“The worst thing they can do is to run away. They are put into prison when they return--here,” and he unlocked a big door. There were four little doors on each side of a dark room. Those on the right opened into closets two feet wide and six long, with bars overhead, all painted black, “to keep them from writing on the walls,” he explained. When the padlock was removed, the cubby-holes on the left were opened; two feet square, black. “Here they must stand.” I gasped. “Oh, yes.” “How long do you keep them in such a place? Surely not over night?” “Not more than eight days.” “And in the other side?” “Not over ninety days in there.” “Is any one in here now?” “Yes, two,” he said. V Certainly nowhere in Peru are contrasts more marked than in Lima of to-day, with its splendidly carved balconies of former times, its scavenger birds, and mud roofs strewn with ashes; its dim, candle-lit, incense-filled churches with their leper windows, and its international horse-racing; its collections of ancient, battered, gold idols, silver llamas, dishes and spoons, and its aeroplane called _The Inca_! Lima is a city where bull-fights are not only an amusement of the people, but of the finest and best intellects which the country has produced as well. Bull-fighters with queues, gold and silver embroidery, lace fronts, and red silk stockings are seen in the streets. Formerly the archbishop, religious orders, and monks all came to the bull-fights. The viceroy, shouting “Long live the King,” threw a golden key into the bull cage, and the fight under most august patronage began. The market of Lima is a picturesque place: Chilean peppers (_aji_), orange and red, pats of goat’s-milk cheese in palm leaves, unsalted butter in green corn husks, piles of ripe olives of various maroon hues, strawberries in hand-woven baskets. Fighting cocks glisten in the intense sunlight. Ladies in mantillas float by, closely followed by boy servants, their arms full of bundles. Here and there Franciscans with “sandaled feet and clattering crucifixes” are amassing tribute. There are said to be about six thousand ecclesiastics now in the city.