to an elevation of 8000 feet, arriving in the evening
at Arequipa. The whole country is desolate in the extreme. On the high
plains we passed through an immense field of moving sand-hills, all of
crescent shape, the sand being white and of a very fine grain. On
approaching Arequipa the sunset effect on the bright and vari-hued rock
strata and scoriae, backed by the grand Volcan Misti, 19,000 feet high,
made a marvellously beautiful picture, the most beautiful of its kind
ever seen by me, and showing how wonderfully coloured landscapes may be
without the presence of vegetation of any kind. Hotels in Arequipa are
very primitive, and after a glance at the market and its filthy people
you will confine your table fare to eggs and English biscuits as I did.
Arequipa has been thrice destroyed by earthquakes and is indeed
considered the quakiest spot on earth. Priests, monks, ragged soldiers
and churches almost compose the town; yet it has a very beautiful Plaza
de Armas, where in the evenings Arequipa fashion promenades to the music
of a quite good band. I seemed to be the only tourist here.

On the 20th I took train to Juliaca, rising to 15,000 feet; thence two
days to Cuzco, the celebrated southern capital of the Incas, whose
history I will not here touch on. Not only are there abandoned Inca
remains, but also in high Peru and Bolivia remains of structures
erected, as it is now supposed, 5000 years ago. The pottery recently
found would suggest this, it being as gracefully moulded and decorated
as that of Egypt of the same period; authority even declaring it to be
undistinguishable from the latter, and they also testify to evidence of
an extremely high and cultivated civilization, not barbaric in any
sense, in these remote periods. Indeed, the civilization of the country
at that far-off time must have been quite as advanced as in the Nile
Valley. Cyclopean walls and other remains show a marvellous skill in
construction; individual blocks of granite-stone, measuring as much as
fifteen to twenty feet in diameter, being placed in these walls with
such skill that even to-day a pen-knife blade cannot be inserted between
them. No mortar was used, but the blocks are keyed together in a
peculiar way. How this stone was so skilfully cut and transported we
cannot imagine; even with iron and all our modern appliances it is
doubtful if we could produce such exactitude.

[Illustration: PERUVIAN RUINS.
(Note dimensions of stones and lock