April r, 1895.] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
653 
altitude) one of the oldest and riehest silver- 
mining centres in South America. He also 
visits Huai'iaca (9,750 feet) and Huanaco (0,126) 
and lias a great deal that is interesting to tell 
us of vegetation and vegetables, flowers and 
fruits and of experiments with French, German 
and Italian agricultural colonies in these upland 
regions. Here is a specimen : — 
"Huariaca is a fairy thriving village on the banks 
of the Huallaga — here grown into a mountain tor- 
rent difficult to cross. We are now 24 miles in a 
direct line from Cerro de Pasco and 5,000 feet lower 
down, so that the air gets sensibly warmer and more 
genial. There are the usual country stores, two flour 
mills, and a decently clean little hotel, in which we re- 
solve to take shelter for the night. Next day we 
made sundry little excursions in the neighbourhood, 
particularly paying our respects to a well-to-do 
Spanish family, whose prettily-kept garden had at- 
tracted our attention on nearingthe village. We were 
kindly received and leisurely shown through every 
corner of the garden, with all its favourite little 
bowers in which the ladies sip their evening coffee. 
Such delicious coffee ! and such charming faces ! 
Whatever else Peru can produce, there can be no 
mistake about its coffee nor its handsome women. 
The aroma of the former, and the fine liquid black 
eyes of the latter, seemed to me as near perfection as 
anything of the kind I had ever come acioss ; and 
the setting of the picture here was ever) thing the 
eye could desire, the clematis twining overhead, the 
perpetual rosos blushing in the background, or half 
hiding beneath the ricth trusses of the Fuchsia coi-i/m 
bijiora, a well-known native of this locality, together 
With the abutilon and many other marvellously pretty 
mallow-worts. Lower down we note, amongst other 
native beauties, the asterdike barnadesia and many 
brilliant shades of tropseolum, so common in Britain 
under the strangely erroneous name of nasturtium. 
The beautifully variegated lupine known to florists as 
CruickshanHi, is also at home here ; and I note an- 
other native, called in other portions of the world to 
which it has been carried, the ■' Cape gooseberry," 
though it is not a gooseberry, neither is it a native 
of the Cape. The Phi/salis Peruviana is rather a poor 
substitute for that prince of small fruits, the yellow 
gooseberry, as grown to perfection in Scotland and 
Tasmania, but it has been though « worth introducing 
into the most distant corners of the earth. It is to 
be seen growing so luxuriantly on the hills around 
Nuwara Eliya, Ceylon, that many imagine it to be 
indigenous. I find it also common in different 
parts of Australasia, while H. O. Forces speci- 
ally mentions having found it on the Cocos, Keeling 
Islands. The phyeahs is a solatium, and is called the 
Cape gecsebcuy bo-ause its ltoipid fruit is parti 
ally enveloped in a cape, or hood ! The tree tomato 
(cyphomandra) is a much more useful native of this 
locality. Amongst the garden weeds, or those plants 
which apparently grow against the wishes of the 
gardener, I noted canna, or Indian shot, calandrinia, 
ageratums, calceolaria, convolvulus, oxalis, and portu- 
laca, and many beautiful creeping solanums well 
worth a place on any greenhouse trellis. The 
larger trees that shelter us, are, however, chiefly 
foreigners, tbo eucalypti predominating, and 
thriving here as freely as in New South great 
Wales. Amongst vegetables I found the artichoke in 
perfection." 
And again, we may quote: — 
"While staying in Huanaco we had a visit from a 
representative member of the German colony of 
planters now settled at Pozuzo, a locality of some 50 
miles .distant flat. 10° S., 7.")° E.), This communi- 
cative gentleman, whose name was Mr. Egg, described 
the progress of tho colony in anything but glowing 
terms— albeit the climate, soil, and productiveness 
seemed everything that could be desired. This colony, 
Alcinamt, was formed 10 years ago by emigrants 
from (he Fatherland, 600 in "number, who. after being 
decimated in crossing the Andes and undergoing un- 
heard-of privations, finally settled down at the junc- 
tion of the Pozuzo and Haunc&bamba rivers to culti- 
vate coffee, cocoa, tobacco, maize, and rice. Ninety 
families still remain, and, on the whole seem to be 
fairly contented and well off — more fortunate than 
our countrymen who tried to settle in Central 
America. It speaks volumes for the climate in such 
a latitude that so many remain to tell the story of 
their early struggles ; the altitude, however, being 
4,000 feet, the climate is comparatively cool and 
pleasant. Brought up in the jungle, as they have 
been, the younger generation have no expensive 
tastes, which is in itself equivalent to a large income. 
The greatest drawbacks seem to be the want of roads, 
maikets, and schools, while there is something cruelly 
oppressive in the extortionate demands of the tax- 
gatherer, who pounces upon the produce as it passes 
through Huanaco and Cerro de Pasco. To the poor 
hard-working colonist there must be something pecu- 
liarly discouraging in thus being comlpeled to con- 
tribute to a lazy, corrupt, and effete government. 
Living literally without protection, with no roads' 
and but few comforts, these plucky planters, labour- 
ing like negros in a tropical climate, have a harder 
lot than any agricultural labourer in the British 
Isles, and no class of men that could now be im- 
ported would submit to it. 
"Altogether, the gist of the interview we had with 
this intelligent German only tended to confirm our 
opinion that any further attempt to introduce Euro- 
pean labour for tropical agriculture is an absurdity." 
Returning to Lima, we learn a little more of 
what can be done on the coast lands of Peru 
with irrigation from what is seen in the Botanic 
Gardens : — 
The promenades are particularly inviting, the brilli- 
antly coloured flowers, always in rich splendour, the 
noblest of palms throwing a refreshing but not too 
dense a shade, while the gentlest of sea breezes 
keeps the thermometer about 60°, a marvellously 
pleasant temperature for such a latitude, and, as the 
vegetation indicates, a climate which, with irrigation, 
is capable of producing any plant of either ths tem- 
perate or torrid zones. Here may be seen such 
pmely tropical plants as coffee, cacao, mango, palms, 
and pine-apple growing in great perfection along- 
side apples, pears, grapes, cauliflowers, and cabbages 
in equal luxuriance. For deciduous trees requiring 
rest one has only to withdraw the water and it is 
winter, return it again and we have a seasonable 
spring. With very little effort, indeed, every plant 
worth growing might be cultivated here. Possibly it 
would be better for the poor degenerating Peruvian 
if a little more energy were required ! 
Finally, we cannot help referring to a visit to 
a splendid sugar-growing region,— with its ad- 
vantages and drawbacks and a reference to th e 
Chinese, — • 
Chicama lies fully 800 miles north of Lima, and is 
reached by boat to Salavery, the seaport of Truxillo 
and terminus of a railway extending for 40 miles in- 
land, by which the sugar estates are served. There 
are several very valuable and prosperous proper- 
ties within easy distance, notal.lv Casa (iranda 
Chiqmtoy, and Cartavia. A description of one may 
serve for all, and I shall here confine my remarks 
to the last-named, viz., the hacienda ' Cartavia 
upon which 1 spent a pleasant week, all the more 
enjoyable that here I unexpectedly met some con- 
genial types of my ubiquitous countrymen— the 
superintendent hailing from Elgin, tho engineer 
from Koss, and the distiller from Fife— a very in- 
telligent trio, who let mo more thoroughly into the 
secrets of sugar culture and manufacture in Porn 
than could have been possible where the language diffi- 
culty barred tho way, 
Cartavia is in extent about 10,5(kS neves, stretching 
from within a few miles of the sea on the west, to near 
the fopt of the mountains on the east, the little 
