Archibald Smith

General features of the Sierra.—Roads.—Wilds of San Mateo.—Indian’s eyrie.—Mountain curate.—Enterprise of a priest engaged in inland traffic.—Pastoral life of Indians.—Ancient ruins.—Royal road of the Incas.—Tarma, a pretty Sierra town, or pueblo.—Various sorts of bridges.—Balsa, or canoe of rushes.—Ancient aqueducts and terraced gardens of the aborigines.—Pagan edifices among the rocks near the coast.—Vale of Rimac.—Temples of the ancient Sun-worshippers of the land.

The space enclosed between the gigantic ridges of the eastern and western Cordillera, or great and frigid mountain-chains of the Andes, is occupied by numerous table-lands yielding short fine grass, and extensive hilly pasture-ground, very like in general outline to the Highlands of Scotland, though destitute of heath: and over this very uneven surface are interspersed lagoons and rivers, and deep, warm, agricultural valleys, in the bottom of which grow the richest fruits and produce of the coast; while the summits of the hills, that rise from and enclose these fertile dales, are exposed to the violence of the tempest in the elevated regions of cold and barrenness.

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; but never arrives at that ideal spot, whence he may command a view from sea to sea,

The highest mountains in Britain, such as Ben-Nevis or Cruachan,[18] must appear very diminutive, when compared to the Andes, whose very vastness and extent preclude from the inland regions any view of the sun dipping under the waves of the Pacific, and whose magnitude limits the quickest sight to the groups of mountains, with their included dales, that go to form one stupendous pile of varied shape, production, and climate.

Many of the mountain roads, as they leave the bottom of the glens, and ascend, in more or less of a caracole, along the face of formidable steeps, seem to bear date of origin from the Quichua era, when the llama was the only beast of burden in the country. These animals, like their Indian owners, delight most in the cool of the hills; but, when laden and on the road, their slow and stately gait must not be hurried or interfered with, nor their burden increased beyond their liking, which seldom exceeds 70 or 80 lbs. weight on a long journey: the Indian understands their way, and rules them by gentleness. As the llamas are not for forced marches, and only make short stages of three or four leagues daily, the paths that lead through pasture-grounds are the best suited for them, and may have been considered by the ancient inhabitants of the land as a sufficient reason for striking off from a barren though less elevated or precipitous path, and climbing to eminences that yield an agreeable temperature and some herbage to the indigenous companions of their toil.

When a person has occasion to traverse these narrow and fatiguing roads, it is necessary for him to keep a good look-out, lest he should clash with some rider or cargo-beast coming in the opposite direction; for there are places where it would be utterly impossible to pass two a-breast; and there would be no small danger, on meeting an impatient animal or careless horseman, that either party would be hurled over the brink, and consigned to the condors and eaglets that nestle on the cliffs and in the dark chasms of the crags.

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.

There are also many cuestas or rapid steeps, with here and there flights of steps, roughly cut in the hard rock. By the way-side, in tedious cuestas of several leagues in extent, recesses are, in numerous instances, worked out on the higher side of the road, which serve for the passengers to draw up while those from an opposite direction are allowed to pass on, or where muleteers stop their cattle to adjust their cargoes and tighten their lazos. But when a rock or shoulder of a cliff juts out from the road towards the lower or precipice side, leaving more or less room for a resting-place, then the little flat space is coarsely walled in with large fragments of rock and such smaller stones as may be at hand, giving the idea of a rude but commanding fortress.

The famous Cuesta of San Mateo, on the Tarma road from Lima, we passed in the year 1834, and could not but wonder how, without any very serious accident, an army of cavalry, destined to celebrate the “fraternal embrace of Maquenguaio,”[19] had been able to pass the same route a few months before, when the path and staircases were yet wet and slippery from occasional showers; and when the lower or proper post-road was unfortunately impassable, from the destruction of one of the ordinary rustic bridges on the river or torrent, that runs at the bottom of the rock-locked ravine through which the regular mule-way has been opened, and by which the waters rush foaming and raging in time of heavy inland rains. This stream, like all such impetuous torrents, during the force of the rainy season on the high mountains and table-lands, carries in its course a vast number of rolling stones, the thundering noise of which rises far above the roar of the white waters as these are thrown back, and resisted incessantly, by large blocks of rocky fragments that half-choke the narrow channel, which at this remarkable place is bordered by immense rocks looking as if they had been separated by violence, or rent to give descent to the concentrated and united body of rivulets that come from many a snowy peak, mountain lake, and marsh.

The hill along which runs the Cuesta road, rising on the face of the steep that overhangs this part of the stream, is of itself a grand object; but that which is seen opposite to it has the greatest elevation of any single mountain in these narrow glens: and nothing of the kind can be more strikingly magnificent than to behold it, girdled in verdure and capped in snow, from the summit of the Cuesta, where the traveller, tired with climbing, is invited to draw breath, and look around him from the cross planted here, as in almost every similar situation, by the pious among the natives, who love to decorate this emblem of their faith with wreaths of fresh and fragrant flowers. But from the better route, which winds by the river underneath, nothing of this sort is to be seen; for here the hills on each side shelve in towards their rugged foundations, until they come so close as completely to overshadow the stream. Here, too, the rider may strain his neck in looking overhead; but his eye only meets, besides a strip of the sky, pendulous succulents and tangling plants on the face of the incumbent ledge, with now and then a flower-enamoured “pica-flor,” (humming-bird,) as he fans, with a gracefully tremulous wing, the expanding blossoms that yield him delicate food and pastime.

These wilds of San Mateo reminded us forcibly of the miniature wilds of Glencoe, remarkable in Scottish history; and we thought, as we passed them, of the bard of Cona (Ossian), who, in honour of the orb which the Peruvians once adored, sung with sublimity and touching pathos,

“O thou that rollest above, round as the shield of my fathers, whence are thy beams, O Sun! thy everlasting light? Thou comest forth in thy awful beauty; the stars hide themselves in the sky; the moon, cold and pale, sinks in the western wave; but thou thyself movest alone. Who can be a companion of thy course?”

The Indian’s eyrie on the summit of some steep and lofty mountain, (seldom visited by a white man, save the curate,) may be easily passed many times unnoticed by a stranger, who has occasion to go over the usual routes in any of the principal ravines and valleys of the Sierra, and who may never be led to suspect its existence till he one day meets a swift-footed Indian, closely followed by a person on a well-accoutred and elegant mule, whose gear is all laden with silver ornaments; and the rider, who sits at his ease in a saddle of the country with a rich pellon, wears a large-brimmed hat, with a black silk cap emerging to view at the ears and temples. He has on at least a couple of ponchos (mantles) well-decorated and fringed; his black or brown stockings are of warm VicuÑa wool; and the heel of a small shoe, half-concealed in a clumsy and costly, though wooden stirrup, is armed with a prodigiously disproportioned silver spur, with a large tinkling roller, used to keep his noble animal in mind that she is but the harbinger of death, and carries on her back the keeper of the sinner’s conscience.

This minister of peace to the miserable, hurries to save the soul of a dying Christian, whose abode, like the falcon’s, overlooks the ordinary path of wayfaring men; and which, when descried, seems, to the sight of an observer underneath, to be indeed the loftiest earthly point between the ground he himself stands upon and that heaven for which, it is believed, the anxious and fluttering spirit of the gasping Indian, only waits the curate’s absolution and blessing to wing its immortal flight. 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. 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. This mule seems not to make any trying exertion, while she leaves all ordinary beasts of her kind behind her on a day’s journey, and ascends a cuesta of three or four leagues without stopping once to draw breath, and again descends the same without missing a foot or slackening the “paso llano,” the best of all travelling paces; while, to her no small recommendation, where horse-shoers are not to be found, whether on hard ground or soft, in summer or in winter, she needs not a shoe on her massy and well-rounded hoof. The Sierra curates of a dreary pastoral district, or secluded Indian residence in the wheat-land temperatures, are men, at the age of forty, commonly much worn out in constitution. One of these gentlemen, to whom his home is irksome, is seen to read for weeks together on a stretch, merely to kill time; or he longs for the more refined “tertulia,” to which at one period he was no stranger; or he starts off, swayed by some sudden impulse, to the nearest town of white inhabitants, where he enjoys a finer climate and more gratifying company. He not unfrequently resorts to a mineral “pueblo” (village), under pretext perhaps of selling his “primicia” or first-fruits in grain, &c. which, to be sure, he does to some purpose; for ten to one he will gamble with the extravagant miners, day and night, till the product of the primicia is all swallowed up; and the poor residentiary returns to his cheerless manse involved in a debt which he cannot pay for the next six months, even should his curacy be worth four or five thousand dollars a year, though it oftener happens that the income is much less. In his mountain curacy, wherein he endures sad periods of ennui and long and frequent fasts,[20] that debilitate and break down the best constitution, (for before he can reach a distant church, and say mass, the day is often far advanced,) the curate complains of feeling himself an exile; and is easily led to seek refuge from his self-weariness in various indulgences that far overstep the barriers of self-denial, and plunge him into the outskirts of that moral darkness which he is sent to enlighten.

Here, if anywhere on earth, the drawbacks of involuntary celibacy are felt by the priest. For such canonical privations he usually searches compensation in the less amiable society of a favourite “sobrina,” or reputed niece, whose kindness hinges on a precarious friendship, and whose artful complacency

But while we regret the evils thus entailed on the curate by the established usage and Romish policy[21] of the sacred orders, we do with pleasure and grateful remembrance assure our readers that, from the individual curates spread over the hill-land of this thinly inhabited country, the foreigner and traveller is always sure to meet with the greatest kindness and hospitality. Further to illustrate the moral and physical aspect of the Sierra, we would mention that once, when on a journey in the interior, we had the good fortune to fall in with a clerical gentleman, whose vigour of mind was not to be overcome by the dreariness of his residence at Cauri, a puna village of cold and shivering aspect. This active and spirited person came up to us as we crossed the celebrated road-way of the Incas, on the heights of Huamalies, and we descended together towards the village of Jesus, only a few leagues distant; but before we could reach this place his fine mule began to trip, then tottered, and soon failed entirely in her hind-legs, as if struck by palsy. She was unsaddled, she immediately stretched herself on the ground, swelled out rapidly, struggled and groaned, and in less than half an hour died.

The priest, who on this occasion showed himself to be not at all unacquainted with practical farriery, felt like one who had lost a tried and valued companion. He soon, however, reconciled himself to a misfortune beyond his power to remedy; and ordering his Indian page to walk down hill, (after he had secured the saddle and trappings of the favourite animal here left to the hungry condors, on the back of the cargo-mule, or bed-mule, driven before us,) the jovial priest mounted the Indian’s little rough poney, and we all arrived safely at our destination early in the evening. The cattle—every hoof—were in distant pastures, and the priest could not be provided with another mule before next morning. We therefore passed the evening agreeably under the same roof, where a pretty-looking white mouse was caged, and kept as a precious remedy and charm against all diseases; and some such wizard power as this timid creature was supposed to possess, these poor mountaineers stood much in need of, as no surgeon or physician ever resides among them. At the village of Jesus we arrived in the dry season, when its nearest plains wore a stunted and withered aspect, and when there was no crop in the ground—not their ordinary potato crop, which indeed is their only one; and which in some years succeeds, while in other years it fails on account of the frost. But, during the rainy season, when frost is unknown in the deep ravines and lofty arable heights and acclivities of the inland country,—where the highest-perched houses are seen, on arriving at them, to have still higher back-grounds,—the Indians, each of whom cultivates his own patch of ground, drive all their cattle to the remotest pastures of their extensive common; because they cannot consent to have them feeding near their doors, and crops, which have no proper enclosures.

The Indians and curates have, for the most part, very opposite interests to support in worldly matters; and they are often seen contending with one another in hard bargains when arranging the business of first-fruits, (for tithes are collected by the state,) marriages, burials, and religious festivals, which latter are closely interwoven with the entire social system of the country. These contentions tend to lower the respectability and sacredness of the proper priestly character; and there are not wanting examples of the Indian carrying his ill-will so far as to desire to be revenged of his ghostly father in a sly way.

On one celebrated occasion the Indians of Huamantanga, situated on the western slope of the Andes, and not far inland from the capital, advised their curate that in a hamlet on a distant hill-top a man was dying; so that, if the curate did not use much haste to assist him, he would necessarily die without confession. The curate replied, “But how am I to reach him?—There is no mule at hand; they are all in the remote common.” An Indian promptly answered, “I will fetch one.” But the curate knew that at that time, on account of the numerous crops, no mule was or could be near. He therefore became suspicious respecting the good faith of those about him, for he was old, and had experience of the perverse and cunning disposition of Indians; but, when the man came to him with a very good-looking mule, he suppressed his sentiments, and asked if the animal was accustomed to be ridden by a curate. “Sabe la mula de cura?” The Indian replied, “La mula es buena,”—the mule is a good one. “Yes,” says the curate; “but let us see if she have acquaintance with a curate.” He now cast off his clerical habit, and, having dressed the Indian as a curate, he made the wily rogue mount the beast; when she reared, kicked, and flung violently, until she dashed him to the ground. To the crafty villager, now caught in his own snare, the churchman good-naturedly observed, “You feel, my man, that the mule, though a good one, yet knows nothing of a curate; and, as there is no other alternative, your friend must survive his present illness, or go down to the grave without confession.” But to the grave he went not on this occasion, for the whole was intended as a trick by which the curate might be deceived to his personal hurt or destruction; but, as far as we could judge, our jolly acquaintance at Jesus was quite a favoured individual, who had nothing to fear from the mule next morning brought for his service.

This gentleman had a great many occupations besides the ordinary professional duties of saying mass, hearing confessions, and absolving sins. He supplied his people with whisky, of which he was the only distiller, and they the principal consumers. He considered it a proud discovery, (of which few of his neighbours were in the secret,) that ardent spirits could be made from barley, reared on the hills at comparatively little expense for the grain-grower; while the usual sugar-cane spirit, or “agua ardiente,” extracted by the help of the inferior copper, or the still worse earthen stills of the interior, had no superiority over it. On the other hand, the “pisco,” or finer flavoured Italia, both of which are procured from the fermented juice of the grape, could only be got, and at great expense of land-carriage, from the coast. He therefore hoped to supersede by his whisky the use of the cane-spirit or pale rum, called “agua ardiente,” or “agua ardiente de caÑa,” because it was sometimes very expensive, and frequently bad; not from any pernicious quality in the saccharine juice, as some natives have imagined, but on account of the defective mode of distillation by poor people, who buy up from the sugar-growers molasses, and a coarse brown sugar, made into little cakes, called “chancaca,” for the purpose of being converted into “agua ardiente,” for which there is always great demand in the colder and mineral districts.

Our speculative priest had a farm in the temperate neighbourhood of a place and curacy called Caina, which lay convenient to his own spiritual flock. Here he cultivated abundance of grain, and possessed extensive pasture grounds. He purchased the “primicia” (first-fruits) of his brethren in Conchucos, and other mountain ranges and elevated districts, wherein church-rates are paid in cattle, as the staple commodity of lands chiefly fitted for pasturage. These cattle he placed on grass, when young and cheap; and when they became in high condition, drove them carefully along the least frequented paths on the verdant heights, to the clover or alfalfa fields in the headland vales of the coast, where they were in demand by the grazier and butcher. He also contracted for so many thousand arobes of sugar yearly, with the planters in Huailas; and by the aid of his Cauri friends and customers, had his sugar conducted to Cerro Pasco at a lower rate of land-carriage than any one else in this line of trade; and, dealing on a large scale, he believed that he could easily undersell the smaller trader.

The Cauri muleteers employed by the priest are staunch hearty fellows who swig off a bottle of whisky, or “agua ardiente,” as if it were less than a mouthful; for they call a bottle a “gota,” or a drop, which shows they hold it as too small a dose for their well-seasoned stomachs.

Our priest also engaged to supply mines, in the adjacent country, with salt for benefiting or preparing metals, which the Caurimen, with their little broad-backed and hardy nags, are used to convey from Huacho on the coasts of the Pacific, by the vale of Sayan, across the Cordillera. He was withal a watch-maker to the neighbouring villages within many leagues of his residence, and knew, if we forget not, how to put the church organ to rights when out of repair.

His people were apparently fond of so stirring and general a speculator; and as they can only grow for themselves, and that in the most sheltered corners, very bad potatoes, with frequent failures in the harvest, (though their common yields good pasture,) their pastor supplied them with maize, (as the miner in isolated localities supplies, at large profits, maize and clothing, &c. to his workmen,) on which, with potatoes, cheese, eggs, and guinea-pigs, they principally support themselves. Butter they rarely know how to churn; and, as the milk is chiefly used for making cheese, it is not often drunk as an article of nutriment, save by those who live in small round booths, that are ever and anon guarded by a host of noisy curs, with hair as shaggy and matted as that which covers the heads of the urchins that feed them. These pastoral huts are scattered over the distant plains and ranges of the mountains throughout the “estancias,” or tracts of hilly pasture-land allotted for rearing and feeding cattle and sheep. At such estancias and huts, the traveller in the interior of Peru has frequently to rest for the night.

The poor Indian owner of a few horned cattle, will rather languish with hunger than slaughter one head of his fold for his private consumption; but he who owns a small flock of sheep can more conveniently sustain himself on meat and “caldo,”—mutton tea, (for vegetables are commonly wanting to make that kind of broth which is to be found at the grain-grower’s,) especially when any traveller passes that way, who buys one of his small sheep—much smaller on the hills than in the warm valleys—for use on the road, and employs the Indian himself to butcher it. These inhabitants of the snowy range, or lofty dales of the Andes, we frequently met,—and they are easily known by their warm clothing, capacious chests, and ruddy complexions,—descending from the frigid regions to the temperate and grain valleys, to barter for the vegetable productions of the agriculturist fresh mutton, which, already skinned and free from offal, they carry on donkeys (animals which in the hands of the Indian escape the cruel stripes and goads inflicted on them by the merciless negro or zambo); and this meat, like beef, being previously dried in the sun, is laid up for use by the dweller of the warm and narrow glen overhung by scorched and rocky acclivities, who places it before the traveller, under the usual name of “charque,” of which we have often eaten with a good appetite.

But to return to our priest: it is to be hoped that, in contributing as much as he did to supply the temporal wants of the hardy attendants at his confessional, he did not irretrievably overlook their Christian and spiritual necessities. From the combined results of his various undertakings, he cherished a glowing expectation of realizing a fortune; but, as we never heard of his success, we think it allowable to suppose that, like other speculators, he must have experienced some severe reverse or serious disappointment, as is quite usual in that country.

When morning arrived, we had our good chupe,—a common and standard dish of the Sierra, consisting of potatoes sliced down and boiled in water or milk, with an addition of eggs, cheese, and, when very nice, butter; but, on many occasions, especially in Huamalies, the traveller only gets yaco-chupe, or water chupe, consisting merely of potatoes sliced and boiled in water, with the addition of a little salt, and a leaflet of wild mint, if at hand, as a useful antidote against flatulency and uneasiness at stomach.

After we had finished breakfast, and found our cattle in readiness, we were sorry to part with our agreeable acquaintance, whose presence and influence furnished us with better fare and accommodation than we usually experienced on our Sierra journeys. This remarkable person was a native of Quito; and whatever may be thought of his enterprise and commercial spirit, like all QuiteÑos we were acquainted with in Peru, he was distinguished for his native talent and ingenuity.

Our way now lay among the ruins of ancient buildings and small towns, with here and there, along the higher ridges, some detached and more stately-looking architectural remains. These relics of the olden times offer far finer samples of masonry than the dry stone and thatched houses of any modern Indian village. The old line of communication between Quito and Cuzco, where we met our Quitenian friend on the preceding day, is a wonderful monument of rude art and industry. This imperial road of the Incas is still perfect in many parts, where the stones appear well fitted and laid in good order, the pavement rising above the level of the plain, and being of a spacious breadth.[22]

We entered one of the houses in “Pueblo Viejo,” or ruins of an old town so called, by the way-side, not far from the celebrated ruins of the ancient city Leon de Huanuco, deemed by the natives as only second to Cuzco—the capital of the empire of the Incas—in the wonders of its masonry. We found the walls of this house, except where defaced by the mischievous hands of man, quite entire, and one angle of the building had yet retained the roof. The windows were small, but the outer door of good size. The walls were as perpendicular as plumb and line in our days could make them, though two stories high. These walls were built with small stones, mostly flags; and between them a thin layer of mud or clay cement. There were, within, stone partitions rising to the level of the outward walls, making the compartments of the house so confined that the roof was easily laid on by long and broad flags projecting from the sides, on which they were steadied by a top-weight, and, meeting at the centre, were so adjusted as to render the closing of the roof perfect. The same appeared to have been the manner in which the floor of the second story had been laid. At the roof, the flags were observed to shoot forwards to some extent outside the wall, doubtless with a view to preserve a perfect equilibrium,—as we have frequently seen on the smaller houses of ancient Indian architecture, which abound near the village of Ambo on the heights of Andaguaylla. The lofty and weather-worn peaks of this estate go to form the ridge of the eastern Cordillera, where the path from these summits descends towards the pueblo of Yuramarca on the verge of the MontaÑa, known in regal times as the asylum of the fugitive criminal.

This hacienda, partaking of the climate of the torrid and frigid zones, and consisting of successive table-lands and steep hills, has frigid summits and ever-blooming dales. Its lakes of Rumichaca, so named because their waters escape under a natural bridge of rock; its Indian moats and fortifications on the heights of Rucrun, and the ruins of which we have just made mention; its woods of alder and perejil; its bamboo thickets, numerous dingles, and silvery waterfalls; its rapacious puma; its herds of deer; its narrow pathways and slippery pastures, from whence the grazing ox so often rolls to the fathomless ravine,—are still present to our mind in one group, with the lovely conjunction of the cultivated vales of Huacar and Huaylas, and the watery cross formed by the confluence of their respective streams, where the river of Huanuco commences its gently winding course. All these crowd into our retrospect, as they are viewed by the imagination in one splendid landscape from the commanding eminences of this fine estate, in contrast with all the boundless mountain-scenery stretching to the west.

Of the houses of the Gentiles, as the natives usually call the antiquated buildings we would wish to describe, (and in the hiding-nooks of which treasure is sometimes found,) the roof is rounded or finished off by stones and clay or earth, so as to throw over the heavy rains that at certain seasons of the year fall in these places. This species of building, as it needed no timber, was naturally recommended in frigid woodless plains and almost inaccessible hill-tops, such as abound in the Sierra or mountain-land of Peru; but in situations like Andaguaylla, where wood surrounds the old Indian houses, they could only adhere to this form of building, on account of their higher perfection in masonry than carpentry, which required the use of tools and art that they evidently did not possess.

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 wall of this description of house they raise a foot or two higher than the roof, so as to give the latter the appearance of a little inclined plane and enclosure; and they leave triangular holes, like those of a dove-house, in this little parapet; within which, when the rains have passed away, and the crops are housed, the peasants stow peas, beans, and maize, until, by direct exposure to a bright sun, these articles are so dried up as to be unhusked without trouble or loss.[23] 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; and mostly all the resident families emigrate during harvest-time to little farms in the vicinity of this pretty Cerrano town, which is considered one of the most agreeable and civilized in all the Sierra, and wherein the better classes, even as in the provincial towns on the coast, desire to adopt the manners of the capital as their standard. Near Tarma is a beautiful cascade, and many peach and apple orchards, with lanes lined with poplars, and perfumed with wild mint and many sweet and fragrant flowers in the wet season, when its hills are verdant, its air pure, and its people joyful. 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.

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. We would not quarrel with these contented people for the moral of this anecdote to the prejudice of their neighbours; but we wish they would themselves make better use of their advantages, and prepare good barley-bread, of which they know not the use, instead of depending upon others for their flour and wheat,—for never did we eat such bad bread, made of putrid flour, as we did in Tarma. Perhaps the immediately preceding visitation of an armed force might have been the occasion of so bad a bread-market. But we can recommend their quails, too soon fatigued to escape by flight, and therefore taken by dogs and unarmed Indians; and their pine apples, and coffee from the near MontaÑa and hacienda of Vitoc, are both very good, the latter excellent.

The centre land of Peru abounds in streams and mountain torrents, subject at certain periods to sudden and tumultuous swells from the bursting of heavy thunder-clouds and continued pouring rain, or pelting hail and thick nocturnal snow-falls, which quickly melt before the shining sun, and fill the rivers to inundation. The consequence of this is, that though the weather may soon after become so fair and showerless as to invite the traveller to proceed on his journey, yet every now and then he may have deep rivers or foaming ravines to cross, where bridges of some sort become indispensable.

When the indigenous race in former times had to pass any river on their route, their engineers supplied, as best they could, the wants of science by that natural sagacity which belongs to their living posterity. When their particular course allowed, they placed their simple bridge near the origin of the stream, or outlet of the lake whence it happened to flow; as we see at the lakes of Lauricocha and Pomacocha. As the waters of the lake can never rise many feet above the usual level, the purpose of a more scientific bridge is served by the Indian method of laying down large stones at short intervals from bank to bank; and, as these stones rise high above the surface of the water, they serve as pillars or supporters, over which are laid transversely large flags, that form an even and safe path for the passage of men and cattle. At the places mentioned, the single stones, too wide apart for stepping-stones, are still to be seen firm in their places; though the transverse flags, probably removed by human hands, are no longer found; at least, at Pomacocha not a vestige of them remains.

A more ingenious bridge of ancient invention, and still used in Peru, is the swing or soga bridge. It is made by ropes twined from the pliable bejuco, twigs of willow, or any other flexible and vegetable filaments; and these are well secured at the ends on the opposite banks of the water: on these, bundles of maguey leaves, broom, or other long-branched and yielding shrubs, are laid crosswise, and bound very closely and firmly by tough ligaments or slips of the maguey leaf (“cabuia”), which answer as well as the best cordage. In this way the bridge is made of sufficient breadth for foot-passengers; and a hand-rope runs along each side of it, by which the traveller can steady himself while walking across. A specimen of this sort is the soga bridge of modern Huanuco. At Oroya also, over the river Jauja, is a very strong one of this kind for cargo-mules to cross upon. The ropes, or rather cables, extending from bank to bank, are made of bullock’s hide; and the cross-bars, bound down with thongs, are of squared pieces of wood, and broad enough to allow the animals to pass with confidence. As this bridge is kept up at unusual expense, and situated on the post-road to the interior, we paid toll at it for passing our saddle-beasts. The rope or swing-bridge is very convenient where the river is too broad to be spanned by any trees to be found in the neighbourhood; but where the stream is not much too wide to be crossed by long trees and beams, of which the temperate altitudes afford appropriate materials in the wood known by the name of perijil or roble, the natives manage to form a strong and pretty durable bridge, by constructing a large and massy stone breast-work on each side the water. In these bulwarks they fix strong timbers, which are made to project over the stream as far as may be required, while the larger portion of the same timbers is covered by a heavy weight of stones and earth: a tree of ordinary length is found sufficient to overlay the centre of the water; as, thus placed, it rests its ends on the projecting timbers already well secured in the midst of the masonry at the opposite banks. These, the most common of all Peruvian bridges, are constructed and kept in repair by order of the prefect of each department, who issues the same to sub-prefects or governors of provinces; and these again send out the entire community of adjacent villages to work under the direction of their respective alcaldes and regidores.

There yet remains a very curious and portable bridge to be mentioned, now falling into disuse, but of which a specimen may be yet seen at Viroy, on the river Huacar, in the department of Junin: this antique relic is named “Guaro.” It is constructed by extending a single strong lazo from one side of the stream to the other, which is well secured to the trunk of a tree, or any such fixture, on the opposite banks: from this a leathern bag, not unlike in appearance to a canvass draw-bucket used aboard ship, is suspended, so as to run easily on the lazo; the passenger sits in the bag, and slides himself quietly across. Bridges of this description are said to have been exceedingly useful to the Montonera, or irregular patriot troops, during the late war that ended in the separation of Peru from Spain.

Another contrivance for passing lakes and rivers in the Andes is the “balsa,” a very small canoe made of rushes. Its surface is level; and when the paddler and only one passenger steady themselves upon it, the canoe is pressed down into the water to within about an inch or two of its surface,—so, at least, was the only one we had occasion to enter; as, upon a journey during the floods of the wet season, we swam our cattle, and crossed ourselves in a balsa of rushes over the river of San Juan, on the plains of Bombon, near Pasco.

The water-courses of the ancient Peruvians are traced along the chasms of rocks and sides of arid eminences in the vicinity of the coast, and in the dry intermediate glens. These aqueducts sometimes appear marvellously constructed among the most rugged crags, and in some points are raised to an astonishing elevation. They are reared from very slender foundations here and there among the now receding, now approaching, shelves of the rocks and cliffs. These piles of irregular mason-work are fabricated with small and thin stones, or light flags, leaning upon every favourable projection along the steep against the front of which the fabric rises; and all the works thus constructed are so solidly and closely united, that after the lapse of ages, and in the land of earthquakes too, they are still in numberless instances nearly perfect.

One of the most striking of these aqueducts is about eight leagues from Lima, on the low road to Alcacota by Caballeros, on a high rocky acclivity, along the base of which runs the road, close by the winding of the river Chillon or Carabaillo, which descends from the Cordillera, by Obrajillo. It is also very usual in the temperate valleys, where the hills are flanked with soil, and clothed in vegetation, to meet here and there the ruins of small villages with files of successively rising platforms on the hollow side of a hill. These tiers of artificial flats, or gardens, are generally only a few yards in breadth; but in length greater or less, in proportion to the dimensions of the semi-circular sweep of the recess capable of cultivation.

In rearing up and constructing these gardens the one above the other, like the pews in the gallery of a church or boxes in a theatre, the ancient Indian must have begun his work by erecting a stone wall on the lower part of the slope, or more even ground, that formed the base of the series; and, as it was in process of rising to the desired height, the earth must have been scraped down from the side of the acclivity, to fill up the space thus partitioned off into a level bank or platform: then, behind this first level was raised another stony partition, and more earth again scraped down; and so on successively, till the uppermost and last tier of these little and tasteful gardens was completed.[24]

By such means these industrious natives always preserved deep soil, which they might dig up and turn over at pleasure, bringing a new surface of earth to yield a new crop without necessity of manure; and by the same contrivance they preserved from the washings of the frequent and heavy rains, the treasure of vegetable loam which they thus so laboriously and patiently amassed.

As we descend from the inner regions of the country, and get down among the arid and naked granite mountains near the coast, we see the ruins of Pagan dwellings showing themselves in the crevices of the rocks, where no plant is seen on the waste land, save a few scattered cacti, and no moving creature except the lizard that basks, and the kite that waits its motions, on the crumbling ruins and circumjacent blocks which have been rolled from their original seats on the face of the steep. And as we approach still nearer the capital, where Glen Rimac unfolds its wide and fertile acres of deep alluvial soil, we see that this goodly land, when denied water, puts on a look of desert sterility; but that it only requires irrigation—it needs no manure—to yield productive sugar-cane, and to throw forth choice lucern and Indian corn, that waves above the head of the overseer as he passes on horseback through the fields, superintending labourers.

As we enter these plains, susceptible of indefinite improvement and vast returns, we are everywhere surrounded with the vestiges of antiquity, particularly with the ruins of guacas, that at a distance look like little hills or knolls scattered over the open plains; but we think that they were once used as so many tombs of the Sun-worshippers of the land. In some of these mouldering monuments there are yet to be found internal chambers or sepulchral vaults, entered by very narrow openings; and, from these labyrinths, mummies, cloths of different colours, various domestic utensils, and sacred figures and idols, have been not unfrequently extracted. We have in our possession a neat silver idol in the figure of an Inca, with a llama of the same material and workmanship, procured from a guaca, and presented to us by our friend the Rev. Dr. Don Lucas Pellicer, an eminent and classical LimeÑo, of whose merits as a scholar and patriotic statesman his country feels justly proud. Many other curious relics of an ancient people are dug out from the same edifices, of which the assiduous Don Mariano Rivero has made the most extensive and interesting collection which is now extant in Peru; and with correct drawings and descriptions of these he has, for some time back, proposed to favour the public, and to enrich the history of his native country.

The tombs from which relics of this kind are usually taken are not, however, confined to the neighbourhood of Lima, Truxillo, or the coast in general, where their structure of moulded earth and sun-burnt clay is best preserved on account of the absence of rain. Such remains are still seen in some parts of the Sierra; and in speaking of the guacas, (which he conceives to have been temples) in his “Historia natural y moral de las Indias,” vol. ii. p. 128, Acosta tells us that “there were in Cuzco[25] more than four hundred temples of idols, looked upon as sacred earth, and all places were full of mysteries. As they” (the Incas) “went on with their conquests, so they introduced their own guacas and rites into all that state. The Great Being whom they adored was the Viracocha Pachayachic, who is the Creator of the world; and after him the Sun; and thus they said that the Sun, like all the other guacas, received virtue and being from the Creator, and that they were intercessors with him.”