egro
Jehu--over the paved street, into the dusty road, where the plunging
steeds are brought up floundering, tugging and straining the heavy
vehicle axle, through the finely powdered soil--now firmly stalled, we
get out per force, curse the roads, and threaten to whip the
driver--then we come on harder ground, until imperceptibly there comes a
rocky strata--loose stones, remains of adobie walls and ditches--but all
equally execrable: then, for a mile or more, fine trees bend their
towering arms over the road, and shortly after, we rattle through a huge
gateway--have travelled eight miles, and we are in the city of
kings--Lima! "See it and die," said the old land pirates of the days of
its founder, Pizarro, and their descendants. Whatever it may have been
two centuries ago, in these days it requires no very strong effort of
will to survive the sight.

The city is compact and populous, the buildings are very low, and quite
resemble the old Moriscan towns along the northern shores of Africa,
with close overhanging _jalousies_ and balconies, finely railed and
latticed. The streets are wide and straight, paved with small
pebbles--dreadfully torturing to the pedestrian--the side-walks beneath
the portals or arcades of the plazas, and in the gateways and patios of
dwellings are figured in coarse mosaic, formed by the white
knuckle-bones of sheep and pebbles. Handsome shops fringe the
fashionable avenues, glittering with costly fabrics and toys; then again
packed side by side, in nooks, alcoves, and niches, are small merchants,
who from their numbers, one would suppose to be all sellers and no
buyers.

The little river Rimac flows noisily through the city, fed from far away
by the silvered pinnacles of snows and ice in the lofty Andes. It is
spanned by a substantial and lofty bridge, whose every stone has been
loosened by the earthquake. Lima might be made one of the cleanest
cities in the world; for through all the main arteries runs a narrow
rivulet diverted from the Rimac. Nevertheless, it is excessively filthy,
and the _gallianzos_, or vultures, tame, and pampered by a profusion of
nastiness and offal, take their morning's meal in the streets and
squares, and afterwards hobble to the house-tops, where, with blood-red
eyes, and gorged bodies, they calmly endure repletion.

The most striking features upon approaching the city are the vast
clusters of domes, towers, and spires, that arise in such thick
profusion from the c