Two months later, in the forests of Brazil, we were to see what the sun of the tropics does in stimulating an exuberant life: here we saw what beauty he can give to sterility.
This "Pampa," or flat stretch of ground over which the railroad runs, is the first step eastward and upward from the sea on to the great inner plateau of Peru, and has a height of from four to five or six thousand feet. Its surface is generally level, yet broken by ridges and hummocks of rock, and dotted all over by mounds of fine grey or brownish sand composed of minute shining crystals. These sand hills, called médanos, are mostly crescent shaped, much like the moon in its first quarter, steep on the convex side, and from ten to fifteen or even twenty feet high. They drift from place to place under the south wind, which blows strongly and steadily during the heat of the day, the convex of the crescent always facing the wind. Sometimes they are swept on to and block the railway line; and when this is apprehended large stones are heaped up at the convex of the crescent and the movement is thus arrested or the sand dissipated. Such scanty vegetation as we had seen on the mist-covered hills toward the coast, has here quite disappeared under the fiery sun, – not even a cactus lifts its stiff stem. It is all sand and rocks, till the line, having run for some twenty miles across the Pampa, enters and begins to climb the second stairway of mountains to another and higher level, which forms the second terrace over which the way lies to the central plateau. The stairway is that line of red and grey mountains which were described as filling the middle distance in the view from Cachendo. Winding up through their hollows and along their faces the train enters a deep gorge or canyon, at the bottom of which, between vertical rock walls, is seen a foaming stream, and mounts along a ledge cut out in the side of the gorge. The canyon widens a little, and at its bottom are seen bright green patches of alfalfa, cultivated with patient toil by the Indians who water them by tiny rills drawn from the stream. At last the line emerges on open and nearly level ground. One has mounted the second step and reached the second terrace or shelf of the Peruvian tableland. Here on a gently rising slope, in a grand amphitheatre, the northeastern and eastern and southeastern sides of which are formed by the three great peaks, Chachani, El Misti, and Pichu Pichu stands Arequipa, the second city in Peru.
It is built on a gentle slope, on both sides of the river Chile, a torrent descending from distant snows in a broad, shallow and stony bed, and indeed owes its existence to this river, for it was the presence of water, enabling a little oasis in the desert to be cultivated, that caught the military eye of Francisco Pizarro. Discerning the need for a Spanish stronghold between the interior tableland and the coast, he chose this spot by the river at the foot of the pass that gives the easiest access to that tableland. It had already been a rest-house station, as its Quichua name implies, on one of the Inca tracks from Cuzco to the sea, along which a service of swift Indian runners is said to have been maintained by the Incas and to have carried up fresh fish to the monarch at Cuzco. It became the seat of a bishop, was soon well stocked with churches and convents, and has ever since held its head high, proud of its old families, and having escaped that occupation by the victorious Chilean army to which Lima succumbed. The air has the desert quality of purity and invigorating freshness. Although thin, for the height above the sea is over seven thousand feet,12 it is not thin enough to affect the heart or lungs of most persons in ordinary health. The sun's heat is great and there is plenty of it, for here one is quite above the region of sea mists, but there is so little to do that no one needs to work in the hot hours, and for the matter of that, nobody, except the Indians, and the clerks of a few European firms, works at all. The nights are deliciously cool. Plenty of water for fields and gardens and fountains can be drawn from the river, and if the municipal authorities took pains to clean up the city by removing rubbish, and set themselves to make the outskirts neater and plant more trees, nothing would be wanting to render Arequipa, so far as externals go, a delightful place of residence. The clearness of the air has led to its being selected as the site of an astronomical observatory maintained by Harvard University for mapping out the stars of the Southern Hemisphere. Not even in Egypt or in the deserts of South Africa do the constellations shine with a more brilliant lustre. The Harvard observers placed and for a time maintained two meteorological stations on El Misti, one near the top, at a height of 19,200 feet, another at a point they called Mont Blanc (15,700 feet). Those who know how recent is the love of mountain climbing in Europe will be interested in hearing that the volcano was ascended as far back as A.D. 1677, on which occasion the crater was exorcised and sacred relics cast into it. The observers also constructed a mule path to the summit, for though the face turned to Arequipa is steep, there is no difficulty in ascending from the north by a circuitous track. There are two craters, a newer one with a diameter of 1500 feet inside a larger one, whose diameter is 2800 feet. I could find no record of any eruption of lava or ashes since the Spanish Conquest, but the vapours in the new crater, always thick, sometimes increase sufficiently to alarm the Arequipeños.
The line of perpetual snow is extremely high in this dry region, as it is in the equally dry peaks of northern Chile. On some mountains of 19,000 feet the snow disappears in summer, except in sunless hollows.
I found myself wondering whether the fascination of the city, with views out over the furrowed desert to the west, where the sun goes down into the cloud bank that hangs over the Pacific, and views up to the tall peaks that guard it to the east, would retain its power when it had grown familiar, and wondering, also, whether, through the four centuries since Europeans came to dwell here, there were many who drew delight from the marvellous nature that surrounds it, and found in the contemplation of this extraordinary scenery some relief from the monotony of life in a society so small and so isolated. The three great mountain masses that tower over the city, emblems of solid and unchanging strength in their form, are always changing in their aspect. The snows creep down in the season of rains, and ascend again when the time of drought returns. Sunrise and sunset bring perpetual miracles of loveliness in the varying play of colours upon snow and rocks. Pichu Pichu, with its long, grey line of precipices, glows under the western sun in every tint of pink and crimson. Chachani's black pinnacles turn to a dark violet, while the snows between them redden. In the middle the broad-based cone of El Misti, with its dark lava flows and beds of brown or yellow ash, ranges from glowing orange to a purple deep as if the mountain were all colour to its core. Behind it, when twilight comes, there rises to the zenith a pale bank of pearly grey, faintly touched by the light that is dying in the west. No wonder that this solemn and majestic summit, traditions of whose outbursts of fire in days gone by still survive, has been personified and worshipped by the Indians, who, though nominally Christians, have, like other primitive races, retained a great deal of the ancient nature religion which sees spirits in all remarkable objects. The reverence for the mountain deities still lingers in secret among them, though it seldom takes form in sacrifices like those of the olden time, when, as tradition says, youths and maidens were flung into the crater to appease the wrath of the fire spirit. A Jesuit annalist relates how, in A.D. 1600, when the volcano of Omate, farther to the southeast, was in violent eruption, casting forth showers of ashes which fell round Arequipa, darkening the sky, while a glow of lurid light shone from the distant crater, the Indian wizards robed themselves in red and offered to Omate sacrifices of sheep and fowls, beseeching the mountain not to overwhelm them. Then he adds, "These wizards told the Indians that they talked to the Devil, who told them of the approaching catastrophe, and said that Omate had asked El Misti to join him in destroying all the Spaniards. But El Misti answered that he could not help Omate, because he had been made a Christian and had received the name of San Francisco; so Omate was obliged to undertake the work alone."13
Built far more solidly than Lima, with house walls five or six feet thick, and lying more out of the stream of modernizing conditions, Arequipa has retained an air of antiquity, and, it may be said, of dignity, superior to that of the capital. As one looks northeastward from the lower part of the town up the rising ground, the numerous churches, with here and there a tall conventual pile, make a varied and effective skyline. The gardens on the higher northwestern bank of the river relieve the mass of houses, and the yellowish grey volcanic stone of which they are built, mellowed by the strong sun, shews well against the purple mass of Misti. There are some picturesque street vistas too, but one misses the bright colours of peasant dress which a city of Old Spain or Italy would shew.
The Harvard Observatory Report gives it as 7550.
Quoted in the learned notes to Mr. Bandelier's valuable book,
