The empire of the Incas lay principally in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador, and extended to the northern part of Chile, but the Incas did not overcome the Araucanian Indians—fierce and intractable—who dwelt in Chile. Nor did they, apparently, descend very much beyond the eastern slopes of the Andes, into the forests and plains of the Amazon and of the Plate, though there are some vestiges of their occupation there. They established a line of forts, of blocks of squared stone along the ceja, or edge, of the Montaña, some of which we may see to-day, doubtless to ward off the attacks of the forest savages.
The Incas possessed great stores of gold, which they used to make household vessels for the princes and for religious purposes, and the Spaniards possessed themselves of this gold. Much of it was sent down to the coast for shipment to Spain, to fill the needy coffers of the Spanish sovereigns. Some of it fell into the clutches of Drake and other enterprising adventurers into these realms of gold, who disputed the Spanish monopoly of the New World.
Let us imagine, as we pace the deck of the steamer and look over towards the setting sun, touching the bosom of the broad Pacific, an early scene upon these waters. Here is Drake's ship, Golden Hind or Pelican, blowing out of Callao with every stitch of canvas set. Drake has heard that a Plate ship, laden with gold and silver, has just set sail for Panama, and he is chagrined at having missed it. The Spaniards had feared no danger. As far as they had known there were no craft in these waters save those which flew the colours of Spain. But now the viceroy of Lima, Don Francisco de Toledo, is uneasy. The, to him, unspeakable Drake—"Caramba! Draco, a Dragon"—is about!
The English ship overhauls the plate ship. But the wind drops and she is still hull down, many a mile of heaving sea between. Shall they lose the prize? No; the boats are put out, and for three days the men of Devon towed their vessel, straining at their oars as British seamen will, and the sluggish Plate ship rises more upon their horizon. Away they toil, past the river of Guayaquil, above which the gleaming Chimborazo rears his distant head, until, six hundred miles to spare from the haven of Panama, she is overtaken, off Cape San Francisco, in what is now Ecuador. They board the ship and seize the treasure, which, according to the Spanish chroniclers, amounted to nearly a million pounds sterling.
The viceroy did not altogether lose hope of recovering this treasure. He prepared a veritable hornets' nest for Drake, in the form of an armada, which was ordered to wait at the Strait of Magellan, which, he imagined, Drake must pass in order to get home. But Drake was not thus to be entrapped. He sailed on northwards—trying for a strait eastward through America—reaching the spot known now as Drake's Bay, in California; found, of course, no passage; careened his ship, cleaned it, and turning his prow westward, sailed across the Pacific, going completely round the world for England, where he was worthily knighted by Queen Elizabeth on the quarter-deck of his wave-worn ship.
Guayaquil is the gateway to ancient Quito, in the Cordillera, and between that port and Callao is Salaverry with the quaint and busy Peruvian town of Trujillo, founded by Pizarro. Callao, to-day, is the principal seaport upon this vast coast, between Panama and Valparaiso. The Oroya railway running therefrom takes us up to the summit of the Andes, nearly 16,000 feet above sea-level, first passing through the old viceregal capital, and ascending the valley of the Rimac, whose waters, the whispering oracle of the Incas, gave their name to Lima.
Lima, the old Ciudad de los Reyes, or "city of the kings," as Pizarro, its founder, termed it, in honour of his Spanish sovereigns, surrounded by its cultivated lands, irrigated from the Rimac, must be regarded as one of the premier cities of the Spanish American world, and one of the most quaint and pleasing, with many historical and literary attributes, a legacy of the old viceregal times. A handsome cathedral overlooks the broad, well-planted plaza, and its high towers, rebuilt after the disastrous earthquake of 1746, a sketch of whose terrors I have given later on, dominate the green campiña, or countryside.
It is a city of many churches and other ecclesiastical buildings, and has something of that mediaeval atmosphere we have remarked in the city of Mexico, and some of its public buildings are worthy of note. The gloomy structure which held the Inquisition faces upon a small plaza in the midst of which arises a bronze equestrian figure of Bolivar, a replica of that at Caracas. We remark the carved oak balconies to certain of the ancient houses, former residences of viceroys and nobles.
But Lima does not love to live upon its past. Its people have laid out a magnificent Paseo, or promenade, named after Columbus, and here a gay and fashionable throng parades upon the Sabbath day, or in the evenings, listening to the music of the band amid the palms and flowers. Here congregate the wealth and beauty of the city, its statesmen and leaders, and all those who customarily throng to these earthly paradises which the Spanish Americans customarily lay out as adjuncts of their cities. The latest modes are seen, the fashions of Paris and London—also the half-naked Indian, unlettered and unashamed.