"The condition of the _plaza_, in Spanish American cities, is an index of the prosperity and enterprise of the particular community. In the more wealthy and advanced towns it is well paved, and planted with shrubs and flowers, and a band, during several evenings of the week, discourses music therein, to the delight of the populace. Here pretty girls and amorous youths promenade--the only means of exercise the former are permitted, and the only general meeting-ground of the two sexes. In the interior towns of Peru the _plaza_ is often grass-grown and unpaved. It seems to reflect the poverty of its inhabitants, and to impress upon the foreigner that the country is but slowly recovering from the misfortunes of its troubled history. The traveller, accustomed to the movement and modernness of the cities of other lands, will observe the _triste_ aspect of the place with dismay, and wish he might turn his horse's head again without delay towards the coast and civilization. But the more leisurely observer will not fail to find much that is interesting even here. The buildings are quaint; the air of mediaeval times which shrouds the grass-grown _plaza_ and the half-ruined church, together with the strange garb of the Indians who slink through the streets, and the struggling evidences of modern civilization--in shop sign or municipal notice--are almost pathetic. Whatever it is, it is peaceful; the climate is bracing, the cost of living--to foreign eyes--_nil_; and do not the surrounding hills and valleys contain unknown possibilities of mineral and industrial wealth? "The society of these places consists of the official element--the prefect and other functionaries, and few professional men; the few storekeepers, and the chief landowners of the neighbourhood. There is but little social life--an occasional _baile_, a few political meetings, and the Sunday morning Mass. At the latter, the young men of the place foregather at the church door, what time the devout _señoritas_ come forth, and pass review of soft faces and flashing eyes, beneath shady mantillas. There is probably a club with billiard-tables, brought with difficulty over mountain roads, as before mentioned, and newspapers of somewhat remote date. But the chief centres for gossip-mongers are the stores, and shops where _copitas_ of brandy and native spirits are sold.