Owing to these accidents our train was provided with a very old engine whose boilers were so leaky that we had a hard time climbing up from Oroya to the divide. Several times we stopped; once for three quarters of an hour to allow enough steam to accumulate to pull us around a curve. We did not object, however, for the scenery was wonderful. The great craggy cliffs, their slopes covered with snow and ice, made us realize that this was really the roof tree of the continent. Just before entering the summit tunnel, the train stopped again, and we had a chance to enjoy a magnificent panorama of snow-capped mountains.
A hand-car with two workmen was sent down the road just ahead of our train so as to give us some sense of assurance. It is well known that most people coming up this road from Lima suffer greatly from soroche before they reach the summit. On our way down, however, most of the passengers were so well accustomed to high elevations that not more than three or four, and they Peruvian ladies from Jauja and Oroya, seemed to be affected. So far as I could judge, their trouble was due more to car-sickness and the lack of ventilation than to the elevation.
We reached Lima about half past eight on the evening of March 2d. Who can describe the comfort and luxury of those first few hours in the excellent Hotel Maury?
My first duty the next day was to call on President Leguia, report on what I had seen at Choqquequirau and tell him how very hospitably we had been received in the interior towns and cities. After talking with him for a few moments, we were no longer at a loss to understand why the Prefects and sub-Prefects of Peru had been so courteous to us, for their chief is himself the soul of courtesy. Well-travelled, well-educated, speaking English fluently, a trained business man, not in the slightest degree the type of South American President with which novel-readers and playgoers are familiar, he impressed us as a man who would do his best to advance the welfare of Peru without caring in the least how his own affairs might prosper in the meantime.
The door-keeper was a fine, tall, gray-haired soldier who had the manners of a general, was rather suspicious of us at first, but returned almost immediately after taking in our cards and, with a magnificent bow and a courtly gesture, ushered us at once into the inner reception room, greatly to the disgust of several pompous, perspiring politicians who had been warming their heels in the gilded salon for some time before we arrived. We did not stay long, and on our way out were again given a demonstration of interest by the courteous old brigadier. To our sorrow we read a few months afterward that in the unsuccessful revolution already referred to in the chapter on Arequipa, which began by seizing the presidential offices and in securing the President himself and his Minister of Foreign Affairs, the revolutionists had ruthlessly killed the old door-keeper.
Like every visitor to Lima, we too went into the cathedral to see the mummified remains of Francisco Pizarro, the Conqueror of Peru, and then we took a little victoria, drawn by a pair of speedy little trotters, and explored the parks and boulevards. We saw the monuments and the new public buildings, called on the American Minister, whom we found to be a charming southern gentleman, exceedingly well suited to his diplomatic profession; admired the many substantial foreign banks and business houses, and regretted that so much of the flavor of the old colonial Lima had been lost in the Chilean war and in the recent era of business prosperity. With electric lights and electric cars and abundant foreign capital, it is not easy to preserve those picturesque features which are so charming in the interior cities.
At last my journey overland from Buenos Aires had been completed. I cannot claim to know it as well or as intimately as the poor “foot-walker” who, if he has been successful, must by this time have reached Buenos Aires and walked on foot twice over this long dreary road. Nevertheless, I can appreciate keenly some of the difficulties of travel in Spanish-America during the colonial period when Lima was the gay capital and Buenos Aires was merely a frontier post. It is small wonder that there was little sympathy between Lima and Buenos Aires in those days.
Like my journey across Venezuela and Colombia, this taught me to feel anew the stupendous difficulties that lie in the way of advancing South American civilization. It made me admire tremendously the courage and determination of those heroes of the Wars of Independence who marched up and down this road for fourteen years until they had driven from it the last vestige of a foreign army.
CHAPTER XXVII
CERTAIN SOUTH AMERICAN TRAITS
As one travels through the various South American republics, becomes acquainted with their political and social conditions, reads their literature, and talks with other American travellers, there are a number of adverse criticisms that frequently arise. I shall attempt here to enumerate some of them, to account for a few, and to compare others with criticisms that were made of the people of the United States, half a century ago, by a distinguished English visitor.