All this indicates a truth, which a thousand other facts corroborate, that the women of Lima are far in advance of the men in sagacity and force of purpose. In the frightful conflicts of the Revolution, when men’s hearts failed them, they were in disguise on horseback among the troops, nerving the timid, and rallying the brave. No political party can long maintain its ascendency in Peru that has not their confidence and support. They will make it ridiculous with their raillery, or odious with their denunciation.
Tuesday, April 28. Out of Lima, the masses in Peru subsist mostly on a vegetable diet. The flour of maize, wheat, peas, beans, barley, rice, and arrowroot, are made into a soft pap, or mush, which is sweetened exceedingly with sugar or molasses. This is the great Peruvian dish called “masamora,” and which is the edible staple in every family. It produces sleekness without strength, and fatness without fire. They who subsist upon it retain their flesh till they pass forty; then begin to dwindle away; at sixty they are extremely thin; and at seventy have hardly substance enough to cast a shadow.
A mother here never nurses her child when she is angry, for fear of imparting to it a choleric temperament. If unable to perform herself this agreeable maternal function, she procures a black nurse, but never an Indian. The vital tide from a red skin she feels assured will give it a fiery irascible disposition. She considers the milk of the black cow cooler than that of any other, and anticipates a mild and amiable temper in her children as she pours it into their porringers. I like this idea of not nursing a child when angry. It is another check on peevishness and passion. It would not be amiss were the superstition universal. Of all objects in the world the most painful to me is, a mother nursing and scolding at the same time. It is worse than thunder out of a soft April cloud.
Wednesday, April 29. There are in Lima two associations which are very attentive to strangers. A member of one is called a pillo, a member of the other a pillofero. The first is a genteel loafer, the second a dexterous gambler. So you have your choice between a good-humored graceless uninvited guest, and a refined cheat. The one is satisfied with your table and floating change, the other goes for your purse and its entire contents. The one plunders you through your vanity, the other through your bad fortune.
Priests here not only guard the prerogatives of their order, but the purity of their Spanish blood. A high ecclesiastic, of Indian or African descent, is not to be found in their ranks. Such a lineage would debar him the sacred functions of the altar. Those who exercise them are as jealous of the Castilian blood which flows in their veins, as an old Hidalgo furbishing his family coat-of-arms. They inculcate equality among their communicants, and make them kneel together on the same stone pavement, but they stand aloof in the immemorial privileges and dignity of their order. They have inferiors who mix with the masses: some of these are devoted men; they encounter incredible hardships in propagating their faith. Their self-denying zeal may well be a lesson to Protestants.
The most amusing being in Lima is the mestizo—the offspring of the European and Indian. His wit and humor never fail him. He will convulse you with laughter, and be himself quite sedate. It puzzles you that a bird of such dazzling plumage should fly out of the shadows of such a sombre tree. The zambo, half Indian and half African, has a broader humor. His allusions are under no restraints from sentiments of delicacy, or respect for the presence of the other sex. I have seen one of them keep a street crowd in a roar by the hour.
Zambos are generally employed as household servants. The children naturally fall into their care, and become early accustomed to the language suggested by their prurient imaginations. Love intrigues are with them a never-failing source of entertainment. Even the “peccadillos” of their parents are sometimes made a subject of mirth. The adventures of the mother are thus made known to the daughter. Her prudent counsels, after that, sound hollow indeed. It is not to be wondered at that she should turn away from the precept to imitate the example. Many families, and among them some of the first in Lima, have thus been plunged in irretrievable humiliation and grief. The cause may be, and generally is, carefully concealed. But an unseen wound may rankle as deeply as that which has no covering. The light which a mother should depend upon to guide the steps of her daughter, is that which is reflected from her own example. If shadows rest on this—if it falls only in transient flakes, seen one moment and lost the next, like the firefly’s fitful beam—it will only serve the more to bewilder and betray. What the mother would have her daughters, she should be herself. It is her example, and not her precepts, that shapes their social and moral being.
Thursday, April 30. In the native Indians is found the productive industry of Peru. The products of their gardens and fields roll in a ceaseless tide into the markets of Lima. Their jewelry and ponchos, wrought with little aid from machinery, rival in elegance some of the most finished productions of art; while their sturdy arms fill with ceaseless echoes the deep silver mines of the Andes. The roads which they constructed under their Incas still run along the jagged steeps of the Cordilleras; their swinging gardens still throw their fragrance on the wind; and through their aqueducts still rolls with refreshing force the mountain stream. But many of their richest plains and glens, Spanish rule and indolence have turned into sterility.
An Indian boy from the interior, domesticated in a European family in Lima, will at first show some alacrity in duty; but when he enters the summer of youth, he flies back to his mountain home. And the Indian girl, who has little else to do than carry a mat to church, on which her mistress may kneel at mass, when the levities of childhood are passed, turns an earnest eye to the picturesque glades of the Andes. The sequestered hut, the wild fruits and flowers which bloom around it, the stream that ripples past the door, the lama-skin couch, and one by whom she can be loved and protected, float through her young dreams, and off she flies for the reality of this romantic vision. Her mistress, the next time she goes to mass, looks for her Indian girl, and begins to think
“That love in simplest hearts hath deepest sway.”