seNor martins. 



129 



for they do not eat them themselves ; but did not succeed. I believe it 

 to be something like the miser-feeling of parting with property, the not 

 being used to money, and also a dislike to kill what they have reared 

 and seen grow up under their own eye. 



Our patrona had six or seven children : one an infant, which, when 

 she puts to sleep, she enwraps closely in a woollen cloth, and swathes 

 tightly, over arms and all, with a broad thick band, so that it is per- 

 fectly stiff, and looks like a log of wood, or a roll of cloth. I asked 

 why she did this, but could only get the reply that it was the " custom 

 here." The young women of the country have very good features, and 

 appear lively and good-tempered. Two daughters of the patrona came 

 in on a visit to-day. I suppose they are out at work (probably as house 

 servants) in some neighboring hacienda. They were dressed in red 

 calicoes, always open in the back, and with the invariable shawl; and 

 one of them had ruffles of cotton lace around the bottom of the sleeves, 

 which did not reach to the elbow. The girls were nearly as dark as 

 Indians, but I presume they had a mixture of white blood. 



July 28. — I walked, in company with Ijurra, about three miles to 

 visit a Serlor Martins, at his hacienda of Cucheros. We found this gen- 

 tleman a clever and intelligent Portuguese, who had passed many years in 

 this country. He knew Smyth, and had helped him along on this route . 

 His wife is Dofta Juana del Rio y a very lady-like person, in spite of her 

 common country costume. It was quite surprising to see a Limena, 

 and one who had evidently lived in the first circles of that city, in this 

 wild country, and in this rude, though comfortable house. The floor 

 was earth, and I saw no chairs. The lady sat in a hammock, and the 

 men either on the mud benches around the sides of the room, or on a 

 coarse wooden one along-side of a coarse table. Part of the house was 

 curtained off into small bed-rooms. There was evident plenty, and 

 great comparative comfort about the house; also, a fine lot of handsome, 

 intelligent-looking children. Senor Martins told me that this Quebrada 

 produced seven hundred cargas of coca yearly. A carga is two hundred 

 and sixty pounds. The value in Huanuco is generally three dollars the 

 arroba. This would make the value of the crop twenty-one thousand 

 eight hundred and forty dollars. The hire of the seven hundred mules 

 required to carry it to Huanuco is two thousand eight hundred dollars, 

 which reduces the value to about nineteen thousand dollars. There are 

 not many haciendas, but a number of small farms ; the owners of which 

 sell their coca on the spot for two dollars the arroba. I asked Martins 

 the reason why I had seen several of the haciendas abandoned, particu- 

 larly his own large one of Casapi. He said there were two causes : one 

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