But, in compensation for its difficulties, agriculture has many advantages on the coast of Peru. No sudden changes of temperature occur to alarm the planter, there are no destructive storms, and the fear of drought does not exist, because the system of artificial irrigation permits of the fields being watered or left dry at the owner’s discretion. Sugar, the chief product of the coast country, is cultivated all the year round, the cutting of cane taking place without interruption on the great plantations that stretch along its valleys. Tumbes, Piura, Lambayeque, La Libertad, Ancash, Lima, Ica, Arequipa, and Tacna have extensive sugar plantations, though from Ica southward, little is exported. The chief sugar-growing districts of the southern coast region are Cañete, in the Department of Lima, and Chincha, in the Department of Ica. From their seaports, Cerro Azul and Tambo de Mora, large cargoes are shipped to foreign countries, as well as from the port of Pisco, at which all the ocean steamers and sailing vessels of the west coast call to receive and discharge merchandise. The large sugar estates of Cañete and Chincha are conducted according to modern methods, those of the British Sugar Company and the haciendas of San José and Larán being the most important in extent and production. The great centre of the sugar industry in Peru is the Chicama valley, in the Department of La Libertad, where the average production reaches four tons to the acre, a larger return than is secured in any other sugar-growing country. The total quantity of sugar produced annually in Peru amounts to about two hundred thousand tons, of which the greater part is grown on the coast, more than a hundred and fifty thousand tons being exported. It is estimated that the value of the year’s harvest averages between eight and nine million dollars. In nearly all the coast districts, flourishing cotton plantations may be seen, though the valleys of Piura are most celebrated for the successful raising of this product, which occupies the second place among the agricultural exports of Peru, the annual shipments amounting to twenty thousand tons, with a prospect of rapid increase, owing to the added extent of territory annually placed under cultivation. In the valleys of Huacho and Supe, in the Department of Lima, the famous “Sea Island” cotton is grown, and all the coast states produce the “Egyptian” and “Mitafifi” varieties. Peruvian cotton is exported only from Piura and Ica. [Illustration: PIER AND WAREHOUSES OF THE BRITISH SUGAR COMPANY, LIMITED, AT CERRO AZUL.]