are largely in black. The black manta drawn over the head is absolutely prescribed for church; indeed, even a European visitor is not allowed to enter a church anywhere in these countries in hat or toque; she must cover her head with the manta.
The houses are low, for here, too, earthquakes are dreaded, and the streets roughly paved with large cobblestones of hard, smooth lava. Streams of water drawn from the river run down many of them, and other streams water the fields along the outskirts. Here and there one sees a garden planted with dark green trees, which relieve the glare of light. The Plaza, less ample than that of Lima, is hardly less striking, with the great pile of the Cathedral occupying more than half of one side of it, arcades filled with shops bordering the other three sides, flowers and shrubs planted in the middle. Everything reminds one of the Asiatic or North African East, – the long, low, blank house walls which enclose the streets, walls into which few and small windows open, because the living rooms look into a central yard or patio; the concentration of the better sort of shops in arcades which represent the Eastern bazaar; the flat roofs on which people sit in the evenings; the deep and pungent dust; the absence of wheeled vehicles; for everybody rides, the richer on horses and the rest of the world on donkeys; the scantily dressed Indians, wild looking as Bedaween, though with reddish brown instead of yellowish brown skins. Instead of camels there are llamas, the one native beast of burden in Peru, much smaller than the camel and more handsome, but not unlike it in its large lustrous eyes, and in the poise of its long neck, with the small erect head slightly thrown back. It resembles the camel also in its firm resolve not to move except at its own fixed pace, and to bear no load heavier than that (of one hundred pounds) to which it is accustomed. The brilliant light, too, and the dry, keen air are like the light and air of the East. But no Eastern city has around it a mountain landscape like this. One must place Tunis or Trebizond in the valley of Zermatt to get an impression of Arequipa as it stands, encircled by snow fields and majestic towers of rock.
The Oriental quality, which startles one in these Spanish-American cities of the Far West is perhaps not wholly due to the Moorish influences transmitted through their Spanish colonists. Climatic and social conditions resembling those of northern Africa and southern Spain have counted for a good deal. Sunlight and dryness prescribe certain ways of building, and the Peruvian Indian resembles the Arab or the Moor in his indifference to cleanliness and comfort. Here in Arequipa, one begins to realize that Peru is in respect of population still essentially a land of the aborigines. All the lower kinds of work are done by Indians, and the class next above is at least half Indian in blood, though not readily distinguishable from the man of Spanish stock, either in aspect or in character and manners. The negro who still abounds at Lima and Callao, though he is beginning to be absorbed into the mass of whites, is no longer seen at Arequipa, for he cannot stand this cold, thin, highland air; and even the zambo, a half-breed of Indian and negro, who is said to want the best qualities of both races, is a trifling element. Here and elsewhere in South America it is impossible to determine the proportion of perfectly pure Spanish families to the whole population. Probably it is small, not five per cent over the whole country, but in Arequipa it may be much larger.
In one respect the city, while thoroughly Spanish, is very unlike the East. It is, and always has been, steeped in ecclesiasticism. The Cathedral is a long and handsome pile, rebuilt after the earthquake of 1868, with two towers on its south front, and an unusually spacious and unadorned interior. It contains a picture attributed to Van Dyck. There is one other church of special interest, that called the "Compañia," i. e. church of the Company of Jesus. Everywhere in South America the Jesuits were numerous, wealthy, and powerful till their suppression in the middle of the eighteenth century; and here, as in many Italian and Spanish towns, their churches are the most profusely decorated without and within. The north façade of this one, built of reddish grey sandstone, is a wonderfully rich and finely wrought piece of ornamentation, and the seventeenth century pictures and wood carvings of the interior are curious if not beautiful specimens of the taste of the time. There are scores of other churches and convents, far more than sufficient for a city of thirty-five thousand people. Their bells clang all day long, and clerical costumes are everywhere in the streets. What is still more remarkable, the men, as well as the women, are practising Catholics, and attend church regularly, a rare thing in most parts of Spanish America. The city was always an ecclesiastical stronghold, and during the long War of Independence, was accounted the most conservative place in Peru. Indeed, it is so still.
But if Arequipa seems old-fashioned and conservative to-day, when a railway connecting it with the coast brings it within three days of Lima, what must it have been two centuries ago, when probably one-third of the white population consisted of priests, monks, and nuns, and the Church ruled unquestioned?
One can imagine no spot more absolutely cut off than this was from the world outside. It was an oasis like Tadmor in the wilderness. Three days' journey across desolate wastes lay between it and the coast, a coast itself scarcely inhabited, and behind towards the north and east there were only mountain solitudes, over which pastoral Indians roved. The bishop and the head of the Jesuits were the real powers, even the governor, and beneath him the alcalde, bowing to them. Nowhere in the world to-day could one find anything like that uniformity of opinion and custom which reigned in this little, remote city in those colonial days which came down into the days of Hume and Bentham in England, of Voltaire and Rousseau in France, and indeed down almost to the memory of men still living. The vision of the Holy Office in the background at Lima was hardly needed to enforce absolute submission of word and thought in such a society. The traveller of to-day marvels at the stillness and stagnation of one of the smaller cities in the interior of Old Spain. Yet a Spanish city, however small or remote, is at least in Europe: there are other cities not far off, and men come and go. Here there were no breaks in the monotony of life, nothing but local interests of the most trivial sort to occupy men's minds. The only events were feast days and religious processions, with now and then an earthquake, and once, thirty years before the War of Independence, the terror of an Indian insurrection far up in the plateau.
Yet life was not wholly monastic. There was some learning, mostly theological. There was also a good deal of verse making: Arequipa was even famous for its poets. Upon what themes did their Muse employ itself? What sighs were there from nuns behind the convent walls? What sort of a human being was the bishop who walked in solemn processions behind chanting choristers to and from his Cathedral? Must there not have been even here the perpetual play of human passion, and could any weight of conservatism and convention extinguish the possibilities of romance? I heard from a trustworthy source a story which shews that even in grave and rigid Arequipa love would have its way and that the hearts of stately ecclesiastics could melt in pity. I tell it in my informant's words.
In old colonial days there lived in Arequipa a powerful family owning large estates and rich mines which they had inherited from their ancestors among the Conquistadores. They wielded authority both in Church and State. At the time when the incident to be described happened the heads of the family were two brothers, of whom the elder held the landed property and the younger was bishop and ruled the Church. The elder was a widower with two children, a son and a daughter. The great convent of Nuestra Señora de los Dolores, founded and richly endowed by this family, always had one of its members as its Abbess, and at that time the only sister of these two brothers held the post. The family, being a power in Arequipa, sought to preserve their supremacy, and accordingly decided that the young daughter of the elder brother should enter the convent and eventually succeed her aunt as Abbess, while her brother should marry and inherit the estates. The girl had no vocation for a religious life and rebelled against the fate proposed for her, but the father and uncle were inexorable, and after a vain struggle she was forced to yield and take the veil. Her aunt felt sympathy for the poor child, having perhaps passed through a like experience herself, and she made the young sister's religious duties as light as possible, allowing her to lead the choir, as she possessed a fine voice, and giving her the business of the convent to attend to. Embroidery was one of the occupations of the nuns, especially fine work on linen, the designs for which were brought from Spain; and to supervise this work and to take care of it was one of the girl's chief pleasures. She always despatched it to the laundry herself and received it on its return, laying it carefully in the presses perfumed with jasmine
