Deck and port /

by Walter Colton

Thursday, April 23. When a young female consents to become the mistress of a man here, she requires of him a certificate that he will not marry without her consent. This certificate she deposites with the Bishop of Lima, and purchases a dispensation for the irregularity involved in the compact. Should the man, from weariness or any other motive, attempt to effect a marriage arrangement with another person, without her consent, she calls at once on the bishop, who threatens the delinquent, if he perseveres, with the highest pains and penalties of the church.

He is thus reduced to the necessity of either making an adequate settlement on the person with whom he entered into the illicit arrangement, or of foregoing entirely his matrimonial purposes. The object of the bishop in this matter is to prevent a dishonored female, with perhaps three or four children, from being thrown on the world without any means of support. Whether this motive, even when its object is achieved, can justify the semi-official sanction of the compact, is another question. But this I may say, it often prevents the heartless libertine from selfishly abandoning one for whose guilt and ruin he is measurably responsible. If he don’t like the conditions, then let him decline the arrangement; it is at best only a passport to guilt and sorrow.

Friday, April 24. I encountered to-day a blind pedler, of whom there are several in Lima. He carried two baskets, the one filled with elegant toys, the other with ribbons, thread, needles, and pins. He knew where to find each article, and the price which he should get for it. Even the quality of the ribbon could not deceive his delicate touch; nor could the coin which he received in exchange, palm itself off for more than its value. Heaven guide and protect thee, thou poor blind pedler! We all feel our way through this dim world in the hope of reaching a brighter and better.

There are a great many families in Lima who have no cooking done in their houses through the year. They send out to the cook-stands which are sprinkled all over the city. They thus save the expense of extra servants and fuel. It is another mode of disguising poverty, and of avoiding the necessity of breaking up their establishments. When a Spanish family of some pretension becomes reduced, and it is necessary to sell the carriage, the coat-of-arms and every clue to its previous owner, are, as far as possible, effaced. As a last resort, the household servants are allowed to hire themselves out, and bring back a portion of their earnings to their owner. When these die, or desert, the last string in the old harp is broken. If a tone lingers still, it is so sad you would not hear it breathe again. There is something in the condition of a man who is now poor and who has seen better days, with which only the most callous levity can trifle. It was only out of Eden that Adam felt in its full force his irreparable loss.

Saturday, April 25. Foreign youth who come to Lima from Protestant countries to engage in business, often disappoint the fondest expectations of their friends. Cast adrift from the moral and religious restraints which they felt at home, and having no respect for the solemn pageantries of religion which they encounter here, they fall easy victims to the vices of the metropolis. Hardly one in ten escapes the giddy maelstrom, down which they are whirled from light and hope. Their ruin would at least be retarded were the institutions of the Protestant faith permitted here. But the Roman hierarchy, which cries aloud for freedom of conscience in the United States, here tramples it down with Bastille ferocity. If the masses in the Catholic church here are bigoted and intolerant, their spiritual superiors have made them so. The depth of the forest wakes or sleeps with the tempest that walks over it.

The frailties of the Limanian female seem not to extinguish her sympathies with distress. She is often at the couch of pain with that tender assiduity which we can hardly dissever from a virtuous life. Her watchful care is not denied to the stranger, or to those utterly incapable of rewarding it. This surviving virtue, amid the wreck of others, is to be ascribed perhaps to that forbearance which her frailties experience. With us she would be abandoned by her relatives, and delivered over by her former associates to irremediable crime and shame. The result of this is a fearful proclivity in guilt and ruin. Whether virtue is best vindicated by a denunciation which never relents, or a forbearance which tries to save, is a question which would not long hold me in suspense. No heart is wholly bad; it has some string in it that will vibrate if rightly touched. He who suffered on the cross died to open the door of mercy, not to shut it.

Sunday, April 26. The religion of the Limanians is entitled to a charitable judgment. The mass of the people are not responsible for the pageantries with which it is invested. Their uninformed faith may be perplexed among shadows, but it often penetrates to the substance. Among the frivolous there are not a few with whom religion is an earnest reality. Among the skeptical, many may be found who have cast the anchor of their hopes within the veil.

We may denounce the proscriptive polity of their church, but we should not denounce them. They worship in a temple which the zeal of ages has reared to their hands. They found its doors barred to other religious persuasions, and it is requiring too much to expect that they will at once throw back its bolts. This can be realized only through the influence of that higher light which the Bible is now pouring into the recesses of every sectarian shrine. Even our own Protestant altars are now visited by rays which have long been shut out, or permitted to fall in only faint fragments. The spirit of intolerance which has pervaded our churches, has been a source of vast moral mischief. The road to heaven is covered with the footprints of thousands, who have been won to it by the accents of Christian love.

Monday, April 27. When a political intrigue explodes in Lima, the first inquiry is for the woman that sprung the mine. She is generally found to be some courtesan, whose success lies more in the power of her personal charms than her force of intellect. Her carriage in Lima and her rancho at Chorillos, sufficiently attest her means, and the honor of those favors through which she beguiles the unwary statesman into her plans and purposes.

If the plot fails, her coadjutors may atone for their political profligacy with their lives; but she lives on, and may yet ensnare the judges that doomed them. She has a tact that eludes sagacity, and a perseverance that seems to challenge obstacles. She makes her way where the maturest counsels are disconcerted, and triumphs where the most daring courage is foiled. She detects at a glance the unguarded point in the most crafty, and turns his weapons against himself. Her intrigues sometimes result in benefit to the state. The same mysterious hand, that traces in ominous characters the doom of the obnoxious or incapable minister, often executes its own sentence.