Fig. 6—Irrigated Chili Valley on the outskirts of Arequipa. The lower slopes of El Misti are in the left background. The Alto de los Huesos or Plateau of Bones lies on the farther side of the valley.
Fig. 7—Crossing the highest pass (Chuquito) in the Cordillera Vilcapampa, 14,500 feet (4,420 m.). Grazing is here carried on up to the snowline.
Capital was lacking but there was also lacking energy among the people. Slipshod methods brought them a bare living and they were too easily contented. Their standards of life should be elevated. Education was still for the few, and it should be universal. A new spirit of progress was slowly developing—a more general interest in public affairs, a desire to advance with the more progressive nations of South America,—and when it had reached its culmination there would be no happier land than coastal Peru, already the seat of the densest populations and the most highly cultivated fields.
These four men have portrayed the four great regions of Peru—the lowland plains, the eastern mountain valleys, the lofty plateaus, and the valley oases of the coast. This is not all of Peru. The mountain basins have their own peculiar qualities and the valley heads of the coastal zone are unlike the lower valleys and the plateau on either hand. Yet the chief characteristics of the country are set forth with reasonable fidelity in these individual accounts. Moreover the spirit of the Peruvians is better shown thereby than their material resources. If this is not Peru, it is what the Peruvians think is Peru, and to a high degree a man’s country is what he thinks it is—at least it is little more to him.