Panama to Patagonia

by Charles M. Pepper

The life of Paita is seen in the market-place among the chattering women venders and their customers. All is animated, good-natured, obliging, but it is chiefly Indian with very little of the Spanish trace. The houses are of mortar, adobe, wild cane, or bamboo laths, some having mud roofs, and they are not bad dwellings. We go on a trip of exploration and find a really clean town—that is, as clean as a town can be that is swept by constant sand-storms—and evidences of good local administration. A hum like all the bees of the universe proves to be merely the murmur from the open school-room. There are two churches, one of cathedral architecture and a more modern one with a wooden steeple like a Congregational meeting-house in New England. In the plaza a forlorn but determined effort is made to coax Nature. Some palm blades are enclosed, and around the borders are scraggy carnations and scrub roses, while in the centre are Kansas sunflowers. Many of the dwellings also have climbing vines, dusty yet still green.

Paita is historic in the annals of the West Coast on account of the legends that have been grouped around it. Most of them relate to its dryness. The rain is said never to fall. This is not quite correct, but difficulty is experienced in finding when a shower may be expected. On my first visit after returning to the ship I casually mentioned at the dinner-table the information given me by an old inhabitant that it rained every seven years. The polite German merchant from Lima corrected me with an apology. “You didn’t quite understand the gentleman,” he said. “He told you that it hadn’t rained for seven years and they didn’t look for rain for another seven years.” After a while the Swiss drummer came aboard just in time for coffee. “Think of it,” he remarked, “it only rains in this place once in twenty-one years.” From later and reliable sources of information I learned that rainfall can be looked for with a reasonable degree of expectation about every fourteen years in the Piura desert, though the moisture sometimes dries before it reaches Paita and the coast. The mean annual temperature is 77° Fahrenheit.

One of the legendary libels which has clustered around Paita is that of the endless flock of goats. The basis of this legend is that the goats are driven down to the port to water, and by the time they get back in the foothills they are so thirsty they have to return, and thus the procession is continuous. Seeing a long flock of them filing through one of the town streets and waiting in vain for the rear-guard to pass, the legend does seem to have a basis in truth, but it is a perversion or exaggeration of facts.

Another libel is that the little dwarf palm which is seen at the top of the highest hill is not a palm at all, but only a slab of boards painted in imitation, so that the inhabitants may believe that a tree can grow in that soil. Actually it is a palm and not a painted post. Moreover, there are real trees. I found a group of the hardy pepper trees just back of the town, where the foothills branch off, and also some acacias, or thorn bushes.

But while it is libelled, Paita also accepts some of the stories which are circulated concerning it. One is that of the English consul or commercial agent who had lived there forty years. When his pension and retirement came, he went to his old home in England, announcing that he would spend his remaining days in the grassy downs where his boyhood had been passed and would be laid away in the green cemetery of his native village. In six months he was back in Paita, declaring that it was the only place in the world in which to live and die. In the course of nature the old gentleman passed away at a very advanced age, and was given the largest funeral that Paita ever had known.

Passing from these legends, Paita, which is now a town of 5,000 or 6,000 inhabitants, has a future as the emporium of northern Peru. It will be the Pacific gateway to the Panama Canal for the Amazon country. Its splendid sheltered bay, with all the facilities for docks and wharves and sea-room for the commercial fleets of a dozen nations, assures its future greatness. It once was the rendezvous of the Yankee whaling-fleets. The railroad runs 60 miles back to Piura, the largest interior city of northern Peru, which has a population of 15,000. Piura is the centre of the cotton-growing district, and with the extension of the irrigating systems the cotton product alone will give Paita a considerable commerce. The total of its imports and exports is between $1,400,000 and $1,500,000 annually. The certainty of the railway being extended as far as the Pongo, or Falls of Manserriche on the Marañon River 400 miles distant, is to be viewed as one means of diverting the rubber and other commerce of the Amazon from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The railway may be built before the Canal is completed.

Paita is the petroleum port. The oil fields lie between it and Tumbez at Talara. The Pennsylvania oil-drillers whom I met on two visits were graphically frank. They thought the petroleum possibilities were great, but they had a poor opinion of the English and French companies. The sulphur beds are near the Bay of Sechura, and are connected with the port of Bayovar by a railway thirty miles long.

A night out from Paita and the morning discloses a sandy shore with round bluffs. After traversing what seems a causeway, there are rocks with a salt crystalline surface. “Guano,” briefly says the experienced traveller, “the Lobos Islands.” “But where is the port of Eten?” “Eten is over there,” pointing to a shell-like side of the hill. A smashing surf is beating, and nothing can be seen but the outline of a pier. Finally heavy surf-boats with strong-armed crews to handle the long oars make their appearance. The passengers are disembarked by means of crane and basket and are hauled up to the pier by the same agency. Eten is the outlet for the sugar and rice of the Lambayeque region, and a railroad spur runs a few miles back in the interior to Ferrenafe. Its yearly commerce is $1,300,000. The Yuncas Indian dialect is spoken in this region. It antedates the Quichua, which was the language of the Inca tribes.

From Eten to Pacasmayo there is a low beach or no beach at all, with the mountains humped up at the foot of conical jagged peaks, beyond which are more peaks in regular order, the Coast Range of the Andes. Pacasmayo bathed in the sunlight and lying at the foot of a high mountain, presents a very pretty picture. The surf is heavy, but the caballitos, or grass canoes, of the natives, are at home in the tumbling waves, and the going ashore is not an unpleasant experience barring the ever present possibility of an upset. The jetty which aids commerce was built by an American company. Pacasmayo ships large quantities of sugar from the valleys beyond and also some rice and fruits. Its oranges are famous. I never saw so many sea-birds as are in this vicinity. The pelicans hang like clouds, and often they dash for the water like an inverted whirling pyramid. Porpoises are numerous, while some seals and whales are found in these waters.

Pacasmayo was the seaport for the transcontinental trail or route to the Amazon which was followed both by the natives and the early Spaniards. The road led over the Cordilleras to Yurimaguas on the Huallaga River. Various projects have been attempted for the purpose of securing through steam and river navigation. An American company has received liberal land grants and other concessions from the Peruvian government. The traffic is large enough to justify building a railway line from Cajamarca to connect with one of the existing coast spurs.