Although mightily shrunken from its former imperial estate, Peru is still a magnificent domain. Its area of 680,000 square miles is equal to the combined areas of Texas, Nevada, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico; its coast-line of 1500 miles is as extensive as our Atlantic coast from Maine to Georgia. The country is divided longitudinally into three distinct regions: the coast, the cordillera, and the so-called Montaña, or wooded slopes, the latter stretching away into the Amazon valley. Along the Pacific coast is a ribbon of dry, tropical lowland, varying in width from twenty to eighty miles, and reaching up to the foothills of the coast range. On these foothills, and increasing gradually in number, through the extension of the irrigating systems toward the sea, lie extensive plantations of cotton and sugar, which form a large part of Peru’s exports. But the coastal stretches are, for the most part, still unreclaimed desert, for, as in the nitrate region of Chile, the rain falls so seldom that, without irrigation, nothing can grow. The explanation given by the scientists is that the moisture from the Atlantic, swept across the continent by the African trade winds, lodges finally in the Andes and flows back over the continental valleys in the great rivers confluent with the Amazon, while that from the Pacific is diverted in some other direction. It has been demonstrated by experiment, however, that these arid parts need only irrigation to make them luxuriantly fertile. Back of the coast the country is cast in a mold of heroic dimensions. Here the Andes spread out into separate cordilleras which are joined at intervals by transverse ranges, forming great _nudos_ (knots), with high plateaux between, surrounded by lofty snow-covered peaks. This mountainous area approximates three hundred miles in width. In these heights lay the wealth that made of Peru a fabulous treasure land, and in the lower valleys the cereals and fruits of the temperate zone, as well as cattle, provide in great abundance for the Peruvian of to-day. In her extensive guano deposits, too, Peru has another great source of wealth.