In Some
Places, These Torrents Or Mountain-Streams Are Twelve Fifteen Or Twenty
Leagues Distance From Each Other, But Generally
Only seven or eight
leagues; and travellers for the most part are under the necessity of
regulating their days journies
By these streams or rivers, that they may
have water for themselves and cattle. Along these rivers, for the breadth
of a league, more or less according to the nature of the soil, there are
some groves and fruit-trees, and maize fields cultivated by the Indians,
to which wheat has been added since the establishment of the Spaniards.
For the purpose of irrigating or watering these cultivated fields, small
canals are dug from the rivers, to conduct the water wherever it is
necessary and where that can be done; and in the construction of these the
natives are exceedingly ingenious and careful, having often to draw these
canals seven or eight leagues by various circuits to avoid intermediate
hollows, although perhaps the whole breadth of the vale may not exceed
half a league. In all these smaller vales along the streams and torrents,
from the mountain to the sea, the country is exceedingly fertile and
agreeable. Several of these torrents are so large and deep, such as those
of Santa, Baranca, and others, that without the assistance of the Indians,
who break and diminish for a short time the force of the current, by means
of piles and branches forming a temporary wear or dike, the Spaniards
would be unable to pass. In these hazardous passages, it was necessary to
get over with all possible expedition, to avoid the violence of the stream,
which often rolled down very large stones. Travellers in the plain of Peru,
when going north or south, almost always keep within sight of the sea,
where the torrents are less violent, owing to the greater flatness of the
plain as it recedes from the mountain. Yet in winter the passage of these
torrents is extremely dangerous, as they cannot be then forded, and must
be crossed in barks or floats like those formerly mentioned, or on a kind
of rafts made of gourds inclosed in a net, on which the passenger reclines,
while one Indian swims before pulling the raft after him with a rope, and
another Indian swims behind and pushes the raft before him.
On the borders of these rivers there are various kinds of fruit-trees,
cotton-trees, willows, and many kinds of canes, reeds, and sedges. The
watered land is extremely fertile, and is kept under continual cultivation;
wheat and maize being sown and reaped all the year through. The Indians in
the plain seldom have any houses, or at best a kind of rude huts or cabins
made of branches of trees, often dwelling under the shade of trees,
without any habitation whatever. The women are habited in long dresses of
cotton which descend to their feet; while the men wear breeches and vests
which come down to their knees, and have a kind of cloak or mantle thrown
over their shoulders.
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