[385] He includes the rich valleys of Palpa, San Xavier, and Nasca under the same name.
[386] I carefully examined these ruined edifices when I was at Nasca. They are built in terraces up the sides of the mountains, which hem in the valley on the south. The houses contained spacious halls, with niches in the walls. About forty feet higher up the mountain, and immediately overhanging the ruined palaces, there was a fortress with a semicircular wall in front, and a high adobe breastwork in the rear. Its only approach was by a steep ramp leading up from the edifices below. The walls of the buildings are all of stone.
[387] I know of only one modern traveller who has visited and described the coast valleys of Acari, Ocoña, and Camana; namely, that noble old warrior General Miller, who led his patriot troops from Quilca to Pisco in 1823, a most difficult march over trackless deserts, and through a country then in possession of the Spaniards.
The Camana valley, which in its upper part is called Majes, has a considerable river; and contains olive yards, vineyards, and sugar plantations. It is in 15° 57´ S. The yellow aji or capsicum of Camana is also famous, and guano has been used as manure in its cultivation from time immemorial.
[388] Quilca was the port of Arequipa until the year 1827, when it was supplanted by its present successful rival Islay, some leagues further down the coast.
[389] This account of the use of guano by the ancient Peruvians is exceedingly curious. Garcilasso de la Vega also describes the use made by them of the deposits of guano on the coast. He says: “On the shores of the sea, from below Arequipa to Tarapaca, which is more than two hundred leagues of coast, they use no other manure than that of sea birds, which abound in all the coasts of Peru, and go in such great flocks that it would be incredible to one who had not seen them. They breed on certain uninhabited islands which are on that coast; and the manure which they deposit is in such quantities that it would almost seem incredible. In the time of the kings, who were Yncas, such care was taken to guard these birds in the breeding season, that it was not lawful for any one to land on the isles, on pain of death, that the birds might not be frightened, nor driven from their nests. Neither was it lawful to kill them at any time, either on the island or elsewhere, also on pain of death. Each island was, by the Yncas, set apart for the use of a particular province, and the guano was fairly divided, each village receiving a due portion” (ii, lib. v, cap. iii). See also Antiguedades Peruanas, p. 77.
Frezier mentions that, when he was on the coast in 1713, guano was brought from Iquique, and other ports along the coast, and landed at Arica and Ylo, for the aji and other crops. Frezier’s South Sea, p. 152.
[390] The desert of Atacama.
[391] The original site was in the rear of the little village of Cayma.
[392] The splendid volcano of Misti rises immediately in the rear of the city of Arequipa, in a perfect cone capped with snow, to a height of 18,00 feet above the level of the sea, or, according to Pentland, 20,300 feet.