The which I communicate to you for its punctual fulfilment.
God preserve you.
J. C'MO. TORRICO.
This passport was made out at a time when I expected to procure two servants. Mauricio, the Chamicuros Indian, was the only servant who accompanied us.
We were accompanied for a mile or two on the road by our kind friends and countrymen, Messrs. Prevost, Foster, and McCall, who drew up at the Cemetery to bid us good-bye; Mr. Prevost advising us to halt at the first place we could find pasturage for the mules. The road we were to travel had reputation for robbers, and Mr. McCall desired to know how we were to defend ourselves in case of attack, as we carried our guns in leather cases, strapped to the crupper, and entirely out of reach for a sudden emergency. Gibbon replied by showing his six-barrelled Colt, and observed that Ijurra, Richards, and myself had each a pair of pistols at hand. As for Mauricio, he kept his pistols in his saddle-bags; and I was satisfied, from some attempts that I had made to teach Luis to shoot, (though he was very ambitious and desirous to learn,) that it was dangerous to trust him with a pair, as he might as readily fire into his friends as his enemies. With the comfortable observation from Mr. McCall that he never expected to see us again, we shook hands and parted.
Our course lay about E. N. E. over an apparently level and very stony road. To the right were the green cane and alfalfa[4] fields, about Miraflores and Chorillos; and on the left and behind, the vegetation afforded by the valley of the Rimac; but ahead all was barren, grim, and forbidding.
Just before sunset we stopped at the hacienda (estate, or farm, or settlement) of Santa Clara, and applied for pasturage. We were told by an old negro woman sitting on the ground at the door of the house, that there was none; which was confirmed by two men who just then rode up, and who expressed their regret at not being able to accommodate us. It was remarkable to see such poverty and squalid wretchedness at nine miles from the great city of Lima; it was like passing in a moment from the most luxurious civilization into savage barbarity—from the garden to the desert. We rode on, about three miles further, to the hacienda of Pacayar, where we arrived at half past six o'clock, p. m.
Before the mules could be unloaded it became very dark; so that the arriero and Mauricio had considerable trouble in driving them to the pasturage. Indeed some of them got away; I could hear them galloping furiously up and down the road, and I went to bed on a table in the only room in the house, with the comfortable reflection that I had balked at starting, and should have to return or send back to Lima to buy more mules.
Tormented with these reflections, and oppressed with the excitement and fatigue of the day, I could not sleep; but tossed "in restless ecstacy" for many a long hour, until just before daylight, when, as I was dropping to sleep, a couple of game cocks, tied by the leg in the room, commenced "their salutation to the morn," and screamed out their clarion notes within a yard of my ear. This was too much for me. I rushed out—to meet a heavenly morning, and old Luis, with the intelligence that the mules were "all right." I took off my upper clothes, and plunged head, neck, and shoulders, into the water of a little mountain stream that rushed clear and cold as ice by the roadside in front of the house. Thus refreshed and invigorated, the appearance of affairs took a new aspect, and light-heartedness and hope came back as strong and fresh as in the days of boyhood.
The mayordomo, or steward of the estate, was a Chino, (descendant of Indian and negro,) and seemed an amiable and intelligent fellow, He gave us a supper of a thin soup (caldo) and chupe;[5] and whilst we were eating it, he was engaged in teaching the children of a neighbor the multiplication table and the catechism.