CHAPTER VIIBACKGROUNDS

“Escutcheoned pavisades, emblazoned poops,Banners and painted shields and close-fights hungWith scarlet broideries. Every polished gunGrinned through the jaws of some heraldic beast,Gilded and carven and gleaming with all hues.”

At first the argosies bore off the ransom of Atahualpa, the golden ornaments belonging to the Sun.

Albrecht Dürer, in his Tagebuch, wrote of having seen a boatload of such booty from the Indies. “And, moreover, have I seen the things which were brought from the new golden land to the king—an entire sun of gold, a fullfathom wide, likewise a silver moon of the same size, also two rooms full of armor, all manner of weapons, harness, war-trappings, and strange accoutrements, curious raiment, bed-draperies and many kinds of wondrous things for divers uses, fairer to behold than marvels. They are all so precious that they are held to be worth a hundred thousand gulden.

“Nor have I in all the days of my life seen aught that did so fill me with delight. For I saw there fine-wrought things of cunning design, and marveled at the subtle skill of men in far countries. Nor know I how to tell of all the things which I saw there.”

Loot of golden treasure gave way to mountains of silver, which poured forth their wealth in such profusion that it staggers even oriental imagination. Loading at Arica, ships brought silver direct from the mines of Potosí. Then there was plunder of Peruvian churches, jeweled chalices, and gold shrines. There were emeralds from the north—a land where they were sacred, small emeralds being sacrificed to larger ones.

These glittering cargoes were carried home toSeville, the “Queen of the Ocean.” Its wonderful Casa de Contratación dealt with the wealth of the Indies and, to quote Alonzo Morgado, “the riches which flowed into its offices would have been sufficient to pave the streets of Seville with gold and silver slabs.”

Like most stories of Peru, the gold and silver it exported seem mere extravaganza. Contemporary accounts, mostly in cipher, may be quoted.

In 1538, G. Loveday wrote to Lord Lisle: “Spanish ships have returned from Peru so laden that the emperor’s part amounts to two million ducats.... The emperor has borrowed the whole from the owners.” Being “occasionally pinched for money,” he found it most convenient to seize the ships laden with private treasure from his “Indyac of Perrow.”

In July, 1555, the Venetian ambassador in England wrote to the Doge and Senate of a fleet of caravels, “all very richly freighted according to the usual parlance of these Spaniards, who invariably reckon by millions.”

Federico Badoer Venetian ambassador with the emperor, wrote (1556) that the king wouldobtain so considerable a sum of money that he would be able to defend himself not only against the Pope but also against France and any other power, if necessary. By this time Peru was raining gold and silver.

Father Acosta returned to Spain with the fleet of 1587. In his boat were twelve chests of gold, each weighing a hundred pounds; eleven million pieces of silver, and two chests of emeralds, each weighing one hundred pounds. “The reason why there is so great an abundance of metals at the Indies,” he wrote, “is the will of the Creator, who hath imparted His gifts as it pleased Him.”

Von Tschudi says that in the first twenty-five years the Spaniards got four hundred millions of ducats of gold and silver, which was, however, only a small part of the vast amount buried or thrown into the mountain lakes whose deep waters concealed it in underground caves. “The Indians, taking a handful of grain from a whole measure, said: ‘Thus much the Christians have gained and the remainder is lodged where neither we nor any one else is able to assign.’”

Humboldt says that from the discovery of Peru until 1800, the Old World received £516,471,344 worth of treasure from the New World. No wonder Europe felt that gold lay about in this land of gold, and that it was only necessary to go and pick it up. No wonder Europe still has an idea of America little changed through four hundred years. And yet only one fifth of the treasure of mines and grave-mounds was supposed to be sent to Spain, whose galleons came to the far-away West Indies to receive it.

It was not long before pirates descended upon Peru. Brittany was the first to fit out fleets for the Indies “on pretense of carrying merchandise thither,” in fact, to molest vessels coming from Peru.

Next, English buccaneers intercepted the Spanish vessels, slow-sailing under weight of gold.

“With the fruit of Aladdin’s garden clustering thick in her hold,With rubies a-wash in her scuppers, and her bilge a-blaze with gold,A world in arms behind her to sever her heart from home,TheGolden Hyndedrove onward, over the glittering foam.”

Sir Francis Drake, with sixty armed ships, looted the Pacific in theGolden Hynde. His ballast was silver, his cargo gold and emeralds. He dined alone with music.

In 1578 he took from the Spanish galleonCacafuego“twenty tons of silver bullion, thirteen chests of silver coins, a hundred-weight of gold, gold nuggets in indefinite quantity, a great store of pearls, emeralds, and diamonds, ... and many, many other things.” Only Queen Elizabeth and Drake knew the exact amount that was taken.

For three centuries pirates and freebooters harried the treasure-fleets of Spain. Toward the end of the seventeenth century, the English Calendar of State Papers compassionately remarks that foreign gluttony “keeps the poor Spaniards in arms all along the coast of Peru and puts them into strange apprehension, all mankind seeming to conspire the murdering and destroying them as common enemies, not because they do worse, but have more than ordinary.”

Much of the twice-looted treasure never reached Europe, for, following the example of

A VIEW OF PAITA FROM THEMIROIR OOST & WEST INDICAL, 1621.

the Indians, the sea-rovers buried large amounts of gorgeous plunder in the mysterious islands of the Pacific. Even to this day, syndicates with steam-dredges and suction-pumps are following up the faded charts on which are indicated the spots where piles of doubloons and ducats and pieces-of-eight are stowed away.

Herelay Lima under a tropical sun, sparkling with treasure, a wilderness of rich carvings and paintings, whose piles of gold and silver shone through the thick perfume of exotic blossoms. Long caravans, loaded with the wealth of the provinces as well as the produce of sales in the remote interior, filed into Lima, where countless gold-and silver-smiths were awaiting their arrival. Weavers of silks, velvets, and brocades, embroiderers, leather and metal workers, sculptors, artists, makers of glass and porcelain bells—all the most skilled workmen flocked to the capital of New Andalusia, the continent’s center, for there they found no lack of rich materials. Their fancy might fashion uncontrolled, with assurance of eager purchasers.

In Lima voyages of discovery to the Isles of Solomon were planned. From Lima pilgrimages were made in search of El Dorado, that luxurious ruler who bathed himself in sweet-smelling gums and then rolled in gold dust. There is no more romantic chapter in the history of Peru than these pilgrimages in search of El Dorado. Southey says they cost Spain more than all the treasure received from her South American possessions.

In Lima lived the viceroys who ruled all of South America from Guayaquil to Buenos Aires, “as by the divine right of kings.” The viceroy was served only by titled Spaniards. He was drawn about by six horses, with sounding of trumpets, and a personal guard of two hundred Spaniards, “for the safety of his person and to support the dignity of his office.” The royal seal, his insignia, rode under a royal flag upon a horse saddled with black velvet and a gold tissue foot-cloth, and was received with deep bows. The viceroy was allowed three thousandpesosto go to Callao, five miles away, and sixty thousand ducats a year for personal expenses.

Greeted with a jewel sent to meet him half-way, the viceroy reaches the bay of Callao. Throughout Lima, the City of the Kings,—founded “with God, for God, and in His name,"—the streets are hung with rugs and tapestry and adorned with green boughs and triumphal arches. (On the arrival of the Duque de la Plata, in 1682, eighty millionpiasterswere spent to pave the streets with bars of silver.)

“First comes a host of Indian warriors in feather pomp. The city militia with pikes and weapons glittering, the stocks of their guns embossed with gold, the noble guard on horseback, ... university professors in brilliant gowns, the royal council and officials, the magistracy in crimson velvet lined with brocade of the same color ... the chamber of accounts, the audience on horses with trappings, the scepter-carrier, heralds in armor with uncovered heads, the master of the horse with drawn sword, accompanied by four servants in livery, pages with the captain of the watch, and lastly, on a throne of red velvet whose silver staffs are carried by the members of the corporation, while thealcaldeshold the cords, all in velvet caps and gowns of incarnation color, ridesthe viceroy under the royal banner and a canopy of cloth of gold. Officers of the royal household, the royal guard in full armor with spear and shield, bring up the rear on horseback.”

The procession moves between companies of halberdiers in a blaze of trumpets, bells, and drums, under showers of flowers thrown from carved balconies.

“When they reach the plaza the whole company faces the cathedral and is received by the archbishop and by the superiors of the religious orders; trumpets cease, knights dismount, and the multitude sings a Te Deum.

“The procession again mounts and accompanies the viceroy to the palace gates.”

“Five days of bull-fights follow, and prizes are bestowed upon those who make the most ingenious compositions in praise of the viceroy. The rector of the university prepares a poetical contest, at which the viceroy presides, seated upon the rectoral chair, which for this occasion glitters with the magnificence of an Eastern throne. The nunneries entertain him with music and present him with curiosities.”

The churches of Lima were hung with velvetand tapestry, with fringes of gold and silver and plates of gold hung in design, so that the walls were nowhere to be seen. Spanish and Flemish paintings surrounded altars of wrought silver. The sacred vessels were of gold, covered with pearls and precious stones. Santo Domingo, the oldest of the brotherhood, possessed a set of thirty candelabra of massive silver, man-high, placed in a double row along the nave of the church. The cloister contained a famous orange garden with wrought-iron waterways and life-sized paintings of Dominicus. In its center was a fountain, whose delicious drip belied its hidden presence under feathery vines. Indeed, why should the church not claim vast riches? One sixth of the population was in the monasteries, and those who were not of the number bought the dress of a religious order in which to be buried. The whole city took part in the sacred feast days, as many in the procession as looking on: legions of monks and thousands of nuns, priests, orders, religious societies, and brotherhoods with their standards, holy pictures, silver crosses, scepters, and biers.

Butwhat was happening to the silent people among the mountain-tops who had stripped the Sun Temples of their offerings to enrich the adventurers from the Isles of Pearls?

Their irrigating canals had been destroyed, the roads and the whole system of government broken up, the people killed in chronic fighting or by hardship in distant campaigns. Ten thousand of the fifteen thousand in Almagro’s Chilean army had died of cold in the mountains, or of heat and thirst in the desert. The people were starved, villages at a time, by the destruction of their crops. Moreover, the villages were given as fiefs to the Spaniards, who received all the tribute. Many were exhausted by dragging heavy artillery over the precipitous mountains. Garcilasso describes the immense beams that crushed the Indians staggering beneath their weight, who were relieved, only on account of necessity, at every two hundred paces. When Gonzalo Pizarro in coat of mail covered with cloth of gold made histriumphal entry as governor into the City of the Kings, the twenty-two pieces of cannon which saluted as the procession advanced through the streets, were carried on the shoulders of six thousand Indians. All these Indians were well trained in morality and sound doctrine by the clergy of Spain.

And worst of all, deep within the mountains of Peru, hollowed by the gold and silver which they had removed to enrich a country of whose existence they would never be aware in any other way, the Indians were dying, thousands at a time. Skeletons concealed in old mines are now found, covered with fibers of silver melted by subterranean fires just beneath the cold desert. Mines now abandoned can be traced by piles of human bones.

A pair of bright green arms, petitioning, stretched forth from the body which has disappeared, were discovered in the bottom of an ancient copper mine. The copper water had filtered through and covered them with a green sheen. Every finger is tense with supplication, every fiber as in the moment of death; not an eager tendon or nerve quivering to the surfacefailed of preservation. All are petrified in a bronze of nature’s molding.

Stories are still told that the Spaniards drove ten thousand Indians at once to work in a Peruvian mine. When their strength was exhausted or they died from lack of food, the Spaniards drove up ten thousand more—an extravaganza of destruction matched only by the scale of nature’s waste. It must be said, however, that cruelty to the Indians was due not to Spanish law, but to the abuse of it.

“In twenty-five years more than eight million Indians were worked to death in the mines of Peru.”

“In a century, nine tenths of the people had been destroyed by overwork and cruelty.”

No wonder Spain was able to equip an Armada!

Againstsuch a dark background flamed the lurid Inquisition.

The working out of theencomienda, or system of slavery, and themita, or forced work in the mines, was more horrible than the torturesgoing on in Lima only because of the scale on which the destruction took place. In 1570 the Blessing of the Inquisition had been conferred upon Peru by Philip II. “At first heresy, then blasphemy, sorcery, polygamy, insulting servants, opposition to jurisdiction, were punished by whipping, banishment, prison, and death by fire. In all cases the goods were confiscated.” The disgrace of an executed man did not end even with his death. “The sons and daughters and grandchildren of the male line lost their rights of citizenship. They might not carry gold, silver, pearls, costly stones, corals, silk, velvet, or fine cloth. They might not ride on horses, carry weapons, or use any of the things of which they were unworthy.”

One star-spangled night, a man looking at the sky remarked that the multitude of stars was superfluous, thus assuming that God had erred in creation, which was heretical blasphemy. Juan de Arianza appeared in the auto of 1631 because, when reading the Scriptures, he exclaimed: “Ea! There is nothing but living and dying!” which sounded ill to those who heard it. One man bragged that he had ahorse that could go sixty leagues in one day: for that he had two hundred strokes of the lash. Another had said he knew an herb which made wives invisible before their husbands: he received five years’ imprisonment. A young priest said he had seen the little Saviour in his dreams: his punishment was two hundred lashes and five years’ work in the galleys. Another, who wished to found a new sect, had called the Indians the children of Israel and had declared that priests should marry, that there should be no confessional, and that the Bishop of Lima ought to be Pope. He thought the Bible ought to be translated into the language of the people and that he was holy as Gabriel and patient as Job. This unfortunate was burned alive; the proceedings of the suit against him filled three thousand pages.

Throughout the seventeenth century Peru was filled with mystic impostors, like the far-famed Angela Carranza, most of whom were dealt with byautos de fe. The use of coca was considered a part of this sorcery and was punished severely.

The confession of a real or an accused crimewas drawn out by torture and compelled by a repetition of the torture. From the final judgment there was no appeal. All was enacted under seal of deepest secrecy. The torture chamber was somewhat removed, so that the screams of the victims could not be heard in the street.

Three kinds of torture were used in Lima. There was the compound pulley. A man’s hands were bound to his back, and he was raised by a pulley to the ceiling by his hands; heavy iron weights were attached to his feet. Sometimes, instead of this, the victim was strapped on a table, an iron collar about his neck, and stretched in both directions without risk of choking; but every bone in his body was dislocated. The second method was smothering. The man’s hands and feet were tied above a bench, and on his upper arms, thighs, and calves, lacing machines were adjusted. Then a funnel was put in his mouth and water was slowly poured in. The third method was the worst of all. The feet were made fast, the soles were covered with fat, then live coals were brought gradually nearer and nearer—aprocess of roasting. When the pain was keenest, a board was shoved between coals and feet, and the sinner was asked if he would now confess his crime.

By a bull of Paul III torture could not last over an hour. After that the victim usually had convulsions or lost his mind. A doctor came, whenever such was the case, to authorize further torture.

Thumbscrews were still used in 1813.

Dr. Lea says punishments in Lima were inflicted with greater rigor than in Spain. If it were lashing, the penitents, without distinction as to sex, were marched in procession through the streets, naked from the waist up, with inscriptions denoting their offenses, while the executioner plied the lash. The mob stoned them as an act of especial piety.

The Inquisition had command of the press. The tribunal of Inquisitors, judging all, were judged by none and wielded absolute power. The Holy Tribunal did not wish to shed blood, so the accused were either strangled or burned. The death-warrant began with the wordsChristi nomine invocato, and officials of the law wereasked to treat the condemned with pity and moderation.

Theauto de fe, the Act of Faith, was intended as a demonstration of authority, a representation of the day of judgment, and it was the highest exhibition of piety.

Following is a description of anauto de fein Lima, on the sixteenth of November, 1625, quoted from Middendorf.

A procession went at daybreak on horseback through the city, with trumpets, fifes, and drums, to announce the execution. A platform was built on the plaza, forty ells high, and a stadium was erected for eight thousand people. “Between eight and nine in the morning the sinners were called for. A cross covered with black crape belonging to the cathedral was carried before them by four priests, all singingmisererein a wailing tone. Each penitent walked between two soldiers and other honorable persons. Silver boxes at the rear contained the judgments.

“The viceroy came out of his palace accompanied by a guard of honor, musketeers, and two trumpeters. Doctors, lawyers, and university professors preceded the monks and the priests, standard bearers in coats of mail with clubs, the captain of the watch, and judges, the oldest of whom walked by the viceroy, cavalry, generals, and pages. The Inquisitors had hats on top of their caps, worn only at that time, decorated with the insignia of the Pope’s legates. The militia had formed in line, and at the appearance of the black and gold banner of the Inquisition they lowered their flags in salute. An altar was raised, a chair for the viceroy and the high officials.

“The eldest one rose and addressed the viceroy. ‘Your Excellency swears and promises upon his faith and word as a true Catholic Viceroy appointed by His Catholic Highness, to defend with all his might the Catholic faith, which the Holy Apostolic Church in Rome recognizes, to further its well being and growth, to follow up the heretics and dissenters and enemies, to give necessary help and aid to the Holy Tribunal of the Inquisition and its servants, so that the heretics and disturbers of our Christian religion shall be taken and punished according to the law of the Holy Church, without your Excellency making any exception in favor of anybody no matter what his station in life be.’

“The viceroy replied: ‘I swear it and promise by my faith and word.’

“‘If your Excellency does so, as we expect from your piety and Christianity you will, the Lord God will bless all the works undertaken by your Excellency in His holy service and will give you health and long life as this kingdom and the service of His Majesty needs.’

“A mass was read for the viceroy, and a priest extolled from the chancel the glory which comes to religion through the sacrifice of heretics. After the sermon, all pledged themselves to tell any act contrary to religion which they knew of, and not to give protection to any heretic who was under the ban of the church.

“The denunciation was read as soon as the culprit was named, led up out of his secret cell and put into a cage from which he had to hear his final judgment. He was dressed in the San Benito, in itself a lasting shame. It reached to the knees of the sinner and had his portrait painted upon it surrounded by flames, devils,and dragons. On his head he wore a bag-like, high and pointed cap, on which were devils’ faces in flames. Gags were ready in case blasphemers should break out against the judges.”

The burning is said to have taken place where the bull-ring now is.

In1746 the city of Lima,—the gorgeous City of the Kings,—at the climax of its luxury, was utterly destroyed. Seventy-four churches, fourteen monasteries with their paintings, lamps of gold, vessels of silver, precious stones, tapestries, and mirrors, their beautiful fountains, arches, cloisters, and stairways in rare designs, were laid waste. The building material was as rich as the work upon it; as a contemporary traveler expressed it: “If it did not exceed in beauty, it at least equaled anything in the world.” In four minutes there was complete desolation. Out of the whole city only twenty buildings remained standing. Bridges broke, palaces fell, the sick in the hospitals were buried alive; nuns in their cloisters, monks in theircells, were suffocated in clouds of sulphurous dust. Churches collapsed, crushing those who were praying within. Even the Holy Inquisition was obliged to suspend torture for the time being.

The earth was like an animal shaking the dust from its back. It swept forward in great waves; walls were reeds on its shores, bending to the tempest. Between the waves, clouds of poisonous dust rose from the chasms.

Clocks stopped. Bells in the towers clashed with limp bell ropes, till towers following in turn stifled the din under smoking débris. Everything was reversed; that which stood still was set in violent motion, and moving things were brought to rest. Shrieks for help and agonized prayers mingled, until they, too, ceased.

The sea retreated half a league from Callao, gathered strength from unknown, hidden places, and with a cosmic roar rushed over the entire city, engulfing it and carrying all the ships of the harbor across its walls and towers to be stranded in inland gardens. All of its five thousand inhabitants perished in the deluge,and there was nothing left to give the least idea of what Callao had been.

“To be preserved from its fury could only be attributed to a particular and extraordinary help of Providence.” Yet thousands in Lima who had escaped destruction or death from fright died of fevers which came after. Those who remained were occupied with burying the dead in trenches. Famine as well as fever followed, for the grain magazines of Callao had been buried under water, ovens had fallen in, aqueducts bringing water for turning the mills had been destroyed.

Nor was this all. Loath to give up its fiendish hold, not yet glutted with destruction, the underground fury visited the helpless ruins it had created with five hundred and sixty-eight earthquakes during the next year!

Processions of priests barefoot, with crowns of thorns on their heads, cords about their necks, and heavy chains on their ankles, taught the people that the destruction was of God, the roaring of the subterranean powers a warning against luxury. The prior of one society went about covered with ashes; a heavy bridlecut his mouth, iron nails fastened his eyelids, his back was bare. “This is the punishment that God in heaven executes,” said a lay brother, walking behind him, as he let fall an iron lash so heavily that the blood spurted.

The bones of Santo Toribio and Santa Rosa were carried about; the viceroy and great persons followed in mourning, with ropes about their necks. Distinguished ladies, barefoot, their hair shaved, walked in coarse clothes. The dense stillness was broken by a monk’s voice: “Holy God, Holy God, be merciful to us.”

Thevalley of the Rimac, where glisten the towers of Lima, is only one of the river-ways which cross the desert. The river of the ancient oracle Rimac, “he who speaks,” has given its name in perverted form to Lima—the Spanish city. The temple of the speaker was in ruins long before Spanish days.

Like other streams of the west coast, the great river Rimac has run through the gamut of all zones. Hurrying down from the cordillera, it spreads fertility far and wide over the dry shore-valley. As far away as Chorillos, “little water jets,” the water of the Rimac filters through, led astray for irrigation. But its own journey to the sea is vain. The mountain water is so precious to the desert that by the time the stream has reached the shore, it has not force enough left to make an outlet across the beach into the ocean.

Irrigating ditches and crumbling mud wallsdivide gardens and vineyards and orchards of wind-blown olive trees. Ruins of mud accumulate dust. Luxuriant nasturtiums drape every dusty bank. Vestiges of fortresses, temples, and grave-mounds of the three ancient cities of the Rimac valley still terrify owners of the sugar-fields, for the inhabitants of the sepulchers sometimes return at night to sit beneath the grape-arbors and listen to the murmur of irrigation streams which they made. Cajamarquilla, Armatambo, and Huadca were the names of these cities, and the whirlwind was their most distinguished god. His white-robed priests ate neither salt nor pepper, and tore out the hearts of men and of animals to offer them to the gods on the platforms of temples.

Sometimes, too, the Huguenot hermit who lived near the site of Huadca and who was burned by the Inquisition returns to his little caves at nightfall.

Lima is in the tropics. Its fruits and flowers are those of the tropics. Yet it is neither hot nor cold. There is no rain and not too much sun, a pleasant monotony interrupted only by earthquakes. An umbrella merchant once triedto set up business in Lima. His act brought forth an article in a local paper on rain, and how on one occasion when it came suddenly people had to get out of bed to find secure places. Editorials on umbrellas followed.

No, there is little to fear from changes of weather, not even thunder and lightning. There is an endless summer, with streets under a continuous awning; yet, after all, only a summer. The rainless desert is soaked in mist all winter long. It falls suddenly like a veil over the bare mountains and drenches the sunlight. A glimpse through it shows a faint sheen, sharp cliffs hazy with hues of light-green velvet, enameled on closer inspection with multitudes of differing flowers.Amancaesspring up dew-laden, those queer, greenish-yellow lilies hanging on smooth, leafless stems, giving their name to whole valleys which they fill. One such lies beyond the gardens of the Barefoot Friars. A favorite retreat for Limaneans, it is called the National Garden. But scorpions lie under the stones.

“A suggestive kind of picture used to hang in many a mediaeval church. It was paintedon both sides of a board. On one side were a pair of lovers walking hand in hand in a meadow gay with spring. Flowers blossomed about their feet; birds sang in the trees above their heads.

“On the reverse was the grim figure of Death, hour-glass and scythe in hand. The thing, pendent from a single cord, hung free in a draughty place, and the air twisted it about hither and thither, so that one side and the other was seen in swift interchange.”

The Alameda, flanked with Norfolk Island pines and marble benches, had in other days rows upon rows of orange trees, stone fountains, and basins as well. At five in the afternoon gilded carriages streamed from palace gardens, driving about so that their fair occupants could greet their friends. Four thousand brocade-lined, gold-trimmed carriages and innumerable chaises shimmered through the heavy odor of orange blossoms.

A traveler of the seventeenth century has described the lady of Lima, clad not in linen, but in the most expensive lace of Flanders, slipped over an underdress of cloth of gold.

GRAPES RAISED BY THE BAREFOOT FRIARS, (LOS DESCALZOS), LIMA.

She glittered with jewels from head to foot, her shoes were fastened with diamond buckles, aigrettes of diamonds were in her hair—“a splendor still the more astonishing as it is so very common,” he said. Nay, she even scattered perfume through her nosegays. On great fête days she tiptoed to church, enveloped all but one eye in a silk-lace shawl. Beneath it glinted a flower-embroidered dress of rarest stuff, fluttering a multitude of ribbons; under a petticoat of heavy brocade, miniature golden feet peeped out, or slippers of peach-colored velvet. The lady of Lima was famed for her wit, entrancing the visitor as she sipped her Paraguay tea from a silver-mounted gourd.

Little is left of former splendor. The statues, the five rows of orange trees, the sweet smells are gone. At the end of the long Alameda, bordered with wind-blown trees and wrecks of marble benches, is a fountain under palms and Norfolk Island pines. Across a shady space and above a high, yellow plaster wall, is the monastery tower, where hangs a clear-toned bell. Rugged hills rise abruptly. This is the home of the Barefoot Friars. A labyrinth ofpaths leads to their orchards and gardens and cells. Going every morning in pairs to the markets to beg for food, they own nothing. They live entirely on alms.

Just before two o’clock each day, the lame, halt, and blind begin to gather from all the town wards, each carrying a receptacle. One poor woman with three or four babies seats herself upon the plaster shelf skirting the wall, setting down her pottery jar by the brook to wait.

The bell strikes two long, clear tones. The whole space is filled. The great monastery gate is flung open, and two brown-clad monks, sleeves rolled up, bring out between them a steaming copper cauldron. The famished multitude fall to their knees, many with difficulty, and a prayer is intoned.

Then the procession begins: men, women, and children in various stages of decrepitude. Beggars with old tin cans totter forward as to the Mecca of a long, hard journey. Decent-looking women, very haughty, conceal their pails under blackmantas. Each receives two ladlefuls of meat, soup, and vegetables. Thekettle is filled again and refilled, till all are served. After the little groups of people have finished theircazuela, the heavy door clashes together.

Beyond the turn of the wall, far down the avenue of palms, the Mendicant Friars emerge, four by four, and swing off across country for their daily walk.

Limais the city of bells. Exuberant wedding carols blend their metallic jingle with three solemn peals for the dying. Hoarse, ill-cast bells mingle with bells whose tones drip like honey upon the monks beneath, who, with cowls thrown back, are pruning monastery gardens, bringing water to the fig-tree from the fountain. Bells are pitched high and bells are pitched low. Bells struck from without shake off the clear ring circling their edges. There are notes with a dry sonority like the clash of bones. Sharp bells nag the persistent sinner. Soft, sweet bells lure him to prayer. Quick strokes near at hand only half conceal those distant thuds, as if the tone had been struck from the atmosphere, giving “a solemn, religious shimmer to the day.”

Though they are more used than those elsewhere, the bells of Lima, it is said, never grow old.

The tones are of every quality, from the tinkle of little convent bells calling the sisters to midnight prayer, to the great bell of the Jesuits, whose “clash, throb, and long swoon of sound” strikes your chest. Silver and gold in this bell cling to the clear, deep notes struck from it and pulsate more than half a minute in the tone, which carries far out over city roofs to sugar-fields and vineyards. The left tower of San Pedro was built about this bell in 1666 and it cannot be removed.

San Pedro has three portals on the façade, only allowed for a cathedral. The story goes that when it was building, permission was asked from Rome for a portal, which was given of course without delay. When the church with its three bronze-knobbed doors was finished, the Vatican was outraged.

“What,” word was sent, “you ask for one door and make three?”

“For two doors one has not to have permission,” came the reply, “only for three. Wewould have had two, anyway; it was for the extra one we needed to ask.”

The church was finished and consecrated. What could be done?

Monastery bells waken the monks at five o’clock, masses follow every half-hour throughout the morning. Burials are tolled very early by two large, discordant bells, struck simultaneously, “a roaring, sinister, mournful peal.” At noon a great caroling honors the Holy One to whom the next day is dedicated. After sunset three slow peals boom from all churches. Old people stand, men take off their hats. At eight sounds the prayer to the dead, at nine, nine peals from every bell in the city are an invitation to pray for those who die to-night. This is the time when the bell in the left tower of San Pedro rings. The left tower of the cathedral is the home of many owls, which come out at night to cry above the houses where the sick are lying to warn them of approaching death.

Because innocent voices are intercessors most pleasing to God, Indian mothers in the mountains prod the poor little savage babies, flopping

A FRANCISCAN FRIAR AT HOME, LIMA.

on their backs, with long, pointed, rat-tail silver spoons, so that they wail intermittently.

In Lima the voice of the bells is lifted to avert catastrophes and to beg for mercy in times of earthquake. When the bells cease, the importance of silence is assumed instantly, as with the dropping of the wind.

A little jungle of cypress, magnolia, jasmine, pomegranate, and fig clusters about a fountain which one hears rather than sees. Contralto bird-notes seem to come from far away, like “the melodious songs of birds with yellow combs in the blessed land of Aztlan.”

The garden is overgrown with passion-flowers, concealing within their petals the sacred heart and nails, even the crown of thorns. Night-blooming cereus hangs darkly above the ground-glass bells of the floriponda, so ineffably sweet after sundown. Its leaves are narcotic. (In Lima one is often given a nosegay of jasmine done up in a floriponda flower.)

I sat waiting on a bench in the cloister garden. Missionary priests were showing maps to little, fluted nuns. Others in black robes and furryhats paced up and down the cloister, fondling small missals and stopping around the corner to gaze at me through the wrought-iron grill. Mediaeval life in full swing, complete from a glance of the eye to the jaunty stick cocked under the Don Juan cloak!

One of the priests carried two phosphorescent beetles in a piece of sugar-cane.

In this convent young girls are taught that a “wife should be loving and faithful, tolerating the defects of her husband, trying to make herself esteemed by him, to soften for him the sorrows of life, cultivating abnegation, evenness of disposition, tolerance, and sweetness. She ought never to think that the faults of her husband could excuse her own.”

Very different was the Dominican convent of Santa Rosa.

An illuminated manuscript hung at the portal, an absolution for those who worship here, sent by the Pope several hundred years ago. The recess in the wall was paved with cobblestones. Antique paintings of saints hung frameless above. Beside the huge doorway, heavily barred, was a turnstile in the wall, with solidpartitions between the shelves to prevent a glimpse within. The staring wordPacienciawas written above it. Utter silence!

Rosa Mercédes and I tiptoed through a narrow doorway, under the wordModestia. We sat on a bench in front of a wooden grill with hexagonal openings. A vague, distinctive smell drifted through it. On the other end of the bench a woman was softly sobbing. We waited half an hour or more.

The week before, the birthday of Santa Rosa had been celebrated in the cloister where she lived. The week after was now being celebrated here, where she died. As I listened, there was an explosion of fire-crackers within.

Beyond a wide space on the other side of the grill was a fine wire netting, so heavy that only a shade, a brush of a veil, a suggestion of a smile could penetrate. A soft sound came through the blackness, and a voice unthinkably sweet said: “Buenos días, Rosa mía.” It was the Sister Margarita, who had been thirty years behind those bars without a glimpse of friends, buried to the evils of the world, consecrated to Santa Rosa.

The voice began to speak.

“Our glorious Rosa! Let me tell you that when she was only three years old the lid of a heavy chest fell upon her thumb. She looked up at her mother and smiled. She concealed stinging herbs in her gloves, and when visitors came, she rubbed pepper into her eyes, so that she could neither see them nor think of what they were saying.Rosa santísima!

“When she sang to her garden the canticle: ‘O all ye green things of the earth, bless ye the Lord,’ the trees clapped their leaves together, and even the vegetables lifted up murmurs of praise. She invented hymns to the Virgin and sang them antiphonally with a bird, though she was often surprised at being able to understand the speech of unbaptized beings. One day in the garden a black and white butterfly hovered above her. Thenceforth she understood that it was decreed that she should enter the order of Saint Dominicus. Her life from that time on was a series of acts of self-mortification.Rosa inocentísima!

“She divided her day into twelve hours of prayer, ten hours of millinery work, and twohours of sleep. She was constantly aware of the presence of the angels.Rosa purísima!

“At sixteen she entered the sisterhood. She prayed to a picture of Christ until it broke into a sweat. She prepared clothing for the infant Jesus by prayer—fifty litanies, nine hundred rosaries, and five days of fasting made him a little garment; and for toys, she said: ‘I give my tears, my sighs, my heart, and soul.’

“She wore a belt lined with nails, which she locked about her, and threw the key down a well. Half the nail belt is in the Santuario of Santa Rosa, where the well was. It went dry on the day of her death.

“She died here in ecstasy on this very spot at the age of thirty.Rosa gloriosísima!”

I spoke with the voice. I asked about Santa Rosa’s shrine with its thousands of little silverex-votosin Santo Domingo.

“Yes, that is where she lies buried, except once a year on the thirtieth of August, when she journeys to the cathedral and back.

“The daughter of a viceroy once climbed out of a palace window at night to take the veil of Santa Rosa.

“When the Pope was deliberating her canonization, he was overwhelmed by a rain of roses; when it was finally celebrated, the streets of Lima were paved with silver bars.

“In 1720, when they dug to build her convent, a strong odor of roses emanated from the ground.

“We keep her roses blooming throughout the year; they grow from the same roots as those she cared for; the rest of the time we spend in embroidery and prayer.”

Such a wonderful voice!

The Sister Margarita pressed a parchment-covered book close against the netting.

“Here is a true life of Santa Rosa. It has never left this monastery. When you read it, you will understand why I have devoted my life to God through the mediation of our glorious Saint, our Patron, our Rosa de Lima.... She stood upon these stones in the courtyard where I now stand. Can you see why a stone has not been changed?... There is no word in this book which is not true. I know it by heart. I will give it to you....

“Es católica?” The voice was suddenly directed toward Rosa Mercédes.

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