Peru in the Guano Age / Being a Short Account of a Recent Visit to the Guano Deposits, with Some Reflections on the Money They Have Produced and the Uses to Which It Has Been Applied

by A. J. Duffield

Lastly—and these characteristics of our Golden Age have been taken quite at random and as they have come to my recollection—the name by which the Incas most delighted themselves in being known was that of 'Lovers of the Poor.' In this Golden Age gunpowder was unknown, and the people for the most part were vegetarians. Animal food was eaten by the soldiery and the labouring people only at the great religious feasts. Fish, and the flesh of alpacas, were confined to the Incas and the nobles. This will account for many things which subsequently occurred, notably their easy conquest by the fire- and meat-eating Spaniard.

Let us now write down our comparisons of the Age of Guano with the Age of Gold.

I. The name and form of Government, it is true, are reduced to writing, but the Government is, and has been from the commencement of its Republican history, as unstable as water. On the close of the Guano Age things would appear to be improving: President Pardo has completed the whole term of his presidential life, and this is only the second instance of a Peruvian Republican President having done so. It would be difficult to reckon up the number of revolutions which have taken place in the Age of Manure.

II. The land is not cultivated: the things, for the most part, which are taken to market, are those which grow spontaneously, without art or industry. The people who supply the Lima market are chiefly Italians, while the greater part of the land is barren and unproductive. Potatoes and other vegetables, wheat and barley, flour, fruits, and beef, all come from Chile and Equador, but chiefly from the former.

III. The great water-courses and system of irrigation which marked the Golden Age are all broken up, and the fructifying water, once stored for the use and service of man, first became his master, and then his relentless tyrant.

IV. The land cannot be said to belong to any one. Certainly not to God. Even the Church, once a great proprietor and holder of slaves, is as lazy as the laziest drone in any known hive. Many of the large estates which flourished in the pre-Guano period have perished for lack of hands. The sugar plantations are exceptions for the present, but what will happen to them when the Chinese are all free is very uncertain. It may even be said to be a source of alarm to many thoughtful persons.

V. Of the municipal laws, which provide for cleanliness, health, and public order, although great progress has been made in Central Lima, all that need be said is, that it is a wonder the inhabitants have survived, and that those who were not killed in last year's revolution have not been carried off by a plague.

VI. Idleness among the upper classes, i.e. the whole white population, the descendants of Spain—those who supply the Army and Navy with officers, the Law with judges, the Church with bishops, and the rich daughters of sugar-boilers with husbands—idleness among these is the order of the day, and is punished by no one. Even the gods appear to take no notice of it, being itself a sort of god, so far as the number of his worshippers are concerned. To-morrow is the everlasting excuse for almost everybody, and yesterday has done nothing but light fools to dusty death; the to-morrow in which the useful and the good are to be done, never comes.

VII. Going to law is not only an infamous passion in this Guano Age, it is a means of living. There must be few if any people of substance in Peru who have not known the bitter curse of the law's delay. I have known lawsuits of the most vexatious and cruel nature, and which, in any country where civilisation is not a mere name, could never have been instituted, last, not five days, but five years, and, alas! even fifteen years. I have myself tasted the bitterness of the law in this land, and been very near being lodged in a loathsome jail at the instance of a miscreant who had it in his power to demand my presence before a bribe-gorged judge. I only escaped paying heavy toll or hateful imprisonment by my friends obtaining the removal of the judge. The second was a gross attempt at extortion, from which I was saved by accident. Both these lawsuits, of the basest sort, had their origin in an injustice which is ingrained in the complexion of the people. The captain and crew of the Talisman could bear testimony to the difference between the administration of law in the Golden Age and in the Age of Manure.

VIII. The education of the people has never been seriously attempted, except in carrying a flimsy old musket. The Indians, who form the great bulk of the population, do not vote. This would involve a slight cultivation of the Indian's intellect, and he does not know what might happen to further embitter his lot if he were to discover to his rulers that he had a mind. He is perhaps the slyest of animals—more sly than a fox, more obstinate than an English mule, and as timid as a squirrel.