Here, if anywhere on earth, the drawbacks of involuntary celibacy are felt by the priest. For such canonical privations he usually searches compensation in the less amiable society of a favourite “sobrina,” or reputed niece, whose kindness hinges on a precarious friendship, and whose artful complacency
“hardens a’ within, And petrifies the feeling!”
But while we regret the evils thus entailed on the curate by the established usage and Romish policy[21] of the sacred orders, we do with pleasure and grateful remembrance assure our readers that, from the individual curates spread over the hill-land of this thinly inhabited country, the foreigner and traveller is always sure to meet with the greatest kindness and hospitality. Further to illustrate the moral and physical aspect of the Sierra, we would mention that once, when on a journey in the interior, we had the good fortune to fall in with a clerical gentleman, whose vigour of mind was not to be overcome by the dreariness of his residence at Cauri, a puna village of cold and shivering aspect. This active and spirited person came up to us as we crossed the celebrated road-way of the Incas, on the heights of Huamalies, and we descended together towards the village of Jesus, only a few leagues distant; but before we could reach this place his fine mule began to trip, then tottered, and soon failed entirely in her hind-legs, as if struck by palsy. She was unsaddled, she immediately stretched herself on the ground, swelled out rapidly, struggled and groaned, and in less than half an hour died.
The priest, who on this occasion showed himself to be not at all unacquainted with practical farriery, felt like one who had lost a tried and valued companion. He soon, however, reconciled himself to a misfortune beyond his power to remedy; and ordering his Indian page to walk down hill, (after he had secured the saddle and trappings of the favourite animal here left to the hungry condors, on the back of the cargo-mule, or bed-mule, driven before us,) the jovial priest mounted the Indian’s little rough poney, and we all arrived safely at our destination early in the evening. The cattle—every hoof—were in distant pastures, and the priest could not be provided with another mule before next morning. We therefore passed the evening agreeably under the same roof, where a pretty-looking white mouse was caged, and kept as a precious remedy and charm against all diseases; and some such wizard power as this timid creature was supposed to possess, these poor mountaineers stood much in need of, as no surgeon or physician ever resides among them. At the village of Jesus we arrived in the dry season, when its nearest plains wore a stunted and withered aspect, and when there was no crop in the ground—not their ordinary potato crop, which indeed is their only one; and which in some years succeeds, while in other years it fails on account of the frost. But, during the rainy season, when frost is unknown in the deep ravines and lofty arable heights and acclivities of the inland country,—where the highest-perched houses are seen, on arriving at them, to have still higher back-grounds,—the Indians, each of whom cultivates his own patch of ground, drive all their cattle to the remotest pastures of their extensive common; because they cannot consent to have them feeding near their doors, and crops, which have no proper enclosures.