Marks of small-pox are seen among the people; but there are no chills and fevers here. Some of the women have dreadful swellings in their necks, called by them "cota," or goitre, caused by drinking bad water, or snow-water deprived of salts. But why this disease is generally confined to the women I cannot say, unless the men never drink water. It was very certain, from the noise after church, that they find something stronger. I do not think the people are generally dissipated, except on Sunday afternoons, when both sexes seem disposed to frolic. During the week they are otherwise employed.
Leaving the Juaja valley, we passed through a rough, hilly country. In barley stubbles ewes are giving lambs.
By Lieut. L. Gibbon U. S. N.
Lith. of P.S. Duval & Co. Phil.
ENCAMPED NEAR HUANCAYO, VALLEY OF JUAJA, Peru.
A woman planting beans after the plough, has her baby slung over her shoulders; by the noise it made, I doubt its partiality to beans. The plough is drawn by oxen, yoked by the horns. It is made of two pieces of wood—the handle and coulter are of one piece, into which is jointed the beam; the coulter is shod with a square plate of iron, without a shear, so that the furrow is made by throwing the soil on both sides, like the North Carolina bull-tongue. On a hill some Indians are planting, while others are carrying up water in large jars from a stream for the purpose of irrigating the vegetables peeping out of the ground.
Some of the Indians on the road look very sad after their Sunday frolic. A man on horseback, with his wife astride behind him, and her baby slung to her back, looked quite as uncomfortable as his miserable little horse. The road is marked with stones at every league of three miles: some of the measures must have been made on a Monday morning after a frolic. The small towns of Guayocachi and Nahuinpacyo are inhabited solely by Indians, and have a ruinous appearance. The streets are pasture-grounds, and decayed old houses serve as roosting-places for buzzards. We had thunder, rain, and hail; the hail-stones as large as peas, and soft, like snow-balls. Lightning flashed all around us in the valley, while the black clouds brought up by the southeast winds were hurried back by a heavy northwest squall. Thermometer 45°.
The Indians gather the dung of animals for fuel. Wood is too scarce to burn here. The green waters of the Juaja rush down through deep ravines; its power is used for a flour mill. The grain is mashed. The branches of a few large cedar trees, give shade to the door of the polite old mestizo miller. Descending the river, we came to a beautiful whitewashed new stone bridge, with one arch, 30 feet above the stream. Paying a toll of one shilling per mule, we crossed the Juaja into the small town of Iscuchaca. Near the river there are patches of lucerne, and peach trees in blossom. A native of Copenhagen, in Denmark, came forward and invited us to his house. The people had told him his countrymen had arrived. He was silversmith and apothecary, but had been employed by the Peruvian government to construct this beautiful stone bridge, which he had finished, and married the first pretty girl on the street leading therefrom, the daughter of a retired officer of the Peruvian army. The bridge across this stream was formerly built of wood. During a revolution, one of the parties set it on fire to the stone foundation. The Copenhagen man gathered a quantity of this stone, made a fire of it in his forge, and heated a piece of iron red hot. He called it brown slate coal; rather hard; not good for blacksmith's work; but the same is used for running an engine at the mines of Castro-Virreyna, in which he is interested. There are thermal springs near; and specimens of magnetic iron were collected from a mountain 1½ league to the northeast of the town. The "Matico" bush is found here. Many stories are told of the effects of this medicinal plant, which has been in use as a tea among the Indians, and as a poultice for wounds.