THE CHIRIMOYA. 



121 



in return. A shop-keeper gave me the price of some of the articles in his 

 store: Broad striped cassimere, such as gentlemen's trousers are made 

 of, five and a half dollars the yard; very common silk handkerchiefs, 

 one dollar; common silk hat, five dollars; blue cloth drillings, twenty- 

 five cents the yard; baize, eighty-seven and a half cents; narrow ribbon, 

 one dollar and twenty-five cents the piece; cotton handkerchiefs, two 

 dollars and twenty- five cents the dozen; tolerable Scotch carpeting, one 

 dollar and a half the vara, of thirty-three English inches; bayeta castilla, 

 (a kind of serge or woollen cloth, with a long shag upon it, and of rich 

 colors,) one dollar and seventy-five cents the vara. In the market, beef 

 and mutton from the province of Huamalies sell at six and a quarter 

 cents the pound; Indian corn, twenty-five cents the olla, of twenty-five 

 pounds; potatoes, seventy-five cents for the costal, of fifty pounds; salt, 

 from the coast at Huacho, six and a quarter cents the pound; sugar, 

 generally from the coast, twenty-five cents the pound, (this in an emi- 

 nently sugar country ;) coffee, twelve and a half cents. Very little meat 

 is raised. I saw a small quantity of pork, with plenty of tallow candles ; 

 and rotten potatoes for the consumption of the Indians. Bread is good, 

 but is generally made, in the best houses, of American flour from Lima. 

 Vegetables and fruit are abundant and cheap. This is, par excellence, 

 the country of the celebrated chirimoya. I have seen this fruit in 

 Huanuco quite twice as large as it is generally seen in Lima, and of 

 most delicious flavor. They have a custom here to cover the finest 

 specimens with gold leaf, and place them as a decoration on the altar of 

 some patron Saint on his festival. The church afterwards sells them; 

 and I have seen several on Colonel Lucar's table. 



This gentleman is, probably, the richest and most influential man in 

 Huanuco. He seems to have been the father of husbandry in these 

 parts, and is the very type of the old landed proprietor of Virginia, who 

 has lived always upon his estates, and attended personally to their culti- 

 vation. Seated at the head of his table, with his hat on to keep the 

 draught from his head — and which he would insist upon removing unless 

 I would wear mine — his chair surrounded by two or three little negro 

 children, whom he fed with bits from his plate ; and attending with pa- 

 tience and kindness to the clamorous wants of a pair of splendid pea- 

 cocks, a couple of small parrots of brilliant and variegated plumage, and 

 a beautiful and delicate monkey — I thought I had rarely seen a more 

 perfect pattern of the patriarch. His kindly and affectionate manner 

 to his domestics, (all slaves,) and to his little grandchildren, a pair of 

 sprightly boys, who came in in the evening from the college, was also 

 very pleasing. There are thirty servants attached to the house, large 



