CHAPTER I

THE REGIONS OF PERU

Let four Peruvians begin this book by telling what manner of country they live in. Their ideas are provincial and they have a fondness for exaggerated description: but, for all that, they will reveal much that is true because they will at least reveal themselves. Their opinions reflect both the spirit of the toiler on the land and the outlook of the merchant in the town in relation to geography and national problems. Their names do not matter; let them stand for the four human regions of Peru, for they are in many respects typical men.

THE FOREST DWELLER

One of them I met at a rubber station on the lower Urubamba River.[1] He helped secure my canoe, escorted me hospitably to his hut, set food and drink before me, and talked of the tropical forest, the rubber business, the Indians, the rivers, and the trails. In his opinion Peru was a land of great forest resources. Moreover, the fertile plains along the river margins might become the sites of rich plantations. The rivers had many fish and his garden needed only a little cultivation to produce an abundance of food. Fruit trees grew on every hand. He had recently married the daughter of an Indian chief.

Formerly he had been a missionary at a rubber station on the Madre de Dios, where the life was hard and narrow, and he doubted if there were any real converts. Himself the son of an Englishman and a Chilean woman, he found, so he said, that a missionary’s life in the rubber forest was intolerable for more than a few years. Yet he had no fault to find with the religious system of which he had once formed a part; in fact he had still a certain curious mixed loyalty to it. Before I left he gave me a photograph of himself and said with little pride and more sadness that perhaps I would remember him as a man that had done some good in the world along with much that might have been better.

We shall understand our interpreter better if we know who his associates were. He lived with a Frenchman who had spent several years in Africa as a soldier in the “Foreign Legion.” If you do not know what that means, you have yet all the pleasure of an interesting discovery. The Frenchman had reached the station the year before quite destitute and clad only in a shirt and a pair of trousers. A day’s journey north lived a young half-breed--son of a drunken father and a Machiganga woman, who cheated me so badly when I engaged Indian paddlers that I should almost have preferred that he had robbed me. Yet in a sense he had my life in his hands and I submitted. A German and a native Peruvian ran a rubber station on a tributary two days’ journey from the first. It will be observed that the company was mixed. They were all Peruvians, but of a sort not found in such relative abundance elsewhere. The defeated and the outcast, as well as the pioneer, go down eventually to the hot forested lands where men are forgotten.

While he saw gold in every square mile of his forested region, my clerical friend saw misery also. The brutal treatment of the Indians by the whites of the Madre de Dios country he could speak of only as a man reviving a painful memory. The Indians at the station loved him devotedly. There was only justice and kindness in all his dealings. Because he had large interests to look after, he knew all the members of the tribe, and his word was law in no hackneyed sense. A kindlier man never lived in the rubber forest. His influence as a high-souled man of business was vastly greater than as a missionary in this frontier society. He could daily illustrate by practical example what he had formerly been able only to preach.

He thought the life of the Peruvian cities debasing. The coastal valleys were small and dry and the men who lived there were crowded and poor (sic). The plateau was inhabited by Indians little better than brutes. Surely I could not think that the fine forest Indian was lower than the so-called civilized Indian of the plateau. There was plenty of room in the forest; and there was wealth if you knew how to get at it. Above all you were far from the annoying officials of the government, and therefore could do much as you pleased so long as you paid your duties on rubber and did not wantonly kill too many Indians.

For all his kindly tolerance of men and conditions he yet found fault with the government. “They” neglected to build roads, to encourage colonization, and to lower taxes on the forest products, which were always won at great risk. Nature had done her part well--it was only government that hindered. Moreover, the forested region was the land of the future. If Peru was to be a great nation her people would have to live largely upon the eastern plains. Though others spoke of “going in” and “coming out” of the rubber country as one might speak of entering and leaving a dungeon, he always spoke of it as home. Though he now lived in the wilderness he hoped to see the day when plantations covered the plains. A greater Peru and the forest were inseparable ideas to him.

THE EASTERN VALLEY PLANTER

My second friend lived in one of the beautiful mountain valleys of the eastern Andes. We walked through his clean cacao orchards and cane fields. Like the man in the forest, he believed in the thorough inefficiency of the government; otherwise why were there no railways for the cheaper transportation of the valley products, no dams for the generation of power and the storage of irrigation water, not even roads for mule carts? Had the government been stable and efficient there would now be a dense population in the eastern valleys. Revolutions were the curse of these remote sections of the country. The ne’er-do-wells became generals. The loafer you dismissed today might demand ten thousand dollars tomorrow or threaten to destroy your plantation. The government troops might come to help you, but they were always too late.

For this one paid most burdensome taxes. Lima profited thereby, not the valley planters. The coast people were the favored of Peru anyhow. They had railroads, good steamer service, public improvements at government expense, and comparatively light taxes. If the government were impartial the eastern valleys also would have railways and a dense population. Who could tell? Perhaps the capital city might be here. Certainly it was better to have Lima here than on the coast where the Chileans might at any time take it again. The blessings of the valleys were both rich and manifold. Here was neither a cold plateau nor the hot plains, but fertile valleys with a vernal climate.

We talked of much else, but our conversation had always the pioneer flavor. And though an old man he saw always the future Peru growing wonderfully rich and powerful as men came to recognize and use the resources of the eastern valleys. This too was the optimism of the pioneer. Once started on that subject he grew eloquent. He was provincial but he was also intensely patriotic. He never missed an opportunity to impress upon his guests that a great state would arise when people and rulers at last recognized the wealth of eastern Peru.

THE HIGHLAND SHEPHERD

The people who live in the lofty highlands and mountains of Peru have several months of real winter weather despite their tropical latitude. In the midst of a snowstorm in the Maritime Cordillera I met a solitary traveler bound for Cotahuasi on the floor of a deep canyon a day’s journey toward the east. It was noon and we halted our pack trains in the lee of a huge rock shelter to escape the bitter wind that blew down from the snow-clad peaks of Solimana. Men who follow the same trails are fraternal. In a moment we had food from our saddle-bags spread on the snow under the corner of a _poncho_ and had exchanged the best in each other’s collection as naturally as friends exchange greetings. By the time I had told him whence and why in response to his inevitable questions we had finished the food and had gathered a heap of _tola_ bushes for a fire. The _arriero_ (muleteer) brought water from a spring in the hollow below us. Though the snow thickened, the wind fell. We were comfortable, even at 16,000 feet, and called the place “The Salamanca Club.” Then I questioned him, and this is what he said:

“I live in the deep valley of Cotahuasi, but my lands lie chiefly up here on the plateau. My family has held title to this _puna_ ever since the Wars of Liberation, except for a few years after one of our early revolutions. I travel about a great deal looking after my flocks. Only Indians live up here. Away off yonder beyond that dark gorge is a group of their huts, and on the bright days of summer you may see their sheep, llamas, and alpacas up here, for on the floors of the watered valleys that girdle these volcanoes there are more tender grasses than grow on this _despoblado_. I give them corn and barley from my irrigated fields in the valley; they give me wool and meat. The alpaca wool is most valuable. It is hard to get, for the alpaca requires short grasses and plenty of water, and you see there is only coarse tufted ichu grass about us, and there are no streams. It is all right for llamas, but alpacas require better forage.

“No one can imagine the poverty and ignorance of these mountain shepherds. They are filthier than beasts. I have to watch them constantly or they would sell parts of the flocks, which do not belong to them, or try to exchange the valuable alpaca wool for coca leaves in distant towns. They are frequently drunk.”

“But where do they get the drink?” I asked. “And what do you pay them?”

“Oh, the drink is chiefly imported alcohol, and also _chicha_ made from corn. They insist on having it, and do better when I bring them a little now and then. They get much more from the dealers in the towns. As for pay, I do not pay them anything in money except when they bring meat to the valley. Then I give them a few _reales_ apiece for the sheep and a little more for the llamas. The flocks all belong to me really, but of course the poor Indian must have a little money. Besides, I let him have a part of the yearly increase. It is not much, but he has always lived this way and I suppose that he is contented after a fashion.”

Then he became eager to tell what wealth the mountains contained in soil and climate if only the right grasses were introduced by the government.

“Here, before us, are vast _punas_ almost without habitations. If the officials would bring in hardy Siberian grasses these lava-covered plateaus might be carpeted with pasture. There would be villages here and there. The native Indians easily stand the altitude. This whole Cordillera might have ten times as many people. Why does the government bother about concessions in the rubber forests and roads to the eastern valleys when there are these vast tracts only requiring new seeds to develop into rich pastures? The government could thus greatly increase its revenues because there is a heavy tax on exported wool.”

Thus he talked about the bleak Cordillera until we forgot the pounding of our hearts and our frequent gasps for breath on account of the altitude. His rosy picture of a well-populated highland seemed to bring us down nearer sea level where normal folks lived. To the Indians the altitude is nothing. It has an effect, but it is slight; at any rate they manage to reproduce their kind at elevations that would kill a white mother. If alcohol were abolished and better grasses introduced, these lofty pastures might indeed support a much larger population. The sheep pastures of the world are rapidly disappearing before the march of the farmer. Here, well above the limit of cultivation, is a permanent range, one of the great as well as permanent assets of Peru.

THE COASTAL PLANTER

The man from the deep Majes Valley in the coastal desert rode out with me through cotton fields as rich and clean as those of a Texas plantation. He was tall, straight-limbed, and clear-eyed--one of the energetic younger generation, yet with the blood of a proud old family. We forded the river and rode on through vineyards and fig orchards loaded with fruit. His manner became deeply earnest as he pictured the future of Peru, when her people would take advantage of scientific methods and use labor-saving machinery. He said that the methods now in use were medieval, and he pointed to a score of concrete illustrations. Also, here was water running to waste, yet the desert was on either hand. There should be dams and canals. Every drop of water was needed. The population of the valley could be easily doubled.

Capital was lacking but there was also lacking energy among the people. Slipshod methods brought them a bare living and they were too easily contented. Their standards of life should be elevated. Education was still for the few, and it should be universal. A new spirit of progress was slowly developing--a more general interest in public affairs, a desire to advance with the more progressive nations of South America,--and when it had reached its culmination there would be no happier land than coastal Peru, already the seat of the densest populations and the most highly cultivated fields.

* * * * *

These four men have portrayed the four great regions of Peru--the lowland plains, the eastern mountain valleys, the lofty plateaus, and the valley oases of the coast. This is not all of Peru. The mountain basins have their own peculiar qualities and the valley heads of the coastal zone are unlike the lower valleys and the plateau on either hand. Yet the chief characteristics of the country are set forth with reasonable fidelity in these individual accounts. Moreover the spirit of the Peruvians is better shown thereby than their material resources. If this is not Peru, it is what the Peruvians think is Peru, and to a high degree a man’s country is what he thinks it is--at least it is little more to him.