Peru in the Guano Age

Let us hasten at once to acknowledge that it has spent 150,000,000 dols. in railways. But let us also add that the greatest authority in Peru has stigmatised these railways as locuras, or follies. This is not an encouraging beginning. But alas it is not only the beginning, it is also the end of the account.

There is nothing else to be seen. There is not a single lighthouse or light on any dangerous rock, or at any port difficult to make along the whole of its coast. All the fructifying rivers of the hills still steal into the sea. Had half the money which has been spent on the Oroya railway been expended on works of irrigation, the Government of Peru would now be in the possession of a respectable revenue.

A morning visit to the market-place in Lima on any day of the week, is enough to convince even a Peruvian President who knows something else besides how to play rocambor, of the truth of this statement.

Internal roads, excepting these 'railways of the age,' there are none; but there are several ironclads and men-of-war in the Bay of Callao, for what use or of what service the First Lord of the Admiralty himself could not tell explicitly.

It might be thought by some ordinary people, of business habits and a little reflection, that a country like Peru, which can boast of as many seaports as it can of first-class towns and cities, would provide those ports with convenient landing-places, moles, or piers.

There is one good pier on the whole coast, which in its useless grandeur stretches out nearly a mile into the sea; as the Oroya railway, like a mighty python, creeps up the precipitous slopes of the Andes 'sixteen thousand feet above the level of the sea.'

As every one knows, the Pacific is a peaceful sea, as quiet as a saucer of milk. But like almost all the things that every one knows, this piece of knowledge will hardly bear the test of experience. Twenty miles or less from its shore, the Pacific on the Peruvian coast, may be said to be as calm and placid as a man's unresisted vices. Put a restraint upon, or raise a barrier against the most modest of the man's wishes, and these suddenly show their strength, even the strength, as some have found to their cost, of resistless passion. It is thus with this Pacific sea. When it comes against a rocky shore, or the miserable wooden barriers which the Peruvian Government have put up for the convenience and comfort of passengers, and the despatch of business, it becomes more like a wild beast, or a watery volcano, or any other fierce and angry force which cannot by ordinary means be restrained. It is not unlikely that a Government fond of providing cheap distraction for the people has purposely neglected this useful work of building piers, with the benevolent design of providing a cheap amusement to those inhabitants of the ports who do not travel by sea.

It is such fun to see a lady dressed in pink satin and blue silk boots get a sudden ducking in salt water, or to watch in safety from the shore a boat full of anxious and highly dressed colonels and sugar-boilers, editors and lawyers, get drenched to the skin, and almost robbed of their breath, in trying to effect a landing at Islay, or Mollendo, Iquique, or Chala, or even Callao.

If any of the readers of this brief but eventful history would desire to see the Peruvian Republic as in a microcosm, let them arrive at the latter chief port of the nation in a steamer, or a cattle ship, as a passenger steamer may now be called. They will see an exhibition of confusion, extortion, bullying, insolence, cruelty, and official imbecility, which cannot be equalled in any other part of the civilised or uncivilised world, including New Guinea or Eragomanga. And as it is now, so it was twenty years ago. A steamer, the European mail for example, drops its anchor about two miles from the shore. It is then surrounded by a hundred small boats, each containing two, sometimes more, coloured men. The screaming, gesticulating, and brutal language of these creatures defy description. The authorities have no control over them, the captain of the steamer is powerless against the invasion of his ship, and all passengers who have no friends, who know nothing of the country and cannot speak Spanish, are placed at the mercy of this swarm of harpies.

Here you have an epitome of Peru. Gentlemen and rogues jostling one another in painful contiguity. Gentlewomen and their opposite, men who work and scoundrels who prey upon other people's labour, priests and colonels, knowledge and ignorance, in some form or other brought in violent collision: the utmost freedom of opinion and nobody to keep the peace!