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CHAP. 
officer to whom he could trust so important a charge. He 
himself had good reasons for thinking so, as he had obtained 
the presidentship by rebelling while in charge of this same 
fortress. After we left South America, he paid the penalty 
in the usual manner, by being conquered, 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 
deceptive 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 woodwork ; 
but some of the old ones, which are now used by several 
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 respect the considerable 
advance made by them in the arts of civilisation. The burial 
