CUTTING SUGAR-CANE IN CENTRAL AMERICA 96 SCENE ON THE GREAT PLATEAU, MEXICO 104 THE CATHEDRAL, CITY OF MEXICO 114 CORDOVA AND THE PEAK OF ORIZABA, STATE OF VERA CRUZ 132 VILLAGE ON THE PACIFIC SLOPE, MEXICO 140 VIEW ON THE GRIJALVA AND USUMACINTA RIVERS, MEXICO 150 THE WHARF AT GUAYAQUIL 158 CULTIVATED LANDS ON THE PACIFIC COAST OF PERU 176 THE LANDING STAGE AT VALPARAISO 198 THE MALLECO RIVER AND BRIDGE, CHILE 206 THE APPROACH TO QUITO 222 PIZARRO, THE CONQUISTADOR 240 IN THE PERUVIAN ANDES 250 PERU, LLAMAS AND ALPACAS 260 PERU: NATIVE BLANKET WEAVER IN THE ANDES 260 THE RUINED INCA FORTRESS OF OLLANTAYTAMBO, PERU 264 INDIAN RAFTS ON LAKE TITICACA 274 ACONCAGUA, THE HIGHEST ANDINE PEAK, CHILE 288 SPANISH AMERICA CHAPTER I A RECONNAISSANCE AND SOME INFORMAL GEOGRAPHY Who has not felt at some time the lure of Spanish America, the attraction of those half-mysterious lands--Peru or Panama, Mexico or Brazil, and all that galaxy of far-off States, with the remains of their ancient civilization and their picturesque modern setting--beneath the equatorial sun, beyond the Western sea? They drew us in our youth, were it but in the pages of Prescott, when with Cortes and Pizarro the Aztec and Inca Empires lay before us; they draw us even in maturer years. Yonder lies the Spanish Main, glittering in the sun as when we sailed it first--in that long-foundered pirate craft of boyhood; there stretch the tropic shores of wild Guiana; there the great Andes rears its towering crests, and over golden sands the Orinoco and the Amazon pour down their mighty floods; whilst, in slumberous and mysterious majesty beyond, wide as the sea of Time, the vast Pacific echoes on its boundless shores. And for those, who would seek the true El Dorado of the West the great Sixteenth Century has not closed yet, nor ever will; the days of ocean-chivalry are not dead, the Elizabethan mariners come and go, for their voyages have no end within those spacious days of history. Spanish America, in fact, is enshrouded in an atmosphere of romance and interest which time does not easily dispel, and remains a land of adventure and enterprise. Its sunny shores, its picturesque folk with their still semi-mediaeval life, despite their advancing civilization--the great untravelled spaces, the forests, the mountains, the rivers, the plains, and all they contain, the lure and profit of commerce and of trafficking--all these are matters we cannot separate from the New World as peopled by Spain and Portugal.