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 therefore almost as high as the city of Quito; but being sheltered by surrounding mountains it enjoys a far milder and more agreeable climate. The soil is extremely fertile, and the plain full of cultivated fields and gardens traversed by avenues of Willows, large flowered red, white, and yellow varieties of Datura, Mimosas, and the beautiful Quinuar-trees (our Polylepsis villosa, a Rosacea allied to Alchemilla and Sanguisorba). Wheat yields on an average in the Pampa de Caxamarca fifteen to twentyfold, but the hopes of a plentiful harvest are sometimes disappointed by night frosts, occasioned by the great radiation of heat towards the unclouded sky through the dry and rarefied mountain air: the frosts are not felt in the roofed houses.

In the northern part of the plain, small porphyritic domes break through the widely extended sandstone strata, and probably once formed islands in the ancient lake before its waters had flowed off. On the summit of one of these domes, the Cerro de Santa Polonia, we enjoyed a pleasing prospect. The ancient residence of Atuhuallpa is surrounded on this side by fruit gardens and by irrigated fields of lucerne (Medicago sativa, "campos de alfalfa"). Columns of smoke are seen at a distance rising from the warm baths of Pultamarca, which are still called Baños del Inca. I found the temperature of these sulphur-springs 55°.2 Reaumur (156°.2 Fahrenheit). Atahuallpa spent a part of the year at these baths, where some slight remains of his palace still survive the devastating rage of the Conquistadores. The large and deep basin or reservoir in which, according to tradition, one of the golden chairs in which the Inca was