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foreign stocks would be exhausted. Silk laces, fringes, and gold and silver embroidery, are 

 wrought by hand to a very considerable -\ti-nt; though, as the ladies, military, and priests, vie 

 with ..eh other in displaying these several fabrics, demand for home consumption keeps pace 

 with the supply. Utensils and ornaments of silver and gold, both solid and fillagree, furnish 

 employment to quite a number of artisans ; but there are few domestic manufactures of any 

 kind to attract wealth from abroad. 



I was sorry to leave that quaint old " City of the Kings." There is a witchery in one's 

 surroundings hero ; commencing with the almost fabulous history of the past, yet linked to the 

 fanciful present by numberless little romances that divest life of the prosiness which renders 

 it at home but a tedious melo-drama. Short, and occupied in the business of sight-seeing, as 

 the visit was, their influences had made me think this came nearer to terrestrial paradise than 

 any other portion of our beautiful world ; and I could but regret that fate had not cast my lot 

 in so pleasant a spot. Its climate, fruits, and flowers ; its solemn old temples with their musi- 

 cal bells ; the eternal pageantry of streets, where costumes vie in varieties with the color of the 

 skin, from the snows of Caucasus to the ebony of Africa ; the wonders of its history ; its cham- 

 bers piled with gold for royal ransom, and streets paved with silver to honor vice-regal advent; 

 the calm, uncomplaining magnanimity of its last Inca, whose simple followers 



Religious in their ignorance, adored 

 The sun that looks upon his worshippers, 

 But knows of them no more !" 



the immolation of hecatombs by command of that secret and irresponsible tribunal, the myste- 

 ries of whose court, or its implements for rending life-strings one by one, none who escaped 

 dare tell of; the more than royal tyranny and extortions of a long succession of vice-kings; 

 the contests when the oppressed had resolved to shake off their task-masters, or yield up lives 

 no longer worth preserving ; and the final epithalamium when a new star was added to the ga- 

 laxy of republics ; all these extend their inviting arms to the traveller, and insensible is he 

 who can voluntarily resist such solicitations. Why, the very beggar here sits in the sun smiling 

 from excess of contentment ; and though one may see women bending under burdens borne on 

 their heads, wreaths of flowers adorn their hair ; and if the face be an index to the heart, a 

 brighter chaplet circles it. Ascending the social ladder, there are graces of person and car- 

 riage, with all the queenly dames one meets in the balmy atmosphere of its Alameda ; a win- 

 some music in their language, to perfect charms and conquest which their eyes rarely leave im- 

 perfect ; and one sits beneath the branches of its pendulous willows listening to the songs of 

 birds in their green homes, and the murmurs of the impetuous Bimac fretting at the obstacles 

 in its way, forgetful of the hours that Time is inscribing in his golden volume. 



