INHABITANTS OF PERU. 315 



and a vile diet, supplied at exorbitant charges by tbe planters themselves, those 

 who survived the eight years for which thej'- had signed found themselves at 

 the end burdened with a debt of which they knew nothing, and for which they 

 had to serve a fresh term of slavery. 



Nevertheless, an improvement in the condition of the labourers was effected, 

 partly by the protests of the Chinese Government, partly by the ruin of the 

 plantations or the exhaustion of the guano-beds, and often by the revolts of the 

 victims. The importation of coolies ceased, and those who remained in Peru, some 

 50,000, have recovered their liberty. Most of the Chinese have given up their 

 national dress and no longer wear the pig-tail. They are scattered everywhere, 

 and are even met in the settlements on the Amazonian slope. 



In the towns they take to trade, keep hotels and restaurants, practise diverse 

 crafts, and succeed in all their undertakings. Hence they excite great jealousy, 

 and at the time of the occupation of Lima by the Chilian forces, nearly 300 

 Chinese tradesmen were murdered and their shops plundered ; a massacre also took 

 place on the plantations of Cailete. 



Formerly the natives were often compared with the Chinese, and in the popular 

 language the term Chinos is still applied to the uncivilised Indians. It was even 

 pretended that the coolies, on landing at Eten, recognised the descendants of the 

 Yuncas as their kinsmen, both in origin and speech. But whatever be the 

 primitive stock of the Peruvian natives, the recent Chinese immigrants differ 

 altogether from them in their more energetic and resolute character, as well as 

 in their mental capacity. 



Numerous Sino-Peruvian families have already been constituted, and thus has 

 begun the gradual ethnical fusion of the races of the Old and New Worlds. Till 

 recently the Peruvian women showed the greatest repugnance to the Chinese, 

 the Macacos (" Apes "), or "people of Macao," as they called them ; now, on the 

 contrary, they greatly appreciate the gentle character, the sense of justice and 

 the family virtues of these " celestials." 



Of the Pacific Islanders scarcely any survive, nearly all having been carried 

 off by consumption ; 2,000 Kanakas imported in 1863 from the Marquesas 

 Archipelago had perished almost to a man within eighteen months. 



Taken as a whole, the national unity appears to be far less firmly established 

 in Peru than in the other South American republics. Class differences, far more 

 than diversity of origin, separate the urban from the impoverished rural popu- 

 lations as widely as if they were two distinct nations. This lack of cohesion 

 constitutes a great danger, and was one of the factors that in the late conflict 

 assured the triumph of the Chilian forces, animated by a more developed national 

 sentiment. 



