Mollendo, the port for Arequipa, Cuzco, La Paz, is anything but an inviting place. It is a dismal town like Iquique, Arica, Paita, and many others on the rainless coast that stretches for hundreds of weary miles down the Pacific. The port is unsheltered and strong south-westerly winds prevail, making the landing in small boats a matter of no little difficulty. The landing-stage or mole belonging to the Peruvian Corporation is the most important feature of the dusty town, for from it all the rich products of the far-distant interior are shipped into the barges which carry them out to the steamers that anchor in the roadstead. The exports are alpaca and sheep’s wool, hides, coca leaves, Peruvian bark, silver, tin, and iron ores. The town itself is built upon steep, rising ground, the roads of which are carpeted with thick layers of ruddy dust, which the wind drives about to the inconvenience of the visitors, although it does not apparently annoy the dirty-looking inhabitants. There are two hotels in the town that offer little choice, and it is a toss-up which is the more deserving of patronage. The houses are all built of wood and painted with colours that soon lose their original hues, for the sun, unmasked by clouds, beats down on them with relentless fury and, combined with the efforts of the dust, contrives to reduce them to a uniform tint of bleached dismalness. The shops expose cheap goods of German manufacture, for all along the Pacific seaboard the irrepressible Teuton is fast obtaining a strong and tenacious foothold. The native market exudes such unmistakable evidences of its contents that only persons with strong stomachs dare venture to make a visual inspection of the wares. Swarthy Indians, enveloped in brilliantly coloured ponchos, lounge on the wharves or in the shade cast by the buildings. The church, built of wood and corrugated iron, in a style absolutely unsuitable to the materials, has two towers surmounted by conical caps that are quite original and absurd. Women sit at little stalls in the gutters or on the pavements, and above their heads little square sunshades stuck on poles give some protection to the medley of fruit in the baskets in front of them. The whole place looks temporary, and one would not be surprised to learn that the authorities were only waiting for funds to lay out a more habitable town. The place has only about 5000 inhabitants, who deserve the sympathy of all right-feeling people. But Mollendo is only a seaport, and the doorway to vast and interesting regions in the interior, many of which are unexplored, and one of which, Bolivia, is still waiting for a proper recognition of its vast resources. The railway to Arequipa and Puno on the Peruvian shore of the highest navigable lake in the world, and to Cuzco, the ancient city of the Incas, has brought these hitherto little-visited centres into closer touch with outside civilisation. [Illustration: A FRUIT-STALL AT MOLLENDO.]