10

MODERN INNOVATIONS.

in commerce and the mechanic arts. Their wealth is derived from corruption, oppression and extortion, and such justice as they administer is sold to the highest bidder. In that country it is settled doctrine, that "the longest pole knocks down the persimmons."

The military authority is so entwined with the civil, that both in effect form one united despotism. The army is, of course, a mere caricature of an army, but it answers all the purposes of enabling the higher officers to fleece and oppress the people. Even when the rogues fall out, honest men do not come by their rights; but whichever faction may chance to be uppermost, it is about the same thing to the people, who are most impartially and religiously plundered on all hands.

Long continued intercourse with foreigners, since the opening of commerce, has deprived the Limeños-and, alas! the fair Limeñas also-of many of their former national characteristics. Our own country is responsible, in a great measure, for this change, and the New England manufacturers have many sins to answer for to Apollo and the Graces, for their innovations here, as well as in almost every other country under the sun. Omnibuses, built in Newark, now travel the road from Callao to Lima, and infest the narrow streets of the latter, originally designed for the equestrian only. English saddlery has nearly superseded the cumbrous but picturesque and showy caparisons which formerly decorated the monture of a Peruvian cavalier, and which consisted of the demi-pique saddle, covered with a gay-colored fleecy pillion, the pommel and cantle richly mounted with silver-chased ornaments, elaborately carved wooden stirrups, and a profusion of silver buckles, studs, and bosses, which covered the plaited bridle, and hung jingling from all parts of the equipment. This outfit was formerly considered necessary to every one, female as well as male; and when both sexes, equipped in gay and fine penchos, hanging in graceful folds, were mounted on the

REMINISCENCES OF LIMA.

11

fiery little jennets of the country, you might see as dashing, tasteful, and gallant a turn-out as any country could show. The ladies were especially attractive, with their penchos falling below the saddle, their long braided locks hanging over the shoulders from beneath the Panama man's hat, and their little silk stockings and delicately slippered feet thrust into both stirrups, the nicely turned ankles being invisible of course. Sometimes the "mount" was a mule, or even a sleek party-colored ass; but in all cases the equestrians vied with each other in the taste and costliness of the adornments of their animals, in which an agreeable variety prevailed. At a little distance it was difficult to distinguish the sexes of the party, owing to the similarity of their costume, and also to the fact that the ladies often rode the most spirited horses. A group of these dames and their attendant squires, when prancing and curvetting on the road to Charillos and other points, to which the inhabitants of Lima repair for their favorite sea-bathing, with the glorious accessories of the towering Andes in the background, and Lima lying at their base, presented a truly national and characteristic picture, such as Leopold Robert would have delighted to paint. In the streets of Lima, gay militaires, reverend ecclesiastics, and Cholos, in the embroidered Andalusian zamarra, vest and breeches of velvet, with lots of little dangling filagree buttons, alternated with Sambos and Sambitas,* in flaunting colored shawls and dresses, their woolly locks plaited with bits of pure gold, and their ears decorated with huge ear-rings of the same metal; while the fair Limeñas, in saya y manta— then of a different and closer fashion from the corresponding garment now worn-moved like shadowy spectres of fairy land amid the bustling throng.

But now, 66 on a changé tout cela !" English tailors have transmogrified the men, and French milliners have played

* The Cholos and Cholitas are those of Indian blood; and the Sambos and Sambitas are of the duskier race of Africa,

12

FEET, SAYA Y MANTA.

the deuce with the women; Lowell fabrics and straight coat-tails have come in with the march of civilization; and I looked almost in vain for the national traits which were wont to delight the eye of youth in Peru's proud capital. The never-to-be-sufficiently-anathematized marchandes des modes have Frenchified even the captivating saya, and converted it into a mere pelisse à la reine-an offence which the eye of taste views with horror. There is, however, one national feature of which even milliners cannot divest the Peruvian women. They inherit it from their Spanish ancestry; and it is an infallible sign of that ancestry in all the varied races in which Spanish blood has intermingled. Go north or south, east or west, it shows itself alike in the different shades of the Mexican and South American Indian, in the Tagolo of Manilla, and even in the blue-eyed Fleming; and in no part of the world, where haughty Spain has displayed her bannered lions and castles, not even in

"Fair Cadiz rising o'er the dark blue sea,"

can this national feature be found in greater perfection than in Lima, among all classes, the dama, the cholita, and the sambita-I allude to the foot and ancle. The chaussure, too, although somewhat too fanciful among the lower orders to suit the taste of our northern fair, is always perfect in its way; and the little embroidered slipper of a Limeña would excite the envy of Cinderella.

The walking dress of the Limeñas, although often graphically described by tourists, has, I believe, never been deemed worthy of a leaf in the Petit Courier des Dames. The saya is a silk petticoat plaited so as to cling to the form without impeding the fair wearer's motions in walking, and as originally cut, displays the form in the most faithful manner, from the waist to the tapering and delicate ancle, graciously revealing a generous share of the latter. The manta envelops the head and face, except one eye, and is skilfully managed at the pleasure of the gypsy, whose

little jeweled fingers are coquettishly employed in so arranging it as to display an exquisitely moulded arm, or a full swelling neck, costumed au naturel. The concealment of the fair incognita is perfect, and numberless are the anecdotes, comic, tragic, comico-tragic, and tragico-comic, melo-dramatic, and farcical, related in Lima, of husbands, brothers, lovers, and strangers "taken in and done for," all hinging upon this masquerading promenade dress. If universal report may be accredited, those graceful and svelte Limeñas are not exactly vestals, and some censorious persons insinuate that these seductive walking-dresses were invented and are still kept up for purposes of intrigue. But the world is given to lying on such subjects, and the best way is to doubt and disbelieve in the absence of actual demonstration. The cunning wearers are very eloquent in expatiating upon its convenience to slip on in haste when they go to mass, and attribute to it various other perfections; but other ladies are of the same way of thinking as a fair Chilena, who replied to my inquiry as to her opinion of the saya y manta, "I acknowledge it shows the shape to great advantage, but it does little honor to the character of her who wears it."

On

The national amusement of the bull-fight, so characteristic of the mother country, has, I believe, gone out of fashion in a great degree, but in place of it there is now established a very tolerable opera. At the date of my visit, the famous Ravel family, whom I had last seen at Niblo's, were playing an engagement at the opera-house, and it is needless to say they were great favorites. Sunday afternoon I saw an oily "padre" with a cock under his soutane walking towards the suburbs, from which I conclude that one elevating amusement has not yet been abrogated, either in church or state. As to bull-fights, since my last visit to Lima, I had witnessed the feats of the famed Montes, in the "plaza de toros" at Seville; and the unscientific chicken-murder practiced here, had no charms for a connoisseur. The superior science displayed by our well

14

ARCHITECTURAL DECORATIONS.

trimmed and gaffed birds, as compared with the clumsy work done with vile "slashers," reminds the spectator of a skilful escrimeur with his slender rapier, pitted against a clownish fellow with a huge broadsword,

"A ton of rusty iron in the hilt."

There are few public edifices in Lima worthy of notice save the cathedral, palace, and a few churches. The façades of these buildings are painted in sized colors, with a variety of designs, bearing at a little distance an humble resemblance to the façades of some European churches, that of the basilica of St. Paul at Rome, for instance; but there is this important difference, that the latter is executed in mosaic.

Many of the private houses are peculiar in several respects. The patios (court-yards) are in many instances tastefully, but somewhat fantastically pictured on their inner walls and verandahs in landscape, while the doors are guarded by grim giants, knights in armor, and ugly dwarfs. Sometimes the "heavenly host," is called in to the aid of the artist in the decoration of the ceiling. The most frequent scene, however, is the festival of the " Amancaes," a plain near the city, resorted to upon the anniversary of the blossoming of a little flower of that name, by all the inhabitants in full dress, from the highest to the lowest. This mode of decorative painting must always be peculiar to Lima, for in a different climate this ornamental feature in external architecture would be washed away by the first shower. It never rains in Lima, but the mists are sometimes as heavy as a "sixteen-dram fog" in old Virginia, where the density of a fog is barometrized by the number of horns it takes to cut it.

The town of Callao, the sea-port of Lima, which I remember as consisting of a few adobe* houses, and a scattered assemblage of Cholo huts, crouched between the

* Sun-baked mud bricks.