is disgusting to see the Peruvian priests, who
usually treat the Indians like brutes, behaving with the most degrading
servility when they want to get money from them. The love of the Indians
for strong drinks is a vice which the priests turn to their own
advantage. For the sake of the fees they frequently order religious
festivals, which are joyfully hailed by the Indians, because they never
fail to end in drinking bouts.

Added to the ill treatment of the priests, the Indians are most unjustly
oppressed by the civil authorities. In the frequent movements of troops
from one place to another, they are exposed to great losses and
vexations. They are compelled to perform the hardest duties without
payment, and often the produce of their fields is laid under
contribution, or their horses and mules are pressed into the service of
the military. When intelligence is received of the march of a battalion,
the natives convey their cattle to some remote place of concealment in
the mountains, for they seldom recover possession of them if once they
fall into the hands of the soldiery.

Every fortnight a mail is despatched with letters from Lima to Tarma,
Jauja, Huancavelica, Ayacucha, Cuzco, and into Bolivia; another
proceeds to the northern provinces; a third to Arequipa and the
southern provinces; and every week one is despatched to Cerro de
Pasco. In Lima, the letter-bag is consigned to the charge of an
Indian, who conveys it on the back of a mule to the next station,[77]
where it is received by another Indian; and in this manner, handed
from cholo to cholo, the letter-bag traverses the whole of its
destined route, unaccompanied by an official courier. As soon as the
mail arrives at a station, a flag is displayed at the house of the
post-master, to intimate to those who expect letters that they may
receive them; for they are not sent round to the persons to whom they
are addressed, and it is sometimes even a favor to get them three or
four days after their arrival. The Peruvian post is as tardy as it is
ill-regulated. On one of my journeys, I started from Lima two days
after the departure of the mail. On the road I overtook and passed the
Indian who had charge of the letters, and, without hurrying myself, I
arrived in Tarma a day and a half before him. Ascending the
Cordillera, I once met an Indian very leisurely driving his ass before
him with the mail-bag fastened to its back. Between the towns which do
not lie in the regula