Panama to Patagonia

LIMA AND THE CORDILLERAS

Pleasing Historic Memories—Moorish Churches and Andalusian Art—Pizarro’s Remains in the Cathedral—Transmitted Incidents of the Earthquake—The Palace, or Government Building—General Castilla’s Humor—Decay of the Bull-Fight—Cultured Society of the Capital—Foreign Element—San Francisco Monastery—Municipal Progress—Chamber of Commerce—A Trip up the Famous Oroya Railway—Masterwork of Henry Meiggs—Heights and Distances—Little Hell—The Great Galera Tunnel—Around Oroya—Railroad to Cerro de Pasco Mines—American Enterprise in the Heart of the Andes.

PLEASANT Lima! Fairest of transplanted capitals! The Moorish memories of Andalusia linger over the City of the Kings which Pizarro founded. The stern monuments of the Inquisition are yet with her. Seek them in the Senate Chamber, where the inquisitors sat in judgment; search for them just over the bridge, where the doomed victims after condemnation awaited their fate; or in the Plaza Mayor, where the autos de fe were celebrated and the condemned were burned or hanged. Reflect, the last victim of the stake was a woman, Madame Castro. She was burned, in 1736, “for being a Jewess.” She would talk heterodoxy!

Historic Lima! Seat of the viceroyalty; throbbing heart and scourging soul of the Spanish colonial empire; home of the Royal Audiencia, centre of law-giving and delegated authority, whence the Ordenazas—the minute code of government and administration alike for subjugated savage and freebooting colonist—were promulgated for all the vast territory from Panama to the Straits of Magellan and from the Pacific far beyond the Andes to the Amazon and La Plata!

But the glory of rulers perishes. Few can name their quota of those forty-four viceroys of Spain who held the sceptre on the Pacific coast. After Pizarro, the Conquistador, of the iron fist and will of steel, and as his superior, came—who? Blasco Nuñez Vela was the first of the viceroys,—a harsh, haughty, obstinate servant of the Crown, whose blundering nearly overwhelmed Spain with the sunset of the splendid colonial empire at its very dawn. Who came between and who was the last?

The sentimental antiquarian grieves over the destruction of the viceregal residence of this last delegated ruler. It lay in a grove of palms and orange trees under the shadow of Mt. San Cristobal, with the ancient garden of the Descalzos, or Barefoot Friars, neighboring it. The mansion was mediæval and tropical. But the big brewery encroached on it. The horses and mules of the big brewery had to be stabled; the beer wagons had to have room. Mr. Champion Jones, the English manager of the industry, gave a breakfast to foreign and resident society one Sunday morning. We revived the memories of the viceroys over an exquisite French menu, and some of us carried away a few mementos. The next day the vandal destroyer pulled down the walls. The mules are stabled there now.

Yet there is cheer for the sentimentalist who mourns over departed glories. The mansion never really was the residence of the viceroy. It was only the bower of his favorite mistress, who dispensed hospitality and received the recognition that the stern society of the times gave to power and place without questioning the private morals of the high and mighty. Besides, it was long after the Inquisition, for the viceroyalty lasted till the young years of the nineteenth century.

But the fourscore churches, with their minarets and towers, their tessellated mosaics and blending of bright colors,—they are Andalusian adaptations of Moorish art. Very shabby are most of them and not kept in good repair. There are too many mosque-like worship-places, and too few devout and open-pursed worshippers. From the roof of the American Legation I counted thirty of these churches. The artist might preserve all the charm of antiquity and yet satisfy the craving for the picturesque if the means were provided and the disposition to do it existed. These edifices are of Spain in the colonial epoch, and Spain never repaired church or castle or dwelling. Let them rust and fall apart, for have not crumbling stone and fading colors a graphicness of their own? Yet with these decaying and neglected Moorish churches in Lima the ruin discloses too much that is tawdry, too much veneer.

The Cathedral is modern, not moth-eaten or weather-rusted within or without. It took the place of the old structure, which was destroyed by earthquake. The interior is tile-paved and clean; there are antique mural paintings, fine examples of wood-carving in the pulpit, solid silver altar fixings, the money value of which the guide recites with swelling pride; and, greatest of all memorials, the bones of Francisco Pizarro.

On my first visit to Lima, in the hurry of business matters and social engagements, I indulged in no sightseeing. The hotel runner who was piloting me about was puzzled. The Cathedral was only a block distant. “Won’t you go to the Cathedral,” he said, “and see the bones of Mister Pizarro?” The lingering and respectful emphasis on the “Mister” was almost too much for my gravity. The Pizarros, as my recollection runs, were swineherds, and the appellation Don never was theirs. But if respect were lacking for their family tree in their lifetime, no descendant could complain of irreverence or want of courtesy in this volunteer guide who sorrowed because of my apparent indifference regarding the late Mr. Pizarro.

On a subsequent visit I went to view the remains. The caretaker irreverently draws the curtains from the niche in the little chapel of the Virgin. I am sure the hotel runner would not do so. But habit in satisfying tourist curiosity has made the Cathedral guide a showman. The remains are in a marble casket. The skeleton is well preserved. The frame is that of a big man; the brains are kept apart in a jar. Rolled in a metal case is the parchment certificate of authenticity. This is what was the mighty conqueror, the most heroic of the Conquistadores, the peer of the indomitable Cortez. Shall we muse curiously, or shall we give way to the physical sensation of being in the anatomical museum of a medical school? It depends on the temperament.

The Cathedral has more than Pizarro’s remains. It possesses the manuscript records of the Municipality of Lima. They are bound in modern calf, though the original parchments are sear and rusty and yellow. There is also a modern library which is open to the public. I found among its attractions, in one of the stairway vestibules, a unique painting on the wall typifying life in Lima in the sixteenth century. It represents a scene in the plaza. It pictures the gay cavalier of Spain in his fancy habiliments; the sedate matron demurely wearing the historic mantilla; the maid in the same head-dress, but coquettish and answering the sly glances of the cavalier; the native Indian race in groups of individuals; women market-venders; the Indians from the country with the llamas and burros,—all as we may guess it was in the sixteenth century and much of it as it is to-day with the native race.

Lima’s earthquake record is a continuous one from 1683, when the great trembling was experienced, until the present day. One of the most memorable of these seismic disturbances was that of October, 1746. The memoirs of the viceroy, Count Superunda, tell a curious story of those days of wonder and terror and the scenes enacted,—how debtors sought for their creditors in order to pay them; how enemies became reconciled and embraced one another in fraternal forgiveness; how slanderers on their knees besought the pardon of those whom they had slandered; and how courteous cavaliers, seeking injured husbands who until then had been ignorant of their wives’ transgressions, asked forgiveness, which the injured husband, in spite of his surprise, would grant with an effusive embrace. A strange picture of morals—ten years after the Inquisition had burned Madame Castro for being a Jewess!

The balconies and arcades of Lima, the façades and graceful arches, are Andalusian, yet there is a trace of Greece in the adaptations of Doric and Ionic columns. The paseos, or walks and drives, the parks and gardens, in their grace and symmetry are Moorish again; so are the kiosks.

The Palace, or Government Building, which is to be supplemented by a new structure, is neither archaic nor modern. It is somewhere midway between two epochs. The tree which Pizarro planted, a fig, is in one of the inner courts. I saw the tree, but was more interested in the pictures in the anteroom of the Foreign Office—old prints of American subjects. One of them was of Washington crossing the Delaware.

In the Palace is a portrait of Joaquin Castilla, one of the sturdy characters in Peruvian history. He was a Spanish soldier without education but of great natural ability who joined the patriots in the struggle for independence and afterwards became President. He had the humor of Sancho Panza. Once a delegation of women waited on him. The request they had to make related to some matter of administration to which an answer would be embarrassing. The old warrior, though he was of low birth, had all the courtesy of a Castilian hidalgo. “Why, ladies,” he said, “you chatter like birds, all trying to talk at once. Now let’s have silence and let one of you speak for all.” A pause. “Let the oldest lady speak.” The tradition is that the delegation at once filed out and bothered the grim soldier no more.

I have encountered many evidences of poverty in Lima, but the poorer classes seem to be contented. When the nights are chilly, they gather their blankets or shawls around them, according to the sex, and huddle in the Plaza. When the day is bright, they bask in the sunshine. The beggars are a nuisance in their obtrusiveness, but they are tolerated.

On a down voyage a party of young foreigners persuaded the captain to hurry the ship into Callao Saturday night, so that they could get ashore and go over to Lima to attend the Sunday bull-fight. The spectacle did not meet their expectations, which had been whetted by what they had seen in Spain. Once the bull-fight in Lima was a recognized social institution and was very brilliant, but its glory has faded. Humane impulses have found place in the municipal regulations, and the horrible spectacle of the bull goring a few poor old horses is not permitted. This takes away much of the excitement. The bull-fight has to be tolerated, and the President of the Republic attends the function given in his honor, but I noticed in the newspaper accounts that it was an indifferent affair. In time the bull-fight will entirely disappear. The races, which are popular, will take its place.

The lottery will stay longer. The drawings are held on the public square every week. The lottery is legalized, and a portion of the proceeds goes to the charitable institutions. That is why it is so difficult to grapple with this evil which demoralizes all classes.

Lima always has been noted for its cultured society. The Spanish spoken is the purest heard in South America. It is as pure as that of Andalusia or Madrid. Music, art, and literature,—these always have had their place. At the hospitable board of Dr. Isaac Alzamora, the former Vice-President, the wittiest host in Peru, I met many persons whose talents and accomplishments hardly could be equalled. The life of the rich families is refined, and notwithstanding its seclusion comes nearer to the American ideal of home than anywhere else in Spanish America.

Lima has two leading clubs. The National is the more conservative, and is where all that is solid in business, politics, and professional life is met. The Union Club is composed of the younger element, and one of its attractions is that more liberty is permitted in gambling.

The foreign society of Lima I found to be more in sympathy with the native society than almost any other place. Its dean, and the most popular foreigner, is Mr. Richard Neill, for twenty years the Secretary of the American Legation, affectionately called Don Ricardo by his Peruvian friends. French, Germans, Italians, even the English, find something in common with the Peruvians. The British colony is numerous enough to be split into factions. The Scotch element, very masterful in business, predominates.

Among the Europeans the Italians are by far the most numerous. They have very largely the retail trade and they are property-holders in an unusual degree. A Little Italy lies across the Rimac River.

A very large Chinese population exists in Lima. Much of it is the second and third generation. Originally the Chinese were brought to Peru as contract coolie laborers, but of late years the immigration has been of a normal kind. The Chinese of this period have discarded the queue and have adopted the conventional dress. Some wealthy Chinese merchants have an appreciable influence in the commerce of the country. These rich merchants are antagonized by another faction which objects to their assumptions of superiority. This element also is getting rich. China keeps a Consul-General in Peru with semi-diplomatic functions, and usually he has enough to do.

I went one day in company with Minister Dudley to call on one of the notable figures in the cultured life of Lima. This was Dr. Ricardo Palma, Director of the National Library, the learned author of an instructive History of the Inquisition and of many other books, both historical and literary. Dr. Palma, during the war with Chile, lost his own library and had the anguish of seeing the accumulated historic treasures of the National Library sacked by the victorious invaders, but he set to work at once to form a new collection. He has gathered together 400 manuscripts, and the Library itself is the best arranged and most easily accessible that can be consulted on the West Coast.

The University of San Marcos also has played a notable part in the intellectual life of Peru.

Of the many churches, convents, and monasteries, the most interesting is that of San Francisco. I went there one afternoon with Mr. Alejandro Garland, the best-informed man in Peru, to learn in a scant half-day something of the ancient institution, though a week would not have been long enough to wander through the cloisters.

The monastery covers several squares. The contemplative, meditative life of the Middle Ages no longer exists. The friars are engaged chiefly in charitable work. The jovial priest who was assigned to be our guide enjoyed having visitors. He explained that the incandescent electric lights had been adopted because they were cheaper than candles, and the Order, being poor, had to economize. But the monks in their cells are still restricted to the tallow dips. He courteously asked us to take afternoon tea with him. Here certainly was an innovation. We hesitated, but he pressed us so heartily that there was no escape. When the bell sounded, we passed into the refectory, were seated on a wooden bench alongside the board table, and were served with coffee and a slice of bread. The friars filed in, bowed politely, and took their places. Some of them looked with evident surprise at our host and his guests, but none with reproof. To ourselves our presence seemed incongruous, yet as a variation of the monotonous routine of their daily life it did not appear unwelcome to the Franciscans. We chatted in an undertone for a while, and on our departing the monks all rose and bowed. My companion, though a persona grata to the monastery and well acquainted with the priests, was as much surprised at our novel experience as myself. He never had heard of a layman or a visitor taking afternoon tea or coffee with the friars.

The patron saint of Lima was Father Francis Solano, the founder of the Franciscan Order in Peru, and the missionary who went through toils unutterable in seeking to Christianize the Indians. I was shown the cell in which he died, and then (a somewhat rare privilege) was permitted to see his skull. Newspapers are received within the walls of the monastery, because, as the good father explained to me, in these stirring days it is necessary to be en rapport with what is going on in the outside world in order to do good works. Some of the friars read English.

Until recently Lima was not a progressive municipality. It preserved the old Spanish traditions of dirt and indifference. But it had an awakening. Public works, such as befit a city of its political and commercial importance, were initiated. A loan for municipal improvements was taken by the local banks. This was gratifying, but the improvements themselves were more gratifying. The town is becoming an industrial centre, with many small factories as the basis.

A very important factor in the progress is the Lima Chamber of Commerce, whose members include all the leading merchants, both native and foreign. The Chamber has exercised a marked influence on the fiscal policy of Peru, and the Government with its coöperation has been able to strengthen the credit of the country abroad and to carry through the measures which are the basis of the commercial and industrial revival that has been enjoyed. Without the aggressive support of this body the establishment of the gold standard scarcely would have been secured. Its advice with regard to the negotiation of commercial treaties to which Peru aspires is valuable, and its suggestions concerning administrative reforms in the customs usually receive respectful attention. I do not know any nation where the business man in public affairs—not in partisan politics—fulfils his proper functions so well as in Peru, and this is done through the concentration in the Chamber of Commerce.

In the public works municipal sanitation is a leading feature. That is good. The death rate of Lima, in spite of a healthful climate, is disproportionately high. The returns show a birth rate of 28.37 as compared with a death rate of 37.43. The ignorance of the poorer classes of the proper means of living is not the only cause of this high death proportion, but they have to be taught hygiene, and the municipality has to lead the way.

The climate of Lima merits the praises given it, yet the Winter season from June to September is raw and disagreeable and especially bad for rheumatism. Tuberculosis claims many victims. The legend is that rain never falls, that the dews and the moisture from the clouds, which is not precipitated, and the fogs on the coast, take the place of rain. This is not quite true. Sometimes there is actual rain and sometimes a drizzle. Minister Dudley and I had the proof two successive evenings, when we were out to dinner and had our high hats spoiled through our failure to carry umbrellas.

Peru, as far as the main Cordillera of the Andes, is bisected by the Central Railway, which runs from the seaport of Callao to Oroya, following the course of the Rimac River. The distance is 138 miles. In these later days of mechanical triumphs it is still possible to declare that this railroad is the engineering marvel of the world. It is an often told story, but one that bears re-telling.

The name of Henry Meiggs in the Yankee mind is vaguely identified with something big in South America and with something wrong in the United States. Meiggs was a fugitive financier from California. He had been the treasurer of San Francisco County, had loaned the public funds to his friends, and when they failed to pay up had been forced to flee as a defaulter. He afterwards made good the defalcation. He first went to Chile, but in a few years settled in Peru. He built the Southern Railway from Mollendo to Lake Titicaca, which is itself a marvellous work. But his fame as a captain of industry and his reputation as a benefactor to Peru rest on the Central Railway. Meiggs was not an engineer. He was a financial genius with a bold imagination and daring mind. He had the capacity to get other men of genius, among them the Polish engineer Malinowski, to carry out his ideas on the side of construction. He could win the confidence of the money-bags of London and float South American bonds at good prices, when the countries issuing those bonds could not give them away.

In 1869 Henry Meiggs signed the contract with the Peruvian government to build the Oroya Railway for $29,000,000 in bonds, which he took and floated at 79, thus making the actual price $22,000,000. He carried the railroad construction as far as Chicla, 88 miles, and built the great Galera tunnel ready for the rails, though they were not laid through it till years after his death, when the extension of the road from Chicla was carried to the terminus at Oroya by the Peruvian Corporation. The road climbs to its greatest elevation in a distance of 88 miles without a single down grade. The ascent is from the tropical ocean border to everlasting snow, through the sublimest scenery that the eyes of man ever dwelt on. There are curves, tunnels, bridges, viaducts, switchbacks, almost without number.

What the railway is as a marvel of engineering construction can be exhibited in no better way than by a simple table giving the distances and heights above sea-level and the “V’s” and “V V’s,” or switchbacks and double switchbacks.

DISTANCES AND ELEVATION ABOVE SEA-LEVEL OF THE CENTRAL RAILWAY OF PERU

I travelled up the road tourist fashion in the regular passenger train, but that gives only a faint idea of the wonders of the railway or the splendor of the scenery. The down trip is the best for observation. This can be taken on an open flat car which is used for the bags of ore. Sometimes the railway officials transport favored guests part of the way down in hand cars, but while the experience is thrilling enough to satisfy the craving of the most exacting nature, the pace is too swift to give a chance for observation. I repeat, the proper way is on an open freight car.

The tunnel and bridge, or viaduct it might be called, like a cobweb reaching from the gorge up to the sky, which generally is most sought after for experiences, is Infiernillo, or Little Hell, also called the Devil’s Bridge. The elevation here is 10,920 feet. The road plunges out of one tunnel and across the great cobweb of steel and iron into another tunnel.

The principal station is Casapalca. It is here that the biggest smelting-works are located. Both silver and copper are treated. Black Mountain Peak is the dominating spur in this neighborhood. Its height is 17,600 feet. San Bartolomew and Verrugas are the places that have a sad fame for the peculiar malady known as verrugas, or bleeding warts. It is a deadly and malignant disease of the blood, is of native origin and confined to a limited area. Its ravages were frightful among the laborers who built the road, but it rarely is heard of now.

The most glorious views of the valleys shut in by the colossal precipices are at San Mateo and Yauli. On the up trip, until Chosica is reached, the valley of the Rimac is broad and regular, a panorama of green and yellow and white,—alfalfa, corn, sugar-cane, and cotton. Here, too, the ruined terraces on the steep mountain-sides, vestiges of the Inca system of aqueducts and irrigation, are numerous.

Mt. Meiggs, 17,575 feet high, is the marker for the Galera tunnel. The mountain is snow-clad. Ordinarily the flagstaff on the peak is visible. The tunnel is three-quarters of a mile long. On the down trip I noticed that we were four minutes in passing through it. The time, it might be supposed, would seem longer than it is, yet my guess was three minutes, and I was surprised when the watch showed a minute more. The cold air draughts were invigorating, like tempered blasts from an ice furnace, and there were to me no disagreeable sensations. I merely wondered when and how we would get out.

Many persons who take this journey complain of the siroche, or mountain sickness, the nausea and headache destroying their pleasure. For those who suffer from this distemper a good plan is to allow two days for the trip and stop over night at one of the stations half-way up, Matucana being the most convenient.

Night trains never have been run on the line, but this innovation may be made. Practical railroad men say that there is no more danger in the night than in the day, for in the daytime, with so many abrupt curves and tunnels, it never is possible to see very far ahead, and the locomotive headlight might really be an advantage. The chief trouble of the railway management is in preventing landslides, but the greatest damage has been wrought by cloudbursts.

The Central Railway was built in order to cheapen the transportation of the ores and the minerals to the seaboard. The bulk of the traffic always will be in one direction, though with the development of the Andine region a considerable increase in agricultural products and general merchandise in both directions may be expected. The management has not always been alive to its own opportunities as a freight carrier. Various companies formed to exploit the coal deposits were discouraged by the railway officials on the ground that the railroad would be put to too much trouble in hauling the output if the mines proved successful!

Oroya is snuggled in among four cañons, which branch off almost at the points of the compass. There are gigantic granite and limestone wedges which split the town into triangles and have resulted in two distinct villages on the bends of the river. The elevation of Oroya is 12,179 feet, but the peaks around are easily a thousand feet higher, and a climb up one of them gives the most splendid view of mountain grandeur that I have seen in any quarter of the world. I have pleasing memories of several days spent in this neighborhood in amateur explorations.

Oroya is a good place in which to observe the native life, both that of the cholos, or mixed race, and the pure Indians. All that is characteristic of civilization or partial civilization in the heart of the Andes may be seen here. The Quichua, or aboriginal Indian race, seems to have preserved its identity side by side with the tincture of Spanish or Caucasian blood which has produced the cholo. They appeared to me a reasonably industrious people, especially the women.

Oroya is the mining-centre for all this district and is the outlet for Cerro de Pasco. It used to be a vastly interesting trip by the highway from Oroya to Cerro de Pasco, and the interest is not greatly lessened now that the American syndicate which controls the copper and silver mines has built a railway 87 miles long. The railroad follows the cañon for 15 miles, and then strikes across the great level plain, or pampa, of Junin, which it leaves at the foothills in order to climb up to Cerro de Pasco. The elevation of this mining-town is 14,200 feet.

A pyramid on this plain catches the eye, and the inquiry is made as to its significance. It is the historic monument marking the last battle between the Spanish forces and the patriots in the war for Independence. The town of Junin near the lake of the same name, while it is one of mud huts and grass-thatched dwellings, is clean and pleasing in appearance.

I never met quite so many weather changes as were encountered in riding across this pampa of Junin. We were in the midst of clouds so thick that they wet us through. Just ahead was a broad level of sunlight, and beyond that a driving snow-storm, and we found the sunlight and the snow exactly as they had appeared. There was a hail-storm which we also saw ahead of us. When it was pelting us, we could look back and through the snow see the sunlit plain and then the violet mantle of the clouds.

Cerro de Pasco is a cold place, but the Montana people who are engaged in developing the mines say that they like the climate, and they compare it approvingly to that of their own State. Heretofore the silver output has been the great source of the wealth of this region. It is a story of the romance of always romantic mining history. It was in 1630 that an Indian shepherd, having made a fire to cook his humble meal and warm his hands, found the stones covered with silver threads. That was the beginning of the silver mining, and since then 450,000,000 ounces are known to have been taken out. The quantity was probably much larger, because the Spanish tax of one-fifth was so heavy that it put a premium on evading it. The American capitalists who invested in the Cerro de Pasco region did so chiefly with the purpose of developing the copper deposits. By the burros and other pack animals the freight for the copper ore down to the railway at Oroya amounted to $40 per ton. That is why the first move of the Americans was to build the railway to connect Cerro de Pasco with Oroya. The coal outcroppings also gave encouragement that the smelters which were erected could secure cheap fuel. The money actually paid out in buying the mining properties and in building the railway was understood to be $8,000,000. The probability is that at the present time the cash investment is not less than $10,000,000, and the capitalists are considering another outlay to the amount of $15,000,000, to build a railway paralleling the Oroya road down to the coast, unless the London directors of the Peruvian Corporation make satisfactory traffic arrangements for freighting the copper and the bullion turned over to their line.

Should the yet untouched mineral wealth of the Cerro de Pasco district prove a fraction of what the mining-experts have declared it to be, the output of ore will be only in its initial stages when the interoceanic canal is opened and the advantages of this route are set off against the long course around Cape Horn to Liverpool or New York. American private enterprise in the heart of the Andes will respond to American national enterprise on the Isthmus of Panama, and the pleasing historic memories of Lima will be blended with the more pleasing prospect of the Cordilleras’ contribution to the material progress of Peru and her people.