MINEEAL WEALTH OF PEEU. 345 



since been mostly replaced by sugar-cane, which succeeds well in the equable 

 climate of the Pacific seaboard. Next to sugar, which is forwarded chiefly to 

 Great Britain, the wool and hair of sheep, llamas and alpacas, form the most 

 important articles of export from the farmsteads, the department of Puno alone 

 forwarding from £120,000 to £200,000 worth annually. On the low-lying coast- 

 lands horned cattle do not thrive, and here the livestock consists exclusively of 

 horses, asses, swine and mules ; as a pack-animal the llama is being gradually 

 replaced by the mule, which carries a four times heavier load twice the distance 

 at a stretch, and which is, moreover, more manageable and much more easily bred. 

 Despite political revolutions, the system of large estates still prevails in Peru, 

 where some of the great proprietors possess domains 80 or 100 leagues in circuit, 

 yielding 5,000 or even 10,000 tons of sugar, or else affording pasturage for 

 100,000 sheep. Nevertheless, the Government, in the hope of attracting foreign 

 settlers, has from time to time attempted to create small holdings, by distributing 

 unoccupied lands in lots of 300 acres, and even less. But the best lands on the 

 Amazonian slope have already been ceded to an English syndicate with almost 

 sovereign rights. 



Mineral Wealth. 



Peru no longer holds the first rank as a mining country, having already been 

 far outstripped, not only by the United States and Australia, but even by Bolivia 

 and Chili in South America itself. Nevertheless, the whole region may still be 

 regarded as a vast storehouse of the metals. It would be almost impossible, 

 writes Raimondi, to point to a single district in Peru proper which does not 

 possess deposits of some mineral or of some substance valuable as fuel or for 

 other purposes. 



In the distribution of these treasures a certain contrast may be observed 

 between the coast region and both of the main ranges. The " Andes," that is 

 to say, the Eastern Cordillera, consisting mainly of Silurian strata, contain gold 

 in their schistose quartz veins, while the torrents descending their flanks to the 

 Amazonian regions wash down numerous pyrites. The Western Cordillera, which 

 separates the inter- Andean plateaux from the seaboard, is poor in gold, but 

 abounds in silver lodes, with endless ramifications wherever the dioritic rocks 

 are found in contact especially with Jurassic limestones. Here the silver ores 

 are nearly always associated with antimony, copper and lead, though copper occurs 

 in greatest abundance on the coastlands. In this maritime zone vast spaces are 

 impregnated with salt, nitrate of soda, borax, petroleum, and till lately the cliffs 

 and neighbouring islets were covered with thick beds of guano. In the Ancachs 

 valley there is an untouched store of coal belonging to the Jurassic period. 



The annual yield of gold is small, owing to the fact that the richest places 

 occur in the least healthy, the most remote and inaccessible regions of the 

 Montana. Hence silver remains the chief mineral product of Peru, and to it 

 some towns, such as Cerro de Pasco and Hualgayoc, owe all their importance. 



