222 



PERU. 



mid-day scarcely an individual was to be seen ; 

 and in the course of the afternoon I accompanied 

 one of the English* merchants, during a walk of 

 more than a mile, through the most populous 

 parts of Lima, without meeting a single indivi- 

 dual : the doors were all barred, the window-shut- 

 ters closed, and it really seemed " some vast city 

 of the dead;' 



An indistinct dread of some terrible catastro- 

 phe was the principal cause of this universal pa- 

 nic : but there was a definite source of alarm be- 

 sides, which contributed considerably to the ex- 

 traordinary effect which I have been describing. 

 This was a belief, industriously propagated, and 

 caught up with all the diseased eagerness of fear, 

 that the slave population of the city meant to 

 take advantage of the absence of the troops, to 

 rise in a body and massacre the whites. I could 

 not, for one, bring myself to suppose this at all 

 probable ; for the slaves had never any leisure to 

 plan such a scheme : their habits were not those 

 of union or enterprise, for they were all domestic 

 servants, and thinly scattered over an immense 

 city, with very rare opportunities of confidential 



