as he handed me ten per cent. rebate on the fares an idea which, I confess, had not occurred to me before. These people kept with me to Southampton-they played violins and pianos beautifully, and gave a concert on board the steamer, and made speeches in Spanish which I had to translate, and when the white cliffs of Albion came in sight they opened bottles of champagne in my honour. But one of them-it was the first time he had travelled on a train, I think-pulled the communication cord of the boat-train to amuse himself, and the train came to a sudden stop at Basingstoke. Again I acted as interpreter, saving them a fine from the indignant inspectors and train officials who rushed up to see what was the matter.

But, kind reader, I have brought you home too soon. Not yet for us are the green fields of gentle, soothing England. Away to the south from Guayaquil we must go, along the heaving waves of that Great Pacific Coast whose surgebeat shores it is ours to follow.

XIV

PERU, THE LAND OF THE INCAS 1

A DEEP blue sky with the flashing sunset on the one hand flaunting great banners of gold and crimson in the westthe colours of Spain which once held sway here-and on the other the far, faint, grey serrated edge of the Andes: so far that no form or shape except that of outline is visible-the true test of distance-and from the surf-beat fringe of sealhaunted and bird-covered rocky promontories, whence a faint solemn moan of breaking rollers comes seaward, a broad, undulating, rising, coastal zone, tinted in the colours of purples and burnt-sierras which depict its canyons and its deserts, stretches away landwardly for a hundred miles towards that solemn Cordillera. The green sea rises refreshingly to meet the steamer's prow; not a sail or smoke-line is visible; not a hamlet or plantation denotes the presence of man upon the seaboard, and only the quivering and throbbing of the engines disturb the solitude of the deck, which I am pacing alone, regardless for the moment of the odour of dinner wafted from the windows of the steamer's saloon. For who would go to a stuffy cabin whilst yet that glowing disc remains upon the great horizon of the west? Is the sun-god of the Aztecs and the Incas of so little moment? So Balboa gazed upon it; so Drake, as hitherwards he passed, hot on the plate-ships' track, and so throughout our thousand leagues of Peruvian and Chilean coast journey do we see it: "So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed." It becomes but a semi-diameter as I watch now; it is but a segment of a circle, and again it has gone entirely, leaving a momentary gap upon the darkening sea-line; and turning from the sunset sky I look again to the Cordillera-bounded east: wild,

1 Some of the particulars in this chapter are taken from a paper read by the author before the Royal Society of Arts in April, 1909, for which the society awarded him their silver medal.

rugged, mysterious. It is Peru: it is the land of Pizarro and the Incas. It is the land of gold; the famous El Dorado of the west, and we are indeed of commercial-minded clay if our hearts do not beat a stroke faster with some touch of enthusiasm. Peru!-the darkening shore-line might be peopled with the ghosts of mail-clad Spaniards, the sinister forms of inquisitorial Jesuits, whilst to seaward the phantom form of some Draconian frigate might be driving 'mid the wrack of the freshening breeze. What is that vessel in the western offing? is it the barque of some sturdy buccaneer from Plymouth? No, it is a piratical craft of another naturepiratical, that is, from the point of view of the British shipowner, for it is a German steamer of the excellent Kosmos Line, which has been picking up cargo at the ports along the coast-ports served otherwise only by the British and British-Chilean lines.

But we are the true Phoenicians on this great coast; we, the British, who bring cargo hither, and transport it hence. Adown this endless coast from Panama to Valparaiso four thousand miles or more, these British-built, British-officered, and well-appointed steamers, tarrying from port to port, journey incessantly. The Phoenician mariners cast anchor repeatedly; alongside come the lighters of the natives, and the incessant rolling and grinding of the steam-winch, which forces the hold of our steamer to disgorge bales of Manchester goods, bar iron, cases of imported whisky, pieces of machinery, and other matters of miscellaneous merchandise; whilst in return we take on bales of cotton or sacks of sugar, from the plantations along the coast; bundles of coca leaves (for export for cocaine-making, growing nowhere else in the world), sacks of silver or copper ore from the mines of the distant Andes, which loom up in grey majesty to the east, and other singular produce of the coast, or of the mountains, and the forest regions beyond. Every package is laid bare to the eye of the passenger as it is swung up and over by the clanking chain; and when the great lighter is filledwith a free accompaniment of Spanish oaths-the rowers bend their backs to the sweeps, cleaving the rolling green waves, surf-crested, between us and the harbour-mole.

I have often asked myself which is the most pleasant mode

of travelling in South America-as perhaps many travellers have asked themselves-whether steamer, railway, or muleback. This might seem at first a trite observation, but it has been often forced upon me by sheer contrast. When I have, after weeks of journeying in the saddle, among the snowy Cordilleras of the Andes or upon the appalling coast deserts of Chile or Peru, come down to a seaport, sold my mules and given away their trappings (perhaps to some faithful peon who has accompanied me), discarded the stout dress of the rider for the garb of more civilized man, and exchanged the rude fare of the sierra for the steamer's table, I have heaved a sigh of satisfaction. The small boat with myself and my steamer trunks-battered from much ascension by mule-bearing up precipices, and scored with the marks of raw-hide ropes which bound them on to the backs of refractory mules in that way which only the Spanish-American arriero can perform, has borne me away from the little port on the arid coast. I have said good-bye to the uniformed Custom House custodian, or the captain of the port, who, with true Spanish-American urbanity has kept me from too lonely British contemplation of the Pacific waves. I have purchased my last packets of native cigarettes and posted my last letter. The semi-Indian boatman bends his arms, the long wharf stretching out beyond the shallow Pacific beach recedes, as does the foam-fringed shore, whilst the rocky promontory, under whose shelter from the rolling sea the funnelled steamer lies, develops to my view. So we go seaward, to where El Vapor lies at her anchor. The swarthy boatman hoists up the battered trunks and perhaps some sacks of mineral samples torn from those far-off Cordilleran mines, receiving with doffed hat and smile my added tip. Poor chap; the row was a stiff one, for the captain of the steamer (out of sheer perversity the captain of the port had said, though probably there were cogent reasons) had anchored miles off shore.

One thing dawns upon me as I hear again the familiar English tongue after my long sojourn among the Spanishspeaking peoples of the coast-the steamer is a bit of Britain. A Cockney steward, who has sailed these seas perhaps more times than Drake and all the famous buccaneers together,

takes my ticket and with respectful "Yessir" hears my requirements and assigns me a cabin.

To have a comprehensive idea of that great part of western South America which forms the republic of Peru its geographical character must be grasped. Peru is naturally divided into three zones-the coast, the mountains, and the forest regions respectively. First is the coast. This is a semi-arid strip of land between the Andes and the ocean, some 1,400 miles long, from Ecuador in the north to Chile in the south. The coast is beaten with a tearing surf, and, whilst there are numerous ports at which the steamers call, only three or four of them-as Callao, Chimbote, and Payta-are first-class harbours, the others being open roadsteads. This coast-zone varies in width about 90 to 120 miles, and is traversed by small rivers at great distances apart, which descend from the Andes to the sea. Between the cultivable lands and cities, which owe their existence to these streams, great arid deserts are encountered, for the Peruvian littoral is subject to the peculiar condition of having no appreciable rainfall, due mainly to the presence of the Andes, which mountains intercept the moisture-laden winds coming from the east.

The coast of Peru is a long barren stretch with few indentations of any magnitude, except the harbours already mentioned; and as we behold it from the steamer's deck we might ask ourselves what of value to man could come from so inhospitable-appearing a littoral. The ancient civilization of the Incas did not dwell here, and the use of the "silent highway" was unknown to them. Through countless ages the surges have beat upon the guano-covered and seal-haunted rocks, unploughed by the craft of man, save it were an occasional balsa, or native raft of woven rushes, such as the Indian of the northern part used for traffic to the Gulf of Guayaquil. It was a singular native craft of this nature a rush craft with mat sails-which the ship of Pizarro overhauled near Tumbez; the gold and pearls it carried firing the imagination of the adventurous conquistadores. For the self-contained empire of the Incas had little use for the sea except for fishing; and as an example of the endurance and swiftness of the royal couriers it is recorded that the Inca

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