[Squier's "Peru: Incidents of Travel and Exploration in the Land of the Incas" is the source of our present selection. The author, Ephraim George Squier, was born in Albany County, New York, in 1821. He studied the aboriginal monuments of New York, and afterwards travelled and made extensive archaeological researches in Central America. He was appointed United States Commissioner to Peru in 1863, and made important studies of the ancient ruins of that country. We give his interesting account of the perilous crossing of the Apurimac.] The great and elaborate highways, or public roads, which the chroniclers and the historians, following their authority, tell us were constructed by the Incas throughout their vast empire, all radiating north, east, south, and west from the imperial city of Cuzco, if they existed at all in Central and Southern Peru, have disappeared, leaving here and there only short sections or fragments, hardly justifying the extravagant praise that has been bestowed on them. The modern mule-paths, miscalled roads, must necessarily follow nearly, if not exactly, the routes of the Indians under the Empire. The physical conformation of the country is such that communication between _puna_ and _puna_, and from valley to valley, must always be made by the same passes. All these passes over the mountains are marked by huge piles of stone raised, like the cairns of Scotland and Wales, by the contribution of a single stone from each traveller as an offering to the spirits of the mountains, and as an invocation for their aid in sustaining the fatigues of travel. These great stone heaps still exist, and will remain to the end of time, monuments marking forever the routes of travel in the days of the Incas. We know, therefore, from these rude monuments very nearly what were the ancient lines of communication. These are also further indicated by remains of the _tambos_, which occur at intervals all through the country, and oftenest in places remote from supplies, in cold and desert districts, where the traveller stands most in need of food and shelter. The modern voyager would consider himself supremely fortunate were he to find one in a hundred of these tambos, now in existence; for travelling in Peru is infinitely more difficult and dangerous than it was in the days of the Incas: more difficult, because the facilities are less; more dangerous, because the laws are more lax, and the moral standard of the people lower. The influence of Spain in Peru has been every way deleterious; the civilization of the country was far higher before the Conquest than now.