The kind and affable inhabitants of this city in the bosom of the Andes have their imaginations excited with the hopes of their rising glories, and their own happy valley is too narrow for their expanding desires. So full are their literati of the flattering idea that an English colony on the river Huallaga may extend its industry and enterprise to the cultivation of the great pampa del Sacramento, that they already fancy proper depôts and harbours selected, docks prepared, and ships building from the timber of their own Montaña, to carry them a voyage of pleasure and profit round the world. They imagine little steamers up to _Playa-grande_, or even to the falls at Casapi, or the port of Cuchero on the river Chinchao, within a couple of days’ journey of their city; and, when their wishes are realized, they calculate that their now useless and neglected copper mines shall be more precious, and draw in upon them more wealth than ever did brilliants or diamonds on their distant neighbours of Brazil. And no wonder that the natives of this Elysian valley should be overjoyed at such prospects; since their long-continued communication with the canoe-men of the Huallaga on the one side, and in former times with those of the missionaries at the port or settlement of Mayro on the other, familiarise them with the notion of navigating the Huallaga and Ucayali; while the intervening plains of Sacramento they consider to be naturally the richest and most capable of improvement of any in the world. Even the miner of Cerro Pasco finds his fancy warmed when he reflects on the prospect of a steam navigation on the Marañon. Don Jose Lago y Lemus, one of the most distinguished of the veteran miners of Pasco, published in 1831 a pamphlet in illustration of the advantages that might accrue to the republic from this navigation. In this pamphlet he endeavours to show that the portions of Peruvian territory hitherto occupied, and consisting of arid coasts and rugged mountainous districts, are not to be compared, in point of natural interest or national importance, with the immense plains and fertile Montaña or wooded deserts on the eastern frontier; and he manifests a laudable and patriotic zeal in endeavouring to arouse the attention of his countrymen to this most momentous subject. Don Jose expresses himself thus: