[Sidenote: Its geographical peculiarities.] In one particular especially is the position of Peru interesting. It presents an analogy to Upper Egypt, that cradle of the civilization of the Old World, in this, that its sandy coast is a rainless district. This sandy-coast region is about sixty miles in width, hemmed in on the east by grand mountain ranges, which diminish in size on approaching the Isthmus of Panama; the entire length of the Peruvian empire having been nearly 2,400 miles, it reached from the north of the equator to what is now known as Chili. In breadth it varied at different points. [Sidenote: A rainless country like Egypt.] The east wind, which has crossed the Atlantic, and is therefore charged with humidity, being forced by the elevation of the South American continent, and especially by the range of the Andes, upward, is compelled to surrender most of its moisture, which finds its way back to the Atlantic in those prodigious rivers that make the country east of the Andes the best watered region of the world; but as soon as that wind has crossed the mountain ridge and descends on the western slope, it becomes a dry and rainless wind, and hence the district intervening to the Pacific has but a few insignificant streams. [Sidenote: Its system of agriculture.] The sides of this great mountain range might seem altogether unadapted to the pursuit of agriculture, but the state of Peruvian civilization is at once demonstrated when it is said that these mountain slopes had become a garden, immense terraces having been constructed wherever required, and irrigation on a grander scale than that of Egypt carried on by gigantic canals and aqueducts. Advantage was taken of the different mean annual temperatures at different altitudes to pursue the cultivation of various products, for difference in height topographically answers to difference in latitude geographically, and thus, in a narrow space, the Peruvians had every variety of temperature, from that corresponding to the hottest portions of Southern Europe to that of Lapland. In the mountains of Peru, as has been graphically said, man sees "all the stars of the heavens and all the families of plants." On plateaus at a great elevation above the sea there were villages and even cities. Thus the plain upon which Quito stands, under the equator, is nearly ten thousand feet high. So great was their industry that the Peruvians had gardens and orchards above the clouds, and on ranges still higher flocks of lamas, in regions bordering on the limit of perpetual snow.