peremptorily warned to desist by the presence of symptoms that menace a decline or consumption.
Hence most ladies in Lima are under the necessity of employing black and brown nurses, who are usually slaves either purchased for milk-nurses or hired out for this purpose.
The skin of the negro appears to be cooler than that of the Indian or white race, and this may possibly have been the origin of the prevailing idea already alluded to, that the milk of the negress is more cooling and refreshing than that of the Indian woman,[6] who, though in other respects a healthy and proper person, is never considered eligible as a milk-nurse, when in this character a negress can be procured.
It unfortunately happens, however, that the predilection thus shown for negresses and those dark women who are nearest allied to the negro race, frequently exposes the white mother’s child to a series of evils, such as imperfect nutrition, contamination of blood, and permanent constitutional injury, all originating in the peculiar circumstances and individual character of milk-nurses; of whom a single child may have been so unfortunate as to have had as many as half a dozen, and to have suffered successively from the blemishes of each. When the young Don, thus nurtured in the very lap of bondage, comes to be fit for school, he goes to, and comes from it, in the company of a slave; and the young Miss, or Niña, who goes out to be educated, is, on her way to and from her parents’ house, attended by a sort of dueña, or experienced zamba. On the customary plea, that the evils of life come early enough, children of gentle blood, especially such as are “rubios,” or fair-complexioned, are allowed all manner of gusto, or indulgence; and in the morning, before they set out for school, they usually receive a real or medio—sixpence or threepence—either as pocket-money, or as a bribe to be obedient and to submit to be taught. In this way expensive habits are early acquired, and mere children made to do what is right and proper from pecuniary motives, rather than a laudable sense of duty.
Reviewing the effects of a close social union, from infancy upwards, between white children and their slave companions, who are seldom endowed with shame or modesty, we are led to remark that, without desiring to make any insinuations against the natural capacity for moral and intellectual improvement observable among all the races of mankind, or wishing in any degree to depreciate the merit of individuals of pure or mixed African and slave descent, we think it may be truly affirmed, that even minds of a naturally amiable and delicate bias, when led habitually to accommodate themselves to the grovelling feelings and propensities of the more degraded portion of our kind, undergo deterioration by degrees, and slide into a participation of the qualities of a baser nature, with which they inevitably amalgamate their own. The proper medium of domestic intimacy allowable between masters and slaves, may be a nice matter to determine with precision; but it may be said in general, that in proportion as this immediate intercourse may meliorate the condition, and quicken the intelligence, of the slave, it tends to lower the tone of morality in that society where slavery is tolerated. Thus, we doubt not, the standard of morals is lowered, and we conceive it may be owing to this very alloy of character that, until very lately, the sheer ruffian was seldom met with, even among the lowest of the dark septs in the voluptuous capital of Peru. Assassinations, it must be owned, have been rather frequent of late years, and these have been almost always perpetrated with impunity; but there is reason to believe that the agents concerned in such atrocious crimes were in many instances not sons of the soil, but outcasts and fugitives from neighbouring states. Money, not blood, is what the worst of the dark native vagabonds of the coast are generally in quest of; and he who does not offer resistance when accosted by the robber, but, instead of armour, carries a few dollars or a couple of doubloons for his ransom, may nine times in ten be suffered to escape with entire personal safety from the midst of the most lawless marauders and dreaded highwaymen, who are usually no other than renegade slaves.
CHAPTER VI.
Social state of the Limenians under the Spaniards and Patriots.—Spanish colonists.—Style of conversation.—Improvements in female education.—Zamba attendants.—Omnipotence of the ladies at fifteen.—Esprit de corps of the fair sex.—Forgiving temper of public opinion.—Defective administration of justice.—Prerogative called Empeño.—God-fathers and god-mothers.—Saint-day parties.—Flowers and perfumes.—Limenian women excel in attention to the sick.—General character of the white women and dark races.—Boys of European race.—Few men of intellectual habits.—Promenade of Amencaes, as illustrative of national feeling and character.—Pillo and Pillo-fino.—Money a substitute for morality.—Relaxation of morals general, but not universal.
Persons of sufficiently mature age in Lima never fail to acknowledge, and often delight to tell us, that before the great revolution, and during the tranquil period of their own early recollections, their fellow-citizens and countrymen were in general fair and upright in their ordinary dealings; and that good humour, happiness, and gaiety of heart were inseparable from their frequent public meetings and social recreations.
But this sound and amicable spirit, which indeed appears to have diffused itself pretty generally in the time of the Spanish dynasty, we may trace as emanating from the many estimable and courteous qualities of those more enlightened Europeans, by whose superior capacity and direction the then existing order of society was so long and quietly upheld in this and in other sections of the New World. The past state of things was nevertheless faulty in many respects. It involved an uncontrolled indulgence in sensual gratification, though the memory of many a disappointed patriot likes to dwell on it as on the flowery retrospect of his happiest days. But Lima is no longer a garden of roses, or a bower of delight. One day, in speaking of the change to the worse that the revolution had brought about in the social system of his country, a venerable old man remarked, “Formerly there was a heart to feel, and a hand to give; but now they have left us neither friendship nor pity: you find not whom to trust; and men, without regard to right or justice, keep all to themselves with the close unyielding grasp of the ape when she clasps her young to her bosom.”
An unbounded love of superficial display engages the minds of the people so fully as to have superseded, to a great extent, active benevolence, and sterling, honourable dealing between man and man; and we must confess that the yet inexperienced creoles, left to themselves, show, in the management of their own affairs, slender political discretion and no shining public virtue.
But yet, as a whole, the Peruvians, for whose manifold faults very great allowances should be made, have, in an eminent degree, the redeeming qualities of soft, attractive manners, and a mild, prepossessing address. These agreeable characteristics, not so frequently as could be wished associated with a manly openness and frankness of mind, sometimes serve, in the present evil times, as a ready cloak to exclude the ken of those whom they are willing to deceive.
If these secluded people, too long accustomed to servitude and ease during the luxurious dynasty of their European masters, were once induced—which, under good moral management, they easily might be—to make honesty and industry more prevalent virtues than they are at present among the bulk of the population, then they might realize, more largely than they have yet done, the advantages of that unsettled freedom, which, with feelings of pardonable exultation, they pride themselves in possessing; and, with such an amendment on their moral features, their richly varied country, with all its natural superiorities and improvable resources, might soon be transformed into an earthly elysium. But the germ of true political liberty must be better cultivated than it has yet been among them, and protected by a steady, disinterested, and patriotic government, before the soil can be made to throw out its latent luxuriance, or generous and noble virtues freely unfold themselves in the heads and hearts of a newly independent, uninstructed, and heterogeneous population.
The common race of Spaniards from old Spain, who established themselves and reared families in Peru, appear to have been, as we formerly signified, men of strict commercial integrity,
