A Gringo's View of Peru in 1925

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Excerpted from Adventures of a Tropical Tramp by Harry L. Foster, published in 1925. Foster tramped his way around Latin America, working odd jobs, and generally having a grand time. As you read these observations, remember your earlier lesson about ethnocentrism. Try to identify the accurate observations made by Foster and to filter out his many ethnocentric biases. This is a central problem for all historians: separating the wheat from the chaff.

Over the World's Highest Railway: Andean Mountain Life

The Central Railway of Peru, which carried me up into the Andes on the following morning, is reputed to be the highest and most picturesque railway in the world. Traveling toward the back country of South America was equivalent to viewing a motion picture of the continent's history--except that the film ran backward, taking one from the modern to the primitive. Even before the cathedral towers of Lima had disappeared behind the train, I looked from the car window to see bamboo huts, with roofs of thatch, half-hidden among groves of banana trees.
It was a. country almost unchanged since the days of the conquerors. The ancient mud walls that intersected the landscape, the tumbled down ruins of adobe villages, even the peasants toiling in the field, seemed to be of an age equal to that of the brown hills which lined the horizon. The track mounted swiftly toward the Andean heights. Within an hour and, a half we were among the foothills of Chosica, Lima's select residential suburb; within another hour and a half Chosica's altitude of 2,800 feet had been doubled, and we pulled into San Bartolome, Lima's fruit garden.

The people of San Bartolome, it appeared, lived principally by picking oranges from the tree and then lying in wait for the railroad passengers. Here I caught a, glimpse of the mountain cholos, the descendants of the races dominated by the Incas. They lined the station platform, most of them women, all of them squatted cross-legged on the ground in native fashion, dressed in a super-abundance of clothes which left one in doubt as to whether they were fat or thin, their hair down their backs in course, greasy braids, and on their heads white-felt mannish Panama-like hats. Their faces were Indian-featured, ruddy and red-cheeked from the cool mountain air, and their expressions solemn and unsmiling.

When they walked, it was with a long, swinging gallop, ungraceful and flat-footed--a system of locomotion inherited from their mountain-climbing ancestors, which, when transferred to the more level country of the foothills, gave one the ridiculous impression that they were still trying to skip from peak to peak.

Every woman had a rainbow-hued shawl over her shoulders, always with a heavy bundle behind the back. Frequently the bundle contained an infant, and invariably the infant was dressed exactly like its mother, with the same superabundance of voluminous gaudy skirts, the same greasy braids of jet black hair, and the same mannish Panama hat.        Its face wore the same solemn, unhappy but resigned ex-pression, and I had the feeling that if it were put on the ground, it would go galloping away with the same flat-footed gallop.

Leaving San Bartolome, with its one row of sand-plastered houses, the train backed away on first of the line's 21 zig-zags or switchbacks. This style of railroad construction is necessary for the steep ascent which commences here, and from the time one leaves San Bartolome until one arrives at Tielio at the top of the mountain range, one never knows whether he is going or coming. The train is continually backing part way up the mountain, then running forward again, until after half an hour of steady riding one looks down at the same spot he saw several hundred feet higher. Occasionally for variety, one ascends a long quebrada, [valley] circles around, and comes back on the other side. It seems to the passenger as though the train were merely cutting geometric figures up and down the hillside, yet it is always ascending, always getting a little closer to its objective.

Our next stop was Surco, the flower garden of Lima. On the platform were more cholo women, [note: cholo is a disrespectful term for Indians, the indigenous popuation. Think of it as something like "redskin"--not meant as a compliment. However, Foster is simply reflecting the typical disdain toward native Americans of his time] with dresses more voluminous than at San Bartolome, and possibly another layer of dirt on their faces, indicating that the increasing altitude not only encouraged more the wearing of clothing, but discouraged more the taking of baths. The flowers which they sold, however, were beautiful. There were immense bouquets of violets, roses, and carnations, purchasable for a few soles when the train first arrived or for a few centavos just before the train departed. Every passenger on board purchased a bouquet or two, sweet and fragrant and dripping wet, and out of consideration for his friends in his own seat, hung his dripping purchase on an adjacent hat rack where it dripped on strangers in the seat behind.

As we continued the ever-ascending journey, it was noticeable that with the growing coolness the air the bamboo huts gave way to solid adobe structures. The flowers of Surco vanished from the landscape; the bananas and sugar cane of the lower altitudes gave place to cactus-to the corrugated, misshapen trunks of the pitahaya or to the wide bluish leaves of the maguey. The country began to resemble the plateaus of central Mexico.

At eleven o'clock the train stopped at an adobe village called Matacana, where every one left the first-class coaches and rushed into the local hotel for almuerzo, or lunch, or breakfast, or whatever the translator chooses to call it, for the Latin American drinks but a cup of coffee upon rising and takes his real breakfast at this hour.

The arrival of the train was an exciting event in Matacana, not only for the natives, but also for the passengers. In the hotel there was but one waiter to serve about sixty of us, a worried looking little cholo who tried vainly to listen to all of us at once. Before I could explain to him in my broken Spanish that I did not object to his fish soup but that I did object most strongly to his serving it with the fish's glassy-eyed head swimming around in it, I was interrupted by the clanging of the station bell. This was but a warning, but at its sound excitement increased. The guests all clamored for the waiter:
"Carramba!        Traiga cerveza!"
"Carramba! No tengo arroz! No tengo nada!” [What's wrong? Bring beer! What's wrong! You don't have rice? We have nothing!]

Presently a second warning sounded, and the engine commenced to puff. The waiter himself had been puffing for some time, as he tried to comply with sixty excited demands for food. Now be rushed frantically about to collect his bills, while the guests rushed frantically to catch their train. Finally the bell rang for the third and last time. At this ultimatum some twenty passengers who lead lingered upon the platform to receive the felicidades of friends outside made a concerted break for the steps of the car. Here they collided with some twenty friends from the outside who had entered the car to bid felicidades [best wishes] topassengers inside. During the confusion which ensued, the contending parties wished each other everything except felcidades.

It was most interesting to watch a cholo board the second-class coach. Since no Andean native leaves his home even for five minutes without carrying his few possessions with him, each cholo had a bundle on his back several times as bulky as his own shoulders, and after he had squeezed through a narrow opening between two other cholos, he invariably discovered that his bundle was tightly wedged between theirs. In the case of the women, instead of locking bundles, they sometimes locked babies, and in the tug of war that followed, a witness could but wonder how the infants survived. Above Matacana we struck more rugged mountain country.        Even the cactus died out, and no vegetation, remained to break the forlorn grandeur of the mountains which towered far above the narrow cliffs to which our track clung precariously.

From Lima the road had followed the River Rimac. Now the river appeared as a tiny ribbon thousands of feet below us, white and foaming in swirling rapids or tumbling in sheer waterfalls fox hundreds of feet. We began to plunge through a succession of tunnels. In the construction of this marvel of railroad engineering, it was necessary to cut some sixty-five of them, through solid rock, totaling over five miles in length, also to build an equal number of bridges over seemingly bottomless ravines. From one of these bridges passengers on the rear platform could look down four hundred feet to where the rusted remains of an engine marked the spot where several construction bosses lost their lives during the building of the road. Occasionally the bleak mountain ravines opened out into valleys, with sides cut into terraces by the Incas, and an adobe town in the bottom-a motley town with mixed roofs of thatch and tin. Atone of these towns, San Mateo, we began to see large herds of llamas, the burden-bearing animals of the Andes which writers have described as possessing heads like a camel, wool like a sheep, and legs like a deer.

The llama is one of the few creatures that can survive the rigorous climate of the high altitudes, and its race seems to register great pride in the fact. Its camel-like countenance has a self-satisfied, sneering expression comparable only to the supercilious expression on a society woman's face when observing her neighbor in a last year's hat. The llama's countenance would be genuinely aristocratic except for the fact that the lower jaw wags continually as though chewing gum. These animals are remarkably docile. They sometimes fight among themselves, but never attack a man. They seldom wander from the spot where their keeper leaves them, and one may see them in large herds, untied and unwatched, awaiting the return of their master. Yet they are sullen creatures with a habit of lying down and refusing to move when given a load which they consider too heavy, and upon rare occasions will spit at a driver, causing very irritating sores from the saliva, for llamas are natural sufferers from various skin and blood diseases.

The drivers of these herds are typical mountain cholos, dirty and barefooted, the men draped with a picturesque poncho made by cutting a neck-slit in a square piece of woolen cloth, the women hidden behind voluminous skirts, now increased with the growing cold of the altitudes to ten or twelve layers of gay petticoats. These Andean Indians, both male and female, were notably lacking in the splendid qualities which the reader of Prescott expects to find ill the descendants of Inca races. Filthy and forlorn-looking despite the gay costumes; they were both stolid and stupid, their eyes bleary with rum, and their cheeks distended with the ever-present chew of coca-leaves.

Nor were their homes ill keeping with the Inca traditions of grandeur. The only habitations to be seen between villages were tiny hovels of stones patched with moss, with roofs so low that the owner and his family had to crawl inside as an animal might crawl into its den. The interior of these hovels, as I was later to discover, was as unprepossessing as the exterior. In one corner three stones constituted a. fireplace; a chimney-less fireplace with only dried llama dung for fuel; in another corner a pile of frozen potatoes represented the family larder; upon the frosted mud floor a few half-tanned, stinking hides of the llama's deceased relatives constituted carpet and bed; other furnishings were lacking.

The gray masses of cloud which hovered above the bleak, cheerless landscape seemed strikingly in harmony with the people and their homes. It was a land of eternal gloom; inhabited by men animals who both shared the same attitude toward life--men. and animals that were sullen, docile, unimaginative, and unsentimental. When, late in the afternoon, the train crawled around a mountain cliff and emerged into a valley among the belching smoke-stacks of Casapalca, the first of the mining camps, where crushers roared and red-faced American bosses shouted orders to cholo laborers, I felt much as a traveler in the desert feels when he stumbles unexpectedly upon an oasis. There was an activity here and a throbbing of busy work that seemed out of place.

Above Caspalca the air became genuinely cold. There was a stinging in the nostrils from rarefied atmosphere, companied by a feeling of dizziness in the head which increased to a pronounced headache as we approached Ticlio, the highest point on this highest of railways. Ticlio proved to be a bleak little tin station surrounded by snow-clad peaks barely discernible through a storm of hail. Just beyond the station loomed the vague form of Mount Meiggs, named after the famous American engineer who built the railway. This mountain was the real divide in the cordillera. In the tunnel which pierces it the traveler reaches the highest point on the main line, at an altitude of 15,665 feet. Here the soroche, or mountain sickness, became general among the passengers. The women brought out smelling salts and sniffed vigorously; while the men called for pisco, the native grape-brandy of Peru. The only genuine cure for this mountain sickness, however, is to let it wear off. With most people it lasts only two or three days, characterized by heavy pounding of the heart pains in the head, and sleepless nights. Some escape it entirely. With others it lasts for weeks. During later days in the mining camp I met a woman whose only indication of it was a daily faint, from which she recovered in, a few moments and felt nothing more until she fainted again on the following day. She fainted regularly every day for a month, after which she enjoyed excellent health.

I had never experienced sea-sickness, and had scorned the idea of having soroche, yet I did feel it at Ticlio, and continued to feel it long after we had passed the highest point and were gliding downhill, again through moss-grown valleys to the American mining camp at Oroya. At Oroya I changed to the mining corporation's own railroad, and traveled, across the dreary pampa for several hours more. It was night when I descended amid a cloud, of sulphurious smoke at the company's smelter, and the red glow of the furnaces looked like Pittsburgh. Clark, a young man in khaki shirt, high leather leggins, and sombrero, who met me at the station handed my suitcase to a cholo with the remark that I would find myself too weak to carry it. I resented the imputation, for although I had felt a trifle dizzy when passing the high point on t railroad, the quarters were only two hundred yards distant. But in the rarefied air of the high, altitude, even walking proved to he hard work. "A good night's rest will fix you up," he chuckled.

It is usually many nights before a newcomer becomes sufficiently acclimated to enjoy a night's rest. I found sleep impossible. For hours I could hear my heart pumping like a steam-hammer as it tried to function in the scant air of two miles above level. Employees are seldom sent to “the hill” without a heart and lung test; nevertheless, it is not an infrequent occurrence for one to be rushed back to Lima on a special train, with a camp doctor Pumping oxygen into him. Even old-timers, long after soroche has passed off, are unable to exert themselves vigorously, although the native-born Indians seem to gallop up or down hill, carrying tremendous loads on the back without effort.

In the morning I had been warned to take things easy, but after the lazy life I had so far seen in Latin America, I wanted to see people working. The auditor took me to the office. Although superintendents in these camps work harder than at home, owing to the difficulty of getting work out of their Indian subordinates, I discovered that office men have much the same habits as the Latins themselves.

“Do you need another man in here, Glen?” the auditor inquired.
A tall Canadian cashier, engaged in chatting with three other khaki-shirted gringos, looked up.
“Why, we have an even four for bridge now,” he replied. “Of course, we can play poker instead-“
“Never mind. Poker would lower the tone of the office work. I'll ship him up to Morococha." They all looked pityingly at me. Morococha was still higher up in the mountains, with a glacier in its back yard.

So I climbed on another train, rode back to the highest point on the main line of the railroad, and changed to a branch that led still higher into a land of Alpine beauty and Arctic temperature. After winding among icy peaks and chilly blue lakes, it came finally down upon another group of chimneys and mine towers, where another manager met me. The managers expect new employees to arrive sick up here, and are very considerate of newcomers.

"I'd take you to the quarters in my automobile," he explained, "but yesterday was pay-day, and I can't drive without running over the drunks."
As we walked down through the straggling native mud village toward the mines, cholos staggered stupidly out of our way, the more nearly sober ones raising their hats in salute, the rest staring at us in, bleary-eyed impudence until I pushed aside. Many of them lay in the road, half-buried in the mixture of mud and melting snow. Before one of the many shafts that dotted the valley below, like entrances to a huge ant-hill, the manager paused. "We'll take the subway to camp," he said. The subway proved to be a mine cage, which shot us down into dripping blackness. Several hundred feet below, in a cavern lighted by flickering miners' lamps, we climbed into a small electric car, and were carried noisily through winding tunnels where water trickled upon us from the rocks close overhead. The gringo camp the where the American employees lived was some two miles distant, but in a few minutes we shot into a brilliant sunshine among a group of neat white buildings.

Here the manager turned me over to a red-haired, freckle-faced man whom he addressed as "Paddy," Paddy looked at me distrustfully. “It's not English ye are?” he inquired. “No, I'm American." “I'll give you a good room then.” I learned later that it was Paddy's dislike for what he termed “Lima-juicers,” culminating in his posting about his home town in Cork some handbills warning them to take their feet off the neck of fair Ireland, that explained why he was now in Peru. Paddy, whose present capacity in the mines was that of “General Welfare Manager,” conducted me to the club, and left me there while he went out to find living quarters. To one who had come to the Andes in search of strange local color, the club was disappointingly civilized. Viewing its big easy-chairs, its piano and victrola, and its books and magazines, one could imagine himself back in some Y.M.C.A. in New York. Even the miners were a trifle disappointing.

Among the Chuncho Indians of the Andes; On Don Victor's plantation

Polygamy, while not universally practiced among the Chunchos, is considered legitimate by native custom. The Franciscan monks have persuaded the Indians of the regime to wear clothing, which accounts for the brown friar-like robe worn by both sexes, but otherwise little change has been made in the customs of the Chunchos.

Pleased to find an interested and credulous listener, the Padre talked late into the night, as Lloyd had talked, telling me of the marriage ceremonies of the natives-how the broom breaks an earthenware jar upon the ground, and the bride in evidence of her submission, gathers up the pieces. The little monk had many personal experiences to relate.

"Once, senior, in the Putumayo country, a chief introduced me to his ten wives. They were all seated upon the ground in a circle, and--" here he lowered his voice to a discreet whisper- “they were absolutely naked. You can imagine my embarrassment, senior, for I was at that time a very young man. But one grows blase, senior, one grows blase."

Life at the Perene was pleasant and comfortable. Don Victor's home was a large building of cedar, screened to keep out mosquitos, lighted with electricity from his own plant, and furnished even to a victrola, for which he had the very best Operatic records. A forest of orange trees, golden with fruit, surrounded the place, and about the front yard strutted numerous tame tropical birds of brilliant plumage. I spent the following day riding about the several haciendas with Don Victor, and by riding hard for eight hours we succeeded in seeing a small part of the quarter million acres of jungle owned by the Peruvian corporation. Only a small part, or rather a comparatively small part, was cultivated, for here (as in the Andes) Peru suffers from a scarcity of labor. The trail would frequently bring us out upon wide fields of cotton with its yellow blossom, or broad patches of sugar cane with its shining pink tassels, or groves of coffee trees and bananas, but most of the time we rode through unbroken jungle.

Once, as we came out suddenly upon a little sandy stream, bordered by high thickets of wild cane, a troop of peccaries, or wild pigs, showed their tusks and then scampered noisily away.
Our trail mounted steeply, ascending high, thickly wooded hills. Occasionally through an opening in the trees we caught a birds'-eye view of mile after mile of trackless wilderness. And finally, when we came to the principal coffee hacienda, the coffee groves seemed to stretch away over just as much space.

The growing of coffee and its preparation for market is such a delicate and complicated operations that one wonders how it was ever discovered in the first place. Coffee bushes must have shade, just a certain amount of shade; not too little or too much. Therefore they are grown with other trees, usually with bananas, but in the Chanchamayo with pacay trees. The pacay is of no other commercial value, although its black seeds are used by the Indians for ornaments. The coffee appears first as a, red berry, containing two beans. Between the, outside of the berry and the beans there is a layer of pulp, to be washed off, inside of which is a white parchment to be removed, and finally, when one gets down to the bean itself, there is still another lager known as the silver-skin to be taken off.

At various points among Don Victor's big groves were vats where the berries were shoveled around like so much sand, for Don Victor estimated that the coffee bushes numbered over a million, and that each bush gave a yearly crop of fourteen ounces. Most of the work was done by machinery. First the outer shell was removed then the parchment berry was allowed to ferment for three days, after which it was washed for three days, and finally dried for three days. After that, it was sent back to the principal hacienda, put through the various other forms of rigmarole, sorted, sacked, and shipped over the long trail to Oroya by burro train. Riding about among the coffee groves, we came upon occasional palm-thatched huts of the Chuncho laborers, consisting as a rule of nothing more than a roof supported by poles, and without sidewalls. Don Victor informed me that many of the higher chieftains had dwellings more palatial than his own, but I saw no such mansions. The huts I saw were merely shelters from the tropic rain, bare inside save possibly for a palm-leaf mat upon the floor, a few earthen-ware jars, and some bows or arrows.
I was surprised to learn that these Chunchos had known the cause of the malaria long before the white man discovered it. According to a very intelligent chief to whom I talked at one of the huts, the savages were not only aware that the fever was carried by a mosquito, but had identified the particular mosquito which carried it.

“That is why we first painted our arms and faces,” the chief told me. “The mosquito can not bite through the paint.”
I am a trifle inclined to doubt the statement, although Don Victor assured me earnestly that the Chunchos are much more intelligent than they look. Certainly, the Chunchos, despite their many savage customs, are vastly superior as a race to the cholos of the Andes. Not merely are they better workers, but among them one finds none of the cowardly docility that one finds among the apologetic, hat-rising mixed-breeds of the Sierra.
On the following day, which happened to be Sunday, many of the Chunchos came in to the Company store dressed in their Sabbath finery. About their necks they wore hundreds of strings, of black and white pacay seeds, fastened together in a design resembling the markings of a snake, and to these necklaces some of them had attached dead birds of brilliant plumage, with the green of parrots predominating. Some carried bows and arrows, long, sharp pointed arrows for spearing fish, or rounded, knob-ended arrows for stunning birds.
Of the four hundred permanent workers on the haciendas, the majority were Chunchos of this type. In contracting for labor, Don Victor makes his arrangements through the chiefs, who, he says, are absolutely reliable and honest in all their dealings. On some occasions, where lie needs the services of sixty or eighty men, their chief, as a personal favor, may request in advance of 200 soles (about $100) or more, but invariably, when the time arrives for the men to appear, the sixty or eighty are on hand in full force. This was quite at variance with the experience of the Andean mining companies in hiring cholos.
In the mountains, when a cholo agreed to work, frequently demanded in advance on his first month's wages, but having spent the advance in the usual orgy of drunkenness, he seldom appeared for work.
During my entire trip to the ChanchamayoValley, I never saw a Chuncho Indian intoxicated. This may have been due, however, to the policy of Don Victor in refusing to sell liquor to his employees. Twice a day each Indian laborer received a glass of pisco or chacta, enough to keep him happy, but not enough to make him drunk. This was regarded as part of his pay, in addition to the daily wage of one sol and a half (about seventy cents in American money).
Having spent three clays With Don Victor, I took my departure. The Chanchamayo Valley was the one really attractive region I had found in Peru, but I did not wish to impose upon the manager's hospitality. Miners from Cerro de Pasco and Oroya had been told, had frequently made the Perene Colony the objective of their twice-yearly vacation, and not long before my visit about a dozen of them had come down there, established themselves in Don Victor's house, and a crate of whiskey which they had brought with them, prepared for a pleasant two weeks. Don Victor, being a Peruvian and bound to the traditions of Peruvian hospitality, would not ask them to leave, but had cleverly fed them on rice and sardines three times a day until they decided of their own volition to move away. I had found his welcome most cordial, but I hesitated to prolong my visit unreasonably.
Remembering my former experience with the “cage,” I rode away by the roundabout trail over the bridge, and was rewarded by meeting another of the numerous first-settler-in-the-Chanchamayo class. It was the bridge-keeper, another old Italian of the group whose operatic proclivities had doomed the early Italian colony to failure as farmers. He lived in a thatched hut beside the bridge, with a Chuncha lady for a wife. His brother had married some other species of Indian, while his brother-in-law was wedded to a third variety of squaw [hmmm does this word sound ethnocentric?]. The three women, each in a different picturesque costume, were all seated cross-legged under the thatched roof, making Indian beadwork. The bridge-tender eked out his slender salary by selling this work, along with arrows, monkey-skins acid other curios.
Like the little carpenter, he took his lot philosophically and made no apologies for “going native." In, fact, he introduced his half-cast progeny by saying to me in Spanish:
"Senior, let me present the evidence of a misspent life in the tropics."
On my way back to La Merced, I stopped for a few minutes at another hacienda to see the making of rum. The Perene Colony was the only hacienda in the valley which did not manufacture this "chacta," and I wanted to see the origin of the fiery beverage whose effects I had so often witnessed in the Andes.
It was a Peruvian-owned hacienda, a group of big wooden buildings surrounded by vast fields of sugar cane, and it was quite the busiest Peruvian-owned institution I ever saw in the country. Machinery roared inside the buildings, big modern trucks came racing up with loads of cane, crushers ground tile cane to a pulp as fast as the trucks dumped it-even the thick molasses-like juice fermenting in the immense vat seemed to bubble enthusiastically, as though it knew that the natives all over the Andes were eagerly awaiting it.

Among the Chuncho Indians

What impressed me most at this chacta estate was the lack of consideration which the Peruvians owner showed for the employees. One huge, barn-like wooden structure housed over a hundred, laborers. It was shabby and filthy: Sometimes an, old piece of burlap was stretched between families; sometimes even this was lacking. There was nothing suggesting furniture-only rough wooden bunks, like the steerage berths in a, ship, where men, women, and children slept. There were no screens for protection against mosquitos, and I could understand at a glance why the cholos were so yellow and pallid with malaria.
"How do you ever keep men here? " I asked one of the bosses.
And indiscreetly he revealed the method: "We keep them in debt to the company store, senor. Thus, according to the law, they are not permitted to leave."
I do not claim that these conditions are typical of the whole of Peru, but I believe that they are fairly general, not only in Peru, but in most other Latin-American countries. Since the first coming of the Spaniard, the Indian has been, exploited alike by government, church, and employer, until he has grown distrustful of all white men. It explains why the cholo of the mining camps, when the American companies attempt to house him in modern dwellings, makes every possible effort to avoid being "uplifted." He has an inbred suspicion that there is something sinister behind the kindly-seeming efforts of his benefactors.
Yet, when a traveling American remarks about exploitation, to a Latin American there is always a ready answer for him. I received the same answer from several Peruvians:
"But what happened in your own- United States, senor? If you did not exploit your Indians you have killed most of them in warfare, driven them from their lands, practically exterminated the race!"
Continuing my journey toward La Merced, I again encountered the little Italian carpenter, hiking on foot along the road with a stick over his shoulder, and a bag on the end of the stick. He had just tramped six leagues through the jungle to sell a few of his little wooden ornaments, and was returning with several more bottles of pisco to relieve the tedium of his celibate life.
"Buenos dias, senor," he cried. "Again you shall be my guest for lunch. Again shall we drink and sing together.”
Remembering the effects of our last, party, I tried to make excuses. Acceptance of` his scant fare seemed to be an imposition.        But he was insistent.
"If the senor shall not drink pisco, he shall drink lemonade. When I have an opportunity to entertain a guest but once in six months, would you refuse me?

We turned off into the narrow trail to his shop, and had lunch together. Again he declined insistently to accept payment. When I tried to pay for some of the ornaments he had made, he begged me to accept them as a gift.
"No one ever comes to my cabin, senor. When I have the opportunity to make a gift but once in six months, would you refuse me?" He consumed large quantities of the pisco [a strong, alcoholic beverage], and grew loquacious. Years ago, he said, he had been happy here with a wife and child, but both had died of the fever. Would I accompany him to their graves to weep with him? When he had the opportunity to weep with a friend but once in six months, would I deny him the pleasure?        He was both amusing and pathetic, for while he spoke of his loneliness with an air of jest, I could see that he felt it most keenly.
After we had wept together over the graves, we carne back to his isolated shop, where he insisted that I again mount the table with him to sing once more, "For he's a Jolly Good Fellow." Since he had the opportunity to do this but once every six months, I could not refuse. And as I led Fannie back through the tunnel of vegetation, he stood there beside his rapidly decaying home,---a lonely, hind-hearted old man, waving a friendly farewell with his empty bottle.
I met very few Americans in Peru who did not, in confidential moments, have something uncomplimentary to say about the Peruvians.
"They're a thieving lot,'' one man said. “You can't do a thing without bribing officials. You can't send money in a letter without its being opened. You can't get goods into port without having stevedores break it open to see whether it's worth stealing. You can't add up your restaurant bill without finding that the waiter's made a mistake in his own favor. These people have the same instincts as Mexican bandits, only they haven't the nerve try come out openly and shoot you, so they pick your pocket:"
"They're a worthless lot," said another. "They sit back and let us develop the country and pay their taxes for them, while they strut around with their canes and make goo-goo eyes at servant girls."
Most of the men who made these criticisms had enough good sense to hide their feelings when in the presence of Peruvians, but there were always a few Americans-usually the poorest specimens of Americans--who did not hesitate at any time to voice their feelings aloud. There is a certain type of traveler who habitually criticizes the trains, the hotels, the meals, the national customs, and to show the Latin the error of his ways, points out how much better everything is in the United states, which may be the truth, but to the Peruvian is a decidedly unpleasant truth. Latin Americans regard politeness as much more essential than truth. They live upon flattery. Two more acquaintances, meeting upon, the street, will stop to embrace each other and assure each other in the most flowery language of their mutual affection. It is not merely pretense; they are so accustomed to do this that they do it spontaneously.
In their Latin impulsiveness, I think they both for the moment believe what they tell each other. At a dinner---and nearly every evening at the restaurant where I dined when in Lima there was a formal banquet tendered by a group of white-collared middle-class aristocrats to one of their number-the speakers would dwell upon the scholarly habits and unimpeachable morals and business acumen and patriotic devotion and various other good qualities of the guest of honor, all in the most ridiculously flowery language, and the much praised guest or honor, although usually an undersized and flabby-faced specimen whose appearance made the tributes more ridiculous, would sit there and beam upon the speakers, both he and they believing every word spoken. Naturally, when a Peruvian hears the truth about himself, even when it is not a terribly offensive truth, the very surprise of such discourtesy stripes him as an insult. Outwardly the Peruvian loves us. Individually any American who treats him politely, and accepts the local customs diplomatically, receives a hearty welcome to Peru. I met Americans in the republic who, having learned to embrace the Peruvians and flatter them in the beloved manner, could get away with murder. I mean this literally. I know of one American who, upon finding a cholo beating a child with a belt-buckle, gave the cholo such a thrashing that the man died; the local officials, to whom this American had always been courteous and over whom he had always made a fuss, instead of trying him for murder, as they might eagerly have done in the case of many Americans, decided after a casual investigation that the cholo had died from “natural causes.”
“That,” said this American, “was because I never call my neighbors spigs; because I live as they do and accept their ways with patience.”
Collectively, however, we are all “gringos,” and until we individually earn the native's goodwill, he dislikes us. Under all his protestations of friendship, he has a slumbering antagonism to us. Inwardly he treasures up the insults his country receives from the occasional indiscreet American, and charges them against all of us. Even while he invites us to develop his country, he cannot help feeling a trifle jealous of us, and resentful of our business-like ways.
Consequently when an American businessman comes to Peru, expecting to accomplish things with a rush, as he might accomplish them at home, he finds many annoying obstacles to overcome. My observations on one particular trip, although I do not attempt to pose as an authority on business problems, may give some insight into a few of these obstacles.
It was a trip to the oil port of Talara, situated on the barren coast just north of Paita. I sailed on the petroleum company's tank steamer, incidentally with a British captain who sat out under the deck awning with me and aired his firm belief in the superiority of all things British to all things American.
A tropical sun had been pouring down upon our deck awning with ever-growing intensity as we steamed northward toward the equator, and when we dropped anchor in Talara Bay, the heat was at its worst. The placid blue water of the harbor glistened like the surface of a highly polished mirror. The gray stucco walls of the petroleum city sparkled blindingly. And beyond, the vast expanse of desert coast, dotted with hundreds of little wooden oil derricks, glittered under the relentless blaze of light, reflecting it and intensifying it to a veritable sheet of flame. This first glimpse of the oil port confirmed my earlier observation that the riches of South America seem always to be found either in the most unattractive or most inaccessible places. They sold everything—llama hides, vicuna rugs, vegetables, fruit, Indian pottery, dolls, crude flutes or drums, leather sandals, homemade shoes, blankets, dyestuffs, clothing, wooden spoons, every imaginable product of native labor.
Particularly in evidence were huge bales of coca-leaves, the chewing-tobacco of the Andes, brought up by muleback from the tropical country of the interior. In early times, according to historians, the runners who formed the telegraph system of the Inca empire, after racing four or five hundred miles across the mountains, would pause to stick a few coca leaves in their frothing mouths, and thus stimulated, would gallop away for another five hundred. Today every Andean Indian, from Columbia down to Paraguay, has his cheek habitually extended with a wad of these leaves, and will refuse to work unless he has this artificial stimulus. Undoubtedly this is a stimulus, for the Indian will travel for two or three days without food when provided with enough coca-leaves, yet these leaves, from which we get our drug cocaine, while they seem to give temporary physical strength, are undoubtedly responsible for the degenerate mentality of the natives.
A perfect bedlam reigns during the market day, the pushing and jostling of the crowds, the noise of the many haggling voices, the squealing of the pigs as they are dragged to the market, the hee-hawing to the burros as they plod along, completely hidden in their mass of stuff strapped to their little backs, the roaring of the bulls in the cattle yards, the squashing of thousands of bare feet through the muck and mud of the plaza, all the various rackets combining to make a riot of sound that eclipses a menagerie at feeding time.
Through the crowds stalk the alcaldes, or mayors of the different Indian villages, their rank indicated by the staff which they carry, a staff of black wood encircled by three silver bands. Except for this staff, there is nothing to mark them as rulers, for they generally are as barefooted, mud-covered, and whisker draped as the rest of their tribe. Sometimes they sell stuff like their fellow townsmen, but more often they drape their dirty ponchos around them with a Roman toga effect and stand by themselves with an air of great hauteur and authority.
As a rule, each village specializes in the manufacture and sale of one certain article, and the members of each village group themselves apart. As a result, one may notice a sameness of types in each group that contrasts strikingly with the type of the group next door. In one spot will be a line of women with large noses selling vicuna skins. In the next group will be a line of cross-eyed women selling native embroidery. In the next group will be a line of pock-marked women selling coca-leaves. The one thing they wear in common is the colorful costume and the layers of mud.
As I pushed my way through the motley crowd I cam upon a party of tropical Indians who quite evidently had just made their first journey to the capital from their homes in the Yungas Valley. They were sturdy little brown men, dressed in cotton breeches which reached barely to the knee, with their feet bare of the usual sandals, and their black hair tied in queues. Although La Paz is situated in the Andes, as are the other more frequently visited Bolivian cities, the greater portion of this republic lies in the tropical regions of the interior.
As the Yungas Indians tramped through the crowded market streets, the honk of an automobile horn sounded a sharp warning, and a big touring car—one of the few cars that had managed to be imported safely to this distant capital—came tearing past them. The Indians paused, open-mouthed, to stare at the novel sight. “What makes it run?” one of them demanded—if Mulvaney interpreted correctly.
Their alcalde, or chief, straightened himself with the manner of a superior being, wise in all such things.
"Wind," he said convincingly.
La Paz is justly called the most colorful capital in South America. Especially on Sunday when the crowds of Andean Indians in their brilliant ponchos are supplemented by these tropical Indians from the Yungas Valley; when upper-class Bolivians in the latest Parisian or London garb, and priests in their brown, white, or black robes, and soldiers in Prussian uniform, and gringo miners in high boots and flannel shirts, mingle with the whole vari-colored mob; when, jingling llama trains and burros contest the right of way with automobiles and trolley cars--La Paz is a sight never to be forgotten.
The bulk of Bolivia's population consists of Indians who speak scarcely a word of Spanish. Most of these Indians are Aymaras, a, much less docile race than the Quichuas of Peru, and in many respects a much more progressive race. One notes the difference particularly in the cholawomen.
The upper-class chola is the most distinctive thing in Bolivia. Unlike the native women anywhere else in South America, she is as neat in her dress as she possibly can be. Her skirts, several in number, are of the finest woolen texture, gay in color, but never clashing in shade. Over her shoulder she wears two shawls of, material resembling silk, draped most artistically, with long fringe almost sweeping the ground. Upon her head
is a distinctive hat of straw, shaped like a derby, but polished with a shellac that makes it shine in the mid-day sun like the dome of a bald head. Her shoes are high, coming halfway to the knee; they are made of a soft white leather, with high heels that give them a Parisian effect, and a pair of tassels which flap about her ankles to increase thie effect. She walks with an independent swing, her hat tilted rakishly upon her black hair, her red cheeks glowing with health, her whole demeanor one of pride, and self reliance, and independence, and every other good quality lacked by the other natives of the Andes.
The caste system is very pronounced in La Paz. The foregoing description applies only to the highest type of Indian woman. Above her is the Spanish-blooded aristocratic lady, who dresses in the latest style from Paris, and the middle-class Spanish woman, who dresses in black with a mantilla over the head. Below her are several classes of less elegant chola women, who wear various combinations of dirty rags after the fashion among Peruvian Indians. But the high-class chola girl is distinctive, and one never ceases to wonder how she has succeeded in rising above the other Indians and how she can afford such fine garments.

The “better” families.

To them on Sunday mornings, she leaves the upper side of the plaza, where society, according to Latin custom, gathers after the church service to strut up and down in gala attire, to see and be seen. In most Spanish cities, it is customary on these occasions, for the men to circle the plaza in one direction, while the women circle in the other, the two processions thus passing and repassing continually, and smiling flirtatiously as they pass. In La Paz, a different system is in vogue. The plaza, like everything else in the city, is situated upon a hillside, with one end some fifty feet higher than the other. Since, in this great altitude, walking up hill is an exertion calling for frequent halts for breath, society uses only the upper side of the plaza, walking back and forth upon one narrow stretch of sidewalk. And since there is more society than sidewalk, this results in a great deal of crowding. The procession of white-colored gentlemen and smartly-dressed women can move but a few steps at a time before congestion occurs; then each couple must pause, with resignation, to wait until the couple ahead moves on. Latin Americans will suffer much inconveniences to gratify their desire to be seen in society.
As my stay in La Paz drew to a close, and I was packing my suitcase preparatory to leaving my hotel, Mulvaney came rushing suddenly into my room.
“Come on,” he shouted. “If you're looking for a revolution, come on! I'm not sure it's a cally, as a family provider should, and managed somehow to wear the traditional white wing-collar and the chaste black necktie and perfectly creased trowsers which marked him as a true son of Lima's artistocracy.
They seemed overjoyed at the honor of having a diplomatic attaché in the house, made me welcome with the heart-warming hospitality which is the Peruvian's chief virtue, and gave me the best room for Lima in that it was connected with a bath, and even more unusual in that the bath was in working order. Also the room had a splendid location upon the street. From my balcony I could view three pretty senoritas in the house opposite, four in the house next to theirs, two more in the house beyond, and so on down the street as far as I could see without falling off the balcony.
And from this strategic location, I learned much about Lima's social customs. The ambition of the average Latin American girl is to marry a gringo. Experience and observation have taught her that while he may not woo her so eloquently in the courting stage, he is more apt to confine his attentions to her after marriage. As I was the only gringo in the community my balcony became a center of attraction in the neighborhood.

The Fourth of July in Lima

t The Consulate became a rendezvous fair the younger members of the diplomatic and consular service.
The Spanish senorita, however, is not nearly so devilish as she is usually portrayed upon our stage or in our action. In real life, on the contrary, she is as modest and timid, as can be found anywhere. Custom keeps her on the balcony or behind a barred window, and i. she smiles frequently, it is because she is making use of the one means at her disposal for flirtation.
When she ventures upon the street, she must run the gauntlet of the amorous gaze from the young Peruvians who line the sidewalk, each of whom will remark aloud, "you're a, little beauty!" or some similar compliment. As she is very susceptible to flattery, this pleases rather than offends her, but she pretends not to hear it, and passes with lowered head. If she meets a man of her acquaintance upon the street, she must wait for him to speak first, and then must answer with only the iciest of nods, lest her reputation be irretrievably lost.
When a young man calls upon her, the evening is dampened by the presence of half a dozen grandmothers and maiden aunts. If he calls upon her twice, her parents may consider it a declaration of serious intentions, and so he usually doesn't. Instead, he prefers to stand outside her barred window, or walk up and down beneath her balcony.
For this form of courtship, an introduction is not always necessary. One evening a youth who had been passing and repassing with lovesick countenance beneath a balcony across the way from my room stopped and poured out his sentiments as follows:
"Oh, you exquisite creature, you are so wonderfully beauteous that it is sacrilege for me to address you, but----"
The balcony was rather high, and he had to raise his voice. He continued the self-styled sacrilege for several minutes, all in the same tone both of voice and subject-matter, until the assembled young diplomats and vice-consuls in my room went out on our balcony and hurled fruit at him.
Despite the predatory attitude of the Latin-American males, and its resulting necessity for extreme modesty of deportment on the part of the girls, the Peruvian young women usually dress in the latest Parisian fashion. One sees shorter skirts and more silk stockings in Lima than on Fifth Avenue or Broadway, New York.
The young women show rather good taste in this respect, for the Latin-American girl is ideally designed for the wearing of silk stockings. One never sees an angular woman in Lima. They are sometimes a little too plump; particularly as they advance in age, and the older ladies show a tendency to grow bluish-black mustachios on the upper lip, but in their youth they are charming.
They reach womanhood at a very early age and frequently when only twelve old they look like mature women, small perhaps, but perfect. At this age, with dresses reaching only half-way to the knees, they look immodest. An Anglo-Saxon child of similar years would never be noticed, but these fully developed little ladies make a visitor feel that the Winter Garden chorus is passing in review.
Those of us who judge Latin-American beauty by the few girls who come to New York cannot appreciate it. In our climate, their native olive tint of complexion becomes sallow and noticeably dark, and the large eyes seem to lose their luster. One should see the Spanish girl in her own country, particularly on Sunday, when she goes to church dressed in black, with a tiny lace mantilla upon her head. Then she is so strikingly beautiful that one can scarcely blame the males for admiring her, although their habit of admiring her aloud fills an American with chivalrous desire to punch a few of them.
Of the young men who regularly “played the bear” on the street where I lived, the most persistent were the Peruvian army officers in their snappy French uniforms. Whenever a group of them appeared, strutting along the sidewalk with their swagger sticks, the timid young ladies of the neighborhood always drew back until only their eyes peeped over the balcony rail. I could always tell when a regular devil was approaching by observing the withdrawal of the modest senoritas.
The Indian servant maids, who occupied the doors opening onto the street, usually held their ground, however, appearing rather flattered at the attentions of the young officers, who, despite their grand manner, are not averse to little affairs with the Indian class. One of the serving maids in my own house had her particular admirer, a fat brown cholo, who every evening came and lounged on the sidewalk before her door. Whenever she opened it a few inches, he would make a rush, but she always managed to close and bolt it in time to giggle at him through the keyhole.
The girl who thus amused herself bore, the name of Maria de la Concepcion. The cholo boy who swept out my room every morning and brought me my coffee and bread at daybreak bore the still more sacred name of Jesus. Both these titles, and others similar, are considered quite fitting in Latin America. In fact, when in traveling for the The Leader, I once inspected a prison roster, I found that every inmate with one exception was named after a saint, suggesting that Peruvian parents are over-optimistic when christening their children.
Lima, with its many churches, is apparently a very religious city. At least two weeks a holy-day is celebrated, the entire business section being closed for one day, or sometimes for three, while the population joins in parading images of saints about the streets. The most vivid mental picture which the visitor to Lima carries away with him is that of a long procession of priests, followed by hundreds of the devout, marching impressively with lighted candles behind life-sized Statues of the Virgin, through narrow Moorish streets lined with mantilla-covered girls and bare-headed men.
Yet the Peruvians are as superficial in their religion as in everything else. These same holy-days are invariably regarded as occasions for drinking, and although they saloons and cafes are theoretically closed on such days, by nightfall the cholos and peons are all staggering home in the same rum-sotted condition as their brothers in the Andean mining regions.
Religion and personal morals seem to have little relationship in the Latin countries. It is commonly remarked that the most devout people in Lima are the prostitutes, who are always to be seen in the vanguard of the religious procession. In fact, I heard of one well-authenticated instance where a house of prostitution, on the evening before Good Friday, suspended business long enough for girls and guests to receive communion. As one passes these places on the street—and one is pat to pass them on the most unexpected street—the view through the opened window frequently discloses among the red furnishings a wall lined with pictures of the saints. Yet the Peruvians see nothing absurd or sacrilegious in these inconsistencies.
There seems to be no particular segregated district in Lima. The resorts are scattered all over town in small groups, and as one strolls through a street which he supposes to be respectable, he is quite apt to stumble upon a row of windows lined with alluring-eyed females of all ages and descriptions, from fourteen, to forty who murmur a soft “Buenos noches” as he passes. Those who recognize him as an Englishman or American will call out, in a manner quite different from the modest manner of their respectable sisters:
“Hello! You like me? Me like you. What na hell? No like me? You be damn!”
Across from the same windows will be a row of private homes, of respectable middle-class families, whose children and young girls line the balconies, interestedly watching the success or failure of the sirens across the street. Consequently the senoritas of good family, while modest in their own deportment, are fully sophisticated. And naturally, when a girl is suddenly left without the guardianship of her family, in a city where the lone girl is not an object of respect, her tendency is to join the ranks of the fallen. She has never been taught to protect herself; in fact, I doubt that the uneducated middle-class girl, brought up to rely not upon her own willpower but upon the careful chaperonage of her family, realizes that she is capable of protecting herself.
The Spanish social system in South America encourages immorality, not only in the natives themselves, but also in the young Americans who work in the cities.
Any normal young man craves decent feminine society. In a city like Lima he cannot take a girl to the theater without bringing along chaperones. If he calls at her house, even if her family does not consider it a formal declaration, he is apt to find it a dull evening. Provided that he is not of the “mushy” disposition, and calls merely to talk, he finds her an uninspiring conversationalist. The limited education which she has received in the convent has not stimulated her interest in literature, and her indolence has kept her from developing her musical talent to any great extent. Her accepted role in life is to be petted and admired, and the grandmothers and maiden aunts are usually present to see that she is not petted until after marriage. The only way to hold her attention is to pay her pretty compliments all evening, as do her Latin admirers, but the average American youth, after repeating his one or two phrases about her beauty for two or three hours, is inclined to feel rather foolish.
In the more exclusive families, where the daughters have been educated abroad, one may find the senoritas as bright and interesting as any of our Anglo-Saxon young ladies, and here also one may be allowed more freedom from chaperonage, but the average young American who comes to Lima will not have access into these homes.
The result of the system is obvious. In any Latin-American city, the “dance halls,” to describe them charitably, are institutions. It is considered the privilege even of married men to spend their evenings there. So regular is the patronage in Lima that if any young men climb into a taxicab after 11 P.M., the driver starts immediately without instructions for one of these places. Nine times out of ten the only reason for this is a dearth of other amusements—yet these “dance halls,” like those of our old West, are by no means limited in their facilities merely to drinking, dancing, and looking on.
I do not mean to say that all young Americans who go to South America give way to vice and dissipation. They do not. But a dearth of other amusements sends many of them on occasional visits to the “dance hall,” where they are subject to its influence.
The American colony in Lima was divided into several groups. One clique consisted of the big men, the managers of the big Anglo-Saxon concerns. Most of them were married, and had their families in Lima. The employees of the two or three big commercial houses fell into other cliques, frequently occupying a house together in college fraternity fashion. Another clique included some half-dozen young American or British aviators in the service of the Peruvian government.
All of these groups had their own circle of friends in Lima, and their own amusements, as did the young men of the consular and diplomatic service, and were little tempted by the dance hall. The traveling salesmen, of whom there were always about two dozen in Lima, and the miners on vacation from the Andes, of whom there were an equal number, found little amusement.
We younger members of the diplomatic and consular service, although we had the entrée into many of the best homes, where the Peruvians had been educated abroad and allowed us to dance and play the piano unmolested by chaperones, were nevertheless frequently bored with the life in Lima, and regretted the limited facilities for amusement. There were always two or three clubs to which Americans and Englishmen were admitted, but their membership was comprised mostly of older men, the managers of the big Anglo-Saxon concerns, and the cost of membership was beyond our means. Moving pictures constituted practically the only attraction. Lima boasted of two or three theaters, but they were not always running, and their entertainments were seldom of the first class.
I recall one vaudeville performance which we attended. It was scheduled to commence at 9 P.M., for late hours are the rule of Lima. At 9:30 an orchestra of four pieces appeared, tuned up, smoked several cigarettes, and finally played the overture. Eventually a young woman danced. Between her dances, the audience waited. After her act had been completed, there was a formal intermission. Then another young woman appeared to sing. This concluded the performance.