Peru in the Guano Age: Being a Short Account of a Recent Visit to the Guano Deposits, with Some Reflections on the Money They Have Produced and the Uses to Which It Has Been AppliedDuffield, A. J. (Alexander James)
History
Peru in the Guano Age: Being a Short Account of a Recent Visit to the Guano Deposits, with Some Reflections on the Money They Have Produced and the Uses to Which It Has Been Applied
Duffield, A. J. (Alexander James)
Guano; Peru -- Description and travel
There is nothing else to be seen. There is not a single lighthouse or
light on any dangerous rock, or at any port difficult to make along the
whole of its coast. All the fructifying rivers of the hills still steal
into the sea. Had half the money which has been spent on the Oroya
railway been expended on works of irrigation, the Government of Peru
would now be in the possession of a respectable revenue.
A morning visit to the market-place in Lima on any day of the week, is
enough to convince even a Peruvian President who knows something else
besides how to play rocambor, of the truth of this statement.
Internal roads, excepting these 'railways of the age,' there are none;
but there are several ironclads and men-of-war in the Bay of Callao,
for what use or of what service the First Lord of the Admiralty himself
could not tell explicitly.
It might be thought by some ordinary people, of business habits and a
little reflection, that a country like Peru, which can boast of as many
seaports as it can of first-class towns and cities, would provide those
ports with convenient landing-places, moles, or piers.
There is one good pier on the whole coast, which in its useless
grandeur stretches out nearly a mile into the sea; as the Oroya
railway, like a mighty python, creeps up the precipitous slopes of the
Andes 'sixteen thousand feet above the level of the sea.'
As every one knows, the Pacific is a peaceful sea, as quiet as a saucer
of milk. But like almost all the things that every one knows, this
piece of knowledge will hardly bear the test of experience. Twenty
miles or less from its shore, the Pacific on the Peruvian coast, may
be said to be as calm and placid as a man's unresisted vices. Put a
restraint upon, or raise a barrier against the most modest of the man's
wishes, and these suddenly show their strength, even the strength, as
some have found to their cost, of resistless passion. It is thus with
this Pacific sea. When it comes against a rocky shore, or the miserable
wooden barriers which the Peruvian Government have put up for the
convenience and comfort of passengers, and the despatch of business,
it becomes more like a wild beast, or a watery volcano, or any other
fierce and angry force which cannot by ordinary means be restrained. It
is not unlikely that a Government fond of providing cheap distraction
for the people has purposely neglected this useful work of building
piers, with the benevolent design of providing a cheap amusement to
those inhabitants of the ports who do not travel by sea.
It is such fun to see a lady dressed in pink satin and blue silk
boots get a sudden ducking in salt water, or to watch in safety from
the shore a boat full of anxious and highly dressed colonels and
sugar-boilers, editors and lawyers, get drenched to the skin, and
almost robbed of their breath, in trying to effect a landing at Islay,
or Mollendo, Iquique, or Chala, or even Callao.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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