Upper Peru

“ There are not, perhaps, in any part of the globe, roads so bad as those which are to be found in all the provinces of the interior of Peru. The passes which are the least dangerous and inconvenient, are the brinks or declivities of the mountains: and these have rather the air of narrow cornices, fastened to the summit of the Cordillera, than of paths destined for the continual journeying of men and beasts of burden. ”

“ The rubber industry of the Iquitos and tributary territory is to Peru what the fur trade of Oregon was to the United States in the period between 1830 and 1850. The populating of the vast inlying country, the trans-Andine slopes and the river basins, means to Peru what the settlement of the Rocky Mountain region extending to the Pacific meant to the people of the United States. If the hardy pioneer class is lacking, and it is, the Peruvian national instinct is not wanting. Enlightened public men are seeking to find expression for it. ”

“ Not only in the descendants of the Incas’ subjects does the charm of the past linger in many beautiful and interesting features of Peru to-day. The influence of the viceroyalty is seen in some of the most attractive characteristics of republican Peruvians; their inheritance from their colonial ancestry may not be an unmixed blessing, but they have reason to be proud of some of its advantages. ”

“ The part they see is the desert coast line with its dirty, poverty-stricken towns, the bleak barren peaks that fringe the Pacific littoral, here and there a spot of verdure at the mouth of a river, and Lima, the capital. A few others, mostly mining men and engineers, take a trip to the summit of nearby mountains on the Oroya railroad, sojourn in the mining towns, suffer from cold and lonesomeness, and swear that Peru is the damnedest country on the face of the globe, and are heartily glad when the time [471] comes for them to leave, vowing never to return again. ”

“ Thus in Peru, though no man who was not an Inca could become rich, all had enough to eat and to wear.
To this day the ruins of temples, palaces, aqueducts, and, above all, the great roads, remain to bear witness to the industry of the Peruvians. Of these roads the most remarkable were two which ran from Quito to Cuzco, diverging again thence in the direction of Chili. One ran through the low lands by the sea, the other over the great plateau, through galleries cut for leagues from the living rock, over pathless sierras buried in snow. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Sun’s innumerable flocks of llamas grazed on the mountains, and his fields were tilled in the valleys, his temples stood throughout the land, and first among them the ‘Place of Gold’ in Cuzco, where his new fire was kindled at the annual solar festival of Raymi, and where his splendid golden disc with human countenance looked forth to receive the first rays of its divine original. Sun-worship was ancient in Peru, but it was the Incas who made it the great state religion, imposing it wherever their wide conquests reached, till it became the central idea of Peruvian life. ”

“ They helped to overcome the traditional feeling that it was beneath the dignity of a Spaniard to be employed otherwise than as a statesman, a soldier, a scholar, or a priest; and among the descendants of Spanish grandees are to be found to-day many active and progressive bankers, merchants, constructing engineers, and “captains of industry,” who are contributing to make Peru rich and prosperous among the nations of the modern world. This spirit is more generally seen in the capital and the seaports than in the cities of the interior, though it is gradually extending to the remotest hamlets. ”

“ IN the times of the Incas the territory which is now Peru supported a dense population. The vestiges which remain of the intensive cultivation of the land show that it must have sustained a very large number of inhabitants. This population extended from the Sierra and its sides to the coast, and took little account of the forest region stretching to the Amazon. The enumeration made by the Spanish colonial officials in 1793 has little value as a basis of estimating the increase, because it was not limited to the present Peru. ”

“ Economic progress is here bound up with a very practical morality. Colonization in the eastern valleys, of which there have been but a few dismal attempts, will only extend the field of influence, it will not solve the real problem of bringing the people of the rich eastern territory of Peru into full and honorable possession of their natural wealth.
The value of the eastern valleys was known in Inca times, for their stone-faced terraces and coca-drying patios may still be seen at Echarati and on the border of the Chaupimayu Valley at Sahuayaco. ”

“ It is therefore Peru that adjusts and maintains the equilibrium of the globe. Peru, in which the prodigal hand of Nature has stored up all the productions she has dispersed in the vast territories which lie on the other side of the Equator; Peru, in which, uniting two different worlds, she has raised to herself a temple worthy of her immensity, is what, in the rotations of the terrestrial planet, prevents the ruin of many an opulent kingdom, of many a warlike nation, and of Europe itself, the theatre of the grandeur and wisdom of man. ”

“ Peru is cut up by the lofty and barren Andean ranges into a number of valleys, each more or less isolated. Some of its cities, like Arequipa, stand in solitary oases surrounded by deserts, while the eastern towns are severed from the capital by so many ridges and gorges that the formation of an active and homogeneous public opinion has been retarded. ”

“ With the inauguration of the republic, the progress of Peru entered a new channel, and though, at first, the stream of liberal ideas had to force a narrow passage between walls of tradition, to surmount rocks and boulders of obstructing prejudice, carrying in its flow an accumulated driftwood of sentiment from the ancient groves of worship, yet its course has been always toward the sea of universal good, and its channel, deepened and widened by the growing force of the current, now forms the bed of a mighty tide of worthy endeavor. ”

“ Broadly speaking, all roads in Peru are little more than mule-paths. The only exception is in favor of the great paved highways built by the Incas, which link the wilds of Bolivia to the capital of Ecuador, and in comparison with which the finest monuments of the Gallo-Roman period are not so very remarkable, after all. ”

“ It would, doubtless, be interesting to carry our view southward into the region of Peru, and to describe the monuments of a civilization on a par with that of the Aztecs, though apparently unconnected therewith in its origin. The immense extent of many Peruvian works; their roads, sometimes nearly 2000 miles in length, and constructed of masonry equally solid with any remains of antiquity; their subterranean aqueducts for the irrigation of dry lands, extending for hundreds of miles ”

“ Even those who are unacquainted with the wise dominion of the ancient Peruvian sovereigns, their comprehensive laws, and the high civilisation they diffused over the whole country, must by this gigantic work be impressed with the highest idea of the cultivation of the age; for well-constructed roads may always be regarded as proofs of a nation's advancement. There is not in Peru at the present time any modern road in the most remote degree comparable to the Incas' highway. The best preserved fragments which came under my observation were in the Altos, between Jauja and Tarma. ”

“ Peruvians from thirty-five to fifty years of age form the national guard. By the well-regulated system of conscription in force, Peru will have in a few years, in addition to its well-drilled army, a host of instructed reserves, requiring only a few drills to transform them into able soldiers. The republic is divided into four military zones, the capitals being Piura in the northern, Lima in the central, Arequipa in the southern, and Iquitos in the eastern zone. ”

“ The eastern branch of the Cordillera of the Andes, which, running between the Huallaga and the Mayro, unites this peninsula with Peru, and the different mountains which, originating at the Cordillera, descend at various distances into the plain, abound in that rich metal which ennobles man, which constitutes his fortune, and which even acquires him, without effort, the sublime titles of wise, discreet, and the rest of those eminent qualities that are wont to shine with diminished lustre when viewed from beneath the humble garments of the poor. ”

“ It was fitting that the capital of the Inca empire which had been subjugated by Spain three hundred years before, should be the first city to receive the patriots who had won its independence, and that the children of the new Peru should link their destiny with the descendants of its oldest civilization on this historic ground, both of them proud to claim the title of Peruvians. ”

“ Back of the coast the country is cast in a mold of heroic dimensions. Here the Andes spread out into separate cordilleras which are joined at intervals by transverse ranges, forming great nudos (knots) , with high plateaux between, surrounded by lofty snow-covered peaks. This mountainous area approximates three hundred miles in width. In these heights lay the wealth that made of Peru a fabulous treasure land, and in the lower valleys the cereals and fruits of the temperate zone, as well as cattle, provide in great abundance for the Peruvian of to-day. ”

“ One reads so much of the great tropical jungles of South America and of wellnigh impenetrable forests that it is difficult to realize that the West Coast from Ecuador, on the north, to the heart of Chile, on the south, is a great desert, broken at intervals by oases, or valleys whose rivers, coming from melting snows of the Andes, are here and there diverted for purposes of irrigation. Lima, the capital of Peru, is in one of the largest of these oases. Although frequently enveloped in a damp fog, the Peruvian coastal towns are almost never subjected to rain. ”

“ But whatever may be thought of the advantages offered by the towns of Peru and La Salle—for their destiny is one—for settlement and the investment of capital, there can be no doubt about the inducements presented to farmers and others by the surrounding country. The climate is genial and salubrious, the atmosphere invigorating and free from miasma, and the scenery delightful—alternating from green and billowy swells of prairie, varied by cultivation and improvement, to wild and romantic dells and ravines. ”

“ Narciso Arestegui, the novelist; as well as the military leaders, General Gamarra, La Puerta, and many others who were proud to claim the old Inca capital as their native city.
In the new era of progress on which Peru has entered with so much promise, the ancient Cuzco, that was held in reverence as the “centre of the universe” ages before America was discovered by the European, will hold its own among its more modern sister cities. The treasure of its ancient ruins but adds interest to a city that knows how to keep in line with the march of modern civilization. ”

“ This central Peruvian area is to-day, with the exception of the irrigated banks of a few streams reaching the Pacific, the only part of the country where either an agricultural or a pastoral population can support itself. The rest of Peru depends upon its mines, chiefly of silver and copper,—a source of wealth uncertain at best. It is only in a few valleys, the most productive of which I am going to describe, that the agricultural population occupies any large continuous area. ”

“ Seldom has a new, obscure, western settlement, whose inhabitants were thrown together by chance, gathered so brilliant specimens of eastern intelligence and civilization. There was an under strata, however, which by no means tends to [Pg 87] brighten the reminiscence. The idlers, adventurers and vagabonds, who follow public works in new countries, and who congregate at the termination of navigation, made a rendezvous here. Peru, as ought to have been mentioned before, is broken by a precipitous bluff nearly an hundred and fifty feet high. ”

“ Our indefatigable botanist, aided by the skilful draughtsman, Don Francisco Pulgar, is unceasingly occupied, and keeps up a constant communication between the mountains, Lima, and Madrid. The Flora of Peru, augmented by new and continual supplies, will be an eternal monument of the wisdom and magnificence of two sovereigns; a rich accumulation of the treasures of the vegetable kingdom; and the most authentic testimony to prove, that Peru does not abound less in exquisite plants, than in precious metals. ”

“ The most ancient civilization in Peru of which traces have been found up to the present time was developed in the coast region, around Nasca and Ica in the southern district and near Trujillo in the north; and the traveller whose interest in antiquities induces him to pay a visit to this country can see some of the most remarkable ruins on the American continent without the inconvenience of making a long and fatiguing overland journey, as the ocean steamers of the South Pacific call at ports in the immediate neighborhood of extensive ruins of prehistoric cities. ”