m?. M" mus FROM PAN A ERNEST PEIXOTTi BOOKS BY ERNEST PEIXOTTO PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS EACH VOLUME ILLUSTRATED BY THE AUTHOR PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA. (Postage extra) net, $2.50 BY ITALIAN SEAS net, 2.50 THROUGH THE FRENCH PROVINCES, net, 2.50 ROMANTIC CALIFORNIA net. 2.50 PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from The Library of Congress http://www.archive.org/details/pacificshoresfro01peix Plaza, San Francisco, Lima PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA BY ERNEST PEIXOTTO ILLUSTRATIONS BY THE AUTHOR i NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS MCMXIII FZ Z 13 Copyright, 1913, by Charles Scribner's Sons Published October, 1913 ©CI.A354657 / PREFACE Spanish America of the Pacific still remains one of the few countries undiscovered by the tourist. The few foreigners who use the steamers that slowly meander up and down its coast are for the most part commercial travellers, mining engineers, or a stray missionary or archaeologist. The few books that have been written about it — and they are very few indeed — deal with the region from one or the other of these view-points. But no book that I have been able to find treats of it as a journey of recreation, a quest for the knowl- edge usually to be obtained by travel. Yet viewed from this stand-point alone, it is a truly fascinating voyage. The luxurious indolence that possesses the traveller as he glides over this lazy tropical sea, the romance of the Spanish cities, the picturesqueness and the appeal of its vast Indian population, the desolation of its arid wastes, the dizzy heights of its Cordillera, the sharp contrast of climate and vegeta- tion — where equatorial tropics and eternal snows are PREFACE often but a few hours apart — all these make up a journey, the fascination of which can scarcely be overstated. And it is my belief that with the open- ing of the Panama Canal this West Coast will be- come a favourite winter cruise for the people of our hemisphere. Living, outside of the larger cities, is primitive, to be sure. But where is the seasoned traveller who would let that deter his ardour? And even as it is the hotels are no better and no worse than they are in towns of the same relative importance in Italy or Spain. The railroads are well equipped for the most part with American rolling-stock, the people cour- teous, kind, and well-disposed toward the stranger — if he will but meet them half-way. To properly appreciate the voyage one must have a taste for the novel and the untravelled; one must have an eye for the picturesque; and, above all, one must have read up the old Spanish chroniclers or at least Prescott's "Conquest of Peru," that still re- mains the vade-mecum of the traveller in the Andes. How strange, how wonderful that this blind his- torian, sitting in his library in Cambridge, could have grasped with such accuracy a country he had PREFACE never seen, describing its mountain fastnesses, its tropical valleys, the romance of its old Inca civilisa- tion, and the ardour of its Spanish conquerors as no one has been able to do before or since! To those who wish to pursue the subject further, I would suggest a perusal of the original story of the Conquest by Xeres, Pizarro's own secretary, and the Commentarios of Oviedo and Herrera, and the poetic, if sometimes exaggerated, accounts of Garcilasso de la Vega. I wish to express my sincerest thanks to the officials and captains of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, the Compania Sud-Americana de Vapores, and the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, for their many kindnesses and courtesies; to the Peruvian Corporation, especially to its representative in Lima, Mr. W. L. Morkill, aptly called the "King of Peru," for the exceptional opportunities he gave us to see out-of-the-way places and interesting festivals with the comfort of a private car, and to the new-found friends in general who taught us what hospitality could mean to the stranger in a strange land. E. P. June, 1913. vii CONTENTS PAGE TO THE SPANISH MAIN 1 PANAMA 17 DOWN THE WEST COAST TO PERU 37 LIMA, CITY OF THE KINGS 57 THE OROYA RAILWAY— i. To the Roof of the World 79 n. Xattxa and Htjancayo 87 SOUTHERN PERU— i. A Coast Hacienda 103 n. To Aeeqtjipa 116 LA VILLA HERMOSA 125 THE LAND OF THE INCAS 137 CUZCO, THE INCA CAPITAL 159 LAKE TITICACA 193 A GLIMPSE OF BOLIVIA 203 ix CONTENTS PAGB THE RETURN TO PANAMA 227 FROM THE ISTHMUS TO THE GOLDEN GATE— i. In Central American Waters 235 ii. Guatemala and Its Capital 247 in. Coast Towns of Mexico 269 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Plaza of San Francisco, Lima . . . Frontispiece PAGE Royal Palms, Nipe Bay, Cuba 7 Negroes selling "Rope Tobacco" Kingston, Jamaica .... 13 The Cathedral, Panama 25 Avenida Central, Panama 29 The Old Bells at Cruces 31 Ruins of Old Panama 33 Native Boats, Paita 45 A Grated Veranda, Salaverry 52 The Aguador Peddles His Donkey-Load of Water . . facing 52 "Balcones," Lima 61 Lima Cathedral from the Bodegones facing 62 In the President's Garden 65 Cloister of San Francisco, Lima 69 xi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Patio of the Torre Tagle Palace, Lima facing 70 Weighing-Post in the Torre Tagle Palace 73 On the Oroya Railway facing 80 The Narrow River Valley Like a Relief Map . . . facing 82 Entrance to a Corral, Oroya 89 The Plaza, Xauxa 91 A Native Family, Huancayo 94 Corner of the Indian Market, Huancayo 95 Landing at Cerro Azul facing 104 Bull Ring in the Cafiete Valley 113 Hacienda of Unanue 114 The Carrito and Its Galloping Mule facing 114 The Port, Mollendo 119 Nearing Arequipa facing 122 The Cathedral from the Mercaderes . . 128 The Cathedral and Chachani facing 130 Court of a Residence facing 132 Church of La Compafifa 133 Arequipa from the Bridge across the Chili facing 134 Entrance to the Old Bishop's Palace 135 Pottery Vendors, Puchara 145 At the Top of the Pass, La Raya facing 146 The Llama Trains Were Already Arriving ..„.,... 148 Corner of the Market, Sicuani ......... facing 150 xii <4 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Urcos facing 154 General View of Cuzco . 163 Old View of Cuzco after Ramusio's Woodcut 167 Arco di Sta. Clara, Cuzco 169 Inca Rocca's Palace facing 170 Old Stone Model of Sachsahuaman 174 Sachsahuaman facing 174 Apse of Santo Domingo Built upon the Temple of the Sun . . 176 Inca Stone Representing a Plan of the Temple of the Sun . . 178 Plaza and Church of the Compafiia, Cuzco . 181 Line the Arcades of the Plaza with Their Gaudy Wares . . . 187 The Steep, Picturesque Streets that Climb the Hills .... 189 Juliaca 196 A Balsa on Lake Titicaca facing 200 Ruins of Tiahuanaco 206 Stone Image, Tiahuanaco 209 A Llama Train on the Bolivian Highlands facing 214 La Paz from the Alto facing 216 Streets Plunge Down One Hill Only to Ascend Another . . . 217 Old Courtyard, La Paz 219 Group at the Market, La Paz facing 220 An Aymara Musician 224 In the Obrajes Valley facing 224 The Plaza, Puno 230 xiii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Watching the Lanchas 238 The Mole, La Libertad 240 Sonsonate facing 244 Ploughing on Agua 249 The Calvario, Guatemala City 255 Cathedral Terrace, Guatemala City 256 A Marimbero 257 Indian Women 258 Huts in the Jungle 262 A Bullock Wagon, Salina Cruz 271 Its Streets of Dazzling Colonnades 276 Market Square, Acapulco facing 276 An Outlying Street, Acapulco 277 Manzanillo Bay 279 A Tiny Pearl of the Tropics 280 Old Church, San Bias 281 Loading Barges, San Bias 283 xiv TO THE SPANISH MAIN TO THE SPANISH MAIN WHAT could be more delightful, upon a cold February morning, than the pros- pect of a voyage to southern seas — with pleasant assurance that in a day or two you will ex- change the wintry blasts of the city streets for the soft trade-winds of the tropics, fanning your cheek and inviting you to languor and repose? The winter had been a particularly severe one. Ice-packs floated along beside us all the way down the bay, and even after we had left the harbour and dropped our pilot beyond the Hook, long floes stretched dazzling white along the horizon like beaches of glittering sand. As I looked about the deck I could scarcely realise that we were really headed for the Caribbean. These big Royal Mail packets, with their English officers [3] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA and their English stewards counting in shillings and pence, seemed more like transatlantic liners (which in reality they are, sailing for Southampton via the British possessions in the West Indies) than like the usual Panama steamers. We left upon a Saturday. All day Sunday we pounded the seas off Hatteras in a stiff sou'easter, but Monday morning dawned bright and clear, with a blue sea, diapered with those large saffron-coloured spots which come up the coast with the Gulf Stream. Already on Tuesday the breeze blew warmer and the first signs of tropical weather appeared among passengers and crew. Sailors and deck-boys shed shoes and stockings, the ladies donned lighter frocks, and the men were shod in white. Flying-fish skipped from wave to wave, glistening like dragon-flies in the sunlight. That afternoon we made our first land — a long island lying low upon the horizon, with a lighthouse at its highest point, Watling's Island, known to the Indians as Guanahuani. It was the landfall of Columbus upon his first blind voyage, the first bit of earth in the New World pressed by European feet, and was named by its discoverer San Salvador. Our [4] TO THE SPANISH MAIN captain described it as about twelve miles long and from five to seven wide, and one of the richest of the Bahama group. Its five hundred inhabitants keep in contact with the rest of the world only by means of a few coasters that now and then put into the little reef harbour at its northern end. In a few hours we sank it in the northwest and sighted no more land that day. When I looked out of my port-hole at dawn next morning, I could make out, between the pale-pink sky and the sea that lay calm and opalescent as a great pearl shell, a long grey streak that each mo- ment grew more distinct, gathering intensity and form, until presently a vivid shore of green, the freshest and brightest hue imaginable, gleamed along the horizon, and I realised that we were rapidly near- ing the coast of Cuba. The sun was just rising. I scurried into cool white linens and scrambled on deck just as we were thread- ing the narrow entrance into Nipe Bay. Upon the one hand stood a plantation set in gardens and fields of sugar-cane, and among thick clumps of palmettoes nestled a group of native huts thatched and wattled with grass. On the opposite shore the ' [5] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA tall, column-like boles of a cluster of royal palms shone brilliantly against the distant mountains that, clear-cut and blue, wreathed their summits in thick clouds like the fumes of volcanoes, so heavy and motionless they lay. Even at this early hour a drowsy softness pervaded the air — a stillness that could be felt. Was it possible that we were but four days from the snow and sleet, the icy streets and blustering winds of New York City? Of course we landed here at Antilla, though there was nothing much to see. The usual mixture of the types and races of the torrid zone stood crowded upon the dock: a negress dressed in old-rose calico; a mestiza with tattooed arms and bony hands that clasped a manta round her yellow neck; black faces peering from the shade of purple and magenta hats, soldiers in khaki, custom-house officials in sky blue, and in the background a lumbering ox-cart dis- charging its load upon a waiting scow. We weighed anchor after luncheon, and all the afternoon skirted the north shore of Cuba. Ever since we left San Salvador we had followed in the wake of Columbus groping from coast to coast upon his first voyage. After landing at Guanahuani, [6] TO THE SPANISH MAIN he set sail southward to this north coast of Cuba, which he named Isabella, in honour of his queen, and Royal Palms, Nipe Bay, Cuba then, as we were now doing, he skirted its shore until he doubled Cape Maysi and saw Hayti, or Es- [7]' PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA panola, as he called it, rise from the sea to the east- ward. This Cuban coast is a long succession of beautiful blue mountains, finely drawn as the pencillings of an old Italian master, and as delicate in outline as the purple djebels of northern Africa. On the deck, every one was enjoying the balmy air and the pros- pect of the bright blue sea flecked with whitecaps. How different our passengers from the usual transat- lantic crowd, bundled in shawls and veils and heavy ulsters! Wraps had been discarded, and the ladies sat about in fresh white gowns and leghorn hats, just as they would on summer verandas. If the promenade-deck still looked Anglo-Saxon, not so the after-deck. Already it had caught the tropic atmosphere, for at Antilla we had taken aboard a crowd of Jamaican negroes as black as coal — the women lolling on the benches, the men half asleep in lavender shirts with their heads tied up in bandanas to ward off sea-sickness. In a corner a family had ensconced itself, rigging up a sort of tent made of counterpanes, one sky blue, one brick red, and the third an old-rose "spread" gaily figured with white. These were all tied together and their ends [8] TO THE SPANISH MAIN anchored to various articles of luggage, to the stan- chions of the deck above, or to the ship's benches. In the shade of these bellying draperies, yet fanned by the breeze, lay these West Indian darkies, a man and three women, their heads pillowed on bundles, he half covered with a table-cloth, his head near that of one of the women whose scarlet skirt was short enough to disclose the flounces of a well-starched petticoat and a pair of black slippers slashed over white stockings. From time to time another woman's hand would appear to smooth her wind-blown dra- peries or quiet the half -naked pickaninnies that wrig- gled and kicked about upon the deck beside her — an exotic picture, certainly, one to be painted by an impressionist with a broad brush and crude, primary colour. By evening we rounded Cape May si and steered southward through the Windward Passage. As our prow pointed toward the Caribbean, the romance of the Spanish Main seemed to fall about us with the deepening twilight. The furrows ploughed by the Spanish caravels have closed, to be sure, and no sign marks the pathway of their keels. Ashore, some old buildings on a battle-field, a bit of ruin or an aban- [9] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA doned road, mark the progress of history and supply the stepping-stones that link the past with the pres- ent; but at sea the waves fill in the furrows as quickly as they are ploughed. Yet the ghosts of the "high- charged" galleons seem to linger in the Caribbean, lurking behind the reefs of its islands, taking refuge in its harbours, or cresting the dancing whitecaps. In its ports the English and the French lay in wait for the Spanish argosies and Drake laid the foundation of England's supremacy on the sea, while over yonder in the lee of Cape Tiburon Morgan fitted out his ex- pedition of free-booters and buccaneers — the most lawless lot of rapscallions that ever assembled in all these pirate waters — for the sack of Panama. The flavour of their deeds still fingers in these archipel- agoes — on these shores shaded by cocoa-nut palms, in their bamboo-built hamlets, and in the little har- bours reefed about with coral. Toward noon next day, Jamaica's lovely coast rose over the starboard bow. As we drew nearer we could make out the gleaming fringes of breakers along the reefs and the low shores vivid with mangoes and palmettoes. Big, vaporous mountains, purple and crowned with cumuli, rose behind, full of mystery [10] TO THE SPANISH MAIN and charm. For hours we skirted this enchanting island. Then a lighthouse appeared with, near it, the wreck of a German liner breaking to pieces upon the treacherous sand — an accident that happened just after the last earthquake when the lighthouse was put out of commission. As we stood watching it we made out, in the surf near shore, a long-boat breasting the waves, now raised high in air upon their crests, now completely engulfed in the deeps between them. Its flags, fore and aft, stood taut in the clipping breeze, and as it approached we could see its oarsmen bending stur- dily over their sweeps. What a picture it made as it drew under the lee of our great bulk, the green boat in the lapis sea with its brawny negro rowers, whose bare legs and chests, wet with spray, gleamed like polished bronze! Bright bandanas were knotted about their heads, and their scant clothing, old and tattered, scarcely concealed their nakedness. In the stern- sheets sat a man who steered with one hand, while with the other he baled out the boat with a cocoa- nut shell. Now from such a boat would you not expect some John Hawkins or Captain Kidd to step forth? But the man in the stern proved only the [in PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA Kingston pilot as he clambered up the rope ladder to our deck. The boat remained bobbing in the sea as our engines started again, and supplied just the proper foreground note to this picture of old Port Royal that now began to unfold itself. On the shore side of the long sand-spit that shields the harbour from the in- roads of the sea, under the protection of the British flag, where the prim barracks are now lined up, the pirates of France and England used to careen and clean their ships and prepare themselves for their next bloody foray upon the Spanish settlements and the caravels taking the "King's Fifth" to Spain. As we rounded the end of the spit and Kingston's harbour opened before us, we could see the beaches where these pirates landed, laden with loot from the Isthmus, and swaggered up to the taverns to squander their doubloons and pieces-of -eight in riotous living. Here Mansvelt and Morgan replenished their crews and refitted their ships; here they joined forces with a fleet of fifteen vessels manned by five hundred men, and here to Port Royal Sir Henry Morgan returned after Mansvelt's death, for it was his ambition to consecrate this harbour as a " refuge and sanctuary for [12] TO THE SPANISH MAIN pirates" and a store-house for their spoils. Here, too, in this town of buccaneers, he planned his raids V & "it Negroes Selling "Rope Tobacco," Kingston, Jamaica on Cuba and the Gulf of Maracaibo, and hence he set sail to join the fleet that he had assembled off Hayti for his attack on Panama. [13] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA All these memories crowded my thoughts as we slowly steamed up to the Royal Mail dock, catching glimpses as we passed of the straight streets swarm- ing with people that lead up toward the vega, extend- ing soft, green, and tropical toward the mountains. The flimsy houses with low-pitched roofs, the cocoa- nut palms waving their long arms in the easterly trade-winds, the pelicans fishing in the bay, the Jamaican negroes that swarmed about the dock, the English-looking shops of the main street, — excellent emporia, by the way, for outfitting in the tropics, — these compose Kingston of to-day, just as they com- posed Kingston of yesterday. There is an excellent hotel, set in its own gardens, but unfortunately — or fortunately, I believe — there were no rooms to be had in it, so we tried a place in the town where we dined in a picturesque court with a fountain plashing beside us, a gaudy parrot in a silver cage moping among pale moon-flowers, a pair of doves cooing in a corner — a little place, in fact, whose romantic charm had caught even an old Civil War veteran, who somehow had been side-tracked here, and who after dinner tuned up his violin, or fiddle, as he called it, and played in the moonlight. [ 14 ] TO THE SPANISH MAIN Later we drove about in the darkness of the tropic night, catching glimpses of dimly lighted Rembrandt- esque figures seated in open doorways or working in shops lit by flickering lamps. There were the Hope Gardens and the markets to be visited next morning, and at two o'clock we left for the south. The governor had come aboard to see off some distinguished friends, and the English element became even more pronounced among the passengers. Army officers in khaki greeted each other as Sir John and Sir William, and dinner-coats became the rule after sundown. Saturday we spent on the high seas, lashed by the "doctor," as the Jamaicans call this brisk trade-wind that kicks up such a swell in the Caribbean— a wind, as the captain expressed it, that "sometimes blows the bananas off the trees"; and he was authority, too, for the following verse, showing that in February we were only seeing the "doctor" at his feeblest: "June too soon; July stand by; August look out; September remember; October all over." [15] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA Before dawn on Sunday morning I saw a light- house blinking on a headland, and the dark moun- tains behind Porto Bello loomed faint and grey against the sky. Then all sign of land disappeared for a while, until a tropical shore, flooded in the rosy sunrise, suffused in humid atmosphere, appeared resting on a turquoise sea. A long break-water lay to the right, a number of docks to the left. We were passed by the business-like Canal Zone doctor and soon were setting foot upon the Isthmus. [16] PANAMA PANAMA "Then, go away if you have to go Then, go away if you will! To again return you will always yearn While the lamp is burning still! "You've drank the Chagres water, And the mango eaten free, And, strange though it seems, 'twill haunt your dreams, This Land of the Cocoanut Tree!" HOW true this verse from "Panama Patch- work," penned by poor James Gilbert, who lost his life by dwelling too long under the spell of the Isthmus — which is scarcely to be won- dered at, for his "Land of the Cocoanut Tree" cer- tainly exerts a strange and potent fascination. The achievements of its intrepid discoverers and conquistadores ; the romantic episodes of its treasure- trains laden with the wealth of Peru; the bloody raids of the buccaneers; the onward rush to the gold-fields [19] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA of California — all these and, finally, the digging of the great canal compose a historic background such as few countries can boast. Every great personage of early American history has imprinted his footsteps upon its red clay soil. In his futile search for the Straits — the mythical Stretto Cubitoso that never could be found — Colum- bus beat along its coast, and Colon and Cristobal, the Atlantic entrance to the canal, perpetuate his mem- ory. From a hill in Darien, Balboa first beheld the Pacific, and the Pacific gateway to the canal will hand down his name to posterity. Pizarro and Cor- tez waged their first battles along its sandy shores and slew the Indians in its treacherous jungles. Her- nando de Soto made it the theatre of his first ex- plorations and there prepared himself for the dis- covery of the Mississippi. Sir Francis Drake sailed his first boat, the Swan, in the troubled waters that wash its shores, and Henry Morgan harassed its coast-towns in his bloodiest forays. De Lesseps, hero of Suez, went down to defeat before its fevers and the crooked administration of his company. Finally, American enterprise, triumphing over all obstacles, has here given its best account of the [20] PANAMA value of collective endeavour and carried through the dream of centuries, the greatest achievement of mankind. . . . The town of Colon, though attractive enough when viewed from the harbour, is disappointing upon closer acquaintance. Its straight streets, flanked by two- storied houses, shaded above and below by broad verandas, remind one, to be sure, of some old town of Spanish California, but little tempts to linger. So, without regret, in a tumble-down cab we followed our luggage (given in charge to a turbaned East Indian) from the dock to the railroad station. The ride to Panama proved full of interest. When we crossed upon this occasion the new line of the Panama Railway through the Black Swamp had just been opened, so that, beyond Gatun from the car- windows, we enjoyed rare glimpses of the virgin jun- gle, a tropical hortus of blooming trees, with orchids and flowering vines draped in their branches, hung amid screens of convolvuli and creepers as intricate as the pendent cords of Japanese curtains. Cane huts, primitive as those pictured by the old chroni- clers in the woodcuts of their first editions, basked in the shade of cocoa-nut palms. [21] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA It was a Sunday, and at each station little parties of holiday-makers — engineers, army officers in im- maculate white with their fresh young wives — came aboard or dropped off to see friends at the different camps. Each station had a physiognomy of its own. Fri- joles was a collection of negro cabins clustered about a primitive church; Matachin a railroad junction; Camp Elliott an army post, smart, spick, and span; Las Cascadas a steaming centre of locomotives and car shops; Culebra a thriving-looking place where, through the open church windows, we could see the congregation at prayer. At many of the turns we had views of the canal work. Gatun Locks and the Spillway lay near the road, and the broad artificial lake formed by the dammed-up Chagres River spread its placid waters to shores adorned with bouquets of cocoa-nut trees and graceful palms. But after Culebra little verdure was to be seen. Later the great locks of Pedro Miguel and Miraflores appeared to the right, and finally Ancon Hill rose behind the Tivoli lying close to the track in the foreground. Thus in a little less than two hours we had accom- [m] PANAMA plished the journey across the continent from ocean to ocean, the only place upon the hemisphere where it is now possible to behold both oceans in a single day. And how different the journey nowadays from what it used to be! When Balboa set out to find the South Sea he forced his way for twenty-six days through the trackless jungle before he reached the hill from which he first beheld the Pacific. Morgan and his buccaneers almost lost their lives while on their way to sack Old Panama, poling up the Chagres River to Venta Cruz, wading waist high through the swamps; cutting their way painfully with machetes through the pulpy undergrowth, attacked by mosqui- toes and jiggers and Indians with poisoned arrows; hearing the strange quick cry of the "chicaly" bird or the "corrosou tolling his bell-like notes"; watching the monkeys play "a thousand antick Tricks" in the branches above their heads. What strange dreams must have haunted their superstitious minds! What fears must have racked their bodies, wasted by hunger and disease! In desperation they were forced to eat the leather of their clothing and accoutrements, stripped and pounded upon stones, and when, on [23] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA the sixth day, they fell upon a barn full of maize, they devoured it dry and raw. Such was crossing the Isthmus in the old days. Now even the dread of fever — the last nightmare to haunt its morasses — has been conjured away, thanks to sanitary measures that will serve as models to all the world. Under army supervision the death rate in the Canal Zone has been reduced to a lower per- centage than in any of the large cities of the United States. Panama City of to-day dates from the latter half of the seventeenth century. Old Panama, the city of the conquistador es, lay a few miles distant, and we shall visit its ruins presently. The newer city pos- sesses all the picturesque features, all the charm of an old Spanish town. Its streets are not straight and regular, as in most Latin- American cities, but wriggle and turn and twist out from and back to the long Avenida Central, the main street that traverses the city from end to end, containing the principal shops and crossing all the plazas. The houses are substantially built and washed with those pastel tones — rose, pale blue, water green, buff, and grey — of which the Spanish peoples are so fond. [24] ■S -t T* "v«T\o The Cathedral, Panama PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA Verandas, as in Colon, overhang all the thorough- fares, and the indolent Panamans spend much of their time upon them or lounging about the numer- ous cafes and hostelries. There are several plazas. The old church of Santa Ana overlooks one; another is named for Bolivar, liberator of Spanish America and founder of its re- publics; and, appropriately enough, the government buildings, a little tawdry perhaps, and the post-office he near it. The third, and this is the largest and most important, is named for the cathedral that fronts upon it — a charming square planted with handsome palms and tropical gardens. The cathedral fagade, while not bearing critical analysis, has all the allure of the big Spanish churches, and the other re- ligious edifices of the city are picturesque and some- times rarely charming in colour. No matter what else you miss in Panama, do not neglect a walk upon the Bovedas, or city walls that skirt the gulf. These great fortifications, the most formidable, except those at Cartagena, that the Span- ish erected in their American possessions, are forty feet in height and no less than sixty feet in thickness. Their tops afford the favourite promenade for the [26] PANAMA Panamans, who, toward sunset, when the heat of the day has spent itself, saunter up and down its broad esplanade enjoying the cool breeze and watch- ing the sun slowly sink behind the hills. No matter how long you remain in Panama, you never grow quite accustomed to the points of the compass, for the sun rises out of the Pacific and sets behind the wooded mountains of the Isthmus, which, of course, is due to the fact that Panama lies east, or rather southeast, of Colon instead of west, as one would naturally suppose. From this sea-wall the view is beautiful. Off to the right lies Balboa, at the entrance to the canal, with the three fortified islands whose guns will com- mand the fairway. Farther from shore Taboga and Taboguilla, lovely and wooded, rise from the blue waters, the former a healthy spot supplied with the purest of water and used by the government as a sanitarium. Other islets lie dotted about, and to the south the gulf stretches off to the Pearl Islands, cov- eted treasure-lands, whose gems at one time rivalled those of Ceylon and supplied the Spanish crown with some of its rarest jewels. Shoreward lies the city, encircling its harbour, dominated by the cathedral [27] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA towers, whose spires are incrusted with pearl shells that, after the frequent rains, sparkle and glitter in the sunlight, serving as beacons to many a fisherman tossed in the troubled waters of the gulf. But to my mind the sea-wall promenade is at its best at night when the wondrous stars — the stars of the southern seas — twinkle and sparkle in the firma- ment. Then no one disturbs your reverie but the sentry rattling his musket as he moves in his stone look-out at an angle of the walls, or the sereno as he whistles to and is answered by the other night watch- men. The acacias nod their delicate leaves in the night breeze that plays soft and cool upon your cheek, and out over the flat salt marshes (for the waters of the sea only lick the walls at high tide) the moon rises, touching pool after pool with silver. To complete the evening, return to the plaza and watch the crowd that enjoys the music as the band plays: the women in black and the men in white; the natives (if it be Sunday) wearing the pollera, or na- tional costume, filling an interminable string of hired carriages that slowly meander up and down the Avenida. The stately palms framing Santa Ana's [28] PANAMA belfry cut their silhouettes against the sky of indigo ; the tread of human feet echoes on the glazed-tiled r Avenida Centred, Panama pavement; but all is toned and put in tune by the glamour of the southern night. It is with a sense of rude awakening that you enter the brilliantly lighted hall of the Hotel Tivoli [29] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA — so typically American in every detail, so strangely discordant, yet so comfortable and clean, in all this tropic atmosphere. An excursion to the ruins of Old Panama can easily be managed in one afternoon, and for it we preferred a carriage to a motor, so that we could enjoy it at our leisure. Our driver was an old Jamaican negro who spoke English with a cockney accent. He knew every plant of the tropics and pointed out as we went along the guava-trees and the poincianas, gorgeous with crimson flowers; the bread-fruits nodding their great, pointed leaves; and the trumpet-trees, whose vivid foliage, lined with silver, sparkled as the wind turned it over. He called our attention also to the whistling of the coral snake, saying that "if it stings you, it's a dirty business," and to an iguana, brilliant, green, that stood motionless by the roadside, strange relic of the Jurassic age — an esteemed delicacy of the natives, with meat as white and tender as that of squab chicken. Mango and rose apple, cocoa-nut palm and royal palm, engaged our attention turn by turn until we reached Las Sabafias. I do not mean to imply that the country is thickly wooded or jungle-like in character. On the contrary, [30] PANAMA the hills are rather bare and grass-grown like pasture lands, for all the tangle of tropic growth has been cut back in the interest of health. After the villas of Las Sabafias, where the well-to- do Panamans make their homes in summer, a few The Old Bells at Cruces native huts appear, thatched and faced with dried palm leaves or plaited like baskets with straw and cane. We now left the main road, turning aside at a prison where a huge alligator-skin, some eight feet long, was drying in the sun — product of a recent hunt. Soon we met the prisoners themselves making a new road to the beach. And here we came upon the ruins of Panama Viejo. [31] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA They have been cleared lately of their tangle of underbrush, and so are seen to better advantage than they formerly were when smothered in vines and creepers. First you cross a ruined bridge, then sub- stantial stone walls appear and foundations covering a considerable area, and finally the tall tower of the church of Saint Anastasius, rising close by the beach, overlooking the little harbour. Here lay the town that has caused such discussion among historians. The old Spanish chroniclers, with their customary enthusiasm, describe it as a great city of several thousand houses, with palaces and churches of suffi- cient splendour to make it resemble Venice ! Benzoni, an Italian who visited it at this same early epoch, resented this comparison, and says that, on the con- trary, it was nothing but a collection of rude mud huts. The truth lay somewhere between these two ex- tremes. The ruins that remain would certainly attest a well-built town of considerable importance, and it is probable that all about this substantial nucleus of stone clustered hundreds of flimsy constructions ex- tending into the surrounding savannahs. When a treasure-ship was despatched from Peru, [32] PANAMA an express was sent ahead to advise the people of Panama of its coming, and their governor, in his turn, notified the colonies along the Spanish Main. Upon .-. CT< ,.- TTo .sJiS&os"-^" Ruins of Old Panama its arrival the treasure was carried across the Isthmus by recuas, or donkey-trains, convoyed by strong forces of soldiers. But the English and French buccaneers, the Cimaroons, and the San Bias Indians with poi- soned arrows gave them many a bitter fight upon the way. Its destination was Nombre de Dios, that, [33] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA owing to its unhealthy situation, had but few per- manent inhabitants. Upon the arrival of these treas- ure-trains, however, it filled with a multitude of merchants from Panama and the colonies along the Caribbean, who bargained and bartered for weeks. The King's galleons, that had been waiting in the safe havens of Cartagena and Santa Marta, came over to load their precious cargoes and transport the King's Fifth to Spain. Thus upon this pebbly beach of Panama Viejo — a cove large enough for galleons but scarcely capable of accommodating half a dozen modern ships — all the wealth of the Incas, Atahualpa's ransom, the golden plates from the Temple of the Sun, the vast products of the silver mines of Potosi were landed to be transported across the Isthmus. The shore of the little bay still bears traces of its sea-wall and, I think, of a fortress such as one sees in towns of similar importance along the Mediter- ranean. As you turn your back upon the sea you look up toward the mountains, the hills from which Morgan looked down upon his prey after the misery he had suffered in crossing the Isthmus. And it was from [34] PANAMA their heights that, with flags flying, trumpets blow- ing, and drums beating a bravery, he descended to attack the doomed city. He left it some days later burned to the ground, its inhabitants tortured, robbed, or killed — so effectually wiped out that it has never been rebuilt. Two hundred beasts of burden laden with spoils and six hundred prisoners held for ransom went with him as he set out again to rejoin his boats hidden on the Chagres River near Cruces. We returned to Panama in the spell of the late afternoon. A marked change had taken place in the aspect of the road, especially after we passed Las Sabanas, for, instead of its mid-day loneliness, it was now dotted with buggies, carriages and motors of all descriptions being, toward evening, the favourite, in fact the only, drive from Panama. I shall not attempt any account of the wonderful canal work which, however, at the time of our visit was at its most interesting stage, the excavations at their deepest, the great cranes and derricks, steam shovels and puffing dirt-trains in full operation, and the giant locks alive with ant-like human beings crawling down below, hanging suspended on the [35] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA dizzy walls, or braving death upon the red, rust- proof gates as tall as sky-scrapers. Thanks to the courtesy of Mr. Bishop, secretary of the canal commission, who accompanied us in person, we made a rarely pleasant visit to its varied features, going about in a motor-car that runs on the tracks and therefore can follow anywhere that the dirt-trains go — that is, everywhere. When we felt that we had seen it all we drove one day over to Balboa, and at its long dock embarked for Peru. [36] DOWN THE WEST COAST TO PERU DOWN THE WEST COAST TO PERU WHEN we boarded the steamer at Panama (or, as the new port is called, Balboa, and I like the name) we seemed to be headed for a new world. The moist and misty air, the soft hills fringed with tropical vegetation, the rich islands of the bay, Taboga and Taboguilla with their little neighbours, precipitous, yet thickly wooded down to the very water's edge, composed a picture so unlike the usual ports of embarkment in more northern climes that we settled ourselves in our chairs with a feeling of quiet expectancy, antici- pating a voyage on placid waters in the doldrums under the equator. Nor were we to be disappointed. As we slowly steamed down the gulf, the sun neared the horizon and its broad golden rays spread out great fingers behind the purple islands, making them ap- pear, as one of the young ladies naively expressed it, t 39 ] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA "like the old pictures of heaven." Long files of peli- cans lazily flapped their heavy wings as they slowly made their way homeward against the evening breeze. An hour later the faint forms of the Pearl Islands rose before us — San Jose to the southward; Pedro Gonzales to the north, and behind them the cloud- wreathed summit of Rey Island that screened from view Saint Michael's Bay, where Balboa strode into the surf to take possession of the Southern Sea in the name of the Spanish King. These islands lured us on like sirens, as they had many a mariner before us, by the glint of their precious gems, to fall into the hands of some pirate, some John Sharp or his like, lurking in an inlet awaiting the galleons, gold-laden, that bore the treasure of the Incas for trans-shipment to Spain. Following the same track that we were taking, Pizarro, nearly four hundred years ago, with his lit- tle company had set out upon his conquest of Peru. And that tall brig upon the horizon, "Her tiering canvas in sheeted silver spread," might she not well be his caravel bound for Gorgona or lonely Gallo or the verdant islands of the Gulf of [40] DOWN THE WEST COAST TO PERU Guayaquil? The sun had now set; the clouds parted, and the moon, hitherto hidden, poured its pale radi- ance upon the calm Pacific. Next morning (how strange at sea !) I was awakened by the bleating of a lamb and by a lusty cock-crow. The Pacific Steam Navigation Company's steamers of the West Coast are a strange little world. Built for an ocean where storms are unknown, they com- bine certain comforts not to be found on much more pretentious boats. Their saloons and cabins are ex- ceptionally large and open directly upon the prome- nade-decks that stretch the entire length of the ship, there being, properly speaking, no steerage and no second class. The natives and others who cannot afford the first-class ticket travel in the "cubierta," as it is called, a deck at the stern roofed with canvas but otherwise open, where in picturesque confusion, surrounded by bags and bundles, they loll in ham- mocks or lie wrapped in shawls. Upon this deck the hen-coop faces, a big two- story affair, partly filled with ripening fruits — ba- nanas, oranges, and the like — and partly with chick- ens, ducks, and other forlorn-looking fowl fattening for the table. Between decks stand your beef and [41] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA mutton on the hoof, gazing mournfully up at you as you look down the hatchways. Upon this home-like boat, quiet and contented, with no unseemly hurry, you meander down the coast at ten knots. The air is soft as a caress, and for at least eight months of the year the sea as placid as a mountain lake, a glassy mirror reflecting an azure sky. For one who wishes to escape the rigours of a northern winter, for a lover of soft sunshine, of southern seas without the brisk trades of the Carib- bean, I can imagine no more delightful voyage than this West Coast cruise, quietly gliding southward, a cloudless sky overhead in the daytime, a marvellous starry heaven at night. Little by little the North Star drops toward the horizon; little by little the Southern Cross ascends in the firmament. It may be hot for the first day or two, but on the third day out you cross the equator and face the breeze that follows the antarctic current, Hum- boldt's Current, that freshens and cools what other- wise would be a hot and steamy coast. Occasionally the calm surface of the sea is ruffled, now by the spike- like fin of a shark or the blow and rounded back of [42] DOWN THE WEST COAST TO PERU a grey whale; again by tortoise shining like great topazes set in opals or by silvery flying-fish skimming from wave to wave or schools of white-bellied man- tas that frolic along by the steamer's side. Three idle days pass by. At dawn upon the fourth I distinctly heard a locomotive whistle and then the clear call of a bugle. Looking out of the state-room window, I had my first glimpse of Peru. It was quite what I had been led to expect: a long, bleak shore of sand, desolate, treeless, dry. We were anchored before Paita, but the port was still silent and the little town apparently asleep, except for an officer taking his morning ride along the beach. By the time I came on deck a boat or two had put out from shore with the doctor and the com- pany's agent. Finally the captain of the port ar- rived, resplendent in his gold-laced uniform as he sat in the stern-sheets of his smart chaloupa, manned by four stalwart oarsmen in spotless white. I lost all interest in him, however, as soon as I made out the queer rafts and boats that were now paddling out toward us. Here, come to fife again, were the old woodcuts in Oviedo's "Historia." In the first edition of this old book, now rare and costly, pub- [43] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA lished in Seville only a few years after the Conquest, there are quaint pictures showing the manners and customs of the natives as the Spaniards first found them: their thatched huts, their cabins perched in the tree tops, their strange animals and queer fish, and their various primitive boats. Here in this har- bour of Paita these self-same craft were coming out to meet us — dugouts filled with fruit and manned by single Indians, balsas of cabbage-wood (a light timber common to Ecuador and Colombia) like those that brought the friendly caciques to greet Pizarro, and larger rafts, rigged with square sails, that ferried him and his little army, horses and all, from Puno to Tumbez, only a few miles distant in the Gulf of Guayaquil. But now another flotilla approached us; this time row-boats of more modern type, painted like those of Naples, blue and green, with the fleteros or boatmen, the sharks of the coast, who row you ashore for what- ever they can make, but are no better and no worse than their prototypes in Mediterranean waters. We landed, and upon the dock found Indian women in black mantas selling green paroquets and gaudy parrots and the strange tropical fruits with which we [44] DOWN THE WEST COAST TO PERU were soon to grow so familiar. We walked to the Plaza, set out with palms and dominated by the SnH-' ; t?sS;l: ; i?i ^.>-;^^^fes% Native Boats, Paita towers of its church, a queer Hispano-Moorish affair in which a black-robed congregation was listening to low mass. We looked, too, into the Gran Hotel Pacinco, where, in its dining-room, we found quite the strangest ceil- ing decoration that we had ever seen. It was painted by some man of real ability,, not at all the same per- [45] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA son who had daubed the crude marines upon the walls, but a man who understood his art. Yet his subject was worthy of a neo-impressionist. In the corners parrots and gaudy butterflies disported themselves, while eggs and fruits lay about in salvers, but the dominant note, the raison d'etre, of the ceiling was an enormous lobster, some fifteen feet across, that spread its vermilion claws and nippers in all directions, em- bracing parrots and fruits, eggs and salvers, in its all- consuming clutches. Paita is really a very old settlement, dating from colonial days. Yet a walk among its streets discloses only the most ephemeral constructions, flimsy beyond belief — houses built of dry bamboo thinly covered with plaster and mud, so thinly covered, indeed, that one can look through the cracks and chinks into the rooms themselves. The whole fabric would crumble away in an instant at the first hint of rain. But rain comes to Paita, according to legend, only once in twenty years. Notwithstanding, Paita is the wettest place on the Peruvian coast. Thence southward for hundreds of miles to the distant coast of Chili, be- tween the Andes and the sea, it never rains, though clouds sometimes form, and at certain seasons a [46] DOWN THE WEST COAST TO PERU sort of heavy mist, the camanchaca, hangs over the land for weeks at a time. We weighed anchor after luncheon, and all the af- ternoon skirted the sandy desert of Sechura, whose yellow dunes, backed by lavender mountains, termi- nate at times in rocky headlands shaped like ruined castles and spotted with guano. This was the desert that Pizarro and his men traversed after landing at Tumbez. On its outer confines they founded San Miguel di Piura, and after five months' halt decided to push on toward the mountains, leaving the coast and their ships behind them, braving the dangers of an unknown country swarming with savages. How they sur- mounted this mountain rampart; how, armour-clad and leading their foot-sore horses, they finally threaded its rocky defiles; how they supported the rigours of cold and exposure at the summit after the warm, tropical air of the coast; how, only two hun- dred strong, they seized the Inca at Cajamarca in face of his fifty thousand warriors, will ever be mat- ters of marvel. We reached Eten early next morning. A more desolate spot could scarcely be imagined. Sky, sea, [47] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA a long, sheer, sandy bluff, an iron mole, and that was all. What town there is must lie behind the dunes. From each of these coast ports, desolate as they may appear, railroads run inland, sometimes far, sometimes only for a short distance. From the looks of the coast one wonders where they run to, little suspecting, as we afterward found, the prolific val- leys that open behind, teeming with vegetation wherever water can be found. Harbours there are none from Guayaquil to Callao, the ships anchoring about a half-mile off shore, a fact that in these peaceful waters entails neither the dis- comforts nor inconveniences that it does on other coasts. Here at Eten we hoisted our new passengers aboard in a sort of car like those used in roller- coasters, four people at a time. Freight is trans- ferred in lighters which they call lanchas. Even before we had been "received" by the captain of the port, several of these could be seen approaching us. How can I describe them? They are about the size of a seagoing schooner. Five heavy beams laid across the bow form seats for ten men, whose brawny arms and well-developed deltoids and pectorals would do honour to trained athletes. Their type — [48] DOWN THE WEST COAST TO PERU the broad, flat face, the high cheek-bones, the nar- row eyes, set atilt, and the drooping moustache — plainly show their descent from the Chimus, that strange Chinese race whose civilisation seems to have centred about Trujillo, somewhat farther down the coast. Clad only in jerseys and trousers, bare- headed or shaded by wide-rimmed straw hats, each lays hold of a gigantic sweep, five on a side. And how they row, wing and wing, throwing the whole weight of their mighty frames upon the oars, rising in their seats till standing — the only boatmen I ever saw who suggested the galley-slave of the Egyptians or the men who manned the Roman triremes! It is only a three hours' run from Eten to Pacas- mayo. On the way you catch glimpses of higher mountains, buttresses of the Coast Cordillera, and by the shore see little groups of fishing-huts clustered in the coves. We had thought the frail balsas of Paita the most daring of seagoing craft, but now we came upon others more daring still — the caballitos (little horses), tiny boats but six or eight feet long that, at a distance, look like the forward end of a gondola. They are made of two cylinders of straw lashed to- gether and diminishing toward the prow, where they [49] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA tilt sharply upward. The lone fisherman sits astride of them, his feet dangling in the water at either side, and thus he puts to sea, a sort of Triton bestriding his sea-horse. Pacasmayo lies in a wide-open roadstead enclosed by golden sand hills, behind which rise chains of lofty mountains, a long wall of blue, deceptive, apparently peaceful and soft in the distance, but jagged and precipitous at closer quarters and traversed only by mule-paths. Yet should I like to have crossed them, for beyond their lofty summits, hidden in a lovely valley, lies Cajamarca, alluded to above, the "City of Atahualpa's Ransom," the Inca town that played so important a part in the story of the Conquest. Another quiet night on shipboard sleeping with that dreamy contentedness that comes over one on a calm sea, and at dawn the following morning we were anchored off Salaverry, the most picturesque of the ports we had yet seen. The sun was just rising in a film of clouds. Behind the dunes that clasped the bases of the mountains in a firm embrace rose the ranges of the Andes, fold upon fold, first the foot- hills, purple-clad, then the fainter Coast Cordillera, and finally, blue and distant, the Black Cordillera. [50] DOWN THE WEST COAST TO PERU But the Cordillera Real, the royal range of towering peaks, is not for the wayfarer by the coast. Once in a while on a clear, calm evening toward sunset a gleaming snow-capped peak may be descried like a cloud in the sky, but otherwise these mountain giants jealously guard their summits for the pilgrims to their shrine. Soon we were to become such pilgrims and see for ourselves the glories of their mighty heights. W T e landed at Salaverry and w T ere delighted with the broad strand, worthy of an Ostend or a Brighton, that stretches in a wide curve off toward Trujillo, founded by Pizarro and named by him for his birth- place in Estremadura, whose white domes and towers lay some miles distant like a mirage of the Orient among palms and verdant valleys. Salaverry itself is a low, one-storied affair whose broad, straight sandy streets with their wooden houses are strongly reminiscent of some of our Western frontier towns. Yet Spanish civilisation has put a picturesque impress upon it — upon its windows with their iron rejas; upon its broad verandas barred with screens and used as outdoor rooms; and upon the life of its streets, where women in black, half [51] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA hidden in sombre doorways, call to the aguador as he peddles his donkey-load of water from door to door, and half-naked street urchins vend chirimoyas and alligator pears at the street-corners. i". ,^-.P«r«..Tr.-—)^,t„; A Grated Veranda, Salaverry Upon the beach the fishermen mend their nets near the caballitos drying in the sun that stand erect against gaily painted fishing-smacks. It was a Sun- day morning, so the strand was dotted with bathers, diving in the surf or chasing each other in wild races [52] The Aguador Peddles His Donkey-Load of Water DOWN THE WEST COAST TO PERU across the hard-packed sand, among them the chil- dren of the British vice-consul, the only foreigners upon the scene. Again we weighed anchor after lunch, and as we sailed southward the coast grew more and more majestic. Never a note of green, to be sure, but, by compensation, behind the fringe of golden sand that skirts the sapphire sea, range upon range of moun- tains, always varied, ever broken into a thousand cones and pinnacles and as changeable in hue as a chameleon, necked by fleecy cloud shadows through the whole gamut of greys, lavenders, and purples. At times the dunes would break as at Chimbote and inland valleys open green as gardens. Toward even- ing the level sun rays warm these ashen mountains, burnishing them like bronze, and their deep que- bradas and rocky gorges by contrast are plunged into indigo shadows of a strength and intensity quite be- yond belief. Occasionally islands whitened with guano lie upon the sea, and upon them nest myriads of birds, and along the water's edge flocks of glistening sea-lions bark and snarl and wriggle and fight or disport them- selves in the surf. Our captain took us quite close to one of these islets — so close, indeed, that with the [53] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA naked eye we could plainly see the innumerable birds, both shags and murre, that peopled its honeycombed pinnacles. Just as we passed he blew two mighty blasts upon the siren, and every seal threw itself headlong into the sea, while the birds in one enor- mous cloud that darkened the sun left their nests, flying far out to sea — a mist of golden dust rising from the island raised by the whir of their countless wings. For the first time in several days no land was in sight the following morning. But by ten o'clock the long, tawny hills of San Lorenzo Island appeared above the horizon, and we made Callao harbour within an hour. There lay a great variety of ship- ping, from the clean, white, English-built cruisers of the Peruvian navy and the smart "home-boats" of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company to old hulks anchored to the northward, whose only passengers or crew were the gulls and pelicans that settled in their rigging or perched along their decks. Our steamer was immediately surrounded by a swarm of small boats, each manned by a shouting crowd of fleteros, that made a gay and brilliant scene, painted in the brightest colours and covered with awnings not unlike those used upon the Italian lakes. [54] DOWN THE WEST COAST TO PERU We went ashore with friends in the company's motor-launch, got through the customs quickly, and soon were in the train bound for Lima, only eight miles distant. I rubbed my eyes as we sped along. Was I in Peru in early March or in California in September? It was surely the end of summer, for here were fields of ripened corn, there venders of luscious grapes. The cattle grazing in the parched fields, the Rimac roar- ing over its stony bed, the tawny shores of San Lo- renzo wreathed with fog like the Contra Costa hills, the files of eucalypti, even the whistle of the Ameri- can-built locomotive and the clang of its bell, re- called like magic the country that surrounds the Bay of San Francisco or hides in the depths of So- noma Valley. But there across the aisle sat a major in his Franco- Peruvian uniform, while in front of him a group of young subalterns in the same neat clothes conversed amiably to ladies in rather boisterous hats, and in the coach ahead, second class, the cholos and other mixed races that we could see proved beyond a doubt that we were in Peru. [55] LIMA, CITY OF THE KINGS LIMA, CITY OF THE KINGS I IMA is a flat city whose straight, wide streets are as regular in plan as those of any metropolis — » of the New World. Pizarro is said to have laid it out, and if he did so he used a T-square and no imagination, merely leaving one empty block in the centre for a Plaza de Armas. Like all cities built upon this checker-board system, it lacks both the pic- turesqueness and charm of the mediaeval town and the dignity and stateliness of the modern city whose converging streets meet to frame views of important monuments. Despite this drawback, however, Lima has a physiognomy all its own. Throughout the colonial period it was the capital of the Spanish-American colonies, the residence of the viceroy and of the nobility. Hence it contains, more than any other South American city, notable examples of Hispanic architecture little suspected by the average tourist. [59] * PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA The streets, too, have distinct individuality, im- parted to a great extent by the balcones, adaptations of the Oriental moucharaby, or mirador, often elab- orately carved, that project from the upper story of almost every house, far out over the sidewalks, some- times occurring uninterruptedly for blocks at a time. They are most practical, allowing the air to pass freely to the rooms within, yet screening the house walls from the direct rays of the sun. The people, especially the women, live upon them, flitting be- hind their long rows of windows as they pass from room to room or leaning over the rail to watch the life in the streets below. The shops, too, are peculiar, being without fronts — wide open during the daytime and closed by long series of folding wooden doors at night. Much interest is also imparted to these streets by the stately palaces, mostly dating from the viceregal period, that are encountered in all the principal thor- oughfares. They present a rather forbidding aspect, with their great walls pierced only by a few barred windows and by their monumental porte-cocheres. But look through one of these vast doorways, and all is gaiety within. In an instant you are transported [60] LIMA, CITY OF THE KINGS to Spain and the sunlit courts of Andalusia. Here the same patios, washed with pale pastel tones and paved with tiles or coloured marbles, bask in the V-.V>;..TT. lit " Balcones," Lima sunlight, decked with palms and oleanders screened behind iron gratings of intricate and artistic work- manship. Through pavilions at the rear you catch glimpses of other gardens beyond. The whole scheme, cool, airy, framing the peep of blue sky overhead, [61] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA seems singularly well adapted to this land of soft sun- shine. The Plaza is a handsome square, well paved, neatly kept, and adorned with beautiful tropical gar- dens set with flowers and stately palms, and ornate lamp-posts supporting arches of lights for festivals. It is surrounded on two sides by portales, or arcades, lined with shops. The third side is occupied by the palace and the fourth by the cathedral. This last is not as interesting as some of the other great Peruvian churches. It was apparently made over in the last century, when a wave of classic re- vival swept away many of the picturesque plater- esque constructions of the Latin-American churches and substituted cold Roman columns and arches for the elaborate pediments and richly carved surfaces of the Churrigueresque artists. So now the cathedral lacks much of that interest that one expects to find in a building of its age. The interior, too, suffers at first sight from the same cause, yet upon closer in- vestigation the choir and chapels yield notable works of art. There are, for example, the massive silver high altar and the rarely beautiful silleria, rows of richly carved stalls ornamented with good statues of saints [62] Lima Cathedral from the Bodegones LIMA, CITY OF THE KINGS and apostles enshrined in ornate canopies or framed in elaborate panelling — all done in cedar wood after the best Hispanic traditions. The Chapel of the Purissima, too, is a fine piece of plateresque not yet debased by the barocco, and we discovered in the sacristy a delightful little Moorish fountain of ala- baster, the glint of whose tiles in the penumbra and the splash of whose water in the silence recalled to us some inner court of the Alhambra. In the Chapel of the Virgen Antigua, under the benign eyes of a placid Virgin and Child sent over from Spain by Charles V, a modest white casket with open glass sides contains the remains of that won- derful ruffian, that intrepid conquistador, Francisco Pizarro. As I looked at his dried bones and mummi- fied flesh exposed thus publicly to the gaze of the curious, lying upon, but in no way shrouded by, a bed of purple velvet, his entrails in a bottle at his feet, I wondered if it was with design that his re- mains are so displayed. Is it mere chance that this poor tomb is all that marks his final resting-place? Is it by mere neglect that no monument to him (at least to my knowledge) exists in all Peru? During the last stormy days of his life he occupied [63] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA the palace that he built across the Plaza. This vast, rambling pile is worthy of a visit, not merely because it is the actual residence of the President, the White House of Peru, but because of its historic associations. A big doorway, where a company of soldiers al- ways mounts guard, admits to an outer court, vast in scale, across which you reach a stairway that leads to a broad upper corridor, severely chaste, white and fresh, and open to the sky throughout its entire length. A series of apartments leads off on either hand, and sentinels challenge you at each door, for revolutions are frequent. But under the guidance of the President's chief aide-de-camp, a colonel of dis- tinction and courtly manners, we visited in turn the various reception-rooms, with their ornately gilded furniture of the viceregal period, and saw the vice- roy's throne that still, standing under its baldaquin but shorn of its imperial ornaments, does duty for the President. We admired, too, the proportions and acoustics of the long banquet-hall, a bit shabby, per- haps, but hemmed in between two of the lovely trop- ical gardens that are incorporated within the palace walls, some of their ancient fig-trees, we were told, dating from the days of Pizarro. [64] iW ^ -Jr»'*<< Aj^ <» P to., •-."is?*** -r#. ' .-o /n -~>£x&SJ ■ •' ' '.Jess Jif Entrance to a Corral, Oroya herdsmen in vivid ponchos came to round them up, galloping across a frail bridge that rocked and swayed under the weight of their horses, being slung across [89] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA the chasm only by means of willow withes like those the Incas used to twist. But the Spanish have definitely imposed their im- print on the land. The pink-roofed villages that hug the hillsides are true bits of Spain; the cemeteries, walled about and towered at the corners, are Hispanic in character, and the haciendas are all of the Span- ish type. Now the country grew wild and treeless again, and we passed through a gorge mined out by water like the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. And then, in a veri- table oasis of eucalyptus groves, lying in the broad valley whose richness was so often mentioned by the ancient chroniclers, we came upon Xauxa sunning its pink-tiled roofs in the afternoon light. The station lies just beyond the town, and is walled about and enclosed by gates like most of the principal depots along the Peruvian railways. So it was with pleasant anticipation that we looked forward to a peaceful night in our comfortable car out under the stars in the country. Dazzling white houses, whose broad eaves stretch out to shade the narrow sidewalks, border the streets that lead to the plaza — a vast square out of all pro- [90] THE OROYA RAILWAY portion to the low buildings that surround it and to the market uses to which it is put. It was none the less picturesque with its wriggling lines of vendors The Plaza, Xauxa squatting in the shade of their primitive para- sols and its churches and public buildings ranged about it. The most important church is a large edifice of no special architectural interest, being a sort of echo of the Cathedral of Lima. But its interior has escaped restoration and makes a dignified appearance with its white walls and single barrel-vault that frame a [91] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA superb reredos occupying the entire east end of the church — one of those amazing structures, gilded, painted, and ornamented with statues, pictures, col- umns, and cornices that, in this case, are held well within bounds, restrained, and fretted by the rich but flat detail of the plateresque rather than the wan- ton exuberance of the baroque. What a treasure- trove for some museum, this fine piece of Spanish art hidden in the mountains of Peru! With some difficulty we found a crazy old carriage to drive us out to call upon a charming Spanish fam- ily who possess a villa on the banks of a lake some distance down the valley. The rough road led off through lanes of century plants into the open coun- try. Now we could see the hills behind the town crowned with Inca ruins — sole remnants of the very consider- able Indian town that once played so conspicuous a part in the Wars of the Conquest and the civil wars that followed. Here, along the Mantaro, the Inca warriors, relying upon the width of the river as a barrier, made their first determined stand against Pizarro during his march upon Cuzco. But the im- petuosity of the Spanish riders, whose horses plunged [92] THE OROYA RAILWAY into the stream, swimming and wading to the oppo- site bank, soon put them to rout and sent them flee- ing toward the mountains. Here, too, at Xauxa, Pizarro spent many anxious days awaiting news of De Soto, sent ahead to recon- noitre; and, further to add to his troubles, his crea- ture, the young Inca Toparca, whom he had set upon the throne of Atahualpa, died, a victim, it was sup- posed, of poison. The ride to the lake gave us a pretty glimpse of this valley of Xauxa with its sheep grazing in the meadows, its long files of eucalypti and clusters of tincurals, and its flights of beautiful birds, eddying and dipping and soaring aloft in brilliant yellow clouds — principally hilgueros and trigueros — that, when they alighted in the cactus-hedges, sang as sweetly as canaries. The villa that we visited was set upon the very waters of the lake, the long reeds brushing the ve- randa as they bowed in the breeze. The air was balmy, like a lovely day in spring — soft, yet with a de- licious tang in it. A little removed from the shore, a group of flamingoes stood, pink and rosy, one- legged in the water. The children were presented [93] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA for our inspection; one of the senoritas "touched" the piano; we were offered refreshments, and then before sunset started back for the town. At dawn next morn- ing I felt a bump and then realised that we were moving. Grey silhouettes of trees and fainter silhouettes of mountains flitted past the window. We had been anxious to see the great market at Huancayo, and, as there is no train on Sun- day morning, a special engine had been sent up for our car, so that we pulled in to the station before seven o'clock. In spite of the early hour all was in a bustle, and when we walked into the main plaza, what a sight met our eyes ! This plaza, surrounded by low houses, forms a part, as it were, of a main street broad enough [94] A Native Family, Huancayo THE OROYA RAILWAY for a metropolitan boulevard, yet it and the square were a compact, seething mass of humanity and beasts. They told us that there were between ten Corner of the Indian Market, Huancayo and twelve thousand Indians at that morning's market, and I fully believe it. In the great square itself the men stood about for the most part, bartering and talking, arrayed in gaudy ponchos and wide-rimmed hats. The women were sitting in circular groups upon the ground, eat- ing their morning meal of steaming food, dipping it [95] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA out of earthen vessels with the spoons whose handles pin their shawls at the shoulder like the Roman agrafes, or they squatted in long lines from end to end of the plaza, forming, with their bright shawls, and their vivid wares wrapped in woven bags and blankets, a huge crazy quilt covering every foot of available space. It was a bewildering scene indeed, this multitude of bright colours, relieved against the low houses in whose tiendas men and women sat drinking those tiny glasses filled apparently with water, but in real- ity with the fiery alcohol, almost pure, distilled on the sugar plantations along the coast. At one end stood a great mud-coloured ruin — of a church, I think, with sightless windows and an open portal — around whose base great herds of llamas and donkeys stood gathered in picturesque confusion. Down the street came water-carriers, staggering along among vendors of coca and bright aniline dyes that would delight a post-impressionist's heart, while along the curbs sat the sellers of ollas and drinking-gourds, of ponchos and saddles, of yellow earthen pottery and big vessels for cooking the chupe, their national dish. Our wanderings finally brought us to the far end of [96] THE OROYA RAILWAY the main street just in time to see the garrison, a battalion of infantry, march out of its barracks with colours flying and headed by its band. The officers were Peruvians of Spanish descent, but the rank and file seemed entirely of Indian origin. They marched well, however, and looked like neat and self-respect- ing soldiers. When I asked why they paraded thus during the full market, I was told that every Sunday this was done to stimulate interest in the army and show the Indian youths what fine fellows they would be when their time came for military service. Half an hour later the cracked bells of the church began to chime, and we walked back to the little square in front of it. Here, nearly twelve thousand feet above the sea, sweet -peas and calla lilies, roses, dahlias, and geraniums were blazing in a perfect riot of colour. Inside the church all was hushed and still. Women in black rebosos, or gaily coloured shawls, sat or knelt upon the stone floor, and a crowd of men stood near the high altar where three officiants were celebrating low mass. It was a picture of quiet dignity, this church in- terior, the groups silhouetting handsomely against the pale-tinted walls and the gilded side-altars, the [97] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA alcaldes from the mountain villages standing apart, leaning upon their long canes bound about with silver, badges of the mayor's office. As the women removed their hats to cover their heads with shawls, coca leaves fell fluttering to the ground, and we noticed many of them wearing these same leaves pasted on their temples to deaden headaches. We were asked by the mayor of the city to go in- formally with him to the Club Nacional, my wife be- ing included in the invitation, though she was the only lady present. We enjoyed the experience, es- pecially the Incaic music that followed, played by an Indian, a descendant of the old stock. It was our first opportunity to hear these weird melodies, so sad, so plaintive in tone, so strange in their synco- pations, that were to follow us wherever we went in the mountains. He played, turn by turn, the old Inca dances, the yaravis sung by the women, and the gay marmeras danced nowadays by the com- mon people all over Peru. What an interesting opera could be woven upon these themes, with the romantic history of the Incas and the scenery of the country and quaint customs of these mountain peo- ple as a background! [98] THE OROYA RAILWAY Some of the Indian women are quite handsome, with their straight noses, full lips, and bronze- coloured skin, smooth and soft, that glistens in the sun. The men, too, have the hardy type of moun- taineers : their legs bare, fine, and strong, their chests deep, and their heads erect. Though dirty person- ally, their town is surprisingly clean for an isolated mountain community. The alcalde dined with us that evening, and we had an interesting discussion of Peruvian politics. We had half planned to visit Santa Rosa de Ocopa, a monastery in the mountains, upon our return jour- ney; but that did not prove feasible, so we proceeded directly back to Oroya, at which station we arrived several hours behind our schedule. To this fact, how- ever, we owed one of the most wonderful impressions of our entire trip : the crossing of the pass at sunset- As we emerged from the Galera tunnel that pierces Mount Meiggs at the top of the grade, nearly sixteen thousand feet above the sea, great clouds piled high about the summits of the mountains, whose peaks, copper, ashen, silver, or coral, stood glistening with eternal glaciers. As we started down the grade the evening mists began to rise, , hurry ing upward from [99] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA gorge, valley, and precipice to swell the gathering vapours — caught by winds and air currents, eddying hither and thither like the fumes from a witch's caldron. In these flying, ghost-like forms lakes ap- peared and disappeared from time to time, hanging suspended, as it were, in mid-air. Embattled peaks rose enormous through the fog, their bulk doubled by the mist, just as the depth of the gorges was rendered doubly terrifying by the mystery of bottomless pits and precipices whose bases were swallowed in swirling vapours. As we descended, the sun, with its last rays, shot shafts of lurid light through these scurrying mists that thus became great tongues of fire, licking the mountains like the flames of a giant conflagration — a Walhalla, a glorious apotheosis to this wonderful ride in the Andes. We passed the night at Matucana, half-way down the grade, and in the morning came down to Lima, to sea-level and the warmth of banana groves, jas- mine, and heliotrope after the snow and ice of the mountains. [100] SOUTHERN PERU SOUTHERN PERU A COAST HACIENDA THE Limari of the Chilian Line took us in a night from Callao harbour to the anchorage off Cerro Azul. Before us lay a typical Peruvian port, barren and dry, whose bleak sand hills made us exclaim: "Why have we accepted this kind invitation to spend a week in this desolate spot!" The doctor's boat came alongside, and presently the chalowpa of the port captain and with it a large lancia. This latter intrigued me, for, though manned by four stalwart oarsmen, it contained no cargo of any description. Its bottom was covered with a great tarpaulin on which stood two empty chairs, its sole passenger being a man in white whose bronzed face was shaded by a cork helmet. I was wonder- ing how we would get ashore, when this man in [103] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA white stepped up and, introducing himself, asked if we were not the expected guests of Sefior H . He proved to be the port agent, British as could be, of the great sugar estate for which we were bound, and soon, with our luggage, we were comfortably in- stalled in the two chairs upon the tarpaulin and were making for the shore, riding the surf until we beached some fifty feet or so beyond the dry sand. Several men waded out for the luggage; my wife was put into a chair carried by three men, while I was told to bestride a big fellow's shoulders as he waded ashore with me. A queer procession we must have made! Our host was down to the port to meet us, and presently, after a comforting cup of tea in the agent's house (it was yet very early in the morning), we were put into a carrito, or little car running on narrow- gauge tracks and drawn by a fat, white mule. A Jap lashed up the animal, constantly shouting "Mula, mula," as we sped around the promontory that gives the port its name — the Blue Hill. In an instant the whole aspect of the country changed as if by magic, a change so startling that it fairly staggered us — the coast desert transformed in a moment from sandy wastes to broad cotton- [104] Landing at f'erro Azul SOUTHERN PERU fields and acres upon acres of sugar-cane. A tall factory chimney loomed up in the distance; then a Japanese village with its temple set among the banana-trees came into view; then a larger native village; and finally the low, rambling hacienda, an extensive group of buildings painted Venetian red and enclosing two patios, one set out with date- palms and a fountain, the other planted with flowers and entwined with honeysuckle. We were taken to large and airy rooms that faced the garden and tennis-court, with, beyond, a fine prospect of the sea, calm, placid, and blue beyond belief. It was now only nine in the morning (for we had made a very early start), and I spent the remaining hours until luncheon in walking through the sugar mill with my host. Santa Barbara is a very big plant, one of the largest on the West Coast, and thirty -five miles of railroad track feed its capacious maw. Train-load after train-load of cane, the "honey of reeds," draws up to the factory each day to spill its contents upon the endless chains that dump them onto the crushing-mills. Like all perfected machin- ery of this day, no human hand touches the product until the finished sugar, one hundred and fifty thou- [105] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA sand pounds a day, is sewn into sacks and put on flat-cars for shipment at the port. After luncheon we started, four of us, in the carrito for Casa Blanca, a large ranch some miles distant, the headquarters of the cultivation department. Here we found horses ready saddled and soon were riding off toward an isolated hill, the Cerro d'Oro, a barren peak bearing Inca ruins plainly visible upon its summit. As we climbed its sandy heights beau- tiful views of the valley began to unfold themselves. To the westward the sea glittered like silver in the afternoon light; to the north, parched and baked and blistered by eternal sunshine, the arid foot-hills lay seamed like wrinkled old mummies; but to the east, in violent contrast to this desolation, the broad Cafiete valley, under the fecundating touch of its river and countless irrigating ditches, bloomed into verdant fields of cane, vivid, velvety, stretching like a vast green carpet to the far foot-hills that rose, pale, ashen, and sandy, to buttress the grand Cor- dillera towering high into the heavens. Upon attaining the summit of the hill there lay about us the ruins of a dead civilisation. House walls of sun-baked adobe brick, with doorways still [106] SOUTHERN PERU intact; fragments of a well-planned fortress; and lower down a cemetery wall beyond which we could see innumerable human bones and row upon row of skulls glistening in the sunshine amid strips of mummy wrappings of vicuna cloth, exhumed by the shifting sand. We rode down the other side to San Luis, and in the carrito again drove for miles through the cane- fields of the vast estate to the Nuevo Mundo. Here we found other horses and, in the now westering light, rode through hills scratched with andenes, or Inca terraces, dating from the days when that pa- tient people, by means of aqueduct and tunnel, de- flected whole rivers to fertilise their crops. These irrigating ditches are still in use, serving as models to the Spaniards. Each hill hereabout is topped with its Inca ruins. Like the mediaeval builders, these Peruvian Indians of the coast region chose the hill tops for their settle- ments, thus protecting themselves alike from wan- dering bands of marauders and the miasmas of the coast marshes. We returned to Santa Barbara in the waning twilight, with the crescent moon and the Southern Cross to guide us. [107] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA So ended our first day at Cerro Azul. I had asked myself in the morning, "Why did I come?" Now I was answered. This single day had given me the most vivid picture of one of those Inca valleys described by the ancient chroniclers, scarcely believable upon this rainless coast — valleys that light its desert wastes with their emerald fields wherever a torrent pours from the Andes down to the sea; valleys that support the lonely coast-towns and pro- duce the barges of sugar, the bales of cotton, the herds of cattle that are hoisted aboard the steamer at every port. The days that followed strengthened this picture and added to its details. Each brought its little ex- pedition. One morning we visited the Japanese village whose picturesque little lanes, shaded by banana palms, put to shame the shiftlessness and dirt of the cholo quarter — the inevitable galpon that houses the half- breed working population of every Peruvian hacienda. Another day we rode to the Seal Rocks along the hard-packed sands of the coast. Our horses at times galloped through the surf itself; then again we were cut off from the sea by hummocks and rocky promon- [108] SOUTHERN PERU tories and reaches of barren sand dunes. Oh, the loneliness of this shore, the desolation of these dunes ! Never a tree, nor a shrub, nor a blade of grass. Only at times the gulls fishing along the beach, or the skeleton of a pelican whitening in the sand, or a flock of buzzards hovering over a dead seal cast up by the breakers. Yet we were following the main coast highway to Lima, a hundred miles or less to the north, though only a furrow in the sand and a single line of telegraph- poles marked its progress. Our ride terminated at Lobos Rock, where the seals lay wriggling in great families, the sound of their barking rising even above the roar of the surf. We watched them for some time, until our horses grew restless and the sun be- gan to sink behind the rocky islets that lifted their purple heads above the sea. We struck out for home in the short twilight of the tropics through the lonely sands, and on the way passed three cholos eating their frugal meal oblivious of the coming darkness, preparing for their long walk toward Lima, going, as they always do, by night to avoid the heat, trudging the endless sandy miles of the coast wilderness. So went the determined old [109] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA conquistadores when Pizarro met Almagro at Mala, so went the Inca runners, so goes the cholo and the Indian to-day. Our longest excursion took an entire day. Early in the morning we went in the carrito as far as Monte Alban, a superintendent's ranch at the farthest limits of the estate, the scene of several Spanish tragedies. There we found horses and were joined by Sefior L , son of the Vice-President of Peru, who was to be our companion for the day and whose home we were to visit later on. Our little cavalcade of six started through the village, San Vicente, whose freshly painted church and clean plaza set with gardens told of its prosperity, and out between the baked mud walls that serve as fences and are so characteristic a feature of this coast region of Peru, until we reached the hacienda of Hualcara. Here we paused for a while and refreshed ourselves in its patio garden aglow with flowers and embowered with great clusters of the pink bellissima, a beautiful vine — Japanese, I believe — that thrives particularly well in these latitudes. In the saddle again, we struck off for the hills. In a moment the cotton-fields and the acres of sugar- [110] SOUTHERN PERU cane were gone and we entered a dry, parched desert, the desolation of the moon, without a vestige of life either animal or vegetable. Through this arid, stony waste we crossed a long abutment of the Sierra and came at last out above a broad valley watered by the main fork of the Canete, a valley we had not yet seen, green from end to end, traversed by long files of trees and dotted with ranches. At its upper end, just under the shadow of the mountains and com- manding the pass that ascends their rugged defiles, rose an isolated cone, the key of the valley, known throughout the country as the Fortaleza— the Fort- ress. As we approached it we could plainly see extensive ruins upon its summit, remains of the great Inca stronghold that defended their mountain kingdom against the invaders. But these ruins along the coast possess neither the interest nor the grandeur of the massive structures that we saw later on the interior plateaus. Built of adobe bricks, not of giant stones, they are specimens of the decadence of the Inca builder's craft, dating as they do from but a century or two before the Spanish conquest. We circled the hill to view them from every side, [111] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA and as we returned, hungry and thirsty, two riders appeared, as from a rub of Aladdin's lamp, leading a pack-animal with lunch-baskets. Where had they sprung from? Only a laugh from our host as in the cool shade of a willow we selected a spot for our mid-day meal. An old Indian brought us 'ponchos to sit upon from his rude cane hut near by; the birds were singing in the canebrakes, and a little stream went rushing merrily by in its mad race from the Andes to the sea. After lunch we crossed this stream and followed down its valley, fording it a dozen times in its mean- derings, riding single-file through the bamboo jungles, the tail and crupper of the pacing pony ahead ap- pearing and disappearing as we sped along. We finally emerged into the main Cafiete valley and paused awhile to visit an old bull-ring quite unique in its way. Its only gradas are a sort of balcony or loggia painted with statues of Roman emperors and with vines and the fittings of a pergola. The entire barrera, or wall surrounding the ring, is frescoed with great figures, life-size, and now partially effaced by time, depicting all the phases of a bull-fight: the picador and his horse gored by the infuriated animal; [112] SOUTHERN PERU the banderilleros adroitly placing their multi-coloured darts; the lithe matador sighting his sword for the final thrust; even to the exit of the dead animal dragged out at the heels of the arrastres. As we left the ring the four wonderful Norfolk '^Si&J^SlBOtt^^^t.^.^ ^^Jgg&t Bull-Ring in the Canete Valley r-CN^.TT. .., Island pines, straight, tall, and branched like giant candelabra— the quartette of trees that make Unanue so conspicuous a landmark in the valley — raised their lofty heads before us, and from time to time we could descry the pinnacles and loggias of the beauti- ful hacienda rising above the intervening meadows. We were to stop for tea at this home of the Vice- [113] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA President, and presently were dismounting in its vast fore-court, where the white oxen were being unyoked from the plough and the farm implements stood neatly ranged under sheds at either side. V<-*..^OA- -m-*.. Hacienda of Undnue The great villa that confronted us was quite un- like any that I have seen — the dream of some French architect who let his imagination run riot. With its massive basement pierced only by narrow loopholes and a single entrance door, its upper terrace shaded on every side by arched verandas, its windows barred with iron rejas, its battlemented roof-line, and the [114] The Carrito and Itn (lalloping Mule SOUTHERN PERU elaborate spires of its porch, it is a strange combina- tion, fanciful to a degree, like some story-book palace set in this remote valley, fortified against an imagi- nary foe, yet a pleasure palace withal, enclosed by its tangled gardens shaded by giant trees. We ascended the double stairway to the broad loggia that commands a view in every direction to- ward the sea, the river valleys, and the mountains. The cool air of these verandas, paved with Italian marble, and of the rooms, cooler still, that surround the main patio, was grateful indeed after the glare of the road and the heat of the afternoon sun. We lin- gered until rather late over refreshing beverages, and the sun was already setting as we bade our host good-bye and started homeward by way of Santa Rita, another ranch at which we left Our horses with an attendant and found awaiting us the now familiar carrito and its galloping mule. [115] II TO AREQUIPA OUR visit at Santa Barbara had come to an end. Early Sunday morning we drove down to the port where in the offing lay the Panama, that was to take us on down the coast. Our host put us off in the same lancha that had brought us ashore, the agent accompanied us to the ship and presented us to the captain, and by ten o'clock we had weighed anchor. By good fortune I found among the passengers a man I had already met, Dr. G , rector of the University of Cuzco, Peru's second oldest seat of learning, and a friend of his, a writer and archaeologist of distinction. In the ship's saloon we talked over the interest of the trip that lay before us, and, to whet our appetite, Senor C showed us some priceless picture cloths of pre-Inca design — condor, puma, and serpents intertwined — that he had just unearthed somewhere near lea. In the afternoon we sighted the Chincha Islands, [116] SOUTHERN PERU white, flat-topped, like half-melted icebergs, cele- brated for their guano deposits, a semicircle of them off Pisco fringing the horizon. Pisco's gaily painted houses soon emerged from the sea and we cast anchor. Dark Indian women came aboard selling the luscious Italia grapes for which the valley is noted, and from which is made the Italia brandy and the "pisco," that alcoholic bever- age so much used along the coast, some of it so strong that, to quote a graphic expression that I heard, "it would make a rabbit fight a bull-dog." Pisco scarcely repaid us for the visit ashore. The town itself lies too far away to be conveniently visited in a few hours. So we had to content ourselves with the settlement along the beach — a series of bath- houses and small hotels like some miniature Coney Island. We stopped next day at another forlorn port, Chala by name, with a flimsy wooden church stuck in a plaza of shifting sand and a few frame houses set upon the same unstable foundation. What the shore lacked in interest the sea made up for. It literally teemed with life. Sea-lions bobbed their heads up and down upon its surface; schools of dolphins frolicked about, while flocks of shags and [117] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA murres hovered over them; long files of pelicans lazily flapped their way toward the guano-coated rocks behind which purplish mountains now rose abruptly from the sea. All afternoon we coasted near the shore and toward night enjoyed a splendid sunset. Early next morning the clang of the engine bell and the clank of the mooring-chains told us we had anchored. In the grey dawn the shore looked not unlike Salaverry, but a larger town lay spread upon the cliffs half hidden in the haze of spindrift. The Pacific rollers thundered in long surges against the rocks, and the boats coming out to meet us bounced like corks upon the sea. Yet it was an exceptionally calm morning for Mollendo, so we were told! As I was choosing afletero among the various brigands who presented themselves to ferry us ashore, a Spaniard stepped up and presented his card — an official from the Southern Railways of Peru. He soon had us installed in his stanch boat, and with the aid of a peppery tug, the first I had seen at the small ports of the coast, we were cutting our way through the water while the other boats were still bobbing about by the steamer's side. [118] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA In behind the break-water all was animation. Busy cranes were loading and unloading barges, a railroad engine was puffing back and forth switching freight-cars to and fro, and along the quays and on the landing-steps a jostling crowd was pushing and shouting. We scrambled ashore and were met by the station-master who had us and our luggage quickly transferred to the private car that was to take us to Arequipa — the same car (though we did not then know it) that afterward was to be our home for weeks. Our train was not to leave until one o'clock, so several hours of leisure lay before us. Mollendo, however, presented few attractions. It looks as San Francisco must have looked in the fifties — its frame houses set in sand dunes. Much of the town overhangs the sea, clinging to the bluffs, so that many of the dwellings present three stories to the ocean and only one to the land. Such a house, for instance, is the Club, a well-managed institution to which we were kindly taken, and where we enjoyed an excellent lunch on a terrace overlooking the broad Pacific, whose thundering surges beat along the shore at our feet. [120] SOUTHERN PERU Just before we boarded our train a curious incident occurred. A little Indian boy, some six or seven years old, approached us and, with tears in his eyes and his voice choked with sobs, asked to become our chico, our boy — literally and of his own free-will giving him- self to us for life. His tale was pitiful indeed. An aunt had brought him down from the mountains and had left him here by the coast and disappeared, whether by boat or train he did not know. We were quite touched by his appeal, and had it not been for the friend who accompanied us — a Peruvian-born — I do not know what might not have happened. He as- sured us, however, that the boy was shamming, that he wanted to go back to the mountains, to be sure, but that as soon as he got a favourable opportunity he would run away; in fact, that if we put him in the second-class coach we should never see him when we arrived; that this sort of appeal to strangers was a regular thing, and so on. Who was right I do not know. But I do know that boys of this age and even younger, and girls, too, of the inferior Indian race, are attached to the person of each young Peruvian child of the upper class and brought up with them for life. We constantly saw [ 121 ] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA such little slaves carrying coats or bundles or um- brellas behind their little masters, who walked ahead with their parents — a pernicious custom, to my mind, breeding arrogance, insolence, and a habit of idleness in the better-born children. We spoke to the station-master about the little waif and he prom- ised to look out for him. I hope he did. We pulled out at the tail of the afternoon passenger promptly on time, skirted the shore for a bit to the bathing resorts of Ensenada and Mejia, and then struck for the hills and Arequipa. The road ascends by a series of loops and curves among rounded foot-hills whose fat flanks are covered only with a tough-looking herb, dull brown and in spots green. Now and then we caught glimpses of one of those verdant valleys that lie tucked away down by the coast. This soon passed from sight, however, and at an elevation of about a thousand metres we emerged onto a succession of broad table- lands backed by blue mountains, whose gorges are filled with white sand that, at a distance, looks like snow-patches. As we proceeded these sandy drifts approached the track, sometimes descending the mountains in long ridges like giant reptiles' tails, sometimes form- [122] SOUTHERN PERU ing pools or hillocks, but oftenest of all piling up in those strange sand-crescents that are one of the phenomena of the region. These crescents are quite perfect in form, highest and broadest at the centre, diminishing with perfect regularity both in height and thickness toward the two horns that curve a bit inward like the Turkish moon. Hundreds of them lie spotted over this table- land, each with its horns pointed eastward, each mov- ing like clockwork in the same direction. For they move. Their tiny white particles, that hum in the heat, are fanned by the wind and chased over the summit, dropping down on the other side. Thus, particle by particle, irresistibly they pursue their onward march. They must be shovelled from the railroads like snow-drifts, though we were told that a few large stones placed upon them would break them up and prevent their movement. The stations along these plateaus are but tiny oases — palms, fruit trees, flowers set in a waterless waste. After San Jose you begin to climb again through salmon-tinted mountains, stratified and shaded like those of the Grand Canyon of the Colo- rado. Deep down in their chasms narrow valleys [123] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA appear — green, rich meadows where cattle graze and Indian bamboo huts nestle by the rivulets. At Vitor, where the women were selling delicious grapes by the station, we had reached an altitude of five thousand feet and soon could look across the broad upper plateau that now spread out before us. At a turn of the road in the distance Chachani and El Misti, the two Andean sentinels, suddenly stood revealed in all the glory of their icy summits, nearly twenty thousand feet above the sea! The scenery now became remarkable — grand. At times we looked deep into the valley of the Chili, with its verdant fields and Indian villages set in clusters of banana palms; at others into arid chasms where the blue evening shadows were slowly creep- ing upward while the coppery sunlight still flickered on the upper walls. And at each turn we obtained new views of the two mountain giants that marked our destination and that grew nearer and ever nearer, now rosy in the evening glow. The short twilight had deepened. Tingo's lights burst forth in the semi-darkness, and in ten minutes we pulled into the station at Arequipa. [124] LA VILLA HERMOSA LA VILLA HERMOSA THE acting superintendent of the Southern Railways was there to greet us, and soon we were rattling, with him, in the dark of the early evening, over the cobble-stones to the hotel. How like Spain it all was — perhaps even more Spanish than Spain, for it lacked every taint of cos- mopolitanism! Suddenly we emerged into the plaza and a moment later stepped out upon our porch speechless at what lay before us. The great bell of the Compania, just op- posite, was tolling for vespers, and its deep, bass voice was answered by the jangling but sweet-toned chimes of the other churches and by the slow, irregular thud of the cathedral bell. We were standing on top of the Portales, or stone arcades of beautiful design, that completely surround the plaza on three of its [127] The Cathedral from the Mercaderes LA VILLA HERMOSA sides. Below us lay flower-beds, palms, and broad, curving pathways whose glistening tile pavements, clean as mirrors, reflected the arc lights above. A quiet crowd was slowly moving about, for a military band was playing off in one corner. Directly opposite loomed the long fagade of the cathedral, above which we could faintly descry the shadowy forms of Misti, rising to its snow-capped cone in all the perfect symmetry of its pure volcanic outline, and of its rugged neighbour, Chachani, cut into a multitude of peaks and ice-fields and rocky pinnacles. "Where," we asked ourselves, "could we find such another combination, a great metropolitan cathedral fronting a monumental plaza and backed by two such mountain giants?" And the spell of this first impression did not wear off. We dined that evening with friends at the Central — a good Spanish dinner — after which we were amused by an Indian flower-boy who, though ugly and ill-formed, danced by our table, and with roll- ing eyes recited quaint pensamientos of languishing themes. As we walked about the streets next morning we [129] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA were struck by the pretty, gay aspect of the town, and of its dwellings painted in pale pastel tones, rose, pale ochre, Nile green, and pearly grey, but most of all azul — those blues that shade from faint, cool white to the deep tones of the azure sky. In the open court-yards oleanders bloomed and the tessellated tufa pavements were shaded by fig, orange, and lemon trees. I should call Arequipa the Silent City. No carts rattle on its thoroughfares, its donkeys' feet are un- shod, and even its little tram-cars fail to drown the murmur of the rushing rivulets that course down its open gutters. It is the second city in size in Peru, and its founder, Garcia Manuel de Carvajal, called it La Villa Her- mosa — the Beautiful City — and it well deserved its name. Its present appellation is Quichua in origin, and is said to have originated from the fact that a party of Inca soldiers once came upon this lovely valley of the Chili, hidden in the dreary Andean soli- tudes, and asked their commander to allow them to remain. His reply was, "Ari, quepai"; that in Quichua means "Yes, remain." Its elevation, some seventy-five hundred feet [130] The Cathedral and Chachani LA VILLA HERMOSA above the sea, gives it a delightful climate, quite spring-like in character, and of its forty thousand in- habitants a large proportion are gente decente, for it has long been recognised as a centre of culture and the residence of men of distinction. The courtesy of the Arequiperlians is beyond ques- tion. Each time you stop to look into a court-yard some one has a pretty way of asking you to come in and "take a seat." Then you are presented with flowers and apologies are made that the season is late and flowers not what they were a month or two ago. And what pretty, dark-eyed young women in lacy mantillas you meet coming home from church on Sunday morning! Let me tell you of an Arequipenian Sunday, to complete the picture, for Arequipa is essentially a religious town and lives its full life on Sunday. You are waked in the morning by the bells of the Compania, big and small, pealing forth in carillons; then, when their vibrant notes have died away, you distinguish the silvery distant chimes of other churches; then a sound of voices chanting, accom- panied by slow martial music. You look out and see a procession making a tour of the plaza — a brother- [131] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA hood bearing a great crucifix, followed by priests and the soldiers of the garrison. By ten you are out and cross the plaza to the cathe- dral and watch the Indian small boys, barefoot and nimble, who noiselessly carry from each home the priedieu, or chair of their mistress, gradually filling all the carpeted nave with them. The great organ peals forth, and feminine Arequipa, in sober black, troops in for high mass. After this morning function there is a lull till about two o'clock, when all the men of the town and some of the women wander down to the bull-ring, where Bomba or Segurito, according to the posters, will fight six "hermosos toros." And splendid bulls they are, to be sure, or were the day we saw them. I have seen no such thrilling fights in Spain as we witnessed here, and would not care often to undergo such ex- citement. Here in Peru the picador is practically suppressed; in fact, often totally so. Hence there are none of the gory horse episodes, and the matador takes the great, long-horned animal while he is still quite fresh and untired. The pluck of the two espadas that we saw that day was astounding. They knelt in the ring, vaulted the [132] Court of a Residence Church of La Com-pania PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA animal, or turned calmly from him so that he just grazed them in his infuriated rushes, playing all the tricks of their hazardous calling, cheered to the echo, until one was finally caught by the bull and severely wounded. We returned to the plaza, where a military con- cert was now in full swing. If the women had pre- sented a sober picture at the cathedral in the morn- ing, not so now at this afternoon promenade. Decked in their smartest gowns and escorted by gay young officers and obsequious young men, they sauntered in groups of three or four round and round the glazed- tile walks among the flowers and palmettoes. We went with two friends (one of them the Amer- ican minister at La Paz) to the zarzuela that evening. A fairly good company was playing an old favourite, the melodramatic "Mancha que limpia," and a good house was in attendance. The scene was certainly characteristic of a Latin play-house, the main floor occupied for the most part by the men, the three tiers of boxes filled with elaborately dressed women, and the peanut-galleries crowded to suffocation with the small trades-people. The town reserves a number of picturesque corners [134] • ^- ; WT l Arequipa from the Bridge Across ike Chili Entrance to the old Bishop's Palace PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA for him who will ferret them out. There is the mar- ket; there are the old palaces and churches orna- mented with those extravagant plateresque carvings done by the Indians under the guidance of their Spanish conquerors; there is the great stone bridge that spans the Chili, with its massive piers and but- tresses that remind you of their prototypes at Toledo; there are the long street vistas, with Chachani or Misti ever framed at the far extremity. And in the evening you may drive out over the rough country road to a bit of American soil — the observatory that Harvard University maintains here for the study of the southern heavens — and see the stars sit for their portraits taken by its wonderful photographic telescopes. It is strange, indeed, to find this astronomer's home, so absolutely American in all its appointments, perched on the far flanks of El Misti, and there to pass an evening in the genial warmth of an enthusiastic young American's fireside. [136] THE LAND OF THE INCAS THE LAND OF THE INCAS AS you ascend from Arequipa to cross the back- L\ bone of the Andes on this Southern Rail- -* ^ way of Peru, leaving behind the dreary waste-lands of the upper Cordilleras, devoid of life and vegetation except for the pajonal, the only grass that clothes the highest plateaus with its stubby golden carpet, where no bit of green has rested the eye since the lovely valley of the Chili faded from view and the eternal snows of Chachani and Misti dropped lower and lower toward the hori- zon; after topping the pass at Crucero Alto, some fifteen thousand feet above the sea, you descend the eastward side by loops and gradients about two thousand feet or more. Vicunas, the sole habitants of these mountain solitudes, graze in the ychu grass by the tracks, and at lower levels llamas and sheep. The flocks and herds increase in size as you de- [139] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA scend. Occasionally clusters of huts appear in whose doorways women are seated weaving 'ponchos, their mouths muffled against the icy breeze. A chain of lakes now borders the road, one bright and peaceful, the next shaded by heavy clouds, dark, tragic as the tarn of the House of Usher. Snow-peaks close in the vista to the left, while ahead opens a broad val- ley, the great basin of Lake Titicaca. You quickly realise that you are entering another world — a strange world shut off from the remainder of our planet by every^ barrier that nature could de- vise. To the east tower the White Cordillera, beyond which moulder the miasmic jungles of the Montana; to the west rise the snowy altitudes we have just traversed. Between these two ranges lie a succession of highland valleys some ten to thirteen thousand feet above the sea, each separated from the other by nudos, or knots, of lesser transverse chains of moun- tains. These valleys in our latitudes would be covered with eternal snow. Here, under the tropics, they blossom with all the products of the temperate zone, enjoying a cool, invigorating climate and supporting a large population of Indians. [140] THE LAND OF THE INCAS They constituted the heart of the ancient empire of the Incas, that amazing despotism tnat stunned the Spanish conquerors with the wisdom of its in- stitutions, the splendour and the size of its buildings, the rich produce of its fields, and, above all, by the wealth of its mines of gold and silver and its amassed riches of centuries. When the Spaniard came, Hu- ayna Capac had already extended his dominions as far north as Quito and as far south as the land of the Araucanian Indians of Chili. Even most of the savage tribes of the Montana owed him allegiance, and only the Pacific bounded his territories to the westward. The centre of his empire lay in these high plateaus of the Andes— the fair and fertile val- leys of Huaylas and Vilcanota, the bare and bleak plains of Cerro de Pasco and Titicaca's basin. We were now entering the last-named, the most southern of the four, and were then to turn north- ward to visit the Inca capital, Cuzco, the navel of the kingdom, as its Quichua name signifies. It was toward the end of the rainy season. So, when we started from Juliaca in the morning the broad valley lay flecked with numerous pools of water that reflected the deep blue of the sky mingled [141] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA with the fleecy white of the small clouds that floated overhead. The air, after the night's rain, was of an indescribable rarity and purity, pellucid; so clear, indeed, that the distant Cordilleras showed every varied marking of their sharp ridges and deep que- bradas. Now and then, as we looked backward, Titicaca came into view, reflecting the hills of indigo blue that surround it. This lake is intimately connected with all the tales and legends of the Incas. In fact, the usually ac- cepted story of the origin of their race makes it spring from the waters of this very lake. Garcilasso de la Vega, himself a descendant of the Incas of the royal line, gives us a clear version of the story. Inti, the Sun-God, ashamed of the barbarous prac- tices of the primitive human beings who then in- habited the globe, taking pity upon them, sent to earth his two children, Manco Capac and his sister- wife, Mama Oello (Children of the Sun, as their descendants, the Incas, always styled themselves), causing them to rise from Titicaca and go forth to instruct the people: he in government and the arts of war and husbandry; she in weaving and spinning — his Coya, or queen of women, as he was king of men. [142] THE LAND OF THE INCAS Inti thus admonished them. " Tis I," said he, "who warm the earth and its inhabitants when they are cold, fertilise their fields and their pastures; who fructify their trees, multiply their flocks; who send them rain and fine weather in season. I make the tour of the world each day to see what is needful for its happiness. I reserve for myself only the pleasure of seeing it happy. Go, do likewise. Be happy if thou canst, but, above all, try to make other people happy." He gave them, too, a "barrilla de oro" of half a yard in length and two fingers in thickness that they were to take with them. They were to pursue their journey until this golden wedge, of its own accord, should sink into the earth, at which spot they were to establish the capital of their kingdom. Accord- ingly, they set forth upon their wanderings, never stopping until they reached the valley of Cuzco, where the golden wedge sank into the earth and dis- appeared. We were now following their footsteps from Tit- icaca's shore to this same valley. The fields were alive with flocks of sheep and herds of cattle and llamas; here and there groups of adobe huts thatched [143] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA with straw afforded shelter for their keepers. The names of the stations told us we were approaching the Quichua country, for, instead of the familiar San Miguel or San Jose, we read Calapuja, Tirapata, Aya- viri, and Chuquibambilla. Quichua was the ancient tongue of the Inca court, imitated by all the con- quered nations until it became the fashionable lan- guage, the most elegant of the South American tongues. It is still the spoken language of the Peru- vian Indian. Our train had now begun to climb, mounting through bleak pastures until we reached La Raya, the summit of one of those knots of mountains that connect the two main ranges of the Andes. The scenery was magnificent. We were shut in by great peaks set in fields of moss or grass that encircle their mighty cones, whose heads reach the realms of eter- nal silence and eternal snow. Two little streams rise at the top of the pass. One, the Puchara, starts down the valley we had just as- cended, finally to reach the Pacific; the other becomes the Vilcanota that, gathering strength as it proceeds, goes to swell the mighty Amazon, emptying into the Atlantic some three thousand miles or more away. [144] Sf ^^^^^^ : V)'" ' *f*cf.w\ a N Pottery Vendors, Puchara PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA As we descended beside its bubbling waters — so soon, alas, to loose their crystal pureness — a beauti- ful valley opened before us, hemmed in by frowning mountains, the first of the valleys that the Incas chose as the central seat of their civilisation. The mountain slopes they terraced into rich andenes; they irrigated their fields and gardens, fortified their crags, and dotted their meadows with villages and cities. At the far end they built Cuzco, their capital, the great shrine of their deity the Sun, the venerated object of their pilgrimage. As Mecca is to the Mus- sulman, or Rome to the Catholic, so was Cuzco to the Inca. These valleys still remain well-tilled, their fields of wheat and barley alternating with patches of quinoa, the hardy grain that is indigenous to these mountain plains, their staple of life, thriving at an elevation of thirteen thousand feet. Before six o'clock we pulled into the station at Sicuani, there to remain for the night. Our itinerary had been planned with this in view, for Sicuani's Sunday-morning market is the most notable in all the region. This being Saturday even- ing, the llama trains were already arriving. After [146] At the Top of the Pass, La Raya THE LAND OF THE INCAS dinner, as we walked about the town, we saw whole troops of these strange beasts being driven into the corrals, craning their long necks, their ears tilted for- ward, suspicious, always on the alert, afraid to enter unknown enclosures. As we crossed the two squares on our return to our car, from the tiendas and chinganas that sur- round them came sad strains of music, sometimes a voice singing, sometimes a reedy flute plaintively crooning, sometimes a rude guitar strumming those sad yaravis, the sole musical expression of the Andean Indian — minor melodies, sad in theme and modula- tion, strange in their wilful syncopations, fitly voic- ing the melancholy, the sorrow of a down-trodden race. The environment of the Inca Indian has had great influence upon his temperament. He combines to a marked degree the nature of the easy-going inhabi- tant of the tropics with the hardihood and fortitude and capacity for toil of the mountaineer. On the bleak punas of this upper world of his, this "roof of the earth," as it has been called, his inscrutable ex- pression, his silences, and his quiet melancholy ac- cord well with the mysteries of the country. [147] \|f$\||P 1 THE LAND OF THE INCAS We were out early next morning, and the sun had not yet risen from behind the mountains, though the sky was bright, as we turned into the plaza. Already it was full of people. Here was the move- ment of the market-place, the bustle of the traders. But how quiet! Only silent groups stood about. They smiled once in a while, but quickly grew grave again; they scarcely ever laughed. As we listened, the singing of the birds — the numerous trigueras — drowned the human voices! The natives were constantly arriving. The sky grew brighter and brighter, and suddenly the fiery orb of the sun shot above the mountains and darted its rays in long shafts of light down upon the market- place. The chill of the early morning was dispelled as if by magic. Small wonder that the Incas in their bleak, fireless mountain homes worshipped him as their chief deity! And now, under his effulgence, the beauty of this Sunday-morning market became apparent. The houses around the plaza, hitherto grey and uninter- esting, now gleamed white or pale blue or caught golden reflections under their broad eaves and bal- conies from the yellow dust of the roadways. Upon [149] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA the surrounding hill-slopes flocks of llamas and trains of donkeys stood silhouetted with silver await- ing a purchaser. And the costumes! The men's were undoubtedly the finest. Their ponchos, or blankets, reaching to the knees, were woven in rich patterns and ornamented with coloured fringes; their sturdy, sun-browned calves and feet were bare or protected only by rude sandals; upon their heads they wore tight-fitting caps with ear-flaps, woven, too, in intricate designs like those of the poncho but far finer, the best being made of the beautiful vicuna wool, which, under the Incas, was reserved for the nobility alone. Their hair, long, black, and thick, showed front and back, and was clipped round, giving to their clear-cut features and aquiline noses the appearance of those splendid bronze heads modelled by Donatello and his school. The dominant colour note was red — scarlet, vary- ing through all the gamut of rose and warmed by intervening stripes of undyed ochre wool. The women wore the bright montero, a gay, broad- brimmed hat almost devoid of crown, ornamented with gold or silver galloon, and their principal gar- [150] . •: J. Comer of the Market, Sicuani THE LAND OF THE INCAS ment was the llicha or mantle in which they draped themselves. Before them, spread upon the ground, lay the various strange eatables that they sell: the dried birds and cockroaches; the chuno, or white potato (do you realise that we owe our common po- tato to these highlands of Peru?), that, boiled with bits of fish or meat, makes the chwpe, their national dish; the roundish grains of the quinoa; the charqui, or jerked meat made of venison or vicuna steaks; the bags of coca leaves that they chew to deaden their senses and efface the effect of cold, hunger, and fatigue as they take their almost superhuman walks. We started on for Cuzco in the morning, expecting to reach it by night. But fate willed otherwise, as you shall see. Along the roads the Indians were hurrying, some afoot, some on donkey -back, and once in a while we passed a single horseman draped in his ample poncho. Women, too, walked briskly with babies or incred- ibly large bundles upon their backs, picking their skirts high above their knees to ford the streams and pools. Beyond San Pablo we could make out the ruins of the great temple of Viracocha, off to the right, half- [ 151 1 PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA hidden in a rocky country. Each station, as we passed, was full of people, the train being still a novelty, an object of interest. The villages became richer. Pottery roofs supplanted the flimsy thatch; substantial walls took the place of rude adobe. The now roaring Vilcanota was spanned, as at Quiquijana, by strong stone bridges. The fields were rich and the hills terraced far up toward their summits. The Incas surpassed all the American races as husbandmen. Agriculture was the key-note of their peaceful civilisation. The Inca himself set an exam- ple to his subjects by going out each year to the fields upon one of the great festivals and turning the sod with a golden plough. One-third of all the land was reserved for him (that is, for government), one-third for the practices of religion, and the remaining third was equally distributed among the people. Each man upon his marriage was given an extra piece and likewise upon the birth of each child, twice as much for a boy as for a girl. Besides cultivating his own portion, he was obliged to work one-third of his time upon the Inca's land and one-third upon the Sun's. Thus, like bees, they droned for their Inca in a sort of socialistic equality. By patient toil and the force of [152] THE LAND OF THE INCAS numbers, combined with skilful irrigation and fer- tilising (even the use of guano was known to them), they brought these highland valleys and terraced hills to a state of productiveness that they have never since attained under their Spanish conquerors. Most of the great work of the Incas — their mighty roads that connected Quito with Cuzco; their aque- ducts, sometimes hundreds of miles in length; their rich andenes — have fallen to ruin, but enough of them remain to put to shame the feeble efforts of their con- querors. About four hours beyond Sicuani the train stopped at a place called Urcos. Upon one side of the track stood the station; upon the other a sort of fonda — eating-house and lodgings combined. No town was in sight. The minutes passed by, and presently men began to drop off and ask questions of the conductor. His replies were evasive. An hour passed, and we were told that, owing to some trouble on the road ahead, we should remain where we were till evening. So, having nothing better to do, we set out to find the town. Happy thought! For no sooner had we climbed a wide path, a sort of causeway lined on both sides [153] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA with giant cacti of all descriptions, than we saw a picturesque red-roofed village ahead of us. We were walking toward the sun, and the llamas and people coming down toward us were edged with gold and sil- ver as the brilliant light caught the long nap of their woolly garments and fringes. We soon reached the first mud-built house sand stumbled up the winding, rock-paved streets, climbing higher and higher to- ward glimpses of gleaming white walls ahead. Suddenly we turned into the village green, for such it truly was, a perfect pastoral hidden in this moun- tain valley. Eight giant trees (pisonays, I think they are called) shaded its broad expanse, their gnarled trunks girdled with stone seats, their lustrous leaves shining and sparkling in the sunlight. In the shadows which they cast, groups of Indian women squatted with their children, and over by the village pump another group quietly gossiped. An old Spaniard, in his threadbare black coat and flashy tie, returned slowly from mass. A broad flight of steps, orna- mented with a tall stone crucifix, rose at the farthest end and led up to the church, whose single lava-built tower, dark and rich in tone, contrasted pleasantly with the white arcades that adjoined it. The long [154] / r rcoa THE LAND OF THE INCAS afternoon shadows, the ruddy glow of the scarlet costumes, the mighty hills, fat-flanked, gouged by landslides, yet tilled to their very summits, composed a charming picture, and when we had enjoyed it for some time we mounted the steps to the church. It, too, well repaid our visit. Its walls and ceiling, though white, are almost completely covered with stencils, executed apparently by Indians, like those of the California missions, but far richer in design and bolder and more vigorous in pattern, and par- ticularly powerful in tone. They form the back- ground for a multitude of objects: paintings, not very good, to be sure, but following the fine old His- panic tradition and set in their original richly carved and gilded frames; polychrome statues of saints and martyrs in the golden niches of side altars, mingled with bits of altar-cloths and laces and old Spanish mirrors. The vandal hand of no city antiquary has as yet defiled this little treasure-house. May my pen never guide one thither! As we emerged from the portal a small voice piped up and asked if we should like to see the lake. The Lake of Urcos? Why had that name a familiar sound? Guided by our small conductor, we soon [155] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA came upon it set like lovely Nemi in its round vol- canic basin, a mirror reflecting the azure sky. The Lake of Urcos? I was still puzzled, but soon had solved the mystery. Now I remembered the passage in Garcilasso. Huayna Capac, last of the great Incas, upon the birth of the son that was to succeed him, caused to be forged a chain of gold, long enough, we are told, to stretch around the great square at Cuzco. And the Inca named his son Huascar, a chain. At the approach of the Spaniards this triumph of the gold- smith's art, a veritable fortune, was thrown, accord- ing to common belief, into this Lake of Urcos. Va- rious attempts have been made to dredge its waters and recover the buried treasure, but as yet all in vain — again reminding us of Nemi and its golden barge of Nero. When we returned to the station we found a tele- gram from the superintendent at Arequipa telling us that we should be obliged to remain at Urcos all night owing to a landslide on the road ahead. Now were we glad, indeed, of our private car, for the rest of the passengers had to make the best of it in the crowded quarters of the fonda, four in a room. [156] THE LAND OF THE INCAS The cholos slept upon the benches of their second- class coach. Faithful old Prudenzio, our Indian cook, had been off shopping in the town and we en- joyed our good dinner sitting by the window watching the natives with their long trains of llamas or donkeys making their way up the steep pathways that lead to their mountain homes. Where do they dwell? Neither house nor village was visible upon these rocky heights, yet doubtless hidden within their defiles nestle lonely huts protected from wintry winds. The water-carriers staggered toward the village under the weight of their earthen ollas; the sad strains of a yaravi floated over the meadows; the Vilcanota, rushing to swell the Amazon, murmured in the distance; the stars shone resplendent in the purity of the mountain air. What a happy day, unplanned and unpremeditated, we had spent quite by chance in this peaceful country-side — this won- derful land of the Incas! But next morning, when told that we should not start for Cuzco until noon, I began to be anxious. We were at the beginning of Holy Week, and I had been especially planning to reach the Inca capital on [157] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA this particular day, the feast of Our Lord of the Earthquakes — the principal Indian festival of the year. The great procession was to leave the cathe- dral at four o'clock, and Urcos is more than two hours' ride from Cuzco. We spent the morning sketching in the village, however, and in visiting a hospitable Spanish family, who asked us in (strangers are a rarity, indeed, in Urcos) to regale us with sweet- meats and coffee. A reassuring telegram awaited us upon our return to the station, telling us that we should leave by one o'clock. All might yet be well. And at one we left. A quick trip through a suc- cession of lovely valleys, where haciendas with long arcades sat embowered in eucalyptus groves, brought us to the considerable town of San Jeronimo, really a suburb of Cuzco. The railroad here makes an ascent, and at each curve of the road we tried to obtain our first glimpse of this sacred city of the Incas. At last, at a turning, there it lay with its domes and towers, its ring of encircling mountains, its red-roofed houses lying flat along its regular streets. [158] CUZCO, THE INCA CAPITAL CUZCO, THE INC A CAPITAL THE neat new station (the road has been only open a year or two) lies outside the city walls. We lost no time in jumping into an old tram-car drawn by four mules, and presently were rattling through the narrow, crooked streets of the lower town, one of the worst quarters of the city — the dirtiest district of a dirty town. But all this was forgotten when we turned into the main plaza of the city. Picturesque arcaded houses surround it on every side; the great church of the Compania, with its belfries and domes, looms up in the centre of the southern side; while upon its east- ern front the grand cathedral faces the setting sun, raised high upon its lofty grada. Grouped upon these steps and in the plaza stood thousands of Indians — they told us fifteen thousand. Not shiftless, half-breed Indians in cast-off European [161] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA clothes, but fine-looking fellows developed like ath- letes by their hardy mountain life and draped in their most brilliant ponchos with their most elaborate pointed caps upon their heads. The garrison, Indians, too, except for the officers, stood drawn up at at- tention. A portion of the centre of the plaza was reserved for gentlefolk, and to this we made our way and were kindly admitted by the sentries on guard. We had scarcely taken our places before the cathe- dral when its sixteen bells began to toll, the rich tones of the great Maria Angola, whose voice can be heard for miles, sounding the deepest bass. A movement swept over the populace. The In- dians dropped upon their knees; the Spaniards re- moved their hats. From the door of the cathe- dral issued the procession. First came the alcaldes, the Indian mayors of all the provincial towns and villages, each carrying his great staff of office, a baton or cane varying in its size and the richness of its silver ornaments according to the importance of his community, some as tall as the men themselves, as thick as their fists, bound round and round with broad bands of silver engraved with rich designs. Next followed the brotherhoods, wearing, like those [162] * i ! - si ft H • o O PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA of Spain and Italy, hoods that concealed their faces; then the monks from the convents, mostly Francis- cans; then the civil authorities of Cuzco, the prefect of the department, the mayor, and other dignitaries; and after them the "Santo," followed by the clergy massed about their bishop. The Santo, or saint, is a great figure, some eight feet high, of the Christ crucified — a fine piece'of wood- carving sent over to the cathedral in the days of its infancy by the Emperor, Charles the Fifth. It is the Indian's most revered image — his special patron saint, stained by time, and perhaps by art as well, the colour of his own dark skin. Many miracles are attributed to it, among others the cessation of the great earthquake of 1650, whence its name, Our Lord of the Earthquakes. Once a year, and once only, on this particular Monday of Holy Week, it is taken from its glass- enclosed chapel, put upon its bulky pedestal, a mass of silver so heavy that thirty -two men stagger beneath its weight, while others follow along beside, ready to relieve them at frequent intervals. Thus, attended by the civil and ecclesiastical au- thorities, it is taken in solemn state to the principal [164] CUZCO, THE INCA CAPITAL churches of the city, followed by the garrison, whose muffled drums play funeral marches on the way. As it leaves the cathedral, boys, tied high up to the pillars of the portal, throw masses of crimson leaves upon it (the nucchu, or funeral flower of the Incas), redden- ing all its upper surfaces as with a shower of blood. Swaying back and forth upon its many unsteady human legs, slowly it makes its way through the silent, kneeling throng toward Santa Teresa. In the open square before this church the women are con- gregated, and, as they see it approach, they begin to moan and beat their breasts; tears start from their eyes and their emotion is evidently intense. Here also boys about the portal shower the funeral flowers. We did not wait to follow it farther, but made our way back to the main plaza, there to await its return. A kind young Peruvian, noting that we were stran- gers, with true courtesy invited us to occupy a win- dow in his home just opposite the cathedral. The sun had now set. Darkness was creeping on. The Indians were slowly coming back into the plaza. A few lights twinkled from one or two street-lamps — and I mean lamps literally, for gas has not yet ap- peared in Cuzco. [165] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA From the direction of La Merced came the sound of mournful music. The great plaza had filled again with people, a huge, silent throng. From one corner emerged the procession, now lit by flickering candles and dominated by the great dark figure of El Sefior de los Temblores. Slowly the lights approached the cathedral, finally mounting its long grees and group- ing themselves against the tight-shut doors of the central portal that formed a bright background. The great throng in the plaza was kneeling, and, as the black figure of the Santo mounted the steps and appeared silhouetted against the doors, a great moan, a sort of collective sob, swelling to a barbaric howl — a sound such as I had never heard before — as if in the presence of some dire calamity, swelled from the poor Indian throats; the black crucifix made three stately bows, to the north, to the west, to the south, in sign of benediction; a sigh of relief and a shudder passed over the square; the huge cathedral doors swung open; the black hole swallowed the image and the candles; the portals closed again, and all was finished. I offer no comment upon this weird ceremony. But in its spectacular appeal to the primitive senses [166] CUZCO, THE INCA CAPITAL it impressed us more than any other religious festival we had ever seen. The ancient city of Cuzco, when first viewed by European eyes, was, according to the best authorities, ^Jk Old View of Cuzco after Ramusio's Woodcut a great and wealthy municipality of perhaps two hundred thousand souls. How old it was at that time we have scant means of knowing. Garcilasso would have us believe that there were only thirteen Incas in the royal line from Manco Capac to Huayna Capac; Montesinos, on the other hand, assures us that the Incas ruled for a thousand years! Which are we to believe? No written history of the race [167] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA exists — only the records of the quipus, those queer knotted strings that were the Incas' sole documents and for which no archaeologist has as yet discovered the key, the Rosetta stone. Cuzco's original plan was, singularly enough, that of the Roman camp, a quadrangle divided by two intersecting streets into quarters, with a gate on each face and towers at the angles. Ramusio gives an interesting woodcut, here reproduced, of the city as it appeared to the conquerors. The Incas, like the citizens of the United States, had no more definite name for their country than Tavantinsuyu, the Empire of the Four Provinces. The four streets of the capital, prolonged by great roads, divided it into four main provinces, each under the dominion of its governor. When their people came to Cuzco they lodged in their own quarter, where they adhered to the costumes and customs of their own province. The city to-day retains the same general plan, its two principal streets being practically the old main thoroughfares. Its two eastern quarters lie upon steep hillsides; the two western are in the valley where runs a little river, the Huatanay, spanned by bridges. [168] Arco di Sla. Clara, Cuzco PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA The northeast quarter was the Palatine Hill of this South American Rome, and contains the palaces of the kings, for each Inca, after the manner of the Roman emperors, built his own abode, scorning to live in that of his predecessor. Along the steep streets of this portion of the city extensive remains of the foundations and walls of these palaces still remain, their giant stones and perfect masonry provoking the constant wonder of the traveller. Pictures of them give but a poor impression, for the heavy rustic finish of the face of each stone hides the perfection of the joints, which are so finely fitted that, devoid of mortar as they are, the blade of a small pocket- knife can scarcely be inserted into any one of them. The Incas were not artists. Their buildings dis- played neither imagination nor beauty of detail, but were characterised rather by stern simplicity and extreme solidity of construction. Had they not been used as quarries they undoubtedly would all be standing to-day, singularly well adapted as they are to the climatic conditions of this high-lying country, resisting storm and earthquake alike where the more modern Spanish buildings crumble to decay. The most extensive ruins left by the Incas, and [170] liicn Rocca'a Palace CUZCO, THE INCA CAPITAL perhaps the most interesting, are those of the great fortress Sachsahuaman, that stands perched upon the summit of a steep hill to the north of the town. To reach it you must climb between garden walls, up lanes laid out in rough steps, until you come to a little plaza in front of the chapel of San Cristobal. The cura was pacing up and down before his church when we stopped to ask him a question. He immedi- ately became communicative and we were glad that we had spoken, for he pointed out to us the many curiosities of his small domain. There was a queer row of pillories in which thieves were exhibited in the olden days; there was a curious Inca fountain, un- couthly cut to represent a female form, and near by, in a garden, raised upon a stone terrace, was all that remains of the ancient palace of Manco Capac, who, according to legend, was the founder of the royal dynasty. This, to my mind, is the building that oc- cupies the important north end of the city in Ramu- sio's wood-block. The property now belongs to a resident of Cuzco, an Italian, who has made it his quinta, or country home, and it is a charming spot indeed, nestled in a rustling forest of eucalypti. , There are several im- [171] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA portant Inca fragments scattered among these trees — sections of handsome walls, a well-preserved door- way, and extensive remains of terraces. The road thence up the mountain is a stiff climb in this altitude, and more than once we stopped to rest and catch our breath, and regret that we had not ordered donkeys on which to scramble up the rocky paths. Several times we passed llama trains coming down, and had to climb in the rocks to let the clumsy beasts go by. Finally we reached the first huge stones of the fortress and entered its portal, which, with its steps, is still in good preservation. Enough of the great walls remains to amaze one with their formidable character and vast extent. The Indians consider them the works of the Evil One, and small wonder, for how human hands ever reared these mighty stones upon this mountain top is quite beyond one's powers of speculation. The fort presents but a single line of defence, some twelve hundred feet long, toward the city, where the hill itself is so steep that it affords the best possible pro- tection, but to the country behind it shows three massive walls placed one above the other, arranged with salients (a device unknown to Europeans of that [172] CUZCO, THE INCA CAPITAL period) and breast-works for the defenders. The stones are cyclopean, many of them being eighteen to twenty feet long and almost the same in height; the largest, we are told, measuring no less than thirty- eight feet in length. Crowning these mighty walls was the fortress proper, consisting of three towers. The central one, the largest, was reserved for the Inca himself and contained his royal apartments. The other two were for the garrison commanded by a noble of the royal family. As in many mediaeval fortress castles, sub- terranean passages, also built of stone, connected these towers with the town below, thus affording a retreat for the Inca in time of peril. Upon the hill-slopes behind the fortress, in fields of flowering shrubs, where paroquets make their homes, stand some strange rocks called by the natives "thrones of the Inca." They are certainly cut with the nicest precision, each edge as sharp as it ever was, but I can scarcely see the reason for the appellation. We returned to the city toward sundown. The views, as we descended, were beautiful. The lovely valley, dotted with eucalyptus groves, lay green and [173] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA radiant below us, framed by its towering mountains that peeped over each other's shoulders as they stretched away, fold upon fold, dimmer and yet more distant until they disappeared in far perspectives. The city that lay be- neath us, one-storied for the most part, flat along its regular streets, looks quite as it must have appeared to the Inca sitting in his fortress tower. Only now pottery roofs replace the thatch of straw or of ychu grass that covered the older houses, and the belfries and domes of numerous Spanish churches have supplanted the gilded walls and cumbersome masonry of the ancient Inca temples. These last lay for the most part in the southeast quarter of the city and were dominated by the great Temple of the Sun, the most revered sanctuary in all the empire, called by the people Coricancha, the Place of Gold. And well it deserved its name, for, [174] Old Stone Model of Sachsahuamdn - ■■^H CUZCO, THE INCA CAPITAL according to all accounts, its walls were a perfect mine of the precious metal. Mortised into the great stones of its exterior walls, a frieze of gold, "of a palm and a half" in width, encircled the entire edi- fice. The interior was ablaze, as befitted a temple dedicated to the glory of light. In the centre of the western wall a giant sun, repre- sented by a human countenance from which rays of light sprang in various directions, glowed in all the splendour of gold and jewels. The great eastern por- tal was placed directly opposite and arranged so that the sun, with its first ray, gilded this golden effigy that thus threw off a strange effulgence. The walls and ceiling were incrusted with gold and the mum- mies of all the Incas, dressed as on occasions of state, with their coyas, or queens, sat about upon golden thrones. Adjoining this main temple lesser shrines were arranged. In that dedicated to the moon, for exam- ple, all was of silver, a silvery moon replacing the golden sun. These buildings were each set in ex- tensive gardens, whose flowers and plants and ani- mals were of gold and silver, simulating with real skill the products of nature. [175] rill Ylj-t-i- i "it n, 7_J~L "i.&ftwjr. ^4p se of Santo Domingo Built upon the Temple of the Sun CUZCO, THE INCA CAPITAL Let him who doubts these tales remember that gold in the eyes of the Peruvian Indian of that day had no monetary value whatever, that money did not exist — that gold, in the popular parlance, was "the tears wept by the sun" and that all of it found in the rich mines of Peru, the real Eldorado of the New World during the Spanish colonial period, was sent either to the Inca or to his temples. Atahualpa, for his ransom, almost filled with golden vessels a room thirty-three feet by twenty, representing a value in our money of some seventeen million dollars. What a sum in those days before the discovery of the great gold mines of modern times! Dr. Caparo Mufiiz, who possesses a remarkable collection of Inca antiquities, showed me a curious stone that he had unearthed on a farm some twelve leagues from Cuzco, at a place called Yayamarca, the Place of the Lord. It is carved to represent a ground- plan of the Temple of the Sun, and so interested me that I made a drawing of it, which I here present. It corresponds quite perfectly with the remains of the sanctuary that still exist. These consist of important portions of its circular walls and a number of those singular niches that [177] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA taper in toward the top like those of the edifices of Egypt. Extensive interior walls of perfect masonry are incorporated in the present church and convent Itica Stone Representing a Plan of the Temple of the Sun of Santo Domingo that the conquerors built immedi- ately over the pagan temple. I visited this old church with the rector of the uni- versity, who was kindness itself to us during our stay, and Padre Vasquez, the amiable prior of the monas- tery, took us about in person. Strangely enough, it was the first time that these two men had met, for the prior was comparatively a new-comer to Cuzco, so I benefited by the enthusiasm of their first visit together. [178] CUZCO, THE INCA CAPITAL We inspected in turn the cloister courts, the church, and all the intricate by-ways of its corridors and stairways. The Christian temple is doubtless in- teresting, but the walls that it stands upon and that crop out here and there in its fabric were the subject of our wonder. Theirs is the most perfect masonry of any of the Inca ruins that I saw. These are the massive smooth-faced stones that Sarmiento saw and commended, whose joints are so nicely wrought that they can scarcely be detected. How a nation, without iron or steel — with only champi, a mixture of copper and tin — to aid them, could have produced such finish will always be a matter of wonder. They certainly possessed some secret for cutting stone that we do not know to-day. Near this Church of Saint Dominic stands the con- vent of the nuns of Santa Catalina, built upon the ruins of what was, in the time of the Incas, the House of the Virgins of the Sun, a huge structure some eight hundred feet in length. These girls, chosen by the provincial governors from among the most beautiful in the kingdom, tended the sacred fire in the temples, their duties being curiously analogous to those of the Roman vestal virgins. Their guardians, the mama- [179] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA cunas, taught them weaving and spinning, and from among them were selected the Inca's many concu- bines. Once in a while one of them was chosen for sacrifice, but this was a very rare occurrence, as the religion of the Incas only permitted of human sacri- fice on occasion of exceptional importance, thereby differing materially from the rites of other American races — the wholesale slaughters of the Aztecs, for example. Soon after the conquest the Spaniards built three great churches in Cuzco, three churches worthy of a European capital. Unlike the churches of Lima, these happily have escaped remodelling. Two of them, the cathedral and the Compania, face upon the main plaza, the heart of the city; the third, La Merced, is but a step away. All three are in the style of the Spanish Renaissance, patterned, let us say, from such a church as San Lorenzo of the Escurial. The interior of the Compania is the handsomest of the three. Its pillars, with their simple capitals, and its well-designed architrave support wide-spreading stone arches and broad vaults of brick. The great retablo that occupies its entire east end, though de- [ 180 ] -J F -'- t.? s -^oTVo . C.,c >«« Plaza and Church of the Compaiifa, Cuzco PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA fective in general design, with its bulky columns and broken pediments, is filled with such fine detail — saints and angels, paintings and niches, rising tier above tier upon its golden cornices — that you forget the one in the admiration of the other. Its gilding, too — as, for the matter of that, the gilding in all these Peruvian churches — is wonderful, done with the rich, pure metal that was found in such comparative abundance at the time of the conquest. And the dust of centuries combined with the finger of time has imparted to this gold, too gaudy perhaps in its pristine glory, a patina of rare mellowness with a depth and glint in the shadow that I have never seen equalled elsewhere. The gold of the pulpit is perhaps the most beauti- ful of all — in fact, the pulpit itself is a gem, remark- able alike for the beauty of its design and its exquisite workmanship, to my mind a far finer work of art than the more famous one at San Bias, which, though a marvel indeed of the wood-carver's art, is too ornate and too charged with intricate detail to merit its high repute. Several of the original polychrome figures of saints still remain in the niches of the south transept, and [182] CUZCO, THE INCA CAPITAL above them a long fresco unrolls itself across the big lunette, a queer procession of black-robed monks, which, though of a much later period, has a Giot- tesque quality in the simplicity of its silhouettes and backgrounds. Near the main portal are other notable pictures, significant perhaps more by reason of their subjects than for their technique. One is of distinct historic interest, depicting the marriage of Don Martin de Loyola to Da. Beatris Nusta, Princesa del Peru, a descendant of the royal Incas. A strange bird is perched upon the bride's wrist, and she wears a cape and a gown elaborately embroidered with the nucchu, the favourite flower of the Incas. Sairitupa and Tupa Amaru, royal personages in rich Inca dress, sit upon thrones to the left, while the relatives of the groom are grouped at the right in magnificent Span- ish court costumes, each detail of which is worked out with the utmost faithfulness. Adjoining this picture hangs a queer painting of very large dimensions depicting a priest who, with open book, the "Exercicia Spiritualia," is confound- ing infidels, shown under the guise of Turks whose turbans bear the legends: Luthero, Calvino, Melan- [183] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA ton, Wiclete, Ecolampadio. I have transcribed the spelling letter by letter. Upon our second visit to this church during Holy Week, the Indians were decorating the shrines for Easter, dressing Santiago in bright colours and hang- ing flags about his niche; placing above the altars huge fan-shaped ornaments made of bits of mirror, pieces of tinsel, and squares and lozenges of lurid colours combined with truly barbaric effect, and placing before these, little rows of monks and figures cut out of paper and dishes filled with grains and fruits — all of which looked strange indeed in a Chris- tian temple and made us remember that the Indian of to-day has not yet lost all of his pagan practices, a fact that was brought back to us again and again as the week progressed toward Easter. The Church of the Order of Mercy, La Merced, in which the bones of Almagro and Gonzalo Pizarro are said to rest, is chiefly remarkable for its cloisters, whose massive stone arcades and monumental stair- cases have for centuries withstood the storms of these altitudes and are perhaps the handsomest in Peru, though not as picturesque as some of those in Lima. [ 184 ] CUZCO, THE INCA CAPITAL One morning I visited the Franciscan convent. The rector, who again accompanied me, asked for Father M , who proved to be a sympathetic Scotchman, artistic to the tips of his long, lean fingers, a lover of music, accompanying the organ with his violin— a mystic and a dreamer, who had forsaken the business life of Lima in disgust and fled to the quiet of this mountain cloister. He kindly guided us about, showing us the strange water-fowl of the country gathered in a circular basin in one of the courts, and the lovely Spanish tiles, piled in a mass in an outhouse, that had once been ruthlessly stripped from the walls by some iconoclastic prior, presenting me with two of the best he could find, and in the sacristy he displayed the vestments of the church — some of old Spanish brocade, others rich in gold and jewels quite newly made by the nuns of Santa Catalina who dwell in the House of the Virgins of the Sun. So the days passed by. Sometimes we explored the by-ways of the city, sketching in the steep, picturesque streets that climb the hills; again we poked about the gaudy Indian shops that line the arcades of the plaza with their [185] PACIFIC SHORES FROM PANAMA vivid wares; sometimes we loitered about the mar- ket or looked for Spanish shawls and frames and laces in the shops and houses. We remained snugly in our car during all our stay, with good Prudenzio to cook for us and faithful Juan to serve us, the hotels of the town offering but a poor alternative for the comfort of this abode out in the broad fields just beyond the smells and dirt of the town. But let me say it here — this is the only Peruvian city we visited that offended us in this way, the other places being far cleaner and better kept than most of the small towns of Italy or Spain. The Easter services did not prove remarkable, re- sembling in all their essentials those we had seen in Mediterranean countries, except for one important ceremony — that of Holy Thursday. The interior of the cathedral at Cuzco is arranged after the peculiar fashion of some Spanish churches, with its choir occupying a large space in the central nave. Richly wrought gates enclose it and a broad flight of carpeted steps lead from it to the massive silver high altar. This arrangement, though well adapted for processionals, blocks the view of most of the congregation. [186] •£: