AYACUCHO TO LIMA
Every one had told us that it would be “absolutely impossible” to leave
Ayacucho until two or three days had elapsed after the end of the
Carnival. Possibly because we were a trifle homesick, and possibly
because we had been assured so positively that it could not be done, we
determined to try to leave Ayacucho on the last day of the three devoted
to Carnival. I must confess that it was rather cruel, not only to the
two soldiers who were ordered to accompany us, but also the _arriero_
who was informed that he must provide us with mules and go when we were
ready to start. The morning was spent in a great row over the mules and
the question as to how far they were to go with us, in which many tears
were shed by drunken Indian women who declared that they were sure they
would never see their husbands or animals back again. If it had not been
for the Prefect’s willingness to help us, we could never have persuaded
any one to go, but he did his part splendidly. We at length got off just
at noon. The Prefect and his friends, to the number of fourteen,
escorted us for the first league out of the city. Then we bade them an
affectionate farewell and started off on the last stage of our journey,
determined, if possible, to travel henceforth as much like private
citizens as we could. To be sure, we had our little military escort.
Without them we should have found it almost impossible to proceed at all
for the next few days. Our first two leagues were over the same road
which we had used in going to Quinua, then, instead of fording the
river, we kept on its left bank until we reached a shaky suspension
bridge. Its floor was made of loose planks that were so easily misplaced
by the mules that Hay declared he had to set them all over again after I
had passed in order to avoid falling into the river.
We met on the road many Indians, celebrating Carnival, marching along
gayly, beating primitive little drums and blowing on bamboo-fifes. They
stopped at almost every house they passed, shouting and hullabalooing
and getting a few drinks of _chicha_.
As we were crossing the rocky bed of a little stream we met an itinerant
musician, a blind harpist, who was being helped across by a friend. His
harp was very curious, being a wooden box shaped like half a cone with
two wooden legs tacked into its base, and two eye-holes on the flat side
which made it look very much like some dwarfish animal. With great
difficulty we tried to persuade him to set up his harp in the dry bed of
the stream and play us a tune while we took his picture. Not having the
slightest conception of what we were trying to do, the poor blind
musician was rather frightened, and as he understood no Spanish
whatever, we should not have succeeded had it not been for the kind
offices of a pleasant-faced mestizo family party who were picnicking on
the bank of the stream and who translated our poor Spanish into Quichua.
In the evening we reached Huanta, an historic little town where savage
Indian tribes from the Amazonian forests have frequently come into
collision with armed Peruvian forces. Although we hoped to be able to
slip into town unnoticed, we were met, a mile out, by the usual dozen of
hospitably inclined _caballeros_ who, with the Gobernador at their head,
had been “celebrating” for the past two or three days. We were by this
time so fatigued by the labors of crossing Peru in the wet season, that
we found it very difficult to be as polite as we were expected to be to
the reception committees that had been our lot hitherto. However, in
this case, to put it bluntly, the Gobernador was very drunk, which made
him only the more friendly, and he insisted that we were two “princes of
America,” and that his house would be everlastingly famous in history as
having been the place where we stayed!
His wife and daughters behaved splendidly. They seemed to realize that
we knew it was customary for all the men to get drunk at this season of
the year. At the same time they did their best to make us comfortable
and to see that the male members of the family did not annoy us any more
than they could help.
Naturally, the “morning after” was a sad occasion, and had it not been
for our excellent soldiers, who had gone to bed sober, it would have
been very difficult to have persuaded our hosts to let us go. The
Gobernador was extremely cross. He had
[Illustration: THE BRIDGE OVER THE HUARPA]
forgotten all about our princely lineage, and only remembered to charge
us treble for everything he could think of. Although we had gotten up at
five o’clock, no Indians sober enough to act as guides could be found
for several hours, and it was after ten before we finally left Huanta.
The son of the Gobernador was the only person who had energy enough, or
had sufficiently recovered from the debauch of the night before, to do
us the honor of escorting us out of town. This had come to be such a
regular feature of our travels since leaving Cuzco that we always looked
forward with curiosity to see what would happen. This young fellow was
very polite and went with us as far as the entrance of the local
cemetery, a bizarre white-washed adobe gate, protected from the weather
by a little covering of red tiles. There must have been something
prophetic about his bidding us good-by at the gates of a cemetery, for
he was the last honorary escort that we had in Peru.
Our road led us through a thickly populated region. Here and there on
the roadside, unfortunate individuals, both men and women, who had been
too far gone to reach home the night before, were sleeping off the
effects of the Carnival. Ordinarily one does not see much drunkenness in
Peru, but this certainly was an exception.
Small towns and villages followed in quick succession. Then we descended
into the valley of the Huarpa River and across a well-built toll-bridge.
The bridge was so long and so high above the stream that my mule
concluded he would stay on the east bank. He yielded to our combined
efforts, but only after much beating. We now passed through a semi-arid
region of cactus and mimosa trees like the basin of the Pampas River,
until we began to climb an extremely steep ravine. Several times we lost
our way, and in places the path had been completely washed out by the
rains. The crux came at a little waterfall only five feet high. So
smooth was the face of the rock over which the little stream of water
trickled that our sure-footed animals found it impossible to reach the
upper level until we had built a rude stone stairway which they
cheerfully essayed to climb. Their energetic scrambles were finally
rewarded by success. For three hours the trail wound upwards as steeply
as it was possible to go, until we reached the bleak _paramo_ near
Marcas.
A magnificent panorama lay spread out before us. In the foreground were
hillsides dotted with thatched huts and fields where sheep and cattle
grazed; in the middle distance, deep valleys whose rivers had cut their
way down into gorges out of our sight; and far beyond, a magnificent
range of mountains, some capped with snow and others with clouds. It was
a little after five o’clock when we entered the picturesque little
village of Marcas with its two dozen huts scattered about under the lee
of the rocks or clustered near the road. We recognized it as just the
sort of village where we would have been refused both food and shelter
had we been alone. But as we were accompanied by an energetic sergeant
who did not propose to allow any poor Indians to stand in the way of our
progress, a hut no dirtier or more comfortless than the rest was soon
put at our disposal, and the sergeant did his best to get us all a good
supper out of our own provisions.
Our baggage animals had had a frightfully hard day of it and our
soldiers assured us that if we intended to catch the weekly train out of
Huancayo, it would be necessary to have at least one more beast of
burden, for although our luggage could be conveniently carried by two
mules going at a walk, if we expected to make forty miles a day, as we
hoped to do, one animal must be rested every other day. Accordingly the
Indian alcalde of Marcas was instructed to get us a mule. “But there are
no mules here” he replied. A horse then. “Very well, there is one old
one which I will have ready for you in the morning.” Soon after
breakfast an old white horse appeared, accompanied by a weeping Indian
woman who had no desire to take our money and who was thoroughly
convinced that she would never see her horse again. It was finally
agreed that the horse should go only to the next town where we could get
another beast and send this one back by one of the Indian alcaldes that
now accompanied us from village to village, returning as their task of
acting as guides was taken up by the alcaldes of the next place.
With the aid of the fresh horse, we made good time and skirted the
slopes of a high range of hills leaving the trim little town of Acobamba
far off on our left. It lies in the valley of the Lircay which is quite
densely populated and seemed to be very fertile. In the middle of the
afternoon we reached Urumyosi where there are curious great rocks
shaped like sugar loaves. They are of soft sandstone which is easily
worked, and a number of caves have been made by poor people at the base
of the rocks. After a long cold ride and ten hours in the saddle, we
came in sight of a mud-colored town called Paucara which has long had a
very evil reputation. Whether this is deserved or not we did not
endeavor to discover. The sergeant persuaded the owner of a rude little
hut, half a mile from the town and on the direct road, to let us spend
the night there. One of our neighbors brought freshly cut barley-straw
for the mules, another brought a dozen eggs, and with the aid of our own
supplies and cooking utensils, we fared splendidly.
The night was excessively damp and as bitterly cold as it can be only in
a genuinely tropical country when the temperature drops forty degrees
after the sun goes down and an icy wind penetrates your very bones, even
though you have hurriedly put on two or three sweaters and a couple of
ponchos as it grew dark. There is no cold like the cold of the tropics.
Furthermore the carcass of a recently killed sheep hung dripping in the
hut. The floor was wet and muddy, there were no windows and only a small
door. We wished we had a tent.
There being no incentive to linger at this charming country-house, our
Indians were actually up and away before six o’clock. We had saved four
eggs the evening before to be cooked for our breakfast, and after
loading our pack animals and seeing them safely off with all our
supplies, we handed our
[Illustration: URUMYOSI]
[Illustration: THE HUT NEAR PAUCARA]
eggs and some tea to the housewife and asked her to prepare us a frugal
meal. Alas! it was quite impossible. The cooking activities of the
evening before had used up every stick of firewood within a radius of a
mile, and there was no way in which water could be boiled. The only
provisions for our breakfast were the raw eggs. We had before us a ride
of forty miles over an exceedingly rough country, part of which lay at
an elevation of fourteen thousand feet above the sea, so we hastily
swallowed our eggs as best as we could and started off with the prospect
of twelve hours in the saddle.
At first the road wound slowly up the valley of Lircay, until finally it
climbed over the edge of the hills to a great bleak plateau where
hundreds of llamas were feeding. When you come to a llama range you may
be fairly certain that the altitude is not far from that of the top of
Pike’s Peak. Add to this a blinding snow-storm that keeps you from
seeing more than six feet ahead of you, a wearied mule, a very hungry
rider, and the uncertainty as to whether you are on the right road or
not, and you will have a picture of our predicament during part of that
never-to-be-forgotten day. At length, to our great delight, the trail
began slowly to descend from cheerless _paramos_ and little mountain
lakes into a great valley where, thousands of feet below, we could see
huts and cultivated fields.
Skirting the hills half-way up the valley and avoiding the attractive
little trails that led down to Indian villages, we kept turning more and
more to the westward until we rounded a spur and came on a magnificent
view of the great river Mantaro that on its way to join the Apurimac has
cut a wonderfully deep cañon through this part of Peru. A tortuous
descent of two thousand feet brought us to the new toll-bridge of
Tablachaca and onto an excellent road. Of course, this does not mean
that it could be used for wheeled vehicles, for of carts there are none
in this part of the world. It simply means that a trail four or five
feet wide and reasonably free from rocks and holes allowed the mules to
jog along at a gait of nearly five miles an hour. So slow had been our
progress over the _paramo_ that it was considerably after dark before we
reached the picturesque old stone bridge of Yscuchaca, re-crossed the
Mantaro, and clattered over the cobble-tones of this well-built little
town.
We had rather flattered ourselves that no one here knew we were coming
and so we had avoided an official reception and all possible attacks on
our digestive faculties. But we had to pay for it by finding that it
took nearly two hours longer than usual before we were able to secure
any accommodations whatsoever for the night. The Gobernador of Yscuchaca
lived a mile or more out of town on his country estate, and learning
finally that there were two “distinguished foreigners” in town, sent his
head servant to welcome us, gave us the use of a room in his town house,
provided our mules with pasturage, and the next morning charged us three
times the regular tariff. I regret to say that we took advantage of the
absence of the Gobernador to pay his major-domo what our sergeant told
us was the
[Illustration: THE TOLL BRIDGE OF TABLACHACA]
legitimate price and left him wondering why he had not been able to
overcharge us as he had certain American civil engineers who had been
here not long before, surveying for the extension of the central railway
of Peru.
At present, that railway, begun many years ago, goes from Lima to Oroya
and thence south to Huancayo which is nearly fifty miles from Yscuchaca.
It is proposed now to continue it from Huancayo to Yscuchaca and thence
due south to Huancavelica where there are mines of quicksilver and
copper. Eventually it will form one of the links in the chain of the
Pan-American Railway.
Our mules were pretty tired and so were we, but when one is on the home
stretch it is easy to travel from early to late. We rose before five
o’clock. Our road first crossed the Mantaro, ascended the left bank of
the stream for several miles, passed several mineral springs, and then
climbed out of the narrowing cañon up toward the village of Acostambo.
At one place where the road had been cut through what looked like a
fossil bed, I was so fortunate as to find, _in situ_, a fossil bivalve.
Professor Charles Schuchert of Yale University has been so good as to
identify it for me as _allorisma subcuneata_. It has been found also in
Brazil. Its geological horizon, the upper carboniferous, is widely
distributed in South America and is well known about Lake Titicaca. The
location of this fossil here may indicate the presence in this vicinity
of coal-beds. If any could be found, it would be the greatest benefit,
not only to the railway that hopes some day to pass through this
valley, but also to the copper-smelters in the vicinity. As a matter of
fact, Peru does not need the coal for power; these great and rapidly
flowing rivers like the Mantaro, the Pampas, and the Apurimac offer an
abundant water-power that, transformed into electricity, would run all
the railroads and factories that could possibly be crowded into Peru.
Personally, I do not believe in the construction of steam railroads in
this country. The difficulties of overcoming steep grades are serious,
and the cost of building is necessarily all out of proportion to the
traffic that is likely to be developed. I do believe, however, that the
future of Peru depends upon the development of her water-power and the
building of light electric railways that would be sufficient to handle
economically the product of the mines and to accommodate passengers. If
the region were one where extensive crops could be cultivated and a
large amount of heavy freight developed, this argument would not hold.
Under the circumstances, however, I believe that it is a much safer
investment for capital and a much more practical work for the government
to develop electric traction.
At Acostambo, a town of perhaps two thousand inhabitants, we tried to
buy something to eat for lunch, but there was nothing to be had except
some dough cakes that had been “cooked” in cold ashes. After passing
through two or three small villages where most of the Indians seemed to
be in a state of intoxication, we crossed the Cordillera Marcavalle and
found ourselves on the well-travelled road to Pampas. Before us, spread
out in a magnificent panorama, the fertile, densely populated valley of
Jauja. Watered by the Upper Mantaro River and its affluents, there are
over fifty villages, towns, and cities, clustered together in this rich
plain. Immediately ahead lay four towns almost exactly in a straight
line and less than ten miles apart: Pucará, where we stopped long enough
to buy some parched corn and freshly roasted pork for supper,
Sapallauga, Punta, and Huancayo. Instead of the desolate region in which
we had passed most of yesterday, we were now in one of the most thickly
populated parts of Peru, and felt as though we were back again in
civilization. This sensation was increased when we began to clatter down
the long street of Huancayo. It seemed like an age before we finally
reached the business centre of the city at 9 P.M. and surrendered
ourselves into the hands of a courteous Austrian hotel proprietor.
We had spent nearly fourteen hours in the saddle. This was quite
forgotten when we learned to our delight that there was to be a train
for Oroya the next day, for the first time in two weeks.
We had heard that the train from Huancayo left usually on Sundays, so we
had promised our soldiers a sovereign apiece if they would see to it
that we reached Huancayo by Saturday night. As they had to accompany the
slow-moving pack animals, they did not arrive themselves until the next
morning, somewhat in fear lest they had lost their promised reward. When
they were assured, however, that we had caught our train, and when they
had received their gold and what was left of our kitchen utensils and
supplies, their delight knew no bounds, and they were constrained to
embrace us in truly oriental fashion.
Sunday morning is a great event in Huancayo. Before sunrise, thousands
of Indians come in from the surrounding towns and villages for the
weekly Fair. Two large plazas are crowded with vendors of every
conceivable kind of merchandise: oxen and mules raised nearby, toys
“made in Germany,” pottery and ponchos made in Huancayo, and beer made
in Milwaukee. Overflowing from the crowded plazas the Fair extends for
nearly a mile through the main street of the city. The picturesque
Indians in their brilliantly colored ponchos, thronging the streets and
alternately buying and selling their wares, offer a field for diversion
that no one should miss who reaches Lima.
Like the Mexican Indians, so vividly depicted by Mr. Kirkham in his
artistic “Mexican Trails,” there are many among the throng who will
“sell a hen, later to bargain for a sombrero, presently to go upon their
knees within the church yonder, candle in hand; lastly to lie by the
roadside, overfull of _pulque_ and oblivious of this world, or the
next.”
The type is the same whether it be seen on a Sunday in the Andes of
Mexico, Peru, or Colombia. Only here it is _chicha_ that is the favorite
beverage instead of _pulque_.
The long expected train was due to arrive at noon and “to leave soon
afterwards.” The platform and the newly constructed booths near the
little corrugated-iron station were crowded for hours by
[Illustration: SUNDAY MORNING IN HUANCAYO]
intending passengers and friends of expected arrivals. But it was late
in the afternoon, almost dark in fact, before the belated little train
pulled into the station and the runners from the three Huancayo hotels
had the satisfaction of greeting their “friends.” We were informed that
the train would not leave before six o’clock the next morning so we
tried to possess ourselves in patience at our comfortable little hotel.
We were on hand, bright and early, just in time to see the train pull
out of the station. Happily it was only a false alarm, and the train
soon backed down to the platform again and waited for three quarters of
an hour for intending passengers to arrive. At length the conductor
decided he could wait no longer, and at 6:40 we pulled out, just before
the sub-Prefect and his friends arrived on the scene. A young politician
on the train, who thought that the sub-Prefect wanted to go to Lima,
pulled violently at the bell-rope. The engineer, accustomed to that form
of stopping the train, had detached the ropes from the locomotive so
that all that the friends of the sub-Prefect were able to do was to pull
several yards of it into the rear coach. Rather characteristically, the
only four people who were on hand at six o’clock ready for the train to
start on time, were all Americans. The two besides ourselves were
artisans from the great copper mines of Cerro de Pasco who were enjoying
a week’s vacation.
At Jauja there is a spur track which runs from the main line a mile or
more back to the historic old city, celebrated in the annals of the
Spanish Conquest and the Wars of Independence. The good people of
Jauja, not yet accustomed to the necessary rules of a railroad train
service, flocked on board the train to say “good-by” to their departing
friends and chat as long as possible. Taking no heed of the screams of
the engine and the cries of the conductor, more than twenty ladies, who
had no intention of leaving town, were still on board when the train
pulled out of the station. The conductor took them a mile and a half
down the track to the main line; then, fearing that the mere fact that
they would have to walk home would not sufficiently impress them, he
made each one pay for riding! Twenty more sheepish-looking individuals
than the garrulous ladies, whom the conductor lined up in the field a
short distance from the tracks and charged for their short ride, would
be hard to find.
At eleven o’clock we came to a wash-out and had to cross the Oroya River
on planks hastily thrown over the unfinished new railroad bridge. A
train was waiting for us on the other side, and with very little delay,
all the passengers and luggage were safely carried across and we reached
Oroya before four o’clock that evening.
Although there are rich mines in the vicinity and it is the terminus of
the new line, built by American capital, to the great Cerro de Pasco
smelters, Oroya is chiefly famous as the terminus of “the highest
railroad in the world,” and we looked forward with interest to our
journey on the morrow.
The magnificent great viaduct which has frequently been pictured as
formerly one of the highest railroad bridges in existence, had come to
grief only a short time before, in a rather tragic manner. A car,
loaded with bridge-construction material and occupied by several
American engineers, was standing on the bridge to which repairs were
being made. A run-away engine came flying down the grade, struck the
car, jumped into the air, crashed back on the frail viaduct, which gave
way and allowed a tangled mass of men and metal to fall into the cañon
two hundred and twenty feet below.
This accident necessitated many delays, as all the passengers and
freight had to be transferred by mules or on foot down into the cañon
and up the other side to the train for Lima.
The ride from Oroya to Lima has been so frequently described by many
travellers and the excitement of coasting down from the summit tunnel
where the altitude is 15,666 feet to the Lima station, which is only a
little above sea level, is so well known, that I will not attempt to
give my own impressions here. Suffice it to say that the excitement was
increased if anything by the fact that besides the bridge accident
another had occurred only a few days previously in which a locomotive
had left the tracks and rolled down an embankment.
Owing to these accidents our train was provided with a very old engine
whose boilers were so leaky that we had a hard time climbing up from
Oroya to the divide. Several times we stopped; once for three quarters
of an hour to allow enough steam to accumulate to pull us around a
curve. We did not object, however, for the scenery was wonderful. The
great craggy cliffs, their slopes covered with snow and ice, made us
realize that this was really the roof tree of the continent. Just before
entering the summit tunnel, the train stopped again, and we had a chance
to enjoy a magnificent panorama of snow-capped mountains.
A hand-car with two workmen was sent down the road just ahead of our
train so as to give us some sense of assurance. It is well known that
most people coming up this road from Lima suffer greatly from _soroche_
before they reach the summit. On our way down, however, most of the
passengers were so well accustomed to high elevations that not more than
three or four, and they Peruvian ladies from Jauja and Oroya, seemed to
be affected. So far as I could judge, their trouble was due more to
car-sickness and the lack of ventilation than to the elevation.
We reached Lima about half past eight on the evening of March 2d. Who
can describe the comfort and luxury of those first few hours in the
excellent Hotel Maury?
My first duty the next day was to call on President Leguia, report on
what I had seen at Choqquequirau and tell him how very hospitably we had
been received in the interior towns and cities. After talking with him
for a few moments, we were no longer at a loss to understand why the
Prefects and sub-Prefects of Peru had been so courteous to us, for their
chief is himself the soul of courtesy. Well-travelled, well-educated,
speaking English fluently, a trained business man, not in the slightest
degree the type of South American President with which novel-readers
and playgoers are familiar, he impressed us as a man who would do his
best to advance the welfare of Peru without caring in the least how his
own affairs might prosper in the meantime.
The door-keeper was a fine, tall, gray-haired soldier who had the
manners of a general, was rather suspicious of us at first, but returned
almost immediately after taking in our cards and, with a magnificent bow
and a courtly gesture, ushered us at once into the inner reception room,
greatly to the disgust of several pompous, perspiring politicians who
had been warming their heels in the gilded salon for some time before we
arrived. We did not stay long, and on our way out were again given a
demonstration of interest by the courteous old brigadier. To our sorrow
we read a few months afterward that in the unsuccessful revolution
already referred to in the chapter on Arequipa, which began by seizing
the presidential offices and in securing the President himself and his
Minister of Foreign Affairs, the revolutionists had ruthlessly killed
the old door-keeper.
Like every visitor to Lima, we too went into the cathedral to see the
mummified remains of Francisco Pizarro, the Conqueror of Peru, and then
we took a little victoria, drawn by a pair of speedy little trotters,
and explored the parks and boulevards. We saw the monuments and the new
public buildings, called on the American Minister, whom we found to be a
charming southern gentleman, exceedingly well suited to his diplomatic
profession; admired the many substantial foreign banks and business
houses, and regretted that so much of the flavor of the old colonial
Lima had been lost in the Chilean war and in the recent era of business
prosperity. With electric lights and electric cars and abundant foreign
capital, it is not easy to preserve those picturesque features which are
so charming in the interior cities.
At last my journey overland from Buenos Aires had been completed. I
cannot claim to know it as well or as intimately as the poor
“foot-walker” who, if he has been successful, must by this time have
reached Buenos Aires and walked on foot twice over this long dreary
road. Nevertheless, I can appreciate keenly some of the difficulties of
travel in Spanish-America during the colonial period when Lima was the
gay capital and Buenos Aires was merely a frontier post. It is small
wonder that there was little sympathy between Lima and Buenos Aires in
those days.
Like my journey across Venezuela and Colombia, this taught me to feel
anew the stupendous difficulties that lie in the way of advancing South
American civilization. It made me admire tremendously the courage and
determination of those heroes of the Wars of Independence who marched up
and down this road for fourteen years until they had driven from it the
last vestige of a foreign army.