Outside the town there were thousands of mules from Tucuman waiting for Peruvian arrieros to buy them. In the plaza were booths full of every description of Manchester and Birmingham goods; in more retired places were gold-dust and coffee from Caravaya, silver from the mines, bark and chocolate from Bolivia, Germans with glass-ware and woollen knitted work, French modistes, Italians, Quichua and Aymara Indians in their various picturesque costumes--in fact, all nations and tongues. In the plaza, too, there were excellent cafés and dining-rooms, all under canvas; but house-rent was exorbitant, and a lodging was not to be had for love or money. There was much complaint of the injury done to trade by the threatened war with Bolivia, and the edict of President Linares, prohibiting all intercourse with Peru. I placed the bundles of plants, carefully wrapped round with ponchos, in a barley-field occupied by arrieros, covered over with their warm _aparejos_; but the thermometer was down to 23° Fahr. in the night. In the afternoon of the 23rd I left Vilque for the sheep-farm of Taya-taya, in company with Dr. Don Camillo Chaves the superintendent. The road was crowded with people coming from Arequipa to the fair at Vilque: native shopkeepers, English merchants coming to arrange for their supplies of wool, and a noisy company of arrieros on their way to buy mules, and armed to the teeth with horse-pistols, old guns, and huge daggers, to defend their money-bags. Many of them were good-looking fellows, the older ones bearing signs of hard drinking. The sheep-farm of Taya-taya,[348] four leagues from Vilque, is a large range of mud-plastered buildings with thatched roofs, built round a large _patio_, on a bleak plain surrounded by mountains. In the morning a flock of forty llamas were being laden with packs of wool in the patio, at which they were making bitter lamentations. We started early on May 24th, and encountered a cold gale of wind, blowing in icy squalls over the cordillera. I reached the posthouse of Cuevillas in the night, a distance of 45 miles; got as far as the posthouse of Pati the next day; encountered a tremendous gale of wind on the skirts of the volcano of Arequipa, but descended to the valley of Cangallo on the 26th; and rode into the city of Arequipa, with my plants, on the morning of the 27th of May. Mr. Weir arrived from Crucero on the 29th, having, as I expected, found Martel in that town, whose designs were thus baffled. From Sandia to Arequipa is a distance of nearly 300 miles. No opposition was made to my departure from Arequipa, although the local newspaper had something to say afterwards,[349] and on June 1st the plants were safely deposited by the Wardian cases at the port of Islay.