As soon as anchors were cast a look shoreward revealed that tens of thousands had come to the waterfront. Later when one went ashore he learned that the Government had declared a holiday in honor of the arrival of the fleet and that all of Callao and Lima, seven miles distant, had come down to see the ships. The stores and shops were closed as if it were Sunday. Business was at a standstill. Official visits were begun at once, but those who could get away made haste to go to Lima on the modern trolley system which in addition to two railroads accommodates the traffic between the two cities. The visitor noted that Callao was an ill smelling place of garish colored houses and narrow streets--a mere port of 40,000 inhabitants--and that it had many of the characteristics of some of the cities on the southern shore of the Mediterranean. Once out in the flat country, the visitor was reminded somewhat of the country between Brooklyn and Coney Island. Truck farms were frequent. What looked to be American corn was growing profusely side by side with banana trees and sugarcane fields. Patches of good old fashioned vegetables--onions, cabbages, radishes, lettuce--were also under cultivation. Large herds of fine cattle grazed on some of the fields, and in others were herded splendid flocks of sheep. It looked almost like home. The fences alone were strange. They were made of thick blocks of dried mud. The entire cultivation was dependent upon irrigation from the Rimac River, the splendid mountain stream that dashes down from the Andes in a torrent clear to the sea. Then one came to Lima itself, situated on a plain girdled by the foothills of the Andes, with its low lying houses, all made of mud plastered upon bamboo reeds, with not a roof in the city that would shed water, for in Lima it never rains; to Lima, the one city in the Western Hemisphere which has preserved a large amount of the architecture of the Middle Ages and is rich in traditions of the past. There in this city of 150,000 people with its well paved streets, its bustling activities, its fine climate (the temperature never goes above 80 degrees, although the city is only 12 degrees from the equator) and attractive people the Americans found plastered on every building in town a paper reproduction of the American flag with the words printed on it: "Welcome to the American fleet!"