ALONG THE PACIFIC COAST
IN COLOMBIA, ECUADOR AND PERU
An enormous horizon opens to the traveller who essays the voyage
along the Pacific coast of South America, from Panama perhaps to the
extremity of the continent; a voyage through every range of climate,
from the Equator to the frigid south, past verdant tropic shores or
barren desert, or beneath eternal snowfields; a voyage redolent of
the early heroic history of the New World, with, to-day, a setting
of the picturesque modern life of the old viceregal, one-time
colonies of Spain.
We shall touch at innumerable seaports, the outlet of five different
countries; those of Colombia and Ecuador, of Peru, Bolivia and
Chile. From Panama to Cape Horn this vast trajectory of some five
thousand miles may be roughly divided into six parts of eight
hundred miles each; that is, Panama to Guayaquil, thence to Callao,
thence to Iquique, thence to Valparaiso, with the remainder along
the southern coast of Chile: a voyage equal approximately to one
from Liverpool to New York and back again.
Due to the comparative tranquillity of the ocean, the voyage is made
in steamers of coasting type, in which the state-rooms are all upon
the deck, and open directly therefrom, a pleasing arrangement in
comparison with the stuffy hold of trans-Atlantic or trans-Pacific
vessels.
Behold, then, a sterile coastline, beaten by never-ending
surf, broken by rocky promontories, bird-covered perhaps, and
seal-haunted, whence the distant roar of breaking rollers at times
comes seaward, and, inland, a rising, undulating zone of desert and
cañon, brown or tawny or purple in its shadows, stretching away
mysteriously for perhaps a hundred miles to where it meets the
solemn Cordillera, which, grey, faint and serrated, with no form
save that of outline--the true test of distance--forms our horizon
on the east.
Above is a deep blue sky, but inclining to greens and opals, for, in
the west, with banners of gold and crimson vapours--the colours of
Spain, whose mariners first beheld it here, the sun is setting, its
disc already upon the bosom of the Pacific. The sun-god of the Incas
goes down, and rose-tinted rays shoot across the stark and rugged
littoral and touch the edges of the green, refreshing seas, rising
between the steamer and the distant surf. It is the coast of Peru,
and in this romantic hour of sunset yonder deserts might be peopled
with the spectral forms of mail-clad Spaniards, the gaunt Pizarro at
their head, heedless of all save empire and El Dorado.
But not a sail or hull disputes possession of the fast-darkening
sea, with the quivering steamer upon whose deck we stand, cleaving
its way a thousand miles from Panama; and if ghosts there be, why
not one of a caravel of Drake, hot on the Plate ships' track from
Callao? Nor on the seaboard does a single habitation denote the
presence of man, for we are passing one of those stretches of desert
of which this coast is largely composed.
But let us look more closely, and imagine we behold for a moment
the forms of the intrepid white men who first broke in upon this
desolation.
It is the early part of the sixteenth century. Upon the seashore
there is a band of mail-clad Spaniards, at their head a tall bearded
man, spare of frame, but full of spirit, that spirit which dares
the unknown and dares again, in spite of famine and privation.
It is Pizarro, the famous _conquistador_, and in his hand is a
drawn sword. There has been disaffection in the band, wrought of
sufferings and disappointment in that desolate region. "Where is the
gold we have been promised?" the malcontents exclaim. "What profit
is there in fighting famine and miserable savages? Let us go back to
Panama before we all perish!"
For reply Pizarro drew the point of his sword across the sand.
"Comrades," he said, "on the south of this line lie perhaps hardship
and death; on the north salvation and ease. Yet perhaps on the south
is Peru and untold wealth; on the north Panama and poverty. Choose
you which you will. I go south. Who follows?" And thus speaking, he
stepped across the line.
Twelve faithful spirits followed this action, and, later, the
thirteen received special reward from the Spanish Sovereign.
Others arrived from Panama, and the voyage was continued. Among the
band was a valiant Greek of great stature, Pedro de Candia, and
he, on one occasion, contemplating from the ship a distant fertile
valley, went ashore alone to traverse it. "Resolved I am," he said,
"to explore yonder valley or die," and, bearing a great wooden
cross in one hand, and his sword and carbine, he broke in upon the
astonished Indians, returning unharmed with tales of gardens filled
with artificial flowers of gold, and other wonders. This was at
Tumbez.
But the conquest of Peru was not thus easily to be performed. The
Spaniards' resources were limited, and they returned to Panama. But
a few gold and silver toys and some Indian sheep--the llamas--which
they took back, did not greatly impress the unimaginative Governor
of that colony, and Pizarro was obliged to proceed to Spain, where
he made a good impression at Court. His further expedition was,
however, rendered possible mainly by the Queen--a woman again
furnishing the imagination and means to discover the New World! She
it was who rewarded Pizarro and his twelve faithful companions, in
the _capitulacion_ she caused to be drawn up.[12]
[12] See the Author's _Ecuador_, in the South American Series; also
_Peru_, in the same.
Pizarro and his men returned to brave the hardships of the coast
again, but we must leave this interesting history and turn to our
topography.
The conditions of aridity on this coast, upon which rain never or
scarcely ever falls, is a result of the interception by the Andes
of the trade winds, whose moisture is deposited on the summits, and
of the cool Peruvian or Humboldt current, flowing northwards up the
coast, its lower temperature preventing the evaporation of the sea
and discharge of the moisture as rain.
We shall have noted this peculiar change to aridity soon after
passing the Equator, as before remarked. The shores of the Gulf of
Guayaquil and part of the Ecuadorian coast are vividly green from
the dense mangrove thickets and other vegetation, but as soon as the
mist zone of the Equator is left behind the coastal zone becomes
stark and unfruitful, beaten by tearing surges between the few
havens.
Upon leaving Panama and its famous Canal--whose great works rapidly
fade into the haze of distant shore and mountain, reminding us how
small the greatest human mark on the face of Nature really is--we
have passed the Pacific coast of Colombia, which does not present
any very noteworthy features. It is shut off from the interior by
the high mountains, and is often unhealthy and but thinly populated,
notwithstanding that it affords certain resources and potentialities
that in the future should be valuable. At the principal port of
Buenaventura it is unlikely that our steamer will call. The
settled and prosperous Colombia--the old viceregal colony of New
Granada--lies in the highlands, whose means of access are from
beyond the Isthmus of Panama, upon the "Spanish Main," as we shall
see elsewhere. However, Buenaventura is the port for the beautiful
Cauca Valley, the garden vale of Colombia, with its pleasing town of
Cali, and a line of railway has painfully made its way up this steep
littoral thereto. Buenaventura was reached by the first Spaniard to
sail this sea, Andagoya, who named it the Port of Good Fortune, but
the great prize of discovery lay in Peru, which he did not reach:
the prize which fell to the more fortunate and adventurous Pizarro.
The port has been described as perhaps the most beautiful on the
Pacific coast, but the traveller who desires in addition material
comforts will not prolong his stay thereat.
Our vessel, pursuing its way, will shortly have sighted the coast of
Ecuador, and may, if conditions concerning quarantine be favourable,
have to enter the great indentation which forms the Gulf of
Guayaquil.
The Guayas River, with the Island of Puna at its mouth, is of
considerable width, but narrows as the ocean steamer ascends it so
much that passage at times is difficult. Memories of Pizarro centre
about the island.
The seaport of Guayaquil lies over thirty miles upstream, and its
aspect on approaching is a striking one; its buildings clustered
along the water-front, backed by verdure-clad hills, and the
shipping in the harbour, and, at night, the rows of lights of
the streets, give an impression of considerable importance to
this tropical seaport. The river off Guayaquil has been likened
to the Mississippi at New Orleans. In early times the town was
frequently sacked by buccaneers--French, English and others, among
them the ubiquitous Dampier. Its dreadful reputation for malaria
and yellow-fever has caused travellers to shun the place, but
these matters have experienced some improvement of recent years,
especially since the building of the Panama Canal.
As the steamer lies in the stream, enterprising Indian boatmen bring
off certain native wares for sale to the passengers, among them
the famous "Panama" hats--which are, be it noted, not a product of
Panama, but of the coastal district north of Guayaquil, notably
Jipijapa and Monte Cristi. They are also made in Colombia. Great
industry, patience and knowledge are displayed by the Indians in
making these hats, of which the material is a palm fibre, not a
straw or grass. They are a really beautiful and dexterous example of
native industry.
Upon the Manabi coast, in the same region, we may see some
remarkable vestiges of the ancient folk of Ecuador, in the great
carved stone armchairs or seats ranged upon a flat hill-top. These
seats are unique in early American archæology and form a puzzle to
the antiquarian.[13]
[13] See the Author's _Ecuador_, loc. cit.
Six hundred miles to the west, far out of our track here, lie
the Galapagos Islands, a possession of Ecuador, the home of the
monstrous turtles whose name the archipelago bears.
The Guayas River and its affluents command our attention and
interest by reason both of their beauty and economic importance.
They form the only considerable fluvial system on the whole western
coast of South America, where, in general, the streams are of small
volume and unnavigable. Here we may navigate the river and its arms
for two hundred miles, and our vessel will convey us past many a
flourishing hacienda on the banks, where the famous _cacao_ of
Ecuador is grown--the chocolate of commerce, of which the region
produces, or has been accustomed to produce, a third of the world's
supply. This fertility is due to the nature of the alluvial soil,
which for ages has collected in what are locally termed _bancos_;
areas or deposits specially suitable for the cultivation of the
cocoa-trees. Many such haciendas flourish upon these rivers, and are
sources of much wealth to their proprietors and to the nation. The
alluvial mud of such remarkable fertilizing properties is carried
along by the waters, which have deposited it in these favoured spots
upon the network of streams which fall into the Guayas.
Groups of feathery coco-palms, with their slender columns and
graceful foliage, which flourish around the haciendas, form a
pleasing picture, which serves to offset the somewhat monotonous
appearance of the _sabanas_, or barer stretches of flat land which
we overlook from the steamer's deck, and which alternate with the
_cacaotales_, _cafetales_ and _cañaverales_, as the coco and coffee
plantations and the great cane brakes--of monstrous bamboos, which
are a valuable article of construction--are termed.
[Illustration: THE WHARF AT GUAYAQUIL.
Vol. I. To face p. 158.]
We remark here the curious native rafts, which without other agency
than the current ascend and descend the rivers on the flowing and
the ebbing tide, reaching Guayaquil, and returning thence upstream.
Continuing our voyage along the coast, the eye may fall upon the
white guano-covered headlands, and the attention is suddenly
arrested by what appears at first sight to be a low dark cloud
moving on the face of the waters. It approaches, and we see that
it is not a cloud, but a flight of birds, innumerable, and flying
in close formation--at times, indeed, they obscure the sky. These
are the guano-producing birds, which haunt the rocky headlands and
islets, and whose product has been so considerable a source of
wealth and contention on this coast. Guano was used by the Incas in
their intelligent and painstaking agricultural operations, and its
misuse or monopoly was prohibited.
The Incas, vestiges of whose remarkable structures and curious
customs we find scattered in profusion throughout the enormous
territory--perhaps two thousand miles in length--which formed
their empire, upon whose coast we are journeying here, made little
use of the sea, except for fishing. By relays of posts, of Indian
runners, fish was carried in fresh, across the deserts and over
the Cordillera, for the table of the Inca at Cuzco, which town,
the ancient Mecca and capital of the early Peruvians, is situated
in a valley 11,500 feet above sea-level and over two hundred miles
inland--a remarkable performance.
The Incas were not a seafaring people, and their civilization--for
it fully merits the name of such--was indeed cut off from the rest
of the world both by the ocean and by the enormous rugged chains of
the Andes, and by the impenetrable forests of the Amazon basin on
the east. As far as is known, they appear not to have had knowledge
even of the contemporaneous cultures of the Mayas, the Aztecs, and
the Toltecs of Mexico and Central America, although all these early
American cultures may have had a common origin, in times much nearer
the general childhood of the world.
Was this coast first explored and even settled by the Chinese long
before Columbus sailed? There are reasons for thinking this may have
been so.
The exploits of Pizarro and his followers took place in the
neighbourhood of Tumbez, near the westernmost point of the South
American Continent. How, fighting against famine, they made their
way along this stark and inhospitable littoral and ascended the
Andes, where by a combination of intrepidity and treachery they
overcame the reigning Inca chief and his people, forms one of the
most fascinating episodes of early American history.
To-day, when we leave our comfortable steamer and follow those same
paths, we find little alteration, in many respects, after the lapse
of four centuries. We must journey in the saddle over the roughest
and often most dangerous of mountain trails. At night it may be that
an indifferent _fonda_, or inn, in the poor Indian villages on the
road will afford some hospitality, but this will be of the meanest
description. Railways are few and far between along this immense and
little-travelled seaboard; food is scarce and life primitive.
But the stamp of Spain is over all, and there is an
atmosphere--attenuated it may be--of the times of Don Quijote de la
Mancha in its social regimen. We cannot withhold a tribute to Spain,
in remarking how she stamped, for all time, her own characteristic
culture throughout thousands of miles, east, north and south, of
tropic seaboard and rugged Cordillera, upon this great continent.
But "Spanish gentlemen should not soil their hands in trade" ran a
decree of the old "Laws of the Indies," and the Spaniards, except
for their exploitation of the rich gold, silver and quicksilver
mines (at a terrible toll of Indian lives), did not reap much
commercial profit from their possessions. This great mineral wealth
was poured for centuries into the needy coffers of Spain--poured
as into a sieve, for it was largely squandered. Under the viceroys
the mines were worked with feverish activity. In one instance an
urgent mandate for increased production so worked upon the official
in charge of one of the huge mines, those of Huancavelica, in
yonder mountains--a veritable labyrinth of underground galleries
and chambers, among which was a chapel, deep below the surface,
with candles ever burning before its shrines--that he ordered the
supporting columns of ore to be taken out, with a result that the
mine fell in, entombing five hundred miners, whose bones remain in
the ruin to this day, it is said.
As for commerce, the British are the great Phoenicians on this
coast; transporting cargo hither and bearing it hence. The German
activity became marked before the war, but the _Kosmos_ line of
steamers stopped, and the Teutonic bagsman ceased his assiduous
traverse of the interior villages with his wares.
Mining in Peru is not what it was in the time of Spain. A wealthy
company of United States capitalists, it is true, ships great
quantities of copper from the wonderful deposits of Cerro de Pasco,
15,000 feet above sea-level, and there are many smaller concerns
of varied nationalities. But thousands of irregular subterranean
workings all over the vast Cordillera remain waterlogged and
abandoned--mines where the visitor is told of fabulous wealth
extracted, and which still contain untold riches, awaiting the time
when they shall be called upon to surrender their hidden stocks of
gold and silver, of copper and a host of other minerals. The glories
of Potosi have in large measure departed, but the tin mines of
Bolivia yield annually a large proportion of the world's supply of
that metal.
Enormous coalfields--notwithstanding that South America has been
regarded as a coal-less continent--exist in the Andes, their
upturned strata outcropping in the bleakest regions, in some cases
amid the perpetual snow.
To-day the cultivators of sugar and cotton in the irrigated valleys
of this vast littoral have come into their kingdom, reaping, during
the war, fortunes from the shipment of these commodities to Britain;
their only plaint that of the restriction of carriage. The merchant
and the shopkeeper made the same lament, and the fashionable
and _simpatica_ dames of Latin American Society bewailed the
impossibility of their enjoyment of the latest Parisian modes.
Away on the slopes and tablelands of the grim Cordillera the
ancient palaces and temples of the bygone Incas look down, unknown,
unvisited, save by those whom interest or chance may take that way.
Once washed by the waves of Lake Titicaca--that most remarkable of
lakes, 12,500 feet above the sea, yet whereon we may journey out of
sight of land--lie the ruins of that strange temple of Tiahuanako,
of unknown age, the most ancient handiwork of man in the New World.
To-day, all that remains of that epoch are these old stone
structures, save that the Indian, as evening falls, preserving
some sentiment of an ancient state, climbs the lonely hills, and
there, alone, makes mournful music with his flute of reeds: notes
which fall weirdly upon the ear as we pass beneath, across the wide
plateau.
The empire of the Incas lay principally in Peru, Bolivia and
Ecuador, and extended to the northern part of Chile, but the Incas
did not overcome the Araucanian Indians--fierce and intractable--who
dwelt in Chile. Nor did they, apparently, descend very much beyond
the eastern slopes of the Andes, into the forests and plains of the
Amazon and of the Plate, though there are some vestiges of their
occupation there. They established a line of forts, of blocks of
squared stone along the _ceja_, or edge, of the Montaña, some of
which we may see to-day, doubtless to ward off the attacks of the
forest savages.
The Incas possessed great stores of gold, which they used to make
household vessels for the princes and for religious purposes, and
the Spaniards possessed themselves of this gold. Much of it was sent
down to the coast for shipment to Spain, to fill the needy coffers
of the Spanish sovereigns. Some of it fell into the clutches of
Drake and other enterprising adventurers into these realms of gold,
who disputed the Spanish monopoly of the New World.
Let us imagine, as we pace the deck of the steamer and look over
towards the setting sun, touching the bosom of the broad Pacific, an
early scene upon these waters. Here is Drake's ship, _Golden Hind_
or _Pelican_, blowing out of Callao with every stitch of canvas set.
Drake has heard that a Plate ship, laden with gold and silver, has
just set sail for Panama, and he is chagrined at having missed it.
The Spaniards had feared no danger. As far as they had known there
were no craft in these waters save those which flew the colours
of Spain. But now the viceroy of Lima, Don Francisco de Toledo,
is uneasy. The, to him, unspeakable Drake--"_Caramba!_ Draco, a
Dragon"--is about!
The English ship overhauls the plate ship. But the wind drops and
she is still hull down, many a mile of heaving sea between. Shall
they lose the prize? No; the boats are put out, and for three days
the men of Devon towed their vessel, straining at their oars as
British seamen will, and the sluggish Plate ship rises more upon
their horizon. Away they toil, past the river of Guayaquil, above
which the gleaming Chimborazo rears his distant head, until, six
hundred miles to spare from the haven of Panama, she is overtaken,
off Cape San Francisco, in what is now Ecuador. They board the ship
and seize the treasure, which, according to the Spanish chroniclers,
amounted to nearly a million pounds sterling.
The viceroy did not altogether lose hope of recovering this
treasure. He prepared a veritable hornets' nest for Drake, in
the form of an armada, which was ordered to wait at the Strait
of Magellan, which, he imagined, Drake must pass in order to
get home. But Drake was not thus to be entrapped. He sailed on
northwards--trying for a strait eastward through America--reaching
the spot known now as Drake's Bay, in California; found, of course,
no passage; careened his ship, cleaned it, and turning his prow
westward, sailed across the Pacific, going completely round the
world for England, where he was worthily knighted by Queen Elizabeth
on the quarter-deck of his wave-worn ship.
Guayaquil is the gateway to ancient Quito, in the Cordillera, and
between that port and Callao is Salaverry with the quaint and busy
Peruvian town of Trujillo, founded by Pizarro. Callao, to-day, is
the principal seaport upon this vast coast, between Panama and
Valparaiso. The Oroya railway running therefrom takes us up to the
summit of the Andes, nearly 16,000 feet above sea-level, first
passing through the old viceregal capital, and ascending the valley
of the Rimac, whose waters, the whispering oracle of the Incas, gave
their name to Lima.
Lima, the old _Ciudad de los Reyes_, or "city of the kings,"
as Pizarro, its founder, termed it, in honour of his Spanish
sovereigns, surrounded by its cultivated lands, irrigated from the
Rimac, must be regarded as one of the premier cities of the Spanish
American world, and one of the most quaint and pleasing, with many
historical and literary attributes, a legacy of the old viceregal
times. A handsome cathedral overlooks the broad, well-planted plaza,
and its high towers, rebuilt after the disastrous earthquake of
1746, a sketch of whose terrors I have given later on, dominate the
green _campiña_, or countryside.
It is a city of many churches and other ecclesiastical buildings,
and has something of that mediaeval atmosphere we have remarked in
the city of Mexico, and some of its public buildings are worthy of
note. The gloomy structure which held the Inquisition faces upon a
small plaza in the midst of which arises a bronze equestrian figure
of Bolivar, a replica of that at Caracas. We remark the carved oak
balconies to certain of the ancient houses, former residences of
viceroys and nobles.
But Lima does not love to live upon its past. Its people have laid
out a magnificent _Paseo_, or promenade, named after Columbus, and
here a gay and fashionable throng parades upon the Sabbath day, or
in the evenings, listening to the music of the band amid the palms
and flowers. Here congregate the wealth and beauty of the city, its
statesmen and leaders, and all those who customarily throng to these
earthly paradises which the Spanish Americans customarily lay out as
adjuncts of their cities. The latest modes are seen, the fashions
of Paris and London--also the half-naked Indian, unlettered and
unashamed.
Lima possesses many educational and scientific bodies and
establishments, and has a well-deserved claim to being a centre of
culture. Its Press is one of the best in South America: its people
have strong poetical leanings and administrative genius. Among the
more recent of successful presidents stand forth the names of Pardo,
Pierola, and Leguia. The last-named, a capable administrator, lived
in London during the Great War and went through the experience of
air-bombardment, when he returned to Peru to take up his second
term of office.
There is a certain isolation about Lima, due to its geographical
position. The other large towns of the Republic are separated from
it by vast stretches of desert and Cordillera, and the railways give
access to but a few points, whilst any interruption of the steamer
lines along the coast cuts it off from the outside world. However,
its picturesque watering-places and well-built residential suburbs
extend the amenities of Lima over a wider zone.
The upper-class folk of Peru, as we behold them in their capital
and other large towns, have the pleasing traits of courtesy and
hospitality we are accustomed to associate with their race in marked
degree. They are extremely eloquent, and aim at a high standard of
civilization--that sensitive characteristic of the Spanish American.
Their women have justly earned a world-wide reputation for their
beauty and vivacity, their good breeding and culture, as well
as their piety and high standard of family life. If the hand of
semi-mediaeval custom still hampers Peru in its social customs, this
is a matter which time constantly modifies.
All parts of Spain furnished the ancestors of the Peruvians--Basque,
Catalonian, Andalusian, Galician, and Castillian names being
encountered among them, and in viceregal days there were many titles
of nobility, which fell into disuse on the advent of the Republic.
Nevertheless, it is an amiable weakness of the Peruvians--as it
is of many other Latin American folk--to love titles, as we see by
the so frequent use of the doctorate degree. In a Peruvian Cabinet,
it would be rare to discover a minister who is not addressed as
"Doctor"--of laws or science--for the degree is often taken in Latin
America largely as conferring some social distinction, and not
necessarily with the purpose of practising this or that profession.
Yet in justice to the Peruvians it must be said that they are
clever professional men, whether at law, medicine or other, whilst
practical science has its outlet also in the engineering profession,
a considerable number of whose exponents make a study of the
country's agricultural and mineral potentialities.
A pleasing feature of the Peruvians is their cordial welcome of
foreigners, their desire to assimilate the things of the outside
world, and strong notions of progress. It is not, however, to be
supposed that their houses are readily open to the foreign visitor.
Like all Latin Americans they are exclusive; and the traveller must
be a _caballero_, a person of refinement, if he is to enter their
family circle.
The main defect of the country and its governing classes is the
neglect of the vast Indian and lower-class population, for this
upper and enlightened class is but a small proportion of the
population. The oligarchical tendencies which we find so strongly
marked in Chile, in Mexico, and, indeed, in every Latin American
State, are strong in Peru. These countries can never truly progress
until they take their domestic responsibilities more seriously,
thereby improving the economic and social status of the great bulk
of poor folk whom Providence has delivered to their charge. On the
contrary, they are more and more exposed to uprising and anarchy,
such as that so terribly exemplified in Mexico, and farther afield
in Russia. If they would preserve their culture they must extend it.
It is true that these responsibilities concerning the Cholos and
Indians have of recent years been more widely recognized, but much
remains to be done in the field of practice. Elsewhere I venture to
discuss, in the closing chapters of this book, what would appear
to be the lines upon which the solution of this vital question of
Spanish America should proceed.
Peru is not yet freed from the revolutionary habit, the game of
politics which brings unrest and at times destruction. The sweets of
office are always alluring. The game is generally played in Peru by
but a few, the bulk of the people standing aloof. Its incidents are
often extremely picturesque and at times operatic. A president may,
one day, be in the zenith of his power, surrounded by his admirers
and fellow-administrators. The next, arrested by a rival with a
handful of soldiers, he may find himself on board a steamer for
Panama, deported, banished and alone. This method is at least better
than that which at earlier times involved political murders, some of
which stand forth in the republican history of Peru.
In justice, however, it must be said that such stains on the pages
of the past are not more marked in Peru than in the case of some
of her neighbours in the New World. Moreover, it is useless for
the European to pretend to arraign the Spanish American for these
practices, whilst his own house is, or has so recently been, the
scene of such dreadful disorders.
From the disorders of man here on the great Pacific coast, let us
turn to the unrest of Nature. During our stay in Lima we may have
experienced an earthquake shock, slight or considerable, and with
others have hastily left our dwelling. Upon this coast the scourge
of the earthquake and the tidal wave is at times laid heavy upon the
dwellers. The destruction of Valparaiso is but a recent occurrence,
as was that of San Francisco, in California. To-morrow, these or any
other cities along the unstable edge of this hemisphere might be
brought low from the same cause.
Here is a picture of terror from the middle of the eighteenth
century. It was in Lima, the beautiful capital of Peru, when, on
a summer night in October 1746, the folk of the city were leaving
the temples after celebrating the _fiestas_ of Saint Simon and
Saint Jude. Rich and noble personages, escorted by their slaves,
were exchanging, as was customary, friendly visits. The moon shone
brilliantly from a cloudless sky; all was quiet and peaceful: the
twang of a guitar or other evening whispers of the city alone broke
the serenity. The bells of the convents and the church-tower clocks
struck half-past ten. It was bedtime.
Suddenly a terrific shaking of the earth took place; the foundations
of the world seemed loosened, the people were thrown from their
beds; the towers of the churches fell; the walls and roofs of the
houses crashed in; the most dreadful panic reigned as thousands of
persons were smothered in living tombs. It was an earthquake.
The shock lasted three minutes, during which the earth was wrenched
and torn as if by a giant. In the time it takes to tell the city
was destroyed, and the work of over two hundred years brought
to ruin. Of a city with 60,000 souls, not more than twenty-five
houses remained. Of the two great towers of the cathedral, one fell
upon the domed roof and the other on the belfry, destroying the
temple in great part--so chronicled a Jesuit priest who witnessed
it. Five magnificent churches were laid in ruins, with sixty
convents, chapels and monasteries. The great buildings fell upon the
small--all were demolished. The streets were blocked with wreckage:
the inhabitants, in all states of dress and undress, striving to
flee, were crushed by falling walls. Sweet maidens of Lima, old hags
from the back streets, noble and priest, gallant and beggar, all in
their terror jostled each other. Those engaged in illicit amours
confessed their sins to unheeding ears. The viceroy's palace fell;
the triumphal arch with the equestrian statue of Philip V fell; the
Royal University and colleges fell; the Tribunal of the Inquisition
was reduced to fragments.
In Lima at this time Catholicism was in the zenith of its power and
splendour and the faith of the people strongest. But no one dare
approach the churches, notwithstanding that they were the home of
God. The shocks continued--more than two hundred in twenty-four
hours--and went on for three days. Trenches were opened to bury the
dead. The stench of the dead bodies of mules smothered in their
stables was unbearable. Over six thousand persons perished.
Whilst the stricken people were seeking their lost relatives,
another terror was visited upon them. Suddenly, from Callao appeared
a negro on horseback, his eyes starting from their sockets, shouting
in accents of terror: "Save yourselves! the sea is coming sweeping
in over the coast! It will be upon you!"
Lima is but a few miles from Callao, with a strip of coastal land
between. The earthquake had given rise, as it commonly does on that
coast, to a tidal-wave, which was now rushing inland. It did not,
however, reach Lima, falling some distance short, and, it is said,
rising to 150 feet above sea-level. But the people already seemed to
see themselves overwhelmed. A priest, half naked, wounding his own
breast in penitential frenzy, rushed through the streets, ashes on
his head, the bit and bridle of a mule in his mouth. "This is the
punishment of heaven upon sinners!" he cried, and he beat himself
with an iron bar until the blood gushed from his body. At the sight,
thousands of persons fell on their knees, imploring pardon from
heaven, confessing their crimes, but "as all were sinners, none
lent ear to the confession of others, being too much occupied in
recounting their own misdeeds."
In Callao a more dreadful scene was enacted. After the first great
shock of the earthquake, the people tried to flee from the town, but
the gates had been locked for the night, and whilst they flocked the
streets, screaming and praying, endeavouring to avoid the falling
walls, a terrible thing was seen. The sea had gone out for more than
two miles from the shore, forming mountains of water that seemed
to reach the skies. The mountains of water then rushed forward and
fell with horrid crash upon the doomed city, submerging the ships in
the bay or carrying them in among the houses. The cries for mercy
to heaven were vain: there was no mercy shown them, and the people
perished. When at length the waters retired, nothing was left of
Callao but part of the wall and the two great doors of the city.[14]
[14] See the Author's _The Andes and the Amazon_.
To this day the image of _Nuestra Señora de los Temblores_--Our Lady
of the Earthquakes--is carried through the streets of Lima, as of
other Peruvian towns, such as Arequipa, which has suffered terribly
from earthquakes in its history, whenever the earth trembles, that
the heavens may be appeased.
A moral effect of these visitations is to be noted by the traveller
in Peru. It is seen that the women of the labouring class wear very
long skirts that often drag in the mud or dust. It was ordained
that, the formerly short skirts being immodest and displeasing
to heaven, which, it was held, had punished the people by that
earthquake, they should henceforth be worn long enough to conceal
the ankles!
Perhaps the devotees of exaggerated feminine fashion in Europe
to-day might usefully ponder these occurrences!