Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/269

Rh of a small fruit, a kind of strawberry, but larger in size. Having been sprinkled with a water of a common scent, or with a spirituous solution of amber, this puchero is valued at half a real.

The different aggregates, such as the blossoms of the little orange of Quito, of the apricot, of the small apples which have an amber colour, of the larger fruits, and of the medlar, together with the chirimoya, carnations, gillyflowers, anemones, tulips, and other flowers in full season, being conjoined with a puchero of double or treble the size of the simple one, augment its price to two or three piastres. Its value is raised or diminished, in proportion to the private festivities which are on foot, and to the times of the public festivals.

To the augmentation of value above-mentioned, is to be superadded the price of the flower named ariruma, which is so arbitrary, that it rises from six reals to six or seven piastres, according to the season, or to the demands of the purchasers. Artificial flowers of this description having been recently introduced, have in some measure diminished the value of the natural ones. It is, however, to be noticed, that the puchero of natural flowers is to be procured at every season of the year, there being simply a variation of the more exquisite flowers, which, for want of a proper degree of skill in the culture, are not at all times obtainable.

This indispensable luxury is purchased by all the different classes of females, in a street fronting the steps of the dral