drawn from an amplitude of resource, which bespeak a broader culture than you might anticipate. Here will be heard enthusiastic odes singing of the monarch of rivers, "rocked by the Genius of the Andes in a silver cradle," wearing "the volcano's lurid light for a diadem"; next plunging into pessimism, bewailing the hardships of existence, or framing a sarcastic summary of life in such a couplet as this: "The man first respires, then aspires, Sighs next, and anon he expires."* Again a better spirit exalts man to the height of a demigod, or, suffused with a sense of the sweetness of human sympathy, proclaims: "Charity, it is thy name Fills the soul with brightest flame! Thou leadest science to noble endeavor; On gleaming pinions, forever inquiet, Thou sweetly bearest to regions celestial, And thou wreathest with palms Him who hath rapture of music, the Poet! Thou bindeth concord and love with glad fetters; Pedagogy has had its share in educating the inhabitants of the Montañaworking in a languid manner, not going deep into anything. Pedagogy, not supplemented by adequate books here, must content itself, consequently, with merest rudiments, and those stirred up into a weak emulsion with fanciful storiesstrange rhapsodical text-books, resulting, as one might presuppose, in filling the young mind with vagaries, in creating a thirst for knowledge without quenchSimon Martinez Izquierdo. + Leopoldo Cortes. ing it. Ever and again the departing traveller is besought by his host to send him "a good history of the world," a "new geography," or some long-wishedfor classic volume. In the towns are schools of considerable size, supported by taxation, aided by small fees from the patrons, heralded always by the conspicuous sign, "Escuela de la Municipalidad," a circumstance of some importance in itself, keeping before the eyes of all the fact that education is a matter of public concern, is a thing desirable, and, such as it is, easily obtainable. Further advertisement of a school's existence is afforded when in session by the vociferous babel of a hundred or more brown little youngsters vying with each other in proofs of application, which proofs seem to consist in studying lessons aloud. Each chacra also has its school, usually instituted and maintained by the doña, and here again the orthodox scholastic babel breaks the stillness which else reigns like a drowsy Sabbath. The common Indian is but a savage with some of the tricks of civilization, a house-builder, a planter of maize and yucca, a weaver of cloth and of hammocks, a fashioner of works of the fictile art of surprising beauty. Without turn-table, simply by a feeling for correct form, are these jars, urns, dishes built up by hand with wooden spatulas. The decoration has become thoroughly conventionalized, crystallized, in fact, into a type of æsthetic expression which may truly be designated art. Predominant is the old classic form of fret and chevron, executed in subdued reds and deep browns upon a gray or creamy ground. Sometimes the leading design is in very heavy lines, with the ground filled in with an exquisitely delicate tracery of similar patterns. The plant life of the forests is also reproducedvines not rudely deline ated, but forming definite curves, springing upward at the end of the pattern, and expanding into the calyx which holds the conventionalized type of a corolla, now a yellow five-rayed star, again a pink-flushed lily's cup, or a sky-blue pendent bell. The artistic spirit displayed in these recalls the wonderful works of Inca art exhumed at the noted necropolis of Ancon. The same is true of their textile fabrics. Here are the same complicated designs, the same rich coloring, worked out in cotton, and in the fibre of the chambirapalm. Of the latter are made bags, called jícaras, and mammoth hammocks, which are, in fact, only great square closely woven lustrous pieces of cloth, with stripes and simple designs in various soft shades of yellow, brown, and red. The Indian, again, manifests his appreciation of graceful form in the rounded ends of his quincha, which give an effective curve to the palm-thatched roof. A NATIVE DISTILLERY, SAN LORENZO. SPECIMEN OF NATIVE POTTERY. More curious still is the advance which, as a savage, he has made from a love of mere rhythmic sound to the production of true melodies, richly modulated, and often bearing in their strain a wail of melancholy so pathetically suggestive that, as you hear an Indian mother crooning them to her babe in these mighty wastes, where Nature, with all her bounty, has yet left man so poor, they seem to be telling the coming generations the mournful history of the struggles and emptiness of the past. Others have the rollicking spirit of revelry, and are indeed used in festal dances. The Indians employ the plaintive songs also in the more solemn ceremonies of the Church, and the tunes of the ancient wardance are incongruously added as a finale to the celebration of religious feasts. On these occasions the Indian population arrays itself in the splendor of gay feathers and painted faces; pandean pipes and snare drums (indigenous here as in other parts of the world) furnish the music, while all dance in circles and bawl songs in the intervals between draughts of maddening rum. The hideous countenances, in which the fire of liquor is heightened by the flush of scarlet paint, the brilliant head-dresses of macaws' wings, and these antique musical instruments, make one almost instinctively look for the satyr's cloven hoof, and the mind is driven to marvel what could have been the labors of the early missionaries; whether these, and such as these, are types of the cristianos they produced! It is much to be feared that these are indeed the very sort. But, however paltry the effects of the early missions may appear, it is interesting to note that at the present day far more than half of the native population of eastern Peru, having nominally become Christian, has entirely and forever ceased its ancient cannibalistic habits-a moral gain of considerable magnitude; that it has also come to look upon the Church as its guide, which means that, with the helpful influence of an increasing white population, it will be found amenable to higher principles when these shall be strongly preached to it. That these people did not long ago become better men may appear not justly chargeable to the old padres, upon reviewing the history of these "Missions of Mainas," as they were formerly called. It may appear that these old padres, whatever faults they may have to answer for, had at least a rational theory of converting the race, which their successors did not carry out. The first entrance into Mainas was made by Gonzalo Pizarro and Francisco Orellana in 1540. The latter, with his company, two friars among them feebly protesting, deserted Pizarro, and passed down the Rio Napo, and thence to the sea by way of the Amazon; fighting, "conquering," leaving a very bad impression of A JÍCARA. white men behind them. Pizarro and his followers retreated to Quito, amid starvation, fevers, running ulcers, mishaps, and miseries so dire that for sixty-two years the memory of it discouraged further effort to explore to the eastward of mighty Cotopaxi. Meantime fable filled this unknown land with the romance of warrior women and the gilded cities of El Dorado. Then Padre Rafael Ferrer, of the company of Jesuits, "being curious to explore," went alone over the mountains, down the Napo to the Amazon, and back again to Quito, "with news of what he had seen." The kindling imaginations of civilian and ecclesiastic were further fanned by a company of soldiers who, in 1616, becoming embroiled with the Indians at Santiago de las Montañas, fled down the Rio Marañon, or Amazon, shot the rapids of the Pongo de Manseriche, and presently got back to the coast, where they told of wonderful riches in Mainas, and of Indians who "desired to be Christians." Accordingly in 1631 the Franciscans sent Friar Felipe Luyendo to the upper waters of the Rio Huallaga, where he made a faint impression. Padre Domingo de Brieda and Padre Andres de Toledo, of the same order, with Captain Juan de Palacios and a few soldiers, set forth into this wilderness in 1635, wandered awhile in uninhabited regions, suffered 66 unspeakable horrors," were abandoned by a large part of their company, and at length made good their escape to Pará. The previous year, however, Mainas was first fairly laid hold of by the Spaniards, when the town of Borja was founded by Don Diego Baca de Vega, under a charter from Don Francisco de Borja, then Viceroy of Peru, and two years later Padre Gaspar de Cuxia and Padre Lucas de Cueva, Jesuits, began their labors here. The site was one unsurpassed for beauty in the entire length of the basin of the Amazon. The blue Andes rose from the very edge of the village, the river swept past in front, while the roar of the floods rushing through the narrow gorge of Manseriche mingled with the chanting of psalms by the fathers. About this time, 1637, the Portuguese, whose hostility to the Spanish yoke was growing more intense, cast a jealous eye towards Mainas, and he despatched the fearless Captain Pedro Texeira up the Amazon, up the Napo, over the snowy Andes to Quito, and back once more over the same route to Pará-a daring enterprise, but less remarkable, considering his excellent equipment of fortyseven large canoes. Padre Andre de Artieda and Padre Cristoval de Acuña went with him on the return voyage, studied the country and people, passed on to Spain, and tried, with the help of a written narrative of the journey, to enlist government aid for the missions begun at Borja. Government, however, was very busy just then with the Portuguese war, and paid no heed to the poor Jesuits, granted them not so much as an audience even. Artieda, bent on doing something, it seems, hastened back to South America, listed himself with the Quito "Audiencia," re-entered Mainas by way of Borja, and founded the mission of Omaguas in 1643. Acuña tarried at the court until, seeing no prospect of peace, he followed Artieda, but died on the road at Lima. The missions prospered "amazingly," and the Colegio de Quito was induced to send two more workers in 1648, Padre Bartolome Peres and Padre Francisco Figueroa. Not enough! Padre Cuxia "runs to Quito" in person, awakens the colegio from its lethargy, returns with three recruits and the promise of others. Within the next fifteen years the missions increased to thirteen in all, many of them in charge of new men, who had arrived with protests from Spain because the fathers accommodated the religion to the customs of the natives." The old veterans argued “poco á poco"-be not too fast; in time wheat will occupy the place of the tares; remember these are savages! But the effort at reconstruction proceeded until one fatal day in 1666, when the Cocamas revolted, painted their faces, and set out on a tour of destruction. light," he wrote, soon after his arrival. He sought to instil civilization into the Indians, brought them various tools to work with, taught old and young, was very zealous in divesting them of barbarism, and was killed and feasted on within a year. It became a remarkable case, being the first reversion to cannibalism among the missions. The Governor sent soldiers, hung the "chief men,” and things began to go badly, with much blood-letting everywhere. Padre Lucas was made Superior at Archidona, on the Napo, to try and straighten out affairs there, but with small success. Padre Geronimo Alvarez, who had renounced estate and title in Valladolid to become a missionary, entered in 1670 by the Rio Pastassa, a hard route. After two years of wretched wandering, threading trackless forests, wading perilous streams, sleeping on the bare cold ground, his clothing ever wet from constant showers, suffering the horrors of starvation, devoured by ulcers, he reached Borja at last, only to die of fever. Padre Raimundo de Santa Cruz, following the same route, through distresses grievous to contemplate, undertook, by cutting a path from the Pastassa to the Napo, for the sake of bringing the growing centres of the work, Borja and Archidona, into closer communication, to give greater security to the missions-a creditable performance-having finished which, he was drowned by the capsizing of his canoe. Disasters succeeded each other rapidOld Padre Figueroa hastened to ly, and, amid other discouragements, the check them, trusting in the mere force of small-pox ravaged all the tribes of Mainas, courage; met them on the big sand bar at the deaths within nine years being stated the mouth of the Rio Huallaga; was re- at sixty-four thousand. Up to 1681 twenty ceived with kisses on the hand, while priests had lost their lives in the Montaña, one fierce fellow slipped behind, and al- and only four remained. No more workmost severed Figueroa's head from his ers would be sent. Spain regarded nearly body by a blow with a sharp-edged all the South American missions with dispaddle. Thus eighteen years of heroic favor, and money was hard to get. Shipwork were ended, and with the fall masters also objected to carry priests; of Figueroa, and the subsequent slaugh- would lie in port for months rather than ter of priests and faithful converts in accept such passengers; and would finally other parts, the missions were almost set sail with them only under compulsion demoralized. The Governor of Borja, of the King's soldiery. At length came a however, wisely refrained from sending remarkable man, Padre Samuel Fritz, by soldiers to punish the Cocamas, but in birth a Bohemian, who was a physician, 1667 Padre Pedro Suarez came across mathematician, painter, carpenter, and the mountains, and was sent to relieve joiner, as well as a devout and earnest Padre Guells, who had been working priest. Profiting by the words of the vetamong the Abigiras along the Napo. erans, he sought only to gain the sym"The great wilderness, with all its hard-pathy and affection of the Indians, hoping ships, seems like a lovely garden of de- for better fruits in the generations to come. |