ULLOa's voyage to south A3IERICA. 599 



neighbourhood of Lima, where every place is covered with fruits and efculent 

 vegetables. 



It alfo enjoys another lingular advantage, the whole year being, as it were, fummer 

 with regard to the plenty and frefhnefs of fruits ; for the feafons of the year varying 

 alternately in Valles and the mountains, when the time of fruits is over in Valles, it 

 begins on the ikirts of the mountains ; and the diftance from Lima being not above 

 twenty-five or thirty leagues, they are brought thither, and by this means the city is 

 conftantly fupplied with fruits, except a few, as grapes, melons, and water-melons, 

 which requiring a hot climate, do not come to perfedion in the mountains. 



The grapes are of various kinds ; and among them, one called the Italian, very 

 large and delicious. The vines extend themfelves on the furface of the ground, which 

 is very well adapted to fupport them, being either ftony or full of fand. Thefe vines 

 are pruned and v/atered at proper times, and thrive remarkably without any 

 other care. 



No other culture is bellowed on thofe defigned for wine, for both at lea, Pifco, 

 Nafca, and all other parts where they grow, they are formed into efpaliers. None of 

 the grapes near Lima are ufed in making wine, the demand for them in other refpedls 

 being too large. 



The foil is ftony and fandy, that ife, confifting of fmooth flints or pebbles, which are 

 fo numerous that as other foils are entirely fand, rock, or earth, this is wholly of the 

 above ftones; and in fome parrs prove very inconvenient to travellers, whether in a 

 carriage or on horfeback. The arable lands have a ftratum of about a foot or two 

 of earth, but below that the whole confifts entirely of ftones. From this circumftance, 

 the fimilarity of all the neighbouring coafts, and the bottom of the fea, this whole 

 fpace may be concluded to have been formerly covered by the ocean, to the diftance 

 of three or four leagues, or even farther, beyond its prefent limits. This is parti- 

 cularly obfervable in a bay about five leagues north of Callao, called Marques, where 

 in all appearance, not many years fmce, the fea covered above half a league of what is 

 now Terra Firma, and the extent of a league and a half along the coaft. 



The rocks in the mcAl inland part of this bay are perforated and fmoothed like thofe 

 wafhed by the waves ; a fufficient proof that the fea formed thefe large cavities, and 

 undermined fuch prodigious mafles as lie on the ground, by its continual elifions ; 

 and it feems ncLtural to think that tht^likemuft have happened in the country contiguous 

 to Lima, and that parts, confifting of pebbles like thofe at the bottom of the adjacent 

 fea, were formerly covered by the water. 



Another fmgularity in this arid country is, the abundance of fprings, water being 

 found every where with little labour, by digging only four or five feet below the 

 furface. This may arife from two caufes ; the one, that the earth, being, from its 

 compofition, very fpungy, the water of the fea eafily infmuates itfelf to a great diftance, 

 and is filtrated in pafTmg through its pores. The other, that the many torrents, after 

 defcending from the mountains, foon lofe themfelves in thefe plains, but continue 

 their courfe along the fubterranean veins of the earth ; for this ftony quality of the 

 foil from the nature of the fprings cannot extend to any great depth, and underneath 

 it the ftratum is hard and compaft ; confequently the water muft be conveyed to the 

 moft porous parts, which being the ftony y it there precipitates into a fubterranean 

 courfe, leaving the furface dry. We have already obferved * that from many of the 

 rivers in Valles, though apparently dry, the inhabitants procure a fufficient quantity 



* Chap. I. of this Part. 



of 



