bination, while we prosecute our inquiries relative to the topography of different parts of the Peruvian territory.
This distinguished patriot, a native of the city of Old Castille, and a respectable merchant of Lima, being on the eve of departing for his own country, with a capital of thirty thousand piastres accquired in commerce, accidentally met with a Spaniard who had for a long time led a savage life among the Indians of the Andes mountains bordering on Guamalies. By this individual he was made acquainted with the extent and fertility of those tracts of territory, hidden from the view and knowledge of civilized man, without being inaccessible; together with the valuable vegetable and mineral productions which might be thence extracted for the common benefit; and, more particularly, with the opportunity which presented itself, to exercise the most commendable charity, by collecting a multitude of fugitive Indians, who, having been driven from the eminences and missions, dwelt in the forests in a semi-pagan state. He exposed the facility of enticing them, if, in addition to the introduction of a few products and implements of agriculture, conjoined with a prudent management, they were to be directed by a priest of known probity, who should aid them with his spiritual instructions, by which they were very anxious to profit. He added, that many of them were already collected near the banks of the river Huallaga, the nature and quality of which territory afforded the
