CHAPTER YII. 



PERU. 

 I. 



General Survey. 



IRTJ or Biru, famous land of the Tncas, whose fame attracted from 

 afar the Andagoyas and the Pizarros, and which from the very 

 first year of its discovery filled the world with rumours of its 

 fabulous wealth, has not maintained in history the pre-eminence 

 which it had so early acquired in the popular imagination. Its 

 mines are no doubt far from exhausted, and its agricultural resources rest undi- 

 minished ; from the headwaters and upland valleys of the Amazons it commands 

 scores of trade routes between the Pacific seaboard and the slopes facing the 

 European seas. 



Nevertheless, Peru has allowed herself to be outstripped by many other 

 colonies whose very names long remained almost unknown. At the beginning 

 of the century it was the foremost of the Spanish South American viceroyalties in 

 trade and population ; at present it occupies only the fourth place, coming next 

 to Argentina, Colombia and Chili. 



Gold, which had in such large measure caused the decadence of the mother 

 country, was also the bane of Peru ; it impoverished the soil, degraded labour 

 and demoralised man. The Peruvian nation still feels to the very marrow of its 

 bones the evil effects of the period during which its rulers thirsted after nothing 

 but gold. 



Disputed Frontiers — Extent. 



Although deprived, in 1883, after her disastrous war with Chili, of a territory 

 estimated at about 50,000 square miles, Peru still remains one of the large states 

 of the New World. Even within its narrowest limits, as determined by the 



