One of the most striking of these aqueducts is about eight leagues from Lima, on the low road to Alcacota by Caballeros, on a high rocky acclivity, along the base of which runs the road, close by the winding of the river Chillon or Carabaillo, which descends from the Cordillera, by Obrajillo. It is also very usual in the temperate valleys, where the hills are flanked with soil, and clothed in vegetation, to meet here and there the ruins of small villages with files of successively rising platforms on the hollow side of a hill. These tiers of artificial flats, or gardens, are generally only a few yards in breadth; but in length greater or less, in proportion to the dimensions of the semi-circular sweep of the recess capable of cultivation. In rearing up and constructing these gardens the one above the other, like the pews in the gallery of a church or boxes in a theatre, the ancient Indian must have begun his work by erecting a stone wall on the lower part of the slope, or more even ground, that formed the base of the series; and, as it was in process of rising to the desired height, the earth must have been scraped down from the side of the acclivity, to fill up the space thus partitioned off into a level bank or platform: then, behind this first level was raised another stony partition, and more earth again scraped down; and so on successively, till the uppermost and last tier of these little and tasteful gardens was completed.[24] By such means these industrious natives always preserved deep soil, which they might dig up and turn over at pleasure, bringing a new surface of earth to yield a new crop without necessity of manure; and by the same contrivance they preserved from the washings of the frequent and heavy rains, the treasure of vegetable loam which they thus so laboriously and patiently amassed. As we descend from the inner regions of the country, and get down among the arid and naked granite mountains near the coast, we see the ruins of Pagan dwellings showing themselves in the crevices of the rocks, where no plant is seen on the waste land, save a few scattered cacti, and no moving creature except the lizard that basks, and the kite that waits its motions, on the crumbling ruins and circumjacent blocks which have been rolled from their original seats on the face of the steep. And as we approach still nearer the capital, where Glen Rimac unfolds its wide and fertile acres of deep alluvial soil, we see that this goodly land, when denied water, puts on a look of desert sterility; but that it only requires irrigation—it needs no manure—to yield productive sugar-cane, and to throw forth choice lucern and Indian corn, that waves above the head of the overseer as he passes on horseback through the fields, superintending labourers.