LITMIR.BIZ

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to improve his state, for that he longed to die. Before they were nearly cured, a march was ordered, and they again had to mount and ride. The consequences of this barbarity were easy to foresee. Before another eight days had elapsed, the squadron was scarcely sixty men strong."

      Turn we from such horrors to a more pleasing theme. "Could I suppose," says Dr Tschudi, "that my readers are acquainted with the excellent description of Lima which Stevenson gives in his Travels in South America,3 I would willingly abstain from any detail of the houses, churches, squares, and streets of that capital. But as that esteemed work was published twenty years ago, and is now almost entirely forgotten, I may venture, without danger of repeating things universally known, to give a sketch of the city of Lima." And accordingly, the doctor devotes his fifth chapter to an account of the capital of Peru – an account over which we shall pass lightly, for the double reason, that our readers may be better acquainted with Stevenson's work than Dr Tschudi's countrymen can be supposed to be, and because, if we linger wherever we are tempted so to do in this very pleasant book, our paper will run out beyond any reasonable length. We must glance at the cathedral founded by Pizarro, and which took ninety years in building. Its magnificence and riches are scarcely to be surpassed by those of any other existing church. The high altar boasts of seven silver pillars of the Ionic order, twelve feet high, and a foot and a-half thick; the shrine is seven and a-half feet high, carved in gold, and studded with countless diamonds and emeralds; the silver candlesticks weigh one hundred and twelve pounds each. In connection with the convent of San Pedro, a curious anecdote is told. It belonged to the Jesuits, and was their "Colegio Maximo;" it was known to possess immense wealth, for the richest plantations and finest houses belonged to the order. In the year 1773, the king of Spain, supported by the famous bull of the 21st June of that year, "Dominus ac redemptor noster," sent orders to his South American viceroys to arrest all the Jesuits in one night, ship them off to Spain, and confiscate their wealth. The greatest secresy was observed, and no one but the viceroy, and those in his entire confidence, was supposed to know any thing of the plan. But the same ship which conveyed to the viceroy the king's instructions in his own handwriting, brought to the vicar-general of the Jesuits in Lima the needful instructions from the general of the order at Madrid, to whom his Majesty's designs had become known. In all silence, and with every precaution the needful preparations were made; at ten o'clock on the appointed night, the viceroy summoned his council, and communicated to them the royal commands. No one was allowed to leave the room till the blow had been struck. At midnight trusty officers were sent to arrest the Jesuits, of whose names the viceroy had a list. It was expected that they would be surprised in their sleep. The patrole knocked at the door of the San Pedro convent, which was immediately opened. The commanding officer asked to see the vicar-general, and was forthwith conducted into the principal hall, where he found the whole of the order assembled, waiting for him, and ready to depart. Each man had his portmanteau packed with whatever was necessary for a long voyage. In all the other convents of Jesuits similar preparations had been made. The astonishment and vexation of the viceroy may be imagined. He immediately sent off the whole fraternity to Callao, where ships were ready to receive them. Inventories were then taken, and search made for the Jesuits' money. But great was the surprise of the searchers when instead of the millions which the order was known to possess, but a few thousand dollars were to be discovered. All the keys, including that of the strong box, were found, duly ticketed, in the vicar-general's room. The Jesuits could hardly have taken a better revenge for the treachery that had been used with their order.

      It was supposed that the money was buried, partly in the plantations, and partly in the convent of San Pedro. An old negro, in the service of the convent, told how he and one of his comrades had been employed during several nights in carrying, with bandaged eyes, heavy sacks of money into the vaults beneath the building. Two Jesuits accompanied them, and helped them to load and unload their burdens. The researches hitherto made have been but superficial and imperfect; and Dr Tschudi opines, with some naïveté, that the hidden hoard may yet be discovered. We cannot partake his opinion. The cunning Jesuits who concealed the treasure will have found means to recover it.

      Lima was the principal seat of the Inquisition upon the west coast of South America, and in severity the tribunal was but little surpassed by that of Madrid itself. The building in which it was held still exists, but was gutted by the populace when the institution was abolished by the Cortes, and few traces of its internal arrangements and murderous engines are now to be seen. More visible ones are yet to be noticed in the persons of some unfortunate Limeños. "A Spaniard," Dr Tschudi tells us, "whose limbs were frightfully distorted, told me, in reply to my inquiries, that he had fallen into a machine which had thus mangled him. A few days before his death, however, he confided to me that in his twenty-fourth year he had been brought before the tribunal of the Holy Inquisition, and by the most horrible tortures had been compelled to confess a crime of which he was not guilty. I still shudder when I remember his crushed and twisted limbs, at the thoughts of the agonies which the unhappy wretch must have endured."

      Now and then, however, the most holy ruffians of the Inquisition met their match, as the following anecdote serves to show. The Viceroy, Castel-Fuerte, once expressed, in presence of his confessor, certain opinions regarding religion which the good monk did not find very catholic, and which he accordingly, as in duty bound, reported to the Inquisitors. The latter, confident of their omnipotence, joyfully seized this opportunity to increase its prestige, by proving that their power extended even to the punishment of a viceroy. But Castel-Fuerte was not Philip of Spain. At the appointed hour, he repaired to the Inquisition at the head of his body-guard and of a company of infantry, with two pieces of artillery, which he caused to be pointed at the building. Entering the terrible hall, he strode up to the table, drew out his watch, and laid it before him. "Señores," said he, "I am ready to discuss this affair, but for one hour only. If I am not back by that time, my officers have orders to level this building with the ground." Astounded at his boldness, the Inquisitors consulted together for a few moments, and then, with eager politeness, complimented the resolute Castel-Fuerte out of the house.

      Lima was founded by Pizarro in the year 1534, on the 6th of January, known amongst Roman Catholics as the Day of the Three Kings. From this latter circumstance it has frequently been called the City of the Kings. Like some tropical flower, urged into premature bloom and luxuriance by too rich a soil and too ardent a sun, its decay has been proportionably rapid, and the capital of Peru is already but the ghost of its former self. Some idea of its rapid growth may be formed from the circumstance that a wall built in 1585, only fifty years after its foundation, includes, with the exception of a small portion of the northern extremity and the suburb of San Lazaro, the whole of a city capable of containing one hundred thousand inhabitants, and measuring ten English miles in circumference. The dates of foundation of the principal public buildings further confirm the fact of Lima's rapid arrival at the size as well as the rank of a metropolis. The number of inhabitants, which in 1810 was estimated at eighty-seven thousand, in 1842 was reduced to fifty-three thousand. It must be observed, however, that the manner of taking the census is loose and imperfect, and these numbers may need rectification. At the same time, there can be no doubt that the population has long been, and still is, daily diminishing. Of this diminution the causes are various, and may easily be traced to the physical and political state of the country. Terrible earthquakes have buried thousands of persons beneath the ruins of their dwellings; the struggle for independence also swept away its thousands; and banishment and emigration may further account for the decrease. Epidemics, the natural consequence of an imperfect police, and an utter neglect of cleanliness, frequently rage in the city and its environs; and Dr Tschudi proves, by interesting tables and statements, that the average excess of deaths over births has been, since the year 1826, no less than five hundred and fifty annually. Without entering into all the causes to which this may be attributed, he pronounces the criminal, but, in Lima, too common, practice of causing abortion to be one of the most prominent. So large a yearly decrease menaces the Peruvian capital with a speedy depopulation, and already whole streets and quarters of the city are desolate, – the houses falling in, – the gardens run to waste. To the country, not less than to the town, many of the above facts are applicable; and the once rich and flourishing region, that extends from the third to the twenty-second degree of southern latitude, and which, at the time of its conquest by Pizarro, contained an enormous population, now possesses but one million four hundred

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