Our friends passed the night at a sugar plantation about two miles from the ruins of Pachacamac, and returned the next day to Lima. There is now only a small village where once was a large city; the inhabitants are employed on the sugar plantations and in the cultivation of their gardens, which are watered by careful irrigation from the Lurin River. The village was burned by the Chilians during the late war, and the traces of their devastations will long remain. The inhabitants fled for safety, and some of them never found their way back again to their birth-places. [Illustration: DOORWAY CUT THROUGH A SINGLE STONE.] Pachacamac does not contain the only ruins in the neighborhood of Lima. At Magdalena, not far from the railway between Callao and the capital, is an extensive ruin which was in good condition at the time of the Spanish conquest; the material has been taken for building purposes, so that the spot is hardly worth visiting at present. The temple contained an idol known as Rimac, whose name is preserved in the river. The idol used to speak, after the manner of the oracles of the Egyptian and Greek temples, and in exactly the same way; a priest was concealed in the statue, which was hollow, and thus the confiding populace was deceived. The deceptions of paganism were as well known in the New World as in the Old. [Illustration: CENTRAL FIGURE OVER DOORWAY.] There are ruins near Chorillos which have also undergone demolition for the sake of their brick and stone, and in the valley of the River Chillon, ten miles northwest of Lima, is a fortification enclosing a hill about five hundred feet high. There is a wall at the base of the hill, another about half-way up, and a third around a level space at the top, where there is a watch-tower, with several ruined buildings. The upper wall is fourteen feet high and made of stones set in tough mortar. As the ancient Peruvians had no knowledge of gunpowder, a fortress of this sort was an excellent protection for a garrison. Following up the valley of the Rimac, twelve or fifteen miles from Lima we come to a side valley which contains the ruins of Cajamarquilla. It was a city about three miles square, laid out into streets and blocks and containing many massive walls which the earthquakes have not been able to destroy. The history of this city is not even known in tradition, and the natives shake their heads when inquiry is made concerning it. The ruins were there when the Spaniards came to Peru. The buildings of this American Baalbec were extensive and connected by narrow passages and subterranean vaults, that seem to have been used for storage purposes. The doorways were low and curiously shaped, and there are no signs of windows in the houses.