Deck and port /

by Walter Colton

Saturday, May 2. The cathedral, and indeed all the principal churches of Lima, impress you more through the magnificence of their proportions than any richness of architecture. They are generally built of a coarse freestone, stuccoed and painted. Their domes and towers rise on the distant eye, in gaudy grandeur, but betray their poverty on a closer vision. The statues which adorn them are generally coarse and frail in the material, and without taste in the execution. Over every altar is a statue of the Virgin in the hues of life. Her costume is light or dark, as the occasion is merry or sad; but the skirt of her dress always spreads to the right and left like a great fan. This depression is given it, so that the priest officiating at the altar, when he looks up, may see her benignant face.

Sunday, May 3. In the church of San Domingo is a statue, in which there is an attempt to represent, under the similitudes of the human form and countenance, the Supreme Jehovah. The idea is taken from those ancient sculptures which embody the attributes of the Olympian Jove. The analogy between those statues which Christianity has been made to sanctify, and those which she cast off with the mythology of paganism, is painfully true. We have here the Venus of the Greeks in the likeness of the blessed Virgin, and the Jupiter of the Romans in the representations of the Supreme Being. Mercury, in the character of the Angel of the Annunciation, brings tidings from heaven; and Pluto, under the thunder-scarred front of Satan, reigns over hell. The unpurified, instead of wandering on the gloomy Styx, now wander in purgatory, till some Charon, in the person of an absolving priest, ferries them over to the fields of purple light. I know the force of visible symbols, and the facility and seeming advantage of impressing man through his outward senses; but something is due to the dignity of truth and the sanctity of that spiritual revelation which God has made of himself, and above all to that fearful mandate—“Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image, nor the likeness of any thing that is in the heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth: thou shalt not bow down to them nor worship them.”

Monday, May 4. The aborigines of Peru still wear a bean at the temple as a charm against disease, and still adhere to their herb doctors. These simple disciples of Esculapius, laden with their barks, balsams, roots, and herbs, traverse the steeps and glens of the Andes, descend into the plains of Chili, and the pampas of Buenos Ayres. If they seldom cure, they have the satisfaction of knowing that they never kill. But as the legitimate province of medicine is to amuse the patient, while nature cures the disease, perhaps the result of their practice will not suffer by a comparison with that of their more learned brethren. It is much wiser, in ordinary cases, to hang a bean to the temple, than to put a pill into the stomach. Nature never complains of the bean, but she is often very much puzzled to know what to do with the pill. Were the ghosts of those who have fallen victims to medicine to appear on this earth, there would be a more terrible shaking among the medical profession, than there was in the valley of Ezekiel’s vision of dry bones.

Tuesday, May 5. The winds in Peru prevail for nine months in the year from the south. These cooler currents, mingling themselves with warmer airs, produce what is called the Scotch mist. It instils itself into your garments slowly, but in a continued exposure will completely saturate them. It is experienced most at night, and disappears beneath the slanting rays of the sun. Strangers are apt to disregard it; but the natives put on their ponchos.

The traveller from a northern zone finds the seasons quite reversed here. Spring opens with September. When the farmer with us is gathering in his last harvest, the seeds of the first are sown here. When the birds forsake our groves for winter quarters, they are here selecting their vernal mates. When the flowers with us perish, they are here just opening their bright eyes to the sun. Nature never leaves herself here without a witness, nor society without its signals, as seen in this monk and Peruvian farmer.

Monk. Peruvian Farmer.

I encountered two things in the markets of Lima rather peculiar in their way. The first was a chicken quartered as if it had been a sheep or bullock, and sold in parts to suit purchasers; each part bringing the price of a whole one with us. The second was a monk carrying a little tray, with a crucifix embossed upon it, which every one was invited to kiss, and pay for the privilege what he might please to put in. One cast into it a biscuit, another a sausage, a third a potatoe; so the monk went off with quite a breakfast, and will be back assuredly to-morrow morning to have it filled again in the same way. It was the first time I ever saw the privilege of a kiss purchased with a potatoe. But a monk is seldom at a loss for an expedient.

Of all the fruits in Peru, the most esteemed is the chirimoya. It grows rather larger than our pippin, has a rough exterior, but is filled with a soft pulp, which resembles in taste our strawberries and cream. It is scooped out with a teaspoon, melts in the mouth, and gushes over the palate in a luscious tide. The tree which bears this fruit requires seventeen years before its seminal buds ripen into their precious burden.

Next comes the granadilla, the fruit of the passion flower. It resembles, in shape, size, and smoothness of texture, the egg of our domestic fowls. You break the shell, and swallow the rich mucilaginous pulp with its delicate seeds. The taste has no analogies in any other fruit. At first it seems to want character or palatable emphasis, but it wins upon you, till that which appeared a defect becomes an excellence. It is just such a fruit as the seeming sacredness of its origin would lead you to expect. It brings you back in your sensations to that fount which nursed your infant life.