gallant, young soldiers who had left Lima in brilliant
uniforms, with high hopes of success, and gay songs on their lips, lay
a confused mass of bloated corpses. Four days of tropical sun had made
them burst, and the stench was horrible. Dreading contagion, for the
field of death lay near to Lima, the Chileans had forced the Chinamen of
that city to gather the dead, cover them with kerosene and fire.

After nightfall, the blue glow rising from these awful funeral pyres,
lit up the whole field. Bands of Chinamen leading mules who carried
panniers containing vessels of kerosene, passed around, and whenever
they saw a corpse not burning, they struck a hole in it with a
spade, poured in the oil and fired. At other points on the road, lay
heaps of mangled dead, while the earth around was torn up in most
unaccountable manner. This was caused by ground torpedoes placed in the
road by some fertile genius, who thought that he could thus destroy
the advancing Chileans.

After two or three of those hidden mines had exploded with dreadful
effect on the Chilean soldiers, they compelled the Peruvian prisoners
to march ahead, and when these were destroyed they set a drove or cattle
ahead in self-defense. Chorrilos, where Paul's headquarters had been so
long, lay a mass of ruins. Bodies in every fallen house gave forth the
awful stench of human decay.

Paul stood on the cliffs overlooking the pleasant bay, in whose waters
his little sloop had been anchored so many times, and beheld the result
of a charge of the Chilean army. Bodies of the dead soldiers lay thick
under the foot of the cliff, Chilean and Peruvian grasped in each
other's arms as they had been hurled in the fury of battle to death
below.

Along the beach from the cliffs to the ocean, lay numbers of the
soldiers who had been wounded, and while endeavoring to reach the
tempting waters and quench their thirst, had perished. Others, who in
their delirium had drank its brine, died in more agony, and lay in
strings along the side washed by the waves.

At the approach of a human being, flocks of hideous galanasas and great
droves of condors would rise lazily, too heavy from their ghastly
feast, to flap their monstrous wings.

It was a sight to sicken one forever of the vaunted glories of the
battlefield.

Soon after the occupation, General Backadana issued a proclamation
requiring all Peruvian officers to surrender. The Chileans knew tha