Recollections of Travels Abroad ... With a map, etc

Front matter

RECOLLECTIONS OF TRAVELS ABROAD REMINGTON & CO.. LONDON HIS RECOLLECTIONS OF TRAVELS ABROAD BY A J DUFF1ELD Author of a New Translation of the "Don Quixote" "Don Quixote Critics and Commentators " " The Beauty of the World" "The Last Inca " "Needless Misery " " Peru in the Guano Age" AND OTHER WORKS " Magic casements opening on the Foam Of perilous seas " " There are in our existence spots of time That with distinct pre-eminence retain A renovating virtue whence our minds Are nourished and invisibly repaired " WITH MAP SHOWING THE AUTHOR'S OCEAN ROUTES LONDON REMINGTON & CO PUBLISHERS HENRIETTA STREET COVENT GARDEN 1889 [All Rights Reserved] TABLE OF CONTENTS. PAGE Epistle Dedicatory ... ... ... vii I. At Sea with a Dushenka ... ... ... i II. Don Juan Badulaque de Gorduro ... ... 24 III. Santa Fe de Bogota ... ... ... ... 37 IV.

Baranquilla, United States of Columbia ... 41 V. Lima, Peru ... ... ... ... ... 51 VI. Lima (Continued) and Guayaquil ... ... 60 VII. The Peruvian Coast ... ... ... ... 70 VIII. From Silvern Potosi to Golden Australia ... 84 IX. Silver Lima[and Golden Melbourne ... ... 117 X. From New Zealand to Bolivia ... ... ... 128 XI. Venezuela, Negroes, and Trinidad ... ... 155 XII. More Gold and Silver Comparisons ... ... 167 XIII. Australia ... ... ... ... ... 174 XIV. Chile 182 XV. Colonial Religion and Morals ... 195 XVI. The United States 211 XVII. Spain 231 XVIII. Canada ... ... ... ... ... ... 247 XIX. Still in Canada ... ... ... ... ... 280 XX. Books and Libraries in the Colonies ... ... TO CHARLES BROOKFIELD, ESQUIRE. My dear Brookfif.ld, It gives me great pleasure to dedicate this book to you, because your name is associated with reminiscences that cannot be made public on account of their private nature, and for affections that would lose their charm if they were shared by others.

I shall never forget the extemporized dramas that were played in your youth, in which the dramatis personæ were numerous, and the players few, for they included only your brother Arthur and yourself. Those of us who were admitted to the gallery know well enough where the future comedian was born ; but I believe I was the only one who prophesied his coming. Of course people in the private boxes had better knowledge, and were therefore not among the prophets. The other day, as I was dining at a nickel restaurant in a back street off Broadway, in the modern city of New York, a man, who guessed that I was an Englishman, asked me if I knew Mrs. Brook field. I was greatly surprised by this question ; not only on account of the lowliness of the house in which I was, but by the obvious obscurity of the person who put it.

Chapter I. At Sea With

A DUSHENKA. THESE Recollections are memories which are left clear after a long lapse of time. By waiting, in some cases as long as six-and-thirty years, I find that either the weather has changed or what was foul has died out of mind like the sound of the trumpets of mosquitoes, or the rattles of snakes ; and the sea with its rage or its calm, its terrors or its joy, is no longer thought of with disgust, although to me the sea has always been a delight, nor has every long voyage been only so much waste of time. There have been whist parties between England and India which I can never forget, theatres on the way to Australia which are always delightful to think of, and friendships and com panionships formed which made the longest voyage too short. I shall never forget, for example, how on one of the longest journeys I ever made, a woman, who was a charming, youthful widow, made love to me, as I have often made love to little children.

She was deliciously stupid, but with liquid brown eyes ; and her well-made body was as full of health as a full magnum of Dagonet B is of liquid joy. Before joining the ship in which the Dushenka, as I will call this lady, and I were to be together for many days, I had been in the saddle for more than a fortnight, during which time I had ridden something more than a thousand miles, six hundred miles of which were over a desert, under the tropic of Capricorn, and I was very tired when I got on board. How delightful it was to be clean, once more to sleep in a Christian bed, sit on a clean deck, with everything wholesome and sweet about you, and resting ! Even now, after the lapse of years, the recollection of those fifteen days of travel over hot sand, with little to eat but raw onions and cheese, and nothing to drink but cold tea, comes back far more vividly than anything which I did last week.

Nor can I forget the soothing pipe of tobacco, without which I could not have gone to sleep after the day's hard ride. Let no traveller in the far interior of any foreign land ever be without tea, tobacco, onions, and cheese ; if he can add to these cuca and preserved potatoes* he need fear no evil. But the glorious rest which followed the toil of that tropical fortnight is graven on my bones. I wanted nothing else but to sit still in an arm-chair on deck, breathe fresh air, and in imagination travel over again those fifteen days in the saddle. * Preserved potatoes, called in Quichua and Aymara Chunyo, or Chuiio, according to Spanish orthography. They will keep for years, and it is a wonder to me that Chunyo is so little known among us. The art consists in mechanically taking all the water out of the vegetable and leaving the protein, the fat, carbohydrates, and mineral matter behind.

This reduces the potato more than 75 per cent., and is as hard as old mortar when quite ready for use. When required for food a handful of what appear to be small marbles is thrown into hot water for half an hour; the first water is thrown away, and they are then boiled in the usual way. When cooked the potato will have assumed its normal size and taste. Of course, this method of preserving potatoes is only possible under a tropical sun, whtre there is also much frost. The only acquaintance I made during the first day or two on board was that of Colonel Lawrence, who had served her Majesty as a warrior in India and was ending his days in her Civil Service, a man of delightful manners and much pride. Dushenka and the Colonel were well acquainted, and he informed me that she was desirous that he should introduce her to me.

I begged him not to do anything of the kind ; but while we were thus chatting the lady came, brought her chair, and began talking to the dear old Colonel on matters of great triviality. Just as I was in the act of getting up to avoid this youthful, restless woman, Lawrence got up and walked away, saying that he was going to look after his horse, whom some "Jew fellow had been interviewing, and, perhaps, had made him unhappy." I was thus left at the Dushenka's mercy. " You are a great traveller Colonel Lawrence tells me," she said, turning her brown eyes full on me. I knew I was in for it, that not again should I as long as that journey lasted know another day of uninterrupted quiet. Without replying to her question, I said — " You are going to England ? " " Oh, yes," she answered. " Are you fond of reading?"

" It is my only pleasure. But I have nothing with me that I have not read over and over again," she answered, as if the knowledge she imparted was worth rubies to me. " What kind of reading do you like best ? " " Oh ! poetry. I am fond of all the poets, but I don't like Tennyson ; indeed, I may say that I detest Tennyson." This I was not surprised to hear, for, in spite of her brown eyes and cherry lips, her pretty-dimpled little hands and graceful bust, I was certain that she had no reason to give for her verdict on the author of " There lies a vale in Ida, lovelier Than all the valleys of Ionian hills." So I said to her with studied gentleness — " If we have any luck, you and I will be together for the next thirty days ; we shall see each other every day, whether we like it or not. We shall, perhaps, quarrel ; or, if not quarrel, we shall hurt one another by some unin tentional word or deed.

It is the inevitable result of living together under circumstances which do not admit of your going into another neighbourhood, if only for a change. Now, if you do not want to quarrel with me, or me to be ungracious to you — " " I am sure you could never be anything of the kind," she threw in. " Let us agree," I continued, without noticing her inter ruption, " to meet every day at one particular spot in all weathers, at one particular hour, for real work, let us call it. I will read to you, and you shall sew or knit some little thing for me, and this work shall last exactly seventy minutes each day, and no more. In this way we shall get along, and during our thirty days of travel we will make certain of three whole days of pleasure." "I like the plan ever so much," she answered; "but the worst of it is I can't sew and I can't knit."

" Why ! " I retorted, with some mastership, " you are like the lilies of the field. Do you like the comparison ? " " I think it a great compliment," she said. " I surely thought you would be offended," I said. " How could you think so ? " she asked. " Do you think it a compliment to be compared to a vegetable ? " I inquired. " Ah ! but lilies are not vegetables," she said. " What are they, then ? Are they animals or minerals ? " I asked. " Oh, no. A vegetable is something to eat, like a cabbage or celery. Lilies are to look at and to smell, to give delight." She said this without the least effort. She neither smiled, nor winked, nor turned a hair. I did not expect her to wink, but I did look for some change in her expression that would guide me to appraise her knowledge. But no, she sat as unmoved as a piece of waxwork in a barber's window, which is used for setting off a style of hair dressing.

What she said was not untrue, but it was not her own. "What will you do, then," I asked, "while I read to you if you can't sew or knit ? " "I shan't want to do anything," she said, " but to sit still and look at you, and listen, and enjoy your voice, and what you will read." I confess that I thought it somewhat early for this, but after living in countries where you can eat your green peas for 300 days the year round you get accustomed to anything . Only an earthquake is equal to keeping up a sense of novelty. You get accustomed to the peas, but not to the earthquake. I had never met a woman like this, at least, not an Englishwoman. I never knew an English lady who couldn't sew or knit, and who could dispense flattering remarks without effort to a stranger. I never knew a woman who, after five minutes' talk, and meeting her for the first time, announced that she would enjoy my voice, and look at me while listening to what I might read to her.

Here was a well-made, fascinating woman, well groomed, and certainly under thirty, with a musical voice, brown eyes, and a refined row of teeth, surrounded by red velvet, who could neither sew nor knit, and who was prepared to sit and look at me for the space of an hour while I read to her. I was much puzzled. Spanish women, or rather Colonial Spanish women, will surprise the best travelled man in the world, I don't care who he is, even if he were Gulliver him self, or the new translator of the "Thousand Nights and One Night." But here was an Englishwoman, good look ing, well dressed, fresh as a daisy, and of quiet manners, with all her features, as well as her hands, under perfect control, saying things to me which a wife may have said — I believe there are wives in the world who flatter their husbands in private — and even English wives — or as a sister might have said to her brother — but which, to say the least, were somewhat unusual.

No doubt " society " on board ship, especially during a long voyage, is very different to society in a village or in London. It is also likely that Lawrence, who knew some thing of me, had told the Dushenka a few favourable lies (men will do this sometimes it they wish to gain anything by it for their friends) of one of whom he had heard somewhat. But this was not sufficient to account for the free speech of this woman. I have now little doubt that it all came from the fact that she was a young widow, and had "moved" in military circles in India, and that unconsciously, she had acquired a familiarity with things which produced carelessness, and had banished all tendency to shyness. How much longer this interestinocommunion would have lasted it is hard to say, but here the ship's drum beat the reveille, and we separated, I with some alacrity, to prepare for dinner.

On the whole I felt much like an invalid who was being nursed into wellness, and no doubt my fifteen days in the saddle had prepared me for such idleness as the Dushenka could make pleasant. I was too tired or too lazy for any other thoughts about the words and ways of this, to me, new sort of woman. The next day we kept our appointment. It was delicious weather, and we made ourselves snug on deck. Dushenka brought plaids and shawls, and I a handful of manuscript. After reading for an hour I asked how she liked it. " I never heard anything so beautiful," she said. " Oh, you must have heard or read something like it, at any rate." "Never; all these thoughts are quite new to me, and they are as beautiful as they are new," she said. " Will you please repeat to me one thought which you noticed ?

" I said. " Oh, there are many," she answered. " I shall go and write them down. One is — " ' Tho' I should die, I know That all about the thorn will blow In tufts of rosy-tinted snow.' "The other is — " ' Every cloud that spreads above And veileth love, itself is love.' " But this is the one I like best — '' 'Oh, to what uses shall we put The wild. weed flower that simply blows ? And is there any moral shut Within the bosom of the rose ? ' " Away she went, and I confess that I was surprised, for I did not believe she was even equal to the task of remembering the lines, and still less of picking them out as beauties worth storing We kept up this kind of reading for nearly a week, at the end of which I wound up by repeating « Œnone," and then I agatn demanded of her how she liked these poems Her answer I did not expect.

She said — " They are marvellously sweet. I am quite enchanted she man who wrote them can write anything." " Who do you think wrote them ? " I inquired. " You," she answered. _ "No," I said ; " the man who wrote • Œnone,' and the rest is lennyson." She was not in the least embarrassed, but said- "If «t had not been for your beautiful reading I should never have understood or liked him." "Do you now know why you dei^t^A t demanded. 7 Tennyson ? " I I d7°; i,ndeed; l fed aShamed °f saying what 1 d'd °f h'm' She reP«-d- « I suppose I must have bee" very stupid." en " And arrogant," , adcW. „ Whm x:X7xl::;j:t ta,tin* of th- *°° ' Well," I answered, " you ca„'t se„ „. __. , have some wage for reading to you. Let me have the pleasure of converting you. I shall be quite satisfied with that. But then you must allow me to speak in plain words, or I shall lose my time and you will not be converted."

"Converted ! " she gasped. "I don't mean," I said, "to make you religious, or to change your religion. I do not even know whether you have any religious convictions or not. I simply want to turn you round; that's what I mean by converting you." " Pray, what do you mean by that?" she inquired. " I have turned you or reversed you on Tennyson — you detested him once, and now you love him; and I now want to convert you so that you shall never again make such another blunder with regard to any great man, or great thought, or beautiful object." " Do you think I am incapable of knowing what is beautiful or great? You are very complimentary," she said. " And you," I answered, " are hasty ; I suppose you always were. What I meant to say was that you must not expect that you are to be supplied with a love of knowledge and good taste, and the means of cultivation, in the same way as you are supplied with gloves, nor will you get new eyes by wishing for them."

" New eyes, indeed!" she said, curling the corners of her mouth. But I was not to be put off in that way ; therefore I said to her — " The reason why you once detested Tennyson is that you were, shall I say a wild rose, or a wild olive — suppose we say an olive, because it is a Scriptural figure of speech, and we may kill two birds with one stone ; the fruit of the wild olive is sour, and its sourness comes from the root. You, I say, were, or are, if you like, a wild olive tree, with a root of your own, with power to bear fruit of yourself — the sour fruit of the wild olive. If you ever bear good olives it will not be as a tree, but as a branch, and that will be when you are grafted into a good olive tree. The source of all beauty, all truth, and love, is God, and until we are brought under His influence or into communication with Him we shall detest all that is beautiful, all that is true, and all that is lovely : ' They are the best for the longest time whom the gods love.'" " Indeed," she said, raising her eyebrows the sixteenth of an inch, " I thought, on the contrary, ' whom the gods love die young,' but please tell me how I am to get grafted into a good olive tree?" meaning to give me " a facer."

"These metaphors and figures of speech," I said, "you must be as careful of as you are of sugar-plums, or any other sweet things, or they will spoil your stomach ; I mean your moral stomach. You will easily get grafted into a good tree and become a branch by first ceasing to be an independent person, and next by cultivating reverence, lowliness of mind, sweetness and reality, or naturalness, and then, then — " Here, to my great surprise and thankfulness, Dushenka rose to her full height, shook out her dress, and without giving me a look she said, as if speaking to herself — " I was never so spoken to in all my life," and off she went, and I lit a pipe. If you want to anger a highly respectable or fashionable woman — by which I mean a woman who gets herself up to be looked at by other people — you have only to make mention of the name of God as a real name of a real being, and she will melt into thin air, like the " insubstantial pageant " mentioned in The Tempest.

We met again at night and she was my partner in a rubber, and very well she played. When it was over and she was going to bed I told her that she played a very good game, and we shook hands, on which she made me a curtsey, not a mere saucy bob like a float on a fishing line indicat ing a bite, but a real curtsey, such as you sometimes see in a country village, and it was a very pretty sight. Our cabins were next to each other ; hers being the outside one looking on to the sea, which was so calm one morning that the port windows could be opened. Along the top of the partition which divided us was a perforated metallic plate, and hearing the Dushenka busy in her cabin I filled my hand with toilette vinegar and sent it flying through the ventilator. She came on deck in a French muslin dress and with out a bit of gold about her — except her wedding ring — or precious stone, or fluttering ribbon.

" Good morning," I said, which she responded to by remarking — " Did you notice how delicious the sea smelt this morning?" " No," I answered. " What was it like ? " " I hardly know," she said. " Was it like a druggist's shop ? "Yes and no." "Ora glove shop? " " I never perceived any odour in a glove shop." " Ah, then you have never been in Cadiz. Was it like Eau de Cologne ? " " A little." Or toilette vinegar ? " Not the least like toilette vinegar, which I hate," she said. It was Sunday, and I waited to see if she would notice it, or make any reference to our "work." " Will you read me something, to-day ? " she said at length. " What would you like ? " I inquired. " I will leave it entirely to you," she said, and then we went to breakfast, but I had no appetite. That toilette vinegar was too much for me.

At the usual hour we met, and I read to her Sterne's sermon " On Enthusiasm," of course without telling her who the author was. On asking her how she liked it, she said — " It is beautiful." This was her constant verdict on anything she liked, " It is beautiful." The words were as necessary to her as her gloves were necessary. On the hottest day she must put on gloves or she would not feel dressed, and " It is beautiful" were equally stock words. The sermon is not beautiful, it is, indeed, very plain; the language is not always pure, and the eloquence is not always natural, but it is the work of a man of genius, a man who is a good olive tree, or a true vine, the fruit of which is sweet and wholesome. " Do you know who wrote that sermon ? " I asked her. " No, indeed, nor can I guess," she answered.

" I suppose not. The author is the Reverend Laurence Sterne, who wrote ' Tristram Shandy,' the ' Sentimental Journey,' and is commonly known in the world of letters as Yorick." " I am very much astonished," she said. " Why ? " I inquired ; not because I expected her to tell me the real reason, but I could only learn more of the quality of her mind by this way of catechising. " I always thought," she answered, " that Sterne was a humourist." " So he was ; but do you attach any definite idea of your own to the term ? What is a humourist ? " " Well, I suppose a Punch and Judy sort of man ; not exactly a wicked man, nor even a naughty man, but a man who lives by his wits." " A literary chevalier d'industrie, " I suggested. "No, I don't mean quite that," she said, "but certainly something French, something not comme il faut."

It is more than likely that she had read either the " Sentimental Journey " or " Uncle Toby," and, regard ing both as books only fit for men, did not like to trust herself to make confessions, or to have it known that she had read what some immoral confessor had perhaps condemned. If she had read "Tristram Shandy" she was, I suppose, quite right in not owning it to one who was quite a stranger to her, although a fellow passenger occupying the next cabin to her own. I do remember a married woman once exclaiming in the innocency of her heart, " I never knew what that meant till now," on the occasion of a certain incident being mentioned by her husband. We all laughed, but then we were all old friends, and she was a gifted woman, and very pretty. She had read the Shandyan philosophy when she could not understand it, and her eyes were opened at a time when it could only move her to wholesome laughter.

Dushenka was a very different woman, and the difference, I think, was in her cultivation. She had been trained in a hot-house, and the other woman had been trained in the fresh air. One was natural, the other was artificial, and sprinkled with toilette vinegar. I will mention another matter which occurred in the course of our acquaintance on board, because I think it opened my eyes to £ new thing, namely, the religion of fashionable English women, the ladies who fill London ■churches and the grand stands with fashionable bonnets and artificial perfume. " What church do you go to when you are in town ." I once asked her. " Oh, we often go to the Chapel Royal — the music is so good. But our own church is St. Elizabeth's, in Moat Lane," she said ; and there was a certain gravity in her voice which made me fancy that she was not a mere out sider.

"They have early celebration there, have they not?" "Oh, yes." "Do you take the Sacrament yourself ? " I asked, with decorum. Thereupon she closed her eyes, turned away her head, and would, I think, have got up and gone away, but several women were, as usual, watching our " goings on," and she would not give them occasion for supposing that we were having a tiff. ' You pain me," she said, at length " I am very sorry ; it is the last thing I should dream of doing," I said. "Perhaps you will tell me what I have done ? " 'You speak of sacred things in a very improper way," she remarked. " I do not think that anything is sacred to you, and this gives me pain." " I simply asked you if you went to the Sacrament," I said. " Yes," she replied, " as if it were a dance. I have no patience with you."

Shall I call it the Lord's Supper ? Pray do change the subject." Do you call it the Eucharist ? " To this she made no answer, but called my attention to something in the sea. " Was it a sail ? " Sail ! There wasn't a sail probably within a thousand miles of us. She wanted to " change the subject," and she didn't want the other women to imagine that we were having a row. " How brown your eyes look this morning ! " I said. She smiled, shook her head, and said — "You have no right to look in my eyes," and she closed them. On which I remarked that I was then looking at some thing which she had never seen, and never would, or could see. " What is that ? " she exclaimed, with animation. She knew well enough that I was looking at her eyelids, but this was the kind of make-believe of which she was master, the twaddle she cultivated and practised every day of her life.

After a little space I said to her — "Have they gone away?" meaning the women who were always watching us. "Yes," she said, "they have gone. How they hate you!" "Never mind them, tell me if you goto the Sacrament?" " I am not good enough," she said, almost naturally. "Would it make you any better, do you think, if you did go?" " Indeed, I am afraid not. I did partake when I was confirmed, but it made no difference in me. I was just as ready for a dance, or a horse in the Park, the next day as ever," and she looked quite sad. She seemed to regard the Sacrament as a balsam, the balsam, perhaps, of Fierabras ;* and I was unwilling to say anything that might disturb her superstition. A little superstition in her case could do no harm, and might do her good. No amount of positive instruction that I could give her would have been of any use, and so I let the subject drop for that day.