Throughout our route we have found more females affected with the goitre than males. In the deep mountain ravines, we were nearly led to the belief men never were troubled with this swelling of the throat.
While looking at a drove of cattle, which has just arrived from the plains, at the market of Trinidad, we noticed that while nearly all the cows, young and old, were miserably thin, many of the males were in good condition.
There is no trade at the present day in this part of the country so important as that of salt brought from without the rain belt. This rain belt is broken. At Lima, in Peru, it never rains, only sometimes drops. There the precipitation is very little, and the evaporation great. Lima is in latitude 12° 03´ south. A few leagues north of Lima, on the coast, are found the salt basins of Huacho. Sea-water is let into basins on the plain. In twenty months the sun evaporates the water, and blocks of salt are left, which supply the markets of North Peru. The government of Peru takes advantage of the break in the rain-belt, and leases the "Salinas," as they are called, to those who pay an annual rent into the public treasury.
The salt of Huacho is carried east, over the Cordilleras, to the valley Juaja, where it rains half the year, and where we found animals suffering for the want of it, though found in veins. The northeast and southeast trade winds carry rains from the north and south Atlantic up to the snow-capped Cordilleras to the west of Juaja valley. There the winds give out; after they have had all the moisture wrung out of them, there is none left to pass over the Cordilleras and rain down into Lima. The break, in the rain-belt, formed by the meeting of these two trade winds, drawn back and forth after the sun takes place on the very tops of the Cordilleras range of mountains, where the last drop of moisture in the winds freeze and fall in the shape of snow flakes. Just below this is found the native habitation of the Peruvian camel. The Indian who inhabits the valley of Juaja, in want of salt, drives the llama down to the Pacific coast, and takes it from a line level with the ocean. He goes to the sea for it in preference to collecting it from the mine. Should he go south, to Chile, he finds the southerly winds bring rain along the coast, and instead of a supply, he finds a market. If he goes north of Huacho to Equador, there northerly winds bring rain, and there is another market.
The Indian loads his llama with one hundred pounds of salt, and drives him up the western slope of the Peruvian mountains, through a gorge filled with snow, over sixteen thousand feet high, to the plains of Juaja.
While the Potosi Indian loads his argentine mule with three hundred pounds of salt, not from the ocean, but from the salt lakes on the plains of Potosi, made by the natural evaporation of the sun from a fresh water stream on the top of the Andes, running over rock salt; he, too, takes it under the rain-belt to the market of Mojos. If salt may be made so readily from the water of the sea at Turk's Island in the West Indies, why may it not be made somewhere on the west coast of Mexico? The scorching rays of the sun peel the skin off people's noses there just as they do on the table lands of Potosi, and along the shores of Peru.
The town of Trinidad is the largest in Mojos, with a population of over three thousand, few of which are creoles. The national creole guard musters about twenty soldiers and five officers, headed by the prefect with the rank of General de Brigada, armed with old flint lock muskets. One common gun-flint will purchase, in the market, a basket containing one dozen delicious oranges. The flint part of Don Antonio's cargo was disposed of at once, and the silver willingly paid. He brought a supply for a long time to come, even at the risk of a revolution. External wars have never interfered with Mojos, except the war of exclusiveness.
On the 6th of June, mass was held in the cathedral, the day being called Santissima Trinidada. After mass we witnessed a grand procession, headed by the prefect and clergy, followed by the whole population dressed in white gowns, "camecitas," as they are called here. Whenever the Indians are performing church service, the women unplat their hair, and allow it to hang gracefully loose behind over their white dresses. The hair of the men is cut short.
At each corner of the plaza was an arbor, constructed of green foliage and flowers, with plantain trees and palm leaves. As they marched round to music and singing, the scene was beautiful and interesting. The red race dressed in white cotton cloth, following the catholic clergy in rich costume, bearing wooden images on their shoulders; three thousand savages, half civilized, were singing church music, and living under the laws of quasi white men. The few creoles who walked by the side of the prefect and clergy were but a drop in the plate.
After the procession returned to the cathedral, the Indians pulled down the arbors and entered the plaza, bearing long poles, with which they built an enclosure on the corner of the square next the prefectura. A pen was erected adjoining, in which, one by one, were placed a number of savage bulls, wild from the pampas.