feet high, and have enormously large heads. In one of them
I counted seventy-five grains in a single row.

Maize forms the bread of the Peruvians. It is almost the only sustenance
of the Indians of the mountains, and is the principal food of the slaves
on the coast. Like the potatoe in Europe, it is cooked in a variety of
ways. Two of the most simple preparations of maize are those called
_choclas_ and _mote_. _Choclas_ are the unripe maize heads merely soaked
in warm water; they form a very agreeable and wholesome article of food.
_Mote_ consists of ripe maize first boiled and then laid in hot ashes,
after which the husks are easily stripped off.

As to whether maize is indigenous to Peru, or when it was introduced
there, much has already been written, and I shall refrain from entering
into the investigation of the question here. I may, however, mention
that I have found very well preserved ears of maize in tombs, which,
judging from their construction, belong to a period anterior to the
dynasty of the Incas; and these were fragments of two kinds of maize
which do not now grow in Peru. If I believed in the transmigration and
settlement of Asiatic races on the west coast of America, I should
consider it highly probable that maize, cotton, and the banana, had been
brought from Asia to the great west coast. But the supposed epoch of
this alleged immigration must carry us back to the earliest ages; for,
that the Incas were (as the greater number of inquirers into Peruvian
history pretend) of Asiatic origin, is a mere vague hypothesis,
unsupported by anything approximating to historical proof.

Since the earthquake of 1687 the crops of maize on the Peruvian coast
have been very inconsiderable. In the mountainous parts it is somewhat
more abundant, but still far from sufficient to supply the wants of the
country. Chile supplies, in return for sugar, the maize required in
Peru. Of the other kinds of grain barley only is raised; but it does not
thrive on the coast, and is cultivated successfully at the height of
from 7000 to 13,200 feet above the level of the sea. The assertion of
some travellers, that barley was known to the Peruvians before the
arrival of the Spaniards, is groundless. It is true that barley is
sometimes found in pots in Indian graves. Those graves, however, as I
have had repeated opportunities of being convinced, belong, without
exception, to modern times, chiefly to the seventeenth century.

Potatoes ar