PERU

Hokitika Guardian, 29 August 1927, Page 1

PERU

In “Llama Land” Air Anthony Dell gives an account of his wanderings in Peru, a country of striking contrasts. Most ol the littoral is an arid waste, rainless and destitute of life. In this forbidding desert oasis, in the shape of river valleys, occur at long intervals. In the background tower the Andes, which the railway crosses at an altitude of 16,600 feet above sea. level. Travellers suffer acutely from mountain sickness, which sometimes proves fatal. On the further side of the slopes is a region of dense forest, in which strange flora and fauna lurk. This is the abode of the authentic vampires, blood-sucking bats. I hey have little c-bance to attack human beings, as the windows of the but are screened, but they frequently kill mules and horses by bleeding them to death. The natives are almost as primitive as they were when Pizarro camo down from Quito to the Amazon to find El Dorado, but found instead starvation, poisoned darts, and savages, who were in the habit of reducing tho heads of their victims to the size of oranges by a secret method that retained their Features unaltered. Even in the settled districts tho condition of the natives is miserable. Many of them work on the plantations for nothing but their keep.

Peru is rich in interest for the archaeologist. Both tho Incas and their predecessors wero highly skilled craftsmen, especially in ceramics. They x cel led in design and decoration, also they were mighty builders. At Cuzco, the ancient capital, the great fortress is fashioned of enormous blocks of granite, twice as high as a man on horseback. It is a mystery how these were transported from the quarries many miles away over the. mountains. The local explanation is that tho In-

cas had only to burn a few herbs and utter incantations and the blocks fell into place as desired. A more plausible one is that they had unlimited slave labour. Another remarkable tiling is that hard stone should have been out so smoothly by a people who were ignorant of iron or shell. The only cutting metal they used was copper, but this they hardened, by a process since lost, with tho addition of a small proportion of tin. Climate has had an important influence on the history of Peru. Away from the mountains, which are scantily inhabited, it is enervating; the Englishman’s walk slows down, after a few months in Lima, to the pace of the Kimono. The national charncted has been affected by the climate. To the latter is attributed the passivity of the Peruvian Indian, without which, indeed, the rule of the Incas would have been impossible. Hie Tr.eas. in their turn, succumbed to a handful of Spaniards, but set their own stamp upon their conquerors. The Peruvians of Spanish or mixed descent show little enterprise. They have been content with the revenues of their haciendas, cultivated by peons, and have left the mines, the oilfields and the nitrate deposits to foreigners to exploit. Perhaps contact with the outer world will imbue them with commercial ambitions, and spur them to develop the riclT natural resources which Peru possesses.