CHAPTER IX.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 proceedTo 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.”
“I say in my slight way I may proceedTo 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.”
“I say in my slight way I may proceedTo 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.”
“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 theserious 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 upin 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 dwindleThan when ’tis reeled from spool or spindle.
A relic can no further dwindleThan when ’tis reeled from spool or spindle.
A relic can no further dwindleThan when ’tis reeled from spool or spindle.
A relic can no further dwindle
Than when ’tis reeled from spool or spindle.
Tuesday, April 21.I have encountered no classof 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 patientas 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 withwhom 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 whohave 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 escapesthe 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 whosuffered on the cross died toopenthe 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, andrallying 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 whenangry. 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 theystand 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 theexample. 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 oftheir 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.”
“That love in simplest hearts hath deepest sway.”
“That love in simplest hearts hath deepest sway.”
“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 guarangogrove. 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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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 inthe 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 medicineis 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.
Monk. Peruvian Farmer.
Monk. Peruvian Farmer.
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-morrowmorning 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 theconsistence 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 dwellingswere 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 poorfamily, 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 roofof 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 theunmentionable, 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 thestage, if not through the door, then through a window.
Better at once to fly the sight,Than stay to perish with affright.
Better at once to fly the sight,Than stay to perish with affright.
Better at once to fly the sight,Than stay to perish with affright.
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 threwher 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 privateexpense. 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 theknee 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.