Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/42

20 of Peru, it would be impossible to trace out the eminent advantages of its former or present inhabitants.

In the general idea of Peru which we have given, we confined ourselves chiefly to the plans that had been suggested, in dividing, peopling, and cultivating its territory, by the different views and interests of its conquerors. We presented to our readers a prefatory introduction, a leisure composition, in which, noticing rapidly, and in substance, whatever this country owes to man, we prepared them for the elucidation of each of the parts contained in that valuable sketch of our political geography. We now follow a different course. In naming Peru, we banish from our view its inhabitants and its cities, and annihilate even the superb towers of opulent Lima. The plains which our forefathers laboured and fertilized, disappear; and the delightful environs of Rimac present no other ornament than a multitude of shrubs and green meadows, which, agitated by the gentle breeze, rival the undulations and murmurs of the Pacific Ocean, as it washes its banks.

Having penetrated into the ages of remote antiquity, in search of the fragments of the edifices of the Yncas, to complete the history of their monuments, we now fix our attention on those times when the human footstep had as yet left no print on the sands of this favoured region; when its fertile plains were still uncultivated. Nature alone appears, wrapt up in a mysterious silence. Her powerful hand is about to give the last perfection to the globe, and to support its equilibrium, by forming two distinct worlds in one single continent. It would appear, that after she had exercised herself on the burning sands of Africa, on the leafy and fragrant groves of Asia, and on the temperate and colder climes of Europe,