rude flat drum, both played by the same performer. Each man carries a stick, with a very small wooden or hide shield, which he strikes to the step of the dance. They also wear small bells on their knees and feet called cosobelês, which jingle with the dance. With this custom there is a great deal of riot and intoxication. Romanism has sway in the Cordilleras, | monotonous music of a reed pipe and a and Sunday is the day for mass, markets, and intemperance. The men are dressed in tall straw hats, ponchos, breeches buttoned at the knee, with long woolen stockings. Blue woolen skirts open in front, a white cotton petticoat, and the shoulders covered with a gay colored plush mantle, compose the dress of the women. Ladies of higher quality wear skirts from colored prints or muslins. The hair, particularly on Sundays, is perfectly arranged, and, parted in the middle, hangs down gracefully plaited behind. It is surmounted by a very neat, low-crowned straw bonnet, and she is always bein calzada, well shod. The women exhibit amiable, frank, and agreeable manners. The cura has a busy time, as nearly every day there is some "Fiesta" of the Church, which is usually celebrated with ringing of bells, music, the firing of rockets, and Indian dances. A dozen low fellows, dressed in the supposed costume of the ancient Indians, red and white blankets from the shoulders, short blue breeches, and sandals of raw hide, march through the streets. Stopping now and then, they perform a sort of a dance to the dull and Tarma is a small town of Peru, with some seven thousand inhabitants, and beautifully situated in an atmosphere of high mountains, clothed almost to their tops in summer with waving fields of barley. Its latitude is 11° 25' south, and the place is nine thousand seven hundred and thirtyeight feet above the level of the sea, between the Andes range on the east and the lofty Cordilleras west. The valley in front of the place is half a mile wide, two long, level, and covered with the greenest and richest pasturage. At the farther end the stream which runs through it plunges over a beautiful rocky cataract thirty feet high. The climate is delicious and invigorating, the sick from Lima and the cold inclement mining districts resorting for health to its pure, mild, and equal temperature. Maize, wheat, barley, and potatoes are the principal crops, cultivated upon the mountain sides and in the rocky valleys of this country. In nearly all cases the land is cultivated by the aborigines, and their wages average from ten to twenty cents a day. The small estates, chacéas, are owned by the descendants of the Spanish Indians, or Mestizos, the last a cross between the two former. The Indians celebrate harvest with great merry-making, cooking their meals, at the time, in the fields, with music and dancing amid the barley stubble. They are very modest, civil, and unassuming in their manners to strangers. The men carry heavy loads of barley or wheat on their backs, while the women drive the loaded mules, slinging the children over their shoulders. All are employed; the father reaps, the mother gathers, the boys tending the flocks, while the girls take care of the children and the cooking, and spin woolen yarn by the hand. When the crops fail on these table-lands the suffering among the Indians is very great. Before the rains commence is their seeding time, and hard frosts in Feb ruary are generally the forerunners of a famine. Black cattle are numerous at the foot of the mountains, and shepherdesses follow thousands of sheep and lambs. During the harvest the tax-gatherers go among the thrashers with silver-headed canes, levying a measure of grain instead of contribution money. They are old Indians, well dressed, with broad-brimmed hats, and a respectable Quaker-like air about them. The priests also are active at the same time for their share of the crops. Men reach a good old age in this climate; seventy, eighty, ninety years are common, and some reach one hundred to one hundred and thirty, the Indians living longest. Mestizo and Spanish girls have been known to be mothers at the early age of eight or nine years. The Spanish Creole population is small, and are generally the shop-keepers and the only dealers in foreign goods, which they purchase at Lima. These they pay to the Indians for work in the silver mines, the natives preferring blue in their dresses to any other color. The demand for wax in the Romish churches is considerable. Eggs and wool are the chief exports of Lima, and are carried across the Cordilleras on the backs of mules. Travelers wonder why they find so many bad eggs on the sea-coast, and it arises from the custom to pass them through the country, as current money, for some time before they are sent away to market. Three eggs will purchase a glass of brandy or sixpence worth of anything in the markets. The Mestizos are the shoemakers, blacksmiths, and saddlers of the country, and lord it over the honest Indians. Inaja is one of the great valleys amid the snowy peaks of Peru, and has a population of about two thousand five hundred inhabitants. The houses are one story. built of unburned bricks, with tile roofs. Its streets are well paved, and a neat little whitewashed church ornaments the plaza. The snowy peaks of the Cordilleras are in full view from the town. No section of Peru is more densely populated than the valley of Inaja. Here, close under the mountains, on the east side, stands the little town of Ocopa, with its convents and schools. From this point Roman Catholic missionaries have been sent in different directions to the forests and plains, at great risk of life and comforts, for the conversion of the savage red man. | Some have been successful, others murdered, and their settlements destroyed by fire, and some never tire! The Inaja River, rising to the north of Tarma, flows in a serpentine course through the whole length of this elevated valley, and creeping through the Andes, suddenly and rapidly rushes by the Ucayali and Amazon to the Atlantic Ocean. Huancavelica, a Peruvian town celebrated for its quicksilver mines, has a population of eight thousand, and is situated in a deep ravine, amid a cluster of lofty peaks. It is the capital of the department, and was named by the Incas, boasts of six churches, an hospital, and college, in which are taught physics, chemistry, and mineralogy. A cathedral stands on the side of the Cinnebar Mountain, which contains the famous quicksilver mine of San Barbara. It is truly a wonderful place, and its entrance resembles a railroad tunnel. The eternal glaciers are seen at the very door, six hundred feet below the top of the mountain; icicles hanging over head, with sheets of ice under foot. Old brick-colored columns support the ceilings of the mine as they are excavated by the workmen, who, with hammer and chisel, are literally honey-combing the mighty Andes. Turn which way the explorer may, he finds a road to travel. In the midst of this dark, wide, and deep excavation, San Rosario Church is reached, rotunda-shaped, with a ceiling one hundred feet high. Over the altar is carved, in solid cinnabar, the Virgin Mary, with the Infant Saviour in her arms. As the Indian miners pass, they turn, and kneeling under their heavy loads of ore, cross themselves, offer a short prayer, and proceed onward by the light always burning at the sacred altar. The mining In dians seldom leave these gloomy regions, but when the church bell invites, they attend its call, and pray for protection from the dangers to which they are exposed. On Sunday evenings they meet their fellowlaborers in this sacred rotunda for religious services. The peak of this mountain is said to be almost a solid mass of quicksilver ore, and this is carried out in bags of raw hide, on the backs of boys; at the furnaces near by, men break the ore into little pieces, and the women make small cakes of the dust. These are heated for eight or ten hours, when the condensed | generally old women, seating themselves vapor falls in quicksilver upon the floor. When washed and dried, it is sold here for one dollar per pound, and sent to the silver mines of Peru. Huancavelica lies on the route from Lima to Cusco, and distant seventy-three miles, and although this is not the shortest road to the coast, still it is the best, and to the best seaport. Freights arrive from Lima in ten days; mules travel the distance with mail boxes in six. Chica is the favorite drink of the Peruvian Indians, and is thus made: A party, around a wooden trough with the maize, each of them takes a mouthful, mashing the grain, and then casts it back into the vessel. The mass, with water, is next boiled in large coppers, fermented in earthen jars, when it is sold by the brewers. It is an intoxicating drink, but the Indians say very healthful. Chupe is the national dish of the Peruvians, and may be made almost of anything related to soups, but is usually composed of mutton, eggs, rice, and potatoes, all highly seasoned with pepper and spices. Lieutenant Gordon, in his explorations of these regions, met a man in a poncho and traveling dress by the name of Sage, with an Indian girl behind his saddle, and although from one of these mountain valleys, he spoke plain English, and was born in New Haven. He was proprietor of a circus company, but had now been many years in South America. Often, he had thought of returning to New England, "but nobody knows me now," he said. "Years ago I heard of the changes there, and don't believe I should know my native place. I have adopted the manners and customs of these people. I have worked in this country for years, and am worth nothing at last." He had navigated the Mississippi in a canoe. Every now and then his English ran off into Spanish, when he would beg pardon for not speaking his native language as well as when he was a boy in his own land. During this conversation, down the sides of the mountain slowly advanced Sage's traveling circus. A little dark Guayaquil girl, a neat rider, accompanied a fine-looking Peruvian, whose fat wife, with sunburned face, followed. Then came a pony and his playmate, a dog, with a beautiful Peruvian girl, servants, and a long train of baggage mules. At the same moment, the Indians were gathered at an old church in the valley, to celebrate the Saint's Day of San Iago. Attired in green costumes, they marched in procession, with drums and fifes, through crowds of women dressed in all colors; some were masked in cow's horns and black, others wore cocked hats and gold-laced coats, while the young Creoles dashed about on horseback. The master of the place had just returned from church, a little intoxicated, and the whole crowd was high from chica. After morning prayers there was a grand procession, headed by the priest. Such is Romanism in the Andes. The scene was beautiful and strange; the church below, and the people lining the road of the valley, while drums mingled their rattling with the shouts and singing of the women. As the traveler descends the eastern slope of the Andes, the scenery changes rapidly with the climate; humming-birds of the most brilliant plumage buzz among the flowers; potatoes, beans, figs, and peaches are for sale by the road-side, and Indian girls offer their chica drink. The quiet little ring-dove builds her nest in the clusters of the evergreen cactus, and the partridge sends forth her well-known call from the barley-fields. One day you are shivering, high up the mountains amid a midwinter's snow-storm; the next, you pass people seated by shady brooks in their midsummer costume. The arrieros, or mule drivers, are an important class of the people. Whenever they meet with difficulties, their rule is to take a seat, and pulling from the pocket a small piece of paper, or a corn husk, they light a cigaros, and consider the case in so cool a manner, while the smoke is curling upward. Unless you saw the mule and baggage through the broken bridge, or down a precipice, you would not know anything had happened to the train. The Peruvian mail from Lima to the southern departments is carried in two small hide boxes, on the back of a mule, with a swallow-tailed red and white flag flying from a short pole fastened between the trunks. Well mounted and armed, the conductor rides after the mail, while the mounted arriero trots ahead, blowing a horn. Letters and remittances are safely sent by this conveyance. There are robbers among these mountain heights, who make their own terms when meeting travelers at night, in lonesome, uninhabitable roads. Their modes of attack differ; when they see the party, and know the number, in the daytime, they boldly make their demands. If in doubt, their guide comes alone, inquires about the travelers' health, requests a light for his cigaros, and expresses a wish to make purchases. Then he returns with a report of his discoveries; and whether the party is attacked or not, the chance is that the mules at pasture will be stolen during the night. The robbers use short, thick clubs, knives, and slung stone balls, but seldom firearms, which they greatly dread. Intent on plunder or murder, the savage, the negro, or the Peruvian robber may approach boldly with his dagger, but the click of a revolver makes him disappear quickly. In some of these valleys are sugar plantations, where the Indians may be seen, with hoe in hand, leading the snowy waters of the Andes between the rows of the young plants, with their rich and yellow leaves. With this beautiful arrangement of nature, he plants and garners a crop every year; and destitute of it in these regions both man and plant would |