76 



THE ROAD. 



It would seem that men could never improve under a system of such 

 absolute slavery as this ; yet to give them liberty, is to abandon them 

 and return them to a state of barbarity, shutting out all prospect of 

 improvement ; and the only hope seems to be in the justice and mod- 

 eration of the rulers — a slim hope here. 



We got off at noon ; stopped at the " chacra" of Gen. Otero, and 

 received a letter of introduction to the commandant of the fort. When 

 the old gentleman saw our new servant "Mariano" he crossed himself 

 most <^3voutly, and ejaculated " Satanas/" He then told us that this 

 was a notoriously bad boy, whom nobody had been able to manage, 

 but that we, being strangers and military men, might get along with 

 him by strictness and severity ; and he gave the boy a lecture upon his 

 duties and the faithful performance of them. 



A mile and a half beyond Gen. Otero's is the town of Acobamba. 

 I judge that it contains twelve or fifteen hundred inhabitants ; but it is 

 situated in a thickly-settled district, and the " Doctrina" is said to be 

 more populous than that of Tarma. Six more miles brought us to 

 Palca, a straggling town of about one thousand inhabitants. We 

 merely passed through, and a mile further on "brought up" at the 

 chacra of Don Justo Rojas, to whom I had a letter from Lizarralde, the 

 administrator at Morococha. Don Justo was engaged in extracting, by 

 boiling, the juice of the rhatany root for an apothecary of Lima. He 

 supplied us with a capital supper of chicken soup and boiled eggs, with 

 alfalfa for the beasts. He also sold us, from his establishment in town, 

 sugar and bread. We pitched the tent in an old corn-field, and slept 

 delightfully. Tent-pegs for this country should be of iron. Although 

 those we used were made of the hardest wood that could be found in 

 Lima, we had used them all up by this time, beating off their heads 

 by driving them with a hatchet into the hard and stony ground. 



Don Justo's is the last chacra in the valley, which now narrows, and 

 allows no room for cultivation. Though going down hill by the barom- 

 eter, we were evidently crossing a chain of mountains, which the stream 

 at the bottom of the valley has saved us the trouble of ascending and 

 descending, by cleaving a way through for itself, and leaving the moun- 

 tains on either hand towering thousands of feet above our heads. The 

 ride was the wildest we have yet had ; the road sometimes finding 

 room along the borders of the river, and then ascending nearly to the 

 top of the hills, and diminishing the foaming and thundering stream 

 to a noiseless, silver thread. The ascents and descents were nearly pre- 

 cipitous ; and the scene was rugged, wild, and grand beyond descrip- 

 tion. 



