The history of this province is uninteresting; the aborigines, of whom there are few remaining and who are called _Guarpes_, were conquered by the Peruvian Incas; and on the road over the Andes to Chili, are still to be seen some tambos or military stations of the Inca Yupanqui. The Spaniards who explored Cuyo were under the command of Francisco de Aguirre, who was sent by Valdivia from Chili, but returned without effecting any thing of importance. In 1560, Don Garcia de Mendoza sent Pedro Castillo to conquer this country; he subdued the Guarpes and founded two cities. The principal rivers in this extensive province are the _San Juan_, the _Mendoza_, and the _Tunujan_. _The San Juan_ rises in the Chilian Andes, and washes the walls of St. Juan de la Frontera. The _Mendoza_ also rises in the same chain, and the two, after receiving several smaller streams, and running twenty-five and thirty leagues, lose themselves in the chain of lakes called Guanasache, which extends more than fifty leagues from north to south, and also receives the _Tunujan_. In these lakes, according to some maps, the great _Rio Colorado_ rises, which flows into the Atlantic, in about 40° south latitude. The eastern part of Cujo is watered by several rivers, but of them very little is known, as these parts are mostly immense plains, in which the herbage is of such a height as to conceal the cattle and animals that feed in them. Unlike the savannahs of the Orinoco and the La Plata, they possess lofty and beautiful trees; of these a species of cocoa palm is the most singular, its leaves and branches commence from the ground, and though they bear some resemblance to those of the cocoa-nut, they are hard and sharp like the aloe, and the tree, which never exceeds eighteen feet in height, bears a fruit also resembling that of the cocoa, but containing no kernel or edible substance. Its trunk is very large, and consists of several concentric layers, each of which to the heart, are finer as they approach the centre, and from a yellow decrease by shades to a perfect white. Of these fibrous coats, the natives make cloth which is strong and flexible, but not so soft as that of flax. The other trees of Cujo are those which are peculiar to the warm regions of Chili and La Plata; of them, the cactus family bear a large proportion, and the nopal or opuntia feeds the cochineal insect, of which, however, none are exported.