General features of the Sierra.—Roads.—Wilds of San
Mateo.—Indian’s eyrie.—Mountain curate.—Enterprise of a priest
engaged in inland traffic.—Pastoral life of Indians.—Ancient
ruins.—Royal road of the Incas.—Tarma, a pretty Sierra
town, or pueblo.—Various sorts of bridges.—Balsa, or canoe
of rushes.—Ancient aqueducts and terraced gardens of the
aborigines.—Pagan edifices among the rocks near the coast.—Vale
of Rimac.—Temples of the ancient Sun-worshippers of the land.
The space enclosed between the gigantic ridges of the eastern and
western Cordillera, or great and frigid mountain-chains of the Andes, is
occupied by numerous table-lands yielding short fine grass, and extensive
hilly pasture-ground, very like in general outline to the Highlands of
Scotland, though destitute of heath: and over this very uneven surface
are interspersed lagoons and rivers, and deep, warm, agricultural
valleys, in the bottom of which grow the richest fruits and produce of
the coast; while the summits of the hills, that rise from and enclose
these fertile dales, are exposed to the violence of the tempest in the
elevated regions of cold and barrenness.
From one of these glens, where we once resided for some time, we left
a house at the door of which the lemon-tree was in perpetual fruit and
blossom, and, in two or three hours thereafter, arrived at the rugged
crags and peaks of the eastern Cordillera.
The lines of road from the western coast to the central Andes of Peru
wind along narrow glens, sometimes contracting into mere ravines, edged
by lofty hills or prodigious rocks that close in abruptly. The traveller
thus journeys for days, leaving one hill behind, and meeting another
rising before; but never arrives at that ideal spot, whence he may
command a view from sea to sea,
“Where Andes, giant of the western star,
Looks from his throne of clouds o’er half the world.”
The highest mountains in Britain, such as Ben-Nevis or Cruachan,[18] must
appear very diminutive, when compared to the Andes, whose very vastness
and extent preclude from the inland regions any view of the sun dipping
under the waves of the Pacific, and whose magnitude limits the quickest
sight to the groups of mountains, with their included dales, that go to
form one stupendous pile of varied shape, production, and climate.
Many of the mountain roads, as they leave the bottom of the glens, and
ascend, in more or less of a caracole, along the face of formidable
steeps, seem to bear date of origin from the Quichua era, when the
llama was the only beast of burden in the country. These animals, like
their Indian owners, delight most in the cool of the hills; but, when
laden and on the road, their slow and stately gait must not be hurried
or interfered with, nor their burden increased beyond their liking,
which seldom exceeds 70 or 80 lbs. weight on a long journey: the Indian
understands their way, and rules them by gentleness. As the llamas are
not for forced marches, and only make short stages of three or four
leagues daily, the paths that lead through pasture-grounds are the best
suited for them, and may have been considered by the ancient inhabitants
of the land as a sufficient reason for striking off from a barren though
less elevated or precipitous path, and climbing to eminences that yield
an agreeable temperature and some herbage to the indigenous companions of
their toil.
When a person has occasion to traverse these narrow and fatiguing
roads, it is necessary for him to keep a good look-out, lest he should
clash with some rider or cargo-beast coming in the opposite direction;
for there are places where it would be utterly impossible to pass two
a-breast; and there would be no small danger, on meeting an impatient
animal or careless horseman, that either party would be hurled over the
brink, and consigned to the condors and eaglets that nestle on the cliffs
and in the dark chasms of the crags.
Such dangerous passes are at some places so contracted that the stirrup
of the muleteer is seen to overhang the foaming stream, or project beyond
the verge of the boldest precipice; and every now and then they are
made more formidable by abrupt angles and insecure breast-work without
parapets, hastily constructed when the rush of a sudden torrent from the
hollow of a hill, or large stones rolling from the heights, have cleft
the way so as to render it for a time impassable.
There are also many cuestas or rapid steeps, with here and there
flights of steps, roughly cut in the hard rock. By the way-side, in
tedious cuestas of several leagues in extent, recesses are, in numerous
instances, worked out on the higher side of the road, which serve for the
passengers to draw up while those from an opposite direction are allowed
to pass on, or where muleteers stop their cattle to adjust their cargoes
and tighten their lazos. But when a rock or shoulder of a cliff juts out
from the road towards the lower or precipice side, leaving more or less
room for a resting-place, then the little flat space is coarsely walled
in with large fragments of rock and such smaller stones as may be at
hand, giving the idea of a rude but commanding fortress.
The famous Cuesta of San Mateo, on the Tarma road from Lima, we passed
in the year 1834, and could not but wonder how, without any very serious
accident, an army of cavalry, destined to celebrate the “fraternal
embrace of Maquenguaio,”[19] had been able to pass the same route a few
months before, when the path and staircases were yet wet and slippery
from occasional showers; and when the lower or proper post-road was
unfortunately impassable, from the destruction of one of the ordinary
rustic bridges on the river or torrent, that runs at the bottom of the
rock-locked ravine through which the regular mule-way has been opened,
and by which the waters rush foaming and raging in time of heavy inland
rains. This stream, like all such impetuous torrents, during the force
of the rainy season on the high mountains and table-lands, carries in
its course a vast number of rolling stones, the thundering noise of
which rises far above the roar of the white waters as these are thrown
back, and resisted incessantly, by large blocks of rocky fragments that
half-choke the narrow channel, which at this remarkable place is bordered
by immense rocks looking as if they had been separated by violence, or
rent to give descent to the concentrated and united body of rivulets that
come from many a snowy peak, mountain lake, and marsh.
The hill along which runs the Cuesta road, rising on the face of the
steep that overhangs this part of the stream, is of itself a grand
object; but that which is seen opposite to it has the greatest elevation
of any single mountain in these narrow glens: and nothing of the kind
can be more strikingly magnificent than to behold it, girdled in verdure
and capped in snow, from the summit of the Cuesta, where the traveller,
tired with climbing, is invited to draw breath, and look around him
from the cross planted here, as in almost every similar situation, by
the pious among the natives, who love to decorate this emblem of their
faith with wreaths of fresh and fragrant flowers. But from the better
route, which winds by the river underneath, nothing of this sort is to
be seen; for here the hills on each side shelve in towards their rugged
foundations, until they come so close as completely to overshadow the
stream. Here, too, the rider may strain his neck in looking overhead;
but his eye only meets, besides a strip of the sky, pendulous succulents
and tangling plants on the face of the incumbent ledge, with now and
then a flower-enamoured “pica-flor,” (humming-bird,) as he fans, with a
gracefully tremulous wing, the expanding blossoms that yield him delicate
food and pastime.
These wilds of San Mateo reminded us forcibly of the miniature wilds of
Glencoe, remarkable in Scottish history; and we thought, as we passed
them, of the bard of Cona (Ossian), who, in honour of the orb which the
Peruvians once adored, sung with sublimity and touching pathos,
“O thou that rollest above, round as the shield of my fathers, whence are
thy beams, O Sun! thy everlasting light? Thou comest forth in thy awful
beauty; the stars hide themselves in the sky; the moon, cold and pale,
sinks in the western wave; but thou thyself movest alone. Who can be a
companion of thy course?”
The Indian’s eyrie on the summit of some steep and lofty mountain,
(seldom visited by a white man, save the curate,) may be easily passed
many times unnoticed by a stranger, who has occasion to go over the usual
routes in any of the principal ravines and valleys of the Sierra, and
who may never be led to suspect its existence till he one day meets a
swift-footed Indian, closely followed by a person on a well-accoutred
and elegant mule, whose gear is all laden with silver ornaments; and
the rider, who sits at his ease in a saddle of the country with a rich
pellon, wears a large-brimmed hat, with a black silk cap emerging to
view at the ears and temples. He has on at least a couple of ponchos
(mantles) well-decorated and fringed; his black or brown stockings are
of warm Vicuña wool; and the heel of a small shoe, half-concealed in a
clumsy and costly, though wooden stirrup, is armed with a prodigiously
disproportioned silver spur, with a large tinkling roller, used to keep
his noble animal in mind that she is but the harbinger of death, and
carries on her back the keeper of the sinner’s conscience.
This minister of peace to the miserable, hurries to save the soul of a
dying Christian, whose abode, like the falcon’s, overlooks the ordinary
path of wayfaring men; and which, when descried, seems, to the sight of
an observer underneath, to be indeed the loftiest earthly point between
the ground he himself stands upon and that heaven for which, it is
believed, the anxious and fluttering spirit of the gasping Indian, only
waits the curate’s absolution and blessing to wing its immortal flight.
It occurs to us here to remark, that in the remote curacies of the hills
no friars are to be seen, as on the coast or more genial climates; an
important part of whose duty it is, wherever they locate themselves, to
aid the Christian to die well, and to watch by his pillow, and exhort
and comfort him, while the crucifix and taper are ever before his eyes,
and the breath of life about to leave his animal frame. But, destitute
of these helps, the curate or curate-substitute, whose calling renders
him the most influential person and only spiritual comforter in an
Indian village, makes, in the appearance we have offered to describe,
his rapid way over hill and cliff, broken ravine and dangerous path, on
a chosen traveller, whose movements are so gentle that she never wearies
the rider. This mule seems not to make any trying exertion, while she
leaves all ordinary beasts of her kind behind her on a day’s journey, and
ascends a cuesta of three or four leagues without stopping once to draw
breath, and again descends the same without missing a foot or slackening
the “paso llano,” the best of all travelling paces; while, to her no
small recommendation, where horse-shoers are not to be found, whether
on hard ground or soft, in summer or in winter, she needs not a shoe on
her massy and well-rounded hoof. The Sierra curates of a dreary pastoral
district, or secluded Indian residence in the wheat-land temperatures,
are men, at the age of forty, commonly much worn out in constitution.
One of these gentlemen, to whom his home is irksome, is seen to read for
weeks together on a stretch, merely to kill time; or he longs for the
more refined “tertulia,” to which at one period he was no stranger; or
he starts off, swayed by some sudden impulse, to the nearest town of
white inhabitants, where he enjoys a finer climate and more gratifying
company. He not unfrequently resorts to a mineral “pueblo” (village),
under pretext perhaps of selling his “primicia” or first-fruits in grain,
&c. which, to be sure, he does to some purpose; for ten to one he will
gamble with the extravagant miners, day and night, till the product of
the primicia is all swallowed up; and the poor residentiary returns to
his cheerless manse involved in a debt which he cannot pay for the next
six months, even should his curacy be worth four or five thousand dollars
a year, though it oftener happens that the income is much less. In his
mountain curacy, wherein he endures sad periods of ennui and long and
frequent fasts,[20] that debilitate and break down the best constitution,
(for before he can reach a distant church, and say mass, the day is often
far advanced,) the curate complains of feeling himself an exile; and is
easily led to seek refuge from his self-weariness in various indulgences
that far overstep the barriers of self-denial, and plunge him into the
outskirts of that moral darkness which he is sent to enlighten.
Here, if anywhere on earth, the drawbacks of involuntary celibacy are
felt by the priest. For such canonical privations he usually searches
compensation in the less amiable society of a favourite “sobrina,” or
reputed niece, whose kindness hinges on a precarious friendship, and
whose artful complacency
“hardens a’ within,
And petrifies the feeling!”
But while we regret the evils thus entailed on the curate by the
established usage and Romish policy[21] of the sacred orders, we do
with pleasure and grateful remembrance assure our readers that,
from the individual curates spread over the hill-land of this thinly
inhabited country, the foreigner and traveller is always sure to meet
with the greatest kindness and hospitality. Further to illustrate the
moral and physical aspect of the Sierra, we would mention that once,
when on a journey in the interior, we had the good fortune to fall in
with a clerical gentleman, whose vigour of mind was not to be overcome
by the dreariness of his residence at Cauri, a puna village of cold
and shivering aspect. This active and spirited person came up to us
as we crossed the celebrated road-way of the Incas, on the heights of
Huamalies, and we descended together towards the village of Jesus, only a
few leagues distant; but before we could reach this place his fine mule
began to trip, then tottered, and soon failed entirely in her hind-legs,
as if struck by palsy. She was unsaddled, she immediately stretched
herself on the ground, swelled out rapidly, struggled and groaned, and
in less than half an hour died.
The priest, who on this occasion showed himself to be not at all
unacquainted with practical farriery, felt like one who had lost a
tried and valued companion. He soon, however, reconciled himself to a
misfortune beyond his power to remedy; and ordering his Indian page to
walk down hill, (after he had secured the saddle and trappings of the
favourite animal here left to the hungry condors, on the back of the
cargo-mule, or bed-mule, driven before us,) the jovial priest mounted the
Indian’s little rough poney, and we all arrived safely at our destination
early in the evening. The cattle—every hoof—were in distant pastures,
and the priest could not be provided with another mule before next
morning. We therefore passed the evening agreeably under the same roof,
where a pretty-looking white mouse was caged, and kept as a precious
remedy and charm against all diseases; and some such wizard power as
this timid creature was supposed to possess, these poor mountaineers
stood much in need of, as no surgeon or physician ever resides among
them. At the village of Jesus we arrived in the dry season, when its
nearest plains wore a stunted and withered aspect, and when there was
no crop in the ground—not their ordinary potato crop, which indeed is
their only one; and which in some years succeeds, while in other years it
fails on account of the frost. But, during the rainy season, when frost
is unknown in the deep ravines and lofty arable heights and acclivities
of the inland country,—where the highest-perched houses are seen, on
arriving at them, to have still higher back-grounds,—the Indians, each of
whom cultivates his own patch of ground, drive all their cattle to the
remotest pastures of their extensive common; because they cannot consent
to have them feeding near their doors, and crops, which have no proper
enclosures.
The Indians and curates have, for the most part, very opposite interests
to support in worldly matters; and they are often seen contending with
one another in hard bargains when arranging the business of first-fruits,
(for tithes are collected by the state,) marriages, burials, and
religious festivals, which latter are closely interwoven with the entire
social system of the country. These contentions tend to lower the
respectability and sacredness of the proper priestly character; and there
are not wanting examples of the Indian carrying his ill-will so far as to
desire to be revenged of his ghostly father in a sly way.
On one celebrated occasion the Indians of Huamantanga, situated on the
western slope of the Andes, and not far inland from the capital, advised
their curate that in a hamlet on a distant hill-top a man was dying;
so that, if the curate did not use much haste to assist him, he would
necessarily die without confession. The curate replied, “But how am I to
reach him?—There is no mule at hand; they are all in the remote common.”
An Indian promptly answered, “I will fetch one.” But the curate knew
that at that time, on account of the numerous crops, no mule was or
could be near. He therefore became suspicious respecting the good faith
of those about him, for he was old, and had experience of the perverse
and cunning disposition of Indians; but, when the man came to him with a
very good-looking mule, he suppressed his sentiments, and asked if the
animal was accustomed to be ridden by a curate. “Sabe la mula de cura?”
The Indian replied, “La mula es buena,”—the mule is a good one. “Yes,”
says the curate; “but let us see if she have acquaintance with a curate.”
He now cast off his clerical habit, and, having dressed the Indian as a
curate, he made the wily rogue mount the beast; when she reared, kicked,
and flung violently, until she dashed him to the ground. To the crafty
villager, now caught in his own snare, the churchman good-naturedly
observed, “You _feel_, my man, that the mule, though a good one, yet
knows nothing of a curate; and, as there is no other alternative, your
friend must survive his present illness, or go down to the grave without
confession.” But to the grave he went not on this occasion, for the whole
was intended as a trick by which the curate might be deceived to his
personal hurt or destruction; but, as far as we could judge, our jolly
acquaintance at Jesus was quite a favoured individual, who had nothing to
fear from the mule next morning brought for his service.
This gentleman had a great many occupations besides the ordinary
professional duties of saying mass, hearing confessions, and absolving
sins. He supplied his people with whisky, of which he was the only
distiller, and they the principal consumers. He considered it a proud
discovery, (of which few of his neighbours were in the secret,) that
ardent spirits could be made from barley, reared on the hills at
comparatively little expense for the grain-grower; while the usual
sugar-cane spirit, or “agua ardiente,” extracted by the help of the
inferior copper, or the still worse earthen stills of the interior,
had no superiority over it. On the other hand, the “pisco,” or finer
flavoured _Italia_, both of which are procured from the fermented juice
of the grape, could only be got, and at great expense of land-carriage,
from the coast. He therefore hoped to supersede by his whisky the use of
the cane-spirit or pale rum, called “agua ardiente,” or “agua ardiente
de caña,” because it was sometimes very expensive, and frequently bad;
not from any pernicious quality in the saccharine juice, as some natives
have imagined, but on account of the defective mode of distillation by
poor people, who buy up from the sugar-growers molasses, and a coarse
brown sugar, made into little cakes, called “chancaca,” for the purpose
of being converted into “agua ardiente,” for which there is always great
demand in the colder and mineral districts.
Our speculative priest had a farm in the temperate neighbourhood of a
place and curacy called Caina, which lay convenient to his own spiritual
flock. Here he cultivated abundance of grain, and possessed extensive
pasture grounds. He purchased the “primicia” (first-fruits) of his
brethren in Conchucos, and other mountain ranges and elevated districts,
wherein church-rates are paid in cattle, as the staple commodity of lands
chiefly fitted for pasturage. These cattle he placed on grass, when young
and cheap; and when they became in high condition, drove them carefully
along the least frequented paths on the verdant heights, to the clover
or alfalfa fields in the headland vales of the coast, where they were
in demand by the grazier and butcher. He also contracted for so many
thousand arobes of sugar yearly, with the planters in Huailas; and by the
aid of his Cauri friends and customers, had his sugar conducted to Cerro
Pasco at a lower rate of land-carriage than any one else in this line of
trade; and, dealing on a large scale, he believed that he could easily
undersell the smaller trader.
The Cauri muleteers employed by the priest are staunch hearty fellows who
swig off a bottle of whisky, or “agua ardiente,” as if it were less than
a mouthful; for they call a bottle a “gota,” or a drop, which shows they
hold it as too small a dose for their well-seasoned stomachs.
Our priest also engaged to supply mines, in the adjacent country, with
salt for benefiting or preparing metals, which the Caurimen, with their
little broad-backed and hardy nags, are used to convey from Huacho on the
coasts of the Pacific, by the vale of Sayan, across the Cordillera. He
was withal a watch-maker to the neighbouring villages within many leagues
of his residence, and knew, if we forget not, how to put the church organ
to rights when out of repair.
His people were apparently fond of so stirring and general a speculator;
and as they can only grow for themselves, and that in the most sheltered
corners, very bad potatoes, with frequent failures in the harvest,
(though their common yields good pasture,) their pastor supplied them
with maize, (as the miner in isolated localities supplies, at large
profits, maize and clothing, &c. to his workmen,) on which, with
potatoes, cheese, eggs, and guinea-pigs, they principally support
themselves. Butter they rarely know how to churn; and, as the milk is
chiefly used for making cheese, it is not often drunk as an article of
nutriment, save by those who live in small round booths, that are ever
and anon guarded by a host of noisy curs, with hair as shaggy and matted
as that which covers the heads of the urchins that feed them. These
pastoral huts are scattered over the distant plains and ranges of the
mountains throughout the “estancias,” or tracts of hilly pasture-land
allotted for rearing and feeding cattle and sheep. At such estancias and
huts, the traveller in the interior of Peru has frequently to rest for
the night.
The poor Indian owner of a few horned cattle, will rather languish with
hunger than slaughter one head of his fold for his private consumption;
but he who owns a small flock of sheep can more conveniently sustain
himself on meat and “caldo,”—mutton tea, (for vegetables are commonly
wanting to make that kind of broth which is to be found at the
grain-grower’s,) especially when any traveller passes that way, who
buys one of his small sheep—much smaller on the hills than in the warm
valleys—for use on the road, and employs the Indian himself to butcher
it. These inhabitants of the snowy range, or lofty dales of the Andes,
we frequently met,—and they are easily known by their warm clothing,
capacious chests, and ruddy complexions,—descending from the frigid
regions to the temperate and grain valleys, to barter for the vegetable
productions of the agriculturist fresh mutton, which, already skinned and
free from offal, they carry on donkeys (animals which in the hands of
the Indian escape the cruel stripes and goads inflicted on them by the
merciless negro or zambo); and this meat, like beef, being previously
dried in the sun, is laid up for use by the dweller of the warm and
narrow glen overhung by scorched and rocky acclivities, who places it
before the traveller, under the usual name of “charque,” of which we have
often eaten with a good appetite.
But to return to our priest: it is to be hoped that, in contributing
as much as he did to supply the temporal wants of the hardy attendants
at his confessional, he did not irretrievably overlook their Christian
and spiritual necessities. From the combined results of his various
undertakings, he cherished a glowing expectation of realizing a fortune;
but, as we never heard of his success, we think it allowable to suppose
that, like other speculators, he must have experienced some severe
reverse or serious disappointment, as is quite usual in that country.
When morning arrived, we had our good _chupe_,—a common and standard dish
of the Sierra, consisting of potatoes sliced down and boiled in water
or milk, with an addition of eggs, cheese, and, when very nice, butter;
but, on many occasions, especially in Huamalies, the traveller only
gets _yaco_-chupe, or water chupe, consisting merely of potatoes sliced
and boiled in water, with the addition of a little salt, and a leaflet
of wild mint, if at hand, as a useful antidote against flatulency and
uneasiness at stomach.
After we had finished breakfast, and found our cattle in readiness, we
were sorry to part with our agreeable acquaintance, whose presence and
influence furnished us with better fare and accommodation than we usually
experienced on our Sierra journeys. This remarkable person was a native
of Quito; and whatever may be thought of his enterprise and commercial
spirit, like all Quiteños we were acquainted with in Peru, he was
distinguished for his native talent and ingenuity.
Our way now lay among the ruins of ancient buildings and small towns,
with here and there, along the higher ridges, some detached and more
stately-looking architectural remains. These relics of the olden times
offer far finer samples of masonry than the dry stone and thatched houses
of any modern Indian village. The old line of communication between Quito
and Cuzco, where we met our Quitenian friend on the preceding day, is a
wonderful monument of rude art and industry. This imperial road of the
Incas is still perfect in many parts, where the stones appear well fitted
and laid in good order, the pavement rising above the level of the plain,
and being of a spacious breadth.[22]
We entered one of the houses in “Pueblo Viejo,” or ruins of an old
town so called, by the way-side, not far from the celebrated ruins of
the ancient city Leon de Huanuco, deemed by the natives as only second
to Cuzco—the capital of the empire of the Incas—in the wonders of its
masonry. We found the walls of this house, except where defaced by the
mischievous hands of man, quite entire, and one angle of the building
had yet retained the roof. The windows were small, but the outer door
of good size. The walls were as perpendicular as plumb and line in our
days could make them, though two stories high. These walls were built
with small stones, mostly flags; and between them a thin layer of mud
or clay cement. There were, within, stone partitions rising to the level
of the outward walls, making the compartments of the house so confined
that the roof was easily laid on by long and broad flags projecting from
the sides, on which they were steadied by a top-weight, and, meeting
at the centre, were so adjusted as to render the closing of the roof
perfect. The same appeared to have been the manner in which the floor of
the second story had been laid. At the roof, the flags were observed to
shoot forwards to some extent outside the wall, doubtless with a view to
preserve a perfect equilibrium,—as we have frequently seen on the smaller
houses of ancient Indian architecture, which abound near the village of
Ambo on the heights of Andaguaylla. The lofty and weather-worn peaks of
this estate go to form the ridge of the eastern Cordillera, where the
path from these summits descends towards the pueblo of Yuramarca on the
verge of the Montaña, known in regal times as the asylum of the fugitive
criminal.
This hacienda, partaking of the climate of the torrid and frigid zones,
and consisting of successive table-lands and steep hills, has frigid
summits and ever-blooming dales. Its lakes of _Rumichaca_, so named
because their waters escape under a natural bridge of rock; its Indian
moats and fortifications on the heights of Rucrun, and the ruins of
which we have just made mention; its woods of alder and perejil; its
bamboo thickets, numerous dingles, and silvery waterfalls; its rapacious
puma; its herds of deer; its narrow pathways and slippery pastures, from
whence the grazing ox so often rolls to the fathomless ravine,—are still
present to our mind in one group, with the lovely conjunction of the
cultivated vales of Huacar and Huaylas, and the watery cross formed by
the confluence of their respective streams, where the river of Huanuco
commences its gently winding course. All these crowd into our retrospect,
as they are viewed by the imagination in one splendid landscape from
the commanding eminences of this fine estate, in contrast with all the
boundless mountain-scenery stretching to the west.
Of the houses of the Gentiles, as the natives usually call the antiquated
buildings we would wish to describe, (and in the hiding-nooks of which
treasure is sometimes found,) the roof is rounded or finished off by
stones and clay or earth, so as to throw over the heavy rains that
at certain seasons of the year fall in these places. This species of
building, as it needed no timber, was naturally recommended in frigid
woodless plains and almost inaccessible hill-tops, such as abound in the
Sierra or mountain-land of Peru; but in situations like Andaguaylla,
where wood surrounds the old Indian houses, they could only adhere to
this form of building, on account of their higher perfection in masonry
than carpentry, which required the use of tools and art that they
evidently did not possess.
In the temperate climate of Tarma, situated in the centre of the Andes in
an east-north-east direction from Lima, where the houses are generally
tiled, and the better sorts of them neatly floored with gypsum or
stucco-plaster, the older houses are still seen covered in with mud or
red brick-clay, underlaid and supported with strong timbers and a coat
of cane or wattling. The most antiquated of these roofs are made with a
very slight declivity, with outlets like a ship’s scuttle-holes at the
most pending angles, so as to give free exit to the rain when it falls
heavily. The wall of this description of house they raise a foot or
two higher than the roof, so as to give the latter the appearance of a
little inclined plane and enclosure; and they leave triangular holes,
like those of a dove-house, in this little parapet; within which, when
the rains have passed away, and the crops are housed, the peasants stow
peas, beans, and maize, until, by direct exposure to a bright sun, these
articles are so dried up as to be unhusked without trouble or loss.[23]
Tarma is the favourite place of resort of sickly persons from different
parts, especially Lima, and the rigorous climate at the mineral works
of Yauli, whence the rheumatic miners, after their own hot springs fail
to cure them, flock to the Estrada, or to the ball and tertulia of the
blooming Tarmenians. All its peaceful inhabitants are agriculturists; and
mostly all the resident families emigrate during harvest-time to little
farms in the vicinity of this pretty Cerrano town, which is considered
one of the most agreeable and civilized in all the Sierra, and wherein
the better classes, even as in the provincial towns on the coast, desire
to adopt the manners of the capital as their standard. Near Tarma is a
beautiful cascade, and many peach and apple orchards, with lanes lined
with poplars, and perfumed with wild mint and many sweet and fragrant
flowers in the wet season, when its hills are verdant, its air pure, and
its people joyful. The population of the town and suburbs is estimated
at eight thousand; yet with all the sickness to which, notwithstanding
the general salubrity of its climate, so large a population as that of
Tarma must be subjected, this retreat of convalescents from the coast
and mineral districts is without a medical adviser of any consideration,
except when chance throws among them one of the faculty of Lima, himself
a confirmed invalid, or only in a state of recovery from consumption or
spitting of blood.
When the people of Tarma have put the seed into the ground, they usually
occupy an entire month in mutual visiting and festivity: and they say of
their neighbours of Jauja (eight leagues to the south of them), whose
rejoicing is at harvest-home, that they distrust Providence, while
they themselves piously rejoice and rest their hope in the Giver of
their harvest; hence, they infer the wheat crops of the Jaujinos (whose
granaries are in favourable years the most plentifully stored in all
Peru) are often blighted and frosted, while the Tarmenian barley always
flourishes. We would not quarrel with these contented people for the
moral of this anecdote to the prejudice of their neighbours; but we wish
they would themselves make better use of their advantages, and prepare
good barley-bread, of which they know not the use, instead of depending
upon others for their flour and wheat,—for never did we eat such bad
bread, made of putrid flour, as we did in Tarma. Perhaps the immediately
preceding visitation of an armed force might have been the occasion of so
bad a bread-market. But we can recommend their quails, too soon fatigued
to escape by flight, and therefore taken by dogs and unarmed Indians;
and their pine apples, and coffee from the near Montaña and hacienda of
Vitoc, are both very good, the latter excellent.
The centre land of Peru abounds in streams and mountain torrents, subject
at certain periods to sudden and tumultuous swells from the bursting of
heavy thunder-clouds and continued pouring rain, or pelting hail and
thick nocturnal snow-falls, which quickly melt before the shining sun,
and fill the rivers to inundation. The consequence of this is, that
though the weather may soon after become so fair and showerless as to
invite the traveller to proceed on his journey, yet every now and then
he may have deep rivers or foaming ravines to cross, where bridges of
some sort become indispensable.
When the indigenous race in former times had to pass any river on their
route, their engineers supplied, as best they could, the wants of science
by that natural sagacity which belongs to their living posterity. When
their particular course allowed, they placed their simple bridge near
the origin of the stream, or outlet of the lake whence it happened to
flow; as we see at the lakes of Lauricocha and Pomacocha. As the waters
of the lake can never rise many feet above the usual level, the purpose
of a more scientific bridge is served by the Indian method of laying
down large stones at short intervals from bank to bank; and, as these
stones rise high above the surface of the water, they serve as pillars
or supporters, over which are laid transversely large flags, that form
an even and safe path for the passage of men and cattle. At the places
mentioned, the single stones, too wide apart for stepping-stones, are
still to be seen firm in their places; though the transverse flags,
probably removed by human hands, are no longer found; at least, at
Pomacocha not a vestige of them remains.
A more ingenious bridge of ancient invention, and still used in Peru, is
the swing or soga bridge. It is made by ropes twined from the pliable
bejuco, twigs of willow, or any other flexible and vegetable filaments;
and these are well secured at the ends on the opposite banks of the
water: on these, bundles of maguey leaves, broom, or other long-branched
and yielding shrubs, are laid crosswise, and bound very closely and
firmly by tough ligaments or slips of the maguey leaf (“cabuia”), which
answer as well as the best cordage. In this way the bridge is made of
sufficient breadth for foot-passengers; and a hand-rope runs along each
side of it, by which the traveller can steady himself while walking
across. A specimen of this sort is the soga bridge of modern Huanuco. At
Oroya also, over the river Jauja, is a very strong one of this kind for
cargo-mules to cross upon. The ropes, or rather _cables_, extending from
bank to bank, are made of bullock’s hide; and the cross-bars, bound down
with thongs, are of squared pieces of wood, and broad enough to allow the
animals to pass with confidence. As this bridge is kept up at unusual
expense, and situated on the post-road to the interior, we paid toll
at it for passing our saddle-beasts. The rope or swing-bridge is very
convenient where the river is too broad to be spanned by any trees to be
found in the neighbourhood; but where the stream is not much too wide to
be crossed by long trees and beams, of which the temperate altitudes
afford appropriate materials in the wood known by the name of perijil or
roble, the natives manage to form a strong and pretty durable bridge, by
constructing a large and massy stone breast-work on each side the water.
In these bulwarks they fix strong timbers, which are made to project over
the stream as far as may be required, while the larger portion of the
same timbers is covered by a heavy weight of stones and earth: a tree of
ordinary length is found sufficient to overlay the centre of the water;
as, thus placed, it rests its ends on the projecting timbers already
well secured in the midst of the masonry at the opposite banks. These,
the most common of all Peruvian bridges, are constructed and kept in
repair by order of the prefect of each department, who issues the same
to sub-prefects or governors of provinces; and these again send out the
entire community of adjacent villages to work under the direction of
their respective alcaldes and regidores.
There yet remains a very curious and portable bridge to be mentioned, now
falling into disuse, but of which a specimen may be yet seen at Viroy, on
the river Huacar, in the department of Junin: this antique relic is named
“Guaro.” It is constructed by extending a single strong lazo from one
side of the stream to the other, which is well secured to the trunk of a
tree, or any such fixture, on the opposite banks: from this a leathern
bag, not unlike in appearance to a canvass draw-bucket used aboard ship,
is suspended, so as to run easily on the lazo; the passenger sits in
the bag, and slides himself quietly across. Bridges of this description
are said to have been exceedingly useful to the Montonera, or irregular
patriot troops, during the late war that ended in the separation of Peru
from Spain.
Another contrivance for passing lakes and rivers in the Andes is the
“balsa,” a very small canoe made of rushes. Its surface is level; and
when the paddler and only one passenger steady themselves upon it, the
canoe is pressed down into the water to within about an inch or two of
its surface,—so, at least, was the only one we had occasion to enter; as,
upon a journey during the floods of the wet season, we swam our cattle,
and crossed ourselves in a balsa of rushes over the river of San Juan, on
the plains of Bombon, near Pasco.
The water-courses of the ancient Peruvians are traced along the chasms of
rocks and sides of arid eminences in the vicinity of the coast, and in
the dry intermediate glens. These aqueducts sometimes appear marvellously
constructed among the most rugged crags, and in some points are raised to
an astonishing elevation. They are reared from very slender foundations
here and there among the now receding, now approaching, shelves of the
rocks and cliffs. These piles of irregular mason-work are fabricated with
small and thin stones, or light flags, leaning upon every favourable
projection along the steep against the front of which the fabric rises;
and all the works thus constructed are so solidly and closely united,
that after the lapse of ages, and in the land of earthquakes too, they
are still in numberless instances nearly perfect.
One of the most striking of these aqueducts is about eight leagues
from Lima, on the low road to Alcacota by Caballeros, on a high rocky
acclivity, along the base of which runs the road, close by the winding
of the river Chillon or Carabaillo, which descends from the Cordillera,
by Obrajillo. It is also very usual in the temperate valleys, where the
hills are flanked with soil, and clothed in vegetation, to meet here and
there the ruins of small villages with files of successively rising
platforms on the hollow side of a hill. These tiers of artificial flats,
or gardens, are generally only a few yards in breadth; but in length
greater or less, in proportion to the dimensions of the semi-circular
sweep of the recess capable of cultivation.
In rearing up and constructing these gardens the one above the other,
like the pews in the gallery of a church or boxes in a theatre, the
ancient Indian must have begun his work by erecting a stone wall on the
lower part of the slope, or more even ground, that formed the base of the
series; and, as it was in process of rising to the desired height, the
earth must have been scraped down from the side of the acclivity, to fill
up the space thus partitioned off into a level bank or platform: then,
behind this first level was raised another stony partition, and more
earth again scraped down; and so on successively, till the uppermost and
last tier of these little and tasteful gardens was completed.[24]
By such means these industrious natives always preserved deep soil, which
they might dig up and turn over at pleasure, bringing a new surface of
earth to yield a new crop without necessity of manure; and by the same
contrivance they preserved from the washings of the frequent and heavy
rains, the treasure of vegetable loam which they thus so laboriously and
patiently amassed.
As we descend from the inner regions of the country, and get down among
the arid and naked granite mountains near the coast, we see the ruins of
Pagan dwellings showing themselves in the crevices of the rocks, where
no plant is seen on the waste land, save a few scattered cacti, and no
moving creature except the lizard that basks, and the kite that waits
its motions, on the crumbling ruins and circumjacent blocks which have
been rolled from their original seats on the face of the steep. And as
we approach still nearer the capital, where Glen Rimac unfolds its wide
and fertile acres of deep alluvial soil, we see that this goodly land,
when denied water, puts on a look of desert sterility; but that it only
requires irrigation—it needs no manure—to yield productive sugar-cane,
and to throw forth choice lucern and Indian corn, that waves above the
head of the overseer as he passes on horseback through the fields,
superintending labourers.
As we enter these plains, susceptible of indefinite improvement and vast
returns, we are everywhere surrounded with the vestiges of antiquity,
particularly with the ruins of guacas, that at a distance look like
little hills or knolls scattered over the open plains; but we think that
they were once used as so many tombs of the Sun-worshippers of the land.
In some of these mouldering monuments there are yet to be found internal
chambers or sepulchral vaults, entered by very narrow openings; and, from
these labyrinths, mummies, cloths of different colours, various domestic
utensils, and sacred figures and idols, have been not unfrequently
extracted. We have in our possession a neat silver idol in the figure
of an Inca, with a llama of the same material and workmanship, procured
from a guaca, and presented to us by our friend the Rev. Dr. Don Lucas
Pellicer, an eminent and classical Limeño, of whose merits as a scholar
and patriotic statesman his country feels justly proud. Many other
curious relics of an ancient people are dug out from the same edifices,
of which the assiduous Don Mariano Rivero has made the most extensive and
interesting collection which is now extant in Peru; and with correct
drawings and descriptions of these he has, for some time back, proposed
to favour the public, and to enrich the history of his native country.
The tombs from which relics of this kind are usually taken are not,
however, confined to the neighbourhood of Lima, Truxillo, or the coast
in general, where their structure of moulded earth and sun-burnt clay is
best preserved on account of the absence of rain. Such remains are still
seen in some parts of the Sierra; and in speaking of the guacas, (which
he conceives to have been temples) in his “Historia natural y moral
de las Indias,” vol. ii. p. 128, Acosta tells us that “there were in
Cuzco[25] more than four hundred temples of idols, looked upon as sacred
earth, and all places were full of mysteries. As they” (the Incas) “went
on with their conquests, so they introduced their own guacas and rites
into all that state. The Great Being whom they adored was the Viracocha
Pachayachic, who is the Creator of the world; and after him the Sun; and
thus they said that the Sun, like all the other guacas, received virtue
and being from the Creator, and that they were intercessors with him.”