SALT TRADE. 



241 



speak of this disease, there is reason to believe it is principally confined 

 within the rain-belt region,- where fresh water covers so much of the 

 pasture lands. We have no account of this disease having destroyed 

 the cattle and horses of Chiquitos, where evaporation is greater than the 

 precipitation. 



Throughout our route we have found more females affected with the 

 goitre than males. In the deep mountain ravines, we were nearly led 

 to the belief men never were troubled with this swelling of the throat. 



While looking at a drove of cattle, which has just arrived from the 

 plains, at the market of Trinidad, we noticed that while nearly all the 

 cows, young and old, were miserably thin, many of the males were in 

 good condition. 



There is no trade at the present day in this part of the country so 

 important as that of salt brought from without the rain belt. This rain 

 belt is broken. At Lima, in Peru, it never rains, only sometimes drops. 

 There the precipitation is very little, and the evaporation great. Lima 

 is in latitude 12° 03' south. A few leagues north of Lima, on the coast, 

 are found the salt basins of Huacho. Sea-water is let into basins on 

 the plain. In twenty months the sun evaporates the water, and blocks 

 of salt are left, which supply the markets of North Peru. The govern- 

 ment of Peru takes advantage of the break in the rain-belt, and leases 

 the " Salinas," as they are called, to those who pay an annual rent into 

 the public treasury. 



The salt of Huacho is carried east, over the Cordilleras, to the valley 

 Juaja, where it rains half the year, and , where we found animals suffer- 

 ing for the want of it, though found in veins. The northeast and 

 southeast trade winds carry rains from the north and south Atlantic up 

 to the snow-capped Cordilleras to the west of Juaja valley. There the 

 winds give out ; after they have had all the moisture wrung out of them, 

 there is none left to pass over the Cordilleras and rain down into.Lima. 

 The b r eak, in the rain-belt, formed by the meeting of those two trade 

 winds, drawn back and forth after the sun takes place on the very tops 

 of the Cordilleras range of mountains, where the last drop of moisture 

 in the winds freeze and fall in the shape of snow flakes. Just below 

 this is found the native habitation of the Peruvian camel. The Indian 

 who inhabits the valley of Juaja, in want of salt, drives the llama down 

 to the Pacific coast, and takes it from a line level with the ocean. He 

 goes to the sea for it in preference to collecting it from the mine. Should 

 he go south, to Chile, he finds the southerly winds bring rain along the 

 coast, and instead of a supply, he finds a market. If he goes north of 

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