The proprietors of some vast iron-works, who slept close to them, through the incessant din of hammers, forges, and blast furnaces, would awake if there were any interruption during the night. And a miller, being very ill and unable to sleep, when his mill was stopped, on his account, rested well and recovered quickly when the mill was set going again. Great hunger prevents sleep, and cold affecting a part of the body has the same effect. These causes operated on the unfortunate women who lived thirty-four days in a small room overwhelmed by snow, and with the slightest sustenance, they hardly slept the whole time." P.T.W. * * * * * PERU: SIMPLICITY OF PASTORAL LIFE. _(To the Editor of the Mirror.)_ After all that has been written and said on South America, by many recent travellers, it may probably be thought that the following remarks are rather out of time; but as a single fact may sometimes serve to show the state of a country more forcibly than volumes, I am induced to relate an anecdote which will throw a little light on the present situation of one portion of the natives of Peru. The Andes take their rise literally at the "end of the World;" for Cape Horn certainly deserves that epithet, and the Straights of Magellan, which divide Terra del Fuego from the continent are comparatively no more than a mountain stream in a hilly country, so that that island may without any impropriety be deemed a part of it. The Andes are not one continuous chain of mountains; but an immensity of piles raised one on another, at different elevations of which are extensive plains, termed "Pampas," some of which appear as boundless as the horizon, and totally divested of herbage. On one of these plains, called the Pampa of Diesmo, in the province of Junin, I was detained some days at the only hut to be seen for leagues. One of the _arreóros_, or muleteers, with me, a native of Madrid, remarked on the solitude of the spot, adding, with a sigh, "This was a different place when first I visited it." Within about half a mile from where we were then conversing was an astonishing freak of Nature. In the midst of the plain were about one hundred naked rocks rising abruptly from the surface, in detached groups, some of which were as high as St. Paul's, and many appeared like the spires of a cathedral. Pointing to these eminences, the muleteer went on to say, "for five months these rocks were my refuge from white men, and from them have I seen an army of twenty-five thousand men traverse this plain again and again; their only support for nearly fourteen months being drawn from the spot." On asking an explanation, he bid me look round and say if I thought I could count the number of sheep on the Pampa. I readily answered I did not think there were fifty. "What will you say, sir," said he, "when I tell you that sixteen years since, there were, _on this plain alone, eight hundred thousand sheep!_ besides oxen; at that time