37 

 COTTON AND ITS CULTIVATION IN PERU. 



Bead by A. J. Duitield, Esq., at a Meeting held March 30, 1864. 



Some ten years ago a friend of mine dug out of an ancient 

 tomb in Antioquia, New Granada, a massive gold plate, which 

 was carved in strange figures, the centre figure being a hippo- 

 potamus. That relic of past ages is a direct proof of the 

 theory of Prescott and others, that the civilization of the Aztecs, 

 the Mexicans, the Muiscas, the people of the great interior 

 kingdom of Cundinamarca, as well, perhaps, of the early settle- 

 ments on the shores of the Great Titicaca lake, came from the 

 Nile. That gold plate was wrapped in a piece of cotton cloth, 

 the workmanship of which was as regular, if not as fine, as any 

 made in Manchester at the present day. I also have examined 

 many of these mural monuments of early Incarial times, and taken 

 from them finely-wrought and brilliantly-dyed cotton-cloths, as well 

 as those string chronicles of early days called quipus, by means of 

 which the Peruvians handed down their history among themselves. 

 These quipus, of many colours and tangled knots, were also made of 

 the finest cotton threads, proving that, centuries ago, cotton growing 

 and cotton manufactures were among the mechanical arts of the 

 children of the sun, and that they brought them to a perfection not 

 surpassed by modern skill or science. Peru is the native soil of one 

 of the finest cotton trees in the world, the length and brilliancy of 

 whose staple have never been surpassed. The members of the royal 

 family, priests, and great officers of state, the Coyas, the Amautas, 

 the Curacas, the Quipucamayus, and the Mamacunas of ancient 

 Peru, were as much indebted for their white robes as, Pliny tells us, 

 were the Egyptian priests to the snowy blossoms of a shrub, and 

 both seem to have been equally skilled in making them. But 

 though great natural forests of cotton abounded, as they still abound, 

 in some parts of Upper and Lower Peru, the cultivation of cotton 

 was carried on to a large extent around the chief centres of popula- 

 tion — in Caxalmarca, the sacred valleys of Cuzco and Pachaeamac, 

 and along the western coast from the Loa to the Guayaquil. I have 

 travelled over many miles of these old cotton plantations, and 

 examined the splendid, scientific methods adopted for keeping up a 

 plentiful irrigation, without which, on that otherwise barren coast, 

 cultivation of any kind would have been impossible. And while 

 those now dried-up channels, and that hard unyielding soil, are an 

 everlasting disgrace to the gold-grubbing, seliish Spaniards, who 

 blotted out a thousand peaceful scenes, yet, though in ruins, they 

 speak to us wise and lofty words. They say plainly enough — Had 

 the Incas possessed Australia as long as we have, it would by this 

 time have been irrigated from Carpentaria to its opposite extremity, 

 and no form of slavery or oppression exist in making it so. The 

 rivers and creeks of the land would not be, as at present, so many 

 thieves, running off with the fresh water to the sea, but guardians of 



