Tarma

“ Tarma is the favourite place of resort of sickly persons from different parts, especially Lima, and the rigorous climate at the mineral works of Yauli, whence the rheumatic miners, after their own hot springs fail to cure them, flock to the Estrada, or to the ball and tertulia of the blooming Tarmenians. All its peaceful inhabitants are agriculturists ”

“ The course of the Lauricocha is about 200 leagues from Lauricocha lake to Jaen, and about 150 from thence to its junction with the Ucayale. The intendancy of Tarma contains many gold and silver workings, particularly the celebrated mines of Yauricocha, in the Cerro de Bombon.
The chief towns of Tarma are Tarma, Huamalies, Huialas, Caxatambo, Conchucos, Guanuco and Pasco. ”

“ Padre Troncoso was the name of the Tarma priest and he delighted in having me take his photograph. He teaches in the parish school and asked me to take a picture of his highest class which consisted of sixteen boys, most of whom were white.
The Hotel Roma is a two-story structure with a carved wooden balcony on its second floor; its exterior is much like many buildings in Stamboul. It is a very comfortable and clean place with good food. There is another hotel in Tarma, the Umberto, which is well spoken of. The most curious sight in the small city is the cemetery. ”

“ They drove the Indians over the rivers of Chanchamayo and Tulumayo; and Don Ramon Castilla, the President, (ever alive to the interests of his country,) sent a company of eighty soldiers, under a captain in the navy named Noel, with engineers, artificers, tools and supplies, and constructed the little stockade fort of San Ramon, at the junction of these rivers. Under the protection of this fort the Tarma people have begun to clear and cultivate, and the former desert is now beautiful with the waving cane, the yellow blossom of the cotton, and the red berry of the coffee. ”

“ We watered our mules here, tarried about an hour, and then continued for another two hours to the city of Palca which is very much like both Tarma and Acobamba, although smaller than the first-mentioned place and larger than the last-mentioned one. It is a poorer [480] place than Tarma, but it has a larger church. This building is several hundred years old; it is of adobe, and has a broad façade from one side of which rises a four-story belfry capped with a steeple. The valley is here very narrow but beyond Palca there is a widening where the Acomayo flows into the Rio Palca. ”

“ It is only when the governor in Tarma compels them to pay the annual contribution, that they make an effort to augment their earnings; they then seek a market for the products of their cultivation, and sell them for ready money. Vitoc and some of the villages in its neighborhood form altogether only one ecclesiastical community, whose pastor lives in Tarma the whole year round. He goes to Pucara only once in six or eight months, to read a couple of masses, and to solemnize marriages and christenings, but chiefly to collect fees for burials which may have taken place during his absence. ”

“ The town of Jauja on this line is considered an excellent place for consumptives, for whom the coast is much too damp. Huancayo, 78 miles from Oroya, is now the terminus, but work has been pushed for 20 miles farther and ere long Ayacucho will be reached, the scene of the final battle, compelling the withdrawal of the Spaniards.
Tarma. The expedition to Tarma and the montaña may attract a few who can spare a week or ten days for this delightful trip. Animals to Tarma may be obtained at Oroya for 5 or 6 soles each. With saddle-bags, no baggage animals are needed. ”

“ At the hour of noon, they arrived at that bad pass of Tarma where warriors were said to be waiting to defend it. The pass seemed to be so full of difficulties that it would be impossible to go up it, because there was a bad road of stone down into the gully where all the riders had to dismount, after which it was necessary to go up the heights by a slope about a league long, the greater part of which was steep and difficult forest, all of which was crossed without any Indians who were said to be armed making an appearance. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The talents of this worthy minister, and the philosophy by which he is characterized, were the counsellors, the physicians, and the remedies. The history is as follows:
In Tarma there is but one church; the population is numerous in proportion to the ground it occupies ”

“ Tarma is 103 miles east-north-east of Lima, in 11° 35' south latitude, and 75° 17' west longitude, in a temperate climate, and surrounded by a large district, in which the soil is every where fertile, excepting on the higher mountains, where it is very cold. The land is chiefly applied to feeding cattle, but many veins of silver of great importance being found and worked in the district, agriculture is neglected. Of these mines, the Yauricocha, two leagues north of Pasco, the Chaupimarca, Arenillapata, St. ”

“ Tarma was next abandoned, and followed the same example, as did Huanuco, Cueñca, and Loxa; whilst, on the news of the capture of the Esmeralda arriving at Truxillo, that important province also revolted, under the direction of the Spanish governor, the Marquis of Torre Tagle.
Notwithstanding this succession of favourable events, General San Martin still declined to march on Lima, remaining inactive at Haura, though the unhealthy situation of the place was such, that nearly one-third of his troops died of intermittent fever, during the many months they remained there. ”

“ The Indian gets here his indispensable coca, and the forests at certain seasons are redolent with the perfume of the vanilla.
It is sad to recollect that in this beautiful country (I have before me the valley of the Chanchamayo) men should have offered me title deeds in gratuity to as much of this rich land as I wanted. Many of the inhabitants of Tarma hold grants of land in the Chanchamayo country from the government, but are so distrustful of its ability to protect them in their labors from the encroachments of the savages, that they do not cultivate them. ”

“ Serving them was a giant Negro and it was he whom the ape-man watched most closely. Familiar with the tribal idiosyncrasies of a great number of African tribes over a considerable proportion of the Dark Continent, the Tarmangani at last felt reasonably assured that he knew from what part of Africa this slave had come, and the dialect of his people. ”

“ From Greystone bridge downwards the great height of the country on both banks gives a distinction of environment to the Tamar above most of its fellows. On looking over the landscape through which it flows, from any high point, it gives the impression of a mighty gorge wriggling tortuously through an upheaved country. Not that you can actually see the Tamar till you get to quite close quarters with it. It is a most difficult river for the casual stranger to acquire an intimacy with, from the fact that it flows in so deep a trench. ”

“ It is impossible, I say, to find any actor so endowed with this type of magnificence as was Talma. Melancholy in Orestes, terrible in Néro, hideous in Gloucester, he could adapt his voice, his looks, his gestures to each character. Mademoiselle Mars was but the perfection of the graceful; Mademoiselle Rachel was but the imperfection of the beautiful; Talma was the ideally great. Actors lament that nothing of theirs survives themselves. O Talma! ”

“ They seemed to see in a moment the shades in people, and only to select the best. And when Tamara came to talk seriously with even the most apparently frivolous, she found they all had the same trace of vague melancholy and mystery, as though they were grasping in the dark for something spiritual they wished to seize. Their views and boundaries of principles in action seemed to be limitless, just as their vast country seems to have no landmarks for miles. One could imagine the unexpected happening in any of their lives. And the charm and fascination of them continued to increase. ”

“ Talma has little of the formal automaton style in his acting. He has indeed that common fault in his countrymen of speaking as if he had swallowed a handful of snuff; but in spite of this, there is great emphasis and energy in his enunciation, a just conception, and an impressive representation of character. He comes more in contact with nature than our Kemble-school, with more of dignity than the antagonist one. ”

“ In this very difficult passage Talma is eminently successful; no vehemence of manner accompanies the desperate resolution he expresses, the recollection of the misery he has suffered, and the dread of the greater misfortunes which his present intentions must bring upon him, seem wholly to overpower him, and his countenance, marked with the utmost dejection and wretchedness, appears still to appeal for mercy to the power which persecutes him. ”

“ As we drive, the fields become less fertile, and the hills encroach upon the level, sending down their spurs upon that waveless plain like blunt rocks jutting out into a tranquil sea. When we reach the bed of the Taro, these hills begin to narrow on either hand, and the road rises. Soon they open out again with gradual curving lines, forming a kind of amphitheatre filled up from flank to flank with the ghiara, or pebbly bottom, of the Taro. The Taro is not less wasteful than any other of the brotherhood of streams that pour from Alp or Apennine to swell the Po. ”

“ There is one circumstance in which Talma has every perfection which it is possible to conceive—in the power, and richness, and beauty of his voice. It is one of those commanding and pathetic voices which can never, at any distance of time, be forgotten by any one who has once heard it: every variety of tone and expression of which the human voice is capable, is perfectly at his command, and succeed each other with a rapidity and power which it is not possible to conceive. ”

“ Tamara's thoughts are with the stranger, though against her will, when an escort brings the dead body of Sinodal. While the poor bride is giving vent to her sorrow and her father seeks to comfort her by offering religious consolation, she again hears the voice of the Demon, whispering soft seductions to her. At last she feels that her strength is failing before a supernatural power, and so she begs her father to let her enter a monastery. ”

“ Morning and evening, day and night, Tamara prayed to God to make an end to their separation, and the Lord answered her prayer. Once upon a time, accompanied by an old nurse and a bitcho (young boy servant) , she started on a pilgrimage to some distant monastery where there lived an old man of ascetic life. To him Tamara revealed her grief and the old man led her into his garden. There in the presence of all he began to pray for her, and suddenly a terrible cloud appeared, lightning was seen and fearful strokes of thunder were heard. Those who were present fell to the ground from fright. ”

“ Tamara with difficulty sought out a bald, ancient old man, grown over as though with bog moss by entangled gray bristles; with little rheumy eyes and an enormous, reddish, dark-blue granulous nose, on the manner of a cookie.
He unlocked the enormous hanging lock, pushed away the bolt and opened the rusty, singing door. The cold, damp air together with the mixed smell of the dampness of stones, frankincense, and dead flesh breathed upon the girls. They fell back, huddling closely into a timorous flock. Tamara alone went after the watchman without wavering. ”

“ The Tamar, with its forest-clad declivities, its rocks and crags and cliffs, its long reaches of shining water fringed with deep green meadows and woodland, is essentially a river for the man with leisure. In the opinion of those who have seen both, the scenery far surpasses that of the belauded Dart. The production of arsenic has discoloured the water in parts, as the mine shafts have destroyed the sylvan charm of the shore, but this is only for a short distance above New Bridge, the New Bridge over which Essex so foolishly led his troops in 1644. ”

“ There was genius in his acting. It may also be said that he revolutionised the art, in the first place through banishing the bombastic and affected style of delivery by his natural, sincere elocution, and secondly through bringing about an innovation in dress, attiring himself like a Greek or a Roman when he played Achilles or Brutus—for which I was heartily grateful to him. Talma had one of the finest heads and one of the most mobile countenances imaginable, and, however impetuous his acting became, always kept dignified, which seems to me a prime quality in a tragic actor. ”

“ Talma was having a bath; he was studying Lucien Arnault's Tibère, in which he hoped to make his reappearance. Condemned by a disease of the bowels to die literally of starvation, he was terribly thin; but he seemed to find consolation even in his emaciated state and to derive hope of a success from it.
"Well, my boys," he said to us, as he pressed his hanging cheeks between his hands, "won't these be just right for the part of old Tiberius?"
Oh! how great and glorious a thing art is! It shows more devotion than a friend, is more faithful than a mistress, more consoling than a confessor! ”