We had hard commons here, our charqui beginning to decay. No eggs; no potatoes; nothing, in fact, but yuccas and bananas. There were turkeys, chickens, and a pig running about the chacra; but no entreaty, nor any reasonable offer of money, could induce the people to sell us one. I offered the patrona a dollar and a half for a half-grown turkey; but she said she must wait till her husband came in from his work, so that she might consult him. When he came, after long debate, it was decided that they would sell me a chicken for breakfast to-morrow. I tried hard to find out why they were so reluctant to sell, for they do not eat them themselves; but did not succeed. I believe it to be something like the miser-feeling of parting with property, the not being used to money, and also a dislike to kill what they have reared and seen grow up under their own eye.
Our patrona had six or seven children: one an infant, which, when she puts to sleep, she enwraps closely in a woollen cloth, and swathes tightly, over arms and all, with a broad thick band, so that it is perfectly stiff, and looks like a log of wood, or a roll of cloth. I asked why she did this, but could only get the reply that it was the "custom here." The young women of the country have very good features, and appear lively and good-tempered. Two daughters of the patrona came in on a visit to-day. I suppose they are out at work (probably as house servants) in some neighboring hacienda. They were dressed in red calicoes, always open in the back, and with the invariable shawl; and one of them had ruffles of cotton lace around the bottom of the sleeves, which did not reach to the elbow. The girls were nearly as dark as Indians, but I presume they had a mixture of white blood.
July 28.—I walked, in company with Ijurra, about three miles to visit a Señor Martins, at his hacienda of Cocheros. We found this gentleman a clever and intelligent Portuguese, who had passed many years in this country. He knew Smyth, and had helped him along on this route. His wife is Doña Juana del Rio, a very lady-like person, in spite of her common country costume. It was quite surprising to see a Limeña, and one who had evidently lived in the first circles of that city, in this wild country, and in this rude though comfortable house. The floor was earth, and I saw no chairs. The lady sat in a hammock, and the men either on the mud benches around the sides of the room, or on a coarse wooden one alongside of a coarse table. Part of the house was curtained off into small bed-rooms. There was evident plenty, and great comparative comfort about the house; also, a fine lot of handsome, intelligent-looking children. Señor Martins told me that this Quebrada produced seven hundred cargas of coca yearly. A carga is two hundred and sixty pounds. The value in Huanuco is generally three dollars the arroba. This would make the value of the crop twenty-one thousand eight hundred and forty dollars. The hire of the seven hundred mules required to carry it to Huanuco is two thousand eight hundred dollars, which reduces the value to about nineteen thousand dollars. There are not many haciendas, but a number of small farms; the owners of which sell their coca on the spot for two dollars the arroba. I asked Martins the reason why I had seen several of the haciendas abandoned, particularly his own large one of Casapi. He said there were two causes: one being a large ant that ate the coca leaves, and which, when once established in a plantation, was difficult to get rid of; and another was the scarcity of labor—that it was barely to be had in the Quebrada; that he had six laborers on his hacienda; and that he was at least two thousand dollars in advance to them. The money, of course, had been advanced to them in the shape of supplies, and I suppose these laborers are now as effectually slaves as if they were so by law.
Nothing is sold from this valley but coca. Only sufficient coffee and sugar cane are planted for the use of the inhabitants. Señor Martins gave us some very good caçacha, or rum made from the cane, and some tolerable pine-apples and plantains. A little cotton is cultivated, and a coarse cloth is woven by hand from it. Every old woman goes about her household avocations with a bunch of cotton in her hand, and a spindle hanging below. I was surprised not to see any wild animals, though I am told that there are deer, hares, tiger-cats, and animals of the mink kind, that occasionally run off with the poultry. There are not so many birds as I expected; those I have seen are generally of a gay and rich plumage. Insect life is very abundant, and nearly all sting or bite. The climate is very pleasant, though the sun is hot in mid-day. The diseases, which occur rarely, are cutaneous affections, tabardillo, and sometimes small-pox.
We met, at Cocheros, an English botanist, named Nation, upon whose track we have been ever since leaving Lima. He was the gardener of Souza Ferreyra, the Brazilian Chargé in Lima, and I believe was collecting plants for him. Poor fellow! he had had a hard time of it; he lost his mule not long after leaving Lima, and walked from Surco to Morococha, where some kind person supplied him with another. He has also had tertiana whenever he has gone into the Montaña. He was alone, and spoke no Spanish, but he had combatted obstacles and difficulties with a spirit and perseverance deserving all praise. I was sorry for his mishaps, but could not help laughing at him a little when I observed that the bats had nearly eaten his mule up. The poor beast was covered with blood all over, and had nearly lost an eye from their bites. Mr. Nation has sent a great many specimens of plants to Lima, and says that the "flora" of this country is rich, and almost identical with that of Brazil.
On our return from Cocheros we stopped at the house of a man who had, the day before, promised to sell us a fowl; with the usual want of good faith of these people, he now refused. Ijurra took the gun from my hand, and, before I was aware what he was about to do, shot a turkey. The man and his wife made a great outcry over it, and he was hurrying off, with furious gestures and menacing language, to report the matter to his patron, when a few kind words, the helping myself to a chew of coca out of his huallqui, or leathern bag, in which it is carried, and the offer of a dollar and a half, which before he had indignantly spurned, changed his mood, and he smiled and expressed himself satisfied, now that the thing was done and it could not be helped. I had been often told by travellers that this was frequently necessary to get something to eat, but had always set my mind resolutely against any such injustice and oppression; and I expressed my opinion of the matter to Ijurra, and requested that the like should not occur again. The elevation of Chihuangala is three thousand four hundred and twenty-one feet above the level of the sea.
July 30.—At 10 a. m., when we had begun to despair of the coming of our Indians, and Ijurra was about to start alone for Tingo Maria, for the purpose of fetching them, they came shouting into the chacra, thirteen in number. They were young, slight, but muscular-looking fellows, all life and energy; and wanted to shoulder the trunks and be off at once. We, however, gave them some charqui, and set them to breakfast. At noon we started, and descended the valley of Chinchao in a N. N. E. direction; the path steep and obstructed with bushes.
At about six miles from Chihuangala we arrived at the junction of the Chinchao river with the Huallaga, in a heavy shower of rain, with thunder and lightning. By leaving the Huallaga at Acomayo, below Huanuco, crossing a range of mountains at the Cerro de Carpis, striking the head of the valley of Chinchao, and descending it, we had cut off a great bend of the river, and now struck it again at the junction of the Chinchao. It is here some sixty yards wide, and the Chinchao thirty, both much obstructed with shoals and banks of gravel. The peons waded the Huallaga above the junction, and brought up a canoe from the hacienda of Chinchayvitoc, a few hundred yards below, and on the opposite side. We passed in the canoe, which the Indians managed very well. It was a great treat, after the tedious walk we had had, to feel the free, rapid motion of the boat as it glided down the stream. The stream seemed to run at the rate of five or six miles the hour; but, by keeping close in shore, two Indians could paddle the light canoe against it very well.
Chinchayvitoc is a hacienda established by a Bolivian gentleman named Villamil, for the collection of Peruvian bark. He brought some Bolivians with him to search for the bark; but it is not to be found in this country of good quality, and the scheme seems a failure. There is a mayordomo and a family of Indians living at the hacienda, but nothing is doing. Our peons cooked our dinner of cheese and rice, and made us a good cup of coffee. These are lively, good-tempered fellows, and, properly treated, make good and serviceable travelling companions. Let them but be faithfully paid, a kind word now and then spoken to them, and their cargoes rather under than over the regular weight, (eighty-seven and a half pounds,) and they will serve faithfully and honestly, and go singing and chattering through the woods like so many monkeys. Above all, let them stop when they wish, and don't attempt to hurry them.
We had Mr. Nation in company. He had collected some valuable plants, and showed me one which he said was a present for an Emperor, and that its very name would make my journal famous. I of course did not ask it of him; but was very glad to be able to repay to him, in some slight measure, the many kindnesses I have received from his countrymen, by giving him a part of my bed-clothes, and making him comfortable for the night, which he seemed to be much in need of, for he was wet and sick; and to sleep on the ground in that condition must be very dangerous. There is much moisture in the atmosphere; and I find it almost impossible to keep the guns in serviceable order.