Millicent Todd Bingham

“ Sometimes there is an awful, rumbling noise, like an approaching earthquake. Then the waters of the river are churned like the smallest mountain torrent tumbling over a rock in mid-stream. The great snake lifts her head, then her heavy body from the stream bed, and crashes off through the jungle. The track she leaves behind her is a desert waste; no growing thing is left, and the wake is as broad, why, as broad as this stream, under which she is now lying,” and he pointed with wide eyes to the water, rushing headlong to join the Amazon. ”

“ Certainly nowhere in Peru are contrasts more marked than in Lima of to-day, with its splendidly carved balconies of former times, its scavenger birds, and mud roofs strewn with ashes; its dim, candle-lit, incense-filled churches with their leper windows, and its international horse-racing; its collections of ancient, battered, gold{139} idols, silver llamas, dishes and spoons, and its aeroplane called The Inca!
Lima is a city where bull-fights are not only an amusement of the people, but of the finest and best intellects which the country has produced as well. ”

“ Yet, even among the tops of the Andes, living things are adjusted to their environment, queer little animals of the heights giving the only human atmosphere there is. Leaping viscachas, with cat-like tails, carve through the frozen ground village burrows made to last forever, treacherous pitfalls for a traveler’s mule. With the finest, silkiest fur, valued by even the Incas, chinchillas sit in the shadows, never in the sun. They appear suddenly on the steep cliffs at dusk and nibble stiff grasses; then disappear like magic, leaving little chains of footprints in the snow. ”

“ Entire it flings itself from the heart of a shower, follows the waves of the sea along, or glints on a butterfly’s wings or from a humming-bird’s throat.
It reveals the elements of the stars, it lists the ingredients of the sun, and sets down upon its ephemeral tablet the red-hot vapors rising from the desert. Even the breath of the volcano has a place in the rainbow alphabet.
It is hard to avoid so fundamental a thing. Close your eyes in the sunlight, and its whole scale is thrown in glistening repetition across your own eyelashes. ”

“ A certain herb lives for years underground in the desert; it feels no necessity for a leaf-existence. Yet if the parched roots are reached by water, they expand toward the sun in lovely bloom.
Up from the shore stretches the bare immensity of desert, ending in one tremulous horizon with the ocean, and with the wilderness of mountains against the pulsating sky at the other. It is the Land of Light. All sensation of color is lost in this great sensation of light, an ardent light “shining through things, not on them.” Even the clouds expire from excess of light. ”

“ The wind brings with it cold clouds of dust laid only by a fresh fall of snow. It mummifies the beasts of burden which fall by the way. Mirages, too, the escort of tropical heat, shimmer upon these arctic plains.
With all the paraphernalia of the torrid zone, limitless vagaries of torrid force which knows no law of custom, the puna has no enjoyment of it. For the cold seems also to have taken on the exuberance of tropical nature.
You may lose your way in a snow-storm; or in the hot and stifling valleys, where the tropical sun can concentrate, you may die of the bite of a venomous serpent. ”

“ The only passion they have brought with them through the centuries is remembrance of the past. The thorn-apple is called huaca cachu, the plant of the grave.
The Indians squat about in groups with their little gourds of chicha. There is no laughing. The mummy-like babies do not cry. The lake on whose banks they live contains no fish. No worm, no insect, inhabits its banks. But there is a spirit which broods from the mountain above. He will lighten the burden of the traveler who seeks the mountain-top and presents him offerings in the depths of night. ”

“ The humming-bird whirls through the jungle and luxuriant valleys of the Andes, out to islands in the Pacific, and follows the fuchsia down to the very boundaries of barrenness in the tail of South America. A mere dab of brain can engineer this infinitesimal motor from Patagonia to Canada. One minute Flame-bearer lives only inside the crater of an extinct volcano in Veragua, marked with red like the fire-stealer wren of Brittany, and many battle with storms of the high Andes and can be seen mingling their vivid flashes with snow. They who live by means of flowers! ”

“ It is a colossal, brutal land, fresh from the cataclysm, whose ponderous masses of rock are all sterile from cold, all silent under perpetual snow. In its clearness of atmosphere sparkles a new conception of the night-time sky. It is a land where thin layers of lichens are the only trace of plant life, where condors wheel about the highest pinnacles, and silver lies buried deep in the ground. It is the lair of mercury-mines which paralyze those working in them, where hot and cold fountains mingle to make one river, where springs of tar and rivers of peat ooze from suffocation within. ”

“ Words give no idea of the brilliancy of the snow on the crests of the Andes, because there are no words made of sunlight and crystals: luminous, empyreal snowshine, shattered by the sun now and then into rainbow colors. As silence is perfect only because it has the possibility of being broken at any instant by a gigantic crash, so whiteness is the emblem of perfect purity only because the possibility of all color lies within. ”

“ In some places cotton grows to the height of a horse’s head, a luxuriant crop, too unexpected for harvest. This brilliant life lasts a week, perhaps more, and then lapses. Where do the slumbering flowers conceal themselves? Where, indeed, does the pansy get its coloring matter?
The desert of Peru is varied: toward the south the coast is strewn with borax, white upon the cliffs; toward the north petroleum gushes from beneath it. Upon the red plains of Huacho are the salt lakes of Pampa Pelada, reflecting the sun in a thousand colors. “White dust-whirlpools dance on its white floor.” ”

“ He watches the sun rise over a continent-jungle, glimmering with heat and dampness, and long after the sunset glow has faded from the highest snowy peak, he sees its fiery ball drop beyond the farthest edge of the Pacific.
The fabulous condor, known in Europe when Peru was a myth, a hostage from a fairyland of gold and silver; a griffin which revels in solitude and in evidences of things gone by.
Loneliness is the condor’s only friend. ”

“ Twilight sheds its undivided gleam above the plains. The sun taking off its crown of topazes is about to retire on the bed of foam to which the ocean entices it. Creation is at this instant a lyre letting fall soft sounds. The desirous breeze that passes giving a kiss to the jasmine, the petal that falls jostled by the wings of the painted humming-bird, the turpial that sings a song of agony in the aspen foliage, the sun that sets, firing the horizon ... all is beautiful. The last hours of the afternoon and all things elevate the created toward the Creator. ”

“ The Incas chose it for an empire’s emblem and dedicated to it a temple close to that of the Sun.
It symbolized to the Spaniards the astounding country which had fallen as by miracle into their grasp, the land of mystery, whose romantic wealth and dazzling promises encircled them as with the rainbow arch, and, like it, receded as they advanced.
Peru still keeps the rainbow symbol. Many-colored mysteries hover about the man who leans over its glittering jewel-casket. ”

“ Water being denied, the desert is soaked with sun. It is the Land of Heat. No plant grows in the scorching soil, no animal can endure it. No bird, no insect flies through the burning atmosphere. Each object shimmers until it seems but the reflection of itself. Fire descends from the burnished sky and vibrates in the air and scalds the sand. Yet concentrating a tropical sun, this hot solitude lies between the cold ocean and the mountains, a region of ice. ”

“ Inti, the Sun, child of the Universal Spirit, is his mighty emblem, a symbol of his uncreated glory, the quickening principle in nature, the great wizard of Peru, the only source of vitality upon earth, by whose energy the winds arise, the glaciers slide over the mountains, by whose energy even the rain descends, the rivers swell, and cascades leap through the valleys down toward the sea. In how much more real a sense than the Incas knew is Peru the land of the sun! ”

“ Beneath it glinted a flower-embroidered dress of rarest stuff, fluttering a multitude of ribbons; under a petticoat of heavy brocade, miniature golden feet peeped out, or slippers of peach-colored velvet. The lady of Lima was famed for her wit, entrancing the visitor as she sipped her Paraguay tea from a silver-mounted gourd.
Little is left of former splendor. The statues, the five rows of orange trees, the sweet smells are gone. At the end of the long Alameda, bordered with wind-blown trees and wrecks of marble benches, is a fountain under palms and Norfolk Island pines. ”

“ Cold, green creepers blister like fire. From vampires which suck your blood as you sleep, to the touch of a vine which paralyzes your entire body, the jungle knows all modes of attack and furnishes the cure for every ill it has created.
What can be taken as the symbol of the jungle? The snake, mysterious, deadly, bound together in savage traditions with lightning, wind, fire-streams of lava, and river-whirlpools, those emblems of serpent treachery? Or butterflies, with their symbolism of life-recurrent?{295} Or the orchid, emblem of wayward unwholesomeness? ”

“ This pool in a shadowed vale of the western Andes, a shady, sweet-smelling spot, lost in an immensity of desert, is a little solitude in the midst of a great solitude, hospitable by sweet contrast. It takes very little water to make a perfect pool for a tiny fish, where it will find its world and paradise all in one, with never an intimation of the dry bank. ”

“ Above the purple mountains, shading away from the red desert, bright blue peaks are snow-covered to set them off from the sky. Fog shadows drop darkness here and there over their barrenness. Even the mist has a poetry of contrast.
Across the plain a constant ocean wind sweeps fine white beach-sand along with waves of color, no less real because impalpable. Its pilgrimage of a thousand years toward the mountains is uninterrupted, for the wind blows always from the southwest. It causes the rippled waves of sand which it brings along to assume in traveling a crescent shape—the wandering médanos. ”

“ A foreign sight or sound, a quick movement of his foot, a short, shrill whistle vibrating through the clear, puna air, a flash of golden brown, and the whole flock is lost in the wilderness of rocks, fleeing miles without stopping. It is said that if the male is wounded, the females surround him, allowing themselves to be shot down rather than leave.
The vicuña defies pursuit or capture and disappears at the first glimpse of intruders, driving the young before him. He is no less wild than in the days when he was royal purveyor of softest fabric to the Incas’ wardrobes. ”

“ Cold is besieged in vain by the sun at its hottest. This land of silent chaos takes on the cold of outer space so near by, which, shot through by the fierce heat of the sun, is incapable of absorbing any warmth.
The magical sun, dispelling somewhat the mountain-sickness, only brings with it another, even worse. For blazing across the snow-fields in its tropical fury, surumpe follows, snow-blindness, cured only by fresh vicuña flesh laid upon the eyes, so the Indians say. ”

“ In 1746 the city of Lima,—the gorgeous City of the Kings,—at the climax of its luxury, was utterly destroyed. Seventy-four churches, fourteen monasteries with their paintings, lamps of gold, vessels of silver, precious stones, tapestries, and mirrors, their beautiful fountains, arches, cloisters, and stairways in rare designs, were laid waste. The building material was as rich as the work upon it; as a contemporary traveler expressed it: “If it did not exceed in beauty, it at least equaled anything in the world.” ”

“ Peru contains them all. He does not have to travel over the face of the earth for a change of climate, but makes short, domestic, vertical journeys instead. Living under his banana groves among his sugar-fields in the lush coast valley, if he feels need of fresher air, he takes a trip up to the temperate zone, where apple orchards and wheat-fields lie spread out in a recess of the mountains, and strawberries redden to perfection. Has he curiosity to see an arctic storm, he goes a little higher, coming out upon the bitter table-land where crests of glaciers cut the sky. ”

“ Shifting cloud-shadows and wandering rainbows flit and interchange over the jungle like the play of colors on a peacock’s neck.
Though we know that there are no mighty civilizations of human making, there are no streets of gold with ruby walls, yet within the imperturbable recesses are strange races and wonders of plant and animal life which may interpret whole domains of knowledge. Nature’s secrets are still locked up in this prolific laboratory. ”

“ Fire-beetles and phosphorescent caterpillars and flickering fireflies—little stitches of a shining thread in the soft, verdured blackness of the tepid night—make the primeval forest discernible.
The true life of the jungle begins with darkness and ends with light. As if the habitual gloom were not deep enough, jungle animals wait until night has enclosed them further to carry on their life activities, those weird creatures which lurk in the shade, primeval instincts always alert, living on suffrance in this land of vegetation. ”