Exploration of the Valley of the Amazon, Part 2 (of 2)

by William Lewis Herndon; Lardner Gibbon

While in Cochabamba we witnessed ceremonials for the funeral of a little child. A number of ladies came to prepare the infant for the grave. They dressed it in a white silk frock, fastened on by diamond rings, and trimmed with gold and silver threads; the little feet and head bare. In its right hand was placed a golden cross, and in the left a small silver lamb. The coffin was lined with deep-blue silk, inside of which was placed a little bed; the whole hung by three bands of blue and white ribbon. While the ladies were engaged upon this preparation, they laughed and talked as though making very different preparations. The mother and family were brought in to see the arrangements. Six little boys, dressed in black, held the ribbons, and carried the child towards the church. The ladies, headed by the commadre (godmother) of the dead infant, followed, and after them friends on foot. The eldest sister was the only one of the family who followed to the church. As the boys moved along through the streets, Indian women crowded round to look at and admire the finery. The boys were cautioned to see that none of the jewellery were stolen. These are taken off after the body leaves the church for the graveyard, where the coffin is placed on a shelf in a brick wall above ground. Great care is taken that the coffin is not stolen, particularly when it is an expensive one. The same coffin is sold several times for eight dollars. Among the mestizos we are told are found many bad people. Twenty priests, with lighted candles, knelt in prayer by the music of "misa de las Angelas"—angels' mass. The ladies returned to the house of the mother, and spent the evening sociably, as though nothing had happened. The regular custom of the country is to have music and dancing in the house before the corpse is taken to the church, and even to bring in chicha; but as the father of this child was a foreigner, no such practice was permitted. The doctrine taught by the church seems to be, that as the child is in Heaven, it is cause for rejoicing and merry-making. This appears to be a bounty for negligence and inattention to life.

I saw a funeral passing through the streets of Cochabamba, preceded by a man with a five-gallon jar of chicha on his head. At the corners of the streets, when those who carried the corpse were tired, they all drank and sang, until the whole party became intoxicated, so that they did not reach the graveyard at all, and the funeral was postponed until the next day, when the same forms were practised we saw the day before.

This is the case only among the mestizos; the Indians are more orderly; show a more quiet respect, natural, and proper feeling. They often sit silently in rows by a corpse all night mourning for the loss of a fellow Indian. There is among them a deep, heartfelt expression, that carries with it outwardly an unmistakeable and truthful inward grief.

The funeral of a wealthy creole is attended by gentlemen dressed in black, invited by printed cards, who carry long tallow candles through the streets, accompanied by music. A train of Franciscan friars and portable altars put up at the corners between the houses and some church. Masses are said agreeably to order, and a charge is made in the funeral bills for chicha, cigars, coca, wine, cooking apparatus, with other church expenses, amounting to nearly three hundred dollars. We witnessed such a bill paid for a friend, and could not avoid making a comparison between the articles and the list of mess stores drawn up by an old sailor on the eve of his departure for a cruise round Cape Horn.

Men do not live to a very old age in Cochabamba, eighty years being the oldest known at present. Girls sometimes bear children at the age of thirteen; twelve years is the marriageable age, both for creoles and Indians. The proportion of marriages in this country is small for the amount of population. I regret to be obliged to say the most moral portion is found among the aboriginal race. The Indian, with his wife and children around him, cultivates the soil, while the creoles and mestizos are idle and generally unmarried people. Since the establishment of the government, in the year 1826 to the year 1851, during twenty-five years, the population has increased from about one million to one million and a half. Few people leave the country, and few emigrate to it.

In the streets of Cochabamba there are many beggars, blind and crazy. It was the practice of one friend to open his door and let into the patio on Saturday about fifty miserable-looking creatures—men, women, and children—not one of them Indians; each was served with two loaves of bread by the hands of his little daughters.

Through the polite interposition of her Britannic Majesty's minister in Sucre, the Brazilian envoy kindly sent me passports to the authorities on my route, and also wrote to the governor of the province of Matto Grosso in my behalf.

The Extraordinary Minister Plenipotentiary from Brazil had made a short speech to the President and his cabinet, at a dinner in Sucre, on the navigation of the Amazon river and its tributaries, by which it was understood he had been sent to desire the exclusive right to navigate the branches of the Madeira flowing through the territory of Bolivia. An enterprising and intelligent gentleman, engaged in the trade of cinchona bark in Cochabamba, and a friend of President Belzu, answered the Brazilian minister. He said it would be more advantageous to Bolivia to grant that privilege to a company belonging to a nation who would introduce the mechanic arts, machinery, and agricultural implements, into the lowlands and proper tools for mining operations. He was in favor of the navigation being opened to the commercial people of North America. To this the Brazilian minister replied, that the North Americans had already annexed a large territory from Mexico, and he considered such a proposition an invitation for them to come to South America. As he had not been received in an official character by the government of Bolivia, he demanded his passport, and retired from the contest.

In the opinion of some, it was thought a wise plan to induce the President of Bolivia to declare towns on the branches of the Madeira free ports of entry to the commerce of the world. By others it was considered an impolitic movement, as there might be proved a necessity to land cargoes in the territory of Brazil at certain points of obstruction between the Atlantic and Bolivia, and no affront should be offered the Brazilian government, with whom it was necessary to be upon good terms for the accomplishment of a great commercial enterprise. The merchants of Cochabamba used their influence with the cabinet ministers to discourage any act which might stand in the way of a right to pass down to the ocean through the territory of Brazil, or, in case of natural obstructions—such as falls and rapids—to prevent an amicable arrangement for portages on land between these two nations.

The President has appointed two French ladies schoolmistresses for the public schools supported by the government for the education of the poor children in Cochabamba. These ladies come from the other side of the world to teach, and by our particular request one of them promised to lead the ideas of the children along the current of the small stream flowing by the school-house through all its turnings, until she got them to understand how easy it would be to go that way to the land of her forefathers.