“The priests in all parts of Peru dress in a very extraordinary, not to say outlandish manner.  One of the lower grade wears a very capacious shovel hat, projecting as much in front as behind, and looking very like a double-ended coal-heaver’s hat.  A loose black serge robe covers him all over, as with a funereal pall, and being fastened together only at the neck, gives to his often obese figure an appearance the very reverse of grave or serious:  The superior of a monastery, or the priest in charge of a parish, wears a more stately clerical costume.  His hat is of formidable dimensions—­a huge, flat, Chinese-umbrella-shaped sort of a concern, which cannot be compared to anything else in creation.  He also affects ruffles and lace, a long cassock, and a voluminous cloak like many of those of Geneva combined together; black silk stockings and low shoes complete the clerical array of the higher ecclesiastics.”

[Illustration:  RIDING AND FULL-DRESS COSTUME OF THE PERUVIAN LADIES.]

Quite as odd, in their way, as these good padres, are the Peruvian loungers, the “lions” of Lima—­a long-haired, becloaked, truculent-looking set of fellows, whose proper place would seem to be among operatic banditti.  A greater contrast and disparity than exists between them and the beautiful brunettes to whom they are fain to devote themselves, cannot well be imagined.  That the latter generally prefer European gentlemen to these ill-favored beaux, follows as a matter of course.  That the discarded “lion” resents this preference of his fair countrywomen, we have the testimony of the traveler already quoted from.

“Instinctively, as it were, a feeling of dislike and rivalry seemed to prevail between ourselves and such of these truculent gentry as it was our fortune to come into contact with.  They were jealous, no doubt, of the wandering foreigners, whom they chose contemptuously to term gringos, but who, they know well enough, are infinitely preferred to themselves by their handsome coquettish countrywomen.  It is, indeed, notoriously the fact, that any respectable man of European birth can marry well, and even far above his own social position, amongst the dark-eyed donnas of Peru.  The men don’t seem exactly to like it.  Judging by their appearance, we found but little difficulty in believing the character which report had given them—­namely, their proneness to assassination, especially in love affairs, either personally, or, more frequently, by deputy.  If the brilliant creole and half-caste women of this warm, tropical country, are some of the most beautiful and lovable of the sex, their sallow, sinister-looking, natural protectors are just the very opposite.  The singular difference in the moral and physical characteristics of the two sexes is something really remarkable, and I, for one, cannot satisfactorily explain it to my own mind.  That such is the case I venture to affirm; the why and the wherefore I must fain leave to wiser ethnological heads.”