GREAT WALL OF PERU — SHIPPEE 463 



hills can boast of two things onl}^ — a natural harbor that would make 

 the most ideal naval, aviation, or submarine base imaginable and a 

 level, hard landing field that is used by the Peruvian commercial air 

 lines. 



The natives of Chimbote assured us that they knew about the wall, 

 that they had heard of it from their ancestors, and that it was pre- 

 Incaic. They could tell nothing, however, of its purpose or its his- 

 tory and, indeed, gave little real evidence that they had ever even 

 heard of it. 



From Chimbote the flight to the mouth of the Santa Kiver was a 

 matter of a few minutes only. Turning inland from there we picked 

 up the wall about 5 or 6 miles from the coast at the ruins of a small 

 village. At that end the wall divides into two sections for a short 

 distance as shown in Plate 1, Figure 1. It may have once extended 

 to the shore line; but, if it did, it has been broken down, and the 

 stones have either been removed for other building purposes or 

 covered by the drifting sand. 



From the ruined village, itself all but lost under the sand, the wall 

 leads away up the north side of the river, first across the level, sandy 

 plain of the river delta and then, as the valley narrows, over the 

 edge of the foothills bordering the valley. As the foothill ridges 

 become sharper and steeper, the wall rises and dips and in places is 

 turned slightly from its generally straight course. Its distance from 

 the river is in general about a mile and a half, although in one place 

 at least it dips down close to the edge of the river bed. In places it 

 blends so well with the background as to be almost indistinguishable. 



It was impossible to make an accurate check on the distance we 

 followed the wall, for the air was so unusually rough that, as we 

 approached the Andes, we had to circle and climb for more and more 

 altitude; but we followed it for at least 40 miles and possibly more. 

 Then we lost it. We had already passed over several short breaks, 

 but this time we failed to pick it up again. The light, which was 

 poor when we started — for the flight was made in August, a winter 

 month, when the coastal valleys are nearly always overcast and often 

 filled solid with fog — was getting rapidly worse; so we headed back 

 for Chimbote, taking only a few minutes out to get more close-ups of 

 the forts on both sides of the wall. 



It so happened that none of our first photographs showed any of 

 these forts. But, on this second flight we noticed at irregular inter- 

 vals on both sides of the wall, but at short distances from it, a series 

 of small forts — some circular and some rectangular — most of which 

 were more or less inset in the top of small hills so as to be quite in- 

 visible from the valley floor. Those on the south side, and they were 

 the larger, were located in the hills on the south side of the Santa 



