From forty to fifty head of oxen, and from three to four hundred sheep, are slaughtered daily for the Lima market: the beef is very good; the mutton of inferior quality. We were told by one of the principal beef contractors that, early in the year 1836, the slaughter of oxen in Lima was reduced to thirty or thirty-five head daily; a decrease from the usual number which he ascribed to the poverty peculiar to that particular period of misrule, disabling many families from buying beef, and partly also to a new military order relating to the soldiers’ rations.
Instead of his former allowance of meat, the soldier was now allowed two reals daily to provide for himself what food he pleased;—an injudicious alteration in his circumstances, for he either gave his ration-money for drink, or indulged his appetite in eating some unwholesome trash calculated to throw him too often on the sick-list.
Pastry and sweet-meat criers are seen everywhere in the Lima streets; and a sort of cook-stand, abounding in fried pork and fish, is to be found at the corner of every square. This practice gives some insight into the dietetic habits of the vulgar; and such poor families of genteel pretensions as from necessity hire out their slaves, are seldom at the trouble or expense of cooking at home when they can more easily call in from the street what little they may satisfy themselves with.
Masamorerias, or a sort of pap-shops, are very common in Lima. Of the sweet pap in vulgar use there are as many varieties as there are of meal and flour,—such as peas, beans, rice, maize flour, arrow-root, starch,—of which they have many varieties. Any of these boiled in water to a very soft consistence, with or without the addition of fruit or some vegetable acid, and sweetened exceedingly with sugar, molasses, or “chancaca,” (the latter, a coarse sort of brown sugar made up into cakes,) is what constitutes the great Limenian dish “masamora,” to which these sweet-mouthed people are as proverbially partial as the English are to roast-beef.
However salutary in itself may be the quality of the more substantial food of such Limenians as can afford to live well and generously, yet most of their dishes are so sodden in lard, that the common fowl, the pigeon, turkey, and that excellent family dish the “puchero,” consisting of a variety of fruit and vegetables, with pieces of meat of different kinds and quality, all boiled and presented in one great piece of plate,—are among the comparatively few which a simple palate can relish.
Their soups, together with a great variety of vegetable dishes, are so heated with agi-pepper, that the coats of the stomach would indeed require to be well greased to protect them against the piquant effects of this popular condiment. Useful and even necessary as this agi is found to be by those Indians of the valleys who cultivate it around their doors, and whose diet is nearly all vegetable, yet in a climate like that of Lima, and in constitutions so delicate as those of its inhabitants confessedly are, it must prove injurious to the organization of the stomach, and to the health in general, when freely and daily taken with a plentiful allowance of animal food, and a general mode of living sober but not temperate; for though the better classes deal sparingly in wine, yet, by partaking more or less of every dish at table, and these not a few, they usually eat more than the powers of digestion can comfortably apply to the support of the frame, not usually exposed by so indolent a people to great waste from athletic exertion.
The native dark races are indeed much more robust in form, and hardier in constitution, than strangers to their climate; and many of them drink “aguardiente,” or uncoloured cane spirits, in great quantity, and with less immediate ill effect than one would expect. Their constant use of such excitants as ardent spirits and fermented beverages called “chichas,” with animal food and agi, may possibly be a principal reason why these persons, whenever they are seized with inflammatory complaints, stand general bleeding better than others of their own caste fed upon sango, a name applied to a sort of mash made with maize-meal and sweet potatoes: but persons of European descent, with skin so much more delicate than the darker races in Peru, and endowed with a more susceptible nervous system, suffer much more readily from atmospherical vicissitudes; and their digestive organs and powers of assimilation being comparatively weak, those irregularities, borne by the negro and zambo with comparative impunity, are to the white man, whose organization is not so suitable as theirs for a warm and relaxing climate, the frequent cause of various disorders of the bowels, as indigestion, cholera morbus, or dysentery. The dietetics of the Limenians naturally induce frequent examples of impaired digestion; and worms, too usually the inmates of unhealthy bowels, are so remarkably common, and in acute febrile diseases are so generally expelled either dead or alive, that their appearance in such disorders is looked upon as a matter of course. What share the water, as a vehicle for ova, may have in propagating these worms, it may be difficult to assign; but as the aqueducts are much neglected, and proper filtering-stones not in general use, it is likely that some seeds of disease may thus enter the system; and it may be mentioned that, during the warm weather, a host of animalcules show themselves to the naked eye in the earthen jars, or “botijas,” which are kept in the culinary apartments as receptacles for water intended for ordinary domestic purposes; and even water, heated in hot baths to ninety or more degrees of Fahrenheit, if again allowed to cool, and stand over a few days, is seen crowded with myriads of playful animalcules.
Of water taken by the writer from the fountain of the great square in Lima, just as the river began to rise in January from the effects of the inland rains, he is happy to be able to furnish the following analysis by Dr. Thomson of Glasgow.