THE TECHNOLOGIST. [April 1, 1865. 



412 THE INDIGENOUS VEGETATION OF 



Then the sower with his pico (a sharpened stake of the hard wood of 

 the algarroho) makes a smaller hole at the bottom of the larger one and 

 drops into it six or eight seeds. Three crops are obtained in the year, 

 but at each successive sowing deeper holes have to be made to reach 

 the moisture, and even so the second and third crops are much inferior 

 to the first. 



Cotton, water-melons, &c, are sown in the same way, but the holes 

 are made larger and at a greater distance — say two feet in breadth and 

 depth, and eight to fifteen feet apart. 



Where the ground is nearly fiat, cultivation is often extended to a 

 long way beyond the limit of the vega, and sometimes nearly as far out 

 as there is any algarrobo ; bat then the plants require to be watered 

 daily, until their roots have penetrated to permanent humidity, and 

 sometimes for the term of their natural lives. Orange and other fruit 

 trees when planted far away from the river have to be watered for years 

 before they become firmly established ; and all this watering must be 

 done by hand, and the water carried by men, women, and children in 

 huge calabashes to where it is required. 



A good deal of water is diverted from the upper part of the Chiraand 

 its tributaries for irrigating the adjacent lands, principally with the 

 object of growing sugar-cane, maize, and lucerne ; but in the lower 

 part of the valley, which is best adapted to the growth of cotton, there 

 has been no systematic irrigation in modern times until very lately, when 

 it was undertaken by foreigners, the lands there being generally at a 

 much higher level than the water in the river, so that to irrigate them 

 the water requires to be raised a certain height by steam or other power. 



To come now to the cultivation of cotton, which has always been an 

 important staple of this department, and with the actual high prices is 

 at present absorbing nearly all the disposable capital and labour, I pro- 

 pose to trace briefly the history of this branch of industry. The con- 

 quistadores found the cotton plant and fabrics of cotton almost everywhere 

 among the native tribes, both on the mainland of the new continent and 

 in the adjacent islands. How many kinds of cotton were then in 

 existence we have no records to show ; but at the present day all the 

 cottons I have seen cultivated by the Indian tribes of South America, 

 from the Atlantic to the Pacific, in the hot plains and in the temperate 

 valleys of the Andes, are referable to one species, the Gossypium barba- 

 dense of Linna?us. In Peru itself, both on the arid sea-coast and in the 

 humid valleys on the eastern side of the Andes, we still meet with only 

 forms of G. barbadense among the Indians, and never of G.peruvianum. 



Corpses disinterred from ancient Peruvian tombs, orlmacas, are nearly 

 always found wrapped in cotton cloth, which is sometimes in wonderful 

 preservation. Underneath this cloth wrapping the body is occasionally 

 found enveloped in the brown cotton which was considered sacred by 

 the Peruvians, and about which a word of explanation is needed. All 

 through tropical South America there is a variety (or rather accidental 



