Religious prejudices.—No faith with heretics.—Corpse of an
Englishman cast into the street by the pious mob.—English
supposed to have been buried with money in the island of San
Lorenzo.—New cemetery, and Latin inscription for the English
burial-ground.—Religious disadvantages of the British in Peru.
Among a people who suffer so large a privation of moral discipline as
the Peruvians, we naturally look for a corresponding prevalence of
religious prejudices. Some years ago, when we lived in one of the most
delightful climates in the interior of Peru, we were greatly annoyed by
our neighbours of the two beautiful villages Ambo and Tomay-quichoa. The
inhabitants of the former would insist that we drove from the estate
of Andaguaylla, upon which we resided, the worshipful saints, (little
painted images dressed in gaudy rags,) and withdrew the workmen, or
“yanacones,”[11] from their little gods and religion. It was not till
after we were accused by the alcalde of Ambo of being a kind of demon
or goblin, that the people of the estate were scared into horror and
desertion; or that we found out, through the kindness of our Spanish
major-domo, that the alarmed men, women, and children on the estate had
over-night rescued the saints from supposed danger, by piously carrying
them away to a town about four leagues distant. Next morning we were left
with only one workman; and he, being an old and maimed soldier, had but
one hand.
This wanton and unjust attack took a legal form, and was parried off by
legal measures with the timely interposition of that enlightened and
benevolent citizen of the world, Doctor Don Antonio de Valdizan, himself
a counsellor of state, a patron of learning, and one of the enterprising
miners, and illustrious men of Peru. After this fray was finally settled
in our behalf, the alcalde persecutor became our avowed and steady
friend. But, on the other hand, the mestizos of Tomay-quichoa, nettled
at the failure of the Ambinos, allowed us, with their usual malicious
forethought, to go to great expense in fencing, building, and cultivating
sugar-cane and other productions, before they showed their determination,
without any provocation given by us, to baffle our labours, and ruin our
fortune, by appropriating to their own use the water for irrigating the
fields under crop, thus annihilating the young plantations.
We remonstrated against their unfair proceedings, but to no purpose. They
fabricated false accusations, and involved us reluctantly in a law-suit
of two years’ continuance, which, to the honour of the judge of the
district, the learned and respected Dr. Mata, was ultimately terminated
by an equitable sentence.
These good people believed we were but Jews, whom the Spaniards
greatly abominate; and they conceived that, if they did not get rid of
our neighbourhood in time, other Englishmen, and therefore, as they
ignorantly supposed, other Jews, would settle there after us; and by
proceeding to disgust us with the place, and scare us away in due
season, they acted in the spirit of the proverb, “El prevenido nunca es
vencido,”—The wary is never foiled. But it is a subject of deep interest
to reflect on the practical example thus afforded of the working of that
sovereign maxim, “No faith with heretics.” We here see, that although
a perverted sense of religion did not extinguish the perception of an
obvious right, yet it overcame the sense of wrong towards the imagined
Jew, and in this respect suppressed the moral feeling of equity.
Such banefully erroneous views must gradually give way before the
spreading light of civilization, and a more extended international
intercourse. The bad moral effect of seeing men, influential and
respected while living, consigned to the indignity of a canine grave
when dead, cannot but be perceived and felt by the surviving friends and
countrymen of the deceased, whose religious persuasions are distinct from
those of the people of the land in which they are sojourners.
We may mention, that the first English gentleman’s remains we were called
upon to accompany to an unhallowed burying-place, were those of one who
died in an inland city remarkable for the hospitality and kindness of its
inhabitants; and, after answering a few questions regarding the religious
creed of the deceased, the price of the interment was settled, we think,
at fifty dollars, and then the good-natured bishop, with a degree of
liberality seldom exercised towards dissenters from the Romish ritual in
Catholic countries, yielded his sanction to let the corpse have Christian
burial. But, subsequently to this permission, a mob was collected in the
night, and the body was cast out from the church to the middle of the
street, where our obliging friend Don Mariano Sanches told us it lay. On
the following morning, in a city where humanity was subdued by the ugly
suggestions of superstition, there were only two good Samaritans. These
gave their attendance at the stranger’s funeral, when the only two or
three Britons at that time in the place accompanied the body outside
the city, to find it a grave under the shelter of an orangery, where its
mouldering bones could not by any chance come into contact with those of
the pious agitators, who would fain persuade themselves that, while they
live in harmony with the living heretic, the mere sight of the worm that
nibbles at his interred remains is quite sufficient to endanger their own
eternal condition.
In the capital of the republic a better example is at length given.
Through the meritorious exertions of the British Consul-general, B. H.
Wilson, Esq. the Peruvian government have ceded to the English a proper
piece of cemetery-ground[12] at Bella Vista, an agreeable and convenient
situation between Lima and the port of Callao. Formerly all the English,
not Roman Catholics, who died in the capital or port, were interred in
the barren island of San Lorenzo, where the bodies were exposed to the
insults of the most vile of mankind,—miscreant convicts confined to the
island for crimes that expel them from the society of honest men, and who
believe that the English heretic, like the ancient Peruvian pagan, must
needs have laid with him in the grave instruments or utensils of his
avocation while living; and, therefore, they are led to expect that, our
English merchant’s grave must be a place of deposit for a full share of
those dollars he was seen always to handle, and to ship away in boxes to
his native land. These outcasts were made to feel their own superiority,
if not while in chains or in the galley, at least prospectively in their
own cypress-shaded Pantheon, over the wealthiest, worthiest, and most
respectable foreigners in their land, who, at the close of life, they
might believe, exchanged situations with themselves,—that is, were sent
in perpetuity to the arid and leafless San Lorenzo, while they themselves
would be conveyed and suffered to rest in honoured ground until the
last day. Let the worst befal them,—should they come to die on the
“banquillo,” (a rude stool on which the criminal is placed at the hour of
military execution,) yet they are not at the last discouraged like the
stranger and Protestant. They have the aid of the priest when going to
execution; and, when gone, their carnal remains may rest in sanctified
earth. There will not probably be wanting on such occasions some
godmother _mas fea que la noche_,—more ugly than night,—or some friend,
who will remember the necessities of the departed highwayman whose days
were closed in the Plaza, and will charitably pay the needy friar’s mass
(value one dollar) to extricate his soul from perdition.
Our Consul-general, ever zealous in the discharge of his public duties,
not only saw the inconvenience to his own countrymen, but the evil result
of the former mode of interment in the island of San Lorenzo, and the
great disadvantage that British subjects laboured under in having no
place of public worship according to the forms of their own national
church. These evils he endeavoured to counteract by procuring the grant
of a cemetery as mentioned; and by having church-service read at the
Consulate-general every Sunday, as is done by captains and commanders in
such of Her Majesty’s vessels of war as have no chaplains on board them.
By this arrangement the most incredulous or prejudiced Peruvians have
an opportunity of knowing that our Consul-general, and such of his
countrymen as do not neglect the public homage offered at the Consulate
to the Creator, do really feel an interest beyond the grave, and have a
hope in Heaven as well as the deluded vulgar, who long believed (and the
absurdity seems to have been inculcated as a political engine of some
power by those who must have known better,) that the English were but
a species of the ourang-outang, with tails like the lower animals; and
consequently it was quite plain, on the alleged evidence of comparative
anatomy, that their ultimate destination could not be higher than that
of the beasts that perish.
The name of Drake, and the famous treasure-ship Caca-fuego, are now
forgotten; but we are assured that in Payta the name of Anson is
associated with sacrilegious recollections, and is mentioned by the
lower class of natives with details that awaken feelings very hostile to
our countrymen. At this sea-port, on the northern shores of Peru, on a
certain festival and anniversary-day, when the image of the Virgin Mary
is taken out in procession, we are told that it is shown with a patch of
red wax on the neck, marking the wound once inflicted in this part by a
sabre-blow from some disorderly sailor of Anson.
An amiable and well-informed Limeña, in whose house many of the
_literati_ daily meet, has laughed heartily at the good old times,
when she related that, when a young girl, (and she is not yet more
than middle-aged,) neither she herself, nor her playmates, ventured to
approach a certain English sailor-boy without holding up their hands
and making the sign of the cross with the fore-finger and thumb. This
lady’s mother took a great interest in the sailor-boy, seeing that he was
fair and handsome; and greatly regretted his not being a Christian, an
expression by which she meant, of course, a Roman Catholic.
Some recollections of ancient feuds may still co-operate, in a greater or
less degree, with religious prejudices to keep up no very warm feeling
towards the English as a people; but it is gratifying to think that even
on the distant shores of the Pacific, and among the glens of the Andes,
there is a growing intelligence that tends rapidly to dissipate such
unfriendly feelings. A nearer acquaintance with the English character,
the insensible but gradual progress of knowledge, the general extension
and assimilating tendency of commerce, the softening effects of time,
and, in a word, the revolution itself, which opened up a channel for
general improvement, are so many circumstances that conspire together to
render the already widely extended connexion of Great Britain with Peru,
every day more cordial in the minds of the natives of this important
republic; and when the country becomes more settled under the direction
of a wise government, such as its friends are now in expectation of
enjoying under the protection of his excellency General Santa Cruz, it
is to be hoped that, this international friendship may be rendered still
more intimate, and mutually beneficial, than it is at present.
Should the projected plan of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company[13]
be happily carried into execution, from which a high moral influence
may be reasonably expected, and our commercial dealings with Peru be
further extended, then will the religious wants of British residents
become proportionably more deserving of public attention. The individual
labour and exertions of these enterprising Britons, in a distant part of
the globe, contribute to encourage manufactures and industry in their
native land; and, though separated from their kindred and country by a
wide-spreading ocean, they are rarely so happy as when they think of
that home to which it is their daily wish to return, and never cease to
feel that once their hearts and warmest sympathies were English. But,
unhappily, to keep the heart pure in the midst of the greatest national
relaxation of morals,—the strongest allurements to vice,—with few
incitements to virtue, and no effective encouragement to religion,—is an
achievement far too great for the average of mankind.
When young men destined for foreign countries leave home at an early
age, they are naturally more defenceless against the insidious inroads
of corruption, and more open to new impressions flowing in upon them
from surrounding objects. Having arrived in Spanish America, they soon
forsake the Protestant respect for the Sunday, and yet scorn the Catholic
sacrifice of the mass; and then they insensibly enter upon the formation
of new habits grafted on the manners and customs of the country, in which
they are as yet but strangers.
The elder and more considerate British residents in Peru, we have
reason to know, feel and regret the want of an established clergyman
regularly and duly trained to discharge the duties of his vocation, and
who should command a becoming degree of personal influence, arising
from his professional character, learning, and piety. No individual of
the commercial body—we would even venture to affirm, that no consular
exertions in this spiritual department of duty—can provide for a
regular attendance on church-service; because, on such topics, every
counting-house clerk considers himself quite as knowing as the Consul, or
any other secular reader of church-service, to whom as a divine they will
not voluntarily accord much deference or attention, however distinguished
that officiating individual may be for his high character, general
intelligence, religious sincerity, and private virtue.