The aged Bard has spoken--and Heaven has heard the prayer; The haughty towers are crumbling low--no regal dome is there! A single column soars on high, to tell of splendours past-- And see! _'tis cracked--it nods the head_--this hour may be it's last! Where once the fairy garden smiled, a mournful desert lies-- No rills refresh the barren sand--no graceful stems arise-- From storied page, and legend strain, this King has vanished long; His race is dead--his power forgot:--such is the might of song! THE MINE, THE FOREST, AND THE CORDILLERA.[8] The silver mines of Potosi, the virgin forests, and mighty cordilleras of South America, are words familiar and full of interest to European ears. Countless riches, prodigious vegetable luxuriance, stupendous grandeur, are the associations they suggest. With these should be coupled ideas of cruelty, desolation, and disease, of human suffering and degradation pushed to their utmost limit, of opportunities neglected, and advantages misused. Not a bar of silver, or a healing drug, or an Alpaca fleece, shipped from Peruvian ports to supply another hemisphere with luxuries and comforts, but is the price of an incalculable amount of misery, and even of blood--the blood of a race once noble and powerful, now wretched and depraved by the agency of those whose duty and in whose power it was to civilize and improve them. The corrupt policy of Spanish rulers, the baneful example of Spanish colonists and their descendants, have gone far towards the depopulation and utter ruin of the richest of South American countries. How imprudent and suicidal has been the course adopted, will presently be made apparent. Those who desire evidence in support of our assertion, need but follow Dr Tschudi, as we now propose doing, into the mining, mountainous, and forest districts of Peru. Difficult and dangerous as a journey through the maritime provinces of Peru undeniably is, it is mere railroad travelling when compared with an expedition into the interior of the country. In the former case, the land is level, and the sun, the sand, and the highwayman, are the only perils to be encountered or evaded. But a ramble in the mountains is a succession of hairbreadth escapes, a deliberate confronting of constantly recurring dangers, to which even the natives unwillingly expose themselves, and frequently fall victims. The avalanches, precipices, gaping ravines, slippery glaciers, and violent storms common to all Alpine regions, are here complicated by other risks peculiar to the South American mountains. Heavy rains, lasting for weeks together, falls of snow that in a few moments obliterate all trace of a path, treacherous swamps, strange and loathsome maladies, and even blindness, combine to deter the traveller from his dangerous undertaking. All these did Dr Tschudi brave, and from them all, after the endurance of great hardship and suffering, he was fortunate enough to escape.