Any statement regarding Peru implies a contrary statement equally valid. Contrast is its characteristic quality, true as to the general aspects of the country and ramifying through remote details. It is the obvious point of view from which to study Peru. The three parts of this book—the desert, the mountains, the jungle—are the three natural divisions of the country. The shore is a long, narrow desert, much diversified. In a fertile valley intersecting it lies Lima, The City of the Kings. The ri

The surface of the ocean is unruffled. Only the heaving of its great body suggests the power beneath. But when it confronts the desert cliffs, backed by the world-weight of the Andes, the force which has been gathering all the way from Australia, so mighty that it can be compared to nothing but itself, snarls into uncontrolled fury, rebellious, but acknowledging the limit of its power. The “Peaceful Ocean” lies next to a land of geological unrest; the coast rising, subterranean torment breaking

No Peruvian thinks of zones differing from his own as being remote geographical localities. Peru contains them all. He does not have to travel over the face of the earth for a change of climate, but makes short, domestic, vertical journeys instead. Living under his banana groves among his sugar-fields in the lush coast valley, if he feels need of fresher air, he takes a trip up to the temperate zone, where apple orchards and wheat-fields lie spread out in a recess of the mountains, and strawberr

The land lying between Peru and Brazil is a mystery “although the bounds be known of all sides.... Some say it is a drowned land, full of lakes and watery places; others affirm there are great and flourishing kingdoms, ... where they say are wonderful things.” Father Acosta     What a “hereditary spell” the jungle has had upon men! How smilingly its beauty allures—and how graciously it repels! Yet its beauty is not merely beauty. It flashes suggestions of wondrous lands beyond, bringing to the i

Peru is the Land of the Sun. Its light and heat descend upon the coast with tropical fury, reducing the desert to a shimmering vibration which breathes back scorching odors toward the sun. The sun alone makes life possible upon the arctic heights where, in Inca days, it was worshipped in name as well as in fact. Yet beyond the mountain-barrier the same constant sun has no longer undisputed sway. The jungle is “almost uninhabitable through too great abundance of waters.” Peru is the Land of Water

Of all the general works on Peru none has greater weight than Peru; Beobachtungen und Studien (1893) by E. W. Middendorf. He has exploited the country in a large, three-volume work with such German thoroughness that hardly a fact has been left for subsequent writers to disclose. I have referred to it constantly. Other shorter, general studies of the country are Von Tschudi’s Reisen durch Südamerika , giving much attention to folk-lore, and Twenty Years’ Residence in South America (1825) by W. B.