This picture may appear to some highly coloured; but I speak from experience, and could relate innumerable instances of the practice of all the social virtues which I have mentioned: sufficient, I am sure, to convince the most hardened sceptic. I arrived at Lima a prisoner, pennyless, and, as I thought, friendless; but in this I was deceived; I owe to persons whom I had never seen, and of whose existence I was then ignorant, such friendship, kindness, and pecuniary relief while in prison, and generous and kind protection afterwards, as I hope will never be eradicated from my bosom; and yet I trust, that I neither do, nor ever can, attribute to the creoles virtues which they do not possess: it is my duty, as an author, to speak the truth, however my gratitude and affection might incline me to conceal their failings.
Gambling is carried on to a great extent in Lima, but much more in the higher circles than in the lower. No public gaming houses are permitted by the government, and the police officers are on the alert wherever a house is suspected; but private parties are very common, particularly at the country houses of the nobility, and at the bathing places of Miraflores, Chorrillos and Lurin. The tables, although in the houses of noblemen, are free to all--the master and the slave, the marquis, the count, the mechanic, and the pedlar, mix indiscriminately. This vice is generally confined to the men; but some females now and then join in these fashionable amusements.
Having observed, that the female creoles are kind mothers, it is scarcely necessary to say, that adultery is rare. One would think that the exclamation of the elder Cato to some young Romans was here observed: "courage, my friends, go and see the girls, but do not corrupt the married women." Concubinage is common, or perhaps only more public than in Europe, where civilization appears to have established the law, that to sin in secret is not to sin at all. It is true, that scandal often aggravates the crime, which is certainly mollified by the sincere regard which the father generally entertains for his natural children; making their happiness a principal object of his attention, and frequently at last legitimating them either by marriage or by will.