handsome enough. There are
also three religious houses, one a monastery of seven or eight
_mercenarians_, a second is an hospital of the brothers of _St John of
God_, and the third a monastery of Franciscans, who formerly had a house
a short way from town, in the pleasantest part of the vale, near the
sea.

[Footnote 266: Perhaps this date ought to have been 1705.--E.]

The vale of Arica is about a league wide next the sea, all barren ground
except where the old town stood, which is divided into small fields of
clover, some small plantations of sugar-canes, with olive-trees and
cotton-trees intermixed, and several intervening marshes, full of the
sedges of which they build their houses. Growing narrower about a league
eastward at the village of _St Michael de Sapa_, they begin to cultivate
the _agi_, or Guinea pepper, which culture extends over all the rest of
the vale, in which there are several detached farms exclusively devoted
to its culture. In that part of the vale, which is very narrow, and
about six leagues long, they raise yearly to the value of above 80,000
crowns. The Spaniards of Peru are so much addicted to this spice, that
they dress no meat without it, although so hot and biting that no one
can endure it, unless accustomed to its use; and, as it cannot grow in
the _Puna_, or mountainous country, many merchants come down every year,
who carry away all the Guinea pepper that grows in the districts of
_Arica, Sama, Taena, Locumba_, and others, ten leagues around, from all
of which it is reckoned they export yearly to the value of 600,000
dollars, though sold cheap. It is hard to credit that such vast
quantities should go from hence, as the country is so parched up, except
the vales, that nothing green is to be seen. This wonderful fertility is
produced by the dung of fowls, which is brought from _Iquique_, and
which fertilizes the soil in a wonderful manner, making it produce four
or five hundred for one of all sorts of grain, as wheat, maize, and so
forth, but particularly of this _agi_, or Guinea pepper, when rightly
managed. When the plants are sufficiently grown in the seed-bed to be
fit for transplanting, they are set out in winding lines like the letter
S, that the furrows for conveying the water may distribute it equally to
the roots of the plants. They then lay about the root of each plant of
Guinea pepper as much _guana_, or bird's dung formerly mentioned, as
will lie in the hollow of the hand. Whe