.
[23] As trees of sufficient size for the purposes required are not always
at hand, we have seen near a hundred men exhaust their strength in
dragging a tree by the means of lazos from deep ravines and hollows. This
waste of power might be easily avoided by the help of the pulley, with
which they are unacquainted; but they show great skill in the application
and management of the lazo, and, when arranged for the tug, their efforts
are roused by a song of which the chorus is “Huasca runa!”—Men, to the
lazo!
[24] It was a punishment which in certain cases the law of Spain
inflicted upon female delinquents, to cut off their hair, and sometimes
shave their eyebrows. This, we understand, was done by the common
executioner,—hence the sense of disgrace.
[25] The coca leaf is to the Indian of the interior a necessary of life,
which he uses from time to time, to renovate his energy for renewed
muscular exertion; and in the intervals of labour he often sits down
to _chaccha_ or to refresh himself by masticating coca seasoned with
quick-lime, which he always carries about his person in a little gourd.
The lime is used in very small quantity at a time, but in a pulverulent
and escharotic state. According to the Indian it counteracts the natural
tendency of the coca to give rise to visceral obstructions. Used in
moderate quantity, the coca, when fresh and good, increases nervous
energy, removes drowsiness, enlivens the spirits, and enables the Indian
to bear cold, wet, great bodily exertion, and even want of food, to a
surprising degree, with apparent ease and impunity. Taken to excess, it
is said to occasion tremor in the limbs, and what is worse, a gloomy sort
of mania. But such dire effects must be of rare occurrence; since, living
for years on the borders of the Montaña, and in constant intercourse with
persons accustomed to frequent the coca plantations, and with Indian
yanacones or labourers, all of whom, whether old or young, masticated
this favourite leaf, we never had an opportunity of witnessing a single
instance in which the coca-chewer was affected with mania or tremor.
[26] The whites have already had a foretaste of this retribution in
La-paz, where, as we have been informed, every white man was massacred.
The Indians are said to indulge in the hope of yet seeing a prince of
their own race on the throne; and such has been their well-founded and
now habitual mistrust of the whites, that they have never revealed where
all their own treasures and those of the Incas, which were buried after
the death of Atahualpa, are to be found. This is a secret to every one
but a chosen few of the caciques. A few years before the commencement of
the war of independence in Peru, a rising took place among the Indians
of some of the inland provinces, under a cacique named Pomacagua: but
this insurrection was soon suppressed. The fact of Pomacagua’s being
acquainted with the hiding place of the regal treasure alluded to,
and his offer to reveal it to save his life, was not believed by the
unrelenting Ramires, and he was shot.
[27] Gamarra resigned the government into the hands of the National
Convention, which, it appears, was not duly authorized to nominate a
president. Under all the circumstances, had Gamarra acted boldly and
openly—had he said from the first that he would remain in the government
until a congress should assemble, before which he would account for
his proceedings, he would have acted not only legitimately, but, as
good judges and patriots believed, even wisely: since, by so seasonable
an exercise of moral courage, he might have saved his country from
anarchy. But, having voluntarily left the government, and publicly as
well as solemnly acknowledged the authority of the Convention and the
Presidentship of Orbegoso, his conduct afterwards, in taking up arms
with the insurgent followers of Bermudes, was unfortunate for himself,
discreditable to his party, and ruinous to his country.
[28] This lady united with a vigorous constitution a bold and energetic
mind. She was feared by her enemies, but sincerely beloved by her
friends. In consequence of the rebellion of her husband, and jealousy
of the government that succeeded that of Gamarra, who, but for her
talents and influence, could not have governed so long as he did, this
ex-presidentess, usually called Panchita, was banished to Chile, where
she died of a disease of the heart, which on her death-bed she ordered to
be sent to Gamarra after her death.
[29] The mercachifle is a licensed pedlar, and the pregonero a news-crier.
[30] Ever since Europeans became acquainted with the Indian race,
self-possession has been noticed as one of their most striking
characteristics. Atahualpa was unmoved in the midst of every danger: and
Santa-Cruz (of Cacique blood) has, in our own day, signally illustrated
the same high feature of character in the Inca family. Finding himself
for a moment isolated on the field of battle, and on the point of being
pierced through by a trooper, he called out in a commanding voice—“Alza
esa lanza y sigue me!”—raise that lance and follow me! Thus, his presence
of mind saved his life; for the mysterious power of a superior mind
triumphed over the hostile arm of the infuriated soldier—who, now, as we
are told, occupies a place in the body-guard of Santa-Cruz.
[31] Only three weeks before he made his revolution, he had suppressed
another in the castles of Callao, and shot every fifth man engaged in
it. His own treason, while successful, he called patriotism: but he was
doomed to suffer the punishment of a rebel.
[32] It has been remarked, by those who have happened to be in Payta
during rain, that the soil on these occasions emits a suffocating and
oppressive smell. This is probably owing to the quantity of animal
and vegetable matter which, during a long continuance of dry weather,
accumulates and is left to dry in the sun; and is partially dissolved
by the rain, and absorbed by the circumambient air. It would be worth
ascertaining by accurate observation whether the typhus of Piura ever
becomes aggravated in type in rainy seasons. We never heard of its being
contagious.
[33] The valley of Nasca, though situate in the midst of an extensive
desert, is rendered very productive in vines, &c. by means of
subterraneous aqueducts constructed by the aborigines. Thus, the ancient
Peruvians had fertilized the most arid plains, and left monuments of
agricultural industry on the coast not less remarkable than their
terraced gardens in the Sierra.
[34] This was once the port where the silver from the mines of Potosi
used to be embarked in Spanish treasure-ships.
[35] At what is considered the watering-place of Cobija, so sparingly
does the fresh water percolate from the rock, that we are informed by an
intelligent navigator, well acquainted with these coasts, that it takes a
whole night to fill a small cask placed under the precious drop, by the
favour of which grow two palm-trees, the only vegetable productions to be
seen on the coast of Bolivia.
[36] This fortress was lately dismantled by order of General Orbegoso’s
government.
[37] The Incas had a garden in the neighbourhood of Cuzco, where all the
trees were of gold and silver, and the fruits and leaves of precious
stones.
[38] Valparaiso is sometimes called the Vale of Paradise; yet there is
anything but a look of Paradise in Valparaiso and its immediate environs.
It has been said that the Elysian vale of Quillota, a few leagues
distant, is the Paradise alluded to in this appellation, which is a
corruption of Va-al-Paraiso, _i.e._ This is the road to Paradise—namely,
Quillota.
[39] See Letter from Alexander Cruckshanks, Esq. to Professor Hooker,
inserted in Part iv.-v. of the Botanical Miscellany for March 1831.
[40] Ensayo sobre las causas de las Enfermedades que se padecen en
Santiago de Chile. Por el Doctor Guillermo C. Blest.
[41] This being written in 1828, it is but fair to suppose that, as the
general police of Chile has been vastly improved since that time, the
evils here alluded to by Dr. Blest may have been removed.
[42] According to Humboldt, the farm of Enciero, near Vera Cruz, 3,043
feet above the level of the sea, is the superior limit of the vomito or
yellow fever; and strangers who come by sea, and therefore pass through
a gradual change of atmospherical temperature, are observed to be less
liable to contract the yellow fever than the whites and mestizoes who
inhabit the table-land of Mexico, (of which the mean temperature is about
60° or 62° of Fahrenheit,) when they descend during the wet season to
the port of Vera Cruz. The rains begin in May and end in October, when
the “_nortes_” or north winds set in; and during the prevalence of these
winds the yellow fever or vomito disappears.—Translator’s Note.
[43] The translator understands that chimneys and stoves have of late
years become common in the houses of the higher classes in Chile; such,
however, as still want these conveniencies make use of the old-fashioned
brasiers, or pans of live charcoal. Over these though people may toast
their legs if they please, still their backs and shoulders are suffering
from cold, as the heat of the _brasero_ or brasier is not sufficient
to support a proper degree of general temperature in the air of the
apartment in which it is placed. These pans are very properly denounced
by Dr. Blest as most unfit, and even dangerous, in the close and
ill-ventilated dwellings of the poor.
[44] Western Peru, from the peaks of the eastern Cordillera to the shores
of the Pacific, has hardly any venomous animal except the scorpion, which
exists in the warm intermediate valleys (in some of which a small black
and white snake is also found, which is said to be highly venomous):
but alligators, as we have seen, abound about Guayaquil; and the coast
of central America is famous for its venomous snakes, as well as for
the antidote to their poison, or the bejuco guaco, which in infusion
makes an agreeable bitter, something like quassia. The same antidote
Providence has planted in the neighbourhood of Tarapoto, on the eastern
frontiers of Peru, where venomous snakes also abound. The popular story
in Peru respecting the discovery of the properties of the guaco is,
that an Indian happening to be present when a condor, or some strong
hawk of the numerous species which inhabit the Cordillera, was engaged
in mortal combat with a tremendous snake, observed that as often as the
bird was wounded he retired to a thicket of guaco, broke off the bark
with his beak, dressed his wounds and pruned his feathers with the sap,
and returned to the fight with confidence and spirit, till at length he
killed the snake, and carried it away in triumph. From this the Indian
inferred, that in the juice of the guaco resided the property that
counteracted the poison of the snake; and it is vulgarly believed that
if you rub your hand and arm with the juice of this bejuco, you may
grasp the deadliest serpent with impunity. But, however that may be, the
fact is never disputed, that the guaco is a quick, powerful, and certain
antidote against the poison of the serpent.—Translator’s Note.
[45] Notes on State of Virginia, p. 62.
[46] _Paco_: so called (in the Indian language) because its wool is long
and of a bright reddish colour. Alppa-co, _sheep of the country_, has
the wool long and very smooth; and, though coming under the denomination
of Peruvian camel, is not very well fitted to carry a burden. Llama
llamscanni, or the _working sheep_ (of the Indian) has the wool short and
rough; and is the tallest, strongest, and best adapted for the cargo.
EXTERIOR PROPORTIONS OF THE LLAMA.
Feet. In. Lines.
From the crown of the head to the extremity of
the sacral bone 6 5 0
The coccyx or tail has of length 1 0 0
From the upper lip to the crown of the head
measures 1 1 0
Length of the ear 0 6 6
Length of the neck from its first to its last
vertebra 2 5 0
Anterior height, measured from the base of the
fore-foot to the edge of the shoulder-blade
parallel with the spine 5 5 0
Posterior height, measured from the base of
the hind-foot to the spine of the sacral bone 3 6 0
[47] _Quipe_: bundle of clothes which they carry on their shoulders.
[48] The antelope, by the account of the Indians, sometimes looks
over the tops of the eastern chain of the Cordillera, in the Vale
of Huanuco. In this vale the tiger-cat has been seen; the mucamuca,
probably a species of skunk, as it emits a most offensive stench, is
common; and here too armadilloes may be found among the thickets of the
pasture-grounds, and they are considered by the Indians to be good eating.
Rats are as common as guinea-pigs in all the agricultural valleys of the
interior: the fox ranges all over the high hills and table-lands of the
Sierra; and among the crevices of the rocks, in high situations, the
traveller meets the long-tailed bizcacha, which burrows like a rabbit,
and is valued chiefly for its fur.—Translator.
[49] Jarava foliis involutis, spica panicul.—_Flor. Per. et Chil._ t. i.
p. 5, icon vi. fig. b. As these pasture-grounds are found at twelve or
fourteen thousand feet above the level of the sea, they do not admit of
the cultivation and population of the lofty plains of Anahuac or Mexico,
which are only six or eight thousand feet above the ocean.
[50] The shrubs, as Dr. Unanue remarks in another part of his work, which
grow at the altitude of from twelve to fifteen thousand feet above the
Pacific, are of a woody fibre, resinous, and covered with firm bark, to
enable them to resist the effects of the piercing cold to which they are
naturally exposed.—Translator.
[51] Not only is the ass of Lima the useful quadruped here described,
but one of the most ungratefully dealt with by the natives, who seem to
have forgotten how honoured this animal had been in ancient times. The
saddle-ass is goaded on at a nimble pace by the sharp point of a rib
torn from some of the numerous skeletons of mules and horses, &c. which
are scattered on the mounds of rubbish, or in the lanes around orchards,
within and without the city-walls; and the donkey-driver grins his smile
of savage complacency as he swings about his heavy lash, and nicely hits
some raw and bleeding spot, the effect of former and frequent inflictions
of the same sort at the hands of cruel men.
Ayanque, in his picture of Lima, correctly says,
Veras borricos de alfalfa
Y borricos capacheros,
Borricos cargando harina,
Piedra, cal, ladrillo y yeso.
Veras borricos volar
Al son del latigo huyendo.—Translator.
[52] In travelling from the inland country to Lima we have had occasion
to observe, that when the horse reared on the cold table-lands, and not
accustomed to any warmer climate, was taken from the Sierra to the coast
in the hot months, he pined away almost as fast as a common fowl on the
high seas when confined in a coop, and exposed to the spray in rough
weather. But the pony, thus affected by the climate of the coast, will
with surprising readiness recover his spirits and health as he returns,
and ascends the tortuous and shelving paths that lead to his native
element near the glacial peaks of the Cordillera.—Translator.
[53] The slaughter thus commenced has passed into a custom of annually
destroying these confiding companions of man, when the howl or piteous
death-cry of the poor animals rings upon the ear, on fine summer
mornings, as the watermen are employed in knocking them down with their
iron-pointed sticks in all the streets, and even at the very doors or
gates where the persecuted creatures seek protection in vain.
To see them dragged along the streets, bound together by the waterman’s
lazo, leaving a bloody track behind them, and then heaped up in the
public squares, where they are often allowed to lie for days, is truly
one of the most painful and disgusting sights which Lima presents,
and to which the bloody scenes of the bull-ring are comparatively
nothing.—Translator.
[54] This earth or “huano,” as the translator has been informed, is
an article of commerce at the port of Ilo; whence it is conveyed to
the neighbourhood of Arica, the Vale of Tambo, and Arequipa, and sold
at so much per quintal. When rubbed between the fingers, it emits an
insufferable stench. Tithes are paid upon this valuable manure, which are
always put to one side in a heap, and, like the rest, carried away on
asses. At Huacho, to the north of Lima, birds’ ordure abounds, and is,
we believe, used as manure. But, in general, the soil in Peru receives
no top-dressing; though about Arequipa, in particular, the agricultural
industry of the ancient Indians has always been followed by their
successors, who, by means of the huano, compel the same piece of ground
to yield several crops annually.
[55] Cuntur de Ccuncuni—_to smell ill_—so called because the condor
emits an offensive smell. This name and that of “puma” were celebrated
among the ancient Peruvians: they were used as appellatives or surnames
in many illustrious families, whose descendants yet live, occupying the
rank of Indian nobility or caciques. According to the meaning of these
words, it appears that there were two orders of superior dignity in the
empire of the Incas,—that of the Condor and Lion; and hence the origin
of the surnames, Apucuntur, or Great Condor, as if we were to say, Great
Eagle; Cunturpusac, or chief of eight Condors; Cuntur-canqui, Condor, by
way of excellence, or Great Master of the Order; Colquipuma, or Lord of
the Silver Lion. Cuntur-apachecta is the distinguishing epithet applied
to the loftiest peaks of the Andes; denoting that these are sites among
which only the Condor, of all the tenants of the air, can take up his
abode.
[56] Here the translator would beg leave to remark, that the common
carrion vulture, or gallinaza, is a tame and useful scavenger, very fond
of taking up his station on spires, high walls, and house-tops: but,
as for the bold and soaring condor, he never saw him frequent crowded
cities, or sit on spires, as if this king of vultures had come in the
spirit of pride imagined by Dr. Unanue.
[57] That this belief in the moromoro’s strength and courage is founded
on fact, is not very improbable; and that the condor was believed
in ancient times, before sheep or lambs were known on the Andes, to
carry off young infants, appears from the small drinking-cups which
are sometimes dug from guacas, in which the stone is so cut out as to
represent the condor carrying off an infant in its talons. The pieces
of silver usually found in guacas are representations of natural
objects.—Translator.
[58] See Letter of Iturre to Mr. Muños: zancudos, flies, and mosquitos
are most troublesome in Andalusia.
N. B. The translator would not venture to decide the question, whether
the cimex be more abundant in the metropolis of France or of Peru; but he
considers it not unimportant to state, from his knowledge of the fact,
that the only effectual means of destroying these insects in Lima, where
they are certainly a great nuisance, is to brush over the bed with an
infusion of the bruised seeds of the anona (of Lambayeque) in lime or
lemon juice. For another set of tormentors, _fleas_, the natives on some
occasions use traps, consisting merely of a piece of _bayeta_ or baize,
which is placed on the part where the enemy is felt to bite; and, as soon
as the fleas get into it, they become so entangled in its meshes, that
they are caught and executed at once,—for even the fairest hand can show
them no mercy. It is curious to observe that, when one is affected with
a paroxysm of ague, no fleas come near him: either the aguish blood or
perspiration offends them.
The locust is one of the insects sometimes seen in multitudes on the
aroma trees of the warm valleys, which they strip of every leaf in a very
short time; just as the cauliflowers are devoured by caterpillars and
swarms of butterflies of great beauty. The glow-worm often shines among
the groves and avenues in a warm and dark night; and at Tarma, celebrated
for the fine texture and beautiful tints of its _ponchos_, the cochineal
insect is reared on beds of cacti, planted for the purpose, all round the
town.—Translator.
[59] The Indians of North America called God the Great Man. See
Jefferson’s note on Virginia, page 56.
[60] See Garcilaso, t. i. page 313.
[61] It is evident, from the concluding query and remark of Dr. Unanue,
that he suspected some speculators in the science of geology of no small
share of credulity; and it also appears that he had not himself examined
the bony fragments to which he alludes. Had these come to his hands,
it is probable that he might have been able to ascertain such specific
and distinct characters as should have served to satisfy him that the
teeth in his possession were not only by report, but in fact, parts of
those skeletons from among which they appear to have been picked up. We
may believe that they were conveyed to Lima chiefly on account of their
more portable size; while the other more unwieldy bones would have been
considered too heavy for being removed so far, by persons who may not
have known their scientific value to the geologist.—Translator.
[62] The periods of the great earthquakes of Peru are thus recorded by
Dr. Hipolito Unanue.
Arequipa. Lima. Quito.
In the year 1582 1586 1587
1604 1630 1645
1687 1687 1698
1715 1746 1757
1784 1806 1797
The same author also mentions the following epochs of volcanic explosions.
In Quito.
Cotopaxi, 1534, 1742, 1744.
Pichincha, 1539, 1566, 1577, 1660.
In Arequipa.
Quinistacas, 1600.
[63] Each “_topo_,” that is, an extent of 5,000 square yards of this
soil, is valued at 1,000 dollars; and every six weeks a harvest of
“_salitre_,” or the sub-carbonate of soda, is reaped by the owners.
[64] Vitor, here alluded to by Mr. Rivero, is one of the chief valleys
in the vicinity of Arequipa. It extends from inland, in a north-west
direction, to the large and well-watered valley of Quilca on the coast,
and to the north of Islay: on the other hand, to the south-west, is the
extensive, rich, and populous valley of Tambo.
Between the vales of Vitor and Tambo there is a sandy, hot desert,
(intensely cold at midnight,) with a gradual ascent, through which passes
the road from Islay to Arequipa; and on the scorched plain, great numbers
of wearied and exhausted cattle are let loose to perish for want of water
and pasture; so that along the way-side are to be seen the skeletons
and hides of animals sun-dried, and in different grotesque attitudes.
Travellers have remarked that along this arid plain, which extends about
twenty leagues inland, there are numerous moveable sandhills of regular
figure like a half-moon, with the convex side always looking to the
sea.—Translator.
[65] Arequipa is above the level of the sea, according to Mr. Rivero’s
observations, 2704 yards; but he considers that Mr. Pentland has been
more exact in estimating its altitude, with the barometer of Fortin, at
2697 yards.
[66] Some months ago, the attention of the public had been called to
this subject by the Hon. P. Campbell Scarlett, in a work entitled South
America and The Pacific; and, only a few weeks since, a prospectus
of a new steam-packet company, under the denomination of Pacific
Steam Navigation Company, has been circulated in London. Mr. William
Wheelwright has, we believe, the merit of being the zealous projector of
this very important undertaking, which now promises to be crowned with
success.
[67] “_Huascar’s chain of gold._”—See Garcilaso de la Vega. Huascar, in
Quichua, signifies ‘chain;’ and that Inca was so called from an immense
chain of gold which was made in his honour. If I remember well, Garcilaso
tells us that it required eight hundred men to support the weight of it.
It remains buried to this day in a lake not far from Cuzco.
[68] “_Let Indian pipe._”—The Indians of Alto Peru mourn the Incas in
“tristes,” which they play upon a kind of pipe. In the time of the
Spaniards, at one time they were forbidden to tune these mournful airs,
from political motives.
[69] “_And Indian maid._”—Many of the Indian women wear a dark drapery
suspended from the left shoulder, and falling down to the mid-leg, as
mourning for their Incas.
[70] Who is insensible to the sad wild note of the cuculi, the
nightingale of this country?
[71] Let any one see the snow-capt mountains at the back of Lima, and
that city of spires lying among the dark orange groves at their feet,
at daybreak from Callao, and he will say the sight is worth a stave at
least; and yet I wish I had never seen it.
[72] Buena Vista, the seat of John Thomas, Esq.
[73] The famous Temple of Pachacamac, whose mighty ruins form a beautiful
object from Buena Vista. Pachacamac, like the Temple of Cholula on the
plains of Mexico, is a sort of made mountain or vast terraced pyramid
of earth. It would be difficult to produce any evidence more conclusive
to the benignity of the climate than that which is exhibited on the
interior walls of this temple, whereof the mud plaster, though exposed
for centuries to the action of the atmosphere, remains to this day with
its rude paintings of red and yellow ochre as inviolate and fresh as if
it were the work of yesterday. By the bye, it may not be impertinent
to mention, that, among these paintings, we find what is called the
Grecian Scroll, which, if I am not mistaken, the Grecians borrowed
from the Egyptians. This may serve to throw some light upon the origin
of Pachacamac. Like that of Mexico,—nay, with still more emphatic
gesture,—the gigantic architecture of Peru points to the Cyclopian
family, the founders of the Temple of Babel and of the Egyptian Pyramids.
I believe (see Garcilaso) that the Temple of Pachacamac was standing when
that part of the coast was conquered by the Incas, so that there is no
knowing its age.
[74] Old Green’s Nonpareil, where the Hearts of Oak meet.
[75] “_Like stars_,” &c.—The milky way, which, by the bye, is far
grander in the southern than in the northern hemisphere, seems to have
been formed by the mutual gravitation of myriads of stars. The dark
spots which follow the course of that magnificent nebula, on each side
of it, are probably the spaces which the stars have left vacant and
lustreless.—See Herschel on Nebulæ.
THE END.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY SAMUEL BENTLEY,
Dorset Street, Fleet Street.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Peru as It Is, Volume II (of 2) - A Residence in Lima, and Other Parts of the Peruvian Republic, Comprising an Account of the Social and Physical Features of That Country" ***
Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.