37 
COTTON AND ITS CULTIVATION IN PERU. 
Bead by A. J. DcmtXD, Esq., at a Meeting held March 30, 1804. 
Some ten years ago a friend of mine dug out of an ancient 
tomb in Antioquia, New Granada, a massive gold plate, which 
was carved in strange figures, the centre figure being a hippo¬ 
potamus. That relic of past ages is a direct proof of the 
theory of Prescott and others, that the civilization of the Aztecs, 
the Mexicans, the Muiscas, the people of the great interior 
kingdom of Cundiuamarca, as well, perhaps, of the early settle¬ 
ments on the shores of the Great Titicaca lake, came from the 
Nile. That gold plate was wrapped in a piece of cotton cloth, 
the workmanship of which was as regular, if not as fine, as any 
made in Manchester at the present day. I also have examined 
many of these mural monuments of early Incarial times, and taken 
from them finely-wrought and brilliantly-dyed cotton-cloths, as well 
as those string chronicles of early days called quipus, by means of 
which the Peruvians handed down their history among themselves. 
These quipus, of many colours and tangled knots, were also made of 
the finest cotton threads, proving that, centuries ago, cotton growing 
and cotton manufactures were among the mechanical arts of the 
children of the sun, and that they brought them to a perfection not 
surpassed by modem skill or science. Peru is the native soil of one 
of the finest cotton trees in the world, the length and brilliancy of 
whose staple have never been surpassed. The members of the royal 
family, priests, and great officers of state, the Goyas, the Amautas, 
the Curacas, the Quipucamayus, and the Mamacunas of ancient 
Peru, were as much indebted for their white robes as, Pliny tells us, 
were the Egyptian priests to the snowy blossoms of a shrub, and 
both seem to have been equally skilled in making them. Rut 
though great natural forests of cotton abounded, .'is they still abound, 
in some parts of Upper and Lower Peru, the cultivation of cotton 
was carried on to a large extent around the chief centres of popula¬ 
tion—in Caxalmarca, the sacred valleys of Cuzco and Pachacamac, 
and along the western coast from the Loa to the Guayaquil. I have 
travelled over many miles of these old cotton plantations, and 
examined the splendid, scientific methods adopted for keeping up a 
plentiful irrigation, without which, on that otherwise barren coast, 
cultivation of any kind would have been impossible. And while 
those now dried-up channels, and that hard unyielding soil, are an 
everlasting disgrace to the gold-grubbing, selfish Spaniards, who 
blotted out a thousand peaceful scenes, yet, though in ruins, they 
speak to us wise and lofty words. They say plainly enough—Had 
the Incas possessed Australia as long as we have, it would by this 
time ha\ e been irrigated from Carpentaria to its opposite extremity, 
and no form of slavery or oppression exist in making it so. The 
rivers and creeks of the land would not be, as at present, so many 
thieves, running off with the fresh water to the sea, but guardians of 
