they did great execution in the work of “cuspiando” or field-levelling. Lucern or alfalfa is daily cut down, and used green, as scores of cattle and the working oxen for the plough and sugar-mills are to be fed by it; yet the scythe is not in use among the great planters, who find it necessary to keep two or three individuals at the sickle to cut down food for herds, in the daytime fed on irrigated pastures, but at night fed in corrals or pens. Potato-ground they are accustomed to break up on the face of steeps with deep narrow spades, to which long handles are attached, that afford good leverage. In the same manner the soil is turned up by those who have neither plough nor oxen, but who yet sow maize on the temperate flats on the hill-sides, and in the midst of thickets by mountain streams, where the soil is usually fertile, and materials for fencing are at hand. People thus circumstanced make holes in the ground with a sharp-pointed stick, where they bury the seed secure, that it may not be taken up by the fowls of the air; and that, when dropped in virgin soil, it may yield a luxuriant crop and plentiful harvest. The Indian sows the white-grained maize in preference to the yellow, (morocho,) as he considers that when toasted it makes the best “cancha,” which the poor Indian everywhere uses instead of bread; and that when boiled it makes the blandest “mote,” for so they call the simply boiled maize: it has moreover the credit of making the most savoury chicha, or beer, which they home-brew whenever they have a little surplus grain at their command. They also, as we were given to understand, make a kind of beer from the fermented juice of the maize-stalks compressed between small rollers of wood moved with the hand. The usual application of dry maize-leaves and stubble is to feed cattle, and for this purpose it is considered more fattening than either alfalfa or sugar-cane tops. Agi, or pimento, is cultivated around the little Indian houses and gardens in the Vale of Huanuco; and without this condiment the natives hardly relish any kind of food. The sugar-mills in this valley are, the greater number of them, made of wood, and moved by oxen. On the larger estates small brass rollers are used; but with a single exception, on the estate of Andaguaylla, where we were concerned in erecting a water-mill for the purpose of grinding sugar-cane, the proprietors adhere to the old practice of working with oxen by day and by night throughout the year, barring accidents, and feasts or holy-days. The beautiful hacienda or estate of Quicacan, Colonel Lucar’s, is a model of industry and method after the fashion of the country; and the most distinguished family of Echegoyen have, in Colpa-grande, the finest cane-estate, as far as we know, in the interior of Peru. It extends for nine or ten miles along the fertile banks of the river, from the city of Huanuco towards the ascents that lead into the Montaña.