April 1, 1865.] THE TECHNOLOGIST. 



NORTHERN PERU. 415 



brokers, and the wonder is, that for many years the quantity of cotton 

 grown in the department has been diminishing. I am informed by 

 Alexander Blacker, Esq , H.B.M.'s Vice-Consul at Payta, that when he 

 first established himself there, now some twelve years ago, 22,000 

 quintals of cotton were exported yearly, and some years previously, the 

 quantity had been still greater ; but that for the last four or five years, 

 the annual exportation bad not exceeded from 6,000 to 8,000 quintals, 

 notwithstanding the enormous increase in the value of the article* 

 This has arisen, not from a less breadth of land being planted with 

 cotton, but from a falling off in the crops, the causes of which the 

 planters themselves are not very well agreed on, while the principal 

 one (as it seems to me) is altogether ignored by them. It is that the 

 same sort of cotton has been grown for centuries on very nearly the 

 same land; the seed grown on .the land constantly resown, without any 

 attempt at selection from the most vigorous plants or the largest pods, 

 and no seed ever brought from other parts to renew the growth, — no 

 rotation of crops — no manuring — in a word, no change of site, climate, 

 or food ever resorted to, without which both animals and plants, in a 

 domesticated or cultivated state, are apt to languish. The consequence 

 is that the plants have got into a quasi-cachectic condition, and have 

 contracted a hereditary liability to certain disorders which threaten to 

 reduce them to complete unproductiveness. The planters, however, 

 have but one answer when asked to account for the failure of their 

 crops, viz., " las heladas " (frosts), — -frosts in a climate where the thermo- 

 meter never descends so low as 60° ! Of course this opinion has no 

 foundation whatever in fact, and it has arisen from an apparent analogy 

 with the effects of real frost in the adjacent cordillera at a height of from 

 7,000 feet upwards. There frost is truly said to be " el azote de la 

 sierra " (the scourge of the highlands): it occurs at any time of the year, 

 and the serenest and sunniest day is most liable to be followed by a 

 frosty night. When frost falls on the maize in flower, or with the seed 

 still green and tender, it utterly destroys it ; but if the seed be well set 

 it resists a moderate frost. Other plants suffer from frost, but none so 

 much as maize, which of all the products of the earth is the most im- 

 portant to the Indian, as the material for his indispensable chicha. 

 What the ailments of the cotton plant, attributed to heladas, really are, 

 we shall see anon, when I come to detail what I have seen of the recent 

 attempts to cultivate cotton by irrigation. 



I cannot make out that any one proprietor has ever had a cotton 

 plantation on a large scale in Piura. A few of the hacendados, owners 

 of large cattle farms at the foot of the cordillera, have been accustomed 

 to grow cotton on the low lands bordering the river, irrigating them after 



* Mr. Duvall says that the exportation of cotton from Payta, from 1852 to 

 1858, was from 7,000 to 10,000 bales annually (each bale of about 156 lbs.), 

 or from 11,000 to near 16,000 quintals, and that the price for exportation in 1857 

 and 1858 was 16 Peruvian dollars the quintal. 



VOL. V. XX 



