Читать книгу The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism (Vol. 1-4). The History of Sea Voyages, Discovery, Piracy and Maritime Warfare онлайн

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Southward, with favouring breezes and usually calm seas, one soon arrives at Callao—a place which may yet become a great city, but which, like everything else in Peru, has been retarded by interminable dissensions in regard to government and politics, and by the ignorance and bigotry of the masses. Peru had an advantage over Chili in wealth and importance at one time; but, while the latter country is to-day one of the most satisfactory and stable republics in the world, one never knows what is going to happen next in Peru. Hence distrust in commerce; and hence the sailor will not find a tithe of the shipping in Callao Roads that he will at the wharfs of Valparaiso. Lima, the capital, is situated behind Callao, at a distance of about six miles. When seen from the deck of a vessel in the roadstead, the city has a most imposing appearance, with its innumerable domes and spires rising from so elevated a situation, and wearing a strange and rather Moorish air. On nearing the city, everything speaks eloquently of past splendour and present wretchedness; public walks and elegant ornamental stone seats choked with rank weeds, and all in ruins. You enter Lima through a triumphal arch, tawdry and tumbling to pieces; you find that the churches, which looked so imposing in the distance, are principally stucco and tinsel. Lima has a novelty in one of its theatres. It is built in a long oval, the stage occupying nearly the whole of one long side, all the boxes being thus comparatively near it. The pit audience is men, and the galleries, women; and all help to fill the house, between the acts, with tobacco smoke from their cigarettes.