If a man wishes to build a house or open a farm, he may be supplied with laborers for six months, at a hire, per month, of as many yards of cotton cloth as will make each a shirt and pair of trousers; the patron or master furnishing them with food; but, as may be imagined, this is of the coarsest and commonest description that will support life.
It would seem that men could never improve under a system of such absolute slavery as this; yet to give them liberty, is to abandon them and return them to a state of barbarity, shutting out all prospect of improvement; and the only hope seems to be in the justice and moderation of the rulers—a slim hope here.
We got off at noon; stopped at the "chacra" of Gen. Otero, and received a letter of introduction to the commandant of the fort. When the old gentleman saw our new servant "Mariano," he crossed himself most devoutly, and ejaculated "Satanas!" He then told us that this was a notoriously bad boy, whom nobody had been able to manage, but that we, being strangers and military men, might get along with him by strictness and severity; and he gave the boy a lecture upon his duties and the faithful performance of them.
A mile and a half beyond Gen. Otero's is the town of Acobamba. I judge that it contains twelve or fifteen hundred inhabitants; but it is situated in a thickly-settled district, and the "Doctrina" is said to be more populous than that of Tarma. Six more miles brought us to Palca, a straggling town of about one thousand inhabitants. We merely passed through, and a mile further on "brought up" at the chacra of Don Justo Rojas, to whom I had a letter from Lizarralde, the administrator at Morococha. Don Justo was engaged in extracting, by boiling, the juice of the rhatany root for an apothecary of Lima. He supplied us with a capital supper of chicken soup and boiled eggs, with alfalfa for the beasts. He also sold us, from his establishment in town, sugar and bread. We pitched the tent in an old corn-field, and slept delightfully. Tent-pegs for this country should be of iron. Although those we used were made of the hardest wood that could be found in Lima, we had used them all up by this time, beating off their heads by driving them with a hatchet into the hard and stony ground.
Don Justo's is the last chacra in the valley, which now narrows, and allows no room for cultivation. Though going down hill by the barometer, we were evidently crossing a chain of mountains, which the stream at the bottom of the valley has saved us the trouble of ascending and descending, by cleaving a way through for itself, and leaving the mountains on either hand towering thousands of feet above our heads. The ride was the wildest we have yet had; the road sometimes finding room along the borders of the river, and then ascending nearly to the top of the hills, and diminishing the foaming and thundering stream to a noiseless, silver thread. The ascents and descents were nearly precipitous; and the scene was rugged, wild, and grand beyond description.
We saw some miserable huts on the road, and met a few asses carrying reeds and poles from Chanchamayo. It seemed a providence that we did not meet these at certain parts of the road, where it is utterly impossible for two beasts to pass abreast, or for one to turn and retreat; and the only remedy is to tumble one off the precipice, or to drag him back by the tail until he reaches a place where the other can pass. Von Tschudi relates an instance of his shooting a mule which met him at one of these places.
We met with a considerable fright in this way to-day. We were riding in single file along one of these narrow ascents, where the road is cut out of the mountain side, and the traveller has a perpendicular wall on one hand, and a sheer precipice of many hundreds of feet upon the other. Mr. Gibbon was riding ahead. Just as he was about to turn a sharp bend of the road the head of a bull peered round it, on the descent. When the bull came in full view he stopped, and we could see the heads of other cattle clustering over his quarters, and hear the shouts of the cattle-drivers, far behind, urging on their herd. I happened to be abreast of a slight natural excavation, or hollow, in the mountain side, and dismounting I put my shoulder against my mule's flank and pressed her into this friendly retreat; but I saw no escape for Gibbon, who had passed it. The bull, with lowered crest, and savage, sullen look, came slowly on, and actually got his head between the perpendicular rock and the neck of Gibbon's mule. I felt a thrill of agony, for I thought my companion's fate was sealed. But the sagacious beast on which he was mounted, pressing her haunches hard against the wall, gathered her feet close under her and turned as upon a pivot. This placed the bull on the outside, (there was room to pass, though I did not believe it,) and he rushed by at the gallop, followed in single file by the rest of the herd. I cannot describe the relief I experienced. Gibbon, who is as gallant and fearless as man can be, said "It is of no use to attempt to disguise the fact—I was badly scared."
At 2 p. m., we arrived at a place called Matichacra, where there was a single hut, inhabited by a woman and her child; the husband having gone to Cerro Pasco to exhibit some specimens of gold ore which he had found here. The woman was afflicted with an eruption on her face, which she thought was caused by the metallic character of the earth around, particularly the antimonial. She took a knife, and, digging earth from the floor of her hut, washed it in a gourd, and showed us particles of metal like gold sticking to the bottom. I showed some of this earth to General Otero, who pronounced that there was no gold in it; but Lieutenant Maury, who examined some that I brought home with a powerful magnifier, has declared that there was. The mountains have an exceedingly metallic appearance, and the woman said that there were still in the neighborhood traces of the mining operations of the Spaniards.
About a mile and a half above Matichacra commenced the steep regular descent of the mountain range, and from just above it we could discern where the valley debouched upon an apparent plain, though bounded and intersected by distant mountains, bearing and ranging in different directions. This place we judged to be the "Montaña." We stopped an hour at Matichacra, (Gourd Farm, from half a dozen gourd vines growing near the house,) and made a chupe with a leg of mutton we had bought the night before at Palca. We saw a few patches of Indian corn on the side of the mountain opposite, and the tops of the mountains are clad with small trees. We passed on five miles further, and camped on a level plat near the banks of the stream, with bushes and small trees growing around us.
June 18.—This was the longest and hardest day's ride. The road was very bad; rocky and rough where it descended the river, and steep and difficult where it ascended the mountain side. We thought that the engineer who planned and constructed the road had frequently "taken the bull by the horns," and selected the worst places to run his road over; and that he would have done much better had he occasionally have thrown a bridge across the stream, and led the road along the flank of the mountains on the other side. In seven and a half miles we arrived at Utcuyacu, (cotton water,) the first hacienda where we saw sugar-cane, yucca, pine-apples, and plantains. It had just been opened, and nothing yet had been sold from it.