[1] As early as 1614 we find Cervantes writing of these countries as the 'refugio y amparo de los desesperados de España, Yglesia de los alçados, salvoconducto de los homicidas, pala y cubierta de los jugadores (á quien llaman ciertos los peritos en el arte) añagaza general de mugeres libres, engaño comun de muchos, y remedio particular de pocos'--or, in plain English, the Indies are the 'refuge and shield of the hopeless ones of Spain, the sanctuary of the fraudulent, the protection of the murderer, the occasion and pretext of gamesters (as certain experts in the art are called), the common snare of free women, the universal imposture of the many and the specific reparation of the few.'--_El Zeloso Estremeño_. In _La Española Inglesa_ he calls the Indies 'el comun refugio de los pobres generosos,' he had himself sought service in the colonies, but anything in the form of favour from the Spanish court never fell to the lot of Cervantes. And all men of brave hearts and high courage may thank God that royal people were as powerless to spoil or to help men of genius then as they are still. [2] See a useful work 'La Condicion Juridica de los Estrangeros en el Peru,' per Felix Cipriano C. Zegarra. Santiago, 1872. p. 136. CHAPTER III. Whether it be true, or only a poetical way of putting it, that Yarmouth was built on red herrings, Manchester on cotton, Birmingham on brass, Middlesborough on pigs of iron, and the holy Roman Catholic Church in China on Peruvian bark, it is true that the Government of Peru has for more than a generation subsisted on guano, and the foundations of its greatness have been foundations of the same[3];--the ordure of birds--pelicans, penguins, boobies, and gulls of many kinds, and many kinds of ducks, all of marine habits, and deriving their living solely from the sea and the sky which is stretched above it. This precious Guano, or Huano, according to the orthography of the sixteenth century, had long been in use in Peru before Peru was discovered by the Spaniards. It was well enough known to those famous agriculturists, the Incas, who five centuries ago used it as a servant. With the change which changed the Incas from off the face of the earth, came the strangest change of all,--Guano ceased to be the servant or helper of the native soil; it became the master of the people who occupy it, the Peruvian people, the Spanish Peruvians who call themselves Republicans. No disgrace or ignominy need have come upon Peru for selling its guano and getting drunk on the proceeds, if it had not trampled its own soil into sand, and killed not only the corn, the trees, and flowers which grow upon it, but also the men who cultivate those beautiful and necessary things[4].