Religious prejudices.—No faith with heretics.—Corpse of an Englishman cast into the street by the pious mob.—English supposed to have been buried with money in the island of San Lorenzo.—New cemetery, and Latin inscription for the English burial-ground.—Religious disadvantages of the British in Peru.
Among a people who suffer so large a privation of moral discipline as the Peruvians, we naturally look for a corresponding prevalence of religious prejudices. Some years ago, when we lived in one of the most delightful climates in the interior of Peru, we were greatly annoyed by our neighbours of the two beautiful villages Ambo and Tomay-quichoa. The inhabitants of the former would insist that we drove from the estate of Andaguaylla, upon which we resided, the worshipful saints, (little painted images dressed in gaudy rags,) and withdrew the workmen, or “yanacones,”[11] from their little gods and religion. It was not till after we were accused by the alcalde of Ambo of being a kind of demon or goblin, that the people of the estate were scared into horror and desertion; or that we found out, through the kindness of our Spanish major-domo, that the alarmed men, women, and children on the estate had over-night rescued the saints from supposed danger, by piously carrying them away to a town about four leagues distant. Next morning we were left with only one workman; and he, being an old and maimed soldier, had but one hand.
This wanton and unjust attack took a legal form, and was parried off by legal measures with the timely interposition of that enlightened and benevolent citizen of the world, Doctor Don Antonio de Valdizan, himself a counsellor of state, a patron of learning, and one of the enterprising miners, and illustrious men of Peru. After this fray was finally settled in our behalf, the alcalde persecutor became our avowed and steady friend. But, on the other hand, the mestizos of Tomay-quichoa, nettled at the failure of the Ambinos, allowed us, with their usual malicious forethought, to go to great expense in fencing, building, and cultivating sugar-cane and other productions, before they showed their determination, without any provocation given by us, to baffle our labours, and ruin our fortune, by appropriating to their own use the water for irrigating the fields under crop, thus annihilating the young plantations.
We remonstrated against their unfair proceedings, but to no purpose. They fabricated false accusations, and involved us reluctantly in a law-suit of two years’ continuance, which, to the honour of the judge of the district, the learned and respected Dr. Mata, was ultimately terminated by an equitable sentence.
These good people believed we were but Jews, whom the Spaniards greatly abominate; and they conceived that, if they did not get rid of our neighbourhood in time, other Englishmen, and therefore, as they ignorantly supposed, other Jews, would settle there after us; and by proceeding to disgust us with the place, and scare us away in due season, they acted in the spirit of the proverb, “El prevenido nunca es vencido,”—The wary is never foiled. But it is a subject of deep interest to reflect on the practical example thus afforded of the working of that sovereign maxim, “No faith with heretics.” We here see, that although a perverted sense of religion did not extinguish the perception of an obvious right, yet it overcame the sense of wrong towards the imagined Jew, and in this respect suppressed the moral feeling of equity.
Such banefully erroneous views must gradually give way before the spreading light of civilization, and a more extended international intercourse. The bad moral effect of seeing men, influential and respected while living, consigned to the indignity of a canine grave when dead, cannot but be perceived and felt by the surviving friends and countrymen of the deceased, whose religious persuasions are distinct from those of the people of the land in which they are sojourners.
We may mention, that the first English gentleman’s remains we were called upon to accompany to an unhallowed burying-place, were those of one who died in an inland city remarkable for the hospitality and kindness of its inhabitants; and, after answering a few questions regarding the religious creed of the deceased, the price of the interment was settled, we think, at fifty dollars, and then the good-natured bishop, with a degree of liberality seldom exercised towards dissenters from the Romish ritual in Catholic countries, yielded his sanction to let the corpse have Christian burial. But, subsequently to this permission, a mob was collected in the night, and the body was cast out from the church to the middle of the street, where our obliging friend Don Mariano Sanches told us it lay. On the following morning, in a city where humanity was subdued by the ugly suggestions of superstition, there were only two good Samaritans. These gave their attendance at the stranger’s funeral, when the only two or three Britons at that time in the place accompanied the body outside the city, to find it a grave under the shelter of an orangery, where its mouldering bones could not by any chance come into contact with those of the pious agitators, who would fain persuade themselves that, while they live in harmony with the living heretic, the mere sight of the worm that nibbles at his interred remains is quite sufficient to endanger their own eternal condition.
In the capital of the republic a better example is at length given. Through the meritorious exertions of the British Consul-general, B. H. Wilson, Esq. the Peruvian government have ceded to the English a proper piece of cemetery-ground[12] at Bella Vista, an agreeable and convenient situation between Lima and the port of Callao. Formerly all the English, not Roman Catholics, who died in the capital or port, were interred in the barren island of San Lorenzo, where the bodies were exposed to the insults of the most vile of mankind,—miscreant convicts confined to the island for crimes that expel them from the society of honest men, and who believe that the English heretic, like the ancient Peruvian pagan, must needs have laid with him in the grave instruments or utensils of his avocation while living; and, therefore, they are led to expect that, our English merchant’s grave must be a place of deposit for a full share of those dollars he was seen always to handle, and to ship away in boxes to his native land. 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. Let the worst befal them,—should they come to die on the “banquillo,” (a rude stool on which the criminal is placed at the hour of military execution,) yet they are not at the last discouraged like the stranger and Protestant. They have the aid of the priest when going to execution; and, when gone, their carnal remains may rest in sanctified earth. There will not probably be wanting on such occasions some godmother mas fea que la noche,—more ugly than night,—or some friend, who will remember the necessities of the departed highwayman whose days were closed in the Plaza, and will charitably pay the needy friar’s mass (value one dollar) to extricate his soul from perdition.
Our Consul-general, ever zealous in the discharge of his public duties, not only saw the inconvenience to his own countrymen, but the evil result of the former mode of interment in the island of San Lorenzo, and the great disadvantage that British subjects laboured under in having no place of public worship according to the forms of their own national church. These evils he endeavoured to counteract by procuring the grant of a cemetery as mentioned; and by having church-service read at the Consulate-general every Sunday, as is done by captains and commanders in such of Her Majesty’s vessels of war as have no chaplains on board them.
By this arrangement the most incredulous or prejudiced Peruvians have an opportunity of knowing that our Consul-general, and such of his countrymen as do not neglect the public homage offered at the Consulate to the Creator, do really feel an interest beyond the grave, and have a hope in Heaven as well as the deluded vulgar, who long believed (and the absurdity seems to have been inculcated as a political engine of some power by those who must have known better,) that the English were but a species of the ourang-outang, with tails like the lower animals; and consequently it was quite plain, on the alleged evidence of comparative anatomy, that their ultimate destination could not be higher than that of the beasts that perish.
The name of Drake, and the famous treasure-ship Caca-fuego, are now forgotten; but we are assured that in Payta the name of Anson is associated with sacrilegious recollections, and is mentioned by the lower class of natives with details that awaken feelings very hostile to our countrymen. At this sea-port, on the northern shores of Peru, on a certain festival and anniversary-day, when the image of the Virgin Mary is taken out in procession, we are told that it is shown with a patch of red wax on the neck, marking the wound once inflicted in this part by a sabre-blow from some disorderly sailor of Anson.
An amiable and well-informed LimeÑa, in whose house many of the literati daily meet, has laughed heartily at the good old times, when she related that, when a young girl, (and she is not yet more than middle-aged,) neither she herself, nor her playmates, ventured to approach a certain English sailor-boy without holding up their hands and making the sign of the cross with the fore-finger and thumb. This lady’s mother took a great interest in the sailor-boy, seeing that he was fair and handsome; and greatly regretted his not being a Christian, an expression by which she meant, of course, a Roman Catholic.
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. A nearer acquaintance with the English character, the insensible but gradual progress of knowledge, the general extension and assimilating tendency of commerce, the softening effects of time, and, in a word, the revolution itself, which opened up a channel for general improvement, are so many circumstances that conspire together to render the already widely extended connexion of Great Britain with Peru, every day more cordial in the minds of the natives of this important republic; and when the country becomes more settled under the direction of a wise government, such as its friends are now in expectation of enjoying under the protection of his excellency General Santa Cruz, it is to be hoped that, this international friendship may be rendered still more intimate, and mutually beneficial, than it is at present.
Should the projected plan of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company[13] be happily carried into execution, from which a high moral influence may be reasonably expected, and our commercial dealings with Peru be further extended, then will the religious wants of British residents become proportionably more deserving of public attention. The individual labour and exertions of these enterprising Britons, in a distant part of the globe, contribute to encourage manufactures and industry in their native land; and, though separated from their kindred and country by a wide-spreading ocean, they are rarely so happy as when they think of that home to which it is their daily wish to return, and never cease to feel that once their hearts and warmest sympathies were English. But, unhappily, to keep the heart pure in the midst of the greatest national relaxation of morals,—the strongest allurements to vice,—with few incitements to virtue, and no effective encouragement to religion,—is an achievement far too great for the average of mankind.
When young men destined for foreign countries leave home at an early age, they are naturally more defenceless against the insidious inroads of corruption, and more open to new impressions flowing in upon them from surrounding objects. Having arrived in Spanish America, they soon forsake the Protestant respect for the Sunday, and yet scorn the Catholic sacrifice of the mass; and then they insensibly enter upon the formation of new habits grafted on the manners and customs of the country, in which they are as yet but strangers.
The elder and more considerate British residents in Peru, we have reason to know, feel and regret the want of an established clergyman regularly and duly trained to discharge the duties of his vocation, and who should command a becoming degree of personal influence, arising from his professional character, learning, and piety. No individual of the commercial body—we would even venture to affirm, that no consular exertions in this spiritual department of duty—can provide for a regular attendance on church-service; because, on such topics, every counting-house clerk considers himself quite as knowing as the Consul, or any other secular reader of church-service, to whom as a divine they will not voluntarily accord much deference or attention, however distinguished that officiating individual may be for his high character, general intelligence, religious sincerity, and private virtue.
