From Tumbez to Callao, the country presents a most arid and uninviting appearance. The high, steep hills near to the shore extend in an almost unbroken line of dull greyish brown, as the sun-baked clay, with here and there patches of dirty white indicating guano deposits. I must confess to a feeling of disappointment on first gazing upon the inhospitable shores of Peru. For my mind treasured recollections of all the glamour and romance that gather round the land and the history of the wonderful Incas. The world’s records contain few more fairy-like narratives than the well attested story of a civilisation equal in many of its aspects to any the world has known. Inland, many types are encountered, easily traceable to those “Children of the Sun” who migrated from the north to the interior highlands of the country and established at Cuzco the centre and capital of a great empire. Originally, their very contrast with surrounding tribes gave them a remarkable distinction, whilst their civilisation was full of sound and humane elements. Its keynote was an intelligent socialism, for the citizen had to supply the needs of the aged and infirm, the widow and the orphan, and the soldier on active service, before supplying his own. The person of the Emperor was regarded as divine, and he wielded supreme authority over his realm. In this enlightened society, hidden away for centuries from the eyes of the rest of the world, poverty was a thing unknown, for communism, tempered by an almost extravagant regard for authority, attained during the regime of the Incas an ideal height never achieved before or since. The Peruvians of those bygone times have left little doubt that they excelled as agriculturalists and shepherds; their mountains were cultivated almost to the snow-line; irrigation on thoroughly sound lines was known and practised; aqueducts and bridges abounded, and adequate roads connected town with town and with the sea. Moreover, the people had advanced sufficiently far along the path of civilisation to have tamed wild animals such as the llama and alpaca for domestic use. [Illustration: THE ARID COAST OF PERU.] On a higher plane than this, they had evolved a religion full of sound rules for individual and social conduct and performed with a wealth of ritual. Its central feature was Sun-worship, which relates it somewhat to the Zoroastrianism of the Persians, but it is clear that, in addition, the Incas and their subjects had an exalted conception of a Supreme Being--the fount and origin of the Universe. His greatest temple, which filled one side of the square at Cuzco, was richly ornamented and decorated, its walls and shrines being overlaid with pure gold, in the working of which metal the ancient Peruvians were highly proficient.