My slightest finger movement was followed by six pairs of eyes, as closely as an “aficionado” of the bull-ring watches those of his favorite matador. Had I found anything worth reading, I should not have been left in peace to read it. First, because of the excitement which the sight of a stranger arouses in Ayacucho, trebled by unbounded wonder that any man should be interested in books and libraries; second, because every Latin-American knows that any person left alone for a moment in a library is sure to carry off as many books as he can conceal about his person. The most modern volumes brought to light by a more careful scrutiny were Racine’s works and a Spanish edition of Richardson’s “Clarissa Harlowe”; but this last I am sure some practical joker had given the good bishop so late in life that he had not found time to read and destroy it before he was called to whatever reward awaited him. We tiptoed out into the earth-carpeted hallway again, and carefully locked up the dust and parchments, as they will no doubt remain until the worthy friars come back from lunch.
Around the corner the cobbled street was blocked by a horseshoeing contest. This is always considered a very serious business in the Andes, though the average horse is so small that a real blacksmith could toss him about at will. A barefoot, half-Indian herrero had emerged from his mud dungeon shop, containing a forge from Vulcan’s time, but by no means the space necessary to admit the animal, and stood watching the preparations for his feat with the anxious and critical eye of an aviator about to attack the world’s record. One of the three attendant Indians threw his poncho over the head of the chusco and bound its eyes. Then a rope was drawn tightly around its neck, with a choking slip-noose about its nose, an Indian clinging desperately to the end of it as long as the contest lasted. Next, a llama-hair lassoo was bound to the animal’s nigh front fetlock and the foot hoisted by another attendant on the off side, who used the back of the trussed-up brute as a pulley. A third Indian held the foot by hand. When all was ready, the valorous blacksmith sneaked up and pared the hoof a bit with an instrument much like a small, sharp, shovel with a long handle—pared it very imperfectly, as is the way of Andean blacksmiths, leaving so much of the toe that the animal was in constant danger of having an ankle broken on some rough-and-tumble trail. Then he hunted up a cold horseshoe, without caulk, just as it came from the hardware store that had imported it from the United States—for the Andean blacksmith never heats a shoe, much less alters it—and laid it gingerly on the hoof. Evidently, to the inexact eye of the herrero, it fitted. He clawed around among the cobbles and refuse of the street, where his tools lay strewn and scattered, until he found several hand-forged horseshoe nails of the style in vogue in our own land before the Civil War, and standing afar off, like a man willing to risk his life to do his duty, yet not to risk it beyond reason, started one of the nails with a Stone-Age hammer. Suddenly the foot twitched. The blacksmith sprang backward a long yard, with blanched countenance, the foot-holder fled, and the two remaining Indians cried out in startled Quichua, while clinging to the far ends of their ropes. Bit by bit the herrero crept up again and took to driving the nails at long range, as if he were mashing the head of a venomous snake, poised on his toes, ready to spring away at the slightest sign of life in the blindfolded animal. Gradually the eight nails were driven, not without several repetitions of the blanching fright, and the operation repeated with the other hoofs. Finally the blacksmith maneuvered to positions in which he could twist off and crudely clinch the protruding nail-points, rubbed a rasp once or twice over them, and the perilous job was done. The fiery steed was relieved of the blinding poncho, the Indians went to restore their nerves with a copita of pisco, and the blacksmith, collecting fifteen cents a shoe from the owner of the animal, shut up shop forthwith, as if he had risked his life enough for one day.
The milking of a cow is a no less serious business in the Andes, and requires as large a force. First the cow must be captured and confined in a corral overnight. Calves are never weaned, but are kept away from the mothers until the hour of milking. As each cow’s turn comes, its calf is freed for a moment, then dragged away by main force, and either tied to the mother’s front leg, or held by a boy close enough to deceive the animal into fancying she is feeding her own offspring. Another youth, after tying her hind legs together at the ankles, clings to a rope about her neck, a third assistant holds a socobe, or shallow gourd-bowl, under the udder, and a woman—why it must always be a woman I know not, but the fact remains—squats on her heels at arm’s length on the opposite side of the animal, and falls to milking with much the same attentive regard for her welfare as the blacksmith. As often as the pint-measure is filled, the milk is poured into a vessel outside the fence or one in the hands of a waiting purchaser. The woman or one of the boys laps up the few drops left in the socobe, and the task continues until two teats are stripped. The two remaining belong by ancient custom to the calf. In view of the fact that cows are milked at most once a day, and often at irregular or broken intervals, it is not strange that milk is rare, and butter unknown, even on large haciendas well stocked with cattle.
Saturday is beggar’s day in Ayacucho, as in most towns of South America. From morning till night a constant procession of disease and decrepitude comes whining by the shops, so endless in its appeals that the town has adopted a custom similar to the merchants of India with their bowls of cowries, or sea-shells. On Saturday morning each shopkeeper opens a package of large needles, three to four inches long, one of which he bestows upon each beggar who presents himself. The mendicant mumbles a “Diós pagarasunqui,” and shuffles on to the next doorway. When he has collected ten or twelve needles, if he be so lucky, he sells them to certain dealers for a medio (2½ cents), on which, apparently, he lives until the next Saturday. In some parts of Peru the Indians wear a large needle in their hatbands, evidently as a weapon of defense, but those of Ayacucho seem to have no practical use, except as legal tender. Some time during the ensuing week the purchasers sell them back to the shopkeepers, Saturday sees them again distributed, and so they go on indefinitely around the circle.
Among other things of long ago Ayacucho used to have a university. To-day her highest institution of learning is the Colegio Nacional de San Román, corresponding to our high schools—chiefly in the impudence of its pupils. It was for the purpose of supplying this institution with an athletic field—incongruous possession it seemed in this community—that a “benefit” bull-fight was perpetrated on the Sunday of my stay. The cuadrilla, headed by “Currito” and “Ramito” of Sevilla, my fellow-sufferers at the hotel, were the same simple-hearted, modest fellows, with a noisy joy in life, that I had found most of their fellows in Spain. Both the principals had come over with Posadas, one of the friends of my Spanish journey, who had returned a year later only to be killed by a “Miura,” while these his companions remained to eke out a livelihood in Chile, Peru, and Bolivia.
All the gente decente of Ayacucho and their wives, in full powder, were on hand when the gala corrida began. We of the élite occupied the “palcos,” or boxes—several rows of chairs shaded by a faded strip of canvas, up on the roof of the ancient colegio, the aged red tiles of which were trodden to powder underfoot. The “ring” in the patio below, fenced by poles tied to uprights and other rustic makeshifts, was surrounded by the excited gente del pueblo. The scene was backed by a massive, old, crumbling church—it would have been hard to avoid such a backing in Ayacucho—and a view of most of the town sprinkled away through its half-green valley, Rasuillca, the snowclad and the black range of Cundurcunca, with its white battle monument and its highway zigzagging away over into the great Amazonian montaña beyond as plainly visible as if they stood a bare mile away. The exciting national sport of Spain degenerates at best to a dismal pastime in the new world. The imported toreros were well enough, but the bulls of the Andes leave much to be desired. Even dogs lose their aggressiveness in high altitudes, it is said. At any rate, the animals gathered for the occasion on the broad pampas at the foot of Cundurcunca could seldom be roused to face the toreros, and spent their efforts chiefly in racing around the “ring” in vain efforts to escape, until they were at length tortured out of existence. In fact, about all the gala corrida amounted to was the substitution of these heroes from across the seas for the native butchers accustomed to prepare Ayachucho’s weekly meat supply. As they fell, the animals were dragged out and cut up within full sight of the crowd, the meat in some cases being raffled off to the ticket-holders of the sol. It was the dragging-out that the gathering hooted most vociferously. Picadores and horses are rarely in evidence in the bull-fights of Spanish-America, but the program had featured the promise of removing the carcasses from the ring “al estilo de España,” that is, by gaily caparisoned mules. It was this new evidence of culture and progress that much of Ayacucho had come to see. But when the first victim sprawled in the dust, the mules were missing, and the customary gang of Indians crawled through the barrier and, tugging at its tail and legs, and raising clouds of dust that half-concealed their activities, gradually removed the fallen brute in the time-honored Andean manner.
As the supply of meat promised to exceed the demand, the fifth and sixth bulls were merely decorated with banderillas and sent back to the corral. Then a pair of two-year-old novillos were turned over to the “aficionados.” A dozen youths of the “best families” descended into the “ring,” in their most impressive Sunday garb and with capotes borrowed from the toreros, and demonstrated their own skill as bull-fighters. A Dr. Fulano, in private life a civil engineer, at least on his visiting-card, killed the first of the frightened animals in admirable style, and was hailed by his delighted fellow-townsmen the king of matadores. But dusk had fallen before the amateurs had effectively wounded the other, and the massed population gradually radiated homeward and subsided into its humdrum weekly existence.
A religious procession in the main square of Ayacucho. When the leading figure reached certain points, an old Indian set off elaborate pieces of fireworks, and as the smoke cleared away scores of urchins dashed in to fight with the Indian and one another for the framework
