Huanuco is not to be confounded with the ancient town called Leon de Guanuco, of which the remarkable remains are still well worth visiting on the high pasture-land of Huamalies: for the city now called Huanuco, or, as some write it, Guanuco, is in a delightful valley, twenty-two leagues in a north-easterly direction from the mines of Cerro Pasco, with a descent of about seven thousand feet; thus situated, as nearly as may be, half-way in respect to altitude between Cerro Pasco and the ocean.

In the first three leagues of our descent from the mines to the vale, we pass by a number of mills for grinding metal, preparatory to its being mixed with salt and quicksilver for the purpose of amalgamation. These are situated in a narrow rocky glen; the rugged road through it lying often along the bed of the stream that wanders down it, putting a great many mills successively in motion as it is directed into troughs or canals leading to the clumsy machinery of the haciendas, to which the ore is conducted at great trouble and expense, on the backs of mules, donkeys, and llamas.

From the village of Quinoa, only three leagues from Cerro, and once celebrated for its gold mine, to the village of Cajamarquilla, two leagues lower down, the road is furrowed, deep, and miry during the wet season; but the pasture-grounds are good, and upon these the cattle of the miners are sent to feed at small expense. From two to three leagues below Cajamarquilla, of which we took notice in our account of Cerro Pasco, is Huariaca, a small town with a large plaza, or square, and very good houses. This town is the centre of a curacy and seat of a governor, with a climate analogous to that of Obrajillo on the road between Lima and Cerro, or Cerro Pasco, formerly noticed. Its artificial productions are also the same as we formerly mentioned, viz. maize, wheat, beans, potatoes, &c.; but here natural vegetation is more luxuriant, and the air exceedingly benign: the frosts are seldom so keen as to blight or wither the parks of lucern, and troublesome heat is unknown. Huariaca is endeared to the memory of many a Cornish miner, who lost his health in Cerro Pasco, and at this rendezvous for convalescence rejoiced in the smiling aspect of nature, and enjoyed the delightful feeling of returning health. The writer, in common with several of his countrymen, has to lament the premature death of the curate of this place, Dr. Don Pablo de Marticurena; whose intelligence, hospitality, and amiable disposition rendered him an object of love and respect, while his house was the home of the traveller, and the abode of charity, without distinction of creed or country. A league below Huariaca, we cross a bridge placed over the small river of Cono or Pallanchacra, a short distance above which is the famous tepid mineral well of Cono; to which, as it is in a temperate little glen, the sick have frequent recourse. On the banks of this stream we have peaches in perfection and plenty; and as we approach towards the village of Saint Rafael, a few leagues lower down, we are amused by looking up at heights topped with Indian hamlets, and at little flats and declivities under crop of wheat and potatoes, &c. and, near the river, maize. The temperature of Saint Rafael is delicious, and this locality is free from any endemic disease.

From Saint Rafael to Ambo is a distance of several leagues of hard road, sometimes running close to the river’s edge, often running along the steep, and with its rocky staircases and narrow passes subjected in time of rains to be blocked up by large stones and small trees, carried down by the mountain torrents. Where the glen expands towards the hill-tops, but closes so narrowly below as only to give room for the channel of the river, we find the road at certain narrows carried along the face of the rock; and here the craggy projections serve as supporters for poles or rafters extending along the intervening gaps, and covered with flags or brushwood laid on and coated with a little earth, thus forming an extremely awkward and narrow bridgeway suspended over the stream. At Ambo, nine leagues lower down than Huariaca, the aspect of the country is changed. Here the loud chirping (for it cannot be called croaking) of little frogs heard by night—the granadilla in elegant flowering festoons seen by day on the pacay and lucuma tree, tell the warm and thirsty traveller that he has come to the land of “guarapo,”[7] where he may enjoy the cool of the corridor, and cast off the load of his Sierra ponchos and heavy clothing.

From Ambo to the city of Huanuco we have five leagues of a charming ride; and from Ambo downwards, the Vale of Huanuco may be said to commence. In this vale the writer resided for three years. The year is, as usual, divided into the wet and dry seasons, observing the same periods of change as we have already noticed to belong to the seasons on the high Sierra. In this valley, however, snow never falls, except on the summits of the highest hills; and the thermometer of Fahrenheit is seldom seen to rise above 72° in the shade of the veranda, or wide-spreading fig-tree. In the hottest day, when every little stone on the surface of the newly-turned field glistens in the sunbeams, so as to torment the sight, the thermometer rises very high on being exposed in the open air to the direct rays of the sun; but, upon being removed into the shade, it again falls to a very few degrees above 70°; and scarcely ever throughout the whole year is it seen to sink under 66° of the night thermometer placed within doors,—thus manifesting an equability of atmospherical temperature altogether as extraordinary as it is benignant. So small, then, is the range of the thermometer in this fine locality, that the state of the internal circulation of our frame is but little disturbed by sudden changes induced by vicissitudes of temperature. To the uniform mildness of its atmosphere it may be principally owing that pulmonary consumption is as little a disease of this favoured locality as ague;[8] for we never, during the period of three years that we resided here, had occasion to know of a single instance in which this disease originated in the valley; but those who, by residing in other situations, had their lungs nearly wasted by consumption and spitting of blood, have, in different parts of this valley, found a temporary asylum which afforded a prolongation of life when entire restoration to health was physically impossible. The climate is sometimes complained of as too dry, it being only during the rainy months that the perspiration commonly becomes sensible on moderate exertion. During the greater part of the year the reflected rays of the sun on the sides of the valley would render it intolerably hot, were it not for the daily breeze that, from about 11 A.M. to 3 P.M. comes with uniform regularity from the Montaña, through the aperture in the mountains along which the river of Huanuco rolls towards the Huallaga and great Marañon.

In August and September, no perceptible dew falls; but during these months, when vegetation among the small neighbouring dales becomes scanty, the deer often steal in herds to the thickets near the river; and we have stalked them at midnight in the midst of the fields, without discovering a trace of moisture on the alfalfa leaf. The nights are always delightful; and the sky, when it does not rain, is pure, bright, and beautiful. The hills on the eastern side of the valley are clothed with pastures, have perennial springs and wood in their dingles and corries, and are capable of grazing cattle all the year: but opposite to these, on the western side, the hills, like those of the coast, are dull arid masses for nine months in the year, only furnishing a sparse growth of flowering shrubs and weeds on their sides; whilst their elevated tops alone throw forth a denser crop of sweet herbage, on which folds of cattle regale themselves in the months of January, February, and March,—at a season, as we have seen, when the uncultivated heights near the coast are scorched, and stripped of all vegetation except cacti and some bulbous plants. But the plains that spread round the base of the hills and mountains that go to form the Vale of Huanuco, are never allowed to take upon them the withered face of winter. By the aid of rivulets from the mountains, sometimes diverted from their natural channels by art, and carried, by circuitous aqueducts of many miles in extent, the numerous flats among the recesses of the heights and slopes, frequently elevated much above the lower plains, are kept ever verdant and productive, in like manner as the fields and enclosures in the bottom of the vale are fertilized by canals from the river. The best sugar-cane comes to maturity in about eighteen months or two years, and yields several cuttings of after-growth. The lucern or alfalfa, without the aid of top-dressing, gives six crops annually for an indefinite number of years; and in some favoured spots it yields a cutting in six weeks, and therefore gives eight crops yearly. The writer had a plot that yielded, at this rate, alfalfa of about a yard in height, and in good flower. The plantain, both long and short, and the richest tuna, or Indian fig, grow in abundance; the finest pineapples are brought from the neighbouring Montaña, where vegetation is much more rapid and vigorous than in the Vale of Huanuco. In this vale, however, the palta and cheremoya mellow on the branches in their native soil. The maguey, coffee, cotton, and vine, the pomegranate and orange, the citron, lemon, and lime, &c. flourish here; and the meanest villager, as well as the humblest lodger under a cane-roofed shed, inhales with every breath the odours of never-failing blossoms. As the morning sun gilds the high ridges of this happy valley, its inhabitants are animated to the daily labours of the field by the cheerful voice of the prettily-plumaged inmates of their well-shaded bowers. Such, then, are some of the more prominent beauties and natural advantages of the Vale of Huanuco: and we may here mention, that the city of Huanuco is the principal seat of recreation for him who wastes his strength and frets his temper in the too often delusive pursuit of wealth in Cerro Pasco, and other inclement mining localities in the neighbourhood. In spite of their vexations and misfortunes, few can have invested themselves with a mood so sad or so cynic as not to enjoy and partake of the enthusiastic glee and antiquated gambols of a carnival feast in Huanuco.

The agriculture of Huanuco,—though alluring to the eye of the ordinary traveller, who only glances at its rich and waving fields, enclosed within tapias or fences of mud, and hedges of the Indian fig, and aloe or maguey plants,—is in every way defective as a branch of industry. The fields owe their luxuriance to nature rather than to man, except in the single advantage of water, which he often directs and supplies to them. Manure is a thing never thought of; and the ground seldom requires it, though we see the same spot year after year under crop: but much of the soil which is considered poor might be rendered fertile, in so favourable a climate, if the people would only take the trouble of cleaning out their large cattle-pens once a year; but this would be to diverge from their accustomed routine, which they dislike to forsake. The implements of husbandry are of the rudest kind. The plough, which is slight and single-handed, is constructed merely of wood, without mould-board, which we have seen a one-handed person manage with perfect dexterity. The ploughshare is a thick iron blade, only tied when required for use by a piece of thong, or lasso, on the point of the plough, which divides the earth very superficially. Where the iron is not at hand, as frequently happens, we understand that the poor peasant uses, instead, a share made of hard iron-wood that grows in the Montaña. Harrows they have, properly speaking, none: if we remember well, they sometimes use, instead, large clumsy rakes; and we have seen them use a green bough of a tree dragged over the sown ground, with a weight upon it to make it scratch the soil. In room of the roller, of which they never experienced the advantage, they break down the earth in the field intended for cane-plants, after it has got eight or ten ploughings and cross-ploughings, with the heel of a short-handled hoe which they call “lampa;” a tool which they use with great dexterity in weeding the cane-fields and clearing aqueducts. For smoothing down the clods of earth, we have seen some Indians use a more antiquated instrument. It consisted of a soft, flat, and round stone, about the size of a small cheese, which had a hole beaten through its centre by dint of blows with a harder and pointed stone. To the stone thus perforated they fixed a long handle, and, as they swung it about, they did great execution in the work of “cuspiando” or field-levelling.

Lucern or alfalfa is daily cut down, and used green, as scores of cattle and the working oxen for the plough and sugar-mills are to be fed by it; yet the scythe is not in use among the great planters, who find it necessary to keep two or three individuals at the sickle to cut down food for herds, in the daytime fed on irrigated pastures, but at night fed in corrals or pens.

Potato-ground they are accustomed to break up on the face of steeps with deep narrow spades, to which long handles are attached, that afford good leverage. In the same manner the soil is turned up by those who have neither plough nor oxen, but who yet sow maize on the temperate flats on the hill-sides, and in the midst of thickets by mountain streams, where the soil is usually fertile, and materials for fencing are at hand. People thus circumstanced make holes in the ground with a sharp-pointed stick, where they bury the seed secure, that it may not be taken up by the fowls of the air; and that, when dropped in virgin soil, it may yield a luxuriant crop and plentiful harvest. The Indian sows the white-grained maize in preference to the yellow, (morocho,) as he considers that when toasted it makes the best “cancha,” which the poor Indian everywhere uses instead of bread; and that when boiled it makes the blandest “mote,” for so they call the simply boiled maize: it has moreover the credit of making the most savoury chicha, or beer, which they home-brew whenever they have a little surplus grain at their command. They also, as we were given to understand, make a kind of beer from the fermented juice of the maize-stalks compressed between small rollers of wood moved with the hand. The usual application of dry maize-leaves and stubble is to feed cattle, and for this purpose it is considered more fattening than either alfalfa or sugar-cane tops.

Agi, or pimento, is cultivated around the little Indian houses and gardens in the Vale of Huanuco; and without this condiment the natives hardly relish any kind of food.