LONGEVITY. 



149 



evening sociably, as though nothing had happened. The regular custom 

 of the country is to have music and dancing in the house before the 

 corpse is taken to the church, and even to bring in chicha ; but as the 

 father of this child was a foreigner, no such practice was permitted. 

 The doctrine taught by the church seems to be, that as the child is in 

 Heaven, it is cause for rejoicing and merry-making. This appears to be 

 a bounty for negligence and inattention to life. 



I saw a funeral passing through the streets of Cochabamba, preceded 

 by a man with a five-gallon jar of chicha on his head. At the corners 

 of the streets, when those who carried the corpse were^ired, they all 

 drank and sang, until the whole party became intoxicated, so that they 

 ! did not reach the graveyard at all, and the funeral was postponed until 

 the next day, when the same forms were practised we saw the day before. 



This is the case only among the mestizos; the Indians are more 

 orderly ; show a more quiet respect, natural, and proper feeling. They 

 often sit silently in rows by a corpse all night mourning for the loss of 

 a fellow Indian. There is among them a deep, heartfelt expression, that 

 carries with it outwardly an unmistakeable and truthful inward grief. 



The funeral of a wealthy Creole is attended by gentlemen dressed in 

 black, invited by printed cards, who carry long tallow candles through 

 the streets, accompanied by music. A train of Franciscan friars and 

 portable altars put up at the corners between the houses and some 

 church. Masses are said agreeably to order, and a charge is made in 

 the funeral bills for chicha, cigars, coca, wine, cooking apparatus, with 

 other church expenses, amounting to nearly three hundred dollars. We 

 witnessed such a bill paid for a friend, and could not avoid making a 

 comparison between the articles and the list of mess stores drawn up 

 by an old sailor on the eve of his departure for a cruise round Cape 

 Horn. 



Men do not live to a very old age in Cochabamba, eighty years being 

 the oldest known at present. Girls sometimes bear children at the age 

 of thirteen ; twelve years is the marriageable age, both for Creoles and 

 Indians. The proportion of marriages in this country is small for the 

 amount of population. I regret to be obliged to say the most moral 

 portion is found among the aboriginal race. The Indian, with his wife 

 and children around him, cultivates the soil, whiie the Creoles and mestizos 

 are idle and generally unmarried people. Since the establishment of the 

 government, in the year 1826 to the year 1851, during twenty-five^ears, 

 the population has increased from about one million to one million and 

 a half. Few people leave the country, and few emigrate to it. 



In the streets of Cochabamba there are many beggars, blind and 



