SCENES OF PERUVIAN LIFE.

Te Aroha News, Volume III, Issue 120, 19 September 1885, Page 6

SCENES OF PERUVIAN LIFE.

A Country In whloh Stables May be Found on the Roof— Umbrellas a Drug in the Markets of Lima— People Crowding to Sunday Bull Fights*

All the houses in Lima are built on the earthquake plan, either of great thick walls of adobe or mere shacks of bamboo reeds, lashed together by thongs of rawhide, and plastered within and without with thick layers of mud. This style of architecture will answer in a country where it rever rains, and where cyclones never come ; but if a good pour should fall in Lima, the whole town would be washed into the river Riniac and carried out to sea. There is never more than one entrance to the houses, and that is protected first by a great iron grating and then by solid doors. The windows are covered with bars. This was done as a precaution against bandits in early times, and against revolutionists in later days, and a very essential precaution it has been ; for, during the time of the Viceroys, bands of robbers used to come down from the mountains and pirates from the sea. Through the single entrance passes every one who comes and goes — the butcher, the baker, the priest who comes to shrive the dying, and the young man to v\ horn Mercedes lis engaged. The other evening a party were making a call, and tho iron gate was closed and locked by the porters, as usual. When they wanted to go away he broke the key in the lock, and it looked as if the hosts would have to find lodgings, or let their guests down irom the roof by ropes, for all the windows were protected by iron bars ; but a screwdriver was finally discovered, by means of which the rusty hinges were displaced and the prison opened. The roofs of the dwellings are always perfectly flat, and among the common people are used as barnyards and henneries. j Very often a cow spends all her days on the I roof of hßr owner's residence, being taken | up when a calf and taken down at the end of life as fresh beef. In the meantime she 1 is fed on slops from the kitchen, and bundles of alfalfa, the South American clover, which the Indians bring in from the country on their own shoulders or the backs of mulee. Chicken coops are more common on the roofs of dwellings, and in the thickly populated portions of town your neighbour's cocks waken you at daylight with reminders of St. Peter. Lima is a poor place to send umbrellas, for along the coast from the northern boundary of Peru, far south west to the end of the Chilean Desert, rain never falls. There is a disagreeable, dismal, sticky, rheumatic ; dew, however, which is worse than a shower, for during the winter season, be- \ ginning in April and ending in October, it j penetrates the thickest clothing and gives i one a sensation described by Mantilini as i demnition moist. j The thermometer is pretty regular, however, and ranges from 60 deg. to 80 deg. Fahrenheit during the year, January being , the hottest month and July the coolest. | Pulmonary complaints are unknown, but | fevers are very common, and the mortality j among infants is pitiable. At Callao,yellow fever is usually endemic, and there are three or four deaths among the marine population every week, as the sanitary regulations, are not well enforced, and the city is dirty,