The sandy
strip along the coast, where rain never falls, is fed only by a few scanty
streams, that furnish a remarkable contrast to the vast volumes of water
which roll down the eastern sides of the Cordilleras into the Atlantic. The
precipitous steeps of the sierra, with its splintered sides of porphyry and
granite, and its higher regions wrapped in snows that never melt under the
fierce sun of the equator, unless it be from the desolating action of its own
volcanic fires, might seem equally unpropitious to the labors of the
husbandman. And all communication between the parts of the long-
extended territory might be thought to be precluded by the savage
character of the region, broken up by precipices, furious torrents, and
impassable quebradas,--those hideous rents in the mountain chain, whose
depths the eye of the terrified traveller, as he winds along his aerial
pathway, vainly endeavors to fathom.5 Yet the industry, we might almost
say, the genius, of the Indian was sufficient to overcome all these
impediments of Nature.
By a judicious system of canals and subterraneous aqueducts, the waste
places on the coast were refreshed by copious streams, that clothed them
in fertility and beauty. Terraces were raised upon the steep sides of the
Cordillera; and, as the different elevations had the effect of difference of
latitude, they exhibited in regular gradation every variety of vegetable
form, from the stimulated growth of the tropics, to the temperate products
of a northern clime; while flocks of llamas--the Peruvian sheep--wandered
with their shepherds over the broad, snow-covered wastes on the crests of
the sierra, which rose beyond the limits of cultivation.
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