Journey from Lima to Pasco by Obrajillo.—Diversity of air and climate.—Canta, a locality favourable to consumptive individuals.—Obrajillo, residence of muleteers.—Relay of mules, and payment in advance.—Cultivation and crops.—Ascent to and pass of the Cordillera—Veta, or Cordillera sickness.—Indian hut.—Muleteers’ lodgings on the Puna.—Wallay.—Diesmo.—Pasco.
We left Lima about noon, and rode along a broad and stony road-way by the skirts of the hills, now, in the month of January, dry and sterile masses of soil and rock. To our left extended the fine but neglected valley of Chillon, once highly cultivated, and susceptible of rich improvement. We passed several Indian edifices, constructed of mud cast in huge moulds, which yet in some degree preserve their forms, notwithstanding the ravages committed upon them by time and earthquakes. These always appear above the level of irrigated land, as if intended wisely to avoid the reach of marsh effluvia, so eminently pernicious to the health of the aborigines.
We arrived in good time at Caballeros, distant six leagues from Lima, and slept very soundly, in defiance of the ceaseless barking of dogs, tinkling of mules’ bells, and noisy chattering of negroes. On the morning following we started at an early hour, with a hope that before the sun came out in his strength we might get over the parched ground of the Rio-Seco. From the heights of this hill-bound recess,—so dreary to the eye, gloomy to the imagination, and everywhere strewed with blanched bones and skeletons of wearied, foundered, and famished animals, left here to perish,—there opens suddenly and at once on the traveller’s delighted vision an unexpected view of the irrigated enclosures of the village of Yanga, close to the winding river, whose banks are clothed in vivid verdure, and garnished with trees always shady and evergreen.
From this cheering eminence, in times of the greatest misrule, the traveller can indulge in the delightful feeling of security, as he casts a backward glance over the dark furnace of the Rio Seco, so appropriate for the infernal deeds of banditti for which it is celebrated, and then descends in good spirits to Alcacota and Yanga, congratulating himself on having got safely through a desolate and perilous route, where wayfarers are often plundered and abused, and, when they offer inefficient resistance, sacrificed and murdered.
Two leagues higher than Yanga are the church and ruins of Santa Rosa de Quive, overlooking the only habitable house of this stage, (a sort of tambo or tavern,) by the banks of a mountain torrent which descends to join the main river of the valley, from the high hills on the right, through an intersecting ravine. In the arid season on the upland, it is nearly dried up; but, in the wet, its turbid waters roll with impetuous course, hurling immense round stones along their channel, and sending forth sounds that may be heard by the traveller at the tambo,—telling him he cannot ford the stream till the river lowers, but must cross a bad bridge of pieces of timber with some earth and sticks, laid over a narrow part of the ravine, considerably higher up than the usual ford.
On the opposite side of this stream is Santa Rosa; here are several houses overlooking a small wooded plain between it and the main river, where men are always employed in cutting and charring wood, which is sent to Lima, fourteen leagues distant. The disease which the natives call Uta, a species of cancer well known among chimney-sweeps in England, prevails in this place. We have also seen here the most severe ague, originating at the season when it rains in the hills of the Cordillera (for here it never rains), and when the torrent alluded to inundates, and overspreads with large stones, sand, and slime, the flat ground near its disemboguement.
Four leagues higher up than Santa Rosa is a place called Yaso, once a flourishing hacienda, with a garden where lucumas, pacays, guayavas, and sour oranges are still seen; but where, in place of a flourishing estate, there are now but a few huts of cane and hurdles, partially bedaubed with mud, and furnished with open corridors, under which the muleteers and travellers stretch themselves to sleep: but as lucern is scarce, and as there is no natural pasture, few choose to pass the night here; though many call for a glass of chicha, or country beer made from maize, to quench their thirst while resting here at noon, when the sun is reflected powerfully from the towering and naked hills around.
The river water being always turbid in time of inland rains, the traveller is tempted to drink of a pure and crystalline stream that here issues from the rock; but the good-natured inmate of some wretched hut warns him of his danger, and assures him, if he drink that water, he will be seized with the severe disease called verrugas, or a painful warty eruption, peculiar to certain quebradas; and Yaso, it may be kept in mind, is one of the localities subject to this sore visitation. A couple of leagues still higher up the “quebrada,” or glen, is the resting-place—Huaramayo; a little green spot, with a few neat huts surrounded with plots of lucern, and many rugged fragments from the neighbouring steeps.
We observed that one of these humble dwellings, made of mud, cane, and wicker, was thatched with a sort of living lichen; a simple style of architecture, which of itself tells us that here the climate is still dry and warm, and the place sheltered from rude winds or storms.
We have seen the cottager, who occupied the hut immediately at the foot of the arduous ascent which here commences, look with indescribable complacency as we, from his little corridor, gazed up in admiration at beholding the rain pour in torrents a few hundred yards above us, while his own snug retreat was hardly reached by a gentle sprinkling, which a Limenian would call “agua bendita,” or holy water, which imparted softness and salubrity to the air, and gave longevity to the aged inmate of the cottage.
This now bent and year-worn, but still active and lively octogenarian, was in his youth a shoemaker in Lima; and being attacked with hÆmoptysis, or spitting of blood, and pronounced incurable by the doctors, he sought for the benefit to be derived from change of climate, and found, after repeated trials, that as often as he returned to Lima his disease of the lungs was renewed, but again removed as often as he arrived at this elfin abode, twenty leagues from the capital. For these good reasons he resolved to settle here, a favoured site where even ague is unknown; and had, when we saw him, already attained a ripe yet energetic old age.
Were this spot a spacious plain like Glen-Rimac, enjoying the climate which it now does, it would be as calm and bright and beauteous as a druidical paradise, and we might even conceive how man might live in such a climate and on such a soil to an antediluvian measure of years.
From Yanga to Huaramayo, the glen through which lies the road to Cerro Pasco by Canta is extremely narrow and confined, except at Santa Rosa, where it is somewhat more open. The way often recedes from, though it is generally in sight of, the bed of the river; and is bound in on each side by lofty and sterile granite mountains, which, on the left side of the river as we ascend, are frequently intersected with narrow, perpendicular veins that arise from the level of the water to the very summit of the mountain, and, from the road, present a ferruginous appearance, suggesting the idea of grand conductors of the electric fluid. It is only by continued irrigation that the few patches and strips of soil, which at this distance here and there relieve the tedium of a rugged way, are compelled to throw forth their vegetable luxuriance.
At Huaramayo the temperature is intermediate between that of Sierra and the coast; and, as in the warm inland valleys in the centre of the Andes, so here, in a region of corresponding benignancy on the western acclivity of the same great mountain pile, we have the tree called molle, or mulli, in abundance along the river’s edge. This tree is much prized as fuel; and the sugar-refiners of the interior use the ashes from it, in preference to those from any other wood, on account of their higher alkaline properties, and consequent efficiency in purifying the cane juice while being boiled down to a proper consistence to be cast in moulds. The Inca tribe, as we learn from Garcilaso de la Vega,[26] made a highly valued and medicinal beer, which some of the Indians of the interior still occasionally prepare, from the clusters of small-grained fruit that hang gracefully and abundantly from this pretty tree. We have said that the climate here corresponds to that of the warm central valleys of the Andes; but though analogous in several respects, yet there is this marked difference, that at Huaramayo, and other headlands like Huaramayo, as, for example, Surco, on the San Mateo route to the Sierra from Lima, there is neither winter nor summer, but one perpetual spring. It does not rain here for several months in the year, as in the more inland vales; but it agrees with them in being out of the sphere of frosts, and exempted from the raw fogs and sultry heat of the coast. At Surco, Huaramayo, and other similar localities in narrow glens extending from the coast to the Cordilleras, the sun appears to rise late and to set early, for it is only for a few hours in the middle of the day that it shines strongly between the perpendicular and lofty hills of the valley; and the mid-day heat arising from the powerful reflection of the sun’s rays on the bare rocks is succeeded by a cool and agreeable evening. Here then the atmospherical currents of mountains and coast meet and neutralize each other,—the extremes of both disappear: and the result is a delicious climate for the convalescent, whose tender organs require a gentle uniform temperature, alike removed from the extremes of heat and cold, dryness and moisture; and he who has the precaution or prudence to keep in the shade while the sun crosses the vale in the middle of the day, may, in truth, enjoy undisturbed all the curative qualities of a delightful and renovating temperature. With this important fact the delicate inhabitants of Lima are perfectly acquainted, and they are accustomed to resort to the cabezadas, or headlands of valleys, where these verge on the joint air of mountains and coast; as, for example, Matucana, the favourite resting-place of phthisical and hÆmoptic individuals, who find themselves obliged to retire from the capital, in order to recover health by visiting those celebrated sites of convalescence—Tarma and Jauja.
Close to Huaramayo, and by the old line of road, begin the steep ascents called the Paxaron, because of the number of paroquets always seen about this place. The path along their acclivity is narrow, fatiguing, and precipitous, to very near the village of Obrajillo, a distance of several leagues. On the airy hill-tops, that overlook this way and the ravine below it, are several villages which are only to be approached by a zigzag and arduous track; and hereabouts, if anywhere on the Canta route, are to be seen examples of the terrific in scenery, for those whose eyes are unaccustomed to the native ruggedness of bold and alpine regions. A young gentleman of our acquaintance, who was familiar with nothing but downs and lawns, was affected at the steeps of the Paxaron with a giddiness that, for some time after, disordered his imagination; and we have seen travellers clash at the worst passes with no small risk in the encounter, where the moving party on the outer verge of the declivity was obliged, for want of room, to brush rudely against the other party standing still on the higher and safer side of the road: and here too, when a weak or weary beast trips, the rider is in danger of toppling over the brink; and the want of parapets makes the road all but impracticable in a dark night.
Canta and Obrajillo are situated in the same opening among the mountains: the latter is entirely the residence of muleteers, whose strong and active women share in the labours of the field; while Canta, on an eminence, is a provincial town, and the seat of a governorship.
The village of Obrajillo is built in a sort of irregular hollow near the bed of a small river, surrounded by arable hills receding and expanding as they rise towards the loftier summits, and therefore affording better ventilation than is to be found in any part of the valley between this and Yanga.
From Yanga to Huaramayo, the hills, as we formerly stated, are doomed to perpetual sterility, and are all unacquainted with the genial influence of dew or rain; but across the summits of the Paxaron we meet with footsteps of that plentiful herbage, with which, at Canta and Obrajillo, the straths and steeps are richly covered.
As Canta is considered a sort of hospital for the ailing people from Lima, it may be proper to remark, that in a medical point of view, it is invested with a great deal of interest, and that it is built on a hill whose base skirts the village of Obrajillo; while, from the plaza of the lower village to the higher town, the ascent is no more than about thirty minutes’ walk. Canta, however, is considered to enjoy a far purer air than Obrajillo; and, as it is only twenty-five leagues from the capital, the hectic, phthisical, and slowly convalescent Limenians, are wont to prefer this to remoter districts. By the people of Obrajillo and Canta, alfalfa, or lucern, is everywhere cultivated near the river and in their little enclosures, and the surrounding hills are covered with pasture: the lower declivities and gentle slopes produce good crops of wheat, beans, potatoes, maize, &c.
Here the culen is one of the most common shrubs, and the natives make a tea of its leaves which is deemed an excellent stomachic. During the wet season flowers and flowering shrubs are spread abroad with liberal profusion; but the trees are too few to supply the wants of the inhabitants, whose houses are therefore constructed at great trouble; being obliged to convey timber from distant places and deep ravines. The stone or adobe walls and thatched roofs of the small villages or pueblos of the Sierra characterize, with only one exception, the buildings of Obrajillo. The dwelling-houses are employed for stowing potatoes, maize, and whatever eatables the residents may be blessed with; and, when the family retire to rest, most of them lie down on sheep-skins wherever they can find room in their disorderly apartments. We need hardly observe that every traveller on these roads must carry with him his own blanket or ponchos to repose on at night.
At Obrajillo there are in all about sixty families; and we saw a maudlin school-master among them with only six pupils, whom he taught, sub Jove, in an open corral.[27] He was looked upon as a savant by the villagers, some of whom found him useful in drawing up their accounts; and we observed that he spoke about the zoology of Aristotle when a friend of ours displayed his more practical zeal and science in collecting and preserving specimens of ornithology, in search of which he frequently waded the river, gun in hand; and a pretty sight it was to see the delicately plumaged diving ducks exhibit wonderful agility, in passing the most foaming rapids. This village of arrieros, or muleteers, is about half-way between Lima and that great source of mineral wealth the Cerro Pasco. From the capital to the Cerro a rider on a good traveller will arrive in four days without injury to himself or beast, and this is considered good work; but we have known the journey from the Cerro to Lima performed in about fifty hours: this again is a work of over-exertion for the man, who is very likely to incapacitate one or perhaps two animals in the undertaking. It may be said, in general, that on a rough and hilly road a league an hour is a fair rate of travelling for a fresh beast on any ordinary journey in the interior of Peru.
The traveller cannot have any dealing with the muleteers without discovering that he is entirely in their power; and that they will furnish him no cattle for his journey, unless he pay them money on account, or “adelantado,” beforehand. Of course he will have to advance some part of the mule-hire before he can budge on another man’s beast; but he should not be ignorant of the Peruvian rule on such occasions, which is, to suspect every man to be a cheat till very certain of the contrary,—a rule which is entirely indispensable. Acting upon the opposite English precept,—to believe every man honest till we find him a rogue,—we were once cheated by the military commandant of Junin, who, being paid “adelantado” for two beasts for the next morning’s journey, furnished one of them with only three legs, the fourth being so contracted that it could not reach the ground. He maintained—and, as he was the first authority in the place, he did so successfully—that as he only agreed to provide two beasts, without respect to quality, he would neither replace the lame nag, nor return our dollars.
The arrieros with cargoes usually take nine or ten days, and sometimes more, from Lima to Pasco, as they make short stages, consulting the ease of their cattle and convenience of lucern or pasture; and at Obrajillo they commonly rest a day at least, to refresh or perhaps relay some of their cattle, before they proceed to brave the toils of the Cordillera. From Obrajillo to Culluai, a small village near the foot of the Cordillera, there are three leagues; and the road leads through a rock-bound passage by the course of a river with a rugged bottom and ruffled stream. There are one or two bad passes to be surmounted in this part of the journey, from the summit of one of which a panting pony laden with part of our baggage once fell over, and broke his neck in the fall. This narrow quebrada or break, is not destitute of interest to the botanist; as in the rainy season, amongst the interspaces of the stones and crags, flowering shrubs of considerable beauty and variety present themselves: indeed, the highest Cordillera entrances are not without their hardy flowers amid the shelves of the rocks. We may remark that, between the cliffs in the neighbourhood of Culluai, may be seen samples of those tiers of gardens, built up one above the other on the face of the acclivity, to which we alluded in our preceding chapter, “on the general features of the Sierra,” as surviving proofs of the industry of the ancient Peruvians.
At this same altitude many susceptible persons begin to feel inconvenience from the rarefaction of the atmosphere, and from want of provision for the stomach, if they happen not to have their own alforjas, or saddle-bags, properly provided with necessaries for the journey. It is only in the puna and table-lands that meat is sure to be had, with, perhaps, potatoes and cancha or toasted maize; but, should the traveller ask for any thing else, he is told “Manam cancha”—there is none.
Between Culluai on one side, and Casacancha, an estancia with a mean hut or two, on the other side of the Cordillera, the distance is five leagues; and about a league or more from Culluai we begin to ascend by the Viuda, or Widow, a towering mountain that stands out as it were apart from the other great masses that at this point group together to form a portion of the great Western Cordillera: and it may be sometimes convenient to know, that on the right-hand side of the Viuda, as we ascend the road that winds round its flank, there is concealed in a recess close to the line of snow the Indian hamlet of Yantac.[28] Before the arriero attempts to ascend the Cordillera, he anoints, as we have seen him do, his cattle over the eyes and on the forehead with an unguent made of tallow, garlic, and wild marjoram, as a preventive against what he calls the veta; attributing the effects of atmospherical rarefaction to a subterraneous veta, or vein of a noxious ore or metal, which, he believes, diffuses in the air of the cold summits and heights its mephitic and poisonous particles.
The Cordillera crossed at noon, and in dry weather, is a grand sight. When we first crossed it the sun was out in full blaze; and, though the mountains of snow lay on every side of our way, we felt quite warm, but we observed that in the shade the cold was very chilling.
It was to us peculiarly exhilarating to gaze on so many snowy monuments reflected in all their sublimity from the green waters of the lakes beneath, thickly thronged with sportive ducks and cormorants. These reservoirs of rain and melted snow, which here and there challenge the traveller’s admiration, are like so many appropriate mirrors, successively disclosed to the eye among the concavities and basins that separate the majestic heads of the hoary Andes.
In a neighbouring and far grander part of the Cordillera, to which on another occasion we clambered by a narrow, rocky, and steep path, we were caught in a sudden fall of thick mist, which at once unrolled its folds, and threw over the broad light of a clear and frosty morning the dark obscurity of night. This transition was accompanied by no thunder or lightning, or sensible commotion of any kind; and after the darkness continued a few minutes, on looking upwards towards the firmament a scantling of rays began to shoot from among the clouds, and a certain though ill-defined body of light could be distinguished as the centre whence those rays seemed to emanate, when, in an instant after, the peak of a mountain—a crystallized pyramid of snow—glistened to view, and shone in the fullest blaze of brilliancy. With such celerity did the cloudy curtain drop and vanish on the face of the deep dark lake of Pomacocha, that the whole scene appeared but as a vision of enchantment.
But to return: we safely crossed the last rib of the Cordillera, and descended into the plain of Casacancha, where we did not stop, but pressed forward three leagues beyond this common halting-place to take up our night’s quarters at Palcomayo, another common stage or resting-place for travellers on this unprovided though much frequented thoroughfare.
But we had not left Casacancha far behind, when one of our fellow-travellers experienced the most distressing headache: his face became turgid, the temporal arteries throbbed with violence, the respiration was difficult, and it seemed to him as if the chest was too narrow for its contents. The other gentleman complained less; it was only a vexatious headache that disturbed him, but his eyes were blood-shot. The writer was still differently affected from either of his fellow-travellers. His headache was moderate; but his extremities soon became quite cold as the sun declined; the skin shrank, and then came on a sense of sickness and oppression about the stomach and heart, with a short, hurried, and panting respiration. His kind associates on this occasion forgot their own ailments in attending to his more urgent wants. They had him carefully wrapped in warm sheep-skins, which formed the usual bedding of the poor Indian family within, and renovated his strength by a cordial basin of hot tea. In this manner, and immersed at the time in the pungent smoke that filled the whole hut, the natural warmth of the extremities and surface was soon restored, so that he became comparatively easy, and passed a better night than either of his two obliging friends.
The servant intrusted with the cargo-mule dropped behind; and not being acquainted with the route, or able to keep sight of us, he went off the road, wandered into a neighbouring valley, Caraguacayan, and did not appear till morning. The gentlemen alluded to had, therefore, to shift for the night as less provided travellers usually do. Their alforjas (saddle-bags) served them as pillows, their pellons and saddle-cloths for beds, and their ponchos as their best covering. They thus lay cooped up on the floor of a dirty little hovel, too small to allow them to stretch their limbs without risk of burning their toes in the hot ashes around the fire-place. The sharp wind pierced through a hundred crevices of the rude wall, and was ill excluded from the low and narrow door-way by a tattered sheep-skin fitted with thongs into a hurdle-frame.
Restless, chirping guinea-pigs—constant inmates of every wretched hut,—persevered during the early part of the night in a bold attack on our bread magazines; pulling at our wallets, placed under our heads, and nibbling at their contents with a degree of boldness and fearlessness which we believe hunger only could inspire. These assailants had scarcely left us to repose in the silence of night, when the wakeful cock from a chink in the wall (originally occupied by an image or household saint) began his repeated crowing at unmeasured periods till well on towards grey morning, when all were in motion: the shepherd rounded his flock, guarded all night against the hostility of the fox and other enemies by the faithful dogs inseparable from the sheep; the muleteer shook himself in his poncho, and went to collect his mules; and the housewife left her sheep and llama-skin bed, and commenced her daily task of boiling the caldo, or soup, for breakfast, and smoking her guests from their uneasy couch.
With so many incitements to bestir ourselves, we were glad to turn out and breathe the fresh air, while things were getting ready for our departure on a fresh day’s journey, with only a headache left for our common annoyance.
The writer had frequent occasion afterwards to cross this same part of the Cordillera, and, profiting by his first lesson, he took care always to start early in the morning on his day’s journey, so as to arrive early in the evening at his quarters for the night. He got refreshment, and turned into bed as soon as possible after his arrival; and took care that he slept warm and dry. By thus avoiding cold and wet, which check perspiration and overload the deep-seated blood-vessels, he ever after on this route avoided the Cordillera sickness.
More than once we have witnessed the most affecting scenes of moaning and suffering, without the additional misery of the veta, when some wet and cold traveller arrived at Casacancha[29] at a late hour, and threw down as his couch his already half-soaked pellon on a damp mud floor, or earthen bench, and covered himself up for the night with his drenched ponchos. In the morning, a traveller so circumstanced may find his ponchos half-frozen over him; and when he arises, and looks out, he often sees the plain covered with snow which has locked up the herbage from the reach of the shivering cattle that stand fettered on the plain.
On these roads, especially at a season when there is reason to expect foul weather, it is best that the traveller should make use of a beast hired of the arriero, who is far more likely to take care of his own mule than of one belonging to another owner, and men are not always to be had to watch cattle let loose in these high pastures at night. The cold is almost sure to scare homeward any animal not seasoned to it; so that, if the cattle be left to themselves, a traveller in the morning may be disappointed by their escape, and unable to proceed on his journey. The arrieros usually encamp for the night wherever it best suits their cattle in the “puna,” near the huts of Casacancha or Palcomayo, and are so accustomed to it that they lie and slumber sweetly we will not say, but soundly enough, among bits of sheep-skin and jerga, or woollen sweating-cloths used to protect the backs and shoulders of the cattle, under whose “aparejos,” or pads, placed standing on the ground, they creep in and find shelter for the night; but in such lodgings no one of acute olfactory nerves could possibly be induced to remain for a minute.
From Palcomayo to Cerro Pasco is a roughly computed distance of fourteen or fifteen leagues, over hilly and frigid pasture-grounds, named “puna;” or over “pampas,” like the plains of Bombon, through part of which the road passes. This journey can rarely be performed in one day without inconvenience to man and beast, and therefore it is usually divided; and the traveller may put up at the village of Hualliay, or the hacienda of Diezmo,—each of these places being about seven leagues from Cerro Pasco, and separated from one another by a range of low hills, and some very remarkable-looking rocks, near the entrance into the table-land of Bombon, which are usually covered with cattle and fleecy flocks.
The higher, and, it is said, the shorter route from Palcomayo, is that by Hualliay, but it is fenny, and only practicable in the dry season; the other route by Diezmo, though somewhat longer, is the safest and best, and is usually followed by the arriero. By either direction, rivers are to be passed, deep and dark in times of flood. By the Hualliay way the ride is rendered interesting on account of the frequently-heard whistle of the vicuÑa, keeping watch over his fellows and giving warning of the traveller’s approach, when the whole herd leave their pasturage and bound away to more inaccessible heights. Geese, too, are very numerous; and there is a lake to be passed which is the favourite resort of the elegant flamingos. To see a flock of them upon wing is a magnificent sight.
