AMONG THE PERUVIANS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1764, 12 September 1885, Page 25

AMONG THE PERUVIANS.

There are a great many more railroads in Peru than is generally supposed. Nearly all of the coast towns have a line connecting them with the plantations of the interior, and as there are no harbours, but only open roadsteads, expensive iron piers have been constructed through the surf, through which merchandise is lifted into barges or lighters and taken to the ships, which anchor a mile or so from shpre. Where the^e.areno piers the lighters are run through the surf when the tide is high, loaded at low tide, and then floated off to buoys to await the arrival of vessels.

All along 'the coast there is a system of " deck trading " carried on by the people of the country. Men and women come on board with market produce, fruit, and other articles, which are strewn' about the deck, and are sold to people who visit the vessel to buy at each port. These traders are charged passage money and freight by the steamship companies, but are a nuisance to the other passengers. Each trader brings a mattress to sleep upon, a chair to use during the day, her own cooking and chamber utensils, and spends the greater part of her life aboard, sailing from one port to another. At Payta we took on a battalion of Peruvian soldiers, with one brass-mounted officer to every seven men. The wives and families of the" Peruvian army always travel with them, like the squaws and papooses of the North American Indian. In, camp the women do the cooking; on the march they carry on their backs and heads a great part of the camp equipage, and in battle they nurse the wounded and rob the dead. They are poor, miserable, degraded creatures, just one degree above the dogs which follow at their heels. Their powers of endurance are extraordinary. Often it is the 'case that they will march twenty or thirty miles a day over dusty roads, carrying a child on their backs, without water or food.

When the latter is scarce they eat the leaves of trees, which, when mixed with lime, are said to be very palatable and nourishing. Each soldier and each woman carries a little bag of lime around his neck, into which he dips his wet finger and draws out a few grains of powder to leaven the lump of leaves he is constantly chewing. The poor children have the hardest time, for they are always without rest or shelter, and often without food. But it is the experience that they are born into, and they know nothing of a better life. The officers tell me that the children often die on the march, when their mothers strip the clothing from them and throw the bodies into the sand or woods, without even a burial or a tear. On the contrary, the women seem to be glad to be relieved by death of an incumbrance. "The other night, in a tempestuous wind on the unsheltered deck of the vessel, without surgical assistance, or even the knowledge of the officers or crew, a child was born. The mother wrapped it in an old blanket, and laid it down upon the boards. Thirty-six hours ,aftei wards she, with the rest of the party, climbed down the ship's side on a ladder, got into a launch, in which there was scarcely standing room, and was towed to shore, where a long and tiresome march into the mountains was to be begun the same night. In her arms was the baby, on her back was a bag which looked as if it weighed fifty or sixty pounds. She was a mere girl, perhaps sixteen or seventeen years of age, and they said it was her first baby, of which she, like all young mothers, was uncommonly proud.'.'

This appeared to be a commonplace occurrence, for it was scarcely noticed by the other , women or men of the crowd, and when I asked an officer which of his company was the father of the child, he replied, " Dios sabe ! " (God knows.) He said there had been four similar accouchements in his company within six months, and thought the mothers and babies were all doing well. The island of San Lorenzo, which was once the seat of a powerful fortress, protects the harbour of Callao, the second pwb on the

Pacific 'coast of South America in population aud commercial importance. It is the. headquarters of the steamship lines and of t-he great mercantile houses, and the population is about one-half of foreign birth. One can hear all the languages of the earth spoken at Callao, aud when we arrived upon the dock there was a group to illustrate thu cosmopolitan character of the citizens. A Chinaman, an Arab, a negro, and a Frenchman were sitting upon a box, while around them were clustered Spaniards, Englishmen, Irishmen, Germans, and Italians. The city is irregular and shabbylooking, but has been a place of great wealth. Millions after millions of dollars' worth of silver have beeu shipped from here by the Spaniards — silver stolen from the Inca temples or dug from the mines they operated before the Spaniards came. It was here that the old buccaneers uswl to rendezvous and waylay the galleons on their way to Spain. Of recent years the importance ot Callao has very much decreased. A constant succession of wars and revolutions in Peru has destroyed its commerce, and although there is usually a great deal of shipping in the harbour, the present amount of trade is very much below that of tho past. There are two lines of railroads to Lima, the capital of the republic, which lies six miles up in the foot-hills of the Andes. The house of which W. R. Grace, Mayor of New York, is the head, is the commercial ruler of this country, but aside from that most of the trade is with England and Germany. — " Curtis," in the Chicago Inter-Ocean.