TARMA. 



71 



and the stream which waters it plunges, in a beautiful little cataract, of 

 some thirty feet in height, over a ledge of rocks at the farther end. 

 Its climate is delicious ; and it is the resort of sickly people from Lima, 

 and the cold and inclement mining districts, who find comfort and resto- 

 ration in its pure atmosphere and mild and equable temperature. I was 

 told, although the district contains nearly twenty thousand inhabitants, 

 and its villages are close together, and easily accessible, that it could not, 

 of itself, support a physician, and that the government had to appro- 

 priate the tax on spirits, and the surplus revenue of the bridge at Oroya, 

 to this purpose. A young American physician, recently established in 

 Tarma, gave me this account ; but said that not even this had been 

 sufficient to keep one here ; that the custom had, therefore, fallen into 

 desuetude, and that he was then engaged, with hope of success, in 

 endeavoring to have this appropriation renewed and paid over to him. 



I cannot vouch for this story. It has an apocryphal sound to me. I 

 only know that it is a very healthy place, and that my medical friend 

 is a person of repute there. When I proposed to carry him off with 

 me, the ladies of my acquaintance raised a great outcry, and declared 

 that they could not part with their Medico. I think there is no apoth- 

 ecary's shop in Tarma, for I supplied the Doctor with some medicines, 

 those which he had brought from Lima being nearly exhausted. I am 

 satisfied, though there are so few diseases, that a good-looking young 

 graduate of medicine, who would go there with money enough to buy 

 him a horse, might readily marry a pretty girl of influential family, 

 and soon get a practice that would enrich him in ten years. I after- 

 wards knew a young American at Cerro Pasco, who, though not a 

 graduate, and I believe scarcely a student of medicine, was in high 

 repute as a doctor, and had as much practice as he could attend to; 

 but who, like several of our countrymen whom I met abroad, was 

 dissipated and reckless, and, as he himself expressed it, "slept with the 

 pump." 



The houses of Tarma are built of adobe ; and the better sort are 

 whitewashed within and without ; floored with gypsum and tiled. The 

 wood and iron work is of the rudest possible description, although the 

 former, from the Montana of Chanchamayo, is pretty and good. The 

 doors of the house we are living in very much resemble "birds-eye 

 maple." Some of the houses are partially papered, and carpeted with 

 common Scotch carpeting. Most of them have patios, or enclosed 

 squares, within, and some of them flat roofs, with a parapet around 

 them, where maize, peas, beans, and such things, are placed in the sun 

 to dry. 



