Peru in the Guano Age

That it was the original intention of the Government to raise a loan on the 'purchase' of the nitrate properties, is evident from the terms of the tenth article of President Pardo's decree, which may be thus translated: —

'The establishments sold to the State shall be paid for within two years, or as soon after as possible, that funds for the purpose have been raised in Europe; payment shall be by bills on London, at not more than ninety days, and at the rate of exchange of forty-four pence to the sol,' etc.

Whatever value these particulars may possess or have given to them by future events6, they will serve to show some of the peculiar features of the Peruvian Government, and to what shifts it can resort, or is compelled to make under adverse circumstances, or circumstances into which it may be brought by its enemies, or its own weakness, its inherent lack of stout-hearted honesty, and its inaptitude for what is known as business.

The nitrate deposits are well enough known. It is absolutely certain that in the year 1863 there were sold 1,508,000 cwts.; and in 1873 5,830,000 cwts. In that year the Government acknowledged to have received from the export of this article the sum of 2,250,000 dols. Should the permanent sale of nitrate reach 5,000,000 quintals per annum, there is no reason why the Government should not realise from this source at least 10,000,000 dols. a year: should it only double its present duties the amount would reach 12,000,000 dols.

The annual amount of nitrate which the fifty-one establishments proposed to be bought by the Government are capable of producing, may be set down at 14,000,000 cwts.

These establishments do not exhaust the whole of the nitrate deposits. There are several large 'Oficinas,' as they are called, which have, for their own reasons, refused to sell their properties to the State.

The region of these deposits is a wild, barren pampa, 3000 feet above the level of the sea, and contains not less than 150 square miles of land, which will yield on the safest calculation more than 70,000,000 tons of nitrate.

Why these establishments for the manufacture of this important substance are called 'oficinas' it may not be difficult to say: it is doubtless for the same reason that a cottage orné at Chorrillos, the Brighton of Lima, is called a rancho. Twenty years ago Chorrillos was to Lima what the Clyde and its neighbouring waters were to the manufacturing capital of Scotland. What Dunoon and its competitors on the Scotch coast now are, such has Chorrillos become, – the fashionable resort of rich people who have robbed nature of her simplicity and beauty by embellishing her, as they call it, with art. All that remains of the straw-thatched rancho of Chorrillos, with its unglazed windows, its mud floors, its hammocks, and its freedom, is its name. An oficina twenty or thirty years ago, was no doubt a mere office made of wood, hammered together hastily, as an extemporary protection from the sun by day, and the cold dews and airs of the night: in appearance resembling nothing else but an Australian outhouse. An oficina of to-day is a very different thing. Its appearance, and all that pertains to it, is as difficult to describe as a great ironworks, or chemical works, or any other works where the ramifications are not only numerous, but novel. The first oficina whose acquaintance I had the honour and trouble to make, was that of the Tarapaca Nitrate Company, situated near the terminus of the Iquique and La Noria Railway, in the midst of a windy plain 3000 feet above the sea, and beneath a far hotter sun than that which beats on the pyramids of Egypt.

If you take a seat in the wide balcony of the house, where the manager and the clerks of the establishment reside, and live not uncomfortably, you look down almost at your feet on what appears to be an uncountable number of vast iron tanks containing coloured liquids, a tall chimney, a chemical laboratory, an iodine extracting house, a steam-pump, innumerable connecting pipes, stretching and twisting about the vast premises as if they were the bowels of some scientifically formed stomach of vast proportions for the purpose of digesting poisons and producing the elements of gunpowder, a blacksmith's forge, an iron foundry, a lathe shop, complicated scaffolding, tramways, men making boilers, men attending on waggons, bending iron plates, stoking fires, breaking up caliche, wheeling out refuse, putting nitrate into sacks, and other miscellaneous labour, requiring great intelligence to direct and great endurance to carry on; and all beneath the fierce heat of a sun, unscreened by trees or clouds, the glare of which on the white substance which is in process of being turned over, broken, and carried from one point to another, is as painful as looking into a blast furnace. Beyond the great and busy area where all these varied operations are carried on the eye stretches across a desert of brown earth, which is terminated by soft rolling hills of the same fast colour. The appearance of this desert is that of a vast number of ant-hills in shape; and in size of the heaps of refuse which give character to the Black Country in Mid Staffordshire. Perhaps the first impression which this repulsive desert makes on the mind of a man who has seen and observed much is that of a battlefield of barbarian armies, where the slain still lie in the heaps in which they were clubbed down by their foes; or it may be likened to an illimitable number of dust-hills jumbled together by an earthquake. All this is the result of digging for caliche, and blasting it out of the sandy bed in which it has lain God only knows how long.

As the breeze springs up, and clouds of fine white dust follow the mule carts and rise under the hoofs of galloping horses, the idea of the battlefield with the use of gunpowder comes back on the memory, and is perhaps the nearest simile that can be used. And this is an oficina! one of the silliest and most inadequate of words ever used to denote what is one of the newest, and may be the largest, as it is certainly the most novel, of all modern industrial establishments.

The manufacture of caliche into nitrate of soda is not without its dangers to human life, though these are fewer than they were when men frequently fell into vats of boiling liquors, or broke their limbs in falling from high scaffolding: the latter form of danger still exists, and is almost impossible to guard against. I am free to say, however, that if the guard were possible I do not believe it would be used. There are some trades and processes which not only brutalise the labourers on whom rests the toil of carrying them on, but which no less degrade the mind of those who direct them; and the nitrate manufacture is one of these. 'Joe,' one of the house dogs, fell into one of the heated tanks of the oficina where I was staying, and his quick but dreadful death made more impression on some than did the untimely death of a man who was killed the day before at the same place. Another item in the agitated landscape which stretches from the balcony where I sat is a spacious burying-ground, walled in as a protection from dogs and carts; but these are not its only or its chief desecrators. The sky furnishes many more. This great oficina contains 1682 estacas; can produce 900,000 quintals of nitrate a year, and was 'sold' to the Government for 1,250,000 dols.

An estaca is a certain amount of ground 'staked out,' as we might say, and contains about one hundred square yards of available land.

There are other oficinas of still greater value than the one mentioned above; as, for instance, those of Gildemeister and Co., and which the Government acquired on the same terms for the same sum.

The markets for this new substance are England, Germany, the United States, California, Chile, and other countries. It is as a cultivator a formidable competitor of the guano, and is esteemed by scientific men to be much more valuable. Its price is set down at £19 the ton, although £12 and £12 10s. is its present market value. The acquisition by the Peruvian Government of this industry was patriotic, even if it were not wise. It was done with the intention of paying the foreign creditors of the Republic. Since then Peruvian patriotism has assumed another form and complexion, and what was done in an honest enthusiasm of haste is already being repented of in a leisure largely occupied with the contemplation of a patriotic repudiation of national duty and debt.

The arguments by which 'prominent' Peruvians are fortifying themselves for a step which at any moment may be taken, are neither moral nor convincing, except to themselves. 'Peru must live,' they say, which does not mean a noble form of poverty, but an altogether ignoble form of extravagance, and even wasteful magnificence. We must have our army, our navy, our President, his ministers, our judges, our priests, our ambassadors, our newspapers, stationery, bunting, gas for the plaza on feast days, wax candles for our churches by night and by day, a national police, gunpowder, jails for foreign delinquents, and railways to the Milky Way, to show to neighbouring republics and all the world that Peru is a fine nation.

There is not one of all these splendid items which, so far as the people are concerned, could not be dispensed with.

But to live, they reiterate, is the primary object and purpose of all nations, and especially republican nations, forgetting, or, what is much more likely, never having known, that death is preferable to a shamed life, and that there are times when it is clearly a duty to die.

The next argument now rapidly gaining ground in Lima is that although the guano has been hypothecated, this was contrary to Peruvian law, which distinctly lays down that nothing movable can be hypothecated; and as guano is clearly movable stuff, which can be proved to the meanest capacity – the capacity, namely, of a holder of Peruvian bonds – the Government has been breaking its own laws for a generation past, and it is now time that this illegal conduct should cease. This is backed up by reminding all men, and especially Peruvians, who will derive great comfort from it, that England having recognised the primary fact that it is the first duty of a man to live, has abolished imprisonment for debt in her own dominions, and therefore she could not exert her power to make Peru pay what she owes, if Peru officially declares that she is unable to do so. These and other like arguments are being openly discussed in the Peruvian capital. Another, and perhaps the most formidable of all these specious pleas is, that England has recently let off Turkey, and therefore there is no reason why she should not let off Peru.

It is only fair to say that there are a few thoughtful men in the City of Kings who, ambitious for their country's honour, would fain see some arrangement made that will enable Peru to pursue her present policy of internal improvement, and help these men, who for the most part are very wealthy, to remain peaceably in office for say ten years longer – or say six – but at least, for God's sake as well as your own, they appealingly persist, let it not be less than four years (in the which there shall be no hearing or harvest for bondholders and dupes of that stamp).

There is no doubt that, in the words of 'a Daniel say I,' if the bondholders would not lose all, 'then must the Jew be merciful,' let them insist on their pound of flesh, and everything denominated in their bond, they will share the fate of Shylock. The only part of that cruel rascal's fate which they need have no apprehension of sharing is, being made into Christians.

It is unquestionably to be feared that if the present Government, and the one that succeeded it in August last under the presidency of General Prado, cannot defend the country from revolt, great disaster will follow not only to the republic, but most certainly to the bondholders.

Revolt is not only possible, it is expected. An armed force led by determined men from without, aided by traitors within, and backed by unscrupulous persons who would be willing to risk one million pounds sterling on the chance of making two millions, might easily – or if not easily, yet with pains – bring back the corrupt days of Balta and Castilla, and, with shame be it said, such people can find a precedent for their proposed scheme in houses of high standing, the heads of which are doubtless looked upon as irreproachable ensamples of cultivated respectability.

[Since writing the above, General Prado has once more assumed supreme power in peace, but there have followed two attempts at revolution within the space of three little months.]

CHAPTER V

Having set forth two principal sources of Peruvian income, let us now proceed to a third. When los Señores Althaus and Rosas appeared in Paris last autumn as the representatives of the Government of Peru, among other national securities which those gentlemen offered for a further loan of money, were the railways of Peru. They are six in number, only one of which is finished according to the original contracts. The amount of mileage however is considerable, so also may be said to be their cost, for the Government has paid to one contractor alone no less a sum than one hundred and thirty millions of dollars. There are other railways whose united lengths amount to about 150 miles; with one exception they cost little, and without an exception they all bring in much.

These do not belong to the Government. The Government railways cost enormous sums and bring in nothing; and it may safely be said that they will never figure, honestly, in the national accounts, except as items of expenditure. The Government of the day would only be too glad to become cheap carriers of the national produce, if there were any produce ready to carry. But the Government built their railways without considering what are the primary and elementary use of railways. It is incredible, but none the less true, that the Peruvians believing the mercantile 'progress' of the United States to spring from railways, thought that nothing more was needed to raise their country to the pinnacle of commercial magnificence than to build a few of these iron ways, and have magic horses fed with fire to caper along them; especially if they could get an American – a real go-a-head American – for their builder. And they did so.

The railway fever has had its virulent type in all parts of the world where railways have appeared. In Peru from 1868 to 1871-2 this fever was perhaps more active and deadly than anywhere; than in Canada, even, which is saying much, for there it took the form of a religious delirium. The Peruvians believed that if they offered a great and wonderful railway to the deities of industry, great and happy commercial times would follow. Just as they believe that give a priest a pyx, a spoon, some wine, and wheaten bread, he can make the body and blood of God; so they believed that give a great American the required elements, he could by some equally mysterious power make Peru one of the great nations of the earth.

Mr. Henry Meiggs7, of Catskill 'city' in New York State, was on this occasion selected as the great high-priest who was to perform the required wonders. Give this magician a few thousand miles of iron rails to form two parallel lines, and a steam engine to run along them, and the vile body of the Peruvian Republic should be changed into a glorious body8 with a mighty palpitating soul inside of it; the body to be of the true John Bull type for fatness, and the Yankee breed for speed.

This new meaning of the doctrine of transubstantiation was preached to willing and enchanted ears. Ten thousand labourers of all colours and kinds were introduced into the country. 'By God, Sir, there was not a steamboat on the broad waters of the Pacific that did not pour into Peru as many peones as potatoes from Chile.' These ten thousand men all went up the Andes bearing shovels in their hands, and singing the name of Meiggs as they went. Millions of nails, and hammers innumerable, rails and barrows, sleepers and picks, chains, and double patent layers, wheels and pistons, with many thousand kegs of blasting powder 'let in duty free,' with all the other infernal implements and apparatus for making the most notable railway of this age9, poured into Peru marked with the name of Meiggs. You could no more breathe without Meiggs, than you could eat your dinner without swallowing dust, sleep without the sting of fleas or the soothing trumpet of musquitoes. Meiggs everywhere; in sunshine and in storm, on the sea and on the heights of the world, now called Mount Meiggs; in the earthquake10, and in the peaceful atmosphere of the most elegant society in the world. The wonderful activity on the Mollendo and Arequipa railway, carried on without ceasing, produced an ecstasy of hope, and also an eruption of blasphemy. Every valley was to be exalted; every Peruvian mountain, hitherto sacred to snow and the traditions of the Incas, should be laid low by the wand of Meiggs; the desert of course should blossom as the rose: no more iron should be sharpened into swords; ploughshares and pruning-hooks should be in such demand, that every blade and dagger or weapon of war in the old world would be required to make them. And a highway should be there, in which should be no lion, even a highway for our God. All this mixture of trumpery metaphors were poured into the ears of the enchanted Peruvians for the space of three years and more. The railway as far as Arequipa was at length finished, the Oroya railway was begun.

It will probably never be finished.

Robert Stephenson is reported to have said once before a Railway Committee: 'My Lords and Gentlemen, you can carry a railway to the Antipodes if you wish; it is only a matter of expense.' The Peruvians, aided by the archpriest Meiggs, 'the Messiah of railways, who was to bring salvation to the Peruvian Republic,' and steadfastly believing in the Meiggs' method of transubstantiation, commenced building a railway, not to Calcutta, but to the moon11.

As early as 1859 the Oroya Railway began to be thought of seriously, and the late President of Peru, with two other gentlemen of character, were appointed a commission to collect data and make calculations for a railway between Lima and Jauja. Nothing, however, was done until 1864, when Congress authorised the Government, Castilla then being President, to construct a railway to Caxamarca, with an annual guarantee of 7 per cent. for twenty-five years.

The railway fever now began to increase in force and virulence, and in 1868 the President of the Republic was authorised to construct railways from Mollendo to Arequipa, Puno and Cuzco; from Chimbote to Santa or Huaraz; from Trujillo to Pacasmayo and to Caxamarca; from Lima to Jauja; and others which the Republic might need – a very respectable order to be given in one day. The Oroya Railway was to be 145 miles in length, and to cost 27,600,000 dols. To Puno the length was to be 232 miles from Arequipa, and the cost 35,000,000 dols. From Mollendo to Arequipa, 12,000,000 dols., the length being 107 miles12. Ilo to Moquiqua, 63 miles, 6,700,000 dols. Pacasmayo to Caxamarca, or Guadalupe, or Magdalena, 83 miles, 7,700,000 dols. Payto to Piura, 63 miles. Chimbote to Huaraz, 172 miles, 40,000,000 dols.

Immediately after this small order was given, and Meiggs began to fill the world with the sound of his name, the Lima editors commenced their fulsome and disgusting eloquence, which day by day held all people in suspense. 'As puissant as colossal are the labours of the administration of Col. Don José Balta, who, without offence be it said, has a monomania for the construction of railways and public works – the infirmity of a divine inspiration in a head of the State.'

What the infirmity of a divine inspiration may be we will not stay to enquire. Goldsmith was called an inspired idiot: and perhaps this was what the learned editor meant to say of Col. Balta.

He goes on: 'The administration of Balta has converted the nation into a workshop. We say it in his honour that he has constructed rather than governed; but he has constructed well and firmly. He has done more than this, he has created and conserved the habit of work in all the nation, demonstrating by the argument of deeds that revolutions spring principally from idleness.' 'Balta has cast a net of railways over the country which has taken anarchy captive. Without any difficulty might it be argued that the time of Balta will be the Octavian Era of Peru13.'

Enough of this. Suffice it to say that among all these oratorical colonels, generals, lawyers, ministers of state, and accomplished editors, there was not one who had the honesty or the pluck to stand up and declare that it was all false which had so eloquently been said of the Oroya and the Arequipa Railways. They are neither the railways of the age nor of the day. There is one short railway in South America, the construction of which called forth more skill, pluck, and endurance than all the Meiggs railways put together, and this one railway has already earned in the first quarter of the century of its existence more money than all the government railways will ever earn during the next age. Hundreds of these inflated colonels and generals, judges, ministers of state, and accomplished editors, must have passed over the railway, which, running through a tropical forest, connects the Pacific with the Atlantic Ocean. Meiggs himself must have known it well; but neither he nor any of the inspired idiots who drowned him in butter had the valour to make mention of it by one poor word. The bridge over the Chagres river is of more utility, as it will win more enduring fame, than all the bridges on the Oroya, including those which 'are sixteen thousand feet above the level of the sea.' The Oroya bridges bear the same relation to those on the Panama Railway as the feat of the man who walked across the Falls of Niagara bears to the economy of walking. As Blondin was the only man who made any profit out of that performance, so Meiggs, the Messiah of railways, will be the only person who will for some time to come profit by the building of the Oroya and Lima line of railway. It is surely impossible that all the reports one has been compelled to give ear to of great silver mines and mines of copper existing on this line can be false. Yet mining, especially in Peru, is not free from danger; it is also not a little mixed up with lying and cheating, and it has a historical reputation for exaggeration. The copper mines on the Chimbote line, however, are quite another matter. If those on the Oroya can be demonstrated to be equally good, and the silver mines only half as good and as great, Peru may yet lift up her head. But he will be a bold man that shall apply to English capitalists for the first loan to Peruvian miners or to be invested in Peruvian mines, and the days of faith and trust will not have passed away when the money shall have been subscribed.

Although it was a poet who said that

'Borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry,'

yet it is as true as if it had emanated from the Stock Exchange, the Times monetary article, or any other recognised fountain of practical knowledge; and as for the native edge of Peruvian industry, it is about as dull as that of a razor not made to shave but to sell – as dull, in fact, as the edge of a hatchet made of lead.

CHAPTER VI

Guano, Nitrate, and Railways being recognised as the prime sources of Peruvian greatness, and these having been noticed with no scant justice, another matter remains for examination, which may be said to surpass all the others in importance, albeit it is not so easy to estimate or understand.

Granted that Peru has all the physical elements of a great nation, – such as gold and silver, copper and iron, and coal, oil and wine, a vast line of sea-coast with numerous safe bays and ports, rivers for internal navigation, as well as railroads, – has she the moral qualities to develop these riches and make the best use of them? In plain words, has Peru ceased to be a hotbed of revolution? is there any hope that the ruling classes of the Peruvian people will become sober, industrious, thrifty, honest, just and right in all their dealings, and cease to be a source of anxiety and disgust to their present and future creditors?

These may be said to be momentous questions, and not to be lightly answered. Any answer not founded on well-ascertained facts and indisputable knowledge should be set aside as vexatious and frivolous. A hasty answer, or one founded on aught else, could only be conceived in malice or prompted by motives of self-interest. It has, for example, during the past few months been comparatively easy to a portion of the London press to defame the character of Peru; to find reasons why its bonds should be held only as waste paper, and even to prove to the satisfaction of its fond and eager readers that she is in an utterly bankrupt state. The same accomplished writers, if it suited their purpose, could as easily prove, with their eloquent persuasiveness, that Peru after all is, in commercial phraseology, sound; she had never yet failed in keeping faith with her English friends, and is too enlightened to think of doing so now. True, she is in debt; but she can pay handsomely, and, in the powerful rhetoric of Bassanio, would encourage money-lenders and her private friends thus: —