Peru in the Guano Age

Wishing to cultivate these delightful heathens, I purchased from time to time a few things, all good, all very reasonable in price. These were chiefly fans, pictures, paper-knives, neckties, and boxes. Some of their ivory carving was a marvel of patience and keen sight. I was assured that one piece, for which they asked the price of 300 dols., took one man two years to make. That one statement made it an unpleasant object to behold. The porcelain brought to Lima is of the gaudiest and most inferior kind. I insisted on this so much that at last they confessed it to be true. 'But then the price,' they suggested. – A pair of vases that would sell in Bond Street for £150, can be purchased in Lima for less than £20.

One day I picked up a New Testament in Chinese, and after staying one evening with my celestial friends for an hour, I took it out of my pocket and asked them to be kind enough to read it for me, and tell me what it was about, for that in my youth my parents had not taught me that language and I was too old to learn it now. The next night our conversation was renewed, all being for the most part of the purest heathenism. They made no allusion to my New Testament; they evidently preferred to talk of other things, or to sell fans. At last in a tone of indifference I asked after my book, which one of their number produced out of a sweet-scented drawer.

'We do not know,' they said, 'what the book is about'; and therefore they could not tell me. They had read it? 'O yes; it was not a cookery book, nor a song book, nor a book about women; but seemed to be a pot of many things not well boiled.' There was no laughter, all was as serious as melancholy itself. I was a little disappointed, and came away without buying anything. It must require great gifts to be a missionary to the heathen, and especially the heathen Chinese. I should be inclined to think it to be as easy to bring a rich Chinaman to repentance as a rich Jew. The failure of my New Testament to make itself understood was a great blow to me. They might probably have understood some portions of the Book of Genesis better; but to my regret I had not the means of putting that to the test.

The mention of the Old Testament reminds me of a trivial incident which occurred one night in a magnificent sala in Lima, where were a good sprinkling of Spanish-speaking gentlemen and ladies, Italians and Germans, I being the only Englishman present. In course of the conversation it was demanded by some one, what were the two creatures first to leave the Ark: and it was at once answered by several voices 'the dove and the deer.' This appeared rather unsound to me, and I questioned the statement. So hot did the debate become, that it ended in a willing bet of £20, when after some difficulty a Bible was procured, and the dove and the raven won. The consternation was great. One man was candid enough to confess that he was an ass of no small magnitude for not reflecting that under the circumstances it could not well be a deer; but he had heard that such was the case, and because it was in the Bible felt bound to believe it.

Among all the classes of immigrants in Peru, or in Lima its capital, the English stand first and highest. They are certainly better represented than they were twenty years ago, but there is still much to improve. One great drawback to the English is the absence of a home, or the means of making one. The construction of the houses is one cause. There are no snug corners sacred to quiet and repose, and if the house be not a convent, it is something between a theatre and a furniture shop. Domestic servants are another fatal drawback, but the rent is the greatest of them all. The rents of some of the dingiest houses in the back streets are higher than those in Mayfair in the season, while the principal houses in the chief street are treble the amount. If I have elsewhere spoken sharply of my countrymen, it is because I think much of the land which gave them birth. It does not by any means follow that because a Peruvian child fifty years of age sells his soul to the devil, that an Englishman of four hundred should follow his example. It should be quite the other way.

The hotels are not, under the circumstances, unreasonable; a bachelor can live very well for thirty shillings a day, including fleas. Washing is a serious item in a city where there is much sun, much dust, little water, and the lavendera is the companion of 'gentlemen.'

New books are not remarkably dear, but the assortment is limited to theology and medicine. There are half-a-dozen daily newspapers, which cost half-a-crown a day if you buy them all. Their joint circulation will not reach more than fifteen thousand copies, while of their number only two may be said to pay their expenses; only one to make any profit. This is not to be wondered at. I tried my best to get into a controversy with them, by rousing them to jealousy. I publicly stated that if the guano deposits had been in Australia, or even in Canada, at a time when so much doubt was thrown on the quantity of guano they might contain, some newspaper would have sent off its special correspondent to make a report. The Comercio, the chief of the press, replied, with charming naivete: 'Why should we go to the expense of making a special report for ourselves when the Government will supply us with as many reports as we like?' The supply of English literature is very poor. Harper's Magazine appears to be in greatest demand, and certainly for the price of forty cents it is a marvel of cheapness. It is well printed, profusely and often well illustrated, and the numbers for the present year contain lengthy instalments of Daniel Deronda, and one or two original novels by American writers. There was not a single decent edition of the Don Quixote in any language to be found in all the shops of the city. There is evidently a brisk sale for very indecent photographs, and cheap editions of the Paul de Kock school. The number of new books printed in Lima is miserably small. The last, which has been very well received, is 'Tradiciones del Peru,' por Ricardo Palma, third series. It is exceedingly well written, and consists of a series of short stories illustrating the manners and customs of the early days. Here is one which for many reasons is worth doing into English. It is called 'A Law-suit against God,' and exhibits much of the old Spanish meal, and not a little of the new Peruvian leaven. It purports to be a chronicle of the time of the Viceroy, the Marquis de Castil-dos-Rius.

In the archives of what was once the Real Audiencia de Lima, will be found the copy of a lawsuit once demanded by the King of Spain, which covers more than four hundred folios of stamped paper, from which with great patience we have been able to gather the following —

I

God made the good man: but it would seem that His Divine Majesty threw aces when He created mankind.

Man instinctively inclines to good, but deceit poisons his soul and makes him an egotist, that is to say, perverse.

Whosoever would aspire to a large harvest of evils, let him begin by sowing benefactions.

Such is humanity, and very right was the King Don Alonso the Wise, when he said – 'If this world was not badly made, at least it appeared to be so.'

Don Pedro Campos de Ayala was, somewhere about the year 1695, a rich Spanish merchant, living in the neighbourhood of Lima, on whom misfortunes poured like hail on a heath.

Generous to a fault, there was no wretchedness he did not alleviate with his money, no unfortunate he did not run to console. And this without fatuity, and solely for the pleasure he had in doing good.

But the loss of a ship on its way from Cadiz with a valuable cargo, and the failure of some scoundrels for whom Don Pedro had been bound, reduced him to great straits. Our honourable Spaniard sold off all he possessed, at great loss, paid his creditors, and remained without a farthing.

With the last copper fled his last friend. He wished to go to work again, and applied to many whom, in the days of his opulence, he had helped, and solely to whom they were indebted for what they had, to give him some employment.

Then it was he discovered how much truth is contained in the proverb which says 'There are no friends but God, and a crown in the pocket.'

Even by the woman whom he had loved, and in whose love he believed like a child, it was very clearly revealed to him that now times had indeed changed.

Then did Don Pedro swear an oath, that he would again become rich, even though to make his fortune he should have recourse to crime.

The chicanery of others had slain in his soul all that was great, noble, and generous; and there was awakened within him a profound disgust for human nature. Like the Roman tyrant, he could have wished that humanity had a head that he might get it on to a block; there would then be a little chopping.

He disappeared from Lima, and went to settle in Potosi.

A few days before his disappearance, there was found dead in his bed a Biscayan usurer. Some said that he had died of congestion, and others declared that he had been violently strangled with a pocket handkerchief.

Had there been a robbery or the taking of revenge? The public voice decided for the latter.

But no one conceived the lie that this event coincided with the sudden flight of our Protagonist.

And the years ran on, and there came that of 1706, when Don Pedro returned to Lima with half a million gained in Potosi.

But he was no longer the same man, self-denying and generous, as all had once known him.

Enclosed in his egotism, like the turtle in his shell, he rejoiced that all Lima knew that he was again rich; but they likewise knew that he refused to give even a grain of rice to St. Peter's cock.

As for the rest, Don Pedro, so merry and communicative before, became changed into a misanthrope. He walked alone, he never returned a salutation, he visited no one save a well-known Jesuit, with whom he would remain hours together in secret converse.

All at once it became rumoured that Campos de Ayala had called a notary, made his will, and left all his immense fortune to the College of St. Paul.

But did he repent him of this, or was it that some new matter weighed heavily on his soul? At any rate, a month later he revoked his former will and made another, in which he distributed his fortune in equal proportions among the various convents and monasteries of Lima; setting apart a whole capital for masses for his soul, making a few handsome legacies, and among them one in favour of a nephew of the Biscayan of long ago.

Those were the times when, as a contemporary writer very graphically says, 'the Jesuit and the Friar scratched under the pillows of the dying to get possession of a will.'

Not many days passed after that revocation, when one night the Viceroy, the Marquis de Castil-dos-Rius, received a long anonymous letter which, after reading and re-reading, made his excellency cogitate, and the result of his cogitation was to send for a magistrate whom he charged without loss of time with the apprehension of Don Pedro Campos de Ayala, whom he was to lodge in the prison of the court.

II

Don Manuel Omms de Santa Pau Olim de Sentmanat y de Lanuza, Grandee of Spain and Marquis de Castil-dos-Rius, was ambassador in Paris when happened the death of Charles II, and which involved the monarchy in a bloody war of succession. The Marquis not only presented to Louis XIV the will in which the Bewitched one carried the crown to the Duke of Anjou, but openly declared himself a partisan of the Bourbon, and also procured that his relatives commenced hostilities against the Archduke of Austria. In one of the battles, the firstborn of the Marquis de Castil-dos-Rius died.

It is well known that the American Colonies accepted the will of Charles II acknowledging Philip V as their legitimate sovereign. He, after the termination of the civil war, hastened to reward the services of Castil-dos-Rius, and he named him Viceroy of Peru.

Señor de Sentmanat y de Lanuza arrived in Lima in 1706, and it could not be said that he governed well when he began to raise his loans and impose taxes on private fortunes, religious houses, and capitular bodies: but by this means he was able to replenish the exhausted treasury of his king with a million and a half of crowns.

Among the most notable events of the time in which he governed may be reckoned the victory which the pirate Wagner gained over the squadron of the Count de Casa-Alegre, thereby doing the English out of five millions of silver travellers from Peru. This animated the other corsairs of that nation, Dampier and Rogers, who took possession of Guayaquil, and squeezed out of that municipality a pretty fat contribution. In trying to restrain these marauders, the Viceroy spent a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in fitting out various ships, which sailed from Callao under the command of Admiral Don Pablo Alzamora. Everybody was anxious for the fray, even to the students of the colleges, all burning to chastise the heretics. Fortunately, the fight was never begun, and when our fleet went in search of the pirates as far as the Galapagos islands, they had abandoned already the waters of the Pacific.

The earthquake which ruined many towns in the province of Paruro was also among the great events of the same period.

Among the religious occurrences worthy of mention were the translation of the nuns of Santa Rosa to their own convent, and the fierce meeting in the Augustine chapter-room between the two Fathers, Zavala the Biscayan, and Paz the Sevillian. The Royal Audiencia was compelled to imprison the whole chapter, thereby suppressing the greatest of disorders, and after a session of eighteen hours and a good deal of scrutiny Zavala triumphed by a majority of two votes.

The venerable Marquis de Castil-dos-Rius was an enthusiastic cultivator of the muses; but as these ladies are almost always shy with old men, a very poor inspiration animates the few verses of his excellency with which we happen to have any knowledge.

Every Monday the Viceroy had a reunion of the poets of Lima in the palace; and in the library of the chief cosmographer, Don Eduardo Carrasco, there existed until within a few years a bulky manuscript, The Flower of the Academies of Lima, in which were guarded the acts of the sessions and the verses of the bards. We have made the most searching investigations for the hiding place of this very curious book, fatally without any result, which we suppose to be in possession of some avaricious bookworm, who can make no use of it himself, nor will allow others to explore so rich a treasure.

The little Parnassus of the palace, which after the manner of Apollo was presided over by the Viceroy, was formed of Don Pedro de Peralta, then quite a youth; the Jesuit José Buendia, a Limeño of great talent, and prodigious science; Don Luis Oviedo y Herrera, also a Limeño, and son of the poet Count de la Granja (author of a pretty poem on Santa Rosa); and other geniuses whose names are not worth the trouble of recording.

It was during the festivities held in honour of the birth of the Infanta Don Luis Fernando, that the little Parnassus was in the height of its glory, and the Viceroy, the Marquis de Castil-dos-Rius, gave a representation at the palace of the tragedy of Perseus, written in unhappy hendecasyllables, to judge by a fragment which we once read. The principal of the clergy and aristocracy assisted at the representation.

Speaking of the performance, our compatriot Peralta, in one of the notes to his Lima fundada, says, that it was given with harmonious music, splendid dresses, and beautiful decorations; and that in it the Viceroy not only manifested the elegance of his poetic genius, but also the greatness of his soul and the jealousy of his love.

It appears to us that there is a good deal of the courtier in that criticism.

Castil-dos-Rius had hardly been two years in his government before they accused him to Philip V of having used his high office for improper purposes, and defrauded the royal treasury in connivance with the contrabandistas. The Royal Audiencia and the Tribunal of Commerce supported the accusation, and the Monarch resolved upon at once dismissing the Governor of Peru from his office; but the order was revoked, because a daughter of the Marquis, one of the Queen's maids of honour, threw herself at the feet of Philip V, and brought to his recollection the great services of her father during the war of succession.

But although the King appeased the Marquis in a way by revoking the first order, the pride of Señor de Olim de Sentmanat was deeply wounded; so much so that it carried him to his tomb, April 22nd, 1710, after having governed Peru three years and a half.

The funeral was celebrated with slight pomp, but with abundance of good and bad verses, the Little Parnassus fulfilled a duty towards their brother in Apollo.

III

The anonymous letter accused Don Pedro Campos de Ayala of assassinating the Biscayan, and stealing a thousand ounces, which served for the basis of the great fortune he acquired in Potosi.

What proofs did the informer supply? We are unable to say.

Don Pedro being duly installed in the Stone Jug, the Mayor appeared to take his declaration; and the accused replied as follows:

'Mr. Mayor, I plead not guilty when he who accuses me is God himself. Only to Him under the seal of confession did I reveal my crime. Your worship will of course represent human justice in the case against me, but I shall institute a suit against God.'

As will be seen, the distinctions of the culprit were somewhat casuistical, but he found an advocate (the marvel would have been had he not) prepared to undertake the case against God. Forensic resource is mighty prolific.

For the reason that the Royal Council sought to wrap the case in the deepest mystery, all its details were devoured with avidity, and it became the greatest scandal of the time.

The Inquisition, which was hand and glove with the Jesuits, sought diligently for opportunities, and resolved to have a finger in the pie.

The Archbishop, the Viceroy, and the most ingrained aristocrat of Lima society took the side of the Company of Jesus. Although the accused sustained his integrity, he presented no other proof than his own word, that a Jesuit was the author of the anonymous denunciation and the revealer of the secret of the confessional, instigated thereto by the revocation of the will.

On his part the nephew of the Biscayan claimed the fortune of the murderer of his uncle, while the trustees of the various hospitals and convents defended the validity of the second will.

All the sucking lawyers spent their Latin in the case, and the air was filled with strange notions and extravagant opinions.

Meanwhile the scandal spread; nor will we venture to say to what lengths it might have gone, had not His Majesty Don Philip V declared that it would be for the public convenience, and the decorum of the Church as well as for the morality of his dominions, that the case should be heard before his great Council of the Indies in Spain.

The consequence was that Don Pedro Campos de Ayala marched to Spain under orders, in company with the voluminous case.

And as was natural, there followed with him not a few of those who were favourably mentioned in the will, and who went to Court to look after their rights.

Peace was re-established in our City of Kings, and the Inquisition had its attention and time distracted by making preparation to burn Madam Castro, and the statue and bones of the Jesuit Ulloa.

What was the sentence, or the turn which the sagacious Philip V gave to the case? We do not know; but we are allowed to suppose that the King hit upon some conciliatory expedient which brought peace to all the litigants, and it is possible that the culprit ate a little blessed bread, or shared in some royal indulgence.

Does the original case still exist in Spain? It is very likely that it has been eaten of moths, and hence the pretext and origin of a phrase which with us has become so popular.

It is said of a certain notary who much troubled the Royal Council in the matter of a will and its codicils, that when the custodian of such things at last produced something which looked like the original, he said, 'Here it is, but the moths have sadly eaten it.'

'Just our luck, my dear sir,' said an interested one, who was none other than the Marquis of Castelfuerte. And ever since, when a thing has disappeared we say 'No doubt the moths have eaten it.'

So much for the lawsuit against God, which only a Spaniard could have conceived and a Peruvian satirist report.

When a commercial father sees his eldest son, on whom he has lavished much care and money that he might learn mathematics and such an amount of classics as will stand him in good stead at the fashionable training grounds of the world's gladiators, and the boy is seen to forsake figures and take to poetry, to prefer the gay science to that which would enable him to master the money article of the Times, that father will feel as great a pang as when a giant dies.

The same feeling may actuate many a Peruvian bondholder when he is told that the Peruvians are beginning to cultivate literature. Many city men will disregard the thing altogether, or disdain to take notice of it. Many will treat it with resentment and contempt. What right have people who are in debt to busy themselves in writing books, in amusing themselves when they should be at work, and in writing poetry when they should be making money. And yet the cultivation of literature for its own sake by any people ought not only to be viewed with favour, it should be carefully watched, to see if it be a real national growth or only a momentary effort which cannot last. If it be the former, we shall see it in an improvement of public morals and manners; in the quickening of the national conscience and chastening the public taste, in an elevation of character and in fresh dignity being imparted to the common things and duties of everyday life.

Peru possesses a history as well as a country. The one remains to be written, and the other to be described by a Peruvian genius who shall do for Peru and Peruvian history what Sir Walter Scott did for his native land and its records.

It is now high time that Peru produced her popular historian. One who can fire the intellect of his countrymen while he provides them with an elevating pastime, who can point out the way they should or should not go by showing them the ways they have hitherto travelled. If the work has been delayed, it is because the people have too long retained the spirit of the former times to make it possible for them to profit by any explanation of the past. Monarchists yet, because they have never known better, they have not been taught to hate the hateful kings who ruled them in selfishness and kept them in ignorance, while they have not learned to love with devotion and intelligence the freedom they possess but know not how to use.

When books are found in hands till then only accustomed to carry muskets, and the pen is handled by those who have hitherto only believed in the power of the sword, we may rest assured that an important change has set in, a silent revolution has begun, which will make all other revolutions very difficult if not impossible.