But while we regret the evils thus entailed on the curate by the established usage and Romish policy[21] of the sacred orders, we do with pleasure and grateful remembrance assure our readers that, from the individual curates spread over the hill-land of this thinly inhabited country, the foreigner and traveller is always sure to meet with the greatest kindness and hospitality. Further to illustrate the moral and physical aspect of the Sierra, we would mention that once, when on a journey in the interior, we had the good fortune to fall in with a clerical gentleman, whose vigour of mind was not to be overcome by the dreariness of his residence at Cauri, a puna village of cold and shivering aspect. This active and spirited person came up to us as we crossed the celebrated road-way of the Incas, on the heights of Huamalies, and we descended together towards the village of Jesus, only a few leagues distant; but before we could reach this place his fine mule began to trip, then tottered, and soon failed entirely in her hind-legs, as if struck by palsy. She was unsaddled, she immediately stretched herself on the ground, swelled out rapidly, struggled and groaned, and in less than half an hour died.
The priest, who on this occasion showed himself to be not at all unacquainted with practical farriery, felt like one who had lost a tried and valued companion. He soon, however, reconciled himself to a misfortune beyond his power to remedy; and ordering his Indian page to walk down hill, (after he had secured the saddle and trappings of the favourite animal here left to the hungry condors, on the back of the cargo-mule, or bed-mule, driven before us,) the jovial priest mounted the Indian’s little rough poney, and we all arrived safely at our destination early in the evening. The cattle—every hoof—were in distant pastures, and the priest could not be provided with another mule before next morning. We therefore passed the evening agreeably under the same roof, where a pretty-looking white mouse was caged, and kept as a precious remedy and charm against all diseases; and some such wizard power as this timid creature was supposed to possess, these poor mountaineers stood much in need of, as no surgeon or physician ever resides among them. At the village of Jesus we arrived in the dry season, when its nearest plains wore a stunted and withered aspect, and when there was no crop in the ground—not their ordinary potato crop, which indeed is their only one; and which in some years succeeds, while in other years it fails on account of the frost. But, during the rainy season, when frost is unknown in the deep ravines and lofty arable heights and acclivities of the inland country,—where the highest-perched houses are seen, on arriving at them, to have still higher back-grounds,—the Indians, each of whom cultivates his own patch of ground, drive all their cattle to the remotest pastures of their extensive common; because they cannot consent to have them feeding near their doors, and crops, which have no proper enclosures.
The Indians and curates have, for the most part, very opposite interests to support in worldly matters; and they are often seen contending with one another in hard bargains when arranging the business of first-fruits, (for tithes are collected by the state,) marriages, burials, and religious festivals, which latter are closely interwoven with the entire social system of the country. These contentions tend to lower the respectability and sacredness of the proper priestly character; and there are not wanting examples of the Indian carrying his ill-will so far as to desire to be revenged of his ghostly father in a sly way.
On one celebrated occasion the Indians of Huamantanga, situated on the western slope of the Andes, and not far inland from the capital, advised their curate that in a hamlet on a distant hill-top a man was dying; so that, if the curate did not use much haste to assist him, he would necessarily die without confession. The curate replied, “But how am I to reach him?—There is no mule at hand; they are all in the remote common.” An Indian promptly answered, “I will fetch one.” But the curate knew that at that time, on account of the numerous crops, no mule was or could be near. He therefore became suspicious respecting the good faith of those about him, for he was old, and had experience of the perverse and cunning disposition of Indians; but, when the man came to him with a very good-looking mule, he suppressed his sentiments, and asked if the animal was accustomed to be ridden by a curate. “Sabe la mula de cura?” The Indian replied, “La mula es buena,”—the mule is a good one. “Yes,” says the curate; “but let us see if she have acquaintance with a curate.” He now cast off his clerical habit, and, having dressed the Indian as a curate, he made the wily rogue mount the beast; when she reared, kicked, and flung violently, until she dashed him to the ground. To the crafty villager, now caught in his own snare, the churchman good-naturedly observed, “You feel, my man, that the mule, though a good one, yet knows nothing of a curate; and, as there is no other alternative, your friend must survive his present illness, or go down to the grave without confession.” But to the grave he went not on this occasion, for the whole was intended as a trick by which the curate might be deceived to his personal hurt or destruction; but, as far as we could judge, our jolly acquaintance at Jesus was quite a favoured individual, who had nothing to fear from the mule next morning brought for his service.
This gentleman had a great many occupations besides the ordinary professional duties of saying mass, hearing confessions, and absolving sins. He supplied his people with whisky, of which he was the only distiller, and they the principal consumers. He considered it a proud discovery, (of which few of his neighbours were in the secret,) that ardent spirits could be made from barley, reared on the hills at comparatively little expense for the grain-grower; while the usual sugar-cane spirit, or “agua ardiente,” extracted by the help of the inferior copper, or the still worse earthen stills of the interior, had no superiority over it. On the other hand, the “pisco,” or finer flavoured Italia, both of which are procured from the fermented juice of the grape, could only be got, and at great expense of land-carriage, from the coast. He therefore hoped to supersede by his whisky the use of the cane-spirit or pale rum, called “agua ardiente,” or “agua ardiente de caña,” because it was sometimes very expensive, and frequently bad; not from any pernicious quality in the saccharine juice, as some natives have imagined, but on account of the defective mode of distillation by poor people, who buy up from the sugar-growers molasses, and a coarse brown sugar, made into little cakes, called “chancaca,” for the purpose of being converted into “agua ardiente,” for which there is always great demand in the colder and mineral districts.
Our speculative priest had a farm in the temperate neighbourhood of a place and curacy called Caina, which lay convenient to his own spiritual flock. Here he cultivated abundance of grain, and possessed extensive pasture grounds. He purchased the “primicia” (first-fruits) of his brethren in Conchucos, and other mountain ranges and elevated districts, wherein church-rates are paid in cattle, as the staple commodity of lands chiefly fitted for pasturage. These cattle he placed on grass, when young and cheap; and when they became in high condition, drove them carefully along the least frequented paths on the verdant heights, to the clover or alfalfa fields in the headland vales of the coast, where they were in demand by the grazier and butcher. He also contracted for so many thousand arobes of sugar yearly, with the planters in Huailas; and by the aid of his Cauri friends and customers, had his sugar conducted to Cerro Pasco at a lower rate of land-carriage than any one else in this line of trade; and, dealing on a large scale, he believed that he could easily undersell the smaller trader.
The Cauri muleteers employed by the priest are staunch hearty fellows who swig off a bottle of whisky, or “agua ardiente,” as if it were less than a mouthful; for they call a bottle a “gota,” or a drop, which shows they hold it as too small a dose for their well-seasoned stomachs.
Our priest also engaged to supply mines, in the adjacent country, with salt for benefiting or preparing metals, which the Caurimen, with their little broad-backed and hardy nags, are used to convey from Huacho on the coasts of the Pacific, by the vale of Sayan, across the Cordillera. He was withal a watch-maker to the neighbouring villages within many leagues of his residence, and knew, if we forget not, how to put the church organ to rights when out of repair.
His people were apparently fond of so stirring and general a speculator; and as they can only grow for themselves, and that in the most sheltered corners, very bad potatoes, with frequent failures in the harvest, (though their common yields good pasture,) their pastor supplied them with maize, (as the miner in isolated localities supplies, at large profits, maize and clothing, &c. to his workmen,) on which, with potatoes, cheese, eggs, and guinea-pigs, they principally support themselves. Butter they rarely know how to churn; and, as the milk is chiefly used for making cheese, it is not often drunk as an article of nutriment, save by those who live in small round booths, that are ever and anon guarded by a host of noisy curs, with hair as shaggy and matted as that which covers the heads of the urchins that feed them. These pastoral huts are scattered over the distant plains and ranges of the mountains throughout the “estancias,” or tracts of hilly pasture-land allotted for rearing and feeding cattle and sheep. At such estancias and huts, the traveller in the interior of Peru has frequently to rest for the night.
The poor Indian owner of a few horned cattle, will rather languish with hunger than slaughter one head of his fold for his private consumption; but he who owns a small flock of sheep can more conveniently sustain himself on meat and “caldo,”—mutton tea, (for vegetables are commonly wanting to make that kind of broth which is to be found at the grain-grower’s,) especially when any traveller passes that way, who buys one of his small sheep—much smaller on the hills than in the warm valleys—for use on the road, and employs the Indian himself to butcher it. These inhabitants of the snowy range, or lofty dales of the Andes, we frequently met,—and they are easily known by their warm clothing, capacious chests, and ruddy complexions,—descending from the frigid regions to the temperate and grain valleys, to barter for the vegetable productions of the agriculturist fresh mutton, which, already skinned and free from offal, they carry on donkeys (animals which in the hands of the Indian escape the cruel stripes and goads inflicted on them by the merciless negro or zambo); and this meat, like beef, being previously dried in the sun, is laid up for use by the dweller of the warm and narrow glen overhung by scorched and rocky acclivities, who places it before the traveller, under the usual name of “charque,” of which we have often eaten with a good appetite.