Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/390

340 ; and after having climbed mountains, descended into abysses, penetrated forests, and gained heights at the manifest risk of falling from the precipices they presented, he finally met, not only with a convenient site for the opening of a road, but also with many rivulets and streams, spacious plains, vestiges of ancient towns, immense pastures, abandoned plantations, dormant mines, and, above all, with mountains thickly covered with the cinchona, or quina tree, the existence of which had never been ascertained in that territory. In a word, he saw before him an unexplored country, capable of becoming a new province, richer than many of those that are peopled. He afterwards ascertained, that upwards of twenty towns, now in ruins, had been built by the missionaries belonging to the Order of Jesus, by whom that conquest had been made; their capitals having been Chavin de Pariaca, Monzon, and Chapacra. The first of these places, being situated on this side of the Cordillera, still subsists, as is proved