AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 225 



The Peruvian government purchase the cargo of living Coolies, 

 paying the Yanliee or English captain a round sum for his care, 

 diligence and labor in stealing Chinamen from their homes to be 

 sent into the guano mines of Peru for life, or for five or seven 

 years, and to be held in bondage or peonage to pay their passage 

 to the glorious land of the Incas. Once on the islands a China- 

 man seldom gets oif, but remains a slave to die there. 



The guano is hard and firmly imbedded in strata on the islands, 

 and can only be broken up with the pick axe and crow bars. It 

 is then broken and shoveled into the wagons and rolled into the 

 shutes of the vessels and then stowed in the hold of the ship as 

 cargo in bulk, in which shape it is sent to market all round the 

 world, but it loses much of its ammonia in the transportation and 

 exposure to the atmosphere, and is often adulterated with earth. 

 The guano when pressed into the hold of the ship is very offen- 

 sive. The s-^amen of ships do not go below to trim the ship or 

 to stow cargo. This is done by the native Peruvians, who strip 

 themselves naked, fasten a sponge or a mop of hemp over their 

 mouths and nose and cover their eyes wdth a thin gauze, and 

 work below to stow cargo. Generally the men below cannot 

 work longer than from ten to twenty minutes before they come on 

 deck to catch a breathing spell, when another gang go imme- 

 diately below to work and repeat the same operation every fifteen 

 to twenty minutes. These stevedores are paid by the Peruvian 

 government to stow the cargo of the ships at the rate of only one 

 dollar for every 500 tons of cargo. This is again a charge on the 

 ship, and amounts to about twenty cents for 100 tons of cargo 

 stowed. 



The smell of the Guano, when stowed in the hold of the ship, 

 is strongly like quick lime and hartshorn combined, indeed it is 

 mostly a carbonate of ammonia. The ammonia may have come 

 from a chemical action of the atmosphere working on animal 

 matter, lime and soda. The animal matter, nitrate of lime and 

 saltpetre has much to do in the composition of guano at these 

 islands; such is the opinion of our informant. 



No person can go upon or come away from the islands, without 

 a pass, as they are guarded by more than one hundred armed sol- 

 diers belonging to Peru. 



The Peruvians send all their prisoners of state into the guano 

 mines, say about two or three hundred, where they are let out to 

 work by day, and at night are shut up in their cells, witli only 

 two meals per day. 



