In the Wilds of South America

by Leo E. Miller

This was in sharp contrast with the low Ecuadorian shore-line; that was bad enough, with its dense, dark jungles growing to the water’s very edge, its overhanging masses of black clouds, and its breathless heat and silence that seemed to exude all the fatal maladies of a tropical clime. Nevertheless, there was a suggestion of life of some sort—inhospitable though it might be. It was not as if an outraged divinity had seared the land with withering breaths of hate, annihilating everything that possessed or gave promise of life, and leaving only the scorched desert as a fearsome reminder of celestial vengeance. But if the land appeared forsaken, the ocean teemed with life. Flocks of gulls always remained in the vicinity of the ship, and occasionally we saw petrels, shearwaters, and albatrosses; whales were not particularly plentiful, but porpoises appeared practically every day. Toward the end of the voyage seals also grew abundant.

There are numbers of ports along the Peruvian coast and the Palena stopped at many of them. The enormous swell coming from the south and scarcely felt at sea spends its violence along the shore, making landing very difficult, and often impossible. Steamships dare not approach close to the jutting rocks. All freight is unloaded into lighters; passengers are lowered in a chair operated by a steam-winch and dumped into the huge, flat-bottomed freight-carriers, together with their belongings. This always causes a good deal of excitement and not infrequently slight injuries are inflicted, as the boats are low one instant and come racing up the next on the top of a mountainous swell.

At noon on the eighth day out from Panama we reached Paita. The town lies on the beach and just below the edge of a high sandy plateau. This is the centre of Peru’s oil-fields. Tanks were visible in the country near the town, and a thin film covered the water for several miles off-shore.

Salavery is a small town with flat, square board houses. In back of it rise high escarpments of rock and sand. It never rains, so water is brought from a little valley far distant in the foot-hills. A narrow-gauge railroad connects the valley with the port, and sugar is brought out for export.

It seems as if most of the coastal towns are merely ports or outlets for products from the interior. There are many fertile little spots between the ridges branching off from the main range; they are well watered by melting snow on the lofty summits, and a great variety of fruit, vegetables, cotton, and cane are grown.

After ten days the ship anchored off Callao; it is but a thirty minutes’ train ride from this port to Lima. The route is flat and runs through corn, banana, and yucca fields and truck-gardens. We visited the creditable zoo and then accepted an invitation to inspect the medical college. The latter is surprisingly well equipped and had an attendance of over eight hundred students. The great cathedral next occupied our attention; the massive temple was in itself most interesting, but curiosity led me to spend the most of our limited time viewing the remains of Pizarro, which are exhibited in a glass-panelled marble casket. An inscription informs the viewers that the conquistador founded Lima in 1535; he died June 26, 1541, and was buried under the cathedral; in 1891 the bones were exhumed and placed in their present resting-place. If one may believe the statements of historians, a monument built of the skeletons of his helpless victims would be a far more suitable memorial to the bloodthirsty outlaw than the place of worship which his remains of necessity must defile.

We had heard a great deal about the difficulty of landing at Mollendo. At times the rollers from the south are so immense that ships do not attempt an anchorage, but continue the voyage down to Arica. We were relieved to find the sea perfectly smooth upon our arrival. The town differed from Paita and Salavery only in that it was somewhat larger. We found it possible to purchase through tickets to La Paz, and noon saw us on our way. The railroad started up the barren slope almost immediately; occasionally the incline was very gentle—so gentle, in fact, that the country lay like a great brown desert on each side of the track. These stretches were covered with crescent-shaped sand-dunes, some of them fifty feet high and several hundred feet from tip to tip. They creep slowly forward as the wind blows the sand up their rear slope to the crest, when it topples over into the centre of the half-moon.

At times the grade was very steep. The deep blue Pacific was visible several hours, sometimes on our right and then on our left, as the train wound up the mountainside, but always receding until it resembled a vast mist-enshrouded amethyst losing itself in the distance.

Alkali-dust entered the coaches in clouds and threatened to suffocate the passengers, but the impressiveness of the scenery more than compensated them for this annoyance.

Not far from Arequipa a deep gorge appeared with a stream threading its way through the bottom. Its banks were covered with trees and green vegetation—a veritable oasis amid the desert that hemmed it in on both sides. The Indians who now came to the car-windows when the train stopped to get up steam brought grapes, figs, oranges, guavas, and empanadas, or meat pies smelling strongly of onions. They were an unkempt, wild-looking lot and had apparently come from the green vale below. At seven o’clock we were up seven thousand feet, having ascended to that height from sea-level in six hours, and drew in at the station of Arequipa.