We left Lima about noon, and rode along a broad and stony road-way by the skirts of the hills, now, in the month of January, dry and sterile masses of soil and rock. To our left extended the fine but neglected valley of Chillon, once highly cultivated, and susceptible of rich improvement. We passed several Indian edifices, constructed of mud cast in huge moulds, which yet in some degree preserve their forms, notwithstanding the ravages committed upon them by time and earthquakes. These always appear above the level of irrigated land, as if intended wisely to avoid the reach of marsh effluvia, so eminently pernicious to the health of the aborigines. We arrived in good time at Caballeros, distant six leagues from Lima, and slept very soundly, in defiance of the ceaseless barking of dogs, tinkling of mules’ bells, and noisy chattering of negroes. On the morning following we started at an early hour, with a hope that before the sun came out in his strength we might get over the parched ground of the Rio-Seco. From the heights of this hill-bound recess,—so dreary to the eye, gloomy to the imagination, and everywhere strewed with blanched bones and skeletons of wearied, foundered, and famished animals, left here to perish,—there opens suddenly and at once on the traveller’s delighted vision an unexpected view of the irrigated enclosures of the village of Yanga, close to the winding river, whose banks are clothed in vivid verdure, and garnished with trees always shady and evergreen. From this cheering eminence, in times of the greatest misrule, the traveller can indulge in the delightful feeling of security, as he casts a backward glance over the dark furnace of the Rio Seco, so appropriate for the infernal deeds of banditti for which it is celebrated, and then descends in good spirits to Alcacota and Yanga, congratulating himself on having got safely through a desolate and perilous route, where wayfarers are often plundered and abused, and, when they offer inefficient resistance, sacrificed and murdered. Two leagues higher than Yanga are the church and ruins of Santa Rosa de Quive, overlooking the only habitable house of this stage, (a sort of _tambo_ or tavern,) by the banks of a mountain torrent which descends to join the main river of the valley, from the high hills on the right, through an intersecting ravine. In the arid season on the upland, it is nearly dried up; but, in the wet, its turbid waters roll with impetuous course, hurling immense round stones along their channel, and sending forth sounds that may be heard by the traveller at the tambo,—telling him he cannot ford the stream till the river lowers, but must cross a bad bridge of pieces of timber with some earth and sticks, laid over a narrow part of the ravine, considerably higher up than the usual ford.