THE MINE, THE FOREST, AND THE CORDILLERA.[8]
The silver mines of Potosi, the virgin forests, and mighty cordilleras of South America, are words familiar and full of interest to European ears. Countless riches, prodigious vegetable luxuriance, stupendous grandeur, are the associations they suggest. With these should be coupled ideas of cruelty, desolation, and disease, of human suffering and degradation pushed to their utmost limit, of opportunities neglected, and advantages misused. Not a bar of silver, or a healing drug, or an Alpaca fleece, shipped from Peruvian ports to supply another hemisphere with luxuries and comforts, but is the price of an incalculable amount of misery, and even of blood—the blood of a race once noble and powerful, now wretched and depraved by the agency of those whose duty and in whose power it was to civilize and improve them. The corrupt policy of Spanish rulers, the baneful example of Spanish colonists and their descendants, have gone far towards the depopulation and utter ruin of the richest of South American countries. How imprudent and suicidal has been the course adopted, will presently be made apparent. Those who desire evidence in support of our assertion, need but follow Dr Tschudi, as we now propose doing, into the mining, mountainous, and forest districts of Peru.
Difficult and dangerous as a journey through the maritime provinces of Peru undeniably is, it is mere railroad travelling when compared with an expedition into the interior of the country. In the former case, the land is level, and the sun, the sand, and the highwayman, are the only perils to be encountered or evaded. But a ramble in the mountains is a succession of hairbreadth escapes, a deliberate confronting of constantly recurring dangers, to which even the natives unwillingly expose themselves, and frequently fall victims. The avalanches, precipices, gaping ravines, slippery glaciers, and violent storms common to all Alpine regions, are here complicated by other risks peculiar to the South American mountains. Heavy rains, lasting for weeks together, falls of snow that in a few moments obliterate all trace of a path, treacherous swamps, strange and loathsome maladies, and even blindness, combine to deter the traveller from his dangerous undertaking. All these did Dr Tschudi brave, and from them all, after the endurance of great hardship and suffering, he was fortunate enough to escape.
At a very short distance from Lima, the traveller, proceeding eastward, gets a foretaste of the difficulties and inconveniences in reserve for him. Whilst riding, through the vale of Surco, or through some other of the valleys leading from the coast to the mountains, he perceives a fountain by the road side, and pauses to refresh his tired mule. Scarcely is his intention manifest, when he is startled by a cry from his guide, or from a passing Indian—"Cuidado! Es agua de verruga!" In these valleys reigns a terrible disease called the verrugas, attributed by the natives to the water of certain springs, and for which all Dr Tschudi's investigations were insufficient to discover another cause. Fever, pains in the bones, and loss of blood from cutaneous eruptions, are the leading symptoms of this malady, which is frequently of long duration, and sometimes terminates fatally. It seizes the Indians and lighter castes in preference to the white men and negroes, and no specific has yet been discovered for its cure. Mules and horses are also subject to its attacks. In no country, it would appear from Dr Tschudi's evidence, are there so many strange and unaccountable maladies as in Peru. Nearly every valley has its peculiar disease, extending over a district of a few square miles, and unknown beyond its limits. To most of them it has hitherto been impossible to assign a cause. Their origin must probably be sought in certain vegetable influences, or in those of the vast variety of minerals which the soil of Peru contains.
In the mountains, the shoeing of mules and horses is frequently a matter of much difficulty; and it is advisable for the traveller to acquire the art, and furnish himself with needful implements, before leaving the more civilized part of the country. Farriers are only to be found in the large Indian villages, and it is common to ride fifty or sixty leagues without meeting with one. In the village of San Geronimo de Surco, the innkeeper is the only blacksmith, and Dr Tschudi, whose horse had cast a shoe, was compelled to pay half a gold ounce (upwards of thirty shillings) to have it replaced. This was one half less than the sum at first demanded by the exorbitant son of Vulcan, who doubtless remembered the old Spanish proverb, "for a nail is lost a shoe, for a shoe the horse, for the horse the horseman."[9] The doctor took the hint, and some lessons in shoeing, which afterwards stood him in good stead. It is a common practice in Peru, on the sandy coast, and where the roads permit it, to ride a horse or mule unshod for the first four or five days of a journey. Then shoes are put on the fore feet, and a few days later on the hinder ones. This is thought to give new strength to the animals, and to enable them to hold out longer. On the mountain tracks, the wear and tear of iron must be prodigious, as may be judged from the following description of three leagues of road between Viso and San Mateo, by no means the worst bit met with by our traveller.
"The valley frequently becomes a mere narrow split in the mountains, enclosed between walls of rock a thousand feet high. These enormous precipices are either perpendicular, or their summits incline inwards, forming a vast arch; along their base, washed by the foaming waters of the river, or higher up, along their side, winds the narrow and dangerous path. In some places they recede a little from the perpendicular, and their abrupt slopes are sprinkled with stones and fragments of rock, which every now and then, loosened by rain, detach themselves and roll down into the valley. The path is heaped with these fragments, which give way under the tread of the heavily laden mules, and afford them scanty foothold. From time to time, enormous blocks thunder down the precipice, and bury themselves in the waters beneath. I associate a painful recollection with the road from Viso to San Mateo. It was there that a mass of stone struck one of my mules, and precipitated it into the river. My most important instruments and travelling necessaries, a portion of my collections and papers, and—an irreparable loss—a diary carefully and conscientiously kept during a period of fourteen months, became the prey of the waters. Two days later the mule was washed ashore; but its load was irrecoverably lost. Each year numerous beasts of burden, and many travellers, perish upon this dangerous road. Cavalry on the march are particularly apt to suffer, and often a slip of the horse's foot, or a hasty movement of the rider, suffices to consign both to the yawning chasm by their side. At the inn at Viso I met an officer, who had just come from the mountains, bringing his two sons with him. He had taken the youngest before him; the other, a boy of ten years of age, rode upon the mule's crupper. Half a league from Viso, a large stone came plunging down from the mountain, struck the eldest lad, and dashed him into the stream."
Although frequently ill-treated by the Creoles, and especially by the officers, the Indians in most parts of Peru show ready hospitality and good-will to the solitary traveller. Those in the neighborhood of San Mateo are an exception; they are distrustful, rough, and disobliging. When a traveller enters the village, he is instantly waited upon by the alcalde and regidores, who demand his passport. Has he none, he risks ill-treatment, and being put upon a jackass and carried off to the nearest prefect. Luckily the ignorance of the village authorities renders them easy to deal with; it is rare that they can read. On one occasion, when Dr Tschudi's passport was demanded, the only printed paper in his pocket was an old playbill, that of the last opera he had attended before his departure from Lima, and which he had taken with him as wadding for his gun. He handed it to the Indian regidor, who gravely unfolded it, stared hard at the words Lucia di Lammermoor, and returned it with the remark, that the passport was perfectly in order.
Any thing more wretched in their accommodations than the tambos or village inns, can scarcely be imagined. So bad are they, that the traveller is sometimes driven to pass the night in the snow rather than accept of their shelter, and at the same time submit to the nuisances with which they abound. One of these villanous hostelries, in which Dr Tschudi several times attempted to sleep, is described by him with a minuteness that will rather startle the squeamish amongst his readers. Vermin every where, on the floor and walls, in the clothes of the Indian hag officiating as hostess, even in the caldron in which a vile mixture of potatoe water and Spanish pepper is prepared for supper. For sole bed there is the damp earth, upon which hosts, children, and travellers stretch themselves. Each person is accommodated with a sheepskin, and over the whole company is spread an enormous woollen blanket. But woe to the inexperienced traveller who avails himself of the coverings thus bountifully furnished, swarming as they are with inhabitants from whose assaults escape is impossible. Even if he creeps into a corner, and makes himself a bed with his saddle-cloths, he is not secure. Add to these comforts a stifling smoke, and other nauseous exhalations, and the gambols of innumerable guinea-pigs, common as mice in many parts of Peru, who caper the night through over the faces and bodies of the sleepers, and the picture of a South American mountain inn will be as complete as it is uninviting. But these annoyances, great though they be, are very trifles compared to the more serious evils awaiting the traveller in the higher regions of the Cordilleras. At about 12,600 feet above the level of the sea, the effects of the rarefaction of the atmosphere begin to be sensibly and painfully felt. The natives, unacquainted with the real cause of the malady thus occasioned, and which by them is called puna, by the Spanish Creoles veta or mareo, attribute it to the exhalations of metals, especially of antimony. Horses, not bred in the mountains, suffer greatly from the veta, and frequently fall down helpless. The arrieros adopt various cruel means for their revival, such as cutting off their ears and tail, and slitting up their nostrils, the latter being probably the only useful remedy, as it allows the animal to inhale a large volume of air. To preserve them from the veta, chopped garlic is put into their nostrils. With human beings, this state of the atmosphere causes the blood to gush from the eyes, nose, and lips, and occasions faintings, blood-spittings, vomitings, and other unpleasant and dangerous symptoms. The sensation somewhat resembles that of sea-sickness, whence the Spanish name of mareo. The malady, in its most violent form, sometimes causes death from excessive loss of blood. Of this, Dr Tschudi saw instances. Much depends on the general health and constitution of the persons attacked. The action of the veta is very capricious. Some persons do not experience it on a first visit to the mountains, but suffer on subsequent ones. Another singular circumstance is, that it is much more violent in some places than in others of a greater altitude. This affords ground for a supposition, that other causes, besides the diminished pressure of the atmosphere, concur to occasion it. These as yet remain unknown. The districts in which the veta is felt with the greatest intensity, are for the most part very metallic, and this has given rise to the Indian theory of its cause.