PART I 

 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY 



CHAPTER I 



THE REGIONS OF PERU 



Let four Peruvians begin this book by telling what manner of 

 country they live in. Their ideas are provincial and they have a 

 fondness for exaggerated description: but, for all that, they will 

 reveal much that is true because they will at least reveal them- 

 selves. Their opinions reflect both the spirit of the toiler on the 

 land and the outlook of the merchant in the town in relation to 

 geography and national problems. Their names do not matter; 

 let them stand for the four human regions of Peru, for they are 

 in many respects typical men. 



The Fokest Dweller 



One of them I met at a rubber station on the lower Urubamba 

 River. 1 He helped secure my canoe, escorted me hospitably to his 

 hut, set food and drink before me, and talked of the tropical forest, 

 the rubber business, the Indians, the rivers, and the trails. In his 

 opinion Peru was a land of great forest resources. Moreover, 

 the fertile plains along the river margins might become the sites 

 of rich plantations. The rivers had many fish and his garden 

 needed only a little cultivation to produce an abundance of food. 

 Fruit trees grew on every hand. He had recently married the 

 daughter of an Indian chief. 



Formerly he had been a missionary at a rubber station on the 

 Madre de Dios, where the life was hard and narrow, and he doubted 

 if there were any real converts. Himself the son of an English- 

 man and a Chilean woman, he found, so he said, that a mission- 

 ary's life in the rubber forest was intolerable for more than a few 



1 For all locations mentioned see maps accompanying the text or Appendix C. 



