452 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I02 



escorted by the infantry company which accompanied them in the 

 procession ; the pyre and place of punishment, where the sentence 

 is carried out, is outside of the city. While this is in process of 

 execution, the rest of the penitents on the stand come down from 

 their seats and pass over to those on the Tribunal side ; here the wax 

 candles which they carried unlighted in their hands in the procession, 

 are lighted, and the oldest Inquisitor, in surplice and stole, with wands 

 in his hands, and with the Cathedral choir intoning the Psalm 

 Miserere mei (Have mercy upon me, O God) absolves each of them 

 in accordance with the sentence, after each has taken the Levior 

 Vehementi oath. Then they take the black veil off the Cross they 

 had carried in the morning, and the procession returns to the Holy 

 Office, with Standard and escort in the same order as it came out. 

 On the next day those who are to be disciplined and flogged are 

 marched through the streets publicly, escorted to their disgrace by 

 the Alguacil Mayor, Secretaries, and Familiars ; those who have to 

 go to the galleys are consigned at once to the Royal Prison as slaves 

 to the King, to be turned over to the galleys. And although in this 

 statement and description something has been told, yet the majesty 

 usually displayed in the auto-da-fe is such that it outdoes any possible 

 account or exaggeration, however full this account may seem to 

 have been. 



Chapter XXIX 



Of the Port of Callao, Suburb of the City of Lima. 



1290. The port of Lima, Callao, is 2 leagues distant from the 

 city, over an arid plain, for it never rains in those regions. The 

 harbor settlement is at the water's edge and runs N. and S., with the 

 coast itself. The land and the beach on which it is built, is loose 

 gravel or small pebbles, used for ballast by all ships plying the 

 Pacific. The place is subject to destruction by earthquakes, on account 

 of the gravel, and so in order to give the houses strength of con- 

 struction they build large cement foundations. This place will contain 

 more than 700 Spanish residents, not counting the transients who 

 normally flock here in large numbers ; there are two roads here f ro«i 

 Lima, every day crowded with people coming and going and with 

 troops of mules ; then there are the visitors from the nearby valleys 

 and from the ships at sea entering and clearing every day. From the 

 valleys they bring down wheat, corn, sugar, and other local products ; 

 and the ships bring consignments of wine from the valleys of lea, 

 Pisco, and Nasca, with the products of New Spain, Nicaragua, the 



