her head, is of great merit, and exactly resembles the 'Santa Justa' of Murillo in the Duke of Sutherland's collection. On the left is a picture of the 'Woman taken in Adultery,' and an excellent copy of the well-known Worshipping of the Magi,' by Rubens, in the Madrid gallery. In a side chapel there is a copy of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper,' with portraits of two caciques-the heads of the two great families of Azangero-with their wives, one of them very pretty, looking on in a corner. These copies, which are excellent, must have been procured from Europe at very great expense.

The author of all this magnificence, according to the inscription on his portrait, which is fixed in a handsome gilt frame by the side of the chancel arch, was the Bachiller Dr. Don Basco Bernardo Lopez de Cangas, a native of Cuzco, and Cura of Azangaro. The interior decorations were completed on January 12th, 1758, and the cura died in 1771. He must have been possessed of enormous wealth, to have enabled him thus to beautify and adorn his church with such lavish profusion.

In the days of the Incas the two great families of Azangaro, whose heads ranked as Curacas, were the Murumallcucalcinas and Chuquihuancas; and they retained the office of cacique until recent Spanish times. The Murumallcucalcina family is now extinct: they lived in the town, and a portion of their house still remains, called the Sondor-huasi, dating from the time of the Incas, and the greatest curiosity in the place. It is a circular building, about twelve feet in diameter, with walls twelve feet high, of mud and straw, very strong and thick. The dome-shaped roof of thatch also dates from the time of the Incas. The outside coating consists of a layer of stipa ychu, two feet thick, placed in very regular rows, and most carefully finished, so as to present a smooth surface to the weather. Next there is a thick layer of the same grass placed horizontally, netted

together with reeds; and finally an inner perpendicular layer; the whole thatch being five feet thick. The interior framework consists of twelve perfect circles of bent wands, with others descending in curves from the apex of the roof to the crest of the wall, and where they cross there are lashings of a tough reed. The whole is finished with most admirable neatness, forming a perfect dome. This is the only roof of the time of the Incas still remaining in Peru, and hence its great importance in an antiquarian point of view. It has been said that the colossal and highly-finished masonry of the Incas, and their poor thatched roofs, formed a barbaric contrast; but the Sondor-huasi proves that their roofs rivalled their walls in the exquisite art and neatness of their finish. The Sondor-huasi is now in a very dilapidated state, and is used as a kitchen by the degenerate collateral heirs of the old caciques.

The Chuquihuanca family had a country house about a league from Azangaro, which was destroyed by the army of Tupac Amaru in 1780, because the Chuquihuancas deserted their countrymen and adhered to the Spanish cause. I accompanied Don Luis Quiñones, and the whole of the society of Azangaro, to a picnic at the ruined house of the Chuquihuancas; and it was amusing to see all the masters of families, the Sub-Prefect Don Hipolito Valdez, the judge, the cura, and every one else, locking the great folding-doors leading into their patios, and putting the keys into their pockets. Azangaro was entirely deserted. We were all well mounted, and there were fourteen young ladies of the party, fresh pleasant girls, who thoroughly enjoyed a good gallop. The ruined house was in a corner of the plain, and surrounded on three sides by steep overhanging cliffs. There are the remains of a house, with a long corridor of brick arches, behind which several broad terraces rise up the face of the cliff, which are still ornamented with some fine oliva silvestre

and queñua trees, a few ancient apple-trees, and a dense growth of bright-yellow Composita, and Solanums with a purple flower. A noisy torrent foamed down the cliffs and over the terraces to the plain below. It was a very pretty spot, but in a most desolate condition, and many small doves made their nests in the trees. Lupins (ccerra3) and nettles (itapallu) were growing in the crevices of the rocks. We had an excellent and very merry dinner; a large amount of Moquegua wine, and of the better-clarified and more generous liquor from Don Domingo Elias's vineyards at Pisco, were drunk; and guitar-playing and samocueca-dancing finished the day's entertainment. We returned to Azangaro after dark. Don Luis assured me that the people of this little town were like one family; and that, though election-time or periods of civil dissension sometimes caused estrangement amongst them, the habitual concord and friendship always returned when the excuse for alienation had passed away.

Azangaro is a great cattle-breeding province, and there is a considerable trade in cheeses with Arequipa and other parts. I found very great difficulty in procuring animals to enable me to continue my journey. At length I succeeded in hiring four miserable-looking, vicious, undersized ponies; and, having crossed the Azangaro on balsas, by far the largest river I had passed over since leaving Puno, the way led over the rocky range of Pacobamba hills into another plain, where there were several cattle and sheep farms; and the village of Corruarini, consisting of a ruined church and a dozen huts. The river Azangaro rises in the snowy mountains of Caravaya, forms an immense curve of nearly half a circle in a course of about two hundred miles, and, uniting with the river of Pucara, falls into the lake of Titicaca as the river Ramiz, the largest of its affluents. After a ride of six leagues

5 Lupinus Paniculatus.-Chloris Andina, ii. p. 252.

we reached the little village of San José, under a conical hill, and close to the snowy mountains of Surapana.

I dined with the cura, Fray Juan de Dios Cardenas, who gave me a list of medicinal herbs used in Azangaro; and the beasts from that place were so infamous that I was obliged to invoke his assistance to procure fresh ones. It appeared that two Frenchmen had passed a few days before, on their way to establish a saw-mill in the Caravaya forests, with a view to floating timber down the river of Azangaro to lake Titicaca, and that they had ill-treated some Indians. It was thus very difficult to induce them to furnish ponies, but the alcaldes, with their great hats and long sticks, were summoned, and, after some negotiation, they were induced to supply four ponies to go as far as Crucero, the capital of the province of Caravaya. It was most fortunate that I was enabled to do this, for, during the night, the owners of the Azangaro ponies came out to San José, and stole them, so that we should have been left without even this wretched means of conveyance.

From San José the path winds up a long ravine for several leagues, down which a torrent dashes furiously over the rocks, descending from the snowy peak of Accosiri. The mountain scenery, consisting of steep grassy slopes, masses of rock, torrents, and distant snowy peaks, was very fine. The ravine led up to the summit of the pass of Surupana, where it was intensely cold, and the height of which I roughly estimated, with a boiling-point thermometer, at 16,700 feet above the sea. Here I met an active young vicuña-hunter, well mounted, and provided with a gun, who said he was a servant of the Cacique Chuquihuanca of Azangaro, on his way to buy wool in Caravaya. He continued in my company during most part of the day. Loud claps of thunder burst out in different directions, and a snow-storm was drifting in our faces. The ravines were covered with deep snow, between