"The agent has been employed at all hours, | both day and night, in making settlements of crops between, in many cases, lazy, idle freedmen, and thieving, cheating employers. "Saturdays and Mondays are devoted to office duty; other week-days to visiting plantations; and Sundays to Freedmen's Sunday - schools, church quarrels, and fights among the brethren." THE "Lines on the letter H," published in the October Number of the Drawer, have brought from a fair correspondent at Cooperstown the name of their author, Catherine Fanshawe, who was conspicuous among the literary celebrities of London during the early part of the present century. Miss Mitford, in her "Recollections of a Literary Life," says: "The 'letter H' (I mean the enigma so called, ascribed to Lord Byron) she wrote at the Deepdene. I well remember her bringing it down at breakfast and reading it to us, saying that she had just composed it.” We give another riddle-a charade-written by Miss Fanshawe: "Inscribed on many a learned page, Long time my first has stood; Till clothed in flesh and blood. "My second is a glorious prize Ye Gods! how they would scamper! The Salique law reversing. JUDGE DOWLING, of the Tombs Police-Court, frequently takes long walks about the city. At the entrance of Central Park he lately encountered a peddler, who told him, as an inducement to buy his wares, that they were surreptitiously obtained in Philadelphia-" In fact, Sir, stolen;" and he could afford to sell them cheap-a very common trick of peddlers to dispose of inferior articles. The Judge talked to the man until he had fully committed himself; and when again asked by the importunate dealer "what he would take," answered: "Since they are so cheap, and since you say you stole them, I'll take the whole stock." And calling a policeman who knew him, he ordered the goods to be seized and turned over to his desk-the property-clerk of the Tombs Court-and they were. EX-JUDGE REYNOLDS, of the City Court of Brooklyn, is as modest a man as he is an able lawyer. Lately, while summing up in the case of Dunsmore vs. Reikes, he had occasion to quote one of his own decisions on a point of law, and asked permission of the presiding Judge (Thompson), with an apology for doing so. In the course of his apology he remarked, desiring to show that he had not had the decision published: 66 How in heaven it was ever reported I don't know." One of the jurors asked, quietly: “Was it reported in heaven, Judge?" The Judge smiled audibly, and blushed. "If not reported in heaven, perhaps 'twas muttered in hell," suggested the juror, having the memory of the famous enigma in his mind. EVERY one has noticed the incongruous readings which are often found on places well plastered or papered with hand-bills. The amiable wife of A. Oakey Hall-late a candidate for District-Attorney of New York County, and, we are happy to know, the successful one-relates that she was astonished to find, from some of these hand-bills, that the New York public were seriously advised to "Buy the best Fireside Companion, A. Oakey Hall." THE late Henry K. Smith, of Buffalo, was not only remarkable for high legal attainments and commanding eloquence, but, as a companion and raconteur, the writer has never known his superior. During his incumbency of the office of Recorder there were in Buffalo several droll characters, runners for steamboats, who were noted for rough-and-ready wit, chief of whom was Fred Emmons. Fred had been indicted for some violation of law, but, in one way and another, had managed to have his trial postponed. Tired of evasions, the Recorder, when the case was next called, told Emmons that no further delay would be permitted. Frederick, seeing that his time had come, proceeded to "the dock," as the steamboat region is designated, and secured the services of five notorious roughs as witnesses. With these he returned to the court-house, and awaited the action of the Court. His Honor soon entered, took his seat, and said: "Well, Emmons, are your witnesses here?" "Yes, your Honor.' "Are you ready, Mr. District Attorney ?" "Yes, Sir." "How many witnesses have you?" "Three," replied the public prosecutor. "And how many have you, Emmons?" "There they sit, your Honor, a full' three knaves and two deuces, and you know, Judge, that beats trays' any day!" 6 It did; but there was some remarkable swearing. Is there a gentleman among us who has been in Washington at any time during the last fiveand-twenty years who has not had the honor of an introduction to Beau Hickman? The last time the writer saw the "Beau" he remarked that he was "now taking 25-cent chips" from gentlemen, which was beggarly compared with the golden-ingot era of Webster and Clay. We noticed that he limped a little, and that a hole had been cut in his shoe. We asked the cause, and hoped it was not gout. "Ah no," said Beau; "it's not that. If I were a wealthy gentleman like yourself I might call it gout, but if you wish to know the actual truth, and won't repeat it, I'll tell you.” We promised. "Well," replied the Bean, "my private opinion is that it's whisky on the hoof!" NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. No. CCXV.-APRIL, 1868.-VOL. XXXVI. AMONG THE ANDES OF PERU AND BOLIVIA. 1.-OVER THE CORDILLERA. vain; every day the darkness deepened, and WHEN, fifteen years ago, I prepared for after some months of ineffectual treatment I this Magazine an article on "Ancient Peru," embodying the results of rather extensive investigations among books and manuscripts, I little thought I should ever be able to realize my dream of visiting and exploring the vast region in which was established the largest and best-organized of the aboriginal empires of America, and which was the theatre of the boldest and most dramatic of the Spanish conquests. Yet among Time's changes and accidents came one to me sad and appalling, but which led to the realization of my early dream. Stricken with amaurosis, in the most active and exciting period of our civil war, the light faded away before my eyes, and a dark veil fell slowly between them and the bright and moving world. The skill of the oculist was exerted in was told, kindly but firmly, that further applications were useless, and that perhaps absolute mental rest and a total change of life might reinvigorate the overworked nerves, and restore, in part at least, my failing vision. A few days afterward, and while suffering under a depression of spirits which only those who have been threatened with blindness can comprehend, I received, from an old and steadfast friend in the Department of State, information of the probable speedy appointment of a mixed commission to sit in Lima "for the settlement of all outstanding claims and points of difference between the United States and Peru," and intimating that my name had been mentioned in connection with the appointment. My ambition to visit the land of the Incas was re Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by Harper and Brothers, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern District of New York. VOL. XXXVI.-No. 215.-00 vived by this intelligence, which created a mental reaction that, no doubt, went far to check the advance of disease. A month later, with my credentials as Commissioner, I was on board a filthy Vanderbilt steamer, bound for the "City of the Kings," as the old, luxurious, licentious capital of Peru was proudly called under the Spanish rule. word the quaint old city of Panama, through which the tides of emigration have twice flowed once toward the golden shores of Peru, and again upon the doubly golden strands of California. Quaint, picturesque Panama, with its ruined temples, vine-covered and blossoming walls, slouching negroes, and fruit-laden bongos. We will not touch at the emerald islands in its bay, where yellow plantains, russet cocoa-nuts, and golden oranges, glow out from the eternal green of the trees; nor will we linger at Guayaquil, where the mangroves, like inverted forests, line the slimy shores of its sluggish river, congenial homes of the scaly cayman, and where slumbers sultry and eternal noon. We will not stop for more than a passing glance at the Isla del Muerto, which looks through the yellow haze like some dead giant floating on a drifting plank in the ocean. Nor will we give more than a passing glance at the Island of Puna, where Pizarro bore up so long and faithfully against open foes and treacherous friends, and organized that force wherewith he reduced the grandest, richest, and most powerful of the ancient empires of America. At the end of two years, mainly spent in explorations of the country, and during which time I had traveled not far from five thousand miles, crossing and recrossing the Cordillera and the Andes, from the Pacific to the Amazonian rivers, traversing nearly the whole of the great Andean Plateau-the Thibet of America-sleeping in rude Indian huts or on bleak punos in the open air, in hot valleys or among eternal snows, gathering with eager zeal and omnivorous appetite all classes of facts relating to the country, its people, its present and its past—at the end of two years I found myself, surrounded with my trophies of travel, on the deck of a swaying steamer in the harbor of Callao, homeward bound, brown in color, firm in muscle, and with my sight practically restored. It will require much time, robbed fragmentally from absorbing occupations, and a labor far less stimulating than was spent in collecting my data, to properly prepare them for the public eye; but meantime, perhaps, the readers of this Magazine may not be indisposed to hear something of Peru, its vast interior, its high plains, mighty mountains, and great lakes whose bosoms lie level with the summits of the Alps-as well as of the strange and imposing monuments of human art and ancient greatness which are crumbling away in sea-coast valleys, or which, in stony solidity, defy time and the elements on the lofty table-lands of Cuzco and Titicaca. They may be interested to know some-iron custom-house of pale gray, and a church thing of the descendants of the Children of the Sun, whose pride and state rivaled those of Oriental potentates, and whose tragic fate gives to their history the interest of romance. Hardly less interesting will it be to know something of the descendants of the Pizarros and Almagros, and what relations they hold toward the people whose empire they subverted and religion they overthrew what are their hopes as a nation and their prospects as a republic. Upon these points something may be learned in the following pages; and without further introduction I ask the reader first to climb with me the mighty Cordillera, into the lofty terrestrial basin of Southern Peru and Bolivia, where repose the silent, enigmatical ruins of Tiahuanaco, the Baalbec of the New World; and then to accompany me to the great lake of Titicaca and its Sacred Islands, whence the Incas dated their origin; and go with me thence, following the footsteps of Manco Capac to Cuzco, the City of the Sun, the capital of the Inca empire, and the Rome of the Western World. We will pass over the intervening six thousand miles of sea, leave behind us without a Coasting along the shores of Ecuador, we may perhaps catch a glimpse of Chimborazo, flaunting its banner of smoke in mid-heaven; but, at any rate, we shall see every where a low strip of dingy green, backed by umber-colored mountains, and behind them a blue range, tipped here and there with the white of eternal snow. This is the great volcanic range of the Cordillera. By-and-by we turn in toward the land. A cliff of pale gray rock; a narrow beach of pale gray sand; a cluster of pale gray houses, resembling for all the world the nests of the eaves-swallow; with a petty mole, an of the same color; the whole half-defined, and to the stranger appearing to be only a claybank, fantastically worn by the rains. Here we have Paita, the first port in Peru at which touch the steamers of the British South Pacific Mail Steamship Company-a line originated by an American, who had to sell his birth-right to England because American capital was too cowardly and too little enterprising to do for America the work Americans ought to do. You will probably go ashore at Paita, and, with me, traverse the narrow pale gray streets, between the most comical houses of canes and pale gray mud, and mount the pale gray cliffs, and look out listlessly upon the vast plain of pale gray sand, which stretches away twenty leagues to Piura, of which the cluster of huts in Paita is the port. You will be thirsty when you return from this pale gray expedition, and will be told that the water you drink, to wash out your pale gray reminiscences, is brought from a distance of thirty miles on the backs of donkeys. You will not be sorry when you leave Paita, but you will wonder what this portion of burnt-out creation was made for, when the captain tells you that you have seen Peru, or at least its coast, fairly typified in and from the coast, where the streams emerge from around Paita, and that for two thousand miles the snowy mountains in a full and perennial you will find only this dreary waste of barren volume before they are drunk up by the thirsty rock and sand, treeless and lifeless, traversed sands. We touch at but one harbor, as we only here and there, at long intervals, by rib- sail along under the shadow of this desolate bon-like valleys of green, marking the course table-land, that of Islay, the port of the second of some small stream or river struggling down city in Peru, Arequipa, ninety miles distant infrom the mountains to the sea. Bold men were land, and only to be reached by a forced ride the conquistadors who coasted slowly along these of that length over a desert of shifting sands, arid shores in face of the prevailing south wind in which not a drop of water is to be found nor and against the great Antarctic current. No- a blade of grass to be seen. Islay is merely a thing short of an absorbing love of adventure, wretched collection of huts perched on a corand a consuming and quenchless avarice, could roded cliff, full of dark caverns, in which are have prevented them from putting down their to be discerned only the flash of the ocean spray, helms and flying shudderingly from the Great or the gleam of the white wings of the thousands Desolation before them. of sea-birds which, with multitudes of howling seals, give all there is of life to the shores and islands of Peru. Three days from Paita, passing too far from the shore to enable us to see the city of Truxillo, around which spread out the vast ruins of Grand Chimu, we find rising bluff before us, crowned by a light-house in the clouds, the bold island of San Lorenzo, inside of which is the harbor of Callao, with its busy huddle of steamers and forest of masts standing out in relief against the yellow walls of the Castle of San Felipe, above whose massive battlements the Spanish flag waved for the last time in Continental America. A noisy crowd of negroes, cholos, Chinese, and vagrant fellows of all nations receives us on the mole, where there is a guard of soldiers in red trowsers, and a uniform altogether out-Frenching France, with officers each bearing more golden lace on his person than would fit out a dozen Brigadiers. Two considerable streams enter the sea near Callao, the Rimac and the Chillon, and their valleys widen out as they approach the ocean, forming a level district of considerable extent, in the centre of which is Lima, the capital of Peru. Behind it rise high, snow-capped mountains, among whose topmost peaks are the fa- | mous silver mines of Cerro de Pasco. We will not stop to visit Lima now, but leave it and its busy port behind us and continue our course down, or as it is called here, up the coast. For a hundred miles, to the port of Pisco, the shore preserves its aspect of a desert, with the single interruption of the small but wonderfully rich and productive valley of Cañete. At Pisco the stream of the same name comes down to the sea, through a valley literally purple with the grape. Off this valley lie the high, rocky, guano-covered islands of the Chinchas, repulsive repositories of treasures richer than the glittering mines of Golconda or Potosi. Beyond Pisco the bare, treeless, silent mountains come close to the sea. I call them mountains, and so they appear to us, but they are only the broken edges of a high desert plateau, undermined by the ocean and corroded by the ceaseless south wind. But one or two streams succeed in penetrating this high desert, and their beds are mere cañons or narrow gorges, with no interval land, and affording no soil nor room for culThe towns that exist stand back at the foot of the Cordillera, sixty or a hundred miles ture. The great table-land of which I have spoken, and along which we sail so closely that its rugged edges shut out from sight the monarch mountains beyond, extends all the way to Arica, the last port but one in Peru, and the principal one in its southern Department of Moquegua, whence we shall start inland on our rough mountain journey. It is gray morning when our steamer slacks up before the port, and moves slowly to her buoy in the open roadstead. To the right, projecting boldly through the thin mist, half made up of spray from the surf that beats on the rocky shore, and which exaggerates its preportions, we discern the great Morro or headland of Arica. Its face is frayed, seamed, and corroded, and is full of caves and dark, inaccessible grottoes which a Scandinavian imagination would fill with gray, elfin creatures, deformed and malicious, but which our unimaginative glasses show us to be the roosts and refuges of the countless water-fowl that flap and shriek around us, and dash up the smooth sea in showers of spray in their eager pursuit of the myriads of fishes that fill these quiet waters. On the very brow of the Morro we detect moving figures, and make out a rude battery, mounted with a few guns, which has been hurriedly erected with a view to intimidate or repel the Spaniards, who have just seized on the Chincha Islands. To the left of the headland there is a low line of verdure, a cluster of modern-built houses, a gayly painted church, and a mole-the latter giving us comforting assurance that here we are not to be obliged to perform the difficult feat of landing on the shoulders of a stalwart cholo, staggering over rolling stones through a thundering surf. This is Arica, the port of Tacna, forty miles distant inland in the direction of the snowy Cordillera that lies, in a long line, crowned with frosted silver, high up beyond a great and ominous range of umber-colored and treeless mountains. A railway, the longest and almost the only one in Peru, connects Arica with Tacna; and puffs of steam rising fitfully near a long and low, and rather dingy building, indicate the hither terminus of the iron road. |