Читать книгу South America Observations and Impressions - James Bryce Viscount Bryce, Viscount James Bryce - Страница 4

The first part of the voyage from Panama down the coast towards Peru is enjoyable when made in a steamer, for the sea is smooth, the southerly breeze is usually light, and after passing through the picturesque isles that lie off Panama one sees at no great distance those Pearl Islands which at one time rivalled the isles of Bahrein in the Persian Gulf as the chief pearl fishery of the world. One wonders at the difficulties experienced by the first Spanish adventurers, Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, and after him Pizarro, in their efforts to get south, but the reason is that a strong current sets into the Gulf, and against it and the prevailing south winds it was hard for the clumsy craft of those days to make progress. But on the second morning when we had got four or five hundred miles to the south, what was our surprise to find the temperature getting lower and the sky cloudier as we approached the equator. It was chilly that evening and we asked for blankets. Dreams of a delightful basking in the soft air of a sunlit sea were dispelled! We were entering cold weather, and it was to continue with us for thousands of miles, all the way to the Straits of Magellan.

Everybody knows nowadays how largely the climate and the flora and the civilization of western Europe are due to the Gulf Stream. But one may suspect that few people have heard of an ocean current on the other side of America equal in length and volume and scarcely less important in its influence on climate. The great Antarctic current, or Humboldt current, as it is sometimes called from the illustrious German who first scientifically observed and explained it, carries up from southern Chile to some distance north of the Equator a vast body of cold water which chills the atmosphere of the ocean and the coast and frequently covers them both with a roof of cloud. Before he crosses the Line, the traveller encounters this murky and ungenial weather, which excited the wonder of the early Spanish writers, who expected to find a zone just as torrid as they had found on the Atlantic. Seldom thereafter (during fully half the year) does he see clear blue sky, save for perhaps an hour or two each day, all the way southward as far as Valparaiso. The mists and clouds which this mass of cold water brings give the sun, the chief deity of the ancient Peruvians of the inner country, no chance on the coast, while the fogs are so frequent as to be a source of anxiety to the navigator, and the clouds so thick that the great peaks of the Andes, though at some points only fifty or sixty miles distant, can rarely be seen from the ocean.

But its cool and cloudy climate is only one of the singular features of the coast. From the Isthmus till one gets a little way south of the Equator at the Gulf of Guayaquil, the usual wet summer season of the tropics prevails and the abundant rains give to the highlands along the coast of Colombia and Ecuador splendid forests, which will one day be a source of wealth to those countries. But at this point, or to be more precise, about the boundary of Ecuador and Peru, near the town of Tumbez where Pizarro landed, the climatic conditions suddenly change, and there begins a rainless tract which extends down the coast as far as Coquimbo in 30° S. latitude. The vaporous moisture which the southeasterly trade winds bring up from the other side of the continent is most of it spent in showers falling on the eastern side of the Andes, and what remains is absorbed by the air of the dry plateaux between the parallel chains of that range, so that hardly any passes over to the western side of the mountains. The Antarctic current, cooling the air of the warmer regions it enters, creates plenty of mists but no rain, the land being warmer than the sea. Thus so much of the coast of western South America as lies between the ocean and the Cordillera of the Andes from Tumbez nearly to Valparaiso, for a distance of some two thousand miles, is dry and sterile. This strip of land varies in width from forty to sixty miles. It is crossed here and there by small rivers fed by the snows of the Andes behind, and along their banks are oases of verdure. Otherwise the whole coast of the strip is a bare, brown, and dismally barren desert.

We had hoped before reaching the arid region to touch at the city of Guayaquil, which is the chief port and only place of commercial importance in the mountain republic of Ecuador. It had, however, been put under quarantine by Peru, owing to the appearance in it of yellow fever and the Oriental plague, so we had to pass on without landing, as quarantine would have meant a loss of eight or ten days out of our limited time. Ecuador is not the most progressive of the South American countries, and Guayaquil enjoys the reputation of being the pest-house of the continent, rivalling for the prevalence and malignity of its malarial fevers such dens of disease as Fontesvilla on the Pungwe River in South Africa and the Guinea coast itself, and adding to these the more swift and deadly yellow fever, which has now been practically extirpated from every other part of South America except the banks of the Amazon. The city stands in a naturally unhealthy situation among swamps at the mouth of a river, but since Havana and Colon and Vera Cruz and Rio de Janeiro and even Santos, once the deadliest of the Brazilian ports, have all been purified and rendered safe, it seems to be high time that efforts should be made to improve conditions at a place whose development is so essential to the development of Ecuador itself.

Seeing far off the dim grey mountains around the Gulf of Guayaquil, but not the snowy cone of Chimborazo which towers behind them, we touched next morning at our first Peruvian port, the little town of Payta, and here got our first impression of those South American deserts with which we were to become so familiar. It is a row of huts constructed of the whitish sun-baked mud called adobe which is the usual building material in the flat country, with two or three shipping offices and stores and a railway station, for a railway runs hence up the country to the old town of Piura. A stream from the Andes gives fertility to the long Piura valley which produces much cotton of an extremely fine quality. There are also oil wells not far off, so Payta does some business, offering as good an anchorage as there is on this part of the coast. We landed and climbed to the top of the cliffs of soft strata that rise steeply from the water, getting a wide view over the bay and to the flat-topped hills that rise fifteen miles or more inland. The sun had come out, the air was clear and fresh, and though the land was as unmitigated a bit of desert as I had ever seen, with only a few stunted, prickly, and woody stemmed plants supporting a feeble life in the hollows of the ground, still it was exhilarating to tread at last the soil of a new continent and receive a new impression.

The first view of Peru answers very little to that impression of a wealthy land called up by the name of this country, more familiar and more famous in the olden days than that of any other part of the colonial empire of Spain. Nevertheless, it is a curious fact that the wealth of Spanish Peru belonged more to her barren than to her fertile and populous regions. In the days of the Incas it was otherwise. They ruled over an agricultural people, and though they had gold in plenty, gold to them was not wealth, but material for ornaments. Apart, however, from agriculture, of which I shall speak later, the riches of Peru have consisted of three natural products, which belong to the drier tracts. These are the guano of the rainless islands off the coast, the nitrate deposits in the province of Tarapaca and the mines of silver and copper. Of these three, the guano has now been nearly exhausted, and while it lasted it enriched, not the country, but a succession of military adventurers. The nitrate regions have been conquered by Chile and seem unlikely ever to be restored. The most productive of the silver mines were taken away when Bolivia, in which they are situated, was erected into a separate republic, and such mines as remain in the High Andes, doubtless of great and not yet fully explored value, are in the hands of foreign companies and syndicates. Little good have these bounties of nature done to the people of Peru, whether Spanish or Indian.

From Panama to Payta the direct steamers take five days, and from Payta to Callao it is two days more, so the whole voyage is about as long as that from New York to Liverpool in the quick liners. This is one of the least troubled parts of the ocean; that is to say, gales are rare, and hurricanes, like those of the Caribbean, unknown. There is, however, usually a pretty heavy swell, and when there has been a storm some two or three hundred miles out to the west, the great rollers come in and make landing along the coast no easy matter. As the ship keeps too far out for the details of the coast to be visible, the voyage is rather monotonous, especially in the cloudy weather we encountered. Here in the Antarctic current one has lost the pleasure of watching the gauzy gleam of the flying fish, but sea-birds appear circling round the ship and pelicans abound in the harbour. Whales, following the cold water northward, are seen spouting and are beset and attacked by their enemy the thresher, while whenever the ship anchors in a roadstead to discharge or take in cargo, seals and sea lions gambolling among the waves give a little amusement. The crew were Chileans, – they are the only South Americans with a taste for the sea – the passengers mostly natives of the various republics along the coast, for these steamers furnish the only means of communication north and south, but there are usually some English commercial men and North Americans looking after their mining interests or prospecting for railways across the Andes. There is much more variety than one usually finds in an Atlantic liner, but much less than in a Mediterranean or Black Sea steamer, where on the same deck you may see the costumes and hear the tongues of seven or eight nations. The Spanish-Americans are not very communicative to strangers, but whoever speaks their language can learn a good deal from them about minerals and revolutions, – the two chief products of the northwest coast.

To sail along a coast without a chance of examining its natural beauties or the cities that stud it, is in most cases mortifying, but here in the six hundred miles between Payta and Callao one has this consolation, that there is nothing to see, and you cannot see it. The shores are brown, bare and unpeopled, while the heavy cloud roof that hangs over the sea, hides the tops of the hills also, and cuts off all view of the snowy Cordillera far behind. The towns are few and small, because the land is sterile save where one of the Andean streams gives fertility to a valley. One would naturally suppose that the country had always been even as it is now. But the ruins of ancient cities here and there prove that it must once have been far more populous. A census taken soon after the Conquest shewed that there were in the Valley of Piura 193,000 Indians. In 1785 the inhabitants, then mostly negroes, numbered only 44,500. Of these ruins the largest are those of a city often called Chimu, from the title of the king who ruled there, near the town of Truxillo, to which Pizarro, when he founded it, gave the name of his own Estremaduran birthplace. The remains cover a wide space and shew that the people who dwelt here and in the other coast valleys must have made considerable advances toward civilization, for the pottery and other utensils are better in artistic style than any other remains found in South America. The kingdom of the Chimu was overthrown by the Incas a century before the Spanish Conquest, and nothing is known of the race except that its language, called Mochica, was quite different from that of the mountain tribes who obeyed the Incas. Whether the people perished under Spanish oppression, or whether they moved away, when in the confusion that followed the Conquest, the irrigation works that made cultivation possible were allowed to fall into decay – this is one of the many riddles of Peruvian history.

Gazing from the deck hour after hour on this dreary coast, and remembering that the Atlantic side of the Continent in the same latitude is one of the best watered and richest parts of the tropics, one is struck by the unfortunate physical conditions that make useless a region whose climate, kept so cool by the Antarctic current would otherwise have fitted it for the development of progressive communities. Such communities did exist among the subjects of the Chimu, but being confined to a few valleys, they were not strong enough to resist the impact of the more numerous mountain tribes. Thus it was only on the plateau behind that a great nation could grow up. With a moderate rainfall these six hundred miles of coast might have been one of the most fertile parts of South America, and the history of Peru would have been altogether different. The absence of rain has provided a compensation in the form of a product which, though it cannot be used on the spot, became serviceable to other countries, and might have given Peru the means of developing mines or building railroads. The droppings of the swarms of sea-birds that frequent the rocky islands along the coast instead of being, as in other countries, washed away by showers, have accumulated till they formed those huge masses of guano which eighty years ago began to be carried away and sold to European countries as the most efficient fertilizers. The Inca sovereigns knew their value and are said to have protected the birds. Unfortunately, this easily obtained source of national wealth excited the cupidity of revolutionary leaders, each of whom fought for power because power meant the command of the revenue derivable from these deposits. Not much is now left, and the republic has been none the better for them. Some of the largest were on the Chincha Islands. The islets are all bare, some shewing bold lines and sharp peaks which remind one of those that fringe the coast of Norway about the Arctic circle.

The entrance to Callao, the port of the city of Lima, which lies seven miles inland and is five hundred feet higher, has a certain grandeur. A range of hills abuts on the sea, forming a bold cape, and opposite to it, leaving an entrance a mile or two wide, rises a lofty island, steep, bare and brown like the islands of the Red Sea, which reduces the long surges of the Pacific and gives a comparatively quiet anchorage in the spacious bay within. The town of Callao, consisting of steamship offices and warehouses and shops dealing in the things ships need, offers nothing of interest, except the remains of the fort of St. Philip, the last building where the flag of Spain floated on the mainland of the New World. So the traveller hurries by the steam railroad or the electric line up to Lima.

We came full of the expectations stirred long ago by the fame of the city Pizarro built, and in which he ruled and perished, hoping to find in it another and a still more picturesque and more truly Spanish Mexico. It was long the first city of South America, into which the silver mines poured fabulous wealth. Its Viceroy was the greatest man in the Continent, a potentate whose distant master could seldom interfere with him, for there were no telegraphs or steam vessels in those days. Nobody but the archbishop could oppose him; nor need he fear anybody but the head of the Inquisition and the head of the Jesuits. The pomp that surrounded him, the pageants with which his entrance was celebrated, were like those of a Mogul Emperor.

Lima was called by Pizarro the City of the Kings, i. e. the Three Wise Men of the East, but the name it now bears, a variant from that of the river Rimac, soon prevailed. It stands in a wide flat valley, guarded by steep mountains to the north, on both banks of the broad stony bed of the Rimac, a large part of whose waters has been diverted for irrigation. Except where this river water has made cultivation possible, the plain is bare, being part of the coastal desert. The high range of hills already mentioned guards the city on the north, and runs out to the sea on the northwest. Lofty spurs of the Andes are visible to the east, but for much of the year the clouds hang so low that the hills are hardly part of the landscape and the great peaks are seldom seen.

As in most Spanish-American cities, the streets are narrow and straight, cutting one another at right angles. One is at first surprised to find the houses extremely low, many of one story and hardly any (save a few new residences on the outskirts) exceeding two stories, and to be told that they are built of bricks, or more commonly of cane and reeds plastered with mud. It is commonly said that in Lima a burglar needs nothing more than a bowl of water and a sponge to soften the plaster, and a knife to cut the canes. But the reason is apparent when one remembers that no place on the West coast has suffered more from earthquakes. Thus, except the convents and some of the older churches, everything looks modern, unsubstantial, and also unpicturesque, having little variety and little ornament in the architecture except the long wooden balcony which usually projects above the gateway. The bridge that spans the Rimac is hardly worthy of a great capital. The shops are small and mediocre, and only in one or two thoroughfares is there any throng of passers to and fro. One notes little of the life and stir, and still less of the stateliness, that befits an ancient and famous home of power.

Yet to this mediocrity there is one exception. It is the great central square. In a Spanish, as in an Italian, city, one usually enquires first for the Square, for whatever nobleness a place has is sure to be there. The Plaza de Armas at Lima has much dignity in its ample space, and beauty in its fine proportions, in its central fountain, in the palms and flowering trees and statues which adorn it, besides a wealth of historic associations in the buildings that stand around it. Most conspicuous is the Cathedral, with its rich façade, its two quaint towers, its spacious interior, not broken, as are most of the great churches of Old Spain, by a central choir, its handsome carved choir stalls, its side chapel shrines, in one of which a glass case holds bones which tradition declares to be those of the terrible Pizarro. That pious conqueror founded the church in 1540, but earthquakes have made such havoc with the walls that what one sees now is of much later date. At the opposite corner of the Plaza are the government offices, comparatively recent buildings, low, and of no architectural interest. In the open arcade which borders them a white marble slab in the pavement marks the spot where Pizarro, cut down by the swords of his enemies, the men of Chile, made the sign of the cross with his own blood as he expired. The passage is still shown whence the assassins emerged from a house hard by the Cathedral, where they had been drinking together to nerve themselves, and crossed the Plaza to attack him in his palace. Also on the Plaza, facing the Cathedral, is the municipal building, from the gallery of which, nearly three centuries after the Inca power had fallen under the assault of Pizarro, General San Martin, the heroic Argentine who led the revolutionary forces to the liberation of Peru, proclaimed to the crowd beneath the end of Spanish rule in South America. Of the old Palace of the Viceroys, which also fronted on the Plaza, there remains only the chapel, now desecrated and used as a storehouse for archives, whose handsome ceiling and walls, decorated with coloured tiles of the sixteenth century, carry one back to the Moorish art of Spain. Other churches there are in plenty, – seventy-two used to be enumerated, – and some of them are large and grandiose in style, but all are of the same type, and none either beautiful or imposing.

Few relics of antiquity are left in them or indeed anywhere in Lima. The library of the University, the oldest seat of learning in America, which was formerly controlled and staffed by the Society of Jesus, suffered sadly at the hands of the Chilean invaders when they took the city in the war of 1882. The old hall of the Inquisition, in which the Peruvian Senate now sits, has a beautiful ceiling of dark red cedar richly carved, a work worthy of the best days of Spain. What scenes may it not have looked down upon during the three centuries when the Holy Office was a power at the name of which the stoutest heart in Lima trembled! And out of the many fine old mansions of colonial days one has been preserved intact, with a beautiful gallery running along its four sides of a spacious patio (internal court), and in front a long-windowed, richly decorated balcony, a gem of the domestic architecture of the seventeenth century, perhaps the most perfect, that earthquakes, fire, and war have permitted to survive in Spanish America. There is so little else to remember with pleasure from the days of the Viceroys and the Inquisitors that these relics of expiring artistic skill may be valued all the more.

I am forced to confess that the high expectations with which we came to Lima were scarcely realized. The environs are far less beautiful than those of Mexico, and the city itself not only much smaller, but less stately, and wearing less of the air of a capital. Our appreciation may perhaps have been dulled by the weather. We were told that the hills were pretty, but low clouds hid all but their bases from us; nor was there any sunshine to brighten the Plaza. For more than half the year, Lima has a peculiar climate. It is never cold enough to have a fire, but usually cold enough to make you wish for one. It never rains, but it is never dry; that is to say, it is not wet enough to make one hold up an umbrella, yet wet enough to soak one's clothes. September was as dark as a London November, and as damp as an Edinburgh February, for the fog was of that penetrating and wetting kind which in the east of Scotland they call a "haar." The climate being what it is, we were the more surprised to hear what the etiquette of courtship requires from a Limeño lover. Every novio (admirer) is expected to shew his devotion by standing for hours together in the evening under the window of the house in which the object of his admiration lives. He may or not cheer himself during these frequently repeated performances by a guitar, but in so moist an atmosphere the guitar strings would discourse feeble music.

Despite her earthquakes, and despite her damp and murky air, which depresses the traveller who had looked for brilliant sunshine, the City of the Kings retains that light-hearted gaiety and gift for social enjoyment for which she was famous in the old days. Not even political disasters, nor revolutions more frequent than earthquakes, have dulled the edge of pleasure. There had been an attempted revolution shortly before my visit. The President, an excellent man, courageous and intelligent, had been suddenly seized by a band of insurgents, dragged through the streets, threatened with death unless he should abdicate, fired at, wounded and left for dead, until his own troops, having recovered from their surprise and found how few their assailants were, began to clear the streets of the revolutionaries, and discovered their chief under a heap of slain. The insurgent general fled over the frontier into Bolivia, where he was pointed out to me some weeks later, planning, as was believed, another descent upon Lima. Such events disturb the even tenor of Peruvian life little more than a street railway strike disturbs Philadelphia or Glasgow.

Lima retains more of an old Spanish air than do the much larger capitals of the southern republics, Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. Its viceregal court was long the centre of the best society of the Continent. Its archbishop was the greatest ecclesiastical potentate in the Southern Hemisphere. It had a closer connection with Spain through its leading families, as well as through official channels, than any other place. Loyalty to the Spanish monarchy was strongest here. It was the last great city that held out for the Catholic King, long after all the other countries, both to the north and south, had followed the examples of revolt set by Mexico and Argentina. And it is also, with the exception of remote and isolated Bogotá, where some few Spanish families are said to have kept their European blood least touched by native immixture, the place in which the purest Castilian is spoken and the Castilian pride of birth is most cherished.

That a city so ancient and famous should not have more of the past to shew, that the aspect of streets and buildings should not be more stately, that there should be so little of that flavour of romance which charms one in Spanish cities like Seville or Avila – these things might be expected in a centre of industry or commerce, losing its antique charm, like Nürnberg or Venice, under the coarsening touch of material prosperity. But there is here no growth of industry or commerce. The Limeños are not what a North American would call either "progressive" or "aggressive." The railways and mines of Peru are mostly in the hands of men from the United States, shipping business in the hands of Englishmen and Germans, retail trade in those of Frenchmen, Spaniards, and others from continental Europe. But the people of Lima may answer that there are more ways than one of being happy. They enjoy life in their own way, with more civil freedom, and very much more religious freedom, than under the Viceroys, and occasional revolutions – now less sanguinary than they used to be – are better than a permanent rule of inquisitors and officials sent from Spain. Some day or other Lima will be drawn into the whirlpool of modern progress. But Europe and North America are still far off, and in the meantime the inhabitants, with their pleasant, courteous manners and their enjoyment of the everyday pleasures of life, are willing enough to leave mines and commerce to the foreigner.

From Callao it is two days more on to Mollendo, over a cold, grey, tumbling sea, along a brown and cloud-shadowed coast. We had, however, changed into a much larger steamer, for at Callao begins the through ocean service all the way to Liverpool of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company. Their vessels, not so large nor so luxuriously fitted up as the Atlantic liners that ply between Europe and New York, are excellent sea boats, and commanded by careful British captains.

Next to Callao in its importance as a Peruvian port, is the little town of Mollendo, for from it starts the principal railway in the country, that called the Southern of Peru, which climbs the Andes, traverses the central plateau, and sends out branches to Cuzco on the north, and on the southeast to the frontier of Bolivia, on the shore of Lake Titicaca. It is the main avenue to the interior of the country. Unfortunately there is at Mollendo no harbour, only an open roadstead, where vessels lie rolling and pitching in the ocean swell, which is sometimes heavy enough to make landing in boats difficult or even dangerous. A sort of breakwater has been made enclosing a tiny port, but even in its shelter, the sweep of the great billow round the rocky semicircle forces the disembarking passenger to jump hastily ashore and scurry up before the next billow overtakes him. No more dreary spot than this could be imagined. Payta in its desert was doleful enough, but Payta had sun; and this place, under a thick roof of cloud, was far more gloomy. Hills brown and barren rise steeply from the beach, leaving little room for the few houses, brown as the cliff itself. There is not a blade of grass visible, nor a drop of fresh water within many miles, save what a pipe brings from a distant river. Yet, gloomy as the place looked under the grey cloud roof which was hanging over land and sea, the inhabitants find it more tolerable at this season than such an arid and treeless land becomes when the blaze of the sun is reflected from the rocky hill face behind.

The railroad runs south for some miles between the cliffs along a stretch of sand, on which the surf booms in slow thunder, then leaves the shore and turns up into the clouds, mounting in long zigzags the steep acclivities of the mountain, and following here and there what were hardly to be called glens, but rather waterless hollows, down which once in nine or ten years a rain storm may send a torrent. The mists grow thicker and damper as one rises, and with the cooler and damper air there begins to be a little vegetation, some flowers, most of them at this season withered, and low, thorny shrubs, such as are usually found on arid soils. Away off to the south, occasional glimpses are caught of a river valley far below, where the bright green and yellow of crops on the irrigated banks make a pleasant relief to the monotony of the brown or black slopes, up which we keep our way. Curiosity grows more intense to know what lies behind those dreary mountains. At last, after two hours of steady climbing to a height of over four thousand feet, the train reaches what seems to be the top of the range, but proves to be really the edge of a tableland, as it emerges on to level ground, it suddenly passes out of the mists into dazzling sunshine, and stops at a spot called Cachendo. We step out, and have before us a view, the like of which we had never seen before. In front, looking eastward, was a wide plain of sand and pebbles with loose piles and shattered ridges of black rock rising here and there from its surface, all shimmering in the sunlight. Beyond the plain, thirty miles away, is a long line of red and grey mountains, their sides all bare, their crags pierced by deep, dark gorges, so that they seem full of shadows. Behind these mountains again, and some fifty or sixty miles distant, three gigantic mountains stand up and close the prospect. That farthest to the south is a long line of precipices, crowned here and there by spires and towers of rock, seventeen thousand feet in height. This is Pichu Pichu. Its faces are too steep for snow, save in the gorges that scar them here and there, but lower down, where the slopes are less abrupt, every gully is white with desert sand blown up by the winds. Next to the north is a huge purplish black cone, streaked near its top with snow beds, and lower down by lines of red or grey ash and black lava. This is El Misti, a volcano not quite extinct, for though there has been no eruption for centuries, faint curls of steam still rise from the crater. It stands quite alone, evidently of far more recent origin than the third great mass, its neighbour on the north, Chachani, which, though also of volcanic rock, has long since lost its crater, and rises in three great black pinnacles, divided by valleys filled with snow. Both it and Misti exceed nineteen thousand feet. They are not, however, the loftiest ground visible. Far, far away to the north, there tower up two white giants, Ampato, and (farther west) the still grander Coropuna, whose height, not yet absolutely determined, may exceed twenty-two thousand feet and make it the rival of Illampu in Bolivia and Aconcagua in Chile. It stands alone in a vast wilderness, a flat-topped cone at the end of a long ridge, based on mighty buttresses all deep with snow and fringed with glaciers.11 These five mountains belong to the line of the great Western Cordillera which runs, apparently along the line of a volcanic fissure, all the way north to Ecuador and Colombia.

This was our first view of the Andes, a view to which few parts of the Old World furnish anything similar, for nowhere else, except in Iceland, and in Tibet and Turkistan, do snow mountains rise out of waterless deserts. Yet this contrast was only a part of the strange weirdness of the landscape, a landscape unlike Alps or Pyrenees or Apennines, unlike the Caucasus or the Himalaya, unlike the Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevada of North America. The foreground of wandering sand and black stones, the sense of solitude and of boundless space, a space useless to man and a solitude he can never people, the grimness of these bare walls of rock and pinnacles of untrodden snow rising out of a land with neither house nor field nor flower nor animal life, but only two lines of steel running across the desert floor, would have been terrible were it not for the exquisite richness and variety of the colours. In the foreground the black rocks and the myriad glitter of sand crystals were sharp and clear. The tints were more delicate on the red hills beyond, and the stern severity of the precipices in the far background was softened into tenderness by distance. The sunlight that burned upon these lines of iron and danced in waves of heat upon the rocks, seemed to bring out on all the nearer hills and all the distant crags varieties of hue, sometimes contrasted, sometimes blending into one another, for which one could find no names, for pink melted into lilac and violet into purple. Two months later, in the forests of Brazil, we were to see what the sun of the tropics does in stimulating an exuberant life: here we saw what beauty he can give to sterility.

This "Pampa," or flat stretch of ground over which the railroad runs, is the first step eastward and upward from the sea on to the great inner plateau of Peru, and has a height of from four to five or six thousand feet. Its surface is generally level, yet broken by ridges and hummocks of rock, and dotted all over by mounds of fine grey or brownish sand composed of minute shining crystals. These sand hills, called médanos, are mostly crescent shaped, much like the moon in its first quarter, steep on the convex side, and from ten to fifteen or even twenty feet high. They drift from place to place under the south wind, which blows strongly and steadily during the heat of the day, the convex of the crescent always facing the wind. Sometimes they are swept on to and block the railway line; and when this is apprehended large stones are heaped up at the convex of the crescent and the movement is thus arrested or the sand dissipated. Such scanty vegetation as we had seen on the mist-covered hills toward the coast, has here quite disappeared under the fiery sun, – not even a cactus lifts its stiff stem. It is all sand and rocks, till the line, having run for some twenty miles across the Pampa, enters and begins to climb the second stairway of mountains to another and higher level, which forms the second terrace over which the way lies to the central plateau. The stairway is that line of red and grey mountains which were described as filling the middle distance in the view from Cachendo. Winding up through their hollows and along their faces the train enters a deep gorge or canyon, at the bottom of which, between vertical rock walls, is seen a foaming stream, and mounts along a ledge cut out in the side of the gorge. The canyon widens a little, and at its bottom are seen bright green patches of alfalfa, cultivated with patient toil by the Indians who water them by tiny rills drawn from the stream. At last the line emerges on open and nearly level ground. One has mounted the second step and reached the second terrace or shelf of the Peruvian tableland. Here on a gently rising slope, in a grand amphitheatre, the northeastern and eastern and southeastern sides of which are formed by the three great peaks, Chachani, El Misti, and Pichu Pichu stands Arequipa, the second city in Peru.

It is built on a gentle slope, on both sides of the river Chile, a torrent descending from distant snows in a broad, shallow and stony bed, and indeed owes its existence to this river, for it was the presence of water, enabling a little oasis in the desert to be cultivated, that caught the military eye of Francisco Pizarro. Discerning the need for a Spanish stronghold between the interior tableland and the coast, he chose this spot by the river at the foot of the pass that gives the easiest access to that tableland. It had already been a rest-house station, as its Quichua name implies, on one of the Inca tracks from Cuzco to the sea, along which a service of swift Indian runners is said to have been maintained by the Incas and to have carried up fresh fish to the monarch at Cuzco. It became the seat of a bishop, was soon well stocked with churches and convents, and has ever since held its head high, proud of its old families, and having escaped that occupation by the victorious Chilean army to which Lima succumbed. The air has the desert quality of purity and invigorating freshness. Although thin, for the height above the sea is over seven thousand feet,12 it is not thin enough to affect the heart or lungs of most persons in ordinary health. The sun's heat is great and there is plenty of it, for here one is quite above the region of sea mists, but there is so little to do that no one needs to work in the hot hours, and for the matter of that, nobody, except the Indians, and the clerks of a few European firms, works at all. The nights are deliciously cool. Plenty of water for fields and gardens and fountains can be drawn from the river, and if the municipal authorities took pains to clean up the city by removing rubbish, and set themselves to make the outskirts neater and plant more trees, nothing would be wanting to render Arequipa, so far as externals go, a delightful place of residence. The clearness of the air has led to its being selected as the site of an astronomical observatory maintained by Harvard University for mapping out the stars of the Southern Hemisphere. Not even in Egypt or in the deserts of South Africa do the constellations shine with a more brilliant lustre. The Harvard observers placed and for a time maintained two meteorological stations on El Misti, one near the top, at a height of 19,200 feet, another at a point they called Mont Blanc (15,700 feet). Those who know how recent is the love of mountain climbing in Europe will be interested in hearing that the volcano was ascended as far back as A.D. 1677, on which occasion the crater was exorcised and sacred relics cast into it. The observers also constructed a mule path to the summit, for though the face turned to Arequipa is steep, there is no difficulty in ascending from the north by a circuitous track. There are two craters, a newer one with a diameter of 1500 feet inside a larger one, whose diameter is 2800 feet. I could find no record of any eruption of lava or ashes since the Spanish Conquest, but the vapours in the new crater, always thick, sometimes increase sufficiently to alarm the Arequipeños.

The line of perpetual snow is extremely high in this dry region, as it is in the equally dry peaks of northern Chile. On some mountains of 19,000 feet the snow disappears in summer, except in sunless hollows.

I found myself wondering whether the fascination of the city, with views out over the furrowed desert to the west, where the sun goes down into the cloud bank that hangs over the Pacific, and views up to the tall peaks that guard it to the east, would retain its power when it had grown familiar, and wondering, also, whether, through the four centuries since Europeans came to dwell here, there were many who drew delight from the marvellous nature that surrounds it, and found in the contemplation of this extraordinary scenery some relief from the monotony of life in a society so small and so isolated. The three great mountain masses that tower over the city, emblems of solid and unchanging strength in their form, are always changing in their aspect. The snows creep down in the season of rains, and ascend again when the time of drought returns. Sunrise and sunset bring perpetual miracles of loveliness in the varying play of colours upon snow and rocks. Pichu Pichu, with its long, grey line of precipices, glows under the western sun in every tint of pink and crimson. Chachani's black pinnacles turn to a dark violet, while the snows between them redden. In the middle the broad-based cone of El Misti, with its dark lava flows and beds of brown or yellow ash, ranges from glowing orange to a purple deep as if the mountain were all colour to its core. Behind it, when twilight comes, there rises to the zenith a pale bank of pearly grey, faintly touched by the light that is dying in the west. No wonder that this solemn and majestic summit, traditions of whose outbursts of fire in days gone by still survive, has been personified and worshipped by the Indians, who, though nominally Christians, have, like other primitive races, retained a great deal of the ancient nature religion which sees spirits in all remarkable objects. The reverence for the mountain deities still lingers in secret among them, though it seldom takes form in sacrifices like those of the olden time, when, as tradition says, youths and maidens were flung into the crater to appease the wrath of the fire spirit. A Jesuit annalist relates how, in A.D. 1600, when the volcano of Omate, farther to the southeast, was in violent eruption, casting forth showers of ashes which fell round Arequipa, darkening the sky, while a glow of lurid light shone from the distant crater, the Indian wizards robed themselves in red and offered to Omate sacrifices of sheep and fowls, beseeching the mountain not to overwhelm them. Then he adds, "These wizards told the Indians that they talked to the Devil, who told them of the approaching catastrophe, and said that Omate had asked El Misti to join him in destroying all the Spaniards. But El Misti answered that he could not help Omate, because he had been made a Christian and had received the name of San Francisco; so Omate was obliged to undertake the work alone."13

Built far more solidly than Lima, with house walls five or six feet thick, and lying more out of the stream of modernizing conditions, Arequipa has retained an air of antiquity, and, it may be said, of dignity, superior to that of the capital. As one looks northeastward from the lower part of the town up the rising ground, the numerous churches, with here and there a tall conventual pile, make a varied and effective skyline. The gardens on the higher northwestern bank of the river relieve the mass of houses, and the yellowish grey volcanic stone of which they are built, mellowed by the strong sun, shews well against the purple mass of Misti. There are some picturesque street vistas too, but one misses the bright colours of peasant dress which a city of Old Spain or Italy would shew. The women are largely in black. The black manta drawn over the head is absolutely prescribed for church; indeed, even a European visitor is not allowed to enter a church anywhere in these countries in hat or toque; she must cover her head with the manta.

The houses are low, for here, too, earthquakes are dreaded, and the streets roughly paved with large cobblestones of hard, smooth lava. Streams of water drawn from the river run down many of them, and other streams water the fields along the outskirts. Here and there one sees a garden planted with dark green trees, which relieve the glare of light. The Plaza, less ample than that of Lima, is hardly less striking, with the great pile of the Cathedral occupying more than half of one side of it, arcades filled with shops bordering the other three sides, flowers and shrubs planted in the middle. Everything reminds one of the Asiatic or North African East, – the long, low, blank house walls which enclose the streets, walls into which few and small windows open, because the living rooms look into a central yard or patio; the concentration of the better sort of shops in arcades which represent the Eastern bazaar; the flat roofs on which people sit in the evenings; the deep and pungent dust; the absence of wheeled vehicles; for everybody rides, the richer on horses and the rest of the world on donkeys; the scantily dressed Indians, wild looking as Bedaween, though with reddish brown instead of yellowish brown skins. Instead of camels there are llamas, the one native beast of burden in Peru, much smaller than the camel and more handsome, but not unlike it in its large lustrous eyes, and in the poise of its long neck, with the small erect head slightly thrown back. It resembles the camel also in its firm resolve not to move except at its own fixed pace, and to bear no load heavier than that (of one hundred pounds) to which it is accustomed. The brilliant light, too, and the dry, keen air are like the light and air of the East. But no Eastern city has around it a mountain landscape like this. One must place Tunis or Trebizond in the valley of Zermatt to get an impression of Arequipa as it stands, encircled by snow fields and majestic towers of rock.

The Oriental quality, which startles one in these Spanish-American cities of the Far West is perhaps not wholly due to the Moorish influences transmitted through their Spanish colonists. Climatic and social conditions resembling those of northern Africa and southern Spain have counted for a good deal. Sunlight and dryness prescribe certain ways of building, and the Peruvian Indian resembles the Arab or the Moor in his indifference to cleanliness and comfort. Here in Arequipa, one begins to realize that Peru is in respect of population still essentially a land of the aborigines. All the lower kinds of work are done by Indians, and the class next above is at least half Indian in blood, though not readily distinguishable from the man of Spanish stock, either in aspect or in character and manners. The negro who still abounds at Lima and Callao, though he is beginning to be absorbed into the mass of whites, is no longer seen at Arequipa, for he cannot stand this cold, thin, highland air; and even the zambo, a half-breed of Indian and negro, who is said to want the best qualities of both races, is a trifling element. Here and elsewhere in South America it is impossible to determine the proportion of perfectly pure Spanish families to the whole population. Probably it is small, not five per cent over the whole country, but in Arequipa it may be much larger.

In one respect the city, while thoroughly Spanish, is very unlike the East. It is, and always has been, steeped in ecclesiasticism. The Cathedral is a long and handsome pile, rebuilt after the earthquake of 1868, with two towers on its south front, and an unusually spacious and unadorned interior. It contains a picture attributed to Van Dyck. There is one other church of special interest, that called the "Compañia," i. e. church of the Company of Jesus. Everywhere in South America the Jesuits were numerous, wealthy, and powerful till their suppression in the middle of the eighteenth century; and here, as in many Italian and Spanish towns, their churches are the most profusely decorated without and within. The north façade of this one, built of reddish grey sandstone, is a wonderfully rich and finely wrought piece of ornamentation, and the seventeenth century pictures and wood carvings of the interior are curious if not beautiful specimens of the taste of the time. There are scores of other churches and convents, far more than sufficient for a city of thirty-five thousand people. Their bells clang all day long, and clerical costumes are everywhere in the streets. What is still more remarkable, the men, as well as the women, are practising Catholics, and attend church regularly, a rare thing in most parts of Spanish America. The city was always an ecclesiastical stronghold, and during the long War of Independence, was accounted the most conservative place in Peru. Indeed, it is so still.

But if Arequipa seems old-fashioned and conservative to-day, when a railway connecting it with the coast brings it within three days of Lima, what must it have been two centuries ago, when probably one-third of the white population consisted of priests, monks, and nuns, and the Church ruled unquestioned?

One can imagine no spot more absolutely cut off than this was from the world outside. It was an oasis like Tadmor in the wilderness. Three days' journey across desolate wastes lay between it and the coast, a coast itself scarcely inhabited, and behind towards the north and east there were only mountain solitudes, over which pastoral Indians roved. The bishop and the head of the Jesuits were the real powers, even the governor, and beneath him the alcalde, bowing to them. Nowhere in the world to-day could one find anything like that uniformity of opinion and custom which reigned in this little, remote city in those colonial days which came down into the days of Hume and Bentham in England, of Voltaire and Rousseau in France, and indeed down almost to the memory of men still living. The vision of the Holy Office in the background at Lima was hardly needed to enforce absolute submission of word and thought in such a society. The traveller of to-day marvels at the stillness and stagnation of one of the smaller cities in the interior of Old Spain. Yet a Spanish city, however small or remote, is at least in Europe: there are other cities not far off, and men come and go. Here there were no breaks in the monotony of life, nothing but local interests of the most trivial sort to occupy men's minds. The only events were feast days and religious processions, with now and then an earthquake, and once, thirty years before the War of Independence, the terror of an Indian insurrection far up in the plateau.

Yet life was not wholly monastic. There was some learning, mostly theological. There was also a good deal of verse making: Arequipa was even famous for its poets. Upon what themes did their Muse employ itself? What sighs were there from nuns behind the convent walls? What sort of a human being was the bishop who walked in solemn processions behind chanting choristers to and from his Cathedral? Must there not have been even here the perpetual play of human passion, and could any weight of conservatism and convention extinguish the possibilities of romance? I heard from a trustworthy source a story which shews that even in grave and rigid Arequipa love would have its way and that the hearts of stately ecclesiastics could melt in pity. I tell it in my informant's words.

In old colonial days there lived in Arequipa a powerful family owning large estates and rich mines which they had inherited from their ancestors among the Conquistadores. They wielded authority both in Church and State. At the time when the incident to be described happened the heads of the family were two brothers, of whom the elder held the landed property and the younger was bishop and ruled the Church. The elder was a widower with two children, a son and a daughter. The great convent of Nuestra Señora de los Dolores, founded and richly endowed by this family, always had one of its members as its Abbess, and at that time the only sister of these two brothers held the post. The family, being a power in Arequipa, sought to preserve their supremacy, and accordingly decided that the young daughter of the elder brother should enter the convent and eventually succeed her aunt as Abbess, while her brother should marry and inherit the estates. The girl had no vocation for a religious life and rebelled against the fate proposed for her, but the father and uncle were inexorable, and after a vain struggle she was forced to yield and take the veil. Her aunt felt sympathy for the poor child, having perhaps passed through a like experience herself, and she made the young sister's religious duties as light as possible, allowing her to lead the choir, as she possessed a fine voice, and giving her the business of the convent to attend to. Embroidery was one of the occupations of the nuns, especially fine work on linen, the designs for which were brought from Spain; and to supervise this work and to take care of it was one of the girl's chief pleasures. She always despatched it to the laundry herself and received it on its return, laying it carefully in the presses perfumed with jasmine flowers, and the laundress was the only person from the outside world (except her own family) with whom she had any communications. This laundress happened to be an alert and intelligent woman, and she gave the nun all the news she had of the world outside the convent walls. After the young sister had been about five years in the convent the Abbess fell ill, and all the old-fashioned remedies known to the nuns failed to help her. She grew steadily worse and they were beginning to think of administering the last offices of the Church when the laundress suggested to the niece of the Abbess that the clever Scotch physician who had lately come to Arequipa should be consulted. To consult a man and a heretic horrified the nuns, but the laundress pressed her advice, and finally the bishop was appealed to and was induced, since his sister's life was at stake, to give his consent. The patient, however, even then refused to see the doctor in person, but the niece, closely veiled, was to be allowed to have an interview with him and to describe the symptoms. Although the doctor was aware that an opinion given under such circumstances was of little use, he consented to this arrangement. Accordingly, at the appointed time he presented himself at the convent gate, under the guidance of the laundress, and was taken to the antechamber of the Abbess's apartment, for a lady of such high rank as the Abbess did not occupy a cell. There the niece received him, closely veiled, and described her aunt's condition. On his asking her if she could count the pulse, she replied, "No, I have never tried." "If you will place your fingers on my wrist, I will teach you," he said. Timidly she did as he bade her, and counted the beats; and, thrilled as he was by the musical softness of her voice, it is possible that he prolonged the lesson, for at length she said, "I understand perfectly, and will now go and count my aunt's pulse," and returned presently with a written report. During her absence the doctor had made enquiries of the laundress in regard to the Abbess's symptoms, and had decided that the old lady was suffering from cancer and had not long to live. But the young sister had made too profound an impression on him to let him give up the case at once, and he prescribed some soothing remedies and offered to return in the morning. These visits continued for several days, and at last he succeeded in seeing the sister's beautiful face and counting her pulse. The laundress could not always be in attendance, and the narcotics administered to the Abbess dulled her vigilance. Realising that his patient's days were numbered and that his work would soon be over, he saw there was no time to lose. The scruples of the young sister were finally overcome. Love won the day, and she promised to fly with her lover after the death of her aunt. With the help of the laundress he devised a plan for escape. The convent was built of stone and the sisters' cells were solidly arched like casemates, the only wood about them being the doors. Obtaining a skeleton from the hospital, the doctor took it to the house of the laundress and she conveyed it in a large linen basket to the convent the day after the funeral of the Abbess, and concealed it in the young sister's bed. That night the girl set fire to her bed, and in the confusion occasioned by the smoke and the alarm she escaped unnoticed into the street, where the laundress awaited her and took her to her house. The frightened nuns sought for her in vain, and when finally a few charred bones were found in her cell, which they imagined in their ignorance to be hers, they mourned her as dead, and buried the bones with all the honour due to her rank and station. Meanwhile the girl herself was in great danger, for had she been discovered she would have been tried for faithlessness to her vows, and she shuddered at the bare possibility of the old punishment of being walled up alive. It was impossible to stay long in the laundress's house, and the doctor implored her to fly with him to the coast, an arduous ride of seventy miles over the desert. Recoiling from such a step, she insisted on first trying to win the pardon and protection of her relatives, and she resolved to throw herself on the mercy of her uncle, the bishop, who had always shewn her much affection and was all-powerful with the rest of the family. Accordingly, just after twilight, and wrapped in her manta, which concealed her face and figure, she stole into the bishop's palace, where she found her uncle at evening prayer, and throwing herself on her knees before him, she implored his protection. He took her at first for her own ghost (for had he not performed the funeral service over her remains?), and when he discovered that it was really she, in flesh and blood, he was horrified and put her from him as he would a viper. But as she still clung to him, telling him her story and imploring his mercy and protection, he at last listened to her, and finally said, "wait a moment," and left the room, returning shortly with a bag containing money and family jewels, emeralds, which he thrust into her hand. "Take this," he whispered, "and fly with your lover to the coast. I will see that you are not followed." She found the doctor with horses at the city gate, and they rode away across the desert, never stopping except to change their mounts and to eat a little food, until they reached the coast, where by an extraordinary piece of luck they found an English frigate lying at anchor. Hurrying on board they told the captain their story, and he at once summoned the chaplain, who married them, and they were soon on their way to England.

Time passed, and the South American colonies became independent of Spain. Many years later, the brother of the nun went on a public mission to Europe. Before he left Peru his uncle, the bishop, told him the story of his sister's life, which had been kept secret until then, and after telling him where she was to be found (for through the Church he had watched over her), he desired her brother to communicate with her. This the nephew did in due course, and his sister was finally forgiven, and her descendants recognized and received by their Peruvian relatives. One of these descendants was seen by my informant wearing the emeralds that had been in the bishop's bag.