92 



LIMA. 



his waist. There were at least twenty parties^ 

 male and female^ bathing at the same moment, 

 and in the same place with ourselves; and a 

 more comical scene I never witnessed. 



After dinner we paid a visit to a pretty Lime- 

 nian lady, a friend of the consults, to whose 

 husband I had a letter of introduction. From 

 thence we extended our walk outside the village 

 of Chorillos. The soil round this place is more 

 burnt up than about Lima, as the canopy of 

 clouds does not reach far enough from the 

 mountains to shelter the country at this dis- 

 tance from them. Irrigation was used formerly 

 to supply the want of rain ; and the Spaniards, 

 after the conquest, continued this practice, 

 which they found universally adopted by the 

 Indians. It was ascertained, that in all the 

 plains between the Cordilleras and the sea in 

 Peru, the water was only from three to four 



