Pleasing Historic Memories—Moorish Churches and Andalusian Art—Pizarro’s Remains in the Cathedral—Transmitted Incidents of the Earthquake—The Palace, or Government Building—General Castilla’s Humor—Decay of the Bull-Fight—Cultured Society of the Capital—Foreign Element—San Francisco Monastery—Municipal Progress—Chamber of Commerce—A Trip up the Famous Oroya Railway—Masterwork of Henry Meiggs—Heights and Distances—Little Hell—The Great Galera Tunnel—Around Oroya—Railroad to Cerro de Pasco Mines—American Enterprise in the Heart of the Andes.
PLEASANT Lima! Fairest of transplanted capitals! The Moorish memories of Andalusia linger over the City of the Kings which Pizarro founded. The stern monuments of the Inquisition are yet with her. Seek them in the Senate Chamber, where the inquisitors sat in judgment; search for them just over the bridge, where the doomed victims after condemnation awaited their fate; or in the Plaza Mayor, where the autos de fe were celebrated and the condemned were burned or hanged. Reflect, the last victim of the stake was a woman, Madame Castro. She was burned, in 1736, “for being a Jewess.” She would talk heterodoxy!
Historic Lima! Seat of the viceroyalty; throbbing heart and scourging soul of the Spanish colonial empire; home of the Royal Audiencia, centre of law-giving and delegated authority, whence the Ordenazas—the minute code of government and administration alike for subjugated savage and freebooting colonist—were promulgated for all the vast territory from Panama to the Straits of Magellan and from the Pacific far beyond the Andes to the Amazon and La Plata!
But the glory of rulers perishes. Few can name their quota of those forty-four viceroys of Spain who held the sceptre on the Pacific coast. After Pizarro, the Conquistador, of the iron fist and will of steel, and as his superior, came—who? Blasco Nuñez Vela was the first of the viceroys,—a harsh, haughty, obstinate servant of the Crown, whose blundering nearly overwhelmed Spain with the sunset of the splendid colonial empire at its very dawn. Who came between and who was the last?
The sentimental antiquarian grieves over the destruction of the viceregal residence of this last delegated ruler. It lay in a grove of palms and orange trees under the shadow of Mt. San Cristobal, with the ancient garden of the Descalzos, or Barefoot Friars, neighboring it. The mansion was mediæval and tropical. But the big brewery encroached on it. The horses and mules of the big brewery had to be stabled; the beer wagons had to have room. Mr. Champion Jones, the English manager of the industry, gave a breakfast to foreign and resident society one Sunday morning. We revived the memories of the viceroys over an exquisite French menu, and some of us carried away a few mementos. The next day the vandal destroyer pulled down the walls. The mules are stabled there now.
Yet there is cheer for the sentimentalist who mourns over departed glories. The mansion never really was the residence of the viceroy. It was only the bower of his favorite mistress, who dispensed hospitality and received the recognition that the stern society of the times gave to power and place without questioning the private morals of the high and mighty. Besides, it was long after the Inquisition, for the viceroyalty lasted till the young years of the nineteenth century.
But the fourscore churches, with their minarets and towers, their tessellated mosaics and blending of bright colors,—they are Andalusian adaptations of Moorish art. Very shabby are most of them and not kept in good repair. There are too many mosque-like worship-places, and too few devout and open-pursed worshippers. From the roof of the American Legation I counted thirty of these churches. The artist might preserve all the charm of antiquity and yet satisfy the craving for the picturesque if the means were provided and the disposition to do it existed. These edifices are of Spain in the colonial epoch, and Spain never repaired church or castle or dwelling. Let them rust and fall apart, for have not crumbling stone and fading colors a graphicness of their own? Yet with these decaying and neglected Moorish churches in Lima the ruin discloses too much that is tawdry, too much veneer.
The Cathedral is modern, not moth-eaten or weather-rusted within or without. It took the place of the old structure, which was destroyed by earthquake. The interior is tile-paved and clean; there are antique mural paintings, fine examples of wood-carving in the pulpit, solid silver altar fixings, the money value of which the guide recites with swelling pride; and, greatest of all memorials, the bones of Francisco Pizarro.
On my first visit to Lima, in the hurry of business matters and social engagements, I indulged in no sightseeing. The hotel runner who was piloting me about was puzzled. The Cathedral was only a block distant. “Won’t you go to the Cathedral,” he said, “and see the bones of Mister Pizarro?” The lingering and respectful emphasis on the “Mister” was almost too much for my gravity. The Pizarros, as my recollection runs, were swineherds, and the appellation Don never was theirs. But if respect were lacking for their family tree in their lifetime, no descendant could complain of irreverence or want of courtesy in this volunteer guide who sorrowed because of my apparent indifference regarding the late Mr. Pizarro.
On a subsequent visit I went to view the remains. The caretaker irreverently draws the curtains from the niche in the little chapel of the Virgin. I am sure the hotel runner would not do so. But habit in satisfying tourist curiosity has made the Cathedral guide a showman. The remains are in a marble casket. The skeleton is well preserved. The frame is that of a big man; the brains are kept apart in a jar. Rolled in a metal case is the parchment certificate of authenticity. This is what was the mighty conqueror, the most heroic of the Conquistadores, the peer of the indomitable Cortez. Shall we muse curiously, or shall we give way to the physical sensation of being in the anatomical museum of a medical school? It depends on the temperament.