Archibald Smith

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ It occurs to us here to remark, that in the remote curacies of the hills no friars are to be seen, as on the coast or more genial climates; an important part of whose duty it is, wherever they locate themselves, to aid the Christian to die well, and to watch by his pillow, and exhort and comfort him, while the crucifix and taper are ever before his eyes, and the breath of life about to leave his animal frame. ”

“ 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; [3] 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 [48] to illustrate these subjects by their science and diligence, they are not Peruvians. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On these roads, especially at a season when there is reason to expect foul weather, it is best that the traveller should make use of a beast hired of the arriero, who is far more likely to take care of his own mule than of one belonging to another owner, and men are not always to be had to watch cattle let loose in these high pastures at night. The cold is almost sure to scare homeward any animal not seasoned to it; so that, if the cattle be left to themselves, a traveller in the morning may be disappointed by their escape, and unable to proceed on his journey. ”

“ 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. ”

“ By the end of September, or beginning of [13] 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. ”

“ From the capital to the Cerro a rider on a good traveller will arrive in four days without injury to himself or beast, and this is considered good work; but we have known the journey from the Cerro to Lima performed in about fifty hours: this again is a work of over-exertion for the man, who is very likely to incapacitate one or perhaps two animals in the undertaking. It may be said, [270] in general, that on a rough and hilly road a league an hour is a fair rate of travelling for a fresh beast on any ordinary journey in the interior of Peru. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Such dangerous passes are at some places so contracted that the stirrup of the muleteer is seen to overhang the foaming stream, or project beyond the verge of the boldest precipice; and every now and then they are made more formidable by abrupt angles and insecure breast-work without parapets, hastily constructed when the rush of a sudden torrent from the hollow of a hill, or large stones rolling from the heights, have cleft the way so as to render it for a time impassable. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Here then the atmospherical currents [263] of mountains and coast meet and neutralize each other,—the extremes of both disappear: and the result is a delicious climate for the convalescent, whose tender organs require a gentle uniform temperature, alike removed from the extremes of heat and cold, dryness and moisture; and he who has the precaution or prudence to keep in the shade while the sun crosses the vale in the middle of the day, may, in truth, enjoy undisturbed all the curative qualities of a delightful and renovating temperature. ”

“ From one of these glens, where we once resided for some time, we left a house at the door of which the lemon-tree was in perpetual fruit and blossom, and, in two or three hours thereafter, arrived at the rugged crags and peaks of the eastern Cordillera.
The lines of road from the western coast to the central Andes of Peru wind along narrow glens, sometimes contracting into mere ravines, edged by lofty hills or prodigious rocks that close in abruptly. The traveller thus journeys for days, leaving one hill behind, and meeting another rising before ”

“ 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 said that the climate here corresponds to that of the warm central valleys of the Andes; but though analogous [262] in several respects, yet there is this marked difference, that at Huaramayo, and other headlands like Huaramayo, as, for example, Surco, on the San Mateo route to the Sierra from Lima, there is neither winter nor summer, but one perpetual spring. It does not rain here for several months in the year, as in the more inland vales; but it agrees with them in being out of the sphere of frosts, and exempted from the raw fogs and sultry heat of the coast. ”

“ The population of the town and suburbs is estimated at eight thousand; yet with all the sickness to which, notwithstanding the general salubrity of its climate, so large a population as that of Tarma must be subjected, this retreat of convalescents from the coast and mineral districts is without a medical adviser of any consideration, except when chance throws among them one of the faculty of Lima, himself a confirmed invalid, or only in a state of recovery from consumption or spitting of blood. ”

“ No active measures have yet been adopted to suppress the flagrant abuses of the Mata-sanos, who infest the interior villages of Peru; where, we regret to say, even the regular practitioner is a kind of public extortioner, who, persuaded that the price of his services is never to be paid after pain and the sense of danger are removed from the sick, is accustomed [190] to make his bargain, and withhold his remedy till he secures beforehand his fee: and the bargain is usually screwed up to the utmost when the patient is known to be rich, and believes his own life in danger. ”

“ Restless, chirping guinea-pigs—constant inmates of every wretched hut,—persevered during the early part of the night in a bold attack on our bread magazines; pulling at our wallets, placed under our heads, and nibbling at their contents with a degree of boldness and fearlessness which we believe hunger only could inspire. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Pleasure and vice are nearly allied, and unhappily he [132] 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. ”

“ In Lima, as elsewhere, it will readily enough be admitted in general terms that [101] 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But, destitute of these helps, the curate or curate-substitute, whose calling renders him the most influential person and only spiritual comforter in an Indian village, makes, in the appearance we have offered to describe, his rapid way over hill and cliff, broken ravine and dangerous path, on a chosen traveller, whose movements are so gentle that she never wearies the rider. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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] [116] 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. ”

“ In the temperate climate of Tarma, situated in the centre of the Andes in an east-north-east direction from Lima, where the houses are generally tiled, and the better sorts of them neatly floored with gypsum or stucco-plaster, the older houses are still seen covered in with mud or red brick-clay, underlaid and supported with strong timbers and a coat of cane or wattling. The most antiquated of these roofs are made with a very slight declivity, with outlets like a ship’s scuttle-holes at the most pending angles, so as to give free exit to the rain when it falls heavily. ”

“ When the people of Tarma have put the seed into the ground, they usually occupy an entire month in mutual visiting and festivity: and they say of their neighbours of Jauja (eight leagues to the south of them) , whose rejoicing is at harvest-home, that they distrust Providence, while they themselves piously rejoice and rest their hope in the Giver of their harvest; hence, they infer the wheat crops of the Jaujinos (whose granaries are in favourable years the most plentifully stored in all Peru) are often blighted and frosted, while the Tarmenian barley always flourishes. ”

“ 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 [107] soil. ”

“ 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 ”