312 The National Geographic Magazine 



The Encyclopaedia Britannica de- 

 scribes the Peruvians as ' ' courteous and 

 hospitable." 



The author of a description of the 

 voyage round the world by the French 

 vessel La Junon says: "Although we 

 were everywhere received with great 

 kindness, nowhere did we meet with so 

 much good will as in Peru." 



An English naval officer, writing of 

 the hospitality shown in the south of 

 Peru, says : " Here, if possible, it sur- 

 passed that shown us in the north, and 

 this hospitality was from people we had 

 never seen before, and most probably 

 would never see again, and without a 

 chance of ever returning their kind- 

 ness." 



M. Marcel Monnier, the author of 

 ' ' Des Andes Au Para, ' ' writing of Peru- 

 vian hospitality, says : " May I be per- 

 mitted at the commencement of this 

 book to address a souvenir to those 

 whose sympathies aided me upon my 

 hazardous journej*. They are far away, 

 many of them can never decipher these 

 lines, and I have little chance of seeing 

 them again, but if ever one of these 

 loose sheets should find its way across 

 the sea, I would that it should bear the 

 expression of my gratitude to friends 

 left upon that Peruvian soil whose hos- 

 pitality was so sweet to me. Ever} 7 - 

 where I received it, upon the coast, as 

 in the Sierra, in the rich or in the 

 modest ' hacienda,' at the home of the 

 humble priest, in the ' tienda ' of the 

 merchant, in the mud hut of the poor 

 Indian." 



Sir Clements Markham says : ' ' The 

 country gentlemen of the Peruvian 

 coast, as a class, are remarkable for 

 their attention to their estates, and for 

 the charity and benevolence they dis- 

 play both to their own dependents and 

 to strangers. The unbounded hospi- 

 tality, indeed, of all those who made 

 me, an unknown and solitary stranger, 

 often without a letter of introduction, 

 their welcome guest, far exceeded any- 



thing I had ever experienced or heard 

 of before." 



Peru is situated on the west side of 

 South America, between the parallels of 

 i^2° north latitude and 19 south, and 

 between the meridians of 64^2° and 

 83}^ ° west of Greenwich. It is bounded 

 on the north by the Republic of Ecuador, 

 on the northeast by the Republic of Co- 

 lombia, and oh the east by the United 

 States of Brazil, on the southeast by the 

 Republic of Bolivia, on the south by 

 Chile, and on the west by the Pacific 

 Ocean. 



The country is physically divided into 

 three well defined zones — the coast or 

 low land bordering the Pacific, the 

 Sierra or highlands forming the Andean 

 region, and the Montana or forest re- 

 gion. 



The width of the coast lands varies 

 between 62 and 93 miles. 



The greatest blessing that nature has 

 bestowed upon Peru is the three ranges 

 of mountains traversing the country 

 from south to north, with an average alti- 

 tude of 15,000 feet above sea level. They 

 are not only beautiful for their abrupt- 

 ness and majesty, but are the reason of 

 the delightful temperature prevailing 

 on the coast ; they provide us with all 

 the climates of the world and products 

 of the world ; they contain incalculable 

 mineral wealth and are the sources of 

 all the streams that descending west- 

 ward irrigate the fertile valleys of the 

 coast, and of the immense net of navi- 

 gable rivers going eastward that will in 

 the near future constitute the highways 

 through which the numberless products 

 of the forest region will reach the mar- 

 kets of the world. Yet these mountains, 

 by their abruptness and granite forma- 

 tion, by their numerous crevasses and 

 precipices, present enormous difficulties 

 for the building of railroads or ordinary 

 roads. 



Owing to their varying altitudes and 

 climatic conditions, the three zones of 

 Peru differ very widely in their charac- 



