Most of the cities, villages, and farms are on these table lands. Often, for the sake of the grand view, a villa is built on a steep ridge, within sight of the broad, undulating surface of some plateau; or, in some position of peerless beauty, the glittering cross on some convent may be seen. The Spanish race appreciate the picturesque, as is shown by their choice of sites, not only in Spain, but in Spanish America. The poetical, imaginative character which has marked Spanish annals for centuries, still marks those who have any claim to Spanish descent. The South American, though half an Indian, recognizes the grandeur of his native mountains, and the beauty of the broad, fertile valleys, while a thorough-going Anglo-Saxon of North America, in the same places, would calculate whether or not the torrent that rushes foaming and glittering down the mountain is too steep to serve a mill, or whether the smaller mountains might not be levelled for building lots; or he would gaze upon some beautiful table land with wonder indeed, but with wonder chiefly how much wheat or barley there grows to the acre, or can be made to grow. The table lands produce the grains and fruits of the temperate zone; and, accordingly, proprietors who own, as many do, estates on the tropical and on the temperate level, may supply their tables with fruits from their own grounds, for which, in other countries, the world must be brought under contribution. The soil is cultivated mainly by Indians. Descendants of the ancient rulers of the land now till the fields of the descendants of the conquerors. Some, indeed, representing more or less the Indian part of the population, are owners of estates; yet a full Indian rarely has lands of his own. He is a hewer of wood and a drawer of water, tills the fields, and performs most of the drudgery of the country. More South Americana of Indian descent, out of the general population, have gained honor and power than could possibly have done so under the confined and absolute sway of the Incas. The Indians of all Spanish America have progressed, however slowly and rudely, in the arts, labors, culture, and faith of Christian civilization, and, in the aggregate, are in advance of the Indians of Anglo-America. Let the imagination survey the whole range of the Andes for their vast extent of sixty degrees of latitude. On every level space are seen the signs of culture and human habitation, fields green with the early grain, or yellow with the harvest. The roads now wind through forests of constant shade, even under the burning sun of the equator; now they turn with gentle windings, or with steep abruptness, while below spread bright and beautiful lands, and interesting the more because associated with the homes and lives of men.