What Remains Of
Arica Is Not Now Liable To Such An Accident, Being Situated On A Little
Rising Ground At The Foot Of The Head-Land.
Most of the houses are only
constructed of a sort of fascines, made of flags or sedges, bound
together, called totora, set up on end, crossed by canes and leather
thongs; or are made of canes set on end, having the intervals filled
with earth.
The use of unburnt bricks is reserved for churches and the
stateliest houses; and as no rain ever falls here, they are only covered
with mats, so that the houses seem all in ruins when seen from the sea.
The parish church, dedicated to St Mark, is handsome enough. There are
also three religious houses, one a monastery of seven or eight
mercenarians, a second is an hospital of the brothers of St John of
God, and the third a monastery of Franciscans, who formerly had a house
a short way from town, in the pleasantest part of the vale, near the
sea.
[Footnote 266: Perhaps this date ought to have been 1705. - E.]
The vale of Arica is about a league wide next the sea, all barren ground
except where the old town stood, which is divided into small fields of
clover, some small plantations of sugar-canes, with olive-trees and
cotton-trees intermixed, and several intervening marshes, full of the
sedges of which they build their houses. Growing narrower about a league
eastward at the village of St Michael de Sapa, they begin to cultivate
the agi, or Guinea pepper, which culture extends over all the rest of
the vale, in which there are several detached farms exclusively devoted
to its culture.
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