CHAPTER VIII 

 THE COASTAL DESERT 



To the wayfarer from the bleak mountains the warm green val- 

 leys of the coastal desert of Peru seem like the climax of scenic 

 beauty. The streams are intrenched from 2,000 to 4,000 feet, and 

 the valley walls in some places drop 500 feet by sheer descents 

 from one level to another. The cultivated fields on the valley 

 floors look like sunken gardens and now and then one may catch 

 the distant glint of sunlight on water. The broad white path that 

 winds through vineyards and cotton-fields, follows the foot of a 

 cliff, or fills the whole breadth of a gorge is the waste-strewn, 

 half-dry channel of the river. In some places almost the whole floor 

 is cultivated from one valley wall to the other. In other places 

 the fields are restricted to narrow bands between the river and the 

 impending cliffs of a narrow canyon. Where tributaries enter 

 from the desert there may be huge banks of mud or broad triangu- 

 lar fans covered with raw, infertile earth. The picture is gener- 

 ally touched with color — a yellow, haze-covered horizon on the bare 

 desert above, brown lava flows suspended on the brink of the val- 

 ley, gray-brown cliffs, and greens ranging from the dull shade of 

 algarrobo, olive and fig trees, to the bright shade of freshly irri- 

 gated alfalfa pastures. 



After several months' work on the cold highlands, where we 

 rode almost daily into hailstorms or wearisome gales, we came at 

 length to the border of the valley country. It will always seem to 

 me that the weather and the sky conspired that afternoon to re- 

 ward us for the months of toil that lay behind. And certainly 

 there could be no happier place to receive the reward than on the 

 brink of the lava plateau above Chuquibamba. There was prom- 

 ise of an extraordinary view in the growing beauty of the sky, 

 and we hurried our tired beasts forward so that the valley below 



no 



