And all
communication between the parts of the long-extended territory
might be thought to be precluded by the savage character of the
region, broken up by precipices, furious torrents, and impassable
quebradas, - those hideous rents in the mountain chain, whose
depths the eye of the terrified traveler, as he winds along his
aerial pathway, vainly endeavours to fathom. *5 Yet the industry,
we might almost say, the genius, of the Indian was sufficient to
overcome all these impediments of Nature.
[Footnote 5: "These crevices are so deep," says M. de Humboldt,
with his usual vivacity of illustration, "that if Vesuvius or the
Puy de Dome were seated in the bottom of them, they would not
rise above the level of the ridges of the neighbouring sierra"
Vues des Cordilleres, p. 9.]
By a judicious system of canals and subterraneous aqueducts, the
waste places on the coast were refreshed by copious streams, that
clothed them in fertility and beauty. Terraces were raised upon
the steep sides of the Cordillera; and, as the different
elevations had the effect of difference of latitude, they
exhibited in regular gradation every variety of vegetable form,
from the stimulated growth of the tropics, to the temperate
products of a northern clime; while flocks of llamas - the
Peruvian sheep - wandered with their shepherds over the broad,
snow-covered wastes on the crests of the sierra, which rose
beyond the limits of cultivation. An industrious population
settled along the lofty regions of the plateaus, and towns and
hamlets, clustering amidst orchards and wide-spreading gardens,
seemed suspended in the air far above the ordinary elevation of
the clouds.
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