Within five miles or thereabouts of Cerro Pasco, is a coal-mine of rather inferior quality, from which Captain Hodge, a distinguished miner from Cornwall, used to supply his customers. The coal burnt at the steam-engine was conveyed about five or six miles from the coal-mine, near the pueblo of Rancas, called “La mina de las Maquinas,” and is of very superior quality. The fuel, however, which is most common in Cerro Pasco, as well as all over the frigid districts of the Sierra, is “_champa_” a turf (not peat) cut from the surface of the marsh-land. Charcoal becomes very expensive; and the large _braseros_ or pans, in which the rich miners once used to burn it, (though not always with impunity, because of the deleterious effect of the carbonic acid gas evolved,) are fortunately out of fashion since the advantages of the chimneys and grates have become known. For smelting purposes, at different mining situations in the Sierra, the ordure of quadrupeds is collected on the plains in the dry season, and used as fuel with rushes and long grass which grow on the pasture-grounds. Heavy timber for the use of the mines and mineral haciendas, and lighter timber for house-building in Cerro Pasco, is dragged a distance of sixty miles, and over bad and uneven road, by men and oxen, from the woods of Paucartambo, at the entrance into the Montaña, to the south-east of Pasco. Fodder is sometimes exceedingly scarce and dear in Cerro Pasco. It frequently takes six reals, or one dollar (3_s._ or 4_s._), daily, to feed a mule or horse with “alcaser” or barley-straw cut down when green, and conducted on beasts’ backs from the small villages in adjoining glens; and it is therefore customary for those who come to Pasco on business, and have several mules or horses, to send them away to the nearest convenient pastures until required to renew their journey. Indeed, in Cerro Pasco itself are to be seen in the wet season small patches of barley which never ripens, and is cut down green; but the quantity grown is too trifling to deserve notice, except in so far as it goes to show the sort of climate in this locality. Potatoes and “alcaser” are the principal productions of Quinoa; for, though its pastures are good, the temperature of the place is too cold to produce maize: but a league or two lower down, at a village called Cajamarquilla, wheat may be grown, but in small quantity for want of sufficient arable land. At this place are numerous little gardens carefully cultivated, whence onions, cabbages, lettuces, and flowers for the use of churches and chapels, &c. are taken, and sold in Pasco market-place, which throughout the year is well supplied with a variety of fruits, plenty of good fresh meat and other provisions in abundance, from the warm and temperate valleys beneath, and lakes and plains around the mines.[1]