[CHAPTER V]
ALONG THE PACIFIC COAST
IN COLOMBIA, ECUADOR AND PERU
An enormous horizon opens to the traveller who essays the voyage along the Pacific coast of South America, from Panama perhaps to the extremity of the continent; a voyage through every range of climate, from the Equator to the frigid south, past verdant tropic shores or barren desert, or beneath eternal snowfields; a voyage redolent of the early heroic history of the New World, with, to-day, a setting of the picturesque modern life of the old viceregal, one-time colonies of Spain.
We shall touch at innumerable seaports, the outlet of five different countries; those of Colombia and Ecuador, of Peru, Bolivia and Chile. From Panama to Cape Horn this vast trajectory of some five thousand miles may be roughly divided into six parts of eight hundred miles each; that is, Panama to Guayaquil, thence to Callao, thence to Iquique, thence to Valparaiso, with the remainder along the southern coast of Chile: a voyage equal approximately to one from Liverpool to New York and back again.
Due to the comparative tranquillity of the ocean, the voyage is made in steamers of coasting type, in which the state-rooms are all upon the deck, and open directly therefrom, a pleasing arrangement in comparison with the stuffy hold of trans-Atlantic or trans-Pacific vessels.
Behold, then, a sterile coastline, beaten by never-ending surf, broken by rocky promontories, bird-covered perhaps, and seal-haunted, whence the distant roar of breaking rollers at times comes seaward, and, inland, a rising, undulating zone of desert and cañon, brown or tawny or purple in its shadows, stretching away mysteriously for perhaps a hundred miles to where it meets the solemn Cordillera, which, grey, faint and serrated, with no form save that of outline—the true test of distance—forms our horizon on the east.
Above is a deep blue sky, but inclining to greens and opals, for, in the west, with banners of gold and crimson vapours—the colours of Spain, whose mariners first beheld it here, the sun is setting, its disc already upon the bosom of the Pacific. The sun-god of the Incas goes down, and rose-tinted rays shoot across the stark and rugged littoral and touch the edges of the green, refreshing seas, rising between the steamer and the distant surf. It is the coast of Peru, and in this romantic hour of sunset yonder deserts might be peopled with the spectral forms of mail-clad Spaniards, the gaunt Pizarro at their head, heedless of all save empire and El Dorado.