No. 298.
Mr. Phelps
to Mr. Frelinghuysen.
Lima, Peru, September 10, 1884. (Received October 9.)
Sir: The Government, since its triumph of the 27th ultimo, has apparently been gaining in strength and in adherents.
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The Government is now in possession of lea. The port of Mollendo is closed to shipping by order, and the English steamship company, about the only ship-owners in interest, submit to the paper blockade.
As the Government exercises a rigid scrutiny of cablegrams, no news from Arequipa can reach us, Mollendo being closed, and we know nothing of what is being done in that stronghold of Caceres. A story was in circulation that the general is lying dangerously sick at a hacienda in the interior, but it is probably false.
Fifteen hundred troops, accompanied by the Secretary of War, have gone by sea to the north to pacify—using the expression common here—that section of the country; in other words, to depose Dr. Puga and establish the power of the Government.
Troops have also gone to Junin, in the interior, from here.
A strict censorship of the press completely cuts off information from the public, and we hear nothing of late of events outside of Lima, or, at least, nothing which the Government does not wish should be known.
What must be regarded as accidental, or, perhaps, more correctly, as a success due purely to want of intelligent command in General Caceres on the 27th of July, has apparently greatly changed the face of affairs over the larger part of Peru. We can only hope as yet that it has been for the best.
I have, &c.,