'Ah, I don't know how that might be,' said my persecutor; 'but I know I lost a bunch of keys.'
'Well, the case is dismissed; and you must pay expenses.' And so ended the case.
Now I have no doubt the old lady, though so wrong-headed in the claim she set up against me, had really lost a bunch of keys on the day my assistant made his – for me – unlucky find. Nor do I for a moment doubt the fact of some of the other applicants having also lost keys on the same day and perhaps near the same spot. But the applications by letter and personally numbered altogether not far short of fifty; and it may be set down as a moral certainty that they did not all lose, each of them, a bunch of keys on that particular day, and in Oxford Street – without being particular as to the spot. My theory is, that some of them had probably got their pockets picked of their keys while travelling by omnibus, and could not of course tell exactly where they lost them. Others may have simply mislaid their keys, and jumped to the conclusion that they were lost. Some others, I fear, had not lost keys at all, but merely came to my place out of idle curiosity. All of them, I know, gave me more trouble than I ever hope to have again in an affair of the kind.
[We can hardly say that the foregoing narrative, to call it so, is overstrained. It points to a marvellous want of logical precision in reasoning which is far from uncommon. Some years ago, in these pages, we mentioned a droll case within our own experience. One day we chanced to find a brooch, and advertised the fact in the newspapers. Next day a lady called on us to say that she had lost a ring, and asked if we knew anything about it. 'Madam,' was our reply, 'you must understand that it was a brooch we found, and not a ring.' 'O yes, that maybe so; but I thought as you were in the way of finding things, you might perhaps have seen something of my ring.' A very pretty example this of want of common-sense. Our advice to all who happen to find any article of value on the street is, to take it at once to the police office, where it may be reclaimed by the owner. Those who will not take this trouble, should let the article alone. Finding does not constitute ownership. We knew a gentleman, now deceased, who in the course of his life punctiliously refrained from picking up any article of value on the street, as the article was not his, and he might have been brought into trouble. This was being too fastidious, for it was allowing the article to be appropriated by possibly some dishonest person. True kindness and true honesty consist in lodging the article found, at the police office, whence, if no owner casts up within twelve months, it will be sent to the finder, whose lawful property it becomes. – Ed.]
THE LAND OF THE INCAS
Peru recalls to every thoughtful student of history not only the half-barbaric splendour of the empire of the Incas, but the vanished prestige and glory of their Spanish conquerors. The gorgeous figure of Pizarro, the stately hidalgo, the successful captain, the ruthless soldier of fortune, meets us still at every step in the once rich Indian empire he won for Spain. On that low swampy mangrove-fringed stretch of coast, a tangled maze of vines and flowering creepers, the half-famished Castilian adventurer landed in 1524. And here, where the full tide of the Pacific rolls in upon the beach in columns of snowy foam, he, in 1535, founded Lima, the 'city of the kings.'
To examine the cities of the Incas, their ruined palaces, and other objects of note in this interesting region, was a task undertaken and carried out by Mr Squier, whose researches have been embodied in a volume entitled the Land of the Incas, the perusal of which enables us to offer the following items to our readers.
The coast of Peru is arid and barren, lined with guano islands, which although adding little to the charm of the scenery, are found as lucrative to-day as the mines of Potosi and Pasco were in the heyday of Spanish greatness. Thanks to this useful but unfragrant compost, Pizarro's city of the kings is still rich and flourishing, though the veins of silver are exhausted, and the golden sands no longer glitter with the precious ore, which fired the Spanish breasts of old with such fierce cupidity. It is very unhealthy, and although in the tropics, the climate for six months in the year is extremely damp and almost cold. Lima, which stands in an earthquake region, is built so as to sustain the least possible damage from the ever recurring shocks of those alarming phenomena. The private houses are never more than two stories in height. They have flat roofs and projecting balconies, and are constructed (one can hardly say built) of cane, plastered with mud, and painted in imitation of stone. Most of them have courts with open galleries in the Moorish style, extending along the four sides; and many of them have towers, from which, in addition to the surrounding scenery, an extended view of acres of flat roofs may be obtained – the said flat roofs being piled with heaps of refuse, filth, and all manner of abominations; very often they are used as poultry-yards, and here the buzzards, which act as scavengers in all the South American cities, roost at night.
The furniture in the better class of these wicker and mud-built dwellings is often very fine: antique plate, velvet hangings, costly mirrors, and family portraits, that smile or frown upon you with all the charm or vigour the brush of Vandyke or Velasquez was able to impart. The pasios or public walks are planted with trees, and the arcades, which are lined with fine shops, are a very favourite promenade. The inhabitants of Lima of all grades are remarkably fond of flowers, particularly of roses, which they contrive to keep in bloom all the year round. 'Roses,' Mr Squier says, 'bloom in every court and blush on every balcony, and decorate alike the heavy tresses of the belle and the curly shock of the zamba.'
Bull-fights are a favourite amusement, and so is cock-fighting, although it is no longer, as formerly, practised in the public streets.
The markets are well supplied, especially with fruit and vegetables. Fish is good and the butcher-meat of fair quality. The luckless traveller in Central America who could get nothing but chickens and turkeys to eat, and was afraid at last that his whiskers would transform themselves into feathers, may go to Lima with all safety, as a medium-sized turkey there costs twenty dollars in gold. The cookery is Spanish in its character, and consists much of stews savoury with oil and garlic and pungent with red pepper.
Twenty miles from Lima is Pachacamac, a sacred city of the Incas, where once stood a gigantic temple, dedicated to a deity of the same name, the supreme creator and preserver of the universe. The ruins of two large wings of this temple still remain, one of which contains a perfect well-turned arch, which is so rare a feature in American ruins that Mr Squier says 'it is the only proper arch I ever found in all my explorations in Central and South America.' Pachacamac was the Mecca of South America; and its barren hills and dry nitrous sand-heaps are filled with the dead bodies of ancient pilgrims, who travelled from all parts of the country to lay their bones, not their dust, in this hallowed spot. 'Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,' has no meaning here; the dead body does not decay, but is dried and shrivelled into a mummy. Mr Squier had the curiosity to open the shroud of what may once have been perchance an Aztec belle. The body, which was that of a young girl, was in a sitting posture, supported on a workbox of braided reeds, in which were rude specimens of knitting, spindles for weaving, spools of thread, needles of bone and bronze, a small bronze knife, a fan, and a set of curious cosmetic-boxes formed of the hollow bones of a bird. These were filled with pigments of various colours, and were carefully stopped with cotton. Beside them was a small powder-puff of cotton for applying them to the face, and a rude mirror formed of a piece of iron pyrites highly polished. There was also a netting instrument and a little crushed ornament of gold intended to represent a butterfly. The long black hair, still glossy as in life, was braided and plaited round the forehead, which was bound with a fillet of white cloth adorned with silver spangles. A silver bracelet hung on the shrunken arm; and between the feet was the dried body of a dead parrot, a pet no doubt in life, and sacrificed to bear its mistress company into the dread unknown land of spirits.
In the fertile valley of Canete, amid rich sugar-plantations, Mr Squier found vast pyramidal buildings, rising stage upon stage, with broad flights of steps winding round them to the summits. While sketching amid a maze of these massive shattered adobe walls, our author was startled by seeing three men suddenly leap over a low wall into the vivid sunshine before him. 'God and peace be with you!' he said as calmly as he could, instinctively divining that his best cue was to appear as cool as possible. 'God and peace be with you!' responded the bandits, for such they were; and after a little bullying, an amicable parley ensued, which had for its object the acquisition of Mr Squier's