-they walked
rapidly through one of the sloping streets leading from the Plaza-Mayor.

This place is situated more than four hundred feet above the level of
the sea, and about a hundred and fifty rods from the bridge thrown over
the river Rimac, which forms the diameter of the city of Lima, arranged
in a semicircle.

The city of Lima lies in the valley of the Rimac, nine leagues from its
mouth; at the north and east commence the first undulations of ground
which form a part of the great chain of the Andes: the valley of
Lungaucho, formed by the mountains of San Cristoval and the Amancaes,
which rise behind Lima, terminates in its suburbs. The city lies on one
bank of the river; the other is occupied by the suburb of San Lazaro,
and is united to the city by a bridge of five arches, the upper piers of
which are triangular to break the force of the current; while the lower
ones present to the promenaders circular benches, on which the
fashionables may lounge during the summer evenings, and where they can
contemplate a pretty cascade.

The city is two miles long from east to west, and only a mile and a
quarter wide from the bridge to the walls; the latter, twelve feet in
height, ten feet thick at their base, are built of _adobes_, a kind of
brick dried in the sun, and made of potter's clay mingled with a great
quantity of chopped straw: these walls are calculated to resist
earthquakes; the enclosure, pierced with seven gates and three posterns,
terminates at its south-east extremity by the little citadel of Santa
Caterina.

Such is the ancient city of kings, founded in 1534 by Pizarro, on the
day of Epiphany; it has been and is still the theatre of constantly
renewed revolutions. Lima, situated three miles from the sea, was
formerly the principal storehouse of America on the Pacific Ocean,
thanks to its Port of Callao, built in 1779, in a singular manner. An
old vessel, filled with stones, sand, and rubbish of all sorts, was
wrecked on the shore; piles of the mangrove-tree, brought from Guayaquil
and impervious to water, were driven around this as a centre, which
became the immovable base on which rose the mole of Callao.

The climate, milder and more temperate than that of Carthagena or Bahia,
situated on the opposite side of America, makes Lima one of the most
agreeable cities of the New World: the wind has two directions from
which it never varies; either it blows from the south-east, and becomes
cool by crossing t