The periodical rides and picnics of the Limenians to Las Huacas, Surco, and Lurin, are now dwindling away into neglect, as there is neither money nor public tranquillity for such happy scenes of customary gaiety. Carnival, with them, has lost its spirit; the _Noche Buena_, or Christmas-eve, is deprived of much of its revelry; and all that in their customs was most alluring and glittering is rapidly withering and dying away. We may now, not unfrequently, observe more disposition to indulge in the gloomy and silent stillness of the “_duelo_,” or formal condolence for the dead, than in the hilarity of the golden times of these merry-making people, who were for generations most happy in the unconsciousness of defects, and in the conviction that no people on earth were superior to themselves in knowledge and civilization. In all parts of the world there are criminally selfish and unprincipled men; and in Peru there may be found a set of rogues, called “_Pillos_,” rendered more numerous and troublesome from the circumstances of the times. Of these the capital presents two kinds, which has led to the distinction of “pillo” and “pillo-fino.” The first is a very common and plausible sort of rogue; but the latter is, as the name implies, a more refined cheat, not unfrequently enticed from distant parts by the fame of the numerous attractions of Lima, the paralysis of the laws, and consequent facility of escaping chastisement. The clink of hard dollars and doubloons, shoveled into “_talegas_,” or money-bags, and again thrown open at the gambling-table, are such sounds as are sure to allure the pillo-fine to that promiscuous society of Limenian gamblers, where the precious coin usually finds its way into the hands of the crafty. Whatever be the land of this animal’s nativity, he is but a vampire,—a human blood-sucker; but the simple pillo is a very different character, always plausible and pliable, an every-day and common-place member of society, who sponges on his neighbour, and whom all Englishmen courted for their generosity are sure to encounter. The ultimatum of this person’s milky adulation and very smiling policy is to procure a loan of money; and when he asks “plata prestada,” or money on loan, of any one, he assures that person, that applying to him is the greatest proof he can offer of his own friendly confidence and regard for the individual; but, while he is lavish of compliment, he takes care not to express his secret purpose, namely, never to reimburse whatever in this way he may hope to clutch.