SKETCHES OF LIMA.
EDUCATION OF FEMALES.—MARRIAGES.—LAPSES FROM VIRTUE.—THE SUNSET
BELL.—SILK FACTORY IN A CONVENT.—HABITS OF THE INDIANS.—THE HALF
WEDLOCK.—BLIND PEDLER.—PROTESTANT YOUTH IN LIMA.—RELIGION OF THE
LIMANIANS.—INTRIGUES AT COURT.—MODES OF LIVING.—THE
ZAMPAS.—CHURCHES.—INDIAN DOCTORS.—FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY.—OLD SPANISH
FAMILIES.—MASSES FOR THE REPOSE OF THE SOUL.
“I say in my slight way I may proceed
To play upon the surface of humanity;
I write the world, nor care if the world read,
At least for this I cannot spare its vanity.”
SATURDAY, APRIL 18. A girl here at the age of ten or eleven is as far
advanced in her social and matrimonial anticipations as she is with us
at seventeen. She expects in her fourteenth year to sway hearts, as the
moon the troubled tide. For this period she trains herself with an
ambition far beyond her years; and when it arrives, she is armed with
all the brilliant weapons of beauty, wit, repartee, and a lively
self-possession. Her wit never wounds, her repartee never gives offence.
She is thoroughly amiable in all her sallies, she means to make you
think well of her, and is equally anxious that you should think well of
yourself. She understands how to inspire self-complacency without any
broad flattery. She is sportive, but it is with dignity; and will sooner
excuse a liberty than a slight.
When this hey-day of life has been sufficiently enjoyed, she marries,
not from having fallen in love, but for the sake of an establishment. If
her husband devotes himself to her, she is generally faithful; but if he
spends his nights in clubs, at the billiard and card table, she is apt
to permit the intimacy of some one whom she ought not to love. This is
rarely, if ever, followed by a domestic explosion. She feels secure of
all that forbearance and silence which the most jealous regard to the
peace and reputation of the family can suggest. With us, the injured
party, though first himself in the fault, yet in his resentment often
turns his own hearth-stone into a tomb. Guilt never fails to carry with
it, in the end, its own punishment. There is a serpent in the cup of
guilty pleasure, whose fang will inflict wounds on which the tears of
repentant anguish will yet fall big and fast.
SUNDAY, APRIL 19. There is one religious observance in Lima which
reminds the traveller of the call of the muezzin from the minarets of
Constantinople, when he summons the Mussulman to prayer. When the bell
of the great Cathedral tolls the departing sun, every one, whether on
foot, in his curricle, or on horseback, and whatever may be his speed,
stops and takes off his hat. The gayest look grave, and the serious
whisper a brief prayer. The shopkeeper suspends his bargain, the
billiard-player lays down his cue; the gambler folds his cards and
reverently rises. In a minute the bell ceases: the horseman dashes on,
the cue and cards are resumed, and Heaven seems again forgotten.
Many of the simple artisans ply their trades outside their shops. You
will encounter twenty or thirty shoemakers driving the awl in a single
court, and as many tailors pushing the needle in another; while a third
is filled by milliners, bleaching and trimming gipsy-hats for Indian
girls. The Limanian lady seldom wears a bonnet; she prefers the manto;
with that she can conceal her face, save the peeping eye, and pass
unrecognised. The saya or skirt of this disguising dress is not the work
of her own sex; it is always cut and made by the same hands which fit
and seam the coats of the gentlemen. What can be expected of a nation
where the men are engaged in making petticoats for the women?
Enterprises of pith and moment are not achieved through the stitches of
that garment. But let that pass.
MONDAY, APRIL 20. The convent of San Pedro, an extensive, costly
edifice, has been converted into an establishment for raising and
twisting silk. The few monks who still lingered in their cloisters, when
they saw the worms slowly winding themselves up in their continuous
thread, as if the sole object of life was to secure an undisturbed exit
from it, concluding that two of a trade could never agree, picked up
their rosaries and relics, and departed. The worms work on, and wind
their silk sepulchres as industriously as if the monks who have gone had
left behind them their ghastly mementoes of life’s brevity.
How strangely sounds that steam-engine as it turns the twisting
machinery, and throws its ceaseless echoes around among these chambers
once dedicated to the spirit of silence! And the thread, as it reels
itself off from the cocoon, seems as if it unwound the quiet existence
of some recluse, whose life was here “rounded with a sleep.” These
threads are to be woven into a rich tissue, beneath which the bounding
heart and glowing limb will but faintly indicate the penance and vigils
which once reigned in these gloomy chambers, from which they stream to
the light. Such are the strange mutations to which the enterprise of the
age brings us. A convent is converted into a factory, its skulls into
steam-boilers, and its beads into bobbins! It is enough to wake St.
Anthony out of his sunless sleep!
A relic can no further dwindle
Than when ’tis reeled from spool or spindle.
TUESDAY, APRIL 21. I have encountered no class of persons in Peru that
have awakened the same degree of sympathy and interest as the native
Indians. On them have been piled misfortunes that would have crushed a
less enduring race. Their lands, their forests, and their streams have
been wrenched from them through treachery and force. The mounds in which
the bones of their forefathers were entombed, have been violated, and
these sacred relics exposed to the gaze of a profane curiosity. These
are wrongs against which his untutored nature rebels, and which he
partially avenged in the frightful scenes of the Revolution. The power
of Spain in Peru went down like a wreck, over which the whelming wave
rushes in remorseless triumph.
The Indians on the coast, born among Europeans, have still something of
that sedateness which is characteristic of their race, when reared under
the influences of civilization. But those from the interior, whose
cradles were swung among the stupendous steeps of the Andes, have a
stern, wild force, which shows where their home has been. They look with
scorn on the tricks of the toilet. They may indeed wear plumes in their
dark hair, but they are from the pinions of some daring bird that has
battled with the mountain storm, or whose rush has been over the
cataract’s plunging verge. Still, they are in a great measure free from
ferocity and disguised revenge. They are magnanimous as conquerors, and
patient as captives. They never lose their equanimity in good or ill
fortune.
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 22. Flowers here play an important part in love
matters. If a lady presents a gentleman with a rose in the morning, it
is significant of the fact that he has not yet, at least in her
imagination, passed into the yellow leaf. But if she presents it to him
in the evening, there is no hope for him, unless he can rejuvenate
himself. These floral gifts at the anniversary of the lady’s birthday,
fly about thick as Cupid’s arrows. They are graceful advances when
presented by gentlemen, and delicate responses when given by ladies.
The Indian girl has less reserve in her love recognitions. She sends a
pretty doll on a nice little couch, covered with white jessamine
flowers. This is a broader intimation than that given through the rose
by the Spanish lady; but it proceeds from a heart quite as guileless and
chaste. If I must confide in the purity and fidelity of either, let it
be in the one who thus embodies the instincts of her sex in these mimic
miniatures of life. Yet with all this seeming delicacy in an affair of
the heart, the Spanish lady indulges in a latitude of speech that would
quite disturb female modesty with us. Her allusions are as broad as are
the exhibitions of folly and vice. She speaks of a man’s mistress, or a
woman’s paramour, just as freely as she would of their carrier-pigeons,
and with just about as little surprise or virtuous indignation. She
seems to consider it neither a high crime nor a pitiable weakness; but
one of those fortunes which mysteriously connect themselves with the
conditions of humanity. When she weds, she will probably need the same
charitable construction, and she will be pretty sure to receive it from
her family and friends. They will deprecate and resent as suicidal
folly, any public demonstrations of domestic disquietude. The husband,
if a foreigner, is told that these are the habits of the country; if a
native, he needs no such information.
THURSDAY, APRIL 23. When a young female consents to become the mistress
of a man here, she requires of him a certificate that he will not marry
without her consent. This certificate she deposites with the Bishop of
Lima, and purchases a dispensation for the irregularity involved in the
compact. Should the man, from weariness or any other motive, attempt to
effect a marriage arrangement with another person, without her consent,
she calls at once on the bishop, who threatens the delinquent, if he
perseveres, with the highest pains and penalties of the church.
He is thus reduced to the necessity of either making an adequate
settlement on the person with whom he entered into the illicit
arrangement, or of foregoing entirely his matrimonial purposes. The
object of the bishop in this matter is to prevent a dishonored female,
with perhaps three or four children, from being thrown on the world
without any means of support. Whether this motive, even when its object
is achieved, can justify the semi-official sanction of the compact, is
another question. But this I may say, it often prevents the heartless
libertine from selfishly abandoning one for whose guilt and ruin he is
measurably responsible. If he don’t like the conditions, then let him
decline the arrangement; it is at best only a passport to guilt and
sorrow.
FRIDAY, APRIL 24. I encountered to-day a blind pedler, of whom there are
several in Lima. He carried two baskets, the one filled with elegant
toys, the other with ribbons, thread, needles, and pins. He knew where
to find each article, and the price which he should get for it. Even the
quality of the ribbon could not deceive his delicate touch; nor could
the coin which he received in exchange, palm itself off for more than
its value. Heaven guide and protect thee, thou poor blind pedler! We all
feel our way through this dim world in the hope of reaching a brighter
and better.
There are a great many families in Lima who have no cooking done in
their houses through the year. They send out to the cook-stands which
are sprinkled all over the city. They thus save the expense of extra
servants and fuel. It is another mode of disguising poverty, and of
avoiding the necessity of breaking up their establishments. When a
Spanish family of some pretension becomes reduced, and it is necessary
to sell the carriage, the coat-of-arms and every clue to its previous
owner, are, as far as possible, effaced. As a last resort, the household
servants are allowed to hire themselves out, and bring back a portion of
their earnings to their owner. When these die, or desert, the last
string in the old harp is broken. If a tone lingers still, it is so sad
you would not hear it breathe again. There is something in the condition
of a man who is now poor and who has seen better days, with which only
the most callous levity can trifle. It was only out of Eden that Adam
felt in its full force his irreparable loss.
SATURDAY, APRIL 25. Foreign youth who come to Lima from Protestant
countries to engage in business, often disappoint the fondest
expectations of their friends. Cast adrift from the moral and religious
restraints which they felt at home, and having no respect for the solemn
pageantries of religion which they encounter here, they fall easy
victims to the vices of the metropolis. Hardly one in ten escapes the
giddy maelstrom, down which they are whirled from light and hope. Their
ruin would at least be retarded were the institutions of the Protestant
faith permitted here. But the Roman hierarchy, which cries aloud for
freedom of conscience in the United States, here tramples it down with
Bastille ferocity. If the masses in the Catholic church here are bigoted
and intolerant, their spiritual superiors have made them so. The depth
of the forest wakes or sleeps with the tempest that walks over it.
The frailties of the Limanian female seem not to extinguish her
sympathies with distress. She is often at the couch of pain with that
tender assiduity which we can hardly dissever from a virtuous life. Her
watchful care is not denied to the stranger, or to those utterly
incapable of rewarding it. This surviving virtue, amid the wreck of
others, is to be ascribed perhaps to that forbearance which her
frailties experience. With us she would be abandoned by her relatives,
and delivered over by her former associates to irremediable crime and
shame. The result of this is a fearful proclivity in guilt and ruin.
Whether virtue is best vindicated by a denunciation which never relents,
or a forbearance which tries to save, is a question which would not long
hold me in suspense. No heart is wholly bad; it has some string in it
that will vibrate if rightly touched. He who suffered on the cross died
to _open_ the door of mercy, not to shut it.
SUNDAY, APRIL 26. The religion of the Limanians is entitled to a
charitable judgment. The mass of the people are not responsible for the
pageantries with which it is invested. Their uninformed faith may be
perplexed among shadows, but it often penetrates to the substance. Among
the frivolous there are not a few with whom religion is an earnest
reality. Among the skeptical, many may be found who have cast the anchor
of their hopes within the veil.
We may denounce the proscriptive polity of their church, but we should
not denounce them. They worship in a temple which the zeal of ages has
reared to their hands. They found its doors barred to other religious
persuasions, and it is requiring too much to expect that they will at
once throw back its bolts. This can be realized only through the
influence of that higher light which the Bible is now pouring into the
recesses of every sectarian shrine. Even our own Protestant altars are
now visited by rays which have long been shut out, or permitted to fall
in only faint fragments. The spirit of intolerance which has pervaded
our churches, has been a source of vast moral mischief. The road to
heaven is covered with the footprints of thousands, who have been won to
it by the accents of Christian love.
MONDAY, APRIL 27. When a political intrigue explodes in Lima, the first
inquiry is for the woman that sprung the mine. She is generally found to
be some courtesan, whose success lies more in the power of her personal
charms than her force of intellect. Her carriage in Lima and her rancho
at Chorillos, sufficiently attest her means, and the honor of those
favors through which she beguiles the unwary statesman into her plans
and purposes.
If the plot fails, her coadjutors may atone for their political
profligacy with their lives; but she lives on, and may yet ensnare the
judges that doomed them. She has a tact that eludes sagacity, and a
perseverance that seems to challenge obstacles. She makes her way where
the maturest counsels are disconcerted, and triumphs where the most
daring courage is foiled. She detects at a glance the unguarded point in
the most crafty, and turns his weapons against himself. Her intrigues
sometimes result in benefit to the state. The same mysterious hand, that
traces in ominous characters the doom of the obnoxious or incapable
minister, often executes its own sentence.
All this indicates a truth, which a thousand other facts corroborate,
that the women of Lima are far in advance of the men in sagacity and
force of purpose. In the frightful conflicts of the Revolution, when
men’s hearts failed them, they were in disguise on horseback among the
troops, nerving the timid, and rallying the brave. No political party
can long maintain its ascendency in Peru that has not their confidence
and support. They will make it ridiculous with their raillery, or odious
with their denunciation.
TUESDAY, APRIL 28. Out of Lima, the masses in Peru subsist mostly on a
vegetable diet. The flour of maize, wheat, peas, beans, barley, rice,
and arrowroot, are made into a soft pap, or mush, which is sweetened
exceedingly with sugar or molasses. This is the great Peruvian dish
called “masamora,” and which is the edible staple in every family. It
produces sleekness without strength, and fatness without fire. They who
subsist upon it retain their flesh till they pass forty; then begin to
dwindle away; at sixty they are extremely thin; and at seventy have
hardly substance enough to cast a shadow.
A mother here never nurses her child when she is angry, for fear of
imparting to it a choleric temperament. If unable to perform herself
this agreeable maternal function, she procures a black nurse, but never
an Indian. The vital tide from a red skin she feels assured will give it
a fiery irascible disposition. She considers the milk of the black cow
cooler than that of any other, and anticipates a mild and amiable temper
in her children as she pours it into their porringers. I like this idea
of not nursing a child when angry. It is another check on peevishness
and passion. It would not be amiss were the superstition universal. Of
all objects in the world the most painful to me is, a mother nursing and
scolding at the same time. It is worse than thunder out of a soft April
cloud.
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 29. There are in Lima two associations which are very
attentive to strangers. A member of one is called a pillo, a member of
the other a pillofero. The first is a genteel loafer, the second a
dexterous gambler. So you have your choice between a good-humored
graceless uninvited guest, and a refined cheat. The one is satisfied
with your table and floating change, the other goes for your purse and
its entire contents. The one plunders you through your vanity, the other
through your bad fortune.
Priests here not only guard the prerogatives of their order, but the
purity of their Spanish blood. A high ecclesiastic, of Indian or African
descent, is not to be found in their ranks. Such a lineage would debar
him the sacred functions of the altar. Those who exercise them are as
jealous of the Castilian blood which flows in their veins, as an old
Hidalgo furbishing his family coat-of-arms. They inculcate equality
among their communicants, and make them kneel together on the same stone
pavement, but they stand aloof in the immemorial privileges and dignity
of their order. They have inferiors who mix with the masses: some of
these are devoted men; they encounter incredible hardships in
propagating their faith. Their self-denying zeal may well be a lesson to
Protestants.
The most amusing being in Lima is the mestizo—the offspring of the
European and Indian. His wit and humor never fail him. He will convulse
you with laughter, and be himself quite sedate. It puzzles you that a
bird of such dazzling plumage should fly out of the shadows of such a
sombre tree. The zambo, half Indian and half African, has a broader
humor. His allusions are under no restraints from sentiments of
delicacy, or respect for the presence of the other sex. I have seen one
of them keep a street crowd in a roar by the hour.
Zambos are generally employed as household servants. The children
naturally fall into their care, and become early accustomed to the
language suggested by their prurient imaginations. Love intrigues are
with them a never-failing source of entertainment. Even the
“peccadillos” of their parents are sometimes made a subject of mirth.
The adventures of the mother are thus made known to the daughter. Her
prudent counsels, after that, sound hollow indeed. It is not to be
wondered at that she should turn away from the precept to imitate the
example. Many families, and among them some of the first in Lima, have
thus been plunged in irretrievable humiliation and grief. The cause may
be, and generally is, carefully concealed. But an unseen wound may
rankle as deeply as that which has no covering. The light which a mother
should depend upon to guide the steps of her daughter, is that which is
reflected from her own example. If shadows rest on this—if it falls only
in transient flakes, seen one moment and lost the next, like the
firefly’s fitful beam—it will only serve the more to bewilder and
betray. What the mother would have her daughters, she should be herself.
It is her example, and not her precepts, that shapes their social and
moral being.
THURSDAY, APRIL 30. In the native Indians is found the productive
industry of Peru. The products of their gardens and fields roll in a
ceaseless tide into the markets of Lima. Their jewelry and ponchos,
wrought with little aid from machinery, rival in elegance some of the
most finished productions of art; while their sturdy arms fill with
ceaseless echoes the deep silver mines of the Andes. The roads which
they constructed under their Incas still run along the jagged steeps of
the Cordilleras; their swinging gardens still throw their fragrance on
the wind; and through their aqueducts still rolls with refreshing force
the mountain stream. But many of their richest plains and glens, Spanish
rule and indolence have turned into sterility.
An Indian boy from the interior, domesticated in a European family in
Lima, will at first show some alacrity in duty; but when he enters the
summer of youth, he flies back to his mountain home. And the Indian
girl, who has little else to do than carry a mat to church, on which her
mistress may kneel at mass, when the levities of childhood are passed,
turns an earnest eye to the picturesque glades of the Andes. The
sequestered hut, the wild fruits and flowers which bloom around it, the
stream that ripples past the door, the lama-skin couch, and one by whom
she can be loved and protected, float through her young dreams, and off
she flies for the reality of this romantic vision. Her mistress, the
next time she goes to mass, looks for her Indian girl, and begins to
think
“That love in simplest hearts hath deepest sway.”
FRIDAY, MAY 1. The most tender and melancholy associations here are
those which crowd upon one, seated at twilight by the burial mounds of
those who were once sole possessors of the soil. The yellow-leaved
willows wave in the still moonlight; their whispers are in mournful
unison with the dirge of the Indian, which still floats over the graves
of his fathers, and melts into harmony with the voice of the cuculi,
that responds in plaintive notes from the guarango grove. Every thing
around you breathes of the past, and of the ruins which time and
disaster have left behind.
“Thou unrelenting Past!
Strong are the barriers round thy dark domain,
And fetters, sure and fast,
Hold all that enter thy unbreathing reign.
Far in thy realms withdrawn,
Old empires sit in sullenness and gloom,
And glorious ages gone,
Lie deep within the shadow of thy womb.”
The swinging hammock is the sofa of the Limanian lady. This airy couch,
twined of beautiful grass, and died into the varied hues of the rainbow,
swings in the cool corridor, while flowers of loveliest tint throw
around it their fragrant breath. In the midst of these odors the fair
one takes her siesta, while her cheek is flushed with the triumph that
floats along her rosy dream. Sleep on while yet thou mayest; a morrow
comes when these visions of pride and happiness will take to themselves
wings and fly away. Care and sorrow will cast their shadows upon thee,
and thou must walk in their gloom down to the dreamless sleep of the
grave. But there are visions which will not depart; there are flowers
that will never die; but they belong to the spirit-land.
SATURDAY, MAY 2. The cathedral, and indeed all the principal churches of
Lima, impress you more through the magnificence of their proportions
than any richness of architecture. They are generally built of a coarse
freestone, stuccoed and painted. Their domes and towers rise on the
distant eye, in gaudy grandeur, but betray their poverty on a closer
vision. The statues which adorn them are generally coarse and frail in
the material, and without taste in the execution. Over every altar is a
statue of the Virgin in the hues of life. Her costume is light or dark,
as the occasion is merry or sad; but the skirt of her dress always
spreads to the right and left like a great fan. This depression is given
it, so that the priest officiating at the altar, when he looks up, may
see her benignant face.
SUNDAY, MAY 3. In the church of San Domingo is a statue, in which there
is an attempt to represent, under the similitudes of the human form and
countenance, the Supreme Jehovah. The idea is taken from those ancient
sculptures which embody the attributes of the Olympian Jove. The analogy
between those statues which Christianity has been made to sanctify, and
those which she cast off with the mythology of paganism, is painfully
true. We have here the Venus of the Greeks in the likeness of the
blessed Virgin, and the Jupiter of the Romans in the representations of
the Supreme Being. Mercury, in the character of the Angel of the
Annunciation, brings tidings from heaven; and Pluto, under the
thunder-scarred front of Satan, reigns over hell. The unpurified,
instead of wandering on the gloomy Styx, now wander in purgatory, till
some Charon, in the person of an absolving priest, ferries them over to
the fields of purple light. I know the force of visible symbols, and the
facility and seeming advantage of impressing man through his outward
senses; but something is due to the dignity of truth and the sanctity of
that spiritual revelation which God has made of himself, and above all
to that fearful mandate—“Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven
image, nor the likeness of any thing that is in the heaven above, or in
the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth: thou shalt not bow
down to them nor worship them.”
MONDAY, MAY 4. The aborigines of Peru still wear a bean at the temple as
a charm against disease, and still adhere to their herb doctors. These
simple disciples of Esculapius, laden with their barks, balsams, roots,
and herbs, traverse the steeps and glens of the Andes, descend into the
plains of Chili, and the pampas of Buenos Ayres. If they seldom cure,
they have the satisfaction of knowing that they never kill. But as the
legitimate province of medicine is to amuse the patient, while nature
cures the disease, perhaps the result of their practice will not suffer
by a comparison with that of their more learned brethren. It is much
wiser, in ordinary cases, to hang a bean to the temple, than to put a
pill into the stomach. Nature never complains of the bean, but she is
often very much puzzled to know what to do with the pill. Were the
ghosts of those who have fallen victims to medicine to appear on this
earth, there would be a more terrible shaking among the medical
profession, than there was in the valley of Ezekiel’s vision of dry
bones.
TUESDAY, MAY 5. The winds in Peru prevail for nine months in the year
from the south. These cooler currents, mingling themselves with warmer
airs, produce what is called the Scotch mist. It instils itself into
your garments slowly, but in a continued exposure will completely
saturate them. It is experienced most at night, and disappears beneath
the slanting rays of the sun. Strangers are apt to disregard it; but the
natives put on their ponchos.
The traveller from a northern zone finds the seasons quite reversed
here. Spring opens with September. When the farmer with us is gathering
in his last harvest, the seeds of the first are sown here. When the
birds forsake our groves for winter quarters, they are here selecting
their vernal mates. When the flowers with us perish, they are here just
opening their bright eyes to the sun. Nature never leaves herself here
without a witness, nor society without its signals, as seen in this monk
and Peruvian farmer.
[Illustration:
Monk. Peruvian Farmer.
]
I encountered two things in the markets of Lima rather peculiar in their
way. The first was a chicken quartered as if it had been a sheep or
bullock, and sold in parts to suit purchasers; each part bringing the
price of a whole one with us. The second was a monk carrying a little
tray, with a crucifix embossed upon it, which every one was invited to
kiss, and pay for the privilege what he might please to put in. One cast
into it a biscuit, another a sausage, a third a potatoe; so the monk
went off with quite a breakfast, and will be back assuredly to-morrow
morning to have it filled again in the same way. It was the first time I
ever saw the privilege of a kiss purchased with a potatoe. But a monk is
seldom at a loss for an expedient.
Of all the fruits in Peru, the most esteemed is the chirimoya. It grows
rather larger than our pippin, has a rough exterior, but is filled with
a soft pulp, which resembles in taste our strawberries and cream. It is
scooped out with a teaspoon, melts in the mouth, and gushes over the
palate in a luscious tide. The tree which bears this fruit requires
seventeen years before its seminal buds ripen into their precious
burden.
Next comes the granadilla, the fruit of the passion flower. It
resembles, in shape, size, and smoothness of texture, the egg of our
domestic fowls. You break the shell, and swallow the rich mucilaginous
pulp with its delicate seeds. The taste has no analogies in any other
fruit. At first it seems to want character or palatable emphasis, but it
wins upon you, till that which appeared a defect becomes an excellence.
It is just such a fruit as the seeming sacredness of its origin would
lead you to expect. It brings you back in your sensations to that fount
which nursed your infant life.
Close on this follows the palta-pear, with its large central stone
resembling that of the peach. This fruit, which is protected by a hard,
thin rind, has the consistence of thick cream, and, with salt sprinkled
on it, is used upon bread as an excellent substitute for butter. I do
not wonder that the epicurean monk, in his desire to lift the flagging
imaginations of his hearers to the fruitions of the better land,
represents the chirimoya, the granadilla, and palta, as nodding over its
crystal streams. They have that which never entered even the imagination
of Mahomet, when he spread the verdant lawns and wove the ambrosial
bowers of his pictured heaven.
WEDNESDAY, MAY 6. The therapeutics of the Limanians are as peculiar,
when applied to their tempers, as their bodies. They never drink cold
water when angry, from an apprehension that it conduces to hepatic
diseases. In their opinion it chills and contracts the biliary
excretories, prevents a natural flow of the bile, and leads to
congestion. The physician often attributes the death of his patient to
this fatal indiscretion. He would sooner give an angry man alcohol, than
a glass of iced-water.
The old Spanish families, who were swept away by the Revolution,
resembled the Mussulman in many of their characteristic habits. They
were remarkable for their commercial probity, their love of ease, their
hatred of innovation, their intolerance of the slightest indignity,
their pride of lineage, and their indulgence in sensual gratifications.
Their dwellings were stately castles, where the indolent lounged, the
gay revelled, the sad were beguiled of their sorrows, and the poor
forgot their poverty. But they have passed away, save a few who remain,
like the sturdy trees of a forest, which the hurricane hath swept. The
few who remain are rarely engaged in any important enterprises. What
capital they have is often locked up, where they forego the interest for
the safety of the principal. There is one old Spaniard who has now, and
has had for years, eight hundred thousand dollars packed away in the
vaults of a large commercial house here. An interest of twenty per cent.
would not draw it from its stronghold. Revolution and rapacity have
wrecked his confidence; and he is in this respect only one among
thousands. The result is, the commerce of Peru has fallen mostly into
the hands of the English and Americans. Their daring spirit will carry
it on, though revolutions succeed each other strong and fast as the
breaking waves of ocean. But the storm is past, and the great deep is
rocking itself to rest.
The Spanish lady has but little book-knowledge, but a most observant
sagacity. She has no acquirements in letters, but reads character as by
intuition. She never essays an argument, and is never at a loss for a
pertinent reply. She is ardent in her temperament, and yet rarely loses
her equanimity. She is alive to adulation, and is never overawed by
menace. She is punctilious in all the forms of religion, and persevering
in all the perils of an intrigue. Her mornings are spent with her
confessor, her evenings with her lover.
Masses for the repose of the soul are inculcated by the clergy as an
indispensable religious duty. They are a source of vast revenue to the
curate, and often involve the relatives of the deceased in ruinous
expenses. It is considered worse than cruel to leave in purgatory the
soul of a relative, which might be relieved through the efficacy of the
mass. The dictates of religion and nature are therefore both enlisted in
securing a punctual performance of this pious obligation. It is an
expensive duty, and the burden often falls where it is least able to be
borne.
The poor widow, believing, as she is taught, that masses can relieve the
condition of her deceased child, mitigate its sufferings, and hasten its
transit from purifying flames to perfect bliss, parts with her last
shilling, as well she may, and even sells her mourning weeds for this
purpose. The author of “Three years in the Pacific” says:—“I saw in
Pisco an Indian boy, who had been sold by the curate in one of the
interior provinces, to pay for the requisite number of masses for the
rest of his father’s soul!” There is a company in Lima, instituted under
the sanction of the archbishop, which engages, for the consideration of
a real a week from any poor family, to purchase, at the death of a
member of the household, a sufficient number of masses to liberate the
deceased from the pains of purgatory. This company has a hundred
applicants where the life-insurance corporation has one. Masses for the
dead, claiming as they do to reach the condition of the departed soul,
cast into insignificance every thing this side of their object, and
leave nothing for a superstitious faith to desire beyond it. The human
imagination cannot conceive of a more tremendous ecclesiastical engine.
THURSDAY, MAY 7. The pleasures of our visit to Lima were not a little
enhanced by the arrangements and hospitalities of Commodore Stockton. He
took ample apartments in the elegant hotel which opens on the grand
plaza, where he had his own table and attendants. We met here not only
the officers of the Congress, but the first gentlemen in Lima. These
entertainments were free of ostentation, and that parade in which the
heart is lost in the forms of etiquette, and were on a scale in keeping
with the rank and ample means of the individual who dispensed them. They
have had the effect not only to strengthen friendship among ourselves,
but to win the good opinion and favor of those whose prominent position
here gives them an influence over the character of our foreign
relations.
The gentlemen connected with the Alsop House have also contributed
largely to the pleasures of our visit here. We shall long remember in
connection with this hospitable mansion the kind attention of Mr.
McCall, Mr. Foster, and our worthy Consul. Their liberality, ample
means, and sterling integrity are a rock on which the American name may
safely repose at Lima.
The time had come for me to leave Lima, and take up my quarters again on
board the Congress. I took a seat in the diligence just starting for
Callao, and which was already pretty full with other passengers. But I
had the advantage of not requiring a great deal of room, and so squeezed
in. Opposite to me sat a fat Peruvian lady, whose huge fan, which
threatened my nose as much as her broad face, was in a constant dash to
create a breath of air, while her flesh shook at every jar as if it
would break from its moorings. Two lap-dogs, one under either flank,
pushed out their panting noses with many ineffectual attempts to
extricate themselves from the heat of their smothered condition; but
were rebuffed by a slap from the lady’s hand, which was too fat to hurt
them but for the massive rings on her fingers, in which flashed gems
enough to stud a sultan’s snuff-box. She wore no bonnet or broad gipsy
hat to protect her from the rays of the sun, which broke through the
open crevices in the roof of the diligence; and indeed she needed none,
for the heavy puffs of her cigar rolled up there, and hung over her head
in a thick floating cloud.
On one side of me sat an officer of the Peruvian army, in full uniform.
His chapeau, tasselled, plumed, and covered with gold lace, rested on
his knees, and exposed the heavy black wig, in which each hair had been
made to take its particular place. His thick coat, with its massive
embroidery, was buttoned, notwithstanding the heat, so close over his
chest and up to the neck, that it seemed to dispute with his stock the
office of supporting the chin. His pantaloons, down which flowed a broad
stream of gold lace, were straightened and stretched in every thread by
the short straps under the boot, which might have lifted his feet from
the floor, but for the ponderous spurs which projected far behind the
heel in a shaft, at the end of which rattled a roller in the shape of a
circular saw. Not a smile or emotion of any kind once disturbed the
fixedness of his bronzed features. He sat crank and motionless as a
statue, save the bony hand which now and then gave another twist to his
moustache, which curled its horns into the corners of his mouth. But for
this slight motion, he might have been taken for one of those old heroes
whom Egyptian art more than three thousand years ago embalmed into
immortality.
On the other side of me sat a middle-aged native, in a white fringed
poncho, a large Guyaquil hat, and figured trowsers. An old-fashioned
ring was conspicuous on his finger, and the remnants of a gold mounting
still lingered on the top of his cane. His features were sharp and
prominent; and he had a remarkable strabismus of his eyes, which seemed
to be trying to look into each other across the bridge of his nose. On
his knees he carried an article of chamber furniture, which, though
manufactured of silver, shall be nameless here.
Having occasion to light a cigar, which required the use of both his
hands to manage the flint and steel, which he carried in his pocket, he
placed the _unmentionable_, without saying a word, in the lap of the
passenger next him, who happened to be the captain of an American
merchantman, and who as quickly thrust it back on the knees of its
owner, with the ejaculation, “Carry your own teapot.” The eyes of the
proprietor flashed fire into each other, but not a word was said. The
officer gave his moustache another twist, the fat lady fanned herself as
before, but the two other lady passengers seemed to be not a little
surprised at the rudeness of the American; neither of them smiled, nor
seemed to perceive the least impropriety, or the slightest shade of the
ludicrous in the conspicuous position which the unmentionable occupied.
With us, two ladies so situated, would have jumped out of the stage, if
not through the door, then through a window.
Better at once to fly the sight,
Than stay to perish with affright.
FRIDAY, MAY 8. We were all again on board, and watching for the
appearance of the steamer from Panama. Seven months had elapsed, and we
had received no intelligence from home, and could expect none now
through any government mail. Indeed, our government has no mail
arrangements in the Pacific. Once in two or three months a packet is
dispatched to Chagres with a mail, which finds its way over the isthmus
to Panama, and there goes soundly to sleep. For matter of reaching its
destination, it might as well be in the moon.
Commodore Stockton had dispatched Mr. Beale and Mr. Norris to the United
States, with instructions to join him by the nearest practicable route
in the Pacific. The line of steamers between the West India islands and
Chagres, and between Panama and Callao, had not then been completed, and
it was therefore extremely doubtful whether they would attempt to reach
us by this route. The probability seemed to be they would take the route
by New Orleans, and across the continent to Mazatlan, and thence to
California.
In the midst of these doubts, the steamer threw her black mass within
the bright line of the horizon. “There she comes!” ran in quick whispers
through the ship. As she neared us, the all-absorbing question was,
whether the secretary of the commodore was in her. On this depended our
last and only hope of letters from home. She passed us at no great
distance; but we tried in vain to discover, through our glasses, the
individual for whom we were looking. No sign of such a person appeared
among the few passengers who paced her deck. I went below; I had seen
enough of steamers, and never desired to see another. The third cutter
was called away, and directed to proceed to the steamer; but that seemed
only blotting out the last ray of possibility.
In twenty minutes, an officer rushed below with the surprising
intelligence that the secretary of the commodore was in the boat
alongside. I was not long in reaching the deck, and could hardly credit
my own eyes when I saw him come over the gangway; and still less when he
placed in my hands some twenty letters from my family and friends. Our
advices were within about thirty days from the United States. The
commodore received a large mail; Capt. Du Pont, and nearly all the
officers, got letters from home. For this intelligence, with files of
papers from the press, we were indebted to the arrangement of Commodore
Stockton, carried through at his private expense. We spent the greater
part of the night in reading our letters and penning answers to them, as
we were to sail the next day for the Sandwich Islands. These details may
not be interesting to some, especially those who have not been absent
from home a week without intelligence; but let more than half a year of
their brief life circle round without any information, and they will
appreciate the significance of such seeming trifles. The surest source
of sympathy is found in an experience of the same calamity.
The Incas of Peru, who invested their imperial sway with the mandates
and sanctions of a supreme theocracy, are in their graves. Their palaces
and temples remain; and in these vast monuments are shrined the
evidences of their departed grandeur and power. The solid blocks of
porphyry which pave the great public way from Quito to Cuzco, and the
table-land of Desaguadero, still invite the footsteps of the moving
masses, and still roll back the sunbeams in showering gold.
The dominion of the usurper who entered this peaceful realm with the
cross and chain, has at length been broken. It lies in ruins, amid
penitent tokens of guilt and sorrow, around the sacred ashes of the
Incas. The fiery deluge of revolution which has swept this fair land
since, has also passed away. The calm hearts of two millions of freemen
remain. They bend the knee to no iron despotism, no consecrated pageant
of power. They have rights which they assert in the unrestricted freedom
of the elective franchise. Their progress to constitutional freedom and
repose has been tumultuous and wild, but they are within sight of their
goal, and will reach it as assuredly as the wave of the rolling deep its
destined strand.
But our anchors are up, our courses set, and we are away for other
shores.
Land of the Incas, fare thee well!
For thee my fancy twines
A rarer, richer coronel
Than glitters in thy mines,—
A circlet where each jewel flings
A ray that blasts the hope of kings.