At one time Peru might have prevented the invasion of her territory, and caused the entire army of Chili to perish, but the instincts of noble generosity and the unwritten law of common humanity were observed. If Peru had been as merciless as Chili the struggle would have been shortened and the result would have been different. Along the coast from Guayaquil, Ecuador, to Coquimbo, Chili, a distance of more than two thousand miles, stretches a desert on which a drop of rain never fell. Occasionally a stream, born of a union between the burning sun and the eternal snows of the Andes, finds its way to the sea, bringing nourishment to the soil and making a little oasis where men can live. But unless the water-supply is very great--and it is only so occasionally--the stream is swallowed by the thirsty sands and absorbed by the atmosphere, which is so dry that nothing ever decays, and causes more rapid evaporation than is known elsewhere. In this desert lie the nitrate mines, and towns have sprung up around them the inhabitants of which are supplied with water by artificial means. Salt water is turned into fresh by means of enormous condensers, and a supply is kept in vast iron reservoirs, from which it is sold to the people at a price about the same as we pay for beer. At the saloons one can get a glass of filtered ice-water for five cents; at the reservoirs a bucket of warm, nasty stuff is sold for ten. If you ask a learned man why it never rains there, he will say that the clouds are deprived of all their moisture when they cross the mountains from the eastward, and when they come up from the westward ocean are at once sucked dry by the heat that radiates from the sun-baked sands. Occasionally along the coast are found immense cemeteries in which the Incas buried their dead; and the contents of the graves are as well preserved as if their age were counted by weeks instead of centuries. The most interesting and extensive of the burial grounds is at Pachacamac, south of Lima, in Peru, where millions of bodies lie, often in three stratas, and very generally in two. Near this place was the famous temple dedicated to Pachacamac, the chief divinity of the Incas, and whom they acknowledged as the creator of the world. It was the Mecca of that day, and each believer was expected to visit it at least once in his life. The pilgrims came from all parts of the empire, bringing votive-offerings, which made the temple very rich; and Pizarro is said to have obtained a vast quantity of plunder from it. Around the temple arose a large city of monasteries to accommodate the priests and devotees, and inns to shelter the pilgrims; but the place is in ruins now. [Illustration: ACROSS THE CONTINENT.]