THE COASTAL DESERT 117 



The Majes Valley sorely lacks an adequate port. Its cotton, 

 sugar, and wine must now be shipped to Camana and thence to 

 Mollendo, either by a small bi-weekly boat, or by pack-train over 

 the coast trail to Quilca, where ocean steamers call. This is so 

 roundabout a way that the planters of the mid-valley section and 

 the farmers of the valley head now export their products over the 

 desert trail from Cantas to Vitor on the Mollendo-Arequipa rail- 

 road, whence they can be sent either to the cotton mills or the 

 stores of Arequipa, the chief distributing market of southern 

 Peru, or to the ocean port. 



The foreshore at Camana is low and marshy where the salt 

 water covers the outer edge of the delta. In the hollow between 

 two headlands a broad alluvial plain has been formed, through 

 which the shallow river now discharges. Hence the natural inden- 

 tation has been filled up and the river shoaled. To these disad- 

 vantages must be added a third, the shoaling of the sea bottom, 

 which compels ships to anchor far off shore. Such shoals are so 

 rare on this dry and almost riverless coast as to be a menace to 

 navigation. The steamer Tucapelle, like all west-coast boats, was 

 sailing close to the unlighted shore on a very dark night in 

 April, 1911, when the usual fog came on. She struck the reef just 

 off Camana. Half of her passengers perished in trying to get 

 through the tremendous surf that broke over the bar. The most 

 practicable scheme for the development of the port would seem to 

 be a floating dock and tower anchored out of reach of the surf, 

 and connected by cable with a railway on shore. Harbor works 

 would be extraordinarily expensive. The valley can support only 

 a modest project. 



The relations of Fig. 65, representing the Camana-Vitor re- 

 gion, are typical of southern Peru, with one exception. In a few 

 valleys the streams are so small that but little water is ever found 

 beyond the foot of the mountains, as at Moquegua. In the Chili 

 Valley is Arequipa (8,000 feet), right at the foot of the big cones 

 of the Maritime Cordillera (see Fig. 6). The green valley floor 

 narrows rapidly and cultivation disappears but a few miles below 

 the town. Outside the big valleys cultivation is limited to the best 



