Too much cannot be said of the charm of Lima’s culture and refinement. If the Limeños have inherited from their ancestors too much of the aristocratic pride and military arrogance that distinguish the Peninsulare, they have also fallen heir to the courtly grace and savoir faire that made the Knights of Alcántara famous among the first gentlemen in Europe four centuries ago. From the Lima home of to-day the visitor will take away with him recollections of hospitality, kindness and old-world dignity, lightened by a pronounced keenness of wit. They have the reputation of being generous and hospitable, if inclined to extravagance, and of forming warm and lasting friendships. Ardent imaginations and brilliant intellects lend a charm to conversation with the men, only less than that which the world-famed beauty, intelligence and kindly courtesy of the women lend to theirs. Very reserved when on their way to church in their black mantos or promenading the Alameda in their handsome toilettes, these ladies exert themselves to make their homes agreeable to their guests. The behavior of the young girls on the Alameda is more like that of their Chilean sisters.
At the head of Peru’s educational system stands the fine old University of San Marcos, in Lima, founded in 1551—nearly a hundred years before Harvard received its charter. It has now many additions and covers all branches of learning, and its courses are thrown open to every class.
SCENE ON THE OROYA RAILWAY.
Peru’s railroads cover but fifteen hundred miles, but they are pushing forward rapidly to fill in its section of the long-promised Pan-American railway from Panamá to Patagonia. One of these, the Oroya road, which ascends from Lima up into the plateau country, is altogether the most impressive piece of railroad engineering in the world; it is not only the highest, but there is no other that lifts its wondering passengers to any such altitude in such an appallingly short space of time. For an hour or more the train winds through a wide, irrigated valley, green and prosperous-looking with plantations of sugar cane. Farther up, the valley narrows and is closed in by naked rocks. Twenty-five miles from Lima a station is reached twenty-eight hundred feet above the sea; twelve miles farther the altitude is five thousand feet. At Casapalca, the town of smelters, thirteen thousand six hundred feet is achieved by the puffing, vibrating engine; at fourteen thousand feet the chimneys of Casapalca’s smelters look like pins stuck in the green carpet below, and finally, the passenger descends from the train, very uncertain on his feet, at the unprecedented height of 15,665 feet, and stands on the cold, wind-swept Andean roof. On every hand are peaks and hoods of snow. Beyond the station the rechristened Mount Meiggs rises another two thousand feet, as a monument to the indefatigable Yankee promoter and soldier of fortune who conceived and built the road—Henry Meiggs.
Turning to the west, one looks back over the long, infinitely varied descent; to the east lie the plateaus and the Andean treasure land. The northern branch of the road continues along almost equally high levels, past the historic plains of Junín on which Bolívar dealt his crushing blow to the viceroy’s army in 1824, to Cerro de Pasco, where the American mining syndicate is preparing to get rich.
II
A still more extensive railroad and one which gives the traveler a more varied view of the Andes, is that ascending from the port city of Mollendo, near the Chilean frontier. This line is the outlet for much of the commerce of Bolivia, and was built by the same gifted Yankee who fathered the Oroya road. Leaving Mollendo, the train speeds over the desert for a few miles and then begins its steady climb upward. All day it labors along the tortuous ascent through echoing walls of rock, bare, repellent, and awe-inspiring in their cold majesty. Suddenly, around a jagged precipice, the passengers look down upon a lovely valley—an oasis of green. In its midst lies the quaint, picturesque old city of Arequipa, which Pizarro, who founded it, was wont to call la villa hermosa—the city beautiful. Seen from the heights, it somewhat resembles La Paz, a group of low, white and blue walled, red roofed buildings, arranged in squares, with a large plaza in the center, the general flatness relieved by many church spires, and its spacious patios a mass of foliage and trees.
Thus far the penetration of the railroad into this quiet retreat has produced but little change in its old-world aspect. It has long been famous for its delightful climate and location, and as Mozans truly says of it, “If it is not the most beautiful place in South America, as its admirers claim, it is certainly the most restful. It is such a place as one would like to retire to after the stress and storms of a busy career, to pass one’s days in quiet and a congenial environment. The people who retain all the light-heartedness and cordiality and culture of old Spain, are worthy denizens of their charming city, and the better one knows them, the more he admires and loves them.”
Overlooking the city are the buildings of a branch of the Harvard Observatory. It is said that, because of the remarkable clearness of the atmosphere and the great number of cloudless nights, this observatory is probably more favorably located than any other in the world, and that, as a consequence, the astronomers stationed there have achieved results of the greatest value to science, especially in photographing the southern skies. Also they are doing valuable work in measuring the heights of the Andean peaks and charting the general topography, as well as in keeping open house to their fellow-countrymen who hunger for the sound of their native tongue after many weeks of effort to comprehend the idioms of the Castilian speech and the patois of the ever-present cholo. The verandas and trim green lawns and tennis courts are a reminder of Cambridge, indeed.