Diego Tupac Amaru received his pardon at Sicuani, from General del Valle in the name of the viceroy, on January 26th, 1782; and on the same day the Bishop of Cuzco[252]solemnly absolved him in the church. But Vilca Apasa, Alejandro Calisaya, and other chiefs of Diego's army, refused to submit, and continued in arms in the provinces of Caravaya and Azangaro. General del Valle marched against them in March 1782, and took most of them prisoners. Vilca Apasa was captured in his native village of Tapa-tapa, eighteen miles east of Azangaro, where his descendants still live. He was torn to pieces by horses in the plaza of Azangaro, and his limbs were stuck on poles by the road-side.[253]An old lady told me that she could remember seeing one of his arms on a pole near her father's house. Calisaya, and many others, were hung. The Spanish General had the cruelty to force Diego Tupac Amaru to accompany him, and to witness the execution of his old friends. Del Valle then marched over the cordilleras of Lauramarca and Ausangate, where the Indians had been in rebellion, taking Diego with him in a sort of triumph, and returned to Cuzco in August. The old general was taken ill soon afterwards, and died at Cuzco on the 4th of September, leaving the command of the troops to Don Gabriel de Aviles.
Diego Tupac Amaru was permitted to retire to Tungasuca; and young Mariano Tupac Amaru, with his cousin Andres Mendegure, lived at Sicuani. But it would appear that the Spanish authorities had no intention of keeping their faith with these unfortunate Indians, and it was soon seen that the distrust of Vilca Apasa was but too well founded. The Spaniards were only waiting for an excuse before they completed the extirpation of the whole family of the Incas. This was soon found in a rebellion of the Indians of Marcapata and Lauramarca, who, on the approach of a force under the Corregidor Necochea in January 1783, retired to the lofty and almost impenetrable heights of Hapo and Ampatuni. In February their leader, Santos Huayhua, was captured with his family, and torn to pieces by horses.[254]
Thus the desired excuse for treachery and faithlessness was furnished. All the surviving members of the family of the Inca Tupac Amaru were arrested, by order of the viceroy of Peru.[255]The accusations against them were frivolous, and, so far as appears in the sentences, without a shadow of proof to support them. Diego was accused of calling the Indians his sons, of living in a way unbefitting a pardoned rebel, and of performing funeral rites for his cousin the Inca; young Mariano Tupac Amaru of rescuing his lady-love on September 9th, who had been forced to become a novice in the monastery of Santa Catalina in Cuzco; Andres Mendagure of conducting himself in a suspicious way; Manuela Castro, the mother of Diego, of keeping up disaffection amongst the Indians; and Lorenzo and Simon Condori, the brothers-in-law of Diego, of assisting the rebels in Marcapata. The rest of the family were accused of being relations.
Diego was imprisoned with his kindred on the 15th of April, 1783, by Don Raymundo Necochea, Corregidor ofQuispicanchi;[256]while Mariano Tupac Amaru and Andres Mendagure were sent to Lima, put on board a ship, butchered at sea, and their bodies thrown overboard. The vulture Matta Linares, who was still an Oidor of the Audienica at Lima, scented carrion from afar, and arrived at Cuzco on April 20th, with the same extraordinary judicial powers as had previously been given by the viceroy to Areche. On the 17th of July he sentenced Diego Tupac Amaru to be dragged at the tail of a mule, with a rope round his neck, to the place of execution in the plaza of Cuzco, there to be hung and quartered, his body and limbs to be distributed amongst the towns of Tungasuca, Lauramarca, Paucartambo, and Calca, his goods to be confiscated, and his houses destroyed; his mother, Marcela Castro, to be hung and quartered, and her body to be burnt in the plaza; Lorenzo and Simon Condori to be hung; and Manuela Titu Condori, the wife of Diego, to be banished for life.[257]These sentences were executed on the 19th of July 1783; and Matta Linares obliged the good cura of Sicuani, Dr. Valdez, by whose persuasion, as the ancient friend of the Inca Tupac Amaru, Diego had been induced to accept the treacherous pardon, to witness the executions.[258]Matta Linares is still remembered in Cuzco for his barbarous, immoral, and sneaking conduct. He died in Spain in about 1818, having been one of the first among the unworthy Spaniards who declared in favour of Joseph Buonaparte.
At about the time of Diego's execution, the last spark of insurrection was trampled out in Huarochiri, a province inthe Andes near Lima. The Indians of the villages near Caramporna had risen under one Felipe Velasco Tupac Inca Yupanqui, who declared that the Inca was not dead, but that he was alive and crowned in the "Gran Paytiti."[259]Don Felipe Carrera, who had been appointed Corregidor of Parinacochas, was sent to Huarochiri, and by a rapid march succeeded in capturing the chief. Towards evening, however, he was surrounded by a large body of Indians armed with slings and poles, in a narrow and dangerous part of the road. He retreated to an eminence with his prisoner, where he defended himself until dark against the storm of stones, and then escaped to Lima. After daily fights with the Indians the rebellion was put down in June, 1783. Felipe Velasco, and his lieutenant Ciriaco Flores, were hung in the great square of Lima on July 7th, 1783.[260]
Having, after two years and a half, succeeded in quelling the insurrection, it remained for the viceroy to extirpate all the innocent members of the family of the Incas, and all who were connected with them by marriage. Ninety members of the family were sent to Lima in chains, among whom were Bartolomé Tupac Amaru, the venerable great-uncle of the Inca; Marcela Pallocahua, the mother of the Inca's wife Micaela Bastidas; and Manuela Condori, the wife of Diego. Soon after his arrival at Lima Bartolomé Tupac Amaru died at the extraordinary age of 125. A life of temperance had given this aged prince the strength to endure months of solitary confinement at Cuzco, to sustain blows from muskets and staves in the plaza, to undergo a cruel journey on foot and in chains of 400 miles, but the horrors of the Lima prison at length killed him. The unhappy survivors were shipped off at Callao, in two ships, the 'Peruana' and the 'San Pedro,' and thrown into cells in Cadiz for three years, when Charles III. caused them to be distributed, apart from each other, in prisons in the interior of Spain, until their sufferings were relieved by death. Once during the voyage they were allowed by the brutal captain of the transport 'Peruana,' named José Cordova, to wash their tattered clothes at Rio; but their fetters were never removed, and, though the captain gave his word of honour to a Frenchman who mended his damaged rudder, that he would take them off, he unblushingly perjured himself; and the horrors which were suffered by these innocent persons, many of them aged women and young children, were never relaxed until they arrived at Cadiz.[261]
Fernando, the youngest child of the Inca, "whose shrill cry smote every heart with electric sympathy"[262]when he beheld the cruel tortures of his parents, was taken to Spain by the visitador Areche in 1781. He was then only ten years of age. In 1783 one Don Luis Ocampo, a citizen of Cuzco, went to Spain, and heard that young Fernando was a close prisoner in the castle of San Sebastian at Cadiz. Through the aid of an Irish gentleman, who was intimately acquainted with the town major, Ocampo applied for a pass to visit him, but was refused. He, nevertheless, made his way into the fort, and, looking round at the iron gratingsof the cells, at length caught sight of a youth whose countenance bespoke his origin. He addressed him in Quichua, and found that he was speaking to Fernando Tupac Amaru. While talking to him Ocampo received a blow from the butt end of the musket of a Swiss sentry, whom, however, he induced to permit him to continue the conversation. It appeared that the government allowed Fernando six rials a day, but that the soldiers of the guard cheated him of half. Ocampo gave him two or three dollars a week during his stay in Cadiz; and this is the last we know, for a certainty, of the last surviving child of the unfortunate Inca.[263]
The fate of these poor Indians, the remaining descendants of those Incas of Peru whose remarkable civilization, and great power and wealth, became a proverb during the sixteenth century, will not fail to be interesting to those who have become acquainted, through the pages of Robertson, Prescott, or Helps, with the history of the Spanish conquest of Peru. The sufferings and death of Tupac Amaru and his family form a very sad story, yet they did not suffer and die in vain: and it must be recorded of them that, unlike other dispossessed families, they sacrificed themselves, not for their own selfish ends, but in the hope of serving their people. They did not die in vain, for in their fall they shook the colonial power of Spain to its foundation. Not only was the system ofrepartosat once abolished, and themitasconsiderably modified, but in 1795 the hated office of corregidors was replaced by that of intendentes, and from the cruel death of the last of the Incas may be dated the rise of that feeling which ended in the expulsion of the Spaniards from Peru.
The rebellion which broke out in Cuzco, thirty-four years after the death of Tupac Amaru, is historically important, not on account of the patriotism of its leaders, for they were almost all men of small weight and selfish ends, but because the great body of the Indians rose as one man at the first signal, in the hope of freeing their country from a foreign yoke. In 1809 the people of Upper Peru had formed an independent government, which they called an "Institucion de Gobierno," and the viceroy sent General Goyeneche against them with 5000 men from Cuzco. The rebels, ill-provided with arms, were defeated at Huaqui, near lake Titicaca, and slaughtered without mercy;[264]but General Pezuela, who succeeded Goyeneche in the command, had to face a patriot army from Buenos Ayres under Belgrano, which kept him fully employed. Then it was that the opportunity was seized of commencing a rebellion at Cuzco; and this enemy in the rear of the royal army placed Pezuela in a most critical position.
The leader of the rebellion was Mateo Garcia Pumacagua, Cacique of Chinchero near Cuzco, then a very old men. In January 1781, when Tupac Amaru occupied the heights of Picchu above Cuzco, he had marched from Chinchero with Indians to join him, but, hearing that a large Spanish army was advancing from Lima, he changed his mind, and took part against his countrymen with such zeal, that the viceroy created him a brigadier in the Spanish service. On August 3rd, 1814, this Indian Cacique Pumacagua, with the three brothers Vicente, Mariano, and José Angulo, Don Gabriel Bejar, Hurtado de Mendoza, Astete, Pinelo, Prado, and others, raised the cry of independence in Cuzco; and so unanimous was the feeling against Spanish rule, that thewhole population of that city joined heart and soul in the insurrection.[265]The brothers Angulo were men of low birth, and vulgar both in their language and their persons;[266]but Astete and Prado were gentlemen of good family and position. It is possible that they made use of Pumacagua, as an Indian cacique, that his countrymen might more readily be induced to join their cause.
Having occupied Cuzco, the insurgents divided their forces into three divisions, which separated in different directions, to excite the other provinces to revolt. Mariano Angulo, Bejar, and Mendoza, who was nicknamed Santafecino, marched to Guamanga, assaulted the house in which several Spaniards had taken refuge, and hung two officers in the plaza. Colonel Vicente Gonzalez was sent against them from Lima, and attacked the insurgents, who had been joined by a body of Morochuco Indians, near Guanta, in September. The rebels were defeated, and several Morochuco Indians were shot at Guamanga, but the country continued in a disordered state until Santafecino was finally routed at Matara in April 1815.
Pinelo, and the cura of Munecas in Upper Peru, entered Puno without resistance with another division on August 29th, advanced to La Paz, and took it by assault after a siege of two days, on September 24th.
The main division, led by Pumacagua in person, and Vicente Angulo, marched on Arequipa.
The position of the royalist army under Pezuela, with the Buenos Ayrean army of independence in front, and this formidable insurrection in the rear, was most critical: for the Indians, believing that the rule of their Incas was to be restored, and that Pumacagua would succeed where TupacAmaru had failed, were flocking in thousands to the standard of the old cacique. Pezuela organized a division of his army, 1200 strong, commanded by General Don Juan Ramirez, who marched from Oruro in October, and fell upon the rebels, numbering 4000 men, 500 armed with muskets, and the rest with slings, who were encamped on the heights above La Paz. The rebels retired in good order to Puno, and Ramirez entered La Paz, and, having extorted 63,000 dollars from the citizens, continued his march to Puno, which he occupied on November 23rd, and pressed on towards Arequipa on the 26th.[267]
In the mean while Pumacagua and Angulo had been joined by many caciques with theirayllusor tribes, and he organized his army at Cavanilla, giving the rank of generals and colonels to the Indian chiefs.[268]From Cavanilla the rebel forces marched along the road from Puno to Arequipa, descended the "alto de los huesos," and encountered the Spanish troops under Brigadier Picoaga in the plain of Cangallo. Picoaga was defeated and taken prisoner, and the Indians entered Arequipa in triumph, where the greatest enthusiasm prevailed for the cause of independence. Picoaga and Moscoso, the Intendente of Arequipa, were shot by order of the Angulos, who, early in December, issued a proclamation, declaring that Peru was free; that there had been a revolution in Lima; and that the viceroy Don José de Abascal was in prison. These falsehoods were intended to excite the Spanish Americans to revolt; but, indeed, they required no such stimulus, for the people of all races and classes were burning to throw off the yoke of Spain.
It was at this time that Melgar, the enthusiastic youngpoet of Arequipa, joined the national army, and became secretary to Vicente Angulo.
On the approach of Ramirez, Pumacagua evacuated Arequipa, and manœuvred for some days on the lofty plains between Apo and the post-house of Pati. Ramirez steadily advanced, and came in sight of the Indian army at a little hut called Chillihua, near the head of the "alto de los huesos;" but Pumacagua, avoiding a battle, retreated hastily into the interior, and Ramirez entered Arequipa without opposition on December 9th. His first act was to shoot Don José Astete, and other patriots who had compromised themselves during the time that Pumacagua was in the city.
The enthusiasm of the Indians was so great that, notwithstanding the affair at Chillihua, which one authority describes as a retreat,[269]and another as a disastrous defeat,[270]they again flocked to the standard of the old cacique at Pucara, where he soon had another undisciplined half-armed force around him, numbering 40,000 men. Ramirez organized a force at Arequipa of 1200 men armed with muskets, and fifty dragoons; and, commencing his march on February 11th, 1815, he encamped round the town of Lampa on March 1st. On that day he received a letter from Vicente Angulo, protesting against the war being carried on in a savage and relentless spirit, representing that, when a whole people rises in arms, the insurgents ought to be granted belligerent rights; and urging the duty of concluding the war by negotiation, and not by bloodshed. "It is not fear," Angulo continues, "that induces me to write thus, but a feeling of humanity."[271]Ramirez answered that he would accept nothing but unconditional surrender. On March 4th he advanced to Ayaviri, on the Vilcañota range, which separates the Collao from the valley of the Vilcamayu. Here he received a letter fromPumacagua. The cacique asked the Spanish general for whom he was fighting, seeing that Ferdinand VII. had been sold to the French, and that no man knew where he had been taken to; he declared that there was now no other king but the caprice of Europeans, and that, therefore, he desired to establish a national Government; and he told him that he was ready to meet the Spanish army on the field of battle.[272]Ramirez replied that a general of the king's army would not waste words with vile and insolent rebels, and that his bayonets would soon make them alter their tone.[273]
From the 6th to the 10th of March both armies marched in parallel lines, separated by the rivers Umachiri and Ayaviri. On the 10th Pumacagua drew up his army behind the river Cupi, which was much swollen by the rains. He had 30,000 men, of whom 800 only were armed with muskets, and forty field-pieces, said to have been cast at Cuzco by an Englishman named George ——,[274]some of them of very large calibre, with which he annoyed the Spaniards during the night before the battle. Ramirez had only 1300 men; but they were all disciplined and well-armed soldiers. He crossed the river Cupi, near Umachiri, in spite of opposition; charged and dispersed the Indians, killing a thousand men, and captured all their cannon. The rout was complete, and the chiefs of the patriot army sought safety in flight.[275]
The poet Mariano Melgar was taken prisoner, and immediately shot on the field of battle. The fate of this young man was very melancholy: an unrequited passion led him to join the desperate cause of the insurgents, and he is nowchiefly remembered by his melancholy love-songs anddespedidas.[276]
Ramirez, immediately after the battle of Umachiri, marched to Cuzco, where he arrived on the 25th; but he detached a portion of his troops in pursuit of the Indians, who were again defeated close to the town of Azangaro. The Spaniards cut off the ears of all their prisoners, flogged them cruelly, and sent them to tell their comrades that they would be treated in the same way unless they instantly laid down their arms. The Indians fled over the hills, followed by the Spaniards, who again defeated them on a hill near Asillo, six leagues to the north. Amongst the prisoners at Asillo were the mutilated Indians who had been sent to terrify the rest, still bravely fighting against their tyrants. Of such heroism is the usually meek and docile Indian capable.[277]
After the battle of Umachiri, Pumacagua had escaped to the heights of Marangani; but he was betrayed by an Indian whom he had sent down to buy some food, and brought a prisoner into Sicuani. After a sort of confession had been extorted from him, he was hung, not even with a respectable halter, but with a lasso, being seventy-seven years of age. José, Mariano, and Vicente Angulo, Gabriel Bejar, and many others were shot at Cuzco by Ramirez, who, in the following June, again united his forces with those of General Pezuela, in Upper Peru. Thus ended the last great rising of the Indians under one of their own chiefs, after a campaign which lasted ten months.
Ten years after the death of Pumacagua every Spanishsoldier had been driven out of the country. Peru was independent, and the Indians received equal rights with citizens of Spanish descent in the new Republic, at least so far, and only so far, as the law could give them. Themitaor forced labour was entirely abolished in 1825; but the tribute or capitation-tax continued to be exacted until 1854 in Peru, and is still the principal source of revenue in Bolivia, the Upper Peru of Spanish times. It is not, however, quite exact to suppose that this tribute was a capitation-tax; it was practically at least a rent or tax on the produce of the land, and more resembled the land-tax of India. The tribute was levied on every male between the ages of eighteen and fifty; but, in point of fact, nearly every individual between those ages cultivated his own piece of land, or shared the produce of a larger piece with several others. Latterly the tribute paid by each Indian generally amounted to five dollars a year; but, in some villages, the Indians paid double that amount, the exact rule being handed down by tradition, and known to the caciques. Those who paid most enjoyed a more dignified position. The department of Puno yielded 300,000 dollars; that of Cuzco, 400,000. The entire abolition of the tribute by General Castilla in 1854 is a portion of that mad and reckless system of finance by which the revenue of Peru is made to depend almost exclusively on the yield of guano from the Chincha Islands.
In Bolivia the tribute is still paid by men between the ages of eighteen and fifty: the amount being six to ten dollars a year for proprietors of land, and five dollars for strangers. The revenue from this source amounted, in 1850, to 4,595,000 dollars.
But though themita, thereparto, and the tribute have all been abolished by law in Peru, the deplorable civil wars, and the system of keeping up a large standing army, which is not only unnecessary, but most mischievous, have entailed muchoppression on the Indians in the shape of impressment for the army. Villages are frequently surrounded by a party of soldiers, and all the able-bodied men that can be caught are driven away to serve in the ranks. This deplorable waste of human life is rapidly reducing the already scanty population; and the system is more oppressive and cruel because it is done in defiance of the law, by the military presidents and generals who have hitherto been able to set the laws enacted by civilians at defiance, when it suits their purpose.[278]Yet on the whole the condition of the Indians is immeasurably more endurable under the Republic than it was when they groaned under themitasof the Spanish corregidors.
The history of these Peruvian Indians has been a very melancholy one. The early accounts which the Spanish chroniclers gave of the great empire of the Incas represented the Indians as a people ruled by laws and usages which provided for almost every action of their lives; neither a thief nor a vicious man was known amongst them; and they lived in happiness and contentment, but under a most rigid system of tutelage and subjection. Then came the Spanish conquerors, and, after a quarter of a century of bloodshed and rapine, the people found themselves bowed down by a grievous yoke. While the most beneficent laws were enacted by the Council of the Indies, their humane provisions continued to be either entirely evaded, or converted into pretexts for additional modes of oppression. From upwards of thirty millions the population was reduced to three millions within the space of two centuries; and all that can be said of the much-lauded colonial legislation of Spain is that it prevented the Indians from being actually exterminated; and that, when Perugained her independence, there were a few million survivors, scattered in villages at wide intervals over a region once thickly peopled by their ancestors. The Council-room at Seville was, like another place, thickly paved with good intentions.
I was thrown a great deal amongst the Indians, and at one time I had the most excellent opportunities of judging of their character, and I was certainly most favourably impressed. They now have many vices engendered by centuries of oppression and evil example, from which their ancestors were probably free: they are fond of chicha and aguardiente, and are very suspicious; but I found that this latter feeling disappears when the occasion for it is found not to exist. They have had but too good reason for their suspicion generally. On the other hand, they are intelligent, patient, obedient, loving amongst each other, and particularly kind to animals. Crimes of any magnitude are hardly ever heard of amongst them; and I am sure that there is no safer region in the world for the traveller, than the plateaux of the Peruvian cordilleras. That the Indians are not cowardly or mean-spirited when once roused was proved in the battles which they fought under the banner of Tupac Amaru in 1781; and a people who could produce men capable of such heroic constancy as was displayed by the mutilated heroes of Asillo should not lightly be accused of want of courage. When well led they make excellent soldiers.
Although there is so large a proportion ofmestizos, or half-castes, in Peru, it is very remarkable how isolated the Indians still remain. They have their separate language, and traditions, and feelings, apart from their neighbours of Spanish origin; and it is even said that there are secret modes of intercourse, and even secret designs amongst them, the knowledge of which is guarded with jealous care. In 1841, when General Gamarra was at Pucara, on his way to invade Bolivia, it was reported that certain influential Indians, from all partsof the country, were about to assemble in the hills near Azangaro, for the discussion of some grave business; and that they were in the habit of assembling in the same way, though in different localities, every five years. The object of these assemblies was unknown—it may have been merely to converse over their ancient traditions—but it was feared, at the time, that it was for some far deeper and more momentous purpose. It is believed that similar meetings have since taken place near Chayanta[279]in Bolivia, near Quito, and in other parts, but the strictest secrecy is preserved by the Indians themselves. The abolition of the tribute has probably had the effect of separating the Indians still more from the white and mixed races, for they used to have constant intercourse connected with the payments to the authorities, which brought them into the towns, while now they live apart in their solitary huts in the mountain fastnesses, or in distant villages.
It may be that this unhappy people, descendants of the once mighty race which, in the glorious days of the Incas, conquered and civilised half a continent, is marching slowly down the gloomy and dark road to extinction; "the fading remains of a society sinking amidst storms, overthrown and shattered by overwhelming catastrophes."[280]But I trust that this may not be so, and that a fate less sad is still reserved for the long-suffering gentle children of the Sun.
JOURNEY FROM PUNO TO CRUCERO, THE CAPITAL OF CARAVAYA.
OnApril 7th we left Puno on the road to the chinchona forests of Caravaya. There are three modes of travelling in Peru: one by purchasing all the required mules and employing servants; the second, by hiring anarriero, or muleteer, who supplies the mules at so much for the journey; and the third, by using the wretched animals which are provided at the post-houses, and changing them at each stage, but this can only be done on the main roads. The latter way, though the least comfortable, is by far the most economical, and I therefore determined to adopt it, yet I should probably have hesitated had I known the trouble it would entail. I bought a fine mule for a hundred dollars, with the gentlepaso llano, the easiest pace imaginable, for myself, and sent to the post-house at Puno for beasts for Mr. Weir, the gardener who accompanied me, and for the baggage. Four vicious-looking brutes accordingly made their appearance, and we started; but no sooner had we reached the plain at the top of the zigzag path leading out of Puno to the north, than they all ran away in different directions, kicking violently. After hours of this kind of annoyance I at last got one of the brutes into a corner of a stone-fenced field, but, just as I was about to catch him, he gave a kick, jumped over the wall, and went off again. It ended in our having to drag the mules by their lassos until our arms were nearly torn out of the sockets; and thus we ignominiously entered thevillage of Paucar-colla late in the evening, a distance of only twelve miles from Puno. As for the scenery, or the nature of the country, between Puno and Paucar-colla, I can remember nothing but vicious mules with their hind legs kicking up in the air.
Paucar-colla is built on an eminence, surrounded by broad grassy plains, which slope down to the shores of the lake of Titicaca. It consists of a few streets of mud-built, red-tiled huts, ranged round a large plaza, with a church in a dilapidated state, also of mud. At this place I saw the last of the Aymara Indians, or at least of their women, who can always be distinguished by their dress, which differs from that worn by the Inca or Quichua Indians. The Aymara women wear anuncu, or garment brought together over each shoulder, and secured in the mode of the classic Greeks, with twotopus, or large pins, generally in the shape of spoons. The head-dress is a curiously-shaped, four-cornered red cap, the sides curving outwards and stiff, with black flaps suspended from it, sometimes hanging down, and at others thrown up over the top. The Quichua dress, used by the women from here as far as Cuzco, is quite different: they have a full woollen skirt, reaching down half-way between the knee and ankle; a bright-colouredlliclla, or mantle, over the shoulders, secured across the bosom by a singletopu; and as a head-dress the broad-brimmed black velvetmontero, with red and blue ribbons.
I left Paucar-colla early next morning, and passed by several fields ofquinoa(Chenopodium quinoa), the harvest of which was just beginning. The stalks are cut and tied up in heaps, and then the grain is beaten out with sticks. It is used by the Indians in their universal dish, thechupe, and in various other ways; but it is an insipid and not very nutritious grain. Just beyond the village there is a stream called the Illpa, which, in the dry season, scarcely wets the mules' hoofs;but at this time of year it was swollen into a broad river, and it was necessary to cross it on reed balsas, with the luggage, while the mules swam. A very large troop of mules, laden with aguardiente, was passing over at the same time—a long and tedious business. There are many streams crossing these roads, which are swollen during the rainy season, and very serious delays are thus caused for want of a few bridges. From the Illpa to Caracoto there is a broad plain extending to the shores of the lake, with the town or village of Hatun-colla on one of the last spurs of the cordillera to the west.[281]This wide expanse, in the rainy season, is swampy and half submerged. It was covered with flocks and herds, with huts and out-buildings scattered over it, and surrounded by mud walls. Here and there we passed pretty little cow-girls and shepherdesses, now dressed in the Quichua, not the Aymara, costume. Some of these little maidens, as they stood by the wayside spinning wool, had such pretty faces, with the rosy colour showing through their soft, brown skins, and their figures were so graceful and dignified, that they strongly reminded me of the pictures of young Inca princesses in the churches of Santa Anna, and of the Jesuits, at Cuzco:—
"La vi tan fermosaQue apenas creyeraQue fuese vaqueraDe la Finojosa."
"La vi tan fermosaQue apenas creyeraQue fuese vaqueraDe la Finojosa."
Potatoes, quinoa, and barley were cultivated in the skirts of the hills bordering on the plain.
The village of Caracoto is at the extreme end of a long rocky spur, running out across the plain; a street of neat mud huts, with a plaza and dilapidated church. At the post-house a child had died, which was set out on a table with candles burning before it, and the friends of the postmaster were holding a wake, singing, fiddling, and drinking. Between Caracoto and the next village of Juliaca there is another swampy plain: most of the road was under water, and we encountered a heavy hail-storm. The lights and shades on the cordilleras and nearer hills, the heavy black masses of cloud in one part of the heavens, and the sun's rays breaking through in the other, were very fine. Juliaca is a small town built under a spur of the mountains, with a handsome stone church. It was Easter-Sunday, and I was invited to meet all the principal families at dinner at the house of the cura. Several Indian alcaldes were in attendance; consequential old fellows in full dress, consisting of broad-brimmed black felt hats, sober-coloured ponchos, and black breeches very open at the knees, no stockings, andusutasor sandals of llama-hide. The distinctive mark of the alcaldes, of which they are very proud, is their staff of office, with silver or brass head and ferule, and rings round it according to the number of years the owner has held office. The Indians here wear the hair in numbers of very fine plaits reaching half-way down their backs. An Indian always accompanied the post-mules from one village to another, in order to take back the return-mules; and at Juliaca, while I was quietly enjoying the cura's hospitality, the Indians took my own mule back to Caracoto, as well as the post-mules. Next morning, therefore, I sent for it, and received an answer that the postmaster knew nothing about it. I was eventually obliged, after seeing the gardener and luggage on their way to Lampa, to go back to Caracoto, where the postmaster was drunk and insolent; and at length I found it, with a troop of others, on the great plain beyond Caracoto. Several Indians took much trouble for me in catching my mule; and it was late in the afternoon before I got back to Juliaca, and was ready to set out on my journey to Lampa. I mention this incident in order to show the trouble and inconvenience of acting as one's own muleteer, although such a mode of travelling is certainly four or five times as cheapas hiring an arriero; and I may add that the travelling by post-mules caused me incessant annoyance and trouble. Whenever they saw a chance the vicious brutes always ran off the road in different directions, bumped their cargo against rocks, and tried to roll, keeping us constantly employed in galloping after them, and greatly increasing the fatigues of the journeys. On several occasions, too, an animal was provided which was so weak or tired that it sank under its cargo before it had gone a league, and obliged me to return to the post-house for another. The adjustment and lashing of the cargos, like everything else, requires considerable knack and skill, which is only acquired by experience; the Indians were as ignorant in such matters as we were; and during the first three or four journeys our troubles were increased by the cargos constantly slipping on one side, when the mules always seized the opportunity of rushing off the road and kicking furiously.
A few miles north of Juliaca there is a large river, formed by the junction of those of Lampa and Cavanilla, the latter being the same which rises in the lake on the road between Arequipa and Puno, and flows by the post-house of La Compuerta. We crossed it in a reed balsa while the mules swam. Beyond the river is the great plain of Chañucahua, which was covered with large pools of water, at this season frequented by ducks and sandpipers. Close under the mountains, which bound it on every side, were a few sheep-farms, one of them the property of Don Manuel Costas of Puno, and the sheep roamed at will over many leagues of pasture-land. At the northern extremity of the plain the road ascends and descends a range of steep hills, and, turning a rocky spur, I came in sight of the town of Lampa. It was just sunset; the tall church-tower rising over the town, and a stone bridge spanning the river, were clearly defined by the crimson glow in the western sky, while the lofty peaked mountains formingthe background were capped by masses of black threatening clouds. At that moment a tremendous thunder-storm, with flashes of forked lightning and torrents of rain, burst over the town.
Lampa is the capital of a province in the department of Puno, and I was hospitably received by the Sub-prefect, Don Manuel Barrio-nuevo, who occupied a good house in the plaza. A portion of the army of the South was quartered in the town; and the General came every evening to have tea with the Sub-prefect and his lady, a handsome Arequipeña. On these occasions the party consisted of General Frisancho and several officers, and ladies who came attended by their little Indian maids, carrying shawls, and squatting on the floor in comers during the visit. After tea and conversation the company generally sang some of thedespedidasand love-songs of their national poet Melgar, in parts; and one young lady sang the plaintiveyaravisof the Indians in Quichua.
The church of Lampa is a large building of stone, dating from 1685, with a dome of yellow, green, and blue glazed tiles, of which I was informed there was formerly a manufactory in Lampa. The tower is isolated, and about twenty yards from the church, apparently of a different date. Rows of Indian girls, in their gay-coloured dresses, were sitting in the plaza before their little heaps of chuñus, ocas, potatoes, and other provisions, amongst which, at the season of Easter, there are always great quantities of herbs gathered on the mountains, possessing supposed medicinal virtues. Among these a fern, calledracci-racci, is used as an emetic;churccu-churccu, a small wild oxalis, is taken as a cure for colds;chichira, the root of a small crucifer, for rheumatism;llacua-llacua, a composita, for curing wounds;quissu, a nettle, used as a purgative;cata-cata, a valerian, as an antispasmodic;tami-tami, the root of a gentian, as a febrifuge;quachanca, a euphorbia, the powdered root of which is taken as a purgative;hama-hama, the root of a valerian, said to be an excellent specific against epilepsy;[282]and many others, the native names of which, with their uses, were given me, but I was unacquainted with their botanical names. Generally when the name of a plant is repeated twice in Quichua it denotes the possession of some medicinal property.
On the morning of our departure from Lampa the ground was covered with snow, which was slowly melting under the sun's rays. Immediately after leaving the town the path winds up a steep mountain range called Chacun-chaca, the sides of the precipitous slopes being well clothed withqueñua-trees (Polylepis tomentella, Wedd.), which are gnarled and stunted, with dark-green leaves, and the bark of the trunk peeling like that of a yew. Their sombre foliage contrasted with the light-green tufts ofstipa, and the patches of snow. The pass was long and dangerous, with little torrents pouring down every rut; and on its summit was the usualpacheta, or cairn, which the Indians erect on every conspicuous point. The path descends on the other side into a long narrow plain, with the hacienda of Chacun-chaca on the opposite side. The buildings are surrounded by queñua-trees, and in their rear two remarkable peaked hills rise up abruptly, clothed with the same trees, with ridges of rock cropping out at intervals. Their sides were dotted with cattle, tended by pretty little cow-girls, armed with slings, and some of them playing thepincullu, or Indian flute. The plain was covered with long grass, in a saturated and spongy state, and groves of queñua-trees grew thickly in the gullies of the mountains on either side. After a ride of several leagues over the plain, latterly along the banks of the river Pucara, I turned a point of the road, and suddenly came in sight of the almost perpendicular mountain, closely resembling the northern end of the rock ofGibraltar, which rises abruptly from the plain, with the little town of Pucara nestling at its feet. The precipice is composed of a reddish sandstone, upwards of twelve hundred feet above the plain, the crevices and summit clothed with long grass and shrubby queñuas. Birds were whirling in circles at a great height above the rock, which, in the Spanish times, was famous for a fine breed of falcons, which were carefully guarded and regularly supplied with meat. They tell a story at Pucara that one of these birds was sent to the King of Spain, and that it returned of its own accord, being known by the collar.
Pucara means a fortress in Quichua; and here Francisco Hernandez Giron, the rebel who led an insurrection to oppose the abolition of personal service amongst the Indians, was finally defeated in 1554. The town is a little larger than Juliaca, with a handsome church in the same style, and a fountain in the plaza. I dined and passed the evening with the aged cura, Dr. José Faustino Dava, who is famous for his knowledge of the Quichua language, in its purest and most classical form. The fame of Dr. Dava's learning, in all questions connected with the antiquities of the Incas and the Quichua language, had reached me in England, and I was glad to obtain his valuable assistance in looking over a dictionary of the rich and expressive language of the Incas, on which I had been working for some time.
Owing to the diminution of the aboriginal population in Peru, and the constantly increasing corruption of the ancient language, through the substitution of Spanish for Quichua words, the introduction of Spanish modes of expression, and the loss of all purity of style, that language, once so important, which was used by a polished court and civilized people, which was spoken through the extent of a vast empire, and the use of which was spread by careful legislation, is now disappearing. Before long it will be a thing that ispast, or perhaps fade away entirely from the memory of living generations. With it will disappear the richest form of all the great American group of languages, no small loss to the student of ethnology. With it will be lost all the traditions which yet remain of the old glory of the Incas, all the elegies, love-songs, and poems which stamp the character of a once powerful, but always gentle and amiable race.
Unlike the English in India, the half-Spanish races of Peru have paid little attention to the history and languages of the aborigines, within the present century; and, if left to them, all traces of the language of the Incas, and of the songs and traditions which remain in it, would, in the course of another century, almost entirely disappear. A few honourable exceptions must, however, be recorded. The late Mariano Rivero paid much attention to the antiquities of his country, and the results of his labours have been published at Vienna.[283]The curas of some of the parishes in the interior, also, especially Dr. Dava of Pucara, Dr. Rosas of Chinchero, and the Cura of Oropesa, near Cuzco, are excellent Quichua scholars, but they are very old men, and their knowledge will die with them.
Dr. Dava had a large collection of the finches, and other birds of the loftier parts of the Andes, hanging in wicker cages along the wall of his house. Amongst them were a little dove calledurpi; the bright yellow little songster calledsilgaritoin Spanish, andcchaiñain Quichua; thetuya, another larger warbler; thechocclla-poccochior nightingale of Peru; and a little finch with glossy black plumage, pink on the back, and whitish-grey under the wings. He also had some small green paroquets, with long tails and bluish wings, which make their nests under the eaves of roofs, at a height of fourteen thousand feet above the sea. At Pucara some ofthe inhabitants have small manufactories for making glazed earthenware basins, pots, plates, and cups,[284]which find an extensive market in the villages and towns of the department of Puno, and which will probably long hold their own against the same kind of coarse wares from Europe or the United States.
From Puno to Pucara I had travelled along the main-road to Cuzco; but, at the latter place, I branched off to the eastward, to pass through the province of Azangaro to that of Caravaya. The main-road continues in a northerly direction, crosses the snowy range of Vilcañota near Ayaviri, and descends the valley of the Vilcamayu to Cuzco. At Pucara I left post-houses and post-mules behind me, for they only exist on the main-roads between Arequipa, Puno, Cuzco, and Lima; henceforth I had to depend on being able to induce private persons to let out their mules or ponies to me.
About 500 yards from the town of Pucara is the river of the same name, which flows past Ayaviri in the mountains of Vilcañota. It was very full, and eighty yards across. The mules swam, and we had to cross in a rickety balsa made of two bundles of reeds, which had to go backwards and forwards five times before all the gear and baggage was on the eastern side. After riding over a plain which became gradually narrower as the mountains closed in, I began the ascent of a rockycuesta, with a torrent dashing down over huge boulders into the plain. There was a splendid view of the distant rock of Pucara, with the snowy peaks of the Vilcañota range behind. A league further on there was an alpine lake, with a fine peaked cliff rising up from the water's edge. There were many ducks and widgeons, and large coots were quietly busy, swimming about and building their nests on little reedislands; also jet-black ibises, with dark rusty red heads and long curved bills. After a ride of several leagues over a grassy country covered with flocks of sheep, I reached the summit of a range of hills, and got a distant view of the town of Azangaro, in a plain with several isolated steep grassy mountains rising from it, and the snowy Andes of Caravaya in the background. After a very wearisome descent I reached the plain, and, riding into Azangaro, was most hospitably and kindly received by Don Luis Quiñones, one of the principal inhabitants.
The region which I had traversed between Puno and Azangaro is all of the same character—a series of grassy plains of great elevation, covered with flocks and herds, and watered by numerous rivers flowing into lake Titicaca, which are traversed by several mountain-ranges, spurs from the cordillera, which sometimes run up into peaks almost to the snow-line, and at others sink into rocky plateaux raised like steps above the plain. What strikes one most in travelling through this country is the evidence of the vast population it must have contained in the days of the Incas, indicated by the ruined remains ofandeneria, or terraces for cultivation, rising in every direction tier above tier up the sides of the hills. But it is now almost exclusively a grazing country, and the Indians, employed in tending the large flocks of sheep, only raise a sufficient supply of edible roots for the consumption of their families, and the market of the nearest town. Frequently the shepherds are what are calledyanaconas, or Indians kept to service by the owners of the flocks, which vary from 400 to 1000 head. The condition of this class of Indians is very hard, as they get only a monthly allowance of anarrobaof chuñu (frozen potato) or quinoa, and a pound of coca, or four dollars a month in money.
Puno, Juliaca, Lampa, Pucara, and Azangaro, are allbetween 12,800 and 13,000 feet above the sea. Between March 28th and April 15th, the indications of the thermometer at these places were as follows:—