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PERU AS IT IS:

A RESIDENCE IN LIMA,
AND OTHER PARTS OF THE PERUVIAN REPUBLIC,
COMPRISING
AN ACCOUNT OF THE SOCIAL AND PHYSICAL FEATURES OF THAT COUNTRY.

BY ARCHIBALD SMITH, M.D.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET,
Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty.
1839.

LONDON:
PRINTED BY SAMUEL BENTLEY,
Dorset Street, Fleet Street.

TO

SIR ALEXANDER CRICHTON, M.D. F.R.S.

PHYSICIAN IN ORDINARY TO THE EMPEROR OF RUSSIA,
AND TO HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS THE DUKE OF CAMBRIDGE;
KNIGHT GRAND CROSS OF THE ORDERS OF ST. WLADIMIR
AND ST. ANNE,
KNIGHT OF THE ORDER OF THE RED EAGLE OF PRUSSIA, ETC.

the following account of Peru, a country which, it is probable, the Author never would have visited but for his very kind and disinterested patronage, is most gratefully dedicated by

Archibald Smith.

PREFACE.

In this refined age and country, to make a graceful appearance as an author requires endowments to which the writer of the following pages has no pretension: neither would he have intruded himself on the public notice, had he not thought it a duty incumbent on every one who travels, to give his own country the benefit of his observation and experience. He will venture to assert, that he has had ample means of making himself acquainted with his subject, and that he has treated it with candour and impartiality.

For upwards of ten years he lived in Peru: sometimes residing among miners; at other times associating with agriculturists; and professionally brought into contact with persons of all classes and ranks in society, from the palace to the humblest hut.

In the interior of Peru, but more especially in Lima, the writer has met with great courtesy and kindness in private life, and been distinguished by very flattering marks of public favour. He therefore, it may be well believed, has not “set down aught in malice;” and he trusts that in the following pages there will not be found any thing injurious to the Peruvian people, or at variance with that lasting gratitude and honest pride with which he remembers and acknowledges their hospitality.

With respect to the manner of executing his task, he feels that he requires the indulgence of his reader; but, with regard to the matter, he persuades himself that, however unskilfully treated it may be, and however deficient in that exquisite minuteness of detail which delights the curious, it will nevertheless be found to convey to the intelligent reader a fair general idea of the physical and moral condition of Peru; which, as it is all that the writer has aimed at, so to have attained it is all that he desires.

CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME.

ERRATA.

Transcriber’s Note: The errata have been corrected but otherwise the original spelling (in both English and Spanish) has been preserved.

PERU AS IT IS.

CHAPTER I.

Boundaries of the Peruvian Republic.—General appearance and climate of the coast.—Seasons divided into Wet and Dry.—Vegetation.—Lunar influence.—Enervating effects of the climate of Lima.

Modern Peru is bounded on the north by the Republic of the Equator; on the south by the Republic of Bolivia; on the east by the Portuguese territories, or Brazil; and on the west by the Pacific Ocean. The coast of the Republic of Peru extends along the shores of the Pacific from the river Loa, which is the southern boundary that divides it from Bolivia, to the river Tumbez, which divides it on the north from Guayaquil, or the Republic of the Equator. All this extent of coast, from 3° 30´ to 21° 30´ south latitude, is naturally a desert, intersected by several rivers, of greater or less magnitude, that descend along narrow mountain-glens of the Andes to the Pacific Ocean.

Many of these rivers are dried up for several months in the year; while others, of larger size, carry a perennial stream, swelling during the rainy season in the inland country, and are never seen to shrink so much in time of drought in the elevated regions from whence they spring, as not to supply the means of irrigating and beautifying the maritime vales through which they flow as they approach the ocean.

It is remarkable that, while along the coast of Peru the eye wearies in looking at sandy plains and hills, we no sooner pass the river Tumbez than the face of nature changes: in the former range all looks arid and scorched; in the latter country all is verdant and sappy. The coast of the Equatorial Republic presents to the eye well-wooded plains; while on the coast and in the valleys of the western side of the Peruvian territory, trees, when not reared by man, are only to be met growing in favoured places in the vicinity of springs and rivers. Piura, the most northern province of Peru along the shores of the Pacific, is celebrated for its remarkably dry atmosphere; but in a rainy year, which seldom happens in this province, the pastures that suddenly spring up are surpassingly luxuriant,—the very sand-fields, “arenales,” after one or two days’ rain, unfold an exuberance of life and vegetation.

The temperature of the low valleys on the coast of Peru may be said in general not to exceed 82° of Fahrenheit in summer, nor to descend much under 60° in winter.[1] Where, however, high hills closely overhang the sandy plains or dry “pampas,” it is difficult to say to what degree the thermometer may fall during night, when the rush of cold air from the upper regions is in proportion to the degree of radiation from the plains, and the force with which the sun’s rays during the day had struck on the scorched ground. So intensely on such occasions does the traveller feel the transition, that, when benighted on desert places, he is sometimes compelled by the keenness of the cold to dismount, and bury himself up to the neck in the warm sand, until a returning sun again befriend him on the morrow, and encourage him to pursue his trackless way.

In Lima, the capital of Peru, neither the extremes of heat nor of cold are ever experienced;[2] an advantage which it partly owes to its very splendid back-ground of mountains, rising one above another to the skies.

In winter, the thermometer of Fahrenheit never, in the centre of the town, falls under 60° in the shade; and, during summer, we have never seen it rise above 82°,—its usual station being about 80° in well-aired apartments. The ordinary difference between the fall of the night and day thermometer is only from three to four degrees when the thermometer is placed inside a common barred window without glass, and opening into a veranda or corridor, such as is usual in Lima houses, for the sake of free ventilation.

In the sultry month of February, the thermometer, if placed on the open and flat-roofed house-top of mud plaster, rarely ascends above 112°; and at this season, when the hot noon-day air may be said to be fanned by the countless “gallinazas,” or vultures, that wheel and sweep in mid-sky, the canopy overhead is curtained with white light clouds that happily protect the city and its inhabitants from the too scorching beams of a tropical sun.

The hygrometer—Leslie’s—seldom indicates fewer than 12° or 15° in the wet season, and rarely exceeds 50° in the summer months.

The range of the barometer may be considered exceedingly limited; for, during the period of six months that we had the opportunity of observing barometrical variations, the mercury was commonly stationary at 29⁹⁄₁₀, and was not seen to fall below 29½ inches. Our means of observation began in September, and ended in March, and therefore included the transition from wet to dry weather,—from the cool of winter to the highest heat of summer.

On one occasion when we observed the barometer fall from 29⁹⁄₁₀ to 29½ inches, there had been a smart earthquake, which, though it happened in the usually dry month of January, was preceded by a gentle shower of rain, at the appearance of which the people in the streets rejoiced, and called it “agua bendita,” holy water!—On another occasion, when we noticed a similar sinking of the mercury, the river Rimac showed by its turbid and swollen stream that it rained heavily in the higher mountains.[3] As for thunder and lightning, they have been so rarely witnessed in Lima, that there they may be said to be unknown. The above statements regarding the state of the atmosphere in Lima, it may be proper to mention, are founded on observations made by the writer at his residence in Archbishop’s Street, close to the cathedral and great square; but about a mile higher up, in a part of the city called the “Cercado,” the influence of the adjacent hills is more sensibly felt in the cooler evenings and mornings;—the night thermometer sometimes sinks down to 54° at the orchards of the Cercado, when in the centre of the city it falls within an open window or veranda not under 60° of Fahrenheit.

In Lima the four seasons are by no means distinctly marked: the dry summer weather frequently encroaches on the autumnal season, supposed to be humid; and again, the sort of weather and ailments most prevalent in winter are sometimes continued through a part of spring.

Hence, though the seasons are usually distinguished into spring, summer, autumn, and winter, it would be more truly characteristic to adhere to the usual division of the aborigines, into wet and dry.

In May the mornings become damp and hazy; and, from the beginning to the latter end of June, more or less drizzly. In October, again, the rains, which even in the months of July and August are seldom heavier than a Scotch mist, cannot be said to be altogether over, as the days are still more or less wet, or occasionally there may be seen to fall a light and passing shower; the evenings and mornings being damp and foggy.

In November and December, when the dry season may be reckoned to have set in, the weather, except for an interval at noon, is for the most part cool, bracing, and delightful: and April, too, is in this respect an agreeable month; at the latter end of which, the natives of the capital, being so exceedingly sensitive as to feel a difference of only two or three degrees betwixt the temperature of two succeeding days like an entire change of climate, are admonished, by a disagreeable change in their sensations, to protect themselves by warm apparel against the chills arising from an occasional north-west, or from the influence of the common south-west wind.

Throughout summer the wind blows almost uniformly, and in gentle breezes, from the south; but the prevailing wind for nine months in the year is the south-west, which, as it mingles with the warmer air along the arid coasts of Peru, tends to moderate the temperature of the atmosphere, and to produce the fog and “garua,” or thick Scotch mists, of which we have taken notice. During the dry season on the coast, the rains are experienced in the interior of the country and lofty range of the high table-lands,—especially in the months of January, February, and March, when the rain that falls inland is often very heavy, and, on the most elevated regions, it is not unfrequently alternated with snow and hail. Thus, the dry season of the coast is the wet in the sierra, or mountain land, and vice versâ; and by merely ascending nigher to the sierra, or descending close to the sea, without any appreciable shifting of latitude, the favoured Peruvians may enjoy, by the short migration of a few leagues, a perpetual summer or an endless winter,—if that, indeed, should be called winter, which is the season of natural growth and herbage.

Whoever, late in August, or early in September, has had the good fortune to visit Buena Vista in the enchanting vale of Lurin, six or seven leagues south of Lima, and for many years the hospitable mansion of that enlightened philanthropist, John Thomas, Esquire, must have observed that at this season, when the sandy downs of Lurin are yet moistened by slight rains and vapours, and garnished with flowers, such of the trees in the vale as are not evergreen, and depend not, like the vegetation of the neighbouring heights, on the periodical rain of the coast, impart a certain melancholy hue to the landscape, as they have already commenced to shed abroad their sear foliage; and here the music of the thicket, and booth on the height, are both in unison with feelings inspired by the yellow-leaved willows, when the “lomero,” or herdsman of the downs, tunes the “yaravi,” a mournful Indian strain, on his homely lute, and when the cuculi, in a plaintive note, responds from the guarango grove.

By the end of September, or beginning of spring, we find the trees in the great avenues around Lima beginning to bud; and the new leaves expand on them, as the grass dies on the adjacent hills, or is only seen to preserve its verdant appearance in the deep clefts and tops of the hilly recesses of Amencaes.[4] But no sooner dies the natural vegetation on the neighbouring heights, and nearer ridges and declivities in view of the city, than the fertile irrigated fields and enclosures throw forth the waving verdure of a hopeful harvest.

Barley, peas, and maize, sown during the wet or misty season, come to maturity through the joint operation of sun and artificial moisture after all natural or spontaneous vegetation has withered and disappeared from the now arid hills and sandy downs. The maize crops the farmers always harvest in the “menguante,” decrease of the moon; for it is a fact known to every husbandman, that if they collect the crop in the “creciente,” or increase of the moon, it will not keep free of moths for three months, even though allowed the advantage of being left in husk, in which state it is found to be least liable to damage.

In the valleys around Lima the agriculturist is very careful not to sow in the creciente, lest the seed should become so diseased and injured as never to yield a healthy crop. The same attention to lunar influence is bestowed by the wood-cutter, who knows that timber cut in the creciente soon decays, and on this account is not of use for constructing houses, or for any other permanent purpose; this is particularly the case with the willow and alder, as the writer had once occasion to know experimentally. Being disinclined to believe what he considered to be the prejudices of the natives respecting lunar influence, he insisted upon roofing in part of a house with alder and willow cut in the creciente; and after a couple of years he was convinced of his own error, when he saw the timber employed become quite brittle and useless, so as to need to be replaced or supported to prevent the roof from falling.

The “arriero,” or muleteer, scrupulously attends to the influence of the moon on his cattle; for if he travels in the creciente, and in a warm or even temperate climate, he takes strict care not to unsaddle his riding-horses, nor to unpad his cargo-mules, until they have rested awhile and cooled sufficiently: and, if he should neglect these precautions, he would be sure to have his cattle disabled by large inflammatory swellings, rapidly running on to suppuration, forming on their shoulders or loins.

In short, the very “chalan,” or horse-jobber, will not be prevailed upon to cut the lampas from a beast’s gums, nor will a Limenian at any time, except in the “menguante,” offer to pare his own corns, (and few are free of such tormentors,) for fear of inducing severe irritation as the reward of his indiscretion; and we may reasonably infer from all these common-place and familiar facts, that, in Peru, lunar influence is very remarkable, since both in the animal and vegetable kingdom it forces itself upon the attention and experience of every one.

If it be asked what general influence such a climate as we have now described may have on the animal frame, we would answer that there appears to be something peculiarly enervating and degenerating, aggravated by the total neglect of sanitary police, in the state of the atmosphere and locality of Lima. This effect is observable in the dog species, which becomes sluggish and spiritless, and more disposed to bark than to bite; but it shows itself more especially in the male descendants of unmixed European parentage.

We commonly see the son of the brave and stately Spaniard dwindle away from the strength of frame and manly character of his progenitor. His mind, like his person, becomes petit-maître; and, though vivacious in youth, it continues through life to be more distinguished for readiness than power, for mobility than vigour.

CHAPTER II.

Chances of life in Lima diminished by neglect of medical police.—Statements showing the proportion of deaths to the population of Lima.—Proportion between the different sexes and castes of the inhabitants.

If the mildness of contagious epidemic diseases were to afford a fair test by which to judge of the climate of any particular locality, or the medical police of its community, that of Lima would surely rank as one of the most favourable. But, however open and spacious be the construction of the houses and site of this capital, and whatever may be said for or against the personal and domestic cleanliness of its inhabitants, and other circumstances affecting the health of individuals, it must be admitted that the salubrity of Lima, and the chances of life it affords, are materially diminished from the want of due attention to public cleanliness.

The aqueducts or canals, which run along all the principal streets in a direction from east to west, and give off branches for gardens and convents, &c. are, after they have passed the city, to some extent usefully distributed on fields between it and the sea-port. But, in general, agriculture, like every other branch of industry, is neglected since the revolution. The drains intended to convey the surplus water from the city over a gentle slope, to impart that moisture to the good soil which could not otherwise part with its nutritive properties, or support vegetation, are frequently in a ruinous condition. Thus, the water is suffered to stagnate in some parts, and run waste in others, without being applied to those beneficial purposes of tillage which should be the means of augmenting the health, population, and general resources of Lima and its environs. By the street-canals, are to be seen all day long the industrious vultures, (by far the most efficient agents of police,) gulping up the refuse cast into these receptacles of every sort of nuisance. When the water runs in small quantity, or is altogether stopped from neglect, the quantity of vegetable and animal deposit carelessly allowed to accumulate in these channels emits a profusion of gaseous volatile poison, more or less penetrating and pernicious, according to the season of the year and heat of the weather.

The manure conveyed from the pens and stables, (which might be applied so as richly to repay the farmer’s toil, and be made to beautify at the same time that it enriched to an incalculable extent the adjacent plains,)—this manure, when not thrown into the canals, is conveyed to the broad walls of the picturesque city, and there heaped up day after day; or, if not thus disposed of, it is carried to the river’s brink, where it is suffered to accumulate into fermenting mounds of daily increasing size. Here it absorbs moisture, and generates miasmata that taint the air breathed by the inhabitants; and so their sloth is chastised. We are persuaded that their own culpable inattention to the cleanliness and salubrity of their capital contributes largely to entail upon them a greater proportion of disease and mortality than could at first sight be expected from the features of the climate. Those natives, indeed, who have passed a life of well-regulated habits, are said to attain a cheerful old age in Lima; and there are instances of a few individuals exceeding a hundred years of age, who preserve considerable bodily activity and mental vivacity. There was living, when we left Lima in 1836, an active little Franciscan friar, said to be considerably above a hundred. A Spanish gentleman of the name of Pellicer, very remarkable for the acuteness and vigour of his mental powers and general health, died in our own day, at the age of a hundred and two or three; and some other instances of this sort might be mentioned. These, however, are exceptions. For it is worthy of particular remark, that, whatever be the causes that tend to produce the melancholy result, the truth is, that the general mortality in Lima is very great; a fact which the records of its Pantheon fully confirm, as may be seen from the annexed documents.

TABLE

Showing the number of Deaths in Lima and its Suburbs from the year 1826 to the year 1835, both inclusive.

Before we offer any remarks on the above table taken from a careful examination of the register-books belonging to the Pantheon, or public cemetery of Lima, it may not be amiss to premise what was the population of Lima when the last census was taken, just before the revolution broke out, and when that city is supposed to have been full of people and at its acme of prosperity. This census, taken by John Baso, one of the “oidores,” or judges of that period, and dated at Lima, September 30, 1818, concludes by the following summary:—“As is demonstrated by the preceding statement, the capital of Lima comprehends within its walls, huts and cottages contiguous to the city gates, and suburbs of San Lazaro, 54,098 persons of all sexes, castes, states, and conditions, which are distinguished minutely in the same statement, of which the total amount consists of 27,545 males, and 26,553 females.”

During the ten years embraced by the above table of mortality, the population of Lima is always estimated, by the best informed natives, as much under, as at the time of the census of Baso it was found to be above, 50,000; but no data, or census of later date, by which to verify this matter in a precise manner, exist in the hands of the patriots; therefore it is in some degree subject of conjecture, although from the number of houses that are now abandoned, and the great falling away of the agricultural and horticultural labourers, we are probably not far from the truth in calling the average population of the capital and suburbs during the last ten years 45,000; in which case the deaths in twenty years will, according to the above rate, as seen from 1826 to 1835, amount to 47,000,—a number greater than the whole population given.

It may not be irrelevant to notice that, in the year 1828, (twenty years after the Pantheon had been opened for interment,) the much lamented General La Mar, at that time president of Peru, visited the burying-ground, and desired, at the suggestion, we are told, of Don Mariano Castilla, a gentleman who had the honour to accompany his excellency on the occasion, one of the chaplains of the cemetery, to inform him, after referring to the proper archives, the total number of bodies interred for the twenty years it had then been open to the public; and we are assured that the result corresponded closely with the rate expressed in our present statement. The archives of Beneficencia, to which the chaplain had recourse, are now lost or mislaid; but the account he furnished General La Mar, after these documents, then extant, were consulted, was published in some one of the periodicals of that day, which, however, we ourselves have not seen. It appears from our table of mortality, from 1826 to 1835, both years inclusive, that during the last four years the number of deaths has augmented in proportion to those that took place during the preceding six. The most obvious reason for which, that we can assign, is, that the late administrator of the cemetery and keeper of its register, to whose charge the books were left during the first six years, was not attentive (as his books yet testify) to enter the number of espuestos,—in other words, corpses left secretly in exposed situations, as, for example, at the Pantheon, hospital, or convent gates; but his successor (Pasos) has, throughout the last four years specified, been very careful to insert a correct enumeration of these cast-away bodies, as the writer has had an opportunity of ascertaining in looking over the books of this obliging person, who lent his willing aid to procure the details whence are drawn the general results expressed in the table.

The number of the espuestos is almost incredible, and shows the prevalency of great poverty; for it is but charitable to think that no one would thus cast away a child’s remains who was not deprived of the ordinary means of covering the expense of an humble interment: but it is said that, in this business, much fraud is committed by the parents of the deceased, who, to avoid paying the regular funeral dues, give the hearse-men a few reals for picking up the exposed bodies, and carrying them to the cemetery to be buried. For these considerations, it will not be unwarrantable to infer that the increase of deaths during the last four years on the table has not been so much in reality as in appearance, from the omission of duly registering the espuestos. Nor does it appear from a document now before us, titled, “Guia politica, eclesiastica, y militar del Peru,” by the celebrated and praiseworthy Dr. D. H. Unanue, published in the year 1793, that the gross amount of deaths has altered, in proportion to the existing population, to that extent which many persons would incline to believe, in consequence of the great increase of poverty and demoralization which have been experienced since that period. In 1793 the population was quoted in the “Guia” at 52,627, and the number of deaths at 2795, not including such as occurred among nuns or ecclesiastics; all of whom, conjointly, formed a large item in the population of Lima, and must have had a good many deaths among their number to increase the real bill of mortality.[5]

It cannot be supposed either, that war had much share in swelling the Pantheon list of dead in these latter years, because, though civil broils were frequent since the year 1826, yet Lima itself was not the usual seat of conflict. Some troops there were always stationed in this city; but, should these be excluded from the estimate of the regular population of the place, still, however, any difference in the sum of mortality thus produced from soldiers dying in hospitals and registered at the cemetery would be, most likely, more than equalled by the default in the account of the espuestos, especially young children, whose remains were irregularly interred, and so not at all entered upon the books. And as for the Montonera troops, or others who met with violent death in or about town during the late noisy skirmishes, they were, upon the whole, too inconsiderable to merit much notice in this place, as appears very clearly from the various entries made in the register by Pasos, the present administrator and book-keeper of the cemetery.

CHAPTER III.

Food, fruit, and water used in Lima.

As the degree of health, and vigour of constitution, enjoyed by individuals, depend in a great measure upon the diet, as well as on the air they breathe, climate, and caste, we shall offer a few general observations on the dietetic habits of the Limenians.

Besides maize, which is more generally cultivated than wheat, the latter being to a considerable extent an article of importation from Chili and other foreign parts, the staple food of the poor on the coast is derived from the camote and yuca, both of which roots are exceedingly nutritive and wholesome; but, in Lima, animal food is consumed in very large quantity. The quantity of poultry used here is incalculable; and a good reason for this is, that the sick, infirm, and convalescent,—always exceedingly numerous in this capital, as well in public hospitals as in private houses,—think themselves neglected in their diet if they have not, at least once a day, chicken or chicken soup. Geese and ducks are in low reputation as articles of aliment; but of pigeons and turkeys there is always a large supply in the daily market, held under sheds in convenient parts of the town. Fish is usually good and plentiful,—the fishermen, by the way, furnishing the best specimen we have seen of a robust form in the Indian family.

The number of fat pigs killed in the town has been, in the year 1835,—on occasion of imposing, for the support of the colleges, a duty of four reals, or about two shillings a-head, on each pig,—estimated considerably above twenty thousand yearly; and there is always so large a consumption of lard and fried pork, (“chicharones,”) that the trade of the “mantequero,” or lard and swine-dealer, is, after that of the baker and lottery-man, “suertero,” one of the most lucrative in the capital.

From forty to fifty head of oxen, and from three to four hundred sheep, are slaughtered daily for the Lima market: the beef is very good; the mutton of inferior quality. We were told by one of the principal beef contractors that, early in the year 1836, the slaughter of oxen in Lima was reduced to thirty or thirty-five head daily; a decrease from the usual number which he ascribed to the poverty peculiar to that particular period of misrule, disabling many families from buying beef, and partly also to a new military order relating to the soldiers’ rations.

Instead of his former allowance of meat, the soldier was now allowed two reals daily to provide for himself what food he pleased;—an injudicious alteration in his circumstances, for he either gave his ration-money for drink, or indulged his appetite in eating some unwholesome trash calculated to throw him too often on the sick-list.

Pastry and sweet-meat criers are seen everywhere in the Lima streets; and a sort of cook-stand, abounding in fried pork and fish, is to be found at the corner of every square. This practice gives some insight into the dietetic habits of the vulgar; and such poor families of genteel pretensions as from necessity hire out their slaves, are seldom at the trouble or expense of cooking at home when they can more easily call in from the street what little they may satisfy themselves with.

Masamorerias, or a sort of pap-shops, are very common in Lima. Of the sweet pap in vulgar use there are as many varieties as there are of meal and flour,—such as peas, beans, rice, maize flour, arrow-root, starch,—of which they have many varieties. Any of these boiled in water to a very soft consistence, with or without the addition of fruit or some vegetable acid, and sweetened exceedingly with sugar, molasses, or “chancaca,” (the latter, a coarse sort of brown sugar made up into cakes,) is what constitutes the great Limenian dish “masamora,” to which these sweet-mouthed people are as proverbially partial as the English are to roast-beef.

However salutary in itself may be the quality of the more substantial food of such Limenians as can afford to live well and generously, yet most of their dishes are so sodden in lard, that the common fowl, the pigeon, turkey, and that excellent family dish the “puchero,” consisting of a variety of fruit and vegetables, with pieces of meat of different kinds and quality, all boiled and presented in one great piece of plate,—are among the comparatively few which a simple palate can relish.

Their soups, together with a great variety of vegetable dishes, are so heated with agi-pepper, that the coats of the stomach would indeed require to be well greased to protect them against the piquant effects of this popular condiment. Useful and even necessary as this agi is found to be by those Indians of the valleys who cultivate it around their doors, and whose diet is nearly all vegetable, yet in a climate like that of Lima, and in constitutions so delicate as those of its inhabitants confessedly are, it must prove injurious to the organization of the stomach, and to the health in general, when freely and daily taken with a plentiful allowance of animal food, and a general mode of living sober but not temperate; for though the better classes deal sparingly in wine, yet, by partaking more or less of every dish at table, and these not a few, they usually eat more than the powers of digestion can comfortably apply to the support of the frame, not usually exposed by so indolent a people to great waste from athletic exertion.

The native dark races are indeed much more robust in form, and hardier in constitution, than strangers to their climate; and many of them drink “aguardiente,” or uncoloured cane spirits, in great quantity, and with less immediate ill effect than one would expect. Their constant use of such excitants as ardent spirits and fermented beverages called “chichas,” with animal food and agi, may possibly be a principal reason why these persons, whenever they are seized with inflammatory complaints, stand general bleeding better than others of their own caste fed upon sango, a name applied to a sort of mash made with maize-meal and sweet potatoes: but persons of European descent, with skin so much more delicate than the darker races in Peru, and endowed with a more susceptible nervous system, suffer much more readily from atmospherical vicissitudes; and their digestive organs and powers of assimilation being comparatively weak, those irregularities, borne by the negro and zambo with comparative impunity, are to the white man, whose organization is not so suitable as theirs for a warm and relaxing climate, the frequent cause of various disorders of the bowels, as indigestion, cholera morbus, or dysentery. The dietetics of the Limenians naturally induce frequent examples of impaired digestion; and worms, too usually the inmates of unhealthy bowels, are so remarkably common, and in acute febrile diseases are so generally expelled either dead or alive, that their appearance in such disorders is looked upon as a matter of course. What share the water, as a vehicle for ova, may have in propagating these worms, it may be difficult to assign; but as the aqueducts are much neglected, and proper filtering-stones not in general use, it is likely that some seeds of disease may thus enter the system; and it may be mentioned that, during the warm weather, a host of animalcules show themselves to the naked eye in the earthen jars, or “botijas,” which are kept in the culinary apartments as receptacles for water intended for ordinary domestic purposes; and even water, heated in hot baths to ninety or more degrees of Fahrenheit, if again allowed to cool, and stand over a few days, is seen crowded with myriads of playful animalcules.

Of water taken by the writer from the fountain of the great square in Lima, just as the river began to rise in January from the effects of the inland rains, he is happy to be able to furnish the following analysis by Dr. Thomson of Glasgow.

Sp. gr. 1·00028; purer than Clyde water: 1000 grains contained

Nature has supplied the Peruvians of the coast with fruits most suitable to their wants; and these, though often injurious when eaten in a state of immaturity, or when the stomach is not in a fit state to receive them, are yet, when used in season, most grateful to the taste, and salutary to the constitution, in the regions where they abound.

We shall, therefore, introduce in this place a list of the fruits produced in the orchards in and about Lima, with a specification of the months when they are in season. This we are happily able to do by presenting our readers with a list, obligingly given to us by Mr. Mathews, an English botanist, now making rich botanical collections in the interior of Peru; but whose occupation, as an horticulturist at Lima, afforded him the best opportunity for exact and practical information on the subject.

January.—Grapes begin to ripen; and also apricots, and a few pears.

February.—Grapes, pears in abundance, apricots; peaches begin to ripen; lucumas scarce; figs.

March.—Grapes in abundance; pears scarce; peaches in abundance; apples begin to ripen; lucumas in abundance; figs in abundance.

April.—Apples in abundance; quinces, ceruela de frayle (spondias dulcis), and cerasas (malpighia glandulosa), palillas (psidium lineatum), and guavas; figs scarce.

May.—The same as April; a few grapes are seen in the market, brought from the southward; cherimollas.

June.—Cherimollas and guanavanas; sweet and sour oranges; a few apples.

July.—The same as June, with the exception of apples and limes; sweet lemons and sour lemons begin to ripen.

August.—The same as July; but slight demand for oranges this month.

September.—Lucumas, paltas, and the fruits of the previous month.

October.—Same as September; but a great demand for limes and sweet lemons.

November and December.—During these two months there is a great demand for sweet and sour lemons, for “frescos” or cooling drinks. Sweet oranges rarely remain good after the middle of November.

Plantains produce all the year, but the greatest abundance is during the hot months. The pepino is also much eaten during December, January, and February. In the months of April and May, the pulp surrounding the seeds in the pod of the pacay are much eaten.

In addition to the above account by Mr. Mathews, we may notice that the melon and sandia, or musk and water-melon, are much cultivated in the neighbourhood of Lima; and are to be seen in large heaps by the bridge, and at the corners of streets, where they are bought up, and consumed with avidity, in the hot month of February. Olives too, and very good ones, grow in the Vale of Rimac, and arrive at maturity in February and March. During the late civil wars, several valuable olive plantations were wantonly cut down. Strawberries, and likewise “tunas,” or Indian figs, of inferior quality, grow in Lima; but the market is supplied with these fruits, and of the best quality, from the neighbouring valley of Sta. Ulaya. The pine-apple does not ripen spontaneously in Lima, though attempts are now making near the Callao gate of the city to cultivate it. The pine-apple eaten in Lima is usually brought from the eastern side of Peru, from the Montaña of Tarma and Guancayo, &c. Sometimes, also, a few pine-apples are carried from about Moro on the coast to the northward; but these often decay before they arrive in Lima.

CHAPTER IV.

Remarks explanatory of certain Dietetic maxims, and established notions or prejudices, illustrative of the physical constitution and domestic habits of the Limenians.

In Lima there are certain opinions and rules, relating to the nature and cure of diseases, so very popular and well received among the vulgar, and at the same time so habitually countenanced by many of the native practitioners, that, for any one who proposes to practise in that part of the world, and hopes to be honourably acquitted by the jury of nurses and attendants who are always numerous about the sick, it may be worth while to consider the tenor of the following remarks:

I. No conoce nuestro clima.—It is affirmed by native doctors, but not always acceded to by the vulgar, that there is something occult in the climate of Lima, which only a Limenian or Creole physician can sufficiently comprehend. Hence the prejudiced objection, “No conoce nuestro clima,”—that is, “he knows not our climate,”—is sanctioned by high professional authority; and this much hackneyed caveat is usually laid at the threshold of every European doctor who desires to make himself professionally useful in Lima.

Every one, we think, will admit that the practice of medicine must be modified, or considerably altered, according to the topography of any particular country; for it is observed, that difference of locality affects not only man, but plants and animals, in a striking degree as we extend from the Equator towards latitudes far to the north or south of it. Yet, if there be any who understand either the botany or zoology of Peru, or who endeavour to illustrate these subjects by their science and diligence, they are not Peruvians.

The only lover of natural history we have the honour to be acquainted with in that country is Don Mariano Rivero of Arequipa; and, though their tranquil sky might be imagined to allure Limenians of a philosophic turn of mind to the contemplation and study of the heavenly bodies, yet to Dr. Gregorio Paredes alone belongs, in the present day, the merit and high distinction of keeping the sublime vigils of the astronomer. Now this dearth of native science is not confined to these general branches of natural history and philosophy, but affects very sensibly the practice of medicine. The very manuals of primary medical instruction put into the hands of medical students in the capital of Peru are foreign and European. And thus it is plain that they have no peculiar and national digest of medical knowledge—no local and partial medical code, such as charlatans and public impostors would desire to insinuate when they talk of their own practice of physic, or what they call Medicina del pais.

It is indeed to be hoped that no respectable physician in Peru will hereafter indulge in the folly of maintaining that Europeans are neither fit to practise in that country, nor able to comprehend the peculiar influences of the climate of Lima. This climate, like every other on the known face of the globe, is open to the investigations of the meteorological observer, whether he be a native of the Old or New World.

The laws of physiology, we may further observe, like those of gravitation, are the same in Peru as in other parts of the world; and the aphorisms of Hippocrates, generally founded on accurate observations made more than two thousand years ago, are at this day equally true as when first embodied, and applicable to man’s physical constitution all over the globe. The medical treatment of diseases, whether conducted at home or abroad, must be conducted in conformity with the common and immutable laws of the animal economy, and with due attention to the constitution and temperament of individuals. The locality of the patient’s birth or residence, the influence of climate, diet, and habits, &c. are mere accidental circumstances, secondary and subordinate considerations, which every physician or medical officer of our fleets and armies, to whatever clime he be transported, should be able to survey and to estimate, like the skilful commander who, as he reconnoitres his ground, perceives the local character of a new field of action.

II. Tomar dulce para bever agua a las horas de la comida.—This is a standing dietetic rule observed at the close of a meal or repast, which means that sugar, or some sweet preserve, is to be taken to give relish to the water that it is customary to drink at this time, whether one feel thirsty or not: they therefore sweeten the palate to enjoy their simple drink.

Should a Limenian in perfect health, who thus drinks water at stated periods, feel thirsty shortly after a meal concluded, as usual, with sugar or some sweet-meat and water, he is taught to endure the inconvenience rather than bring on himself indisposition by indulging his thirst. To understand this, it is requisite to know, that, until three hours have elapsed after the taking of the last meal, no one is supposed to drink even water, which is the most common beverage of the natives; for to commit such an irregularity would, it is believed, be to occasion a fit of indigestion or to hazard health.

This may appear a ridiculous prejudice to those who are accustomed to quench their thirst, as often as it naturally arises, without regard to rules; but, on the coast of Peru, the neglect of this prophylactic rule of only drinking at stated periods, when it violates the established habits of an individual trained up in the observance of it, may be allowed to be injurious to the health, as it certainly disturbs the digestive functions. This strict attention to measured periods of drinking water is also countenanced in the hill-land of the interior, where digestion is usually so vigorous as not to require such nice precaution: but it is patronised by custom; and this, no doubt, the majority hold as a sufficient reason for the continuance of the practice.

When a person suffers from acute febrile disease, and is only allowed very spare and tenuous diet, such as chicken soup, panada, tapioca, or arrow-root, &c.; then, from one meal to another, the regular interval is five hours; three hours after each meal, water, or some medicated drink, is given; and, two hours after this drink, the allotted aliment, of whatever simple sort it may be, is again repeated. Thus food and drink are regularly alternated till the patient is considered to be in a state which requires the supply of solid food; and then, as when in ordinary health, the interval from meal to meal is understood to be seven hours. The solid food given to the convalescent generally consists of chicken, which, of all the items in the list of Limenian dietary, is that in most general requisition. Now, for the proper digestion of the chicken, five hours are allowed before any medicated drink is ordered after it; and the principle recognised in this method is, that drink, which too much dilutes and weakens the gastric juice in the stomach, cannot with propriety be taken before chymification is complete.

Nurses, and very kind and obliging friends, usually attend so strictly to the above order in giving food and drink, that, though the poor patient be burning with thirst, he can only have permission to quench it at the fixed and assigned hours; and, through a feeling of pure benevolence towards the sick, they interrupt a salutary sleep rather than fail in punctually giving either drink, nutriment, or medicine at the corresponding hours. Under the influence of an amiable sense of duty, the anxious mother is often heard to assure the doctor that she herself was attentive to give her child its drink or medicine at exact time, as announced from the nearest church spire by the striking of the clock; though it grieved her to interrupt its gentle slumber.

During the exacerbations of intermittent fevers, so prevalent in Peru, the state of the stomach is usually much disturbed; and in such circumstances, instead of alternating food and drink without regard to the condition of the digestive functions, we have taken pains to persuade the sick to deviate from the order established by custom, and allowed our patients the inexpressible comfort of drinking as often as thirst urged them, until there was obtained a solution of the febrile exacerbation.

III. Prepararse para tomar purga.—Many practitioners of the venerable Boerhaavian school have died in Lima in course of the last few years, but several of this stock are yet remaining; and, in their professional harangues at consultations, they are heard to talk learnedly of the malignant, adust, crude, and corrosive, &c. state of the humours of the human frame, without, as it always appeared to us, being able to affix any precise and practical ideas to these hypothetical expressions. And though the junior doctors of modernized opinions are generally found to indulge in some theory of the abstract solidists, yet they are obliged to respect the prejudices of the vulgar, and talk in a way that is agreeable to those whom it is their business to persuade. Patients, blinded by the received notions concerning the scorched blood, and displaced, corrupt, or perturbed and jumbled humours, reckon the daily visit of the physician indispensable under ordinary circumstances of indisposition. They do not expect that, day after day, active drugs are required; but, according to their own precognition of the case, they think it necessary for their safety that their medical adviser make his regular visits and observations, carefully examine the various excretions, and so be able to judge accurately of the character of the case, and prepare the patient by delay, diet, and diluents, &c. to take physic in due time, which is the meaning of the vernacular expression, “Prepararse para tomar purga.”

IV. Empacho.—This famous Limenian mischief-maker is supposed to lurk concealed under almost every form of chronic or intractable disease, and means, in the most usual acceptation of the word, a preternaturally loaded and torpid condition of the bowels: but, on other occasions, the same word is used to express the casual lodgement, in any part of the digestive passages, of some such matter as the fresh rind of a fig, grape, or date, keeping up local irritation and fever. Thus, at one time, the term empacho signifies a confined and inactive state of the bowels; and, at other times, indigestion of some foreign and adherent substance, frequently giving rise to quite a contrary condition of gastric disorder: the former is called simply empacho; the latter is called empacho pegado,—for the removal of which, a table-spoonful, or two, of the liquid fat of a fowl—the enjundia de gallina! is a popular remedy.

In a large proportion of cases where this cause of mischief is supposed to exist, it has, in fact, no place or existence except in the mind that conceives the notion of it; and, in itself, the fallacy is harmless so long as it is speculative: but the practice to which it leads is often mischievous, and it is with the latter that the practitioner has most to do.

It would, indeed, be a hopeless task for the regular practitioners in Peru to reason a Limenian doctress out of her reveries on the subject of empacho, which, when viewed by her as the exciting cause of disease, assumes a Protean character, and is visible to her imagination in mostly every case of ailment, which she, true to her favourite opinion, offers to cure in her own way.

The evil effects of a farrago of nostrums, or untimely and inappropriate medicaments applied by the help of the doctress, the educated physician is often called, but sometimes too late, to correct; and the fatal abuses thus arising have, on various occasions, called forth the public and earnest remonstrances of the highest medical tribunal of the country,—but all to no purpose, the practice being rooted in vulgar favour and prejudice.

So universal, indeed, is the credit of the Limeña quacks, or curanderas, of whom La Señora Dorotea is the chief, and so general is the use of the instrument called jeringa, (through the medium of which the principal ingredients of this señora’s materia medica are confidently applied,) that it constitutes an essential and conspicuous article of domestic utility. And the great consideration in which this auxiliary is held, as a sine quâ non in the treatment of empacho, and almost every disease, renders it a topic of never-failing conversation.

As a familiar example of the abuse of the jeringa, may be mentioned the vulgar practice of resorting to it in disorders attendant on dentition. Sometimes the increased action of the bowels is indiscreetly stopped by astringents thus adhibited, and a fatal determination of blood to the head ensues; but it more frequently happens that the contrary practice is pursued, and stimulant remedies are administered, which either increase the existing disease, or transmute it into a dysentery. On such occasions the skilful practitioner may endeavour in vain to convince the mother that her child’s gastric ailment does not proceed from the presence of the dire empacho. When, as often happens during the progress of teething, children are suffered to eat all sorts of sweets, fruit, and unwholesome diet, or permitted to partake of strong food used by adults, and ill-suited to the more delicate organs of the tender child, then, no doubt, empacho or indigestion may be traced, in many cases, as a co-existing cause of the irritation and disturbance in the bowels, to which the offspring of white parents are more particularly subject in Lima. Complicated cases of this nature demand a prudent modification in treatment. Yet such instances are not so frequent as others, independent of indigestion, and in which a moderate bowel complaint is so far from being injurious that it is most salutary, as a natural protection against affections of the head during the process of teething. It is a peculiarity connected with the religious belief and popular customs of the country, that diseases of infancy and early childhood are too lightly considered by the native physician. The reason assigned for this is the devout one, that little innocents are exempted from the pangs of Purgatory, which must be borne by adults for the purification of their souls; and that therefore, for the child, it is happiness to die.

We have heard the physician offer this consolation to a weeping mother in the higher ranks of society. He softly assured her that her pretty babe would pass through Purgatory to Paradise without as much as scorching a finger in the transit.

In the lower and middle ranks especially, this religious dogma seems to stifle the natural emotions of the heart; for, evidently forgetting that even “Jesus wept,” they celebrate with music and dancing the death of the dearest object of a fond parent’s affection, who, as her child is consigned to a niche in the Pantheon, bedecks her person, grown thin by previous care and watching, and now she smiles in her robes of white, as if these were indeed no emblems of torn affection!

V. Sangria sobre el empacho.—To bleed a patient affected with empacho is, by the common consent of the vulgar, declared to be a most unpardonable blunder; and this is the meaning of the expression, “Sangria sobre el empacho!” when ejaculated in the apartments of the sick.

It will be readily imagined that, in numerous instances coming under the vulgar denomination of empacho, the subtraction of blood will be a necessary measure before purgatives can be properly or safely resorted to, with a view to remove from the bowels the irritating cause lodged there, and affecting the general system.

But to avoid the unjust criticism of uncharitable members of the profession, who are always ready to turn to their private advantage, any popular prejudice which can be called in to humble the name of fellow-practitioners more respectable than themselves, and also as a mean either to acquire or to preserve the confidence of the sick, the prudent physician will not overlook the natural effects of any known prepossession regarding blood-letting. He will so far accommodate his practice to the ideas of those who are most interested in the issue of his treatment, as to order at least one enema, when the empacho is firmly believed to exist, before he proceed to the further discharge of his professional duty, and fulfilment of the indication of the case, by ordering the lancet to be applied.

No time or advantage is lost by such a concession to the preconceived and inflexible opinion, that bleeding is particularly hurtful in those cases of illness connected with undue accumulations in the bowels: but one very important end is gained by it; since, by agreeing with the sick and their friends on an indifferent point of practice, they will more willingly submit to the application of other remedies necessary for the safety of the patient.

VI. Cosas frias y calientes.—All articles of diet, and medicaments, are by the Peruvians vulgarly divided into cold and hot; or, as the words on which we are about to comment express it, into “cosas frias y calientes.”

When the physician prescribes any particular diet or physic to a patient in Lima, he must be ready to answer many inquiries regarding the qualities of the things prescribed.

Besides professed sick-tenders, zamba housekeepers or head-servants, some women in the middle and humbler ranks, such as manteras, chocolateras, tenderas, cigareras, picanteras, pulperas, changaneras,—that is, female shopkeepers, chocolate and cigar venders, with a subordinate gradation of publicans, &c.—are always ready to talk, with confounding fluency and volubility, without knowledge, concerning qualities and temperaments; and they display a natural acuteness of metaphysical capacity, with a truly peripatetic nicety of discrimination, when, in a moment of oratorical excitement, they assign to certain mixtures and drinks ideal measures and degrees of the elementary qualities. Women skilled in such mysteries, and omniscient charlatans, run over the various combinations of the cold and hot, dry and humid, and all their resulting modifications of temperature and temperament, with apparently unerring precision, and with a graduated exactness which no chemist in Europe, with every advantage of science and apparatus, can pretend to equal in his elaborate investigations into the qualities and elements of bodies either living or inanimate.

The particular temperament of the patient his intimate friends are supposed to know perfectly; and the doctor’s reply to any question that may be proposed to him on this subject will be considered, in many instances, as no bad test of his penetration and professional knowledge in other matters with which they do not presume to be themselves so well acquainted.

In conformity with such prevailing impressions, when nurses are to be selected for the children of delicate mothers, preference is given to the black women, as their blood and milk are believed to be cooler and more refreshing than the same fluids are in women of a different race. The Indian woman, on the other hand, is considered inferior to the negress as a nurse, because she is believed to be of a comparatively hot temperament and constitution. The effect of the quality of the nurse’s milk is conceived to influence the future temperament of the infant that hangs on her breast; and it is sometimes assigned as a reason why an individual is of an ardent temperament, that when a child he had been weaned, or deprived of the breast, by giving him wine,—se desteto con vino.

Colour is looked upon as an indication of constitutional temperament even in the lower animals. Thus, when one in town labours under hectic fever, or consumption, he is recommended to go to the country, and drink warm milk from a black cow, because it is allowed to be more cooling and febrifuge than the milk taken from a cow of any other colour.

In case of a rheumatic swelling of a joint,—the knee, for instance,—or some tumefaction in any of the glands, it is taken for granted, that, whatever other remedy be applied, the envelope for the limb or part affected must be of a medicinal colour, and consist of black wool, or something of a dark woollen texture. In short, so far has this general idea concerning the antiphlogistic nature of black been carried, that few natives dispute its accuracy: nor are we prepared to say that it may not have some foundation in fact and observation (though often laughed at by strangers as a puerile prejudice); for it is well known to scientific men, that the free radiation of heat is much influenced by the differences of colour in the radiating surfaces of bodies.

With respect to food and drink, the division into cold and hot is never overlooked.

A “traguito,” or little dram of Italia, a colourless brandy made on the coast, the old men consider as fresco, or cooling, when taken immediately after dinner; and when they take the “traguito,” which they do not every day, it will probably facilitate the digestion of the greasy food which they are commonly accustomed to eat, and in this manner deserve the name of a fresco. But, again, though at their entertainments they allow wine to be a safe and good drink after the “helados,” or ices, which they like exceedingly, still they use wine sparingly on other occasions, as they consider it too heating for general use. There are fruits after which the natives do not think it safe to drink either wine or spirits; of this sort is the short plantain, called “platano de guinea,” after which a mouthful of spirits would be considered quite poisonous. Foreigners do not seem to attend to this strict rule observed by the natives; nor is the violation of it, as far as we know, attended with any serious consequence to them.

Various kinds of fruit and vegetable juices, which are considered cool in their qualities, are not rarely most heating in their effects, according to the condition of the system when taken. The melon is in reputation for its cooling nature; but, though the impression made by it on our alimentary organs is at first very refreshing, the muleteer who journeys from the Cordillera to the coast, and has but once in his lifetime been attacked with a gastric tertian, in consequence of cooling his parched fauces by eating of the melon, can give a lively account of the internal heat, agitation, and oppression experienced by him on the occasion. There is no cooling fruit safer than the granadilla, which is most grateful and refreshing to the feverish patient, or thirsty traveller in the scorched and rock-bound ravines and narrow valleys of the interior, where this fruit is often abundant, as it is also on the coast in its proper season.

Fowls are reckoned to be infinitely cooler in their temperament than sheep or oxen, and their flesh is also considered as very safe and cooling; hence the almost universal use of the former, and prohibition or disuse of the latter, in the dietary of a delicate invalid. This distinction will appear still more strongly marked, when it is observed, that to prescribe beef-tea in any acute disease would be deemed an act of rashness and ignorance; but chicken-tea is held to be the most cooling of diluents, and very eligible in the most inflammatory diseases and in the warmest weather.

This chicken-tea, called “agua de pollo,” is commonly prepared in the proportions of three cupsfull of water to one half of a little unfledged chicken, with the addition of a mallow leaf or two, and the core of a lettuce, (cogollo de lechuga,) by which latter in particular its cooling properties are said to be exalted. After the ingredients are boiled together for a proper length of time, the clear decoction is poured off for use. The great efficacy of this drink is accredited by the undisputed consent of doctors of all colours, and matrons as well as nurses of all sorts and temperaments.

It is needless to remark that, in general, plain water or toast-water, or a ptisan of barley decocted with some of the subacid fruits of the country, would answer very agreeably the purpose of the agua de pollo; but when the latter is preferred, it should be remembered that in warm weather it decomposes rapidly, and then acquires irritating properties. As a purgative, in gastric disorders, the old physicians in Lima extol almond oil, which is often of inferior quality; and they take some pains to arm the minds of the credulous against the use of the best castor-oil of European preparation, by telling them that it is extracted from the seeds of the “higuerilla,” or castor-oil shrub, everywhere indigenous in the warm valleys of the interior; and these seeds are generally known to be excessively drastic when taken as the peasants use them, in the dose of two or three bruised, and then swallowed in substance. Now from the seeds the native apothecaries prepare an impure oil, which is sold in the shops under the name of “oil of higuerilla;” and as it is only used for burning in lamps, when the vulgar learn that castor-oil is but another name for the same, they naturally consider it as essentially hot, and most heating and improper for internal use. The vulgar should be advised by every ingenuous and intelligent member of the profession, that the fault is not in the remedy, but in the way of preparing it: and this remark may be extended to the delicate preparations from the mineral kingdom, which acquire a bad name when badly prepared, as is necessarily the case in Lima, where chemistry is so little cultivated or practised as a science.

VII. Los acidos son malos para el pecho.—No class of remedies is in more general use in Lima than vegetable acids in the bilious disorders of daily occurrence; but in affections of the chest, whether simply catarrhal, or of the more serious forms of pneumonia or phthisis, it is a generally received and settled opinion that acids of all sorts are injurious, which they make known by such expressions as these: “Los acidos son malos para el pecho,”—acids are bad for the breast; “Los acidos cierran el pecho,”—acids shut up the breast.

This opinion seems to have partly originated from a notion, once entertained by the doctors, that acids coagulate the animal fluids, and so produce obstructions and disease. It is made evident to our senses, that milk secreted from the blood is readily coagulated by acids; and thus they seem to conceive that something of the same process takes place in the circulating fluids of the body when acids are taken into the system.

Not only the vulgar, but some of the professional characters, appear to be impressed with the notion that the blood is thickened or curdled by acids, whether mineral or vegetable; and that the delicate circulation of the lungs is consequently impeded, and the respiratory pores clogged. This opinion appears to be expressed in the very common remark, “El enfermo tomo fresco de lemon, y con el acido se le ha tupido el pecho,” which means that the patient drank cold lemonade, and with the acid the breast was stopped up.

We are well persuaded that there are instances, especially among delicate females, where the respiratory organs are so susceptible of impressions, that the immediate refrigerating effects of cool acidulated drinks on the stomach of such persons extend rapidly, by sympathy, from the stomach to the surface of the body and lungs; and there produce a certain degree of constriction on the exhaling vessels, which disturbs their healthy action.

It is only in this manner we can account for the fact, as frequently stated to us by patients, that, as certainly as they did take anything cool and acidulated, they were speedily affected with a tightness about the chest, and felt as if they had actually caught cold. On such occasions their usual observation was, “El acido me ha cerrado el pecho,”—the acid has locked or closely shut the breast.

A complicated ailment which is vulgarly conceived to be seated in the chest, is often met with in Lima during the sultry months of January, February, and March. It is attended with a short and dry cough, a foul tongue, and evening fever, or restlessness, that chases away sleep. The patient becomes low-spirited and anxious; and dreads an approaching attack of consumption, or spitting of blood.

In such disorders, the gastric and hepatic functions may be suspected of some irregularity; and, when in any case this is explained to the patient, the disease may be treated as one seated in the organs of digestion, and frescos or cooling acidulated drinks often do wonders. Not only diluted in cold water, but with the addition of ice, the various vegetable acids of the season are given with the best results. They break up the whole chain of morbid symptoms; and the patient, thus encouraged and refreshed, completes convalescence by cold sea-bathing, and a few weeks’ residence at the neat village of Mira-flores, a few miles from the capital.

Throughout the entire year, but more particularly during the warmer months, great use, and no small abuse, is made of all sorts of frescos, or cooling and acidulated drinks, with or without the addition of ice, and other ingredients of a very opposite nature, as pimento and spices, which latter render the same drink heating to the stomach, that, by ice, is rendered cool on the lip.

There are no beverages which the vulgar misapply more than their frescos. The most approved of these, as tamarinds and whey, or the juice of the apple and quince, &c. diffused in water and sweetened with sugar, are sometimes so long continued with a view of cooling and purifying the blood, that they finally relax and weaken the stomach; of which there are heard many complaints. Again, iced water, or iced acidulated frescos, are frequently misapplied in the common acute diseases of the country when the patients are in a free sweat; for, by suddenly checking a salutary perspiration, very bad consequences may follow: but this, though a well-known fact, is too often overlooked.

VIII. Acido sobre la leche es malo.—It is particularly worthy of notice that, shortly before or after milk happens to be taken pure as a drink, or mixed up in some culinary form as an article of diet, it is believed that no acid can be safely received into the stomach; it being thought necessary that the interval between these incompatible ingredients should be seven hours at least.

In illustration of the fact here stated, it may be mentioned that we were once called to see a lady in Lima who had been ailing for about a twelvemonth; and, on inquiring why she had delayed her cure so long, her reply was,—

“A year ago, on my arrival from Valparaiso, I called in Dr. ——, a French physician, who ordered me to confine myself to a rice and milk diet alternated with lemonade. I felt so greatly shocked at this gentleman’s extraordinary error in prescribing such treatment, which every one knows to be most hurtful, not only to the infirm, but to the sound and healthy, that I resolved at the time to leave my complaints to nature, rather than expose my life to the greater indiscretion of some other doctor of less fame.”

In this instance the error, for which the French physician was blamed, consisted in his having overlooked the popular rule universal in Peru, and probably not unknown in Chile, that “acido sobre la leche es malo,” viz. that acid after milk is hurtful.

According to this rule in Peruvian dietetics, it would be considered little short of poisonous to use milk or cream with any sort of fruit, jam, or preserve containing the least quantity of acid. And here it may be noticed, that in their own preserves, they completely destroy the rich and distinguishing flavour of the fruit by an excess of sugar, just as they annihilate, in very bad taste, the peculiar and natural fragrance of their finest flowers by sprinkling upon them foreign and artificial perfumes.

IX. Los olores son malos para las recien paridas.—It is one of the social customs of Peru, sometimes attended with great inconvenience, that friends and visitors, moved by feelings of kindness, crowd into the rooms of the sick, when not perhaps in a fit state to enjoy company or conversation.

During their confinement ladies are not sufficiently exempted from this friendly intrusion, or neighbourly attention. The only restraint imposed upon those who visit a lady on such an occasion is, that they do not enter her apartment with flowers or perfumes; nor are the attendants permitted to introduce censers with the fumes of burning incense, as is customary at other times. Thus, it is acknowledged that “Los olores son malos para las recien paridas,” viz. that perfumes are injurious to women during their confinement; and they certainly are so, for they are frequently observed to give rise to fainting, convulsions, or other bad consequences. These precautions all who visit or wait upon the sick are strict in observing; and so much the more, as it is customary for females in every rank to use perfumes on their dress, and to decorate their heads with flowers for evening visits: a practice in which the woolly-haired negress and mulatta greatly excel, as they love to adorn their stunted curls with flowers of aroma and jessamine.

Parturient women are very subject to a sensation of languor and exhaustion at stomach, attended with a feeling of faintness, which they call “fatiga.” On ordinary occasions, when this feeling or sensation is experienced by females not similarly situated, it is usual to resort to cordials and odoriferous draughts containing lavender, hartshorn, &c. and also to stimulating embrocations applied over the seat of the stomach, which usually consist of a camphorated mixture, or perhaps Cologne water, and other such remedies applied in common cases of weakness and faintness referred to the stomach; but, under the circumstances to which our rule refers, all applications of this sort are inadmissible.

When there is a feeling of sickness and faintness, with a disconsolate sensation (called “un desconsuelo”) at the epigastrium or scrobiculus cordis, they are allowed on all occasions to apply to the stomach, as a popular remedy with the matrons, a bit of warm toast, or the breast of a fowl sprinkled over with powdered cinnamon and moistened with wine, or, as it is vernacularly expressed, “la pechuga de gallina con vino y canela;” and they agree that this application, which possesses a great deal of their confidence, commonly produces the best effects.

X. Tomar agua fria encima de colera.—To drink cold water immediately after a fit of anger, which is the meaning of the words in our text, is a frequent cause of ailment, and one which the practitioner every day hears of as the origin of the worst cases of visceral obstructions or hepatic disease. Unfortunately, the occasions of such attacks are of ordinary occurrence; for the temper of those who suffer from them is rarely under proper control, and, as a necessary consequence of the existing state of society, provocations to anger are common in every situation.

We were once consulted by a curate of an irritable disposition, and an epicure in his taste, on account of an induration and very prominent enlargement of the liver, which some time after ended in a fatal abscess. This gentleman assigned, as the exciting cause of his malady, his having drunk cold water when angry, or on occasion of a quarrel he had with his cook, a Zamba girl, who we may suppose must have spoiled some favourite sauce.

This was the first time we were consulted on an ailment said to arise from drinking cold water when angry. But afterwards, as we had engaged in more general practice, we were called upon to listen to very many statements of the same sort; and, on such multiplied and independent evidence, we are compelled to believe that this is indeed one of the usual causes of hepatic derangement very prevalent in Peru.

During these fits of anger the brain appears to be greatly excited, and the flow of blood to it increased; and the liver, which readily sympathises with the brain in our mental states of angry emotion, seems to be at the same time gorged with blood. Under these circumstances, we think a draught of cold water operates injuriously, by creating a sudden chill within, and inducing, through the channel of sympathy between the stomach and liver, contraction of the biliary excretories, which lays the foundation of more permanent congestion and consequent inflammation, by preventing the natural relief which should arise from a free flow of bile. That the ready flow or free outlet of bile is the natural and proper medium of relief in such cases, every one has an opportunity to judge; for fits of anger are so common in Lima, that a day never passes without witnessing or hearing of their ill consequences; and the most familiar and immediate effect is a bilious disorder of the bowels, or indigestion and subsequent vomiting,—just as the stomach happens to be occupied, or otherwise, during the period of mental perturbation.

We may remark, that ice and iced water are only considered safe (even by the vulgar, who use them daily with a view to restrain the excessive flow of bile consequent on an angry or choleric fit,) when they are given after the violence of the commotion is over, and after the stomach, if it happen to be loaded, has, by drinking warm water or otherwise, been freed of its contents; but in hot weather, when the skin is more relaxed, and the bilious secretion more plentiful and redundant than common, ices are much used, and iced water forms the usual drink at the hour of meals.

We meet with persons who never experience the smallest annoyance or approach to anger, without being affected by some corresponding movement in the bowels; and others are never known to get warm in earnest discussion without feeling some derangement at the stomach, or showing on the following day a white or furred tongue. In truth, the delicacy of the digestive organs, or that mobility by which their functions are so easily affected by mental emotions, is quite extraordinary; and, as the daily repair and due sustenance of the whole frame depends on the regular and healthy discharge of the digestive functions, it is not to be wondered at that, among a people by no means intellectual in their habits, the sword should often be observed to wear out its scabbard,—in other words, that the frequent agitations of passion should induce serious diseases, and easily wear out the frame in a country where the sympathy between the mind and chylopoetic organs is so very marked and influential. Hence the anxiety which experienced natives feel at the hour of awakening repentance, or the return of sober reflection, after a culpable indulgence of anger; and hence, too, the rigid abstinence or tenuous diet attended to after one has been fretful or out of temper, till the pulse is again observed to be natural, and the organs of digestion sufficiently composed: and to show how far these painful states of mind may affect the secretion of milk, we have only to recollect that the Limeña will hear her babe cry a whole day, rather than harm it by giving the breast till her own agitation, which she knows vitiates her milk, is quieted after one of those choleric movements which it has been either her fault or misfortune to suffer.

XI. Si se puede lavarse con agua fria.—In almost every case of lingering illness in either sex, it is vexatious to witness the reluctance to ablution that prevails in the capital; and this prejudice, with the dread of shaving connected with it, is particularly cherished among those who have been delicately nurtured; the male part of whom are often heard to ask “si se puede lavarse con agua fria o afeytarse?”—if it be safe to wash with cold water or to shave.

The Limenians are fond of seasonal bathing and the pleasures of a watering-place, which they know how to enjoy for three months in the year.

Chorrillos, three leagues to the south of Lima, is the favourite watering-place, much frequented during the sultry summer months by gambling parties, and persons of rank and fashion from town. It is only a small village of fishermen, and constructed of cane and mud. The Indian owners of the shades, and neatly constructed houses or ranchos, let them to the bathers at a high rate during the bathing season; and some persons either take these for a term of years, or construct other light summer houses for themselves, which they fit up very tastefully, and pass the summer months in them in the midst of gaiety and mirth. Chorrillos is sheltered from the south-western blast by an elevated promontory, called the Moro-Solar, which rises like a gigantic guaca overlooking the numerous monuments, or pagan temples, of this name, which are scattered over the naturally rich, but now in a great measure waste and desolate plain, that extends from Lima to Chorrillos.

During the raw, damp, and foggy months of July and August in Lima, Chorrillos enjoys a clear sky and a genial air. The south-westers laden with heavy clouds spend their strength on the friendly Moro-Solar, (on which burst the only thunder-storm witnessed by the Limenians in the memory of any one now living,) and divide into two currents: the one pursues the direction of the village of Mira-flores, and the other the hacienda of San Juan, leaving Chorrillos clear and serene between. Thus protected, the village of Chorrillos feels not the chilly mists of winter; and it is the great hospital of convalescence for agueish, asthmatic, dysenteric, rheumatic, and various other sorts of invalids from the capital during the misty season, when the clinking of dollars and noise of the die no longer disturb the repose of the sickly.

The salutary practice of bathing in the sea was in former times confined chiefly to those affected with cutaneous diseases; but within the last forty or fifty years, as we are told, sea-bathing has been preferred to river-bathing, or to the cold baths by the old Alameda, and fountain of Piedra-lisa. The women are usually cleanly in their persons; but, however congenial cleanliness may be to their sex, they, like the sick and bearded men, seem to be greatly afraid of ablution in hectic fever, and some thoracic diseases with which they are often visited.

Of the Indian in the interior we need not speak in the same breath with his brother in the capital, or with the maritime Indian, whose ordinary occupation in fishing, or more delicate engagement of safely conducting the ladies over the surf during the bathing season, especially at Chorrillos, necessarily leads to cleanliness. But the indigenous mountaineers never perhaps in the whole course of life wash their bodies thoroughly; and their skin (at least in the warm valleys) is habitually covered with a thick coating of perspirable matter and extraneous dirt, which it is not easy to wipe off.

In very many cases of acute disease, the warm bath is, with the natives of the coast, a favourite and most valuable remedy, rarely neglected; but its application is usually forbidden in affections of the chest.

It will be readily imagined that the frames of those who fly from impressions of cool air and hazy weather, which, with all their care to shun, they cannot entirely escape, easily become so sensitive as to render them more susceptible in proportion to their self-indulgence, and more liable to catarrhal affections, than those who, by free exposure of their persons, train their constitutions to greater hardihood.

As evidence of the evil results arising from the vain endeavour to avoid the impression of the common physical causes to which, through life, every one must be occasionally exposed, we would particularly notice the peculiar delicacy of the delicately reared Limenian. When somewhat weakened by bad health, or a slight indisposition which confines him to his apartments for a few days, should he happen to shave and wash the face with cold water, he is thereby put in danger of being visited by a spasmodic affection of one side of the mouth, or affected, as is more likely to take place, with a cold in the head; so that the inflammation thus induced in the nostrils and fauces may soon be observed to extend itself along the continuous mucous membrane, and through the windpipe into the cavity of the chest; and there it is hard to foretel what ravages it may commit.

We need not therefore be surprised to hear the often reiterated query of the convalescent in the words, “No me hara daño lavar y afeytarme?”—will it not do me harm to shave and wash? Nor should we indulge in a smile at his expense, as we see him gradually venture on the first degrees of ablution, by rubbing over the hands and face with a cloth dipped in tepid water sharpened with aguardiente, or the common spirits of the country.

XII.—Morir en regla. This expression, which means to die according to rule, is one which all good Catholics are most solicitous to realize for themselves and friends; and the custom it refers to is deemed of the utmost importance in a religious and professional point of view.

When a physician visits a patient, and finds him in a doubtful or critical state, he must never omit to warn the patient or his friends of his real situation, with a view to enable them to call a medical consultation, and allow time for testamentary preparations and spiritual confession. The neglect of this precautionary measure would, in the event of the disease terminating fatally, bring great blame on the physician; but, after he has notified what he considers to be the patient’s real condition, then, whether the parties interested in such communication choose to act upon his advice or not, he has acquitted himself properly; and when the patient, previously confessed and sacramented, dies with the benefit of a consultation, or duly assisted by a medical junta, he is said to die according to rule, that is, morir en regla.

The great medical juntas in Lima, by which we understand consultations where more than four or five doctors are met together, are remarkable occasions of oratorical display. The warmest discussion frequently turns on the dose, composition, or medicinal operation of some common drug; and all the learning, method, and criticism, sometimes discovered at these solemn debates, terminate not unfrequently in the most simple practice, by which the nurse is enjoined to have recourse to the jeringa, and the patient told he must drink “agua de pollo,” or chicken-tea, until the return of the junta. In former times such consultations were called oftener than necessary, because a great junta became a sort of ostentatious exhibition, in which all who could afford to cite a group of doctors desired to imitate the great and the wealthy.

A sample, on a little scale, of such fashionable follies, is familiar to the Limenian in the well-known local story of the two doctors, who, for a month or more, daily met in consultation at the house of a family in town, where, as they retired to the supposed privacy of a consulting-room, the one would clear his throat, and ask the other, “Come el enfermo hoy?”—May the patient eat to-day?—to which the second doctor would reply, “Como no? si, comera.”—Why not? yes, he shall eat. Thus, day after day, began and ended the consultation, as far at least as its topics of discussion concerned the patient; while the good old doctors spun out a regular allowance of time before they rejoined the patient, or his attendants, serenely to announce the well-matured result of their conference. A man of nous, accustomed to listen behind the scenes, at length broke in upon their consultation; and dismissed them one day by paying to each his usual fee, and telling them both how happy he was to find that he now knew as much as themselves, for that he could repeat as well as anybody, “Come el enfermo hoy?—Como no? si, comera.”

A medical junta in Lima is commonly continued morning and evening, and from day to day, till the patient is pronounced to be out of danger. As the junta breaks up after each separate meeting, it is customary for the president of the meeting, or one of the physicians, to say, as he leaves his seat, “Vamos a consolar al enfermo,”—Let us go to console the patient; and then all the doctors present re-enter the patient’s apartment to soothe and to console him; and after this one of the number steps forward to lay down the regimen—“a dar el regimen”—agreed upon in consultation, and which one or more nurses and attendants are now ready to receive from the mouth of the physician. After the formality of a junta is thought no longer necessary, it often happens that, by wish of the patient or his relatives, two or more of the medical advisers return at separate hours, but by mutual agreement, for several days, by way of further security to the sick, or as a source of satisfaction to his family.

After all the care possible bestowed on the part of doctors, it often happens that, when the patient recovers, San Antonio, or any other saint after whom the individual is named, has all the credit of the cure; but, when the case is unprosperous, then all the evil is ascribed to human agency.

In Lima, as elsewhere, it will readily enough be admitted in general terms that all must die; but regarding this proposition, when death strikes any one in particular, difficulties at once suggest themselves; for the surviving friends are ever ready to assign many reasons why they are quite sure the deceased might have escaped, had it not been for this or that physician that misunderstood his malady. Hence it may be said that it is only in well-regulated juntas, and in public hospitals, that the people of Lima are supposed to glide to their latter end by fair and natural means. Upon this subject we heard it remarked by a sagacious native, “Should a gambler lose at a cock-fight, he does not attribute the loss to any fault in the cock, but to some trick done to him; if a horse lose in a race, his owner never acknowledges the cause of the failure to be in the animal, but assigns it to some accident thrown in his way: and surely, when we know that on such comparatively trivial occasions men thus talk and think, it is but natural for them, in an affair of such moment and interest as life itself, never to believe that a friend or relative loses his existence from any fault of his own, or any defect in his organization, but rather that his demise should be charged, as we see it is, though often unjustly, on the blind and stumbling ignorance, or unpardonable carelessness and indifference of the physicians.”

One common consequence of this mode of thinking is, that, by a single fatal case in practice, all the former success of the practitioner is overlooked, at least for a time; from which it follows that various medical advisers are sure to replace one another often in those families where death is a frequent visitor.

We seldom meet in families that shyness or reserve in divulging bodily ailments which can render them reluctant to change their family physician; and no physician, though specially entrusted with a patient, can be sure that others of the profession do not, at secret interviews, tamper with his peculiar treatment. This baneful custom leads to professional jealousies and mutual distrust. We believe many families countenance it from motives of consideration for the doctor ostensibly in trust, whose self-love they propose to spare by this clandestine practice, when they think a more open manner of proceeding would be repulsive to his feelings. There is, however, another very obvious reason which lends its influence to this furtive system of visiting the sick; and it is, that by this means the opinion of several advisers may be had at comparatively little expense. Should only two individuals be called to meet at the bedside of the patient at an appointed hour to consult on his case, the meeting is a bonâ fide junta, and each member of it is entitled to his four or four and a half dollars; whereas the single visits are only valued at one dollar each, and such detached visits are in many instances not paid by the sick, but by the friends at whose request the professional calls are made. Here then is great economy; eight opinions (and if the patient be poor, so that he is only expected to pay a half dollar fee for a detached visit, sixteen opinions) may be procured for the standard price of two when given in consultation; and custom, as well as reason and prudence, require that several opinions should be taken in cases of hazard and difficulty.

Owing in a considerable degree to the comparative poverty of the present times, medical juntas are by no means so frequent as they used to be; but yet it is a common saying on serious occasions, where the assistance of more than one medical adviser is thought necessary, that more is seen by four eyes than by two.—“Mas se ve con cuatro ojos que con dos.” By multiplying skill according to this rule, a score of eyes may be assembled in one junta to search into the patient’s obscure malady, so as to point out the cause and the remedy; or, if there should be no other alternative, let him die according to rule.

CHAPTER V.

Condition of Slave population, and its influence on the family economy and moral sentiments of the European race.

Such is the influence which slave domestics exercise over the feelings and comfort of private families, and, we would even add, over the moral and physical features of the community, that it would be impossible to give a correct picture of the state of society in Lima without first cursorily viewing the condition of the slave population in Peru.

In article 152 of the Political Constitution of the Republic of Peru, it is declared that no one is born a slave in the republic, neither does any one enter from other countries who is not left free when he treads on Peruvian soil. Should any Peruvian be found guilty of importing slaves into the republic for the purposes of traffic, the constitution declares that he shall be deprived of his rights of citizenship. But the internal traffic of slaves still continues, though it is confined to buying and selling such slaves as existed in the country before the war of independence began, or to such of their offspring as were born before the year 1820, when Peru was no longer the acknowledged patrimony of Spaniards. With respect to the mere exterior appearance of negroes born in Peru of African parents, it is observed that they are influenced by the bleaching effects which the climate of the Peruvian coast is known to produce on the ruddy sons of our northern climes who reside for any length of time in Lima. The native negro therefore is lighter in colour, and possessed of finer, more expressive, and much more regular features than the jet-black and lacerated “Bozals” or African-born blacks, on whose countenance and breast are commonly seen deep and hideous scars that bespeak at once their more barbarous origin and their foreign importation.

The orderly discipline of the “Galpon,” or slave-barracks, appears, from the acknowledgments of the natives themselves, to have been very creditable to the humanity of the slave-holders in the days of Spanish sway over them,—a time when slaves are said to have shared in the felicity of their masters. Leniently dealt with, and in the abundant fruition of animal gratifications, they felt themselves happy, and forgot that they were not free.

The patriot legislators have enacted that it is illegal for any master to apply the whip or scourge, “azote,” in chastising his slave. The ordinary mode of punishment in the capital is to send the offender for correction to a “panaderia” or bakehouse, where his labour is increased or mitigated according to his conduct while there. In most ancient families, who have yet preserved sufficient fortune to allow them to keep up some retinue, we find a number of slave attendants whose progenitors served in the same family of distinction for a long series of years; and thus a mutual attachment has grown up between the parties, that makes them view each other with that sort of interest which we observe between masters and old servants at home. It is not unusual for a master on his death-bed to reward the fidelity of a faithful slave by granting him his liberty; and we have witnessed some very touching instances of gratitude shown by well-educated white women towards those female slaves, or, we might say, devoted friends, on whose willing services and attention they themselves often placed their confidence in the hour of sickness or adversity. These recollections are in our mind associated with those amiable traits of human nature which unite the great family of mankind; but it must be observed that from such instances, particularly creditable to the character of individuals, nothing can be argued in favour of slavery as such, which never can be otherwise than unjust and unchristian.

Since the triumphs of patriotism first cheered the hopes of the people, since the very slaves, intoxicated with aguardiente or momentary enthusiasm, joined aloud in the chants in praise of liberty, numberless families in the capital have gradually sunk into increasing poverty, of which a common consequence is, that individuals who can boast of the purity of their origin, or who, in native phrase, count it no plebeian privilege to say that their four quarters are Biscayan, now find themselves reduced to lend out their old domestic slaves on hire as a means of support; the slaves being obliged to pay a certain moderate proportion of their daily wages or earnings to their proper owners. A male slave, when thus hired out in Lima, is understood to pay his owner one real, or a sixpence, out of his day’s wages or earnings; and women, when hired out as nurses, are usually paid fifteen dollars a month; of which they pay four dollars to their proper owners, and the rest they may do what they please with: others again go out as cooks, or are employed as laundry-maids, &c.

The few agricultural slaves yet left in the country have usually allotted to them a tarea, or daily task, so light and easy, as far at least as we have had any opportunity of knowing, that it is soon executed; and whatever work any one of them does over and above this daily task, he is paid for as if he were a freeman. Were he indeed to value his personal freedom, he could thus secure it to himself by fair means, and at the cost of moderate industry. A few of the more ambitious of this class have really availed themselves of so good an opportunity to effect their own emancipation; but in general the slave population in Peru do not appear solicitous to change their circumstances, nor are they very conscious of anything abject in their condition. They well know that they enjoy a degree of liberty which they consider sufficient, and which they sometimes are pleased to exercise to suit their own convenience: for example, if you are assisted by a slave, it is not unlikely that, when least expected, he will tell you it is his desire, and he demands it as his right, that he be sold or transferred to a purchaser of his own choice and finding; and, should he once become restive, he is best got rid of quickly, as until that is the case no more good comes of him. If the servant should be not a slave, but a dusky freeman of slave descent, he is so accustomed to self-indulgence, that he must daily have his own hours of pleasure, whether his master will or not; and, if found fault with, he replies in the usual ejaculation, “Quien quiere matarse con trabajar?”—Who would kill himself with toil?

Those again who rely on the assistance of an Indian, (nominally free, though virtually a slave, working for a mere maintenance and some trifling gratuity,) reared up from childhood in their own houses and for their own particular service,—a very customary thing to do,—are commonly, in the long run, left in the lurch; for, when a good opportunity offers, away starts the cerrano or mountaineer, whether male or female, for Guamanga, Guamantanga, or some such mountain home. The Indian girl thus reared in some private family is commonly very useful until she attains the age of twelve or fifteen, when she looks out for a mate, with whom she can fly to the hills, to be happy in a smoky hut, and on a llama-skin couch; and the shrewd and quick-eyed Indian boy, with head and hands to conceive and execute, no sooner gets a little insight into good service or some handicraft, than he meditates upon and watches the opportunity for escaping to his native home, “mi tierra!” and, sooner or later, he is sure to effect his object. Yet, notwithstanding this disposition to desertion, where an Indian does become personally attached to his employer, which is not often, his fidelity and constancy are allowed to be unbounded.

The vexations so often caused by the Indians among the class of their Spanish employers, or white superiors, (who usually expect more from this oppressed order of citizens than they care to pay for,) gave rise to the proverbial complaint against the indigenous tribes:

“Mal con ellos; pejor sin ellos,”

Bad with them; worse without them.

The ladies, or females of Spanish blood in Lima, usually become mothers at too tender an age, and we think it is chiefly on this account that they are commonly found to be incapable of nursing with impunity; and, if they persist in attempts at nursing beyond what their constitution can bear, they are peremptorily warned to desist by the presence of symptoms that menace a decline or consumption.

Hence most ladies in Lima are under the necessity of employing black and brown nurses, who are usually slaves either purchased for milk-nurses or hired out for this purpose.

The skin of the negro appears to be cooler than that of the Indian or white race, and this may possibly have been the origin of the prevailing idea already alluded to, that the milk of the negress is more cooling and refreshing than that of the Indian woman,[6] who, though in other respects a healthy and proper person, is never considered eligible as a milk-nurse, when in this character a negress can be procured.

It unfortunately happens, however, that the predilection thus shown for negresses and those dark women who are nearest allied to the negro race, frequently exposes the white mother’s child to a series of evils, such as imperfect nutrition, contamination of blood, and permanent constitutional injury, all originating in the peculiar circumstances and individual character of milk-nurses; of whom a single child may have been so unfortunate as to have had as many as half a dozen, and to have suffered successively from the blemishes of each. When the young Don, thus nurtured in the very lap of bondage, comes to be fit for school, he goes to, and comes from it, in the company of a slave; and the young Miss, or Niña, who goes out to be educated, is, on her way to and from her parents’ house, attended by a sort of dueña, or experienced zamba. On the customary plea, that the evils of life come early enough, children of gentle blood, especially such as are “rubios,” or fair-complexioned, are allowed all manner of gusto, or indulgence; and in the morning, before they set out for school, they usually receive a real or medio,—sixpence or threepence,—either as pocket-money, or as a bribe to be obedient and to submit to be taught. In this way expensive habits are early acquired, and mere children made to do what is right and proper from pecuniary motives, rather than a laudable sense of duty.

Reviewing the effects of a close social union, from infancy upwards, between white children and their slave companions, who are seldom endowed with shame or modesty, we are led to remark that, without desiring to make any insinuations against the natural capacity for moral and intellectual improvement observable among all the races of mankind, or wishing in any degree to depreciate the merit of individuals of pure or mixed African and slave descent, we think it may be truly affirmed, that even minds of a naturally amiable and delicate bias, when led habitually to accommodate themselves to the grovelling feelings and propensities of the more degraded portion of our kind, undergo deterioration by degrees, and slide into a participation of the qualities of a baser nature, with which they inevitably amalgamate their own. The proper medium of domestic intimacy allowable between masters and slaves, may be a nice matter to determine with precision; but it may be said in general, that in proportion as this immediate intercourse may meliorate the condition, and quicken the intelligence, of the slave, it tends to lower the tone of morality in that society where slavery is tolerated. Thus, we doubt not, the standard of morals is lowered, and we conceive it may be owing to this very alloy of character that, until very lately, the sheer ruffian was seldom met with, even among the lowest of the dark septs in the voluptuous capital of Peru. Assassinations, it must be owned, have been rather frequent of late years, and these have been almost always perpetrated with impunity; but there is reason to believe that the agents concerned in such atrocious crimes were in many instances not sons of the soil, but outcasts and fugitives from neighbouring states. Money, not blood, is what the worst of the dark native vagabonds of the coast are generally in quest of; and he who does not offer resistance when accosted by the robber, but, instead of armour, carries a few dollars or a couple of doubloons for his ransom, may nine times in ten be suffered to escape with entire personal safety from the midst of the most lawless marauders and dreaded highwaymen, who are usually no other than renegade slaves.

CHAPTER VI.

Social state of the Limenians under the Spaniards and Patriots.—Spanish colonists.—Style of conversation.—Improvements in female education.—Zamba attendants.—Omnipotence of the ladies at fifteen.—Esprit de corps of the fair sex.—Forgiving temper of public opinion.—Defective administration of justice.—Prerogative called Empeño.—God-fathers and god-mothers.—Saint-day parties.—Flowers and perfumes.—Limenian women excel in attention to the sick.—General character of the white women and dark races.—Boys of European race.—Few men of intellectual habits.—Promenade of Amencaes, as illustrative of national feeling and character.—Pillo and Pillo-fino.—Money a substitute for morality.—Relaxation of morals general, but not universal.

Persons of sufficiently mature age in Lima never fail to acknowledge, and often delight to tell us, that before the great revolution, and during the tranquil period of their own early recollections, their fellow-citizens and countrymen were in general fair and upright in their ordinary dealings; and that good humour, happiness, and gaiety of heart were inseparable from their frequent public meetings and social recreations.

But this sound and amicable spirit, which indeed appears to have diffused itself pretty generally in the time of the Spanish dynasty, we may trace as emanating from the many estimable and courteous qualities of those more enlightened Europeans, by whose superior capacity and direction the then existing order of society was so long and quietly upheld in this and in other sections of the New World. The past state of things was nevertheless faulty in many respects. It involved an uncontrolled indulgence in sensual gratification, though the memory of many a disappointed patriot likes to dwell on it as on the flowery retrospect of his happiest days. But Lima is no longer a garden of roses, or a bower of delight. One day, in speaking of the change to the worse that the revolution had brought about in the social system of his country, a venerable old man remarked, “Formerly there was a heart to feel, and a hand to give; but now they have left us neither friendship nor pity: you find not whom to trust; and men, without regard to right or justice, keep all to themselves with the close unyielding grasp of the ape when she clasps her young to her bosom.”

An unbounded love of superficial display engages the minds of the people so fully as to have superseded, to a great extent, active benevolence, and sterling, honourable dealing between man and man; and we must confess that the yet inexperienced creoles, left to themselves, show, in the management of their own affairs, slender political discretion and no shining public virtue.

But yet, as a whole, the Peruvians, for whose manifold faults very great allowances should be made, have, in an eminent degree, the redeeming qualities of soft, attractive manners, and a mild, prepossessing address. These agreeable characteristics, not so frequently as could be wished associated with a manly openness and frankness of mind, sometimes serve, in the present evil times, as a ready cloak to exclude the ken of those whom they are willing to deceive.

If these secluded people, too long accustomed to servitude and ease during the luxurious dynasty of their European masters, were once induced—which, under good moral management, they easily might be,—to make honesty and industry more prevalent virtues than they are at present among the bulk of the population, then they might realize, more largely than they have yet done, the advantages of that unsettled freedom, which, with feelings of pardonable exultation, they pride themselves in possessing; and, with such an amendment on their moral features, their richly varied country, with all its natural superiorities and improvable resources, might soon be transformed into an earthly elysium. But the germ of true political liberty must be better cultivated than it has yet been among them, and protected by a steady, disinterested, and patriotic government, before the soil can be made to throw out its latent luxuriance, or generous and noble virtues freely unfold themselves in the heads and hearts of a newly independent, uninstructed, and heterogeneous population.

The common race of Spaniards from old Spain, who established themselves and reared families in Peru, appear to have been, as we formerly signified, men of strict commercial integrity, scarcely requiring written obligations or acknowledgements in their pecuniary transactions one with the other; they are reported to have been friendly and charitable, always ready to assist a poor adventurer from the old country, or a needy friend, whenever he presented himself.

The houses of the affluent teemed with idle domestics and laughing loiterers, whose coarse merriment bespoke contentment and plenty; and the beggar, who sat in the back-court and corridor (the walls of which are still beautified with painted flowers and landscapes) to enjoy the cool of the artificial fountain, or who rested himself on the benches of the tesselated porchway, laughing with the merry fellows that were about him, felt not the miseries of pauperism; for, wherever the Limenian mendicant seated himself, there he was happy, and partook cheerfully of the abundant surplus from the rich man’s table, which was liberally bestowed on the poor.

But, generally speaking, delicacy of sentiment or refinement of education did not belong to the Spanish colonists; and though they acquired wealth by their moderate industry, reared costly edifices and churches, endowed convents and monasteries, and paid for numberless masses; though they befriended the poor, and filled their welcome guest’s cup to overflowing in a land of milk and honey; yet, be it spoken with candour, their summum bonum seems to have been something like a good Mussulman’s paradise.

The natives of the country still avow, that though the Spaniard, who used to come to their shores as an adventurer soon to be incorporated into their domestic circle, was seldom a polished or intellectual character, nevertheless he was usually a man of integrity and some industry, or, to use their own words, “brusco, pero recto y trabajador.” Besides, the women, whom we in general allow to be good judges in every rank of life, continue to bear witness that the Spaniard makes a good husband and a kind father of a family,—“el Espanol es buen marido y buen padre de familia.” But, to merit this encomium from the fair sex on the shores of the Pacific, let it be borne in mind that austere virtue and severe self-denial are not always expected or required in the husband.

Those educated foreigners who frequent the rounds and “tertulias” of Limenian good company,—which we take as the best criterion of refinement in that country,—have had occasion to regret, that women of the most elegant manners, ladylike mien, and unimpeached character, are despoiled of no small share of the outward illusion of their charms, and appear to lose much of the moral loveliness of their sex, by an unconscious licence of speech, that cannot fail to appear faulty in the opinion of those to whom long habit has not yet rendered the style familiar.

We have pleasure in bearing our humble evidence in favour of the great pains, and cost, to which mothers now put themselves in educating their daughters; and it is incontrovertible, that the rising generation are about to come on the stage of active life, with many advantages of instruction which were not enjoyed by their parents. But, granting it to be true, that these interesting young ladies may have considerable advantages over their predecessors in the knowledge of French, geography, music, a little drawing, and a chaster fashion of dancing, still, we are apprehensive, that in more humble and useful domestic education not a little is wanting: and this important defect, we conceive, is not to be remedied by expensive teachers, or by the routine of boarding-schools; but, if we mistake not, by good example at home. To improve the domestic education in the female part of the community, it would be necessary to detach young ladies as much as possible from the customary attendance of old favourite “zambas;” who, there is much reason to believe, teach them at an early age to pry into the private weaknesses of their seniors, and excite in their quick, comprehensive minds a degree of attention and curiosity which, when indiscreetly called forth, seldom fail to bias their inclination to vices that may on some occasions be deemed hereditary; and thus open a door to a series of indulgences which, in the long-run, prove the bane of their own ill-sought happiness, as well as the wreck of many a fond parent’s hopes, too blindly placed on a daughter left to the daily tutorship of intriguing domestics.

The ladies when young, and long before they become marriageable, are taught to anticipate their own omnipotence at fifteen, which little girls of seven or eight years of age already reckon to be the approaching era of their perfect felicity; for the Spaniards say “No hay fea de quince,”—All are fair at fifteen. There is also among these gifted women, whose superiority, as a body, over their own countrymen is always admitted, a great “esprit de corps,” so that the greatest sinner among them is never left without a gentle voice to plead her cause, and palliate, when she cannot exculpate, a sister’s errors.

This forgiving system runs through every class and rank, from the highest to the lowest; but it is in the lofty circles that its influence is most worthy of particular notice. No one ventures to throw the first stone at the unfortunate; and there insensibly arises a gradation of vices and virtues, dove-tailing into each other so as to constitute a social whole, wherein the different degrees of moral deviation are all shaded by an overflowing charity. Pleasure and vice are nearly allied, and unhappily he who assumes the clerical habit and tonsure is not, in his own person, always a stranger to the voluptuous enjoyments of those around him; and the example of the man who rules the conscience of the people,—who grants them absolution, and allows them indulgences,[7]—will naturally be imitated: hence the indulgence of public opinion as regards individual and private character in Peru.

The slow and partial administration of justice is loudly complained of by those whose affairs require them to frequent courts of law in the Peruvian capital. The turbulent independence of the bad and disorderly, uncontrolled by any active and faithful police, is every day increasing, and already puts justice at defiance. The impudence, ill-acquired pecuniary influence, and intrigue of the false-hearted and boasting patriot, are daily seen to assume the embroidered insignia of “un benemerito de la patria!”—an honour which only in equity belongs to that rare character—the genuine patriot, who knows how to sacrifice his private convenience to the public good. The judges are often left without pecuniary means consistent with their honourable calling, because their salaries are not duly paid by the government; and if, under these circumstances, the balance of justice be disturbed in its equilibrium, the blame must not be all laid to the charge of those public functionaries who are the appointed ministers of the laws. The truth is, that, for a considerable time back, the sums that entered the national treasury were too scanty to support the pageantry of military array, together with the accumulated expences of a destructive and demoralizing warfare; and the pecuniary embarrassments arising from these circumstances, involved in their consequences some drawbacks in the civil administration of justice. But another popular cause, and that to which we would desire to draw the attention of the reader, for the unequal distribution of justice, is by common consent allowed to be, that in the best, as even now in the worst of times, the fair sex in Lima have enjoyed, from date immemorial, a more than regal prerogative, which the convulsions that effected what is called their political freedom, have in no essential particular obliterated or changed. It is called Empeño.

This tacitly constitutional instrument of clemency, although in the hands of women naturally inclined to mercy, may, when misguided, operate against the vital interests of the community; and by it the true ends of legislative enactments may, from time to time, be frustrated. This prerogative is put in practice especially by certain genteel-looking young women, who are neither married nor single, but who, in the language of the indulgent matrons of the country, are allowed to be, though not married, highly honourable and gifted,—“No es casada, pero muy honrada, muy prendada:” and a lady of this quality seldom loses favour, or a good place in society, so long as she has a calesa or carriage in Lima, and a rancho or bathing-lodge in Chorrillos. Let us now suppose that this lady, attired in her national, or rather Limenian, dress of saya and manto,[8] desires either to plead some advantage or indulgence for another, or a favour more particularly for herself,—and that for this purpose she employs the blandishments and flow of persuasive language at her command. The gentleman, thus softly assailed by so eloquent and attractive a being, unwisely listens until he is entirely at his magician’s bidding. This spell is what is vulgarly meant by the gigantic and overgrown prerogative termed in Peru empeño. But we must not forget to mention, that this ascendant power is very commonly promoted by a certain spiritual influence, in which both married and single partake,—namely, the sacred relation between god-fathers and god-mothers, the well-known “compadres y comadres” of that sunny land; and it will be at once perceived that an influence so remarkable in the ladies as this, which enables them, during their good pleasure, to deprive men of free-will, must have wide practical application, and be productive of great good or evil in that country, where it confessedly extends its sway to bench and altar, senate, palace, and camp. No old stager in Lima hears of a political or domestic altercation, or of any serious movement that causes a stir and sensation in the city, but he immediately inquires what woman can be at the bottom of this bullanga or hubbub; and if the affair should happen to concern himself, his friends, or political party, he does not long sit at ease until he finds out who that woman is, or discovers where the spiritual alliance rests, where dwells the comadre that rules the order of the day.[9]

The Peruvian highland girls have an ingenious way of contriving for themselves compadres, without the necessary interference of the priest, merely by sending the gentleman, whom any one of them in particular may desire to honour, a sweet cake made into the form of a doll, which they call “guawa,” the Indian name for baby. This offspring of a good-humoured regard which they desire should become mutual, they nicely dress, and accommodate on a couch made from a selection of the fresh flowers of the season, and forward it with their kindest wishes (con muchisimas expresiones), under their now adopted name of comadre, to the person on whom by this gracious act of partiality they confer the confidential title, expecting by his acceptance a return of the attentions and courtesy of the real compadre. On the coast, again, (in the capital,) on the anniversary of a lady’s birth-day, or saint’s day, celebrated in merry parties encouraged to assemble by the joint allurements of music, dancing, cooling repasts, and all that can render such meetings attractive, the drawing-room may be said to be converted into a flower-garden by the attention of compadres, comadres, and friends, who vie with each other in sending presents of fine flowers, sweet preserves, and other gifts; and, at the annual return of these joyful meetings, the friends of the family, and of the individual who is the object of the compliments of the day, have the best opportunity of expressing their friendship, by adding to the ornaments of a young lady’s toilet, or presenting her with any delicate mark of personal regard.

These meetings, not overlooked in the humblest dwellings, are seen to best advantage in the handsome “quadra,” or tertulia-room of the wealthy, where the large chandeliers are well reflected by spacious mirrors, in which are seen multiplied the groups of happy faces, to the delight of the party, all pleased with one another. Here and there are Guamanga baskets of filigree texture laden with spiced and perfumed fruits, sometimes ornamented with delicate threads of gold and silver, fancifully twined from peg to peg of the spice fixed in the fruit. Among them, too, are usually golden apples,—viz. apples coated with gold leaf,—many sweet fruits imbedded in aroma, and the sweetly-scented cheremolla or cheremoya, and orange blossoms, which are peculiarly welcome to the guests when distributed from the hands of the hostess, or her engaging daughters.

We may here observe, in passing, that handing a flower to a forenoon visitor, who, if a polished gentleman, accompanies his verbal salutation by raising his hand softly to his heart, is only a customary mark of polite attention, quite in character with the complacent manners and natural taste of the Limenian ladies, in this respect favoured by their balmy climate, in which odoriferous fruits and flowers are always within reach: and on leaving their house they almost invariably besprinkle their visitors with perfumes, and thus send them away redolent of hospitality. And while their corridors, in which they frequently swing in their hammocks, or enjoy the siesta, are scented with flower-gardens, and their “patios,” or courts, with roses and jessamine, sweet perfumes, and fragrant herbs are frequently used in their principal bed-chamber, when it is found convenient, for the sake of cheering the sick, to receive friends into this apartment, which is usually very gorgeously furnished, and communicates with the drawing-room or quadra. Our professional avocations have afforded us an intimate opportunity to know, and we feel a peculiar pleasure in proclaiming it, that it is by the bedside of sickness (where men are exceedingly helpless without the aid of the softer sex, at once more patient and serene, more dexterous and endearing in their assistance,) that the Limeña, be her rank, birth, or pretensions what they may, is seen to greatest advantage. Here the humblest and most faulty of these comforters shows the native goodness of her disposition, and is seen to rise superior to the drawbacks of her education, manifesting the angelic power of her sex to soothe pain and cheer the broken-hearted, by the exercise of that blessed charity which covereth a multitude of sins.

It is curious to notice that among the white women of Lima there are no menials, though they are subject to many of the privations and humiliations of poverty; but, a poor girl of unmixed Spanish blood, though of lowly birth, feels, however destitute in her circumstances, the impulse of what she deems nobility within her; and at nothing do her prejudices more strongly recoil, than at the idea of becoming the wife of a man of African or slave descent.

Comely countenances,—above all, a bright and beautiful eye,—and pretty figures, with an inimitably graceful walk, constitute the common inheritance of the European race, who, in their own forms, partake of the softness and fineness of the climate in which they were brought into being. These are, in common with their tawny and darker countrywomen, extremely attentive to the public and outward ordinances of their showy religion, which must strike every one with a feeling of solemnity as, at the stroke of a bell at twilight, every human being engages in one common act of public devotion. They retain the common Catholic spirit of pious display, fasting, and penance; the same faith in the efficacy of saintly images and influences; the same reliance on priestly absolution and indulgences; but they do not cherish the cruelty or stern religion of their ancestors, whose ardent zeal planted the cross on the now mouldering ruins of Pachacamac.[10] Though little versed in book-information, they are usually gifted with natural acuteness and intelligence; are seldom quite ignorant of the ways of the world, even when educated in convents; are hardly ever so overcome by their tender feelings, or so blind to their worldly interests, as to fall into the folly of a genuine love-marriage; and they are never at a loss for a sagacious observation or pertinent reply. They are indulgent to human passion and weakness; are agreeable, sometimes fascinating companions; and never fail to leave the buen mozo, (the good-looking young man,) if not delighted with them, at least highly pleased with himself. Their conversation is sprightly and unembarrassed; and though particularly indulged and caressed from childhood, accustomed to flattery and fond of admiration, they are as free from obtrusive levity and affectation of manner, as from blushing timidity or cold reserve; their filial love is the admiration of foreigners; and, when blessed with good husbands, they are faithful and affectionate wives.

Nothing in Lima can strike the attention of a stranger, who understands their language, more than the propriety and fluency with which serving-people express their thoughts, and this they commonly do with an agreeable seasoning of the ease and manner of the higher classes; a fact, no doubt, attributable to much native ability on their own part, and to their having been brought up on a footing of great familiarity with their superiors. This recommendatory trait in the humblest ranks of the community is, we regret, fast giving way to the intrusive manners of the unrestrained and rising aristocracy of a mongrel brood,—a dusky and bronzed brotherhood, whose very complexion indicates an incapacity to blush as apparent, at first sight, as among the white race used to be the long-honoured badge of the proud Spanish lineage,—the “sangre azul!” blue blood!—so called, by the inferior races, in consideration of the hue of the veins rising to view under the delicate tissue of a pure white skin.

Wit, not unknown among the white women, is a general attribute of the mestizo and zambo septs, as well male as female. These people of colour are too much addicted to sarcasm, and too fond of the ludicrous and fantastical. When in a bilious or choleric mood, they are outrageously passionate; but then, with chicha-piña (fermented juice of the pine-apple), and nieve (ice or iced-water), they soon drown or freeze their fury, and restore to themselves equanimity and mirth. Instances of death from impetuous gusts of passion are, we believe, rare among them; though we have had occasion to hear of some such, and we have witnessed severe nervous ailments that arose from the turbulent emotion of their savage anger. Such mixed castes are remarkable for a great deal of what is by themselves called “broma,”—a facetious kind of bantering, with noisy fun and sensual dalliance, which is most displayed at their “jarranas,” or merry meetings: they like the theatre, and they are passionately fond of bull-fights, cock-fights, religious processions, and that sort of song and music which inflame the passions and deprave the heart,—their feasts too often degenerate into debauchery, and their merriment into obscenity.

Boys of pure Spanish parentage or descent, in Lima, are usually animated and intelligent, like their sisters; but, as their bodily powers approach to maturity, their attention is engrossed with frivolous pleasures, which seem to enervate the mental faculties, and stint and vitiate their future expansion. It is, therefore, not unusual for hopeful boys to become childish and fickle, silly and fatuous men. The latter imbecility of mind we observe with striking frequency in the families of the suppressed nobility.

Those very few well-tempered spirits that have outgrown every obstacle to their full mental developement, have that inborn thirst after knowledge which even knowledge itself cannot quench; for, the more they learn, the more they aspire to know; and these men, with little external incitement to forward or nurture their literary tastes and pursuits, are like those plants on arid land, which only require a few fleeting showers to quicken their energies, develope their form, and unfold their beauty. Such choice persons are the delight of their friends, and worthy of that better state of society for which they daily sigh, as they see the best laws and institutions of their country trampled upon by military despots, whose nod they must obey, while they say in their hearts, “Vetitum est sceleri nihil!”

On the 24th of June, (Dia de San Juan,) all Lima annually assemble along the windings of the “Great Alamada,” and between orangeries now prettily laden with fruit, to the romantic mountain recess of “Amencaes,” only about one mile from town, and beautifully adapted for pleasure-grounds, if only supplied with water, which it might have at some expense. This spot commands a fine view of the capital, with its towering spires; of wide fields, innumerable orchards, the Rimac, and the fine lagoon at its mouth; the island of San Lorenzo, and the shipping at Callao; and it has, in its back-ground, a set-off in the acclivities newly clothed with vivid vegetation, among numerous crags and many a ridge and chasm. Here, on the day of San Juan,—a day of festivity and joy,—men, women, and children, of all ranks, all ages, and all colours and occupations, meet. Mirth is the object of one and all. Their horses, their asses, and even their own persons, are adorned in their best manner; and the rational as well as the irrational members of the ever-moving crowd are bedecked with the flower of Amencaes taken from the favourite clefts and nooks of these hills. In this place there are tents and sheds, that supply seats and refreshment for those who love the thoughtless and bawling mirth of the “jarrana.” There is at this exhibition a dunning confusion of musical discord kept up by drumming, piping, shouting, harping, and guitaring, singing, laughing, and dancing; but no fighting. Here too we may see the popular “paseo,” or promenade, of the “chuchumecas,” (women of immoral character,) who mingle freely and good-humouredly with the crowd, to the infinite amusement of the multitude. The national taste is on this, as on other occasions of festivity, eminently displayed by the loud and simultaneous laugh, or “carcajada,” of cheering voluptuaries when the samaqueca—a favourite dance—is exhibited in a free and masterly style.

The periodical rides and picnics of the Limenians to Las Huacas, Surco, and Lurin, are now dwindling away into neglect, as there is neither money nor public tranquillity for such happy scenes of customary gaiety. Carnival, with them, has lost its spirit; the Noche Buena, or Christmas-eve, is deprived of much of its revelry; and all that in their customs was most alluring and glittering is rapidly withering and dying away.

We may now, not unfrequently, observe more disposition to indulge in the gloomy and silent stillness of the “duelo,” or formal condolence for the dead, than in the hilarity of the golden times of these merry-making people, who were for generations most happy in the unconsciousness of defects, and in the conviction that no people on earth were superior to themselves in knowledge and civilization.

In all parts of the world there are criminally selfish and unprincipled men; and in Peru there may be found a set of rogues, called “Pillos,” rendered more numerous and troublesome from the circumstances of the times. Of these the capital presents two kinds, which has led to the distinction of “pillo” and “pillo-fino.” The first is a very common and plausible sort of rogue; but the latter is, as the name implies, a more refined cheat, not unfrequently enticed from distant parts by the fame of the numerous attractions of Lima, the paralysis of the laws, and consequent facility of escaping chastisement. The clink of hard dollars and doubloons, shoveled into “talegas,” or money-bags, and again thrown open at the gambling-table, are such sounds as are sure to allure the pillo-fine to that promiscuous society of Limenian gamblers, where the precious coin usually finds its way into the hands of the crafty. Whatever be the land of this animal’s nativity, he is but a vampire,—a human blood-sucker; but the simple pillo is a very different character, always plausible and pliable, an every-day and common-place member of society, who sponges on his neighbour, and whom all Englishmen courted for their generosity are sure to encounter. The ultimatum of this person’s milky adulation and very smiling policy is to procure a loan of money; and when he asks “plata prestada,” or money on loan, of any one, he assures that person, that applying to him is the greatest proof he can offer of his own friendly confidence and regard for the individual; but, while he is lavish of compliment, he takes care not to express his secret purpose, namely, never to reimburse whatever in this way he may hope to clutch.

It is a trite saying with the Spaniard,—“Es bueno conocer el amigo sin perderlo,” that is, It is well to know a professed friend, but not to lose him; and this will be found, like most Spanish adages, to convey in actual life a lesson of practical wisdom. The common pillo, of whom we take notice, never thinks the less of you for giving him a polite refusal; and, by so doing, you act in the spirit of the above saying, and preserve both your friend and your money; for, when civilly refused, he in good nature leaves you, and proceeds forthwith in search of some less wary dupe, and thinks to himself as he departs from you, “Ya este sabe,”—This one is up to our tricks.

Though Peru be a land of gold and silver, yet nowhere are the precious metals in greater requisition than in Lima, where the scarcity of circulating capital is shown by the revolting dealings of the common usurer, who extorts from the victims of his cupidity two or three per cent. a month on the advances he makes; and the current and regular rate of interest in that country is one per cent. a month, or twelve per cent. a year.

The “plata,” or money, covers more delinquencies than charity itself; hence we hear such expressions as these: “Nada es mala que gana la plata,” viz. Nothing is bad that wins the money. “Bien, le costo su plata!”—Very well, (what is it to us?) it cost him his money! “Porque no tener su gusto cuando le cuesta la plata?”—Why not have his pleasure when it costs him the money?—as if money, forsooth, could annihilate the moral turpitude of sinful enjoyment.

We cannot give the reader a better idea of the popular ethics of Peru in the present day, than in the words of a friend long resident in the country, who said that Peru had the advantage over every other country he had seen,—that in it “no one need ever be put out of countenance for anything he can say or do.” By so broad a statement as that conveyed in the expression now cited, we would only desire to represent the bad state of moral feeling prevalent among the bulk of a people not long since let loose to follow their own unrestrained wishes; without thereby meaning to deny the fact, that, in Lima more particularly, we often find that good natural dispositions and obliging manners do in no small degree supply, in the ordinary intercourse of life, the place of higher principle. And yet more: we would honourably except from this general description many individual examples of eminent virtue to be met in Peruvian society; striking instances of disinterested friendship and kindness (of which the writer himself has more than once been the favoured object); and the most generous, amiable, and praiseworthy bearing, which we have seen displayed by them in their domestic and social relations.

If we consider all things in the circumstances of the Peruvians, their story from first to last must awaken an interest in the mind of every inquirer into their past and present state, rather than dispose him to censure them indiscriminately for their errors. We may indeed wonder not to find fewer good qualities among them; and, on the other hand, not to see the fiercer passions that utterly brutalize human nature, and agitate every corner of society, more called into action among a medley of ignorant and discordant castes, passing without adequate preparation from one extreme of government to another, and from one civil broil into another of greater confusion and misrule.

But, as we have already had occasion to mention, there is among the entire mass of the people a natural aptness to please by a happy address; and no one can witness the external graces of the more enlightened and better classes, who are daily engaged in their customary rounds of social and courteous attentions, without desiring that these qualities, at least, should survive the overthrow of whatever is pernicious to a healthy state of society.

CHAPTER VII.

Religious prejudices.—No faith with heretics.—Corpse of an Englishman cast into the street by the pious mob.—English supposed to have been buried with money in the island of San Lorenzo.—New cemetery, and Latin inscription for the English burial-ground.—Religious disadvantages of the British in Peru.

Among a people who suffer so large a privation of moral discipline as the Peruvians, we naturally look for a corresponding prevalence of religious prejudices. Some years ago, when we lived in one of the most delightful climates in the interior of Peru, we were greatly annoyed by our neighbours of the two beautiful villages Ambo and Tomay-quichoa. The inhabitants of the former would insist that we drove from the estate of Andaguaylla, upon which we resided, the worshipful saints, (little painted images dressed in gaudy rags,) and withdrew the workmen, or “yanacones,”[11] from their little gods and religion. It was not till after we were accused by the alcalde of Ambo of being a kind of demon or goblin, that the people of the estate were scared into horror and desertion; or that we found out, through the kindness of our Spanish major-domo, that the alarmed men, women, and children on the estate had over-night rescued the saints from supposed danger, by piously carrying them away to a town about four leagues distant. Next morning we were left with only one workman; and he, being an old and maimed soldier, had but one hand.

This wanton and unjust attack took a legal form, and was parried off by legal measures with the timely interposition of that enlightened and benevolent citizen of the world, Doctor Don Antonio de Valdizan, himself a counsellor of state, a patron of learning, and one of the enterprising miners, and illustrious men of Peru. After this fray was finally settled in our behalf, the alcalde persecutor became our avowed and steady friend. But, on the other hand, the mestizos of Tomay-quichoa, nettled at the failure of the Ambinos, allowed us, with their usual malicious forethought, to go to great expense in fencing, building, and cultivating sugar-cane and other productions, before they showed their determination, without any provocation given by us, to baffle our labours, and ruin our fortune, by appropriating to their own use the water for irrigating the fields under crop, thus annihilating the young plantations.

We remonstrated against their unfair proceedings, but to no purpose. They fabricated false accusations, and involved us reluctantly in a law-suit of two years’ continuance, which, to the honour of the judge of the district, the learned and respected Dr. Mata, was ultimately terminated by an equitable sentence.

These good people believed we were but Jews, whom the Spaniards greatly abominate; and they conceived that, if they did not get rid of our neighbourhood in time, other Englishmen, and therefore, as they ignorantly supposed, other Jews, would settle there after us; and by proceeding to disgust us with the place, and scare us away in due season, they acted in the spirit of the proverb, “El prevenido nunca es vencido,”—The wary is never foiled. But it is a subject of deep interest to reflect on the practical example thus afforded of the working of that sovereign maxim, “No faith with heretics.” We here see, that although a perverted sense of religion did not extinguish the perception of an obvious right, yet it overcame the sense of wrong towards the imagined Jew, and in this respect suppressed the moral feeling of equity.

Such banefully erroneous views must gradually give way before the spreading light of civilization, and a more extended international intercourse. The bad moral effect of seeing men, influential and respected while living, consigned to the indignity of a canine grave when dead, cannot but be perceived and felt by the surviving friends and countrymen of the deceased, whose religious persuasions are distinct from those of the people of the land in which they are sojourners.

We may mention, that the first English gentleman’s remains we were called upon to accompany to an unhallowed burying-place, were those of one who died in an inland city remarkable for the hospitality and kindness of its inhabitants; and, after answering a few questions regarding the religious creed of the deceased, the price of the interment was settled, we think, at fifty dollars, and then the good-natured bishop, with a degree of liberality seldom exercised towards dissenters from the Romish ritual in Catholic countries, yielded his sanction to let the corpse have Christian burial. But, subsequently to this permission, a mob was collected in the night, and the body was cast out from the church to the middle of the street, where our obliging friend Don Mariano Sanches told us it lay. On the following morning, in a city where humanity was subdued by the ugly suggestions of superstition, there were only two good Samaritans. These gave their attendance at the stranger’s funeral, when the only two or three Britons at that time in the place accompanied the body outside the city, to find it a grave under the shelter of an orangery, where its mouldering bones could not by any chance come into contact with those of the pious agitators, who would fain persuade themselves that, while they live in harmony with the living heretic, the mere sight of the worm that nibbles at his interred remains is quite sufficient to endanger their own eternal condition.

In the capital of the republic a better example is at length given. Through the meritorious exertions of the British Consul-general, B. H. Wilson, Esq. the Peruvian government have ceded to the English a proper piece of cemetery-ground[12] at Bella Vista, an agreeable and convenient situation between Lima and the port of Callao. Formerly all the English, not Roman Catholics, who died in the capital or port, were interred in the barren island of San Lorenzo, where the bodies were exposed to the insults of the most vile of mankind,—miscreant convicts confined to the island for crimes that expel them from the society of honest men, and who believe that the English heretic, like the ancient Peruvian pagan, must needs have laid with him in the grave instruments or utensils of his avocation while living; and, therefore, they are led to expect that, our English merchant’s grave must be a place of deposit for a full share of those dollars he was seen always to handle, and to ship away in boxes to his native land. These outcasts were made to feel their own superiority, if not while in chains or in the galley, at least prospectively in their own cypress-shaded Pantheon, over the wealthiest, worthiest, and most respectable foreigners in their land, who, at the close of life, they might believe, exchanged situations with themselves,—that is, were sent in perpetuity to the arid and leafless San Lorenzo, while they themselves would be conveyed and suffered to rest in honoured ground until the last day. Let the worst befal them,—should they come to die on the “banquillo,” (a rude stool on which the criminal is placed at the hour of military execution,) yet they are not at the last discouraged like the stranger and Protestant. They have the aid of the priest when going to execution; and, when gone, their carnal remains may rest in sanctified earth. There will not probably be wanting on such occasions some godmother mas fea que la noche,—more ugly than night,—or some friend, who will remember the necessities of the departed highwayman whose days were closed in the Plaza, and will charitably pay the needy friar’s mass (value one dollar) to extricate his soul from perdition.

Our Consul-general, ever zealous in the discharge of his public duties, not only saw the inconvenience to his own countrymen, but the evil result of the former mode of interment in the island of San Lorenzo, and the great disadvantage that British subjects laboured under in having no place of public worship according to the forms of their own national church. These evils he endeavoured to counteract by procuring the grant of a cemetery as mentioned; and by having church-service read at the Consulate-general every Sunday, as is done by captains and commanders in such of Her Majesty’s vessels of war as have no chaplains on board them.

By this arrangement the most incredulous or prejudiced Peruvians have an opportunity of knowing that our Consul-general, and such of his countrymen as do not neglect the public homage offered at the Consulate to the Creator, do really feel an interest beyond the grave, and have a hope in Heaven as well as the deluded vulgar, who long believed (and the absurdity seems to have been inculcated as a political engine of some power by those who must have known better,) that the English were but a species of the ourang-outang, with tails like the lower animals; and consequently it was quite plain, on the alleged evidence of comparative anatomy, that their ultimate destination could not be higher than that of the beasts that perish.

The name of Drake, and the famous treasure-ship Caca-fuego, are now forgotten; but we are assured that in Payta the name of Anson is associated with sacrilegious recollections, and is mentioned by the lower class of natives with details that awaken feelings very hostile to our countrymen. At this sea-port, on the northern shores of Peru, on a certain festival and anniversary-day, when the image of the Virgin Mary is taken out in procession, we are told that it is shown with a patch of red wax on the neck, marking the wound once inflicted in this part by a sabre-blow from some disorderly sailor of Anson.

An amiable and well-informed Limeña, in whose house many of the literati daily meet, has laughed heartily at the good old times, when she related that, when a young girl, (and she is not yet more than middle-aged,) neither she herself, nor her playmates, ventured to approach a certain English sailor-boy without holding up their hands and making the sign of the cross with the fore-finger and thumb. This lady’s mother took a great interest in the sailor-boy, seeing that he was fair and handsome; and greatly regretted his not being a Christian, an expression by which she meant, of course, a Roman Catholic.

Some recollections of ancient feuds may still co-operate, in a greater or less degree, with religious prejudices to keep up no very warm feeling towards the English as a people; but it is gratifying to think that even on the distant shores of the Pacific, and among the glens of the Andes, there is a growing intelligence that tends rapidly to dissipate such unfriendly feelings. A nearer acquaintance with the English character, the insensible but gradual progress of knowledge, the general extension and assimilating tendency of commerce, the softening effects of time, and, in a word, the revolution itself, which opened up a channel for general improvement, are so many circumstances that conspire together to render the already widely extended connexion of Great Britain with Peru, every day more cordial in the minds of the natives of this important republic; and when the country becomes more settled under the direction of a wise government, such as its friends are now in expectation of enjoying under the protection of his excellency General Santa Cruz, it is to be hoped that, this international friendship may be rendered still more intimate, and mutually beneficial, than it is at present.

Should the projected plan of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company[13] be happily carried into execution, from which a high moral influence may be reasonably expected, and our commercial dealings with Peru be further extended, then will the religious wants of British residents become proportionably more deserving of public attention. The individual labour and exertions of these enterprising Britons, in a distant part of the globe, contribute to encourage manufactures and industry in their native land; and, though separated from their kindred and country by a wide-spreading ocean, they are rarely so happy as when they think of that home to which it is their daily wish to return, and never cease to feel that once their hearts and warmest sympathies were English. But, unhappily, to keep the heart pure in the midst of the greatest national relaxation of morals,—the strongest allurements to vice,—with few incitements to virtue, and no effective encouragement to religion,—is an achievement far too great for the average of mankind.

When young men destined for foreign countries leave home at an early age, they are naturally more defenceless against the insidious inroads of corruption, and more open to new impressions flowing in upon them from surrounding objects. Having arrived in Spanish America, they soon forsake the Protestant respect for the Sunday, and yet scorn the Catholic sacrifice of the mass; and then they insensibly enter upon the formation of new habits grafted on the manners and customs of the country, in which they are as yet but strangers.

The elder and more considerate British residents in Peru, we have reason to know, feel and regret the want of an established clergyman regularly and duly trained to discharge the duties of his vocation, and who should command a becoming degree of personal influence, arising from his professional character, learning, and piety. No individual of the commercial body—we would even venture to affirm, that no consular exertions in this spiritual department of duty—can provide for a regular attendance on church-service; because, on such topics, every counting-house clerk considers himself quite as knowing as the Consul, or any other secular reader of church-service, to whom as a divine they will not voluntarily accord much deference or attention, however distinguished that officiating individual may be for his high character, general intelligence, religious sincerity, and private virtue.

CHAPTER VIII.

Clergy and lawyers more honoured than physicians or surgeons.—University of St. Mark.—Anatomical amphitheatre.—College of San Fernando.—State of the medical schools and profession on the coast and in the Sierra.—General remarks on Limenian education.

During the continuance of the royal authority in Peru, when military titles were only conferred on men of Spanish blood, the honour of the church and civil courts of judicature was pre-eminently fostered by the government, and the duties of those high vocations devolved on select individuals of white or Spanish race. If there were exceptions to so partial a distribution of favour, these appear to have been made in behalf of a few of the aborigines, or Indian people, whose blood to this day runs in the veins of some of the first families of that country.

The Peruvian clergy have ever been jealous of the dignity of their office, and consulted purity of blood in their august order with the same earnestness that they watched over the orthodoxy of their faith. They appear to have considered all mixture of African blood as a sort of test of spiritual contamination, and never suffered those tarnished with it to approach the altar, except as hearers or penitents,—never as ministers of the sanctuary. We may reasonably suppose that much of this partiality on the one hand, and rigorous exclusion on the other, was originally founded on considerations of political jealousy and distrust; but, be that as it may, the effects of this line of policy are still observable notwithstanding the liberalism that is afloat, for we do not meet with a single curate of negro or zambo progenitors, while in the law the majority of professors are of Spanish origin. The practice of medicine was looked upon as the proper occupation of those who, though possessed of some classical attainments, were deemed unworthy a place in the more distinguished departments of law and theology. But this order of things admitted of a few exceptions; for, as in the dregs of the legal profession there were certain tawny interlopers, so also in the higher walks of the medical department there was a proto-medico, and a few more physicians of European birth or descent. The great body of the profession, however, were raised from among the genuine black, or other more or less crossed Ethiopian castes, to whom, as is affirmed by Ayanque at page 43 of his celebrated satire, titled “Lima por dentro y fuera,” the healing art in all its branches, and especially surgery, was almost entirely intrusted. This arrangement, which involved consequences of vital interest to society, probably arose from inadequate ideas entertained by the Spaniards respecting the medical profession; viewing it less as a noble science than as a superior sort of handicraft. Certainly it did not arise from indifference about their own lives or personal safety; for no men are more careful of themselves when sick, or more ready to call in professional assistance, than the Spaniards of South America. An idea still prevalent is, that individuals selected from “la gente prieta,” or the sable people, are, on account of their more vigorous character and constitution, the best suited for the exercise of a laborious and active profession in the debilitating climate of Lima, where, in former days, young men of European parentage not in some government employment, or members of legal and ecclesiastical establishments, had an insuperable aversion, which they have not yet overcome, to work for their bread.

But, leaving these matters as we find them, we shall here give an extract from the well-known work, titled “Mercurio Peruano,” by which it will be seen what was the ancient state of medicine in Peru.

“In the sixteenth century, the taste of our nation leaned in favour of scholastic theology, the philosophy of Aristotle, and the civil law of the Romans; so that at the period of founding the university of Saint Mark, as well as for some time after, there were established for teaching each of the above branches of learning a competent number of well-endowed professorships; and, moreover, colleges were erected not only in Lima, but in all the principal cities within the viceroyalty of Peru, for teaching the same.

“For medicine two chairs were appointed or intended,—one (de prima) on the theory of medicine, and the other (de visperas) on pathology; but, no salaries being fixed, these fell to the ground. It is not therefore to be wondered at, that when, in the year 1637, they deliberated upon restoring the medical professorships, it was stated by Dr. Huerta, that in arts, laws, and theology, there had flourished a large number of doctors, enumerating about one hundred in Lima that very year, (seventy years from the foundation of the university,) but that in this lapse of time only three or four physicians were known among them, who, having studied in other parts, had incorporated themselves with the university.”

It was at the same time urged by Dr. Huerta (who was professor of the Quichua language) that the appointment of medical professors was quite useless, “as it was notorious that the Indians performed better cures than the physicians, recovering those whom the doctors had given up for lost; and, moreover, that many who were for some time in hospitals had from their own experience found out how to cure very successfully, without being professed doctors, like Martin Sanches and Juan Ximenes.”

Let no one suppose, from the date of the fact here stated, that the age of empiricism is passed away; for now, in the nineteenth century, we have hospital-dressers who take upon themselves the character of instructed practitioners, and are employed as such; while the famous curandera, or doctress, La Señora Dorotea, wants not among the opulent and best-informed persons of Lima warm defenders of her skill and superiority over the doctors of the university.

Before an anatomical amphitheatre was opened in Lima in the year 1792, the study of the healing art continued to be much neglected, as we are informed by the founder of this school, who, after some statements on this important subject,[14] observes, that the public instruction of medicine being wanting in the royal seminary, and having no colleges that might supply this deficiency, it followed as a consequence that in the medical profession those improvements had not been made that the importance of the art demanded,—a great detriment to the public health. Some years after the anatomical amphitheatre, or practical school of anatomy, was formed, its founder was raised to the head of the medical profession in Peru; and, desirous to advance medical science among his countrymen, he had further prevailed with the viceregal government to establish a college of medicine and surgery in Lima as an independent medical seminary, dedicated to San Fernando, in honour of their august sovereign Ferdinand VII. of Spain.[15] This college, as we are informed by one of its earliest inmates, was established in the year 1809, and in it different professorships were properly assigned. Here there was a professor of chemistry, but, for want of suitable apparatus, he had not yet opened an experimental course; a professor of botany, who really gave some practical lessons when walking out with his pupils in the neighbouring “potreros” or grazing parks. There were also professors of the practice of medicine and surgery, &c. all on a goodly plan, after the manner of European colleges. But, while these improvements were going on, the revolution came, to do evil that good might come; and then all the fair hopes from the college of San Fernando were nipped in the bud.

This seminary, which, at present, metaphorically represents the tree of knowledge, stripped of its green leaves and fair promise, under the shade of the wide-spreading tree of liberty, on which it is to be hoped that science ere long may be grafted, is, in its now blighted condition, under the nominal rectorship of Doctor Don Caietano Heredia, one of the earliest and most illustrious of the disciples educated in this school,—a gentleman who, to his infinite praise, caught no small portion of that love of knowledge, and desire to disseminate it, which so eminently distinguished the eloquent founder, Don Hipolito Unanue.

We may briefly remark that, at the period when the revolution broke out in Lima, there were in the medical profession some men of excellent classical knowledge, well versed in medical literature; and the valuable libraries which some of them have left behind them would, if only spared by the most destructive moth of that country, long stand as monuments of their professional scholarship. Among the junior physicians of the capital there is less ancient learning, but a better acquaintance with modern authors, especially French works, which are imported very freely; and the revolution, which so lately subverted the ancient form of government, may likewise be said to have opened up new sources of professional knowledge and improvement in medical practice.