THE BORDER VALLEYS OF THE EASTERN ANDES 73 



The Cordillera Vilcapampa is a climatic as well as a topo- 

 graphic barrier. The southwestern aspect is dry; the northeast- 

 ern aspect forested. The gap of the canyon, it should be noticed, 

 comes at a critical level, for it falls just above the upper border 

 of the zone of maximum precipitation. The result is that though 

 mists are driven through the canyon by prolonged up-valley 

 winds, they scatter on reaching the plateau or gather high up on 

 the flanks of the valley or around the snowy peaks overlooking 

 the trail between Ollantaytambo and Urubamba. The canyon 

 walls are drenched with rains and even some of the lofty spurs 

 are clothed with dense forest or scrub. 



Farther down the valley winds about irregularly, now pushed 

 to one side by a huge alluvial fan, now turned by some resistant 

 spur of rock. Between the front range of the Andes and the 

 Cordillera Vilcapampa there is a broad stretch of mountain coun- 

 try in the lee of the front range which rises to 7,000 feet (2,134 m.) 

 at Abra Tocate (Fig. 15), and falls off to low hills about Rosalina. 

 It is all very rough in that there are nowhere any flats except for 

 the narrow playa strips along the streams. The dense forest adds 

 to the difficulty of movement. In general appearance it is very 

 much like the rugged Cascade country of Oregon except that the 

 Peruvian forest is much more patchy and its trees are in many 

 places loaded with dense dripping moss which gives the landscape 

 a somber touch quite absent from most of the forests of the 

 temperate zone. 



The fertility of the eastern valleys of Peru — the result of a 

 union of favorable climate and alluvial soil — has drawn the 

 planter into this remote section of the country, but how can he dis- 

 pose of his products? Even today with a railway to Cuzco from 

 the coast it is almost impossible for him to get his sugar and cacao 

 to the outside world. 3 How did he manage before even this rail- 

 way was built? How could the eastern valley planter live before 

 there were any railways at all in Peru? In part he has solved 

 the problem as the moonshiner of Kentucky tried to solve it, and 



* Commenting on the excellence of the cacao of the montana of the Urubamba 

 von Tschudi remarked (op. cit., p. 37) that the long land transport prevented its use 

 in Lima where the product on the market is that imported from Guayaquil. 



