Notes from a Traveler in the Tropics 

 IV. PERU 



By FRANK M. CHAPMAN 



With illustrations by Louis Agassiz Fuertes 



EXCEPT where occasional small, shallow, snow-fed rivers reach the sea 

 and in the generally adjacent irrigated areas, the coastal region of Peru 

 is almost devoid of vegetation. But this barrenness, this nakedness, as 

 it may well be called, serves but to reveal the infinitely diverse beauties of 

 form, structure, and color of the earth's surface far more clearly than if they 

 were cloaked by a forest. I yield to none in my love of trees; I know the charm 

 of tree-covered hills and mountains, but their attractiveness is from within 

 rather than from without. One revels in this grandeur of trunk and grace of 

 limb, their vistas, their play of sunlight and shadow, the fertility to which they 

 give such noble expression, the life to which they give abode. But from a 

 scenic point of view they have concealed the charms of the earth in which they 

 grow as effectively as one could hide the exquisitely modeled form of a deer 

 by draping it in a sheep's skin. 



No one complains of the Grand Canon because it is treeless, and I have small 

 patience therefore with those writers who describe the coast of Peru as mono- 

 tonous and lacking in interest because of its aridity, when from the sea to the 

 summit of the Andes there stretches a panorama as varied in feature as it 

 is vast in size. 



It is true that fogs and low-hanging clouds at times prevail on this coast, 

 and when they persistently shut out the view of mountain ranges arising to 

 snoW-clad peaks they accentuate the impression of desolation which the bar- 

 renness of the foreground, seen alone, may produce. But, on the other hand, 

 when they disappear before the heat of the ascending sun or are penetrated by 

 its setting rays, they reveal the weird, impressive world which lies behind them, 

 and create effects of singular and indescribable beauty. 



It must be admitted that distance here truly "lends enchantment to the 

 view." Doubtless it may be seen to best advantage, and unquestionably with 

 the greatest comfort, from the deck of a coasting steamer which, sailing from 

 port to port, gives one a frequently changing outlook. 



It should be clear, from what has been said above, that western Peru is not 

 fitted to support a large or varied avifauna. In the 'distribution' of bird-life 

 in this part of the world, the sea received by far the larger share. Great stretches 

 of coast are as lacking in birds as they are in plants, and it is only about the 

 rivers and irrigated districts that birds are found in any numbers. Neverthe- 

 less, the bird-life of western Peru presents several exceptionally interesting 

 problems which the American Museum is now attacking in the field and about 

 which I hope to have something to say at a later day. 



(157) 



