The finest café on the west coast of America is the one in Lima named Palais Concert and is owned by the Maury proprietors. It is modern European, and is supposed to have a Viennese orchestra, none of whom, however, hail from Austria. A popular restaurant is the Estrasburgo. The peculiarity about it is the sacrilegious mural painting in it, which strange to say is tolerated in this most fanatically religious country. The painting is an advertisement of a French brandy firm. The hideous corpse of Lazarus, with pointed chin and ears, coming to life, is rising from a coffin, and with a sardonic grin on his face he is eagerly stretching out his hand for a tumbler of brandy which is being handed him by a bleached-out Christ, garbed in red, and with glistening ringlets of peroxide colored hair. Christ is saying: "Arise, O Lazarus, and drink this brandy!" This Estrasburgo is a favorite resort of Jews in transit. They go there to view this picture, and when they see that no Christian is present, nudge each other and say: "This is fine." The Restaurant Berlin is a well furnished place on the Plateros de San Pedro. This is all. There is no Berlin about it excepting the name, although I understand that the proprietor is a German. The uncouth waiters, some with repulsive boils on their faces, shuffle across the unswept floor, which is overrun with cockroaches, and slop down vile concoctions in front of you, spilling the sticky liquid on the fly-infested table. One night while sitting there with a friend, I was given a curaçao flavored with turpentine, while he drew a cocktail savored with the cholo waiter's dirty thumb.
One of Lima's institutions is drink. Being almost a teetotaler, I can give no more information than what I observed. Saloons exist everywhere; there are over six thousand of them, some of which are really high class. Also there are clubs where liquid refreshments are sold. There are no days when the saloons are compelled to close; they generally close their doors at night only when business becomes slack. Besides the two breweries in Lima there is one in Callao, and although there is much beer sold, the predominance of mixed drinks is so much greater that the former is put into the background. The beer is vile and I was advised not to drink any of it. In the winter of 1916 two mozos of the Hotel Maury drank a bottle of Nacional Pilsen (Callao) behind a door when the boss was not looking. Five minutes afterwards one mozo died from the effects, and the life of the other was barely saved. Another man drank some Backus & Johnston beer. Shortly afterwards his teeth and tongue turned black. In both these cases it was found that the beer was mixed with powerful acids. The reason for this has not yet been discovered. It is believed by some people that the preparation was faulty; by others that it was the work of a rival brewery. Most of the confectionery stores have bars. Broggi invented a drink which goes by his name. It is called Broggi bitters. This is the recipe:—Aperitàl, cane syrup, and a dash of Angostura. To this is added a lemon rind that has been soaked in alcohol. Add cracked ice and fill the glass with syphon water. Shake well and pour the liquid through a strainer. Broggi bitters may be obtained anywhere in Lima but they do not taste like the ones served at the original place. The Maury specializes in Peruvian cocktails. This drink is pisco, lemon juice, and a teaspoonful of sugar. To it is added a few drops of Angostura; it is then shaken with cracked ice, strained, and served with an orange rind.
Pisco is a terribly strong native drink and is indulged in by the lower classes. It is grape alcohol, and is flavored with pineapple, or raspberry, or orange, or prunes. It is seen in the cheap saloons, standing in large glass jars, yellow, red, orange, or brown according to the flavor of the ingredient syrup. Chicha, far from being like the grape cider of Chile, is here a corn alcohol and is indulged in by the scum for their debauches.
I was once in Lima when there was much money in circulation. The crowds of foreign residents of the mining towns in the Cordillera and the floating population used to hie to the Maury bar twice a day to spend it, and great orgies were pulled off. This has changed materially, for now with less money in circulation, there are no more of these parties. Formerly one never saw any paper currency. Now one never sees any gold. Several of the banks in consolidation have issued circular checks which are considered by the government as legal. They are the best looking bills in South America. Their denominations are half pound, one pound, five and ten pound notes. The merchants grab all the silver soles that fall into their hands, so that it is impossible many times to change these circular checks when change is most needed. Some merchants place signs in their stores saying that this paper currency will not be accepted as tender unless the purchases amount to two soles. I was told by the cashier of the Bank of Peru and London that if I went into a café, bought and drank a bottle of beer, and offered one of these checks in payment, the proprietors would be obliged to change it even though they had signs posted to the contrary. He said that if they refused to make change for me to walk off without paying and the law would be on my side. I told this to a chance acquaintance from Montana who had a perpetual thirst. He tried it out by making diurnal rounds of many saloons, drinking two or three potations in each place, always tendering a circular check of one of the higher values, which he invariably found unchangeable.
Lima has the only ice-cream soda fountains that I have discovered south of the Equator although I am told that one exists in Buenos Aires. It also has a soft drink parlor, Leonard's, called the Hemaglobino, where ordinary soda water with the standard, and to us exotic, syrups, such as tamarind, are dispensed. As to money making, it is a mint, and as Prat remarked to me, in Buenos Aires it would be a veritable gold mine.
A Lima institution that needs to be ameliorated is the post office department. None of the South American post offices are any too reliable but that of Lima is the limit. A few instances of post office irregularities in the Latin republics will serve as an introduction before that of Lima is dealt with.
In Paraguay it happens that the post offices frequently run shy of stamps. A person in Asuncion would like to mail a letter. He takes it to the post office and is told that there are no stamps but that if he will pay the money equivalent to the postage the letter will be forwarded. He does so, and it is the last he or anybody else ever sees of the letter. It is opened by the post office clerk to see if it contains money. If it does, the money finds its way into the clerk's pocket. In any case the letter is thrown into the waste-paper basket.
In enlightened Argentina, there is also much thievery of mail. A mail car was recently wrecked on the Central Argentine Railroad. Between the lining of the car and the outside boards hundreds of opened registered letters were found. A postmaster in a small Argentine village died recently. In remodeling the building which was used as the post office there were found in the basement four thousand opened letters.
In Santiago I was advised by my friends to send them no registered mail. They told me if I did, they would probably never receive it because it was common for the post office clerks to open registered mail to see if it contained money. In Argentina and in Bolivia the post office clerks are discourteous and hate to make change. They gossip with their friends, keeping a row of people waiting indefinitely for service. Oftentimes they are busily engaged in reading a newspaper and will not look up until the article is read. In Ecuador with the exception of the city of Guayaquil there is no money order service, and letters are not forwarded if the addressee changes his residence. In Peru there is no money order service between Lima and the mining towns such as Cerro de Pasco. Many foreigners live in this last-mentioned town and it is often necessary for people in the capital to remit money to them. In order to do so, it is necessary for the remitter to go to a bank and purchase a draft.
Regarding the Lima post office, thievery is rampant. I bought some Panama hats in Paita and had them sewed up neatly in several parcels which I mailed to friends in the United States. The parcels arrived with practically the identical sewing that I had done, but when they were opened they were found to contain newspapers. A letter to the United States from Lima requires twelve centavos postage and a postal card four centavos. When a foreigner goes to this post office and looks around for the stamp window he is invariably accosted by several individuals who inquire if he wishes to buy any stamps. Upon their being answered in the affirmative, they inquire what denomination he wants. If he should tell them that he wants to buy some twelve centavo stamps they will produce a bunch of them which they will sell him for eight centavos. They also sell four centavo stamps for two and three centavos. Many of these stamps are minus gum. This shows that the post office clerks are in league with these touts. They take off the new stamps, throw the letters in the waste-paper basket, hand the stamps to their understudies, who whack up the profits with them. These clerks also steal new stamps from the drawers and peddle them out the same way.