128 PERU. 



tants, having more water, are enabled to irrigate a 

 little land, and raise hay, on which the mules and 

 asses employed in carrying the saltpetre are fed. 

 The nitrate of soda was now selling at the ship's 

 side at fourteen shillings per hundred pounds : the 

 chief expense is its transport to the sea- coast. The 

 mine consists of a hard sti'atum, between two and 

 three feet thick, of the nitrate, mingled with a little 

 of the sulphate of soda, and a good deal of common 

 salt. It lies close beneath the surface, and follows 

 for a length of one hundred and fifty miles the 

 margin of a grand basin or plain ; this, from its out- 

 line, manifestly must once have been a lake, or, 

 more probably, an inland arm of the sea, as may be 

 inferred from the presence of iodic salts in the sa- 

 line stratum. The surface of the plain is 3300 feet 

 above the Pacific. 



19th. — We anchored in the Bay of Callao, the 

 seaport of Lima, the capital of Peru. We stayed 

 here six weeks, but, from the troubled state of pub- 

 lic affairs, I saw very little of the country. During 

 our whole visit the climate was far from being so 

 delightful as it is generally represented. A dull, 

 heavy bank of clouds constantly hung over the land, 

 so that during the first sixteen days I had only one 

 view of the Cordillera behind Lima. These mount- 

 ains, seen in stages, one above the other, through 

 openings in the clouds, had a very grand appear- 

 ance. It is almost become a proverb, that rain 

 never falls in the lower part of Peru. Yet this 

 can hardly be considered correct ; for during al- 

 most every day of our visit there was a thick driz- 

 zling mist, which was sufficient to make the streets 

 muddy and one's clothes damp : this the people 

 are pleased to call Peruvian dew. That much rain 

 does not fall is very certain, for the houses are 



