Peru in the Guano Age

The next emigration was from the islands of the South-western Pacific – subjects of his Majesty the King of Hawaii, whose diplomatic representative in Lima demanded the return of these people, who did return in an unexpected manner, to the earth out of which they were taken. They all died like flies that had been poisoned. The Peruvian Government then prohibited any further immigration of Polynesians.

It was afterwards discovered that these people had been kidnapped, or, as the official report says, 'seduced first, and stolen afterwards.'

It had been eloquently preached by many ardent Peruvians, now that the subject of immigration for a moment or so seized hold of their warm brains, that all that was needed to fill Peru with happy colonists was to establish liberty of worship, toleration, a free press, dignity – moral and intellectual – security to persons and property, and when these great things were once placed on a firm basis in Peru the superfluous populations of the world would flock to the abundance it could offer, together with the warm and delightful sun, like doves to their windows. These things not having been done, the other has been left undone – albeit not for that specific reason. The immigrating class, for the most part, have their own way of procuring information regarding the country which courts their presence, and it is quite likely that the glad tidings from Peru still require to be authenticated. Neither the Irish labourer, nor the Scotch, nor yet the Welsh have bestowed themselves on Peru, and it is to be hoped they never will until they can be sure of quick returns. The Cornish miner is well known in various localities for his drunkenness, his obstinacy, his cunning, and above all for his untruthfulness.

The Chinese immigration, if such it can be called, is the only considerable immigration that has ever taken place in Peru. It began as a commercial speculation; and there are many orthodox and highly respectable men in Lima who owe their wealth to the traffic in Chinese, in whose magnificent salas a conversation on China is as welcome as the mention of the gallows in a family, one of whose members had been hanged.

Of the 65,00 °Chinese taken from their native land, 5,000 died on their way to Peru; they threw themselves overboard or smoked a little too much opium, or were shot, or all these causes were put together. It was once my lot to be seated in a very small room filled for the most part with guano men, where I was compelled to listen to the tale of an Italian who had served as chief mate on a ship freighted with Chinamen. He thought his life was once in danger.

'And what did you under the circumstances?' enquired some one.

'I shot two of them down, sacramento,' answered the villainous-looking wretch; on which there was a burst of laughter that did not seem to me very appropriate.

'And what was done with you?' I enquired in no sympathising tone.

'Senor,' replied the assassin, 'the Captain, Senor Venturini, accommodated me with a passage in his gig to the shore, where I remained to make an extended acquaintance with the Celestial Empire.'

The cold insolence of this criminal suggested to me that I had just as well keep my troublesome tongue as still as possible.

The Chinese question, as is natural that it should, has agitated the public mind in Lima not a little. At one time it assumed such alarming features that it was seriously proposed in Congress to expel the free Chinamen from Peru, or compel them to contract themselves anew2. It was known that the free Chinamen stirred up their enslaved brethren to revolt; explained to them – which was perfectly true – that according to Peruvian law they could not be held in bondage, and if they escaped they could not be recaptured. Many attempts at escape were made and many murders were the result.

According to the Peruvian author quoted above, the Chinamen brought to the dung heaps of Peru, or its sugar plantations, are selected from the lowest of their race. 'The planters promote the natural degeneration of their Chinese labourers; they lodge them in filthy sheds without a single care being bestowed upon them, while they are condemned to a ceaseless unremitting toil, without a ray of hope that their condition will be ever bettered. For the enslaved Chinaman the day dawns with labour; labour pursues him through its weary hours, a labour which will bring no good fruit to him, and the shadows of night provide him with nothing but dreams of the tormenting routine which awaits him to-morrow. In his sickness he has no mother to attend him with her care; he has not even the melancholy comfort that he will be decently buried when he dies, much less that his grave will be watered with the sacred tears of those who loved him. Of the meanest Peruvian the authorities know where he lived, when he died, and for what cause, and where he is buried. But the Asiatics are disembarked and scattered among numerous private properties, their existence is forgotten, they do not live, rather they vegetate, and at last die like brutes beneath the scourge of their driver or the burden which was too heavy to bear. We only remember the Chinaman when, weary of being weary, and vexed with vexation, he arms himself with the dagger of desperation, wounds the air with the cry of rebellion, and covers our fields with desolation and blood.'

The great distance, observes the same author, of the private estates from the centre of authority, is one of the securities of their owners that their abuse of their Chinese slaves will neither be corrected or chastised. On the contrary, his influence with the local authorities is oftentimes such as to make them instruments of his designs. Between the master and the slave respect for the law does not exist, and the consequence is, that the one becomes more and more a despot, and the other more and more insolent and vicious.

Escape for the Chinaman is next to impossible; he can only free himself from the horrible condition in which he finds himself by using his braces or his silken scarf for a halter, or the more quiet way of an overdose of opium.

Treat the Chinaman well, and he is a valuable servant, and happily many thousands of such are to be found along the coast, in several of the great haciendas, and in Lima. The wages of a Chinese slave are 4 dols. a month, two suits of clothes in the year, and his keep. A free Chinaman as a labourer earns a dollar a day, and of course 'finds' himself. Now and then one hears strange phrases at the most unexpected time, and one's ears tingle with words that an Englishman knows how to meet when compelled to hear them.

'How did you manage to do all that work?' was a question put at a dinner-table one night in Lima, when I was partaking of the awful hospitality of an English-speaking capitalist.

'Well,' was the reply, 'I bought half-a-dozen Chinamen, taught them the use of the machine, which the devils learned much quicker than I did, and in less than three months I found that I could easily make ten thousand dollars a month,' etc.

'I bought half-a-dozen Chinamen!' They might have been so many sacks of potatoes, or pieces of machinery, and the ease and familiarity with so repulsive a commerce which the speech denoted, proved too well the contempt which such familiarity always breeds.

The Chinaman is not only very intelligent, he is even superior in his personal tastes to many of those who pride themselves on being his masters. If he has time and opportunity he will keep himself scrupulously clean in his person and dress. After his day's work, if he has been digging dung for example, he will change his clothes and have a bath before eating his supper. He is polite and courteous, humorous and ingenious. He is by no means a coward, but will sell his life to avenge his honour. It is always dangerous for a man twice his size to strike a Chinaman. The only stand-up fight I ever saw in Lima, was between a small Chinaman and a big Peruvian of the Yellow breed; and the yellow-skinned 'big 'un' must have very much regretted the insult which originated the blows he received in his face from the little one. The Chinamen of the better class, the Wing Fats; Kwong, Tung, Tays; the Wing Sings; the Pow Wos; the Wing Hing Lees, and Si, Tu, Pous, whose acquaintance I made, are all shrewd, courteous, gentlemanlike fellows, temperate in all things, good-humoured and kind, industrious, and exquisitely clean in their houses and attire. It was an infinitely greater pleasure to me to pass an evening with some of these, than with my own brandy-drinking, tobacco-smoking, and complaining countrymen, whose conversation is garnished with unclean oaths, whose Spanish is a disgrace to their own country, and their English to that in which they reside.

My Chinese friends were greatly puzzled at the answer I gave to their questions why I had come to Peru, or for what purpose; they could not believe it, any more than they could believe that an English gentleman drank brandy for any other reason than that it was a religious observance.

'And why came you to Peru?' I enquired in my turn.

'To make money,' was the candid reply.

'For nothing else?' I insisted.

To give emphasis to his words Wing Hi rose from his seat, paced slowly up and down the room clapping his hands now behind his back, and now below his right knee: 'For nothing, nothing, nothing else,' he exclaimed, and laughed.

'Do you like Lima pretty well?' I enquired with some care, for a Chinaman resents direct questions; and the answer invariably was —

'No. Lima is no good, there is no money;' which many other shopkeepers not Chinamen can swear to, and their oaths in this instance are perfectly trustworthy.

'You do not give credit I suppose?' and I kept as solemn a face as possible in putting the question. My solemnity was speedily knocked out of me by the burst of boisterous laughter which greeted my question.

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 —