Peru in the Guano Age

III

The anonymous letter accused Don Pedro Campos de Ayala of assassinating the Biscayan, and stealing a thousand ounces, which served for the basis of the great fortune he acquired in Potosi.

What proofs did the informer supply? We are unable to say.

Don Pedro being duly installed in the Stone Jug, the Mayor appeared to take his declaration; and the accused replied as follows:

'Mr. Mayor, I plead not guilty when he who accuses me is God himself. Only to Him under the seal of confession did I reveal my crime. Your worship will of course represent human justice in the case against me, but I shall institute a suit against God.'

As will be seen, the distinctions of the culprit were somewhat casuistical, but he found an advocate (the marvel would have been had he not) prepared to undertake the case against God. Forensic resource is mighty prolific.

For the reason that the Royal Council sought to wrap the case in the deepest mystery, all its details were devoured with avidity, and it became the greatest scandal of the time.

The Inquisition, which was hand and glove with the Jesuits, sought diligently for opportunities, and resolved to have a finger in the pie.

The Archbishop, the Viceroy, and the most ingrained aristocrat of Lima society took the side of the Company of Jesus. Although the accused sustained his integrity, he presented no other proof than his own word, that a Jesuit was the author of the anonymous denunciation and the revealer of the secret of the confessional, instigated thereto by the revocation of the will.

On his part the nephew of the Biscayan claimed the fortune of the murderer of his uncle, while the trustees of the various hospitals and convents defended the validity of the second will.

All the sucking lawyers spent their Latin in the case, and the air was filled with strange notions and extravagant opinions.

Meanwhile the scandal spread; nor will we venture to say to what lengths it might have gone, had not His Majesty Don Philip V declared that it would be for the public convenience, and the decorum of the Church as well as for the morality of his dominions, that the case should be heard before his great Council of the Indies in Spain.

The consequence was that Don Pedro Campos de Ayala marched to Spain under orders, in company with the voluminous case.

And as was natural, there followed with him not a few of those who were favourably mentioned in the will, and who went to Court to look after their rights.

Peace was re-established in our City of Kings, and the Inquisition had its attention and time distracted by making preparation to burn Madam Castro, and the statue and bones of the Jesuit Ulloa.

What was the sentence, or the turn which the sagacious Philip V gave to the case? We do not know; but we are allowed to suppose that the King hit upon some conciliatory expedient which brought peace to all the litigants, and it is possible that the culprit ate a little blessed bread, or shared in some royal indulgence.

Does the original case still exist in Spain? It is very likely that it has been eaten of moths, and hence the pretext and origin of a phrase which with us has become so popular.

It is said of a certain notary who much troubled the Royal Council in the matter of a will and its codicils, that when the custodian of such things at last produced something which looked like the original, he said, 'Here it is, but the moths have sadly eaten it.'

'Just our luck, my dear sir,' said an interested one, who was none other than the Marquis of Castelfuerte. And ever since, when a thing has disappeared we say 'No doubt the moths have eaten it.'

So much for the lawsuit against God, which only a Spaniard could have conceived and a Peruvian satirist report.

When a commercial father sees his eldest son, on whom he has lavished much care and money that he might learn mathematics and such an amount of classics as will stand him in good stead at the fashionable training grounds of the world's gladiators, and the boy is seen to forsake figures and take to poetry, to prefer the gay science to that which would enable him to master the money article of the Times, that father will feel as great a pang as when a giant dies.

The same feeling may actuate many a Peruvian bondholder when he is told that the Peruvians are beginning to cultivate literature. Many city men will disregard the thing altogether, or disdain to take notice of it. Many will treat it with resentment and contempt. What right have people who are in debt to busy themselves in writing books, in amusing themselves when they should be at work, and in writing poetry when they should be making money. And yet the cultivation of literature for its own sake by any people ought not only to be viewed with favour, it should be carefully watched, to see if it be a real national growth or only a momentary effort which cannot last. If it be the former, we shall see it in an improvement of public morals and manners; in the quickening of the national conscience and chastening the public taste, in an elevation of character and in fresh dignity being imparted to the common things and duties of everyday life.

Peru possesses a history as well as a country. The one remains to be written, and the other to be described by a Peruvian genius who shall do for Peru and Peruvian history what Sir Walter Scott did for his native land and its records.

It is now high time that Peru produced her popular historian. One who can fire the intellect of his countrymen while he provides them with an elevating pastime, who can point out the way they should or should not go by showing them the ways they have hitherto travelled. If the work has been delayed, it is because the people have too long retained the spirit of the former times to make it possible for them to profit by any explanation of the past. Monarchists yet, because they have never known better, they have not been taught to hate the hateful kings who ruled them in selfishness and kept them in ignorance, while they have not learned to love with devotion and intelligence the freedom they possess but know not how to use.

When books are found in hands till then only accustomed to carry muskets, and the pen is handled by those who have hitherto only believed in the power of the sword, we may rest assured that an important change has set in, a silent revolution has begun, which will make all other revolutions very difficult if not impossible.

CHAPTER III

Whether it be true, or only a poetical way of putting it, that Yarmouth was built on red herrings, Manchester on cotton, Birmingham on brass, Middlesborough on pigs of iron, and the holy Roman Catholic Church in China on Peruvian bark, it is true that the Government of Peru has for more than a generation subsisted on guano, and the foundations of its greatness have been foundations of the same3; – the ordure of birds – pelicans, penguins, boobies, and gulls of many kinds, and many kinds of ducks, all of marine habits, and deriving their living solely from the sea and the sky which is stretched above it.

This precious Guano, or Huano, according to the orthography of the sixteenth century, had long been in use in Peru before Peru was discovered by the Spaniards. It was well enough known to those famous agriculturists, the Incas, who five centuries ago used it as a servant. With the change which changed the Incas from off the face of the earth, came the strangest change of all, – Guano ceased to be the servant or helper of the native soil; it became the master of the people who occupy it, the Peruvian people, the Spanish Peruvians who call themselves Republicans.

No disgrace or ignominy need have come upon Peru for selling its guano and getting drunk on the proceeds, if it had not trampled its own soil into sand, and killed not only the corn, the trees, and flowers which grow upon it, but also the men who cultivate those beautiful and necessary things4.

During the time that Peru has been a vendor of guano, it has sold twenty million tons of it, and as the price has ranged from £12 to £12 10s. and £13 the ton, Peru may be said to have turned a pretty penny by the transaction. What she has done with the money is a very pertinent question, which will be answered in its right place.

The amount of guano still remaining in the country amounts to between seven and eight million tons. There are men of intelligence even in Peru who affirm that the quantity does not reach five million tons. One of my informants, a man intimately connected with the export and sale of this guano, assured me that there are not at this hour more than two million tons in the whole of the Republic, and he had the best possible means at his disposal for ascertaining its truth. I have since discovered, however, that men who deal in guano do not always speak with a strict regard for the truth.

As this is one of the vexed questions of the hour to some of my countrymen, the violent lenders of money, Jews, Greeks, infidels and others; although I have no sympathy with them, yet on condition that they buy this book I will give them a fair account of the guano which I have actually seen, and where it exists.

I was sent to Peru for the express purpose of making this examination. I may therefore expect that my statements will be received with some consideration. They have certainly been prepared with much care, and, I may add, under very favourable circumstances.

My visits to the existing guano deposits were made after they had been uncovered of the stones which had been rolled upon them by the turbulent action of a century of earthquakes, the sand which the unresisted winds of heaven for the same period had heaped upon them from the mainland, and the slower but no less degrading influences of a tropical sun, attended with the ever humid air, dense mists, fogs and exhalations, and now and then copious showers of rain. Moreover, my visits were made after a certain ascertained quantity of guano had been removed, and my measurements of the quantity remaining were therefore easily checked.

Last year the Pabellon de Pica was reported to contain eight million tons of guano. At that time it was covered from head to foot with more than fifty feet of sand and stones. The principal slopes are now uncovered. Before this painful and expensive process had been completed, various other courageous guesses had been made, and the Government engineers were divided among themselves in their estimates. One enthusiastic group of these loyal measurers contended for five million tons, another for three million five hundred and twenty thousand six hundred and forty, and another, unofficial and disinterested, placed it at less than a million tons.

My own measurements corroborate this latter calculation. There may be one million tons of guano on the Pabellon de Pica. The exact quantity will only be known after all the guano has been entirely removed and weighed.

The Pabellon de Pica is in form like a pavilion, or tent, or better still, a sugar-loaf rising a little more than 1000 feet above the sea which washes its base. It is connected by a short saddle with the mountain range, which runs north and south along the whole Peruvian coast, attaining a height here of more than 5000 feet in isolated cones, but maintaining an average altitude of 3000 feet.

When a strong north wind rages on these sandy pampas, the dust, finer than Irish blackguard, obscures the sky, disfigures the earth, and makes mad the unhappy traveller who happens to be caught in its fury. A mind not troubled by the low price of Peruvian bonds, or whether even the next coupon will be paid, might imagine that the gods, in mercy to the idleness of man, were determined to cover up those dunghills from human sight; and hence the floods, and cataracts of sand and dust which have been poured upon them from above.

If it could be conceived that an almighty hand, consisting of nineteen fingers, each finger six hundred feet long, with a generous palm fifteen hundred feet wide, had thrust itself up from below, through this loaf of sugar, or dry dung, to where the dung reaches on the Pabellon, some idea might be formed of the frame in which, and on which the guano rests.

The man who reckoned the Pabellon to contain eight million tons of guano, took no notice of the Cyclopean fingers which hold it together, or the winstone palm in which it rests. There are eighteen large and small gorges formed by the nineteen stone fingers. Each gorge was filled with a motionless torrent of stones and sand, and these had to be removed before the guano could be touched.

So hard and compact had the guano become, that neither the stones nor the sand had mixed with it; when these were put in motion and conducted down into the sea below, the guano was found hard and intact, and it had to be blasted with gunpowder to convey it by the wooden shoots to the ships' launches that were dancing to receive it underneath. The process was as dangerous as mining, and quite as expensive, to the Peruvian Government; for, although the loading of the guano is let out by contract, the contractors – a limited company of native capitalists – will, as a matter of course, claim a considerable sum for removing stones and sand, and equally as a matter of course they will be paid: and they deserve to be paid. No hell has ever been conceived by the Hebrew, the Irish, the Italian, or even the Scotch mind for appeasing the anger and satisfying the vengeance of their awful gods, that can be equalled in the fierceness of its heat, the horror of its stink, and the damnation of those compelled to labour there, to a deposit of Peruvian guano when being shovelled into ships. The Chinese who have gone through it, and had the delightful opportunity of helping themselves to a sufficiency of opium to carry them back to their homes, as some believed, or to heaven, as fondly hoped others, must have had a superior idea of the Almighty, than have any of the money-making nations mentioned above, who still cling to an immortality of fire and brimstone.

Years ago the Pabellon de Pica was resorted to for its guano by a people, whoever they were, who had some fear of God before their eyes. Their little houses built of boulders and mortar, still stand, and so does their little church, built after the same fashion, but better, and raised from the earth on three tiers, each tier set back a foot's length from the other. It is now used as a store for barley and other valuable necessaries for the mules and horses of the loading company.

If the bondholders of Peru, or others, have any desire to know something of public life on this now celebrated dunghill, they may turn to another page of this history, and Mr. Plimsoll, or other shipping reformer, may learn something likewise of the lives of English seamen passed during a period of eight months in the neighbourhood of a Peruvian guano heap. In the meantime we are dealing with the grave subject of measurable quantities of stuff, which fetches £12 or so a ton in the various markets of the cultivated world.

The next deposit – of much greater dimensions, although not so well known – is about eight miles south of the Pabellon, called Punta de Lobos. This also is on the mainland, but juts out to the west considerably, into the sea. I find it mentioned in Dampier – 'At Lobos de la Mar,' he says, vol. i. 146, 'we found abundance of penguins, and boobies, and seal in great abundance.' Also in vol. iv. 178 he says, 'from Tucames to Yancque is twelve leagues, from which place they carry clay to lay in the valleys of Arica and Sama. And here live some few Indian people, who are continually digging this clayey ground for the use aforesaid, for the Spaniards reckon that it fattens the ground.' The fishing no doubt was better here than at the Pabellon, which would be the principal attraction to the Indians. The Indians have disappeared with the lobos, the penguins and the boobies.

One million six hundred thousand tons of guano were reported from Lobos last year by the Government engineers. The place is much more easy of access than the Pabellon, and no obstacle was in the way of a thorough measurement, and yet the utmost carelessness has been observed with regard to it. It may safely be taken that there are two millions and a half of tons at this deposit, or series of deposits, ten in number, all overlooking the sea. The guano is good. If the method of shipping it were equally good the Government might save the large amount which they at present lose. I have no hesitation in saying, that for every 900 tons shipped, 200 tons of guano are lost in the sea by bad management, added to the dangers of the heavy surf which rolls in under the shoots. As at the Pabellon de Pica, so here the principal labourers are Chinamen, and Chilenos, the former doing much more work than the latter, and receiving inferior pay. Many of the Chinamen are still apprentices, or 'slaves' as they are in reality called and treated by their owners.

At Punta de Lobos I discovered two small caves built of boulders, and roofed in with rafters of whales' ribs. The effect of the white concentric circles in the sombre light of these alcoves had an oriental expression. The number of whales on this coast must at one time have been very great. They are still to be met with several hundred miles west, in the latitude of Payta. No doubt for the same reason that the lobos and the boobies have gone, no one knows where, so the whales have gone in search of grounds and waters remote from the haunts of man and steamers.

A singular effect of light upon the bright slopes of dazzling sand which run down from the northern sides of the Point, was observed from the heights: when the shadows of the clouds in the zenith passed over the shining surface they appeared to be not shadows, but last night's clouds which had fallen from the sky, so dense were they, dark, and sharply defined. [It frequently happens in Peru, that what appears to be substantial, is nothing better than a morning cloud which passes away.]

Huanillos is another deposit still further south, where the guano is good but the facilities for shipping it are few. Here are five different gorges, in which the dung has been stored as if by careful hands. The earthquake however has played sad havoc with the storing. From a great height above, enormous pieces of rock of more than a thousand tons each have been hurled down, and in one place another motionless cataract of heavy boulders covers up a large amount of guano.

The quantity found here may be fairly estimated at eight hundred thousand tons.

It was easy to count ninety-five ships resting below on what, at the distance of three miles, appeared to be a sea without motion or ripple. At the Pabellon de Pica there were ninety-one ships, and at Lobos one hundred and fourteen ships, all waiting for guano: three hundred ships in all, some of which had been waiting for more than eight months; and it is not unlikely that the whole of them may have to wait for the same length of time. An impression has got abroad that the reason of this delay is the absence of guano. It is a natural inference for the captain of a ship to draw, and it is just the kind of information an ignorant man would send home to his employers. It is however absolutely erroneous; the delays in loading are vexatious in the extreme, but being in Peru they can hardly be avoided. Their cause may be set down to the sea and its dangers, the precipitous rocky shore, the ill-constructed launches and shoots, and now and then to the ignorance, stupidity, and obstinacy of a Peruvian official, called an administrador.

Chipana, six miles further south of Huanillos, is another considerable deposit. But as this had not been uncovered, and the place is absolutely uninhabited and without any of the common necessaries of life, which in Peru may be said to be not very few, I did not visit it, and am content to take the measurement of a gentleman whom I have every reason to trust, and on whose accuracy and ability I can rely as I have had to rely before.

The amount of guano at Chipana may be taken at about the same as Huanillos. If to this be added the deposits of Chomache, very small, Islotas de Pajaros, Quebrada de Pica, Patache, and all other points further north, up to la Bahia de la Independencia, we may safely declare that among them all will be found not less than five million tons of good guano.

Before proceeding to give an account of the deposits in the north, it may be well to allude to a question of considerable importance to some one, be it the Government of Peru, or the house of Messrs. Dreyfus Brothers, the present financial agents of Peru. The only interest which the question can have for the public, or the holders of Peruvian bonds, arises from the fact of this question involving no less a sum than £1,500,000 or even more; and if the Government of Peru has to pay it, so much the worse will it be for its already alarmed and disappointed creditors. Many of the three hundred ships lying off the three principal deposits of the South, have been there for very long periods of time, and a considerable bill for demurrage has been contracted. The question is who is to pay the shipowners' claim, and probably the law courts will have to answer the question. It would appear at first sight that this charge should be paid by Dreyfus. According to the first article of the contract between that firm and the Government of Peru, Dreyfus was to purchase two million tons of guano, and to pay for the same two million four hundred thousand pounds sterling. Here is a distinct act of purchase. The guano is the property of Dreyfus. The second article of the contract would appear to provide especially for the case in point: 'Los compradores enviarán por su cuenta y riesgo, á los depositos huaneros de la Republica, los buques necesarios para el transporte del huano' [the purchasers shall send, at their own cost and risk, the necessary ships to the guano deposits of the Republic for the purpose of transporting the guano].

This would seem to be plain enough: but these ships, or the greater part of them, came chartered by Dreyfus, not to any deposit of guano, in the first instance, but to Callao, where they collected in that bay, notorious now for many reported acts of singular heroism, and other acts of a very different nature. The ships were finally detained by command of the President of the Republic, who, acting on certain subterranean knowledge, refused to despatch the ships, or to allow them to proceed to the deposits. Dreyfus, the President insisted, had already taken away all the guano that belonged to them, and therefore the ships which they had chartered for carrying away still more should not be allowed to go and load. At last the President appears to have discovered his mistake, and the ships, to the amazement of the Lima press, were allowed to depart; some to the Pabellon de Pica, where they still are; others to Lobos, and the rest to Huanillos. In the meantime the following circular appeared.