[7] “Guarapo” is the name for the fermented cane-juice used as drink.
[8] “Coto,” or goitre, is common among the inhabitants of Huanuco; but it is a disease very rarely seen on the western side of the Andes.
[9] From pexe, fish; buey, ox.
[10] Though Mr. Mathews omits to mention its botanical character, it is probable from the name huasca (which means rope) that this, like the former plant, is a pliable bejuco. The bejucos are commonly used in Peru as cordage, for the purpose of constructing bridges and fences.
[11] The Chamber of Deputies is composed of representatives elected by the electoral colleges of provinces and parishes. The parochial electoral colleges are composed of all the citizens resident in the parish, congregated according to law. For every two hundred individuals in a parish an elector is nominated; and in every village whose numbers entitle them to name an elector, or have a parochial college, a municipal body is established with a right to superintend its own local interests, consistently with the laws and public good,—and subject to the approbation of the departmental juntas. The electoral colleges of provinces are composed of parochial electors constituted according to law, and they elect deputies to Congress in the proportion of one for every twenty thousand inhabitants, or for a fractional number which exceeds ten thousand. But the province in which the whole population does not come up to ten thousand inhabitants, will nevertheless name a deputy.
[12] See “La Constitucion Politica de la Republica Peruana,” published in 1828.
[13] Cajamarca lies to the eastward of the city of Truxillo, in northern Peru, and, by the post-road, about forty-five leagues inland from the shores of the Pacific. It is the principal town in the province of Cajamarca, and is remarkable in the history of Peru as a seat of the Incas; their baths and palace are yet to be seen, though in ruins. Here the magnanimous Prince Atahualpa, who had purchased his freedom by an immense ransom of gold and silver, fell a victim to the insatiable cupidity and treachery of Pizarro.
[14] In dry weather sweeping the streets can hardly be considered as a serious punishment; but in the rainy season, when it is customary for the inhabitants to walk with wooden clogs, called zuecos, the scavenger’s task could not fail to be of very difficult performance in the Cerro.
[15] The practice, common among Catholics, of visiting the tombs of their family, and honouring the spot where the remains of their relatives or friends rest, is not an ostentatious ceremony, but an humble act of devotion, in which we must believe that the heart of the supplicant is deeply engaged. In the niches of the Pantheon at Lima, the renewal of flowers week after week, and even year after year, bears witness that filial or conjugal affection is still cherished in the heart long after the object of endearment has been removed from those who only survive to deplore their own loss, and with tender sorrow pray for the spirit of the departed. Whoever has visited the cemetery of Père la Chaise, in Paris, must have been struck by the attention of the living to the dead,—the daily decorations of the grave, and the prayer offered up by pious friends; nor can we suppose any person capable of viewing with cold indifference the flowery neatness which surrounds those monumental tombs, which in Père la Chaise seem to triumph over the silence of the grave.
[16] See Memoria, por Jose Villa, Ministro de Hacienda; Lima, 1834.