20
...
519
in
wretched misery but not more than one or two in ten, and they cannot after such a condition. If we fail to relieve those employed in shops, or in trade, we are
of Your Excellency with the request, that you would look upon our complaint with your powerful protection, which will cause us to leap for joy.
We are charged with all the thefts, and whatever is lost, from which we can hardly clear ourselves. If we appear in the streets, we meet ridicule, and vile language to disgrace us, thorns and briers meet us, and do us harm whichever way we go.
Everybody in this port (of Lima) feels as if they had fallen into a pit, from which there seems no escape. Our sufferings are unutterable.
Therefore we now come into the presence of Your Excellency, earnestly supplicating for your saving and merciful protection to be extended towards us.
Like rain falling on the parched wastes, your kindness will revive us, like a lucky star shining along a dark road.
Wherever we are, we will remember your goodness, and feel it to be a fragrance transmitting to endless ages.
Prostrate at your feet, we now conclude this statement.
December 1868.