hucksters surround the place with tables, selling cakes, candies, ice-cream, and peanuts, and all the populace come out to gossip and flirt. These festivals furnish about the only opportunity for Vilkins to get a word alone with his Dinah, for on a “Buena Noche” he can offer her his arm, and promenade up and down the plaza, murmuring soft nothings in her ear as long as she will hear them, or until the great bell of San Pedro strikes midnight, when there are a hustle and a bustle, and everybody goes home. Some of the largest and finest stores in Lima are owned and managed by Chinese merchants, who have the monopoly of the trade in mantas and silk dress-goods. Italians usually keep the bodegas and eating-houses. There are half a dozen large American mercantile establishments, and the house of Grace Brothers, of which Mr. William R. Grace, ex-mayor of New York, is the head, practically monopolizes the foreign trade of Peru. Much of the business in the interior is done by itinerant peddlers, who carry their wares on their backs, and tramp over the whole continent from the Isthmus to Patagonia. There is also a class of itinerant doctors of Indian blood, called _collahuayas_, who travel on foot from Bogota, in Colombia, to Buenos Ayres, carrying the news from place to place, and practising a sort of voodoo system over the sick. They are well known throughout the country, and exercise a remarkable influence among the natives, who entertain them as guests of distinction wherever they go. All the benevolent institutions of Lima are supported by a “Sociedad de Beneficencia,” an organization of citizens who raise money by private subscriptions, and by bull-fights, cock-fights, and lotteries. The Penitentiary is a noble building, erected on the plan of the Philadelphia House of Correction, by a Philadelphia architect, the prisoners in which are engaged in making uniforms, shoes, and other equipments for the army. Capital punishment is abolished in Peru, but political offenders are tried by military courts, and shot when found guilty of conspiracy or treason. There are in the prison one hundred and thirty-five unhanged murderers serving out life sentences.