THE VOYAGE OF THE BEAGLE 



389 



ica, he paid the penalty in the usual manner, by being con- 

 quered, taken prisoner, and shot. 



Lima stands on a plain in a valley, formed during the 

 gradual retreat of the sea. It is seven miles from Callao, 

 and is elevated 500 feet above it; but from the slope being 

 very gradual, the road appears absolutely level ; so that when 

 at Lima it is difficult to believe one has ascended even one 

 hundred feet : Humboldt has remarked on this singularly de- 

 ceptive case. Steep, barren hills rise like islands from the 

 plain, which is divided, by straight mud-walls, into large 

 green fields. In these scarcely a tree grows excepting a few 

 willows, and an occasional clump of bananas and of oranges. 

 The city of Lima is now in a wretched state of decay: the 

 streets are nearly unpaved; and heaps of filth are piled up 

 in all directions, where the black gallinazos, tame as poultry, 

 pick up bits of carrion. The houses have generally an upper 

 story, built on account of the earthquakes, of plastered wood- 

 work ; but some of the old ones, which are now used by sev- 

 eral families, are immensely large, and would rival in suites 

 of apartments the most magnificent in any place. Lima, the 

 City of the Kings, must formerly have been a splendid town. 

 The extraordinary number of churches gives it, even at the 

 present day, a peculiar and striking character, especially 

 when viewed from a short distance. 



One day I went out with some merchants to hunt in the 

 immediate vicinity of the city. Our sport was very poor; 

 but I had an opportunity of seeing the ruins of one of the 

 ancient Indian villages, with its mound like a natural hill in 

 the centre. The remains of houses, enclosures, irrigating 

 streams, and burial mounds, scattered over this plain, cannot 

 fail to give one a high idea of the condition and number of 

 the ancient population. When their earthenware, woollen 

 clothes, utensils of elegant forms cut out of the hardest rocks, 

 tools of copper, ornaments of precious stones, palaces, and 

 hydraulic works, are considered, it is impossible not to re- 

 spect the considerable advance made by them in the arts of 

 civilization. The burial mounds, called Huacas, are really 

 stupendous; although in some places they appear to be nat- 

 ural hills incased and modelled. 



There is also another and very different class of ruins, 



