ult of access in the dry season and
impossible when the river rises during the rainy months. The contrast
between the gigantic hills of sand and the luxurious vegetation was
very striking; but to us the most beautiful thing in the landscape
was the long, glistening, white mass of Coropuna, now much larger
and just visible above the opposite rim of the valley.

At eight o'clock in the morning, as we were wondering how long it would
be before we could get down to the bottom of the valley and have some
breakfast, we discovered, at a place called Pitas (or Cerro Colorado),
a huge volcanic boulder covered with rude pictographs. Further
search in the vicinity revealed about one hundred of these boulders,
each with its quota of crude drawings. I did not notice any ruins of
houses near the rocks. Neither of the Tejada brothers, who had been
past here many times, nor any of the natives of this region appeared
to have any idea of the origin or meaning of this singular collection
of pictographic rocks. The drawings represented jaguars, birds, men,
and dachshund-like dogs. They deserved careful study. Yet not even the
interest and excitement of investigating the "rocas jeroglificos,"
as they are called here, could make us forget that we had had no
food or sleep for a good many hours. So after taking a few pictures
we hastened on and crossed the Majes River on a very shaky temporary
bridge. It was built to last only during the dry season. To construct
a bridge which would withstand floods is not feasible at present. We
spent the day at Coriri, a pleasant little village where it was almost
impossible to sleep, on account of the myriads of gnats.

The next day we had a short ride along the western side of the valley
to the town of Aplao, the capital of the province of Castilla, called
by its present inhabitants "Majes," although on Raimondi's map that
name is applied only to the river and the neighboring desert. In 1865,
at the time of his visit, it had a bad reputation for disease. Now
it seems more healthy. The sub-prefect of Castilla had been informed
by telegraph of our coming, and invited us to an excellent dinner.

The people of Majes are largely of mixed white and Indian
ancestry. Many of them appeared to be unusually businesslike. The
proprietor of one establishment was a great admirer of American shoes,
the name of which he pronounced in a manner that puzzled us for a
long time. "W" is unknown in Spanish and the letters "a,