384 Voyage of the Novara. 



ficulties and dangers could not deter from joining us. As we 

 had to take with us provisions for the entire party, a string 

 of mules heavily laden with prog had been sent oif early in 

 the morning to the goal of our excursion. These preparations 

 seemed to be by far the most important in the eyes of a 

 majority of the cavalcade, after their arrival at the ruins 

 themselves, an examination of which was evidently the last 

 thing they had thought of when they bestrode their steeds in 

 the morning. 



The road to the ruins of Cajamarquilla is excessively fa- 

 tiguing, rough, and rocky : nothing but climbing over rocky 

 hills, upon which close to the very edge of the precipice is a 

 faint Indian track, or crossing torrents, where the horse 

 sinks to his crupper in the water, so that only a practised 

 horseman can save himself from a thorough soaking. 



Immediately on leaving the city begins a tract of desolate 

 sterile stone-fields, in the midst of which one reaches what is 

 known as the Hacienda de Pedrero, a lonely farm, where, it 

 being as usual a fete-day of some Peruvian saint, a dozen field 

 labourers had collected under the shadow of the verandah 

 round the farm-house, blissfully occupied in doing nothing. 

 No two of these were of the same breed ; there were men of 

 every variety of race and shade of colour ; whites, Indians, 

 Chinese, Negroes, Mulattoes, Mestizoes, Chinos, Sambos, 

 Quadroons, &c. &c., and this specimen in little of the popula- 

 tion of Peru would lead any observer to conjecture correctly 

 as to the main reason of the low position held by the country 



