The climate of Cerro Pasco is for nearly one half the year, or from the end of November to May, exceedingly gloomy and variable. In the course of a few hours, the wind is often observed to take the round of the compass; and in the same time it changes from fair to rain, from rain to sleet, snow, hail, and rain again. The lanes, for streets they merit not to be termed, are during the greater part of these months wet and miry. The thermometer of Fahrenheit, during this period, rarely rises above 44° in the shade, and seldom falls so low as the freezing point.
But during the dry season, which reigns from May to November, it is much otherwise; and then, though the sun at noon shines forth with great power in the face of a cloudless canopy, the frosts at night are intense, and the evenings and the mornings are keenly piercing and cold. In the course of the month of August the air is so remarkably dry that the nose and fauces become parched and painful. The writer suffered so much from this troublesome affection as to find it necessary to seek a more temperate air a few leagues off, when the ailment disappeared immediately.
The severity of the climate of Cerro Pasco had little to mitigate its effects in the manner wherein houses were constructed in the time of the Spaniards. The dwellings are covered with thatch, and this is the unfortunate cause of frequent and destructive fires breaking out in the town. To avoid such accidents, one or two houses have been lately covered with lead.
It was not until the arrival of the Peruvian Mining Company, in December 1825, that the inhabitants were taught how to mitigate the evils of their inclement home by the construction of chimneys and proper fire-places, as well as glazed windows; and for the introduction of these comforts to the dwellings and firesides of the miners we have heard the company blessed, long after its agents had to forsake those regions of subterranean wealth. Though this rich district has not the natural advantages of a favourable climate, yet it possesses that by which its rigour may be softened and its effects meliorated; it has abundance of coal.
Within five miles or thereabouts of Cerro Pasco, is a coal-mine of rather inferior quality, from which Captain Hodge, a distinguished miner from Cornwall, used to supply his customers. The coal burnt at the steam-engine was conveyed about five or six miles from the coal-mine, near the pueblo of Rancas, called “La mina de las Maquinas,” and is of very superior quality. The fuel, however, which is most common in Cerro Pasco, as well as all over the frigid districts of the Sierra, is “champa” a turf (not peat) cut from the surface of the marsh-land. Charcoal becomes very expensive; and the large braseros or pans, in which the rich miners once used to burn it, (though not always with impunity, because of the deleterious effect of the carbonic acid gas evolved,) are fortunately out of fashion since the advantages of the chimneys and grates have become known.
For smelting purposes, at different mining situations in the Sierra, the ordure of quadrupeds is collected on the plains in the dry season, and used as fuel with rushes and long grass which grow on the pasture-grounds.
Heavy timber for the use of the mines and mineral haciendas, and lighter timber for house-building in Cerro Pasco, is dragged a distance of sixty miles, and over bad and uneven road, by men and oxen, from the woods of Paucartambo, at the entrance into the Montaña, to the south-east of Pasco.
Fodder is sometimes exceedingly scarce and dear in Cerro Pasco. It frequently takes six reals, or one dollar (3s. or 4s.), daily, to feed a mule or horse with “alcaser” or barley-straw cut down when green, and conducted on beasts’ backs from the small villages in adjoining glens; and it is therefore customary for those who come to Pasco on business, and have several mules or horses, to send them away to the nearest convenient pastures until required to renew their journey. Indeed, in Cerro Pasco itself are to be seen in the wet season small patches of barley which never ripens, and is cut down green; but the quantity grown is too trifling to deserve notice, except in so far as it goes to show the sort of climate in this locality. Potatoes and “alcaser” are the principal productions of Quinoa; for, though its pastures are good, the temperature of the place is too cold to produce maize: but a league or two lower down, at a village called Cajamarquilla, wheat may be grown, but in small quantity for want of sufficient arable land. At this place are numerous little gardens carefully cultivated, whence onions, cabbages, lettuces, and flowers for the use of churches and chapels, &c. are taken, and sold in Pasco market-place, which throughout the year is well supplied with a variety of fruits, plenty of good fresh meat and other provisions in abundance, from the warm and temperate valleys beneath, and lakes and plains around the mines.[1]
“No one is ignorant,” says the intelligent and active prefect, Don Francisco Quiros, in his report to the departmental junta of his jurisdiction of Junin, assembled in Huanuco in 1833,—“No one is ignorant that the richest fountain of our national wealth this day is concentrated in the immense treasures of the mineral of Pasco. Its works, conducted with intelligence and managed with economy, would be more than enough to spread abroad abundance in all the republic, enough to draw towards us the productions of the whole universe, and to increase incalculably the delights and comforts of life. But the fatality which too often persecutes what is good, has plunged us in misery. Avaricious hands, desiring to enrich themselves in a moment, have for years back paralysed our best exertions; and by the indiscreet liberality of our mineral statute, ‘ordenanza,’ permitting the labouring miners to be paid in ore, and thereby violating more and more the principles of subterranean architecture, it would seem that instead of supporting the ample domes with solid pillars, pains had been taken to bring them down. There, as in a sepulchre, our most flattering hopes will be interred, if with a strong hand abuses so enormous shall not be checked,—if a wholesome severity may not be able to restrain the scandalous practice of thieving, as well as the irregular mode of subterranean labour.”
The mine labourer can choose for himself, by the laws of the mineral district, one of two sorts of payment. He can have four reals, or two shillings, daily as a fixed hire; or he may choose to retain a certain proportion of the ore, which he breaks down from the mine and carries, (panting loudly under his burden, contained in a leathern bag or capacho,) to the surface, where the division takes place by established measure; and the women, with a pot of chicha in hand, eagerly grasped at by the overheated and half-exhausted capachero or carrier, commonly stand by the mouth of the mine to carry home the miner’s share,—a bundle of ore called “mantada.” A common workman’s daily share of metal may be worth a great deal of money, or it may be worth little or nothing. When the former is the case, the mine is said to be in “boya” or “bolla,” namely, a state of rich production, when the common labourer naturally insists upon being paid in metal; and again, when the mine does not produce good ore, or such as pays well, the labourer, who throws away his all on the pageantry of religious festivals and processions, claims his four reals per day’s work, and will have no share in his employer’s bad bargain.