Peru in the Guano Age. Duffield Alexander James
neither moral nor intellectual capacity, utterly innocent of any culture, or regard for it; of no manners or good customs that could reflect honour on the English name, and who gained fortunes after such fashion as only the practices of a corrupt government could sanction or connive at. Few English ladies have ever been permanently resident in Lima. It has been visited by one or two showy examples of the money-monger class; but the Lima people have not had the opportunity of knowing by actual contact in their own country the gentry of England. This has been a disadvantage to us and to them of the greatest magnitude: for while we have accepted the hospitality of Peru, we have not returned it in a manner worthy of the English name.
Nor can it be said that English travellers who have written on Peru make any very great figure in the cause of truth and honesty; whilst the amount of literary pilfering has been almost as notorious as that of the pillage of the public treasury by native officers of state.
The commanders and petty officers of the Steam Navigation Company in the Pacific come more in contact with the better class of Peruvians than any other portion of the English community. Among these numerous officers there are a few to be met with who can speak grammatical English. No doubt, grammar to a sailor is an irksome thing, at any rate it is a thing of minor importance, and we rather like our sailors to be free of everything except their courage, their gentleness, their love of truth, and, above all, their glorious self-abnegation. But it is a pitiable sight to see a British tar with lavender kid-gloves on his fists, Havannah cigars in his great mouth, widened by an early love for loud oaths, rings on his fingers, and other apings of the fine gentleman; and it is disgusting to see him dressed in an authority he knows not how to adorn, and placed in a position which he can only degrade. Yet these British tars are looked up to as English gentlemen, and, what is more, as English captains; and not a few Peruvians come to the natural conclusion that it is no great thing to be an English gentleman after all.
It is very grievous to make these remarks; justice demands, however, that if we would criticise the Peruvians from an English standpoint, we should take into consideration the English example which has been placed before them during all the years of an Age of Guano.
An English sailor in every part of the commercial world which he visits is too often a disgrace to himself and a dishonour to his country. But in Peru he is a standing disgrace to humanity. When on shore, if he is not drunk, he is kicking up a row. His language is foul, his manners brutal, his associates the off-scouring of the people, and his appearance that of a wild beast. We have of late been turning our attention to unseaworthy ships, and the amount of wise and unwise talk that this important subject has evoked has been great and surprising. It is a pity that no one has thought it necessary to take up the subject of the unworthy sailor, which should include not only the ignorant, drunken, and grossly depraved seaman, but the oftentimes illiterate, ill-conditioned, and brutal creature called a captain, who commands him. There are many considerations why the captain of a British ship should be a man of good character, and there are imperative reasons why he should be compelled to earn a certificate of good conduct, as well as a certificate of proficiency in the science of navigation. The ability to represent the country whose flag he carries, as a man well-instructed and of good manners, is not the least of those reasons.
I recently had the opportunity of becoming personally acquainted with nearly five hundred captains of merchant ships in the Pacific. I am ashamed to confess that the French, the Italian, the North American, and the Swede were everyway superior men to the English captains. There were exceptions of course; the superiority was not in physical force, but in intelligence, in manners, in the cleanliness in which they lived, and the sobriety of their lives. If the Pabellon de Pica may be compared to a pig-stye, the British sailors who frequent its strand may be likened unto swine. Indeed, it is an insult to that filth-investigating but sober brute to compare him with a being who at certain times is at once a madman, a drunkard, and not infrequently a murderer. It is not easy to escape the conviction that captains such as these must be of use to their employers, and are needed for purposes for which ordinary criminals would be unfitted. At the Pabellon de Pica a choice selection of these British worthies may be seen daily getting drunk on smuggled beer, winding up with smuggled brandy, wallowing among the filthiest filth of that foul concourse of filthy inhuman beings, a detestable example to all who witness it; and a living ensample of what England now is to a guano-selling people.
All this has come of our trying to do some justice to the Peruvians, and no doubt it will become us as quickly as possible to attend to the mote which is in our own eye.
It should likewise be borne in mind that the Peruvians have suffered the greatest indignities at the hands of successive British Governments. Claims for money of the most vexatious, frivolous and irritating nature have been pressed upon Peru with an arrogance equal only to their ridiculous extravagance. When at last, with great difficulty, our Government has been induced to submit one of these claims to arbitration, judgment has invariably been given against us – as it only could, or ought to have been given.
This chapter should not be closed without noticing the fact that for nearly fifty years the English have had their own burying-place at Bella Vista, which is midway between Lima and Callao, and their own church and officiating chaplain. The Jews likewise have their synagogue, the Freemasons their lodges, the Chinese their temples; and although liberty of worship is not the law of the land, the utmost toleration in religious matters exists. The women of Lima, who have retained the old religion with ten times more firmness than the men, are the sole opponents of all religious reforms in the Peruvian Constitution. And because it is the women who stand in front of their Church, guarding it with their lives, let us have some respect for them. They are a powerful and determined body, as courageous as they are beautiful, which is saying much. In times of great excitement they will take part in the parliamentary debates! Not, indeed, in a parliamentary and constitutional manner, but in a manner quite effectual. These fair champions of their Church, when liberty of worship, or liberty of teaching, or any question that touches the Roman Catholic faith is being debated in the assembly, proceed thither in the tapada attire, with only one eye visible, and from the Ladies' Gallery will throw handfuls of grass to a speaker – intimating thereby his relationship to one of our domestic quadrupeds – or garlands of tinsel, just as it pleases them, and as the words of the speaker are for or against their cause. Our own House of Commons should take knowledge of this, and pause before they remove the lattice work from before their Ladies' Gallery!
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