(50,000 tons) are exported annually to England, North America, and Germany, in which countries it is extensively and beneficially used for manure.[122] Here we found lying at anchor a large merchantman, the Victorine of Bordeaux, 3000 tons burthen, which was taking in a full cargo, exclusively, of this valuable product. The saltpetre is found between beds of clay from one to six feet below the surface, boiled in large vats to free it from impurities,[123] and dried in the form of cakes, which are packed for shipment in sacks of 250 lbs. It is worth, if purified, 21 reals (about 11s. 4d.) per cwt. on the spot, and fetches £16 to £17 per ton in England. Upon a rough calculation, the quantity of saltpetre along the coast of Peru at an average breadth of 30 miles amounts to 60,000,000 tons, enough to maintain the existing supply[124] for at least another thousand years. The rate of wages of the men engaged in the trade, owing to the scarcity of labour, is from two to three dollars per diem! The scarcity of water at Iquique is so great, that the town has to be supplied by means of a distilling apparatus, an undertaking the gross daily receipts of which are six hundred dollars! For the precious element has to be purchased not merely for men but
animals; the price, for example, for a male to drink ad libitum is one real, about 8 1⁄2d.
Tincal, or Biborate of Soda, is also largely found all along the coast, but the export was long prohibited, the suspicious jealousy of the Peruvian Government seeking to obtain first of all conclusive evidence of the value of this natural product, and the best means of making it contribute to the State treasury. At present about 200 tons, worth from £16 to £20 per ton, are exported annually. As we lay at anchor off Iquique, numbers of natives shot about with arrow-like rapidity in their exceedingly primitive boats, made of seal-skins fastened together in canoe-fashion. To avoid overturns, these curious specimens of naval architecture have bladders attached on either side!
The heat now began to be very perceptible. The bare, treeless, almost perpendicular sand-bluffs along the coast, impart to it a dreary aspect, which even the rocky chain immediately behind, rising some 2000 to 4000 feet, scarcely succeeds in softening. A great number of the passengers, mostly Peruvians, indemnified themselves for the cheerless monotony of the prospect on deck, by intense devotion to the mysteries of the green table in the saloon. All through the day, till far on in the night, the painted pasteboard flew from hand to hand. The favourite game was Rocambor, something like Ombre, diversified with Monte and dice, and for very high sums. I saw ten condors (£21) laid upon a single card. A few elderly gentlemen sat regularly in a distant corner of the
saloon, where they played assiduously from nine in the morning till midnight without interruption. One wealthy Peruano, well known along this coast, in the course of a single voyage is said to have lost 80,000 dollars (£16,800)!!
On 20th May we anchored in Arica, an elegant seaport of some 7000 inhabitants, surrounded by beautiful luxuriant gardens, and which, though belonging to Peru, may be considered as the chief outlet for the produce of Northern Bolivia, since Tacna, the most important manufacturing town of that State, with a population of 12,000, is only nine English miles distant, lying at the foot of the Cordillera, while La Paz, the capital of the Republic, with a population of 75,000, is 288 miles distant, and is easiest reached from Arica. The political division of Bolivia is a crying injustice to that lovely country and its industrious population. The harbour of Arica belongs by natural position to Bolivia and not to Peru; commercial interests and general intercourse unite it far more intimately with Northern Bolivia than with Peru. The chief exports of Arica are silver, copper, alpaca wool, cinchona bark, chinchilla furs, cotton, and tin. There are also two steam flour-mills within the little town in full operation; the grain comes from the interior, and is shipped as flour to the various harbours along the coast. A railroad from Arica to Tacna greatly facilitates traffic and commerce, but further in the interior all intercourse is carried on by means of narrow mule-paths.[125]
The houses, constructed for the most part of sun-dried bricks all along the coast of Peru, where rain is absolutely unknown, and even the dew-deposit is trifling, are flat, barely roofed in with thin strips of cane, and consequently when seen from the street have a very untidy appearance. Unfortunately these terrace-like roofs are likewise the sole receptacles for the refuse of the house, and any one who, in order to get a better view, ventures to ascend one of the adjoining dazzling white sand-heaps, will long remember the filthy but unique spectacle which greets his eye.
Immediately outside of the suburb of Chimba, the desolate nature of the country comes conspicuously into view. I next walked to one of the nearest sand-hills, because I was assured that there were numerous graves of queens to be found there, as well as quantities of mummies. Owing to the extreme dryness of the atmosphere, the skulls of the dead which here lay scattered upon the surface of the soil, seemed as though they were so many anatomical preparations. Even some dead bodies of animals showed no symptoms of decomposition, but had been perfectly dried. The peculiarity of the meteorological conditions, the extreme dryness of the atmosphere, and the saline impregnation of the soil, have very much more to do with these marvellous antiseptic appearances than any indigenous skill in embalming the Indian corpses; since,
even now, when the brown Catholicized Peruvians have lost none of their old superstitions, though they have abandoned most of their former arts and customs, the dead committed to the earth without further preparation, present the same mummified appearance when disinterred. I took away with me the skull of an Indian, from the neighbourhood of Arica, which was remarkable for the singular malformation resulting from compression by circular bandages.