formed me that a diary kept by him for ten years reported but 10° variation for any one year, marked by a thermometer hung in a non-conducting mud mansion, and exposed neither to reflected rays of the sun nor to currents of air, the lowest degree having been 62°, and the highest 72°. An extraordinary uniformity, perhaps unsurpassed in any part of the world.

In attempting to account for the equable climate of Lima and its vicinity, we must seek the probable explanation, first, in the influence of the neighboring snow-capped mountains, and the unvarying southerly breeze, in modifying a solar heat which in a corresponding latitude of the northern hemisphere is almost insupportable; and secondly, in the scarcely varying temperature of the vast ocean which washes these shores, and with which the same wind comes freighted to moderate the cold of winter. Doubtless the absence of rain may also account in part for the fact that no sudden transitions of temperature are known here. Dews, amounting at times to heavy mists, fall at night, dampening the atmosphere often for several hours after sunrise. These yield the required moisture for the luxuriant vegetation of the valley, but they are detrimental to health, and counteract the otherwise beneficial influence of this equable climate over pulmonary diseases.

The streets of Lima, in its central districts, run corresponding to the points of the compass, crossing at right angles; those of the suburbs are without regularity. Their width varies from twenty to thirty feet, and they are paved with hard rubble stone, having sidewalks from three to four feet wide, of flat stone, singularly enough imported from England, labor being too costly, or the natives too lazy to quarry granite found in inexhaustible beds a few miles east of the city.

The river Rimac, running from east to west, divides the city into two parts. One, the larger portion, embracing four-fifths of the city, is situated south of the river; and enclosed as it is by an adobe wall twelve feet high, with gates and bastions now in process of dilapidation, which touches the southern bank of the Rimac, by its extreme ends east and west, it presents a semicircular shape, the length being about two miles and its width but little over one. The other and smaller part is the irregular

shaped suburb of San Lazaro, forming the remaining one-fifth of the city, and situated on the north side of the river, being united to the larger part by a substantial stone bridge, five hundred feet long, resting on six heavy piers, and which has withstood uninjured the destructive earthquakes that have visited the capital.

Lima has a general declivity from southeast to northwest, and those streets which run from east to west, and some few running from south to north, have in the middle canals, about two feet wide, walled, and arched in places to allow of vehicles crossing to opposite sides of the street, but open above throughout the intervening extent. These canals are called acequias, and through them run streams of water introduced by natural flow from the Rimac, the declivity allowing an uninterrupted passage, the river heading about fifty miles east among the mountains, and having a rapid fall the whole distance from its source to the sea.

Probably these acequias were originally intended to convey through the city pure water for domestic use, cleanliness, and general hygiene. But they are now the depositories of all sorts of garbage and filth; and by the disregard of municipal regulations forbidding such use except after midnight, they have become, without reference to time, the substitutes of water-closets, the latter rarely being found, the night-bucket forming the usual intermedium, and the direct use of the acequia a not uncommon custom in the less respectably inhabited parts of the city. These aqueducts, indeed, have degenerated into public cesspools, revolting to decency, repugnant to comfort, and detrimental to health; distributing the foul contents and poisonous malaria wherever a stream meanders; and if perchance this, from obstruction, should cease to flow, there results an abiding and intolerable offensiveness. The acequias are the favorite resorts of that most obnoxious of the feathered family, turkey buzzards, the municipal scavengers and privileged proprietors not merely of these pestiferous premises, but also of the arcade and house-tops, and the church towers, from which they complacently survey their domain below, and swoop down to their repast whenever the uprising stench of a deposit announces the

spread of another foul banquet. That malignant yellow fever, with such a source of pestilence in its midst, should have prevailed in this city a few years since, is not surprising, although in this mild climate and with ordinary attention to public hygiene, and domestic and personal cleanliness, that disease could never have originated here, nor spread if imported. It is unpleasant to refer to these things, but it is only by considering their habits and municipal regulations, that the condition of a people can be determined.

The houses of Lima, like those of Callao, are of a structure demanded by its climate and liability to earthquakes. The latter requires that they should be built of unusually massive and strong walls, capable of resisting shocks, or of yielding and elastic materials, adapting themselves to terrestrial movement, and recovering their original condition. As the former mode of building would be too costly for ordinary dwelling-houses, it is used only for churches, prisons, and the most expensive edifices, and even for these only in the lower story; the upper, when such exists, having the lighter materials of ordinary dwellings. Dwellings are of two classes, according to the rank and wealth of their proprietors. The common kind are of very simple construction, usually one story in height, built on a line with the street, or in long rows at right angles with it, and communicating therewith by a court or cul-de-sac. A scantling frame is first put up, the interspaces of which are filled with split Guayaquil cane, or with the wild cane of Peru, cana brava, these either being passed through holes bored in the timbers above and below, and arranged parallel and near to each other, or interlaced obliquely, according to the fancy of the builder. Upon both sides of this framework a plaster is spread, consisting of mud mixed with cut straw or chaff. Partitions are made of split cane and mud plaster, separating one or more apartments. Chimneys in such houses are dispensed with, the mildness of the climate rendering artificial heat unnecessary for personal comfort, and the yard, when such is found, being the primitive kitchen of the common people. A door, and a window, cften without glass, and grated with iron bars, together with roof of thatched flags, or plank covered with mud several

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inches thick, complete the building. Two stories and several apartments are sometimes found, built of like materials, floored, and generally more commodious and comfortable.

The residence of a wealthy inhabitant occupies the four sides of a square open court, or patio, as it is called, the approach to which is by a well-secured gateway large enough to admit a carriage, and usually guarded by a porter. The court is tastefully paved with small rubble stone, or with the bleached vertebræ, or other small bones of animals, arranged so as to form ornamental figures. The house, one or two stories high, has galleries facing the court, the alto, when it exists, being protected by a projecting roof, and having a stairway leading to its gallery, which gives access to the upper rooms, all of which open on the gallery. The alto in front is provided, also, with a latticed or glass window balcony above the gateway, something like a bay-window overlooking the street, which serves the very important purpose of ladies' observatory. The principal material of these houses is usually sun-dried bricks, adobes, for the lower story, the wall of which is very thick, though sometimes the entire building even of this class is framework and cane, the stucco of the inside being not so coarse as that in common use. Wall paper hides the defects of the interior plastering, and partitions are made of board covered with papered canvas. Lima, as in Callao, the mud roof is preferred as the best nonconductor of heat in warm weather, but plank and cement roofs are also used. The invariably flat roof is often furnished with a mirador—a look-out. Occasionally a first-class residence is seen tolerably well frescoed, and neatly, conveniently, and even luxuriously arranged and furnished. They certainly have an advantage over North American city residences, in that they have no steep, narrow, and endless stairways to climb. The wealthy light their mansions with gas, and a very few have, also, water introduced into their houses; but both are used at an exorbitant charge: for gas, nine dollars per one thousand cubic feet; for water, fifty dollars per annum for a single flow. The streets are well lighted by gas. If there be stabling on the premises, it occupies a small court behind the dwelling, and is accessible only through the front gateway and patio. Cellars

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are not dug. Earth so near the lower floor would be detrimental to health, but that it is always dry in this rainless climate. Necessary out-buildings, common among the lower classes of North Americans, are not found in Lima, and a modern watercloset is unknown, from which there result great discomfort, injury to health, and public as well as private indecency. A stranger, accustomed to the observances of a higher civilization, in passing along thoroughfares of this capital, cannot avoid offence to his delicacy; and a municipal regulation tolerates the weekly call at houses by an incorporated French company, in the broad face of day, for revolting contributions that have failed to find their way into the filthy acequias, and are perpetually passing by drayloads through crowded business streets, to the disgust of foreigners and the annoyance of well-bred citi

zens.

The many cracked, inclined, warped, and twisted houses seen in Lima, attest the force by which they have been tried; and show the discretion of the people in sacrificing appearance to security, and in seeking the best means of guarding against the effects of that power which heaves the granite foundations of the earth, lifts and sunders its crust, and moves even the ocean to its will. North American thin walls of brittle materials, ambitious of height and often measuring the ambition of vulgar owners, would crumble into fragments under the might of a Peruvian earthquake, involving all, property and people, in destruction. But secure against ordinary danger by architectural ingenuity, and having the accessible patio to escape to in the event of threatened demolition of his house, the patriotic Limeño would rather take the risk of the earth's ague paroxysm than not to make a sensation in the world. He seems to have pleasure in knowing that his country can get up a phenomenon that cannot be equalled elsewhere.

Hotels! What shall be said of them? Send a live Yankee down here, with plenipotentiary powers to take Maury's Hotel Français, Morin's Hotel, Hotel de la Bola de Oro, Hotel de l'Europe, and Hotel l'Universo, and put them together; let him turn them inside out, expel the fleas, drive out the billiard and rochambor tables and their devotees from the best and