Street in Moquegua
Although Don José Vergara said that he would loan us the horses, when we were about to depart he came to me and said that it would cost us twenty-five soles ($12.50) for their rent. This was reasonable enough according to the standards of civilization but was exorbitant for that locality. It was after ten o'clock in the morning before we got away. For about ten miles the trail led over a rocky plateau and then came to the edge of a precipice at the bottom of which was the bed of the Cinto River, here dry. Here were three mud huts and a cistern half full of water, which was drawn from some springs a few miles up the valley. We remained here about an hour during which we cooked some meat and potatoes that we had brought with us; we pushed on again across another plateau similar to the one which we had just traversed excepting that it was sandier and smoother riding. At nightfall we came out on a nose of a hill and saw below us in the distance the lights of a city which we knew was Moquegua. An hour later we clattered over the flinty pavement of the narrow streets and pulled up at the portals of the Hotel Lima, one of the best in rural Peru. A large well-ventilated room, electric lights, and the noise of locomotive whistles made us feel that we had again reached civilization.
Street in Moquegua
Moquegua is a fine old town on a river of the same name and capital of the province of Moquegua, lying at an altitude of over four thousand feet above sea level in the center of a rich agricultural district, abounding in olives. These and raisins are the chief exports of the district.
The city has a population of nine thousand and much resembles Tacna on account of the substantial buildings; it is not as lively as Tacna, due to the former place having stationed there five regiments, but otherwise it is a pleasanter town. It is higher, cooler, and there is more verdure. The valley itself is a long, broad ribbon of cultivation, mostly devoted to the growing of grapes. Moquegua is connected to its port, Ilo, by a railroad sixty-five miles long.
Before the Pacific War, Moquegua was a wealthy town and larger than at the present time; since then many of the inhabitants emigrated, many going to Arequipa and to Lima. The alameda, though much neglected, shows signs of former grandeur, which is testified by the broken statues and cracked stone benches which formerly were the pride of the city. Moquegua has the name of being a very religious place; it has many churches and its streets swarm with priests, in this respect being much different from the Chilean towns that I had just visited.
Ilo is a small port of about two thousand inhabitants, very poor and squalid but not so much so as Mollendo. In both these places bubonic plague is rife, but strange to say that malady has never mounted as high as Arequipa or Moquegua. At Ilo I boarded a small postal steamer of the Peruvian Line and after a few hours' steam we anchored off the cliffs of Mollendo, the most dangerous landing place on the Pacific Ocean. The swell is so great here that sometimes passengers have to wait two weeks before it has subsided enough to permit them to embark on the steamers. I had to transfer to another ship here because the one I was on touched at all the small ports and took a week to reach Callao.