The first stroll disclosed the hitherto unsuspected fact that several of the mud-dens were shops. One of them posed as a restaurant, but its restorative powers were at best anemic. Jaen is probably the hottest, and certainly the hungriest, provincial capital in Peru. To retain its rank as a “city,” it fulfilled nominally the test as a place where bread is made,—a tiny, soggy bun selling for the price of an American loaf. Milk and fruit, which might easily have been superabundant here, were unknown luxuries, and the customary food of the populace included nothing a well-bred dog would have touched in any but a ravenous state. A dozen of us without families, including the alcalde, were dependent upon the “restaurant,” and we agreed upon a fixed ration of bread and eggs, the supply of which never approached even the normal demand. But the alcalde quickly formed the habit of sneaking over before the hour set and, by virtue of his official powers, consuming most of the provender. To forestall him, the rest of us took to arriving earlier, until it grew customary to appear for the noonday meal at about nine, and to sit down to supper toward three, eyeing each other ravenously, and jealously watching the cook’s every movement. He who is accustomed to complain of the “high cost of living” should try the antidote of a journey down the Andes, where the high cost reigns supreme, without the living. In these languid corners of the world where life is reduced to its lowest terms food and lodging assume the first place of importance, and the mind is never free from these primitive apprehensions; no sooner does one eat than the worry arises as to where the next meal will come from, as each day’s pleasure on the road is tempered by wondering what hardship the night will have in store.
There were some evidences of negro blood in Jaen, though that of the aboriginal Indian tribe of the region was universal, in the percentage of one half to a far smaller fraction in varying individuals. The men wore home-made garments of the cheapest cotton, patched and sun-faded, generally no shirt, with merely a kerchief knotted about the neck above the undershirt, and sombreros de junco, hats woven of a species of swamp-grass or reeds, which a few weeks of sun and rain gave the appearance of a badly thatched roof. The women wore no hats, combed their raven-black hair flat and smooth, without adornments, and let it hang down their backs in a single braid. Like all the cholas and half-castes of the sex in the Andes, they dragged their misshapen skirts constantly in the mire of the streets and the “floors” of their huts, and were habitually even less cleanly in their habits than the men. The stage of education may be gaged from the fact that the government telegraph operator assured me I could not reach Cerro de Pasco by land, but must “cross the sea” to Lima and take the railroad from there. Jaen’s chief pastime for speeding up the monotonous stretch between the cradle and the grave is the consumption of the native “cañazo,” and only those who rose early were likely to find a completely sober man. A sort of harmless anarchy reigned. A man merry with cane-juice might sit outside the mud school-house and keep school from “functioning” all day long, without interference. An amorous youth, going on a drunken rampage among the huts or the washerwomen on the banks of the irrigating ditch, was avoided if possible, but was never forcibly restrained. As is frequent in tropical towns, there was little evidence of religion, pseudo or otherwise, which thrives best in the high, cold regions of the mysterious páramos. The mud church, with its tower melted off unevenly at the top, like a half-burned candle in a wind, had long since lost its cura, and served now as provincial jail, by the simple addition of a few poles set in adobe across the door and a few languid soldiers lolling in the general vicinity whenever they had no particular desire to be somewhere else.
On the afternoon of my arrival the rumor floated languidly over the town that the weekly cow was to be butchered next morning, but it was denied later in the evening. I made the most of my day of leisure by acquiring a bar of native soap, of the appearance of a mud-pie and the scent of boiling glue, and spending some two hours in the irrigating ditch, stringing across the main street, from a telegraph pole to a rafter of “my house,” all the garments that could be spared from use in an unexacting society. Nothing was more certain than that I should start again at daylight of the second morning—until news arrived that the river eighteen miles south was impassable until the waters receded. It was evident, too, that I must deny myself the companionship of “Cleopatra.” She hung wilted and dejected in the town pasture, and at best there was no hope that she would last many days further, even if there were any means of getting her across the swollen river. I accepted the alcalde’s offer of $3 for the animal and her “furniture,” and felt a glow of satisfaction, tempered with regret at the loss of a good companion, for all her faults, that I should no longer have to drag my feet behind me at her snail’s pace, and be dependent on my right arm for advancement.
On the morning I should have started, the rumor again ran riot that the town was going to pelar un res—“peel a beef.” This time matters went so far as to lead the octogenarian victim out into the main street, where the population gathered in an attitude of anticipation, a dozen or more armed with home-made axes and knives, the rest with pots and gourds. For a long time the languid hubbub of some discussion rose and fell about the downcast animal. Then gradually the gathering disintegrated and scattered to its huts, each pausing at sight of a face, to drone in that singularly indifferent monotone of the tropics, “No hay carne hoy”—(there is no meat to-day). Some misanthropist, an agent of a neighboring hacienda, it turned out, had offered $9 for the animal, and Jaen did not feel justified in squandering any such fortune for mere food. My rosy dream of again tasting fresh meat and of carrying supplies on my journey was once more rudely dissipated.
The east was blushing from the first kiss of the bold, tropical sun when I sallied forth on the morning I had concluded to start, river or no river, and went to wake up the “restaurant” keeper, sleeping on his dining-table with the precious bread-box under his head. The alcalde appeared almost at the same instant from the direction of the irrigation ditch, his towel about his neck. He greeted me with forced courtesy. His solemn promise to arrange to have my baggage transported to the river in consideration for the low price at which he had acquired “Cleopatra” had gone the way of most South American promises—into thin air. Now I reminded him of it, he would order a soldier to accompany me at once. The earth swung a long way eastward on its axis without any other sign of activity. Then some one came to say that a soldier would not be sent, because Anastasio Centurión, returning to his “Hacienda Algarrobo” forthwith, would be delighted to carry my belongings on his mule. An hour later he declined to carry them, then he was prevailed upon by his compadre, the lieutenant-governor, to renew his offer; then he again concluded the weight was too great, and finally sent an urchin for my saddle-bags. Before they were loaded, however, a dispute broke out over the ownership of a “silver” spur that had been picked up in the sand of the main street, and the town followed the alcalde to the mud hut that served as court of justice. It was also the city bakery, and the wife of the justice, who had put off baking the morning before, and was not yet mixing the dough, ceded a corner of the kitchen table to the court, which in the course of an hour settled the case in the customary Latin-American way—by deciding that the disputed property should remain “in the hands of justice.”
A woman of the jungles of Jaen preparing me the first meal in days at the typical Ecuadorian cook-stove. She declined to pose for her picture and is watching me dust the kodak
Peruvian prisoners earn their own livelihood by weaving hats, spinning yarn, and the like. As in the debtors’ prisons of Dickens’ day, the whole family may go to jail to live with the imprisoned head of the household
A soldier was at length sent to round up one of the donkeys grazing in the main plaza. Gradually the disgusted animal was fitted with my former donkey-furniture, amid the contrary suggestions of the populace, and the alcalde furnished me an order to the ferrymen at the river to set me across in the name of the government—and to return donkey and aparejo. A winding, narrow, stony path, that wet its feet at the very outset, squirmed away through the desert-like forest. “Down there,” said Anastasio, wrapped gloomily in his maroon poncho and viciously kicking the spur on one bare heel into the side of his heavily-laden animal, “is the camino real, pero da mucha vuelta.” How it could “give more turns” than the one we were following, it was hard to imagine. My pack-animal this time was a matron of forty, comparatively speaking, and correspondingly set in her ways. Within the first mile “se me escapó,” as the natives have it; that is, she suddenly bolted into the thorny wilderness at the first suggestion of an opening, and left me dripping with sweat and speckled with the blood of a dozen superficial lacerations before I again laid hands on her in an impassable clump of brambles and cactus. Anastasio tied her tow-rope to his saddle, and for an hour or so she seemed completely resigned to her fate. But evidently there is no trusting the sex at that age. No sooner was she paroled than she bolted again, and led me a skin-gashing chase of several miles through a wild and waterless solitude. Yet, after all, manipulating a donkey is a splendid apprenticeship for dealing with Latin-Americans; no better training could be suggested for the prospective salesman south of the Rio Grande.