Fig. 65—Regional diagram to show the physical relations in the coastal desert of Peru. For location, see [Fig. 20].
If the reader will examine Figs. 65 and 66, and the photographs that accompany them, he may gain an idea of the more important features of the coastal region. We have already described, in Chapters V and VII, the character of the plateau region and its people. Therefore, we need say little in this place of the part of the Maritime Cordillera that is included in the figure. Its unpopulated rim (see p. [54]), the semi-nomadic herdsmen and shepherds from Chuquibamba that scour its pastures in the moist vales about Coropuna, and the gnarled and stunted trees at 13,000 feet (3,960 m.) which partly supply Chuquibamba with firewood, are its most important features. A few groups of huts just under the snowline are inhabited for only a part of the year. The delightful valleys are too near and tempting. Even a plateau Indian responds to the call of a dry valley, however he may shun the moist, warm valleys on the eastern border of the Cordillera.
Fig. 66—Irrigated and irrigable land of the coastal belt of Peru. The map exhibits in a striking manner how small a part of the whole Pacific slope is available for cultivation. Pasture grows over all but the steepest and the highest portions of the Cordillera to the right of (above) the dotted line. Another belt of pasture too narrow to show on the map, grows in the fog belt on the seaward slopes of the Coast Range. Scale, 170 miles to the inch.
The greater part of the coastal region is occupied by the desert. Its outer border is the low, dry, gentle, eastward-facing slope of the Coast Range. Its inner border is the foot of the steep descent that marks the edge of the lava plateau. This descent is a fairly well-marked line, here and there broken by a venturesome lava flow that extends far out from the main plateau. Within these definite borders the desert extends continuously northwestward for hundreds of miles along the coast of Peru from far beyond the Chilean frontier almost to the border of Ecuador. It is broken up by deep tranverse valleys and canyons into so-called “pampas,” each of which has a separate name; thus west of Arequipa between the Vitor and Majes valleys are the “Pampa de Vitor” and the “Pampa de Sihuas,” and south of the Vitor is the “Pampa de Islay.”