The citizen. (Frederick City, Md.) 1895-1923, 1908-04-17
STREET MERCHANTS OF CALLAo.
Most of the Buying and Selling Of
This Town is Done Outdoors.


To Callao belongs the distinction
of presenting the most interesting
phases of street life and the most
varied types of street characters of
any city in the Western Hemisphere,
If not in the world.
The way the clouds of the Pacific
have of banking in against the Peru
Wan Andes without precipitating any
of their moisture gives a climate
which for GOODNESS accompanied by
dryness is quite without parallel in
similar ATTITUDES. The conditions of
out of door life are as near the ideal
as in any place in the world, says a
correspondent of the Los Angeles
Times, and as a result of this proba-
bly, nine-tenths of Callaos buying and
selling is done on the streets. The
city has no large shops whatever, and
even the arcades so common in most
Spanish-American cities are rare; on
the other hand, more or less itinerant
street vendors and hucksters are le-
gion and practically monopolize the
retail trade of the whole town.
Few carts are used in trade, most
of the vendors carrying their wares
on their heads or on horse or mule
back, prominent among the latter
class being the panadero or baker.
He bakes his bread in a big stone
outdoor oven during the early hours
of the morning and delivers it during
the day. His outfit consists of two
big skin covered baskets thrown on
each side of horse, between which
he perches himself-usually with
both feet on one side as though
mounted on a side saddle-and
hands out his bread to his customers
as they respond to his lusty hail at
their doors.
Sacks of stale bread for chicken
feed are occasionally carried, being
tied to thongs on the outside of the
big bags. The bread loaves consist of
long slender sticks of glazed gluten,
with crust so hard as almost to
scratch glass when fresh, and which,
stale, will resist Knife Dlade like
piece of hippo hide. Loaves of five
or six feet long are baked for certain
feast days; in fact it is said that their
length ON these occasions is only lin
tied by the width of the extremely
narrow streets through which they
must be delivered.
The grocer boy delivers in two big
bags made of untanned cowhide, with
the hair out, and his mount is usually
mule. When his bags are full, on
the out trip, he rides on the neck of
the mule, but going back, empty, he
either rides with one foot in each bag
or else climbs in one bag, invites a
friend to climb into the other to make
a balanced load, and thus has COM
pany for the home trip.
One of the funniest things I saw in
Peru was standup give and take
smuggling match between two young
sters-one in either bag of a delivery
outfit-who had evidently come to
serious misunderstanding over some
thing and were having it out then
and there, while the old mule, I'M
moved by the diversion which fur
nished unlimited amusement for ev-
cry one along three or four full
blocks of Callao's principal street,
neither batted an eye nor deviated an
iota from the sober measure of his
even, plodding tread
The lechero, or milkman, has a
light frame of untanned cowhide fit
ted to his horse, and in this rests his
cans. At the bottom of each can is a
little brass faucet for drawing off the
milk. AS the cream and richer milk
rises to the top of the cans it is a
common trick of the 1echeros to leave
the last four or five inches in the bot
tom for their own use, or that of
some favorite customer. OF course
food carried thus on horseback comes
in for good deal of jolting, and a
good housekeeper is able to tell how
long her purchases have been on the
way by the amount of chatting her
loaf has received and the quantity of
butter that floats on her milk.
Perhaps the strangest of all the
mounted merchants of Callao is the
pollero, or poultryman. His stock is
carried in two huge cages, one on
either side of his horse, and in COM
partments in these one may be pretty
sure of finding doves, ducks and
chickens, and sometimes even geese
and turkeys. They buy fowls as we'll
as sell them. and are always ready to
enter into any kind of an exchange.
The polleros have the name, as a
class, of being rather rascally fellows,
with an uncomfortable propensity for
annexing any stray property that
may be left lying around. and "Cui-
dado. ninos, ell pollero" ('1ook out.
children, the poultryman") is the
usual admonition his coming evokes.