The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-04-24

| adobe; and one is struck by the fact ! that in all Lima, and, indeed, in all
 South America, there is no such thing as northern chimney! Notwithstand- | ing their airy framework, the builders
 thereof did not ignore the architectural ! traditions of their Moorish and Castil-
 Han ancestors. The largest casas of
 the wealthiest people show little more than blank walls outside, with few windows on the ground floors, and those all heavily barred with iron, each house with one high folding door which opens flush with the pavement of the street, and leads to the patio, or inner courtyard, with it's fountain and flow CTS and shrubs, into which all the liy- ] ing rooms open. The barred windows are relics of early days in Old Castile, ! when precautions against bandits
 were a constant necessity; and they
 have served equally well in this coun- | try, during the time of the viceroys, against hoards of pirates from the sea and bands of robbers from the moun-
 tains, and in later days against revolu- i tionists.
 The more modern houses are two sto- ried and these have always balconies regular Romeo and Juliet retreats,
 whose golden opportunity for filtration are by no means neglected. Wherever there is an upper story, the lower one is seldom used for living purposes, but is generally given over to stabling the horses, storing the carriages, servants quarters, etc.; or is rented, room by room, to as many small shop-keepers. It is not at all uncommon to find family of high degree and great social pretensions, belonging to that exclusive inner circle of upper tendon, than to gain adnittance thereto it would be | easier for the typical camel to go | through the needless eye--residing above a butchers stall, with strips of raw beef, half-dissected pigs, sausages and entrails festooned in bold relief above the lower windows; while near the front door a cobbler sits at his bench begging the coarse shoes of los pobres, and woman .squats in the stuccoed archway of the main entrance, with 8 kettle of odorous fat sizzling over charcoal brazier,A frying, a vile combination of fish, flesh, fowl and garlic, made up into, little pies, which she sells to passers-by. You would hardly be able to guess where some of the COWS are kept that furnish the milk of the city-not all of them-but few. Nowhere else than on the tops of suburban houses! As the roofs are perfectly flat, the common people util- ize them for all manner of purposes, notably for henneries, pig sties, dog kennels, gardens where flowers and vegetables grow in boxes, laundries, and even barn-yards. A recent writer on this subject says: Tn many cases Lima cow spends all her days on the roof of her owners residence, having been taken up when a calf and brought down at the end of her life as fresh beef. In the meantime she is fed on al- falfa (tropical ciever), and the slops from the kitchen. Chicken coops are still more common on the roofs of dwellings, and in the thickly populated portion of the town your neighbors' cocks awaken you at daylight with re- minders of St. Peter"
 Two sides of the Plaza Mayor are oc- cupied by portals, with shops behind them, or, to be more explicit, by build ings whose fronts are faced by pillared corridors, roofed in a long series of arches. These portales are the favorite promenade of the ladies of the city, and therefore, as matter of course, of the gentlemen also. At all times and sea- sons one may meet here the beauty and fashion and flower" and vigor, as we'll as the extremes of riches and pow erty, pride and squalor, that make up the variegated life of this old city. The shops are small, but surprisingly crowded with handsome goods and in them one may find nearly every article of fashion and luxury which the largest stores of Europe or the United States can show.
 They are nearly all kept by foreign CTS, French predominating, German coming next in line, then few Italians and Englishmen. Some of the finest fancy goods stores are owned and managed by Chinese merchants, who enjoy the monopoly of trade in embroi- dered establishments conducted by merchants from the United States, and the house of the Grace Brothers (of which Banker William R. Grace, of New York city, is the head, practically monopolizes North American trade in Peru. Pawn shops are incredibly nu- merous and packed with treasures of every description, diamonds, pearls, emeralds, splendid laces, articles a of virtu, table service and toilet sets of salid gold and silver, (including pieces for all the common uses of the bed room), betokening the extravagence of an age when the Andes poured out streams of precious metal that were thought to be exhaustless; for since these later days of poverty the wolf has been kept from many doors by the surreptitious sale of household treas ures, heir-looms, keep-sakes and even rich, old-fashioned garments which their grandmothers wore. It is quite the fashion here to visit pawn shops, and the tourists cannot do better than go on tours of inspection and perhaps convert some coined silver into jewels in antique settings, which may some times be bought for a tithe of their real value.
 From the Plaza Mayor the street called San Lazaro leads down to the river Rimac, where 1t is crossed by an ancient stone bridge, which was built in the year 1610, by order of the Mar