OF all the general works on Peru none has greater weight than Peru; Beobachtungen und Studien (1893) by E. W. Middendorf. He has exploited the country in a large, three-volume work with such German thoroughness that hardly a fact has been left for subsequent writers to disclose. I have referred to it constantly. Other shorter, general studies of the country are Von Tschudi's Reisen durch Südamerika, giving much attention to folk-lore, and Twenty Years' Residence in South America (1825) by W. B. Stevenson, secretary to Lord Cochrane. He traveled far and wide in Peru and made observations in regard to remote details. Typical of descriptive writings is Two Years in Peru (1876) by T. J. Hutchinson. Various general works by Bernard Moses and his publications in the University of California Chronicle are valuable, notably his work on the produce of the mines.

Reliable observations on ruins are those made by E. G. Squier in his Peru: Travel and Exploration in the Land of the Incas, by Mariano Rivero y Juan de Tschudi in Antiguedades Peruanas, and by Charles Wiener in Pérou et Bolivie. Studies of ruins in particular localities have been made by many archaeologists; for example, on Tiahuanacu, L. Angrand, in Antiquités Américaines, though his book is now out of date, Adolph F. Bandelier in his Islands of Titicaca and Koati, Max Uhle, with whom I visited some of the ruins, on Tiahuanacu and Pachacamac, and Hiram Bingham in recent explorations.

Sir Clements Markham has spent more than fifty years studying every stage of Peru's history from the time when it was a land of myth to the Chilian war. His researches as well as his careful translations have been published in a series of volumes. Authorities on various periods of the history are legion. Relating to pre-Inca times, in which studies of myths and theories of ruins are intermingled, original sources are the Memorias Historiales of Montesinos, first published in French in 1840, and Cieza de Leon, the soldier, whose Crónica del Peril (1553) is authority on the Incas. Some modern scientists who have written about the pre-Inca period are Ernest Desjardins in his Pérou avant la Conquête Espagnole, Tylor's Primitive Culture, Meyen's Uber die Ureinwohner von Peru, and Brinton in his Myths of the New World and other works. Many persons are studying the legends, as, for instance, Professor Liborio Zerda of the University at Bogota. The Miscelaneas Australes of Miguel Cavello Balboa, a soldier, is an original source for knowledge of the remote Chimus. Das Reich der Chimus by Otto von Buchwald, and especially Das Mucha oder die Chimu Sprache by Doctor Middendorf, who quotes largely from Calancha and Carrera, are modern authorities.

In regard to the Incas: As a background there are the old, picturesque chronides which read like romances, but on which reposes most of the knowledge that modern authorities have corroborated in regard to the earlier inhabitants of Peru. These contemporary accounts have to be carefully studied in order to distinguish fact from fiction. Next to the Crónica of Cieza de Leon are the Comentarios Reales of Garcilasso de la Vega, in whose own veins the turbulent blood of the Conquistador mingled with the blood of the Sun. During his lifetime the imperial race of his mother was exterminated by the fierce adventurers becoming grandees, of whom his father was one. His book has the value of personal reminiscence. His enthusiasm adds a certain glamor; but even if his unique work has been spurned as an Utopian romance, it has been reluctantly accredited as the foundation of facts set forth by its critics. De las Antiguas Genies del Perú by Bartolomé de las Casas, works by Diego Fernandez, Betanzos, Oviedo, Sarmiento, Cobo, Ondegardo, Molina's Fables and Rites of the Incas, and the great Miscelaneas of Balboa must be consulted. Many of them have been translated by Sir Clements Markham and published by the Hakluyt Society of London.

It is bewildering to try to single out one or two modern works upon the Incas, for their name is legion. The definitive authority in English is of course Sir Clements Markham, whose Incas of Peru (1910) has followed numberless more detailed works of his own upon the subject.

Der Belus oder Sonnendienst auf den Anden oder Kellen in America by Frenzel, presents one field of theory which observations on the remains of the Incas' walls suggest. The temptation to interpret by means of analogies to other remote civilizations is withstood with difficulty. From John Ranking and his Historical Researches on the Conquest of Peru by the Mongols, to Ignatius Donnelly and his evidence in favor of its conquest by the Egyptians via Atlantis, Peru has given an unlimited field for speculation. Lord Bacon believed, by the way, that Peru was a proud kingdom in the time of Atlantis. A striking example of immense erudition expended on a futile, though technically well-supported, fancy, is Rudolph Falb's Das Land der Inca. Painstaking scholars are tracing out similarities between the Peruvian language and the Semitic and Phoenician tongues — "astounding affinities," of which common stems are purest in Quichua, so that the human race seems to have emanated from the tops of the Andes; similarities, too, between Peruvians and the long-bearded Druids whose rites were chiefly sun-worship; they also kept memoranda with strings tied in different knots, like the quipus, and built vast structures of stone without tools. There are analogies between Peruvians and Hindus, who worshipped the Sun as Rama and called their first legislator Vaivasaonta, the Son of the Sun, and between Peru and Farther India. The Seccos have been called the Malays of Bolivia. There are analogies between Peruvians and Chinese, whose royal color was also yellow, whose peculiar god from earliest times was the Sun, who used quipus, who had terrace-cultivation and irrigation-systems like those of the Incas, who used foot-messengers for royal emissaries, and brought all the gold and silver of the realm for the beautifying of royal temples. "The buildings, religious institutions, division of time, and mystic notions," which "seem in Asia to indicate the very dawn of civilization," are found here upon the Andes. Whether there was intercommunication, or whether such facts merely suggest the instinctive discovery of all peoples, their origin is wrapped only in mystery — a veil whose lightest corner is only just lifting.

But to continue with the succeeding periods of history. Spanish vice-regal days and the civil wars of the conquerors, the fleets of treasure, the Inquisition, have been the subject of romantic histories. Besides Prescott's well-loved Conquest of Peru, William Robertson's History of America, published more than a century ago, gives a concise, general survey since the Conquest. Drake's Worlde Encompassed and Southey's account of Drake's voyage in his English Seamen, as well as Froude's, together with various Hakluyt publications, are authorities for freebooter days. Also there are such cold authorities as the Calendars of State Papers of many countries, E. Armstrong's The Emperor Charles V, and for the Inquisition, H. C. Lea, Vicuna Mackenna, and Ricardo Palma. The reports to the Royal Council of the Indies of the sixteenth century enter into minute details. Father Acosta was the historian of the third council. His Historia Natural y Moral de las Indies, first published in 1590, is an indispensable book, although it has borne the reproach of being superficial.

The French Academicians came to Quito in 1735 to measure an arc of meridian, an enterprise which d'Alembert considered the greatest ever attempted by science. One of these scientists, La Condamine, made extensive studies in quinine, named cinchona for the Countess of Chinchón, vice-queen, and one of the first to feel its beneficent power. His Voyage fait dans l'Intérieur de l'Amérique Méridionale (1745), and the Voyage Historique de l'Amérique Méridionale by Antonio y Jorje Juan de Ulloa (Spanish edition in 1748, French in 1752), who accompanied the French expedition, both aim at truthfulness. Another delightful as well as dependable work of the eighteenth century is the Voyage dans la Ater du Sud by Amédée Francois Frézier (1716). In particular must be mentioned Lozano's Histoire des Tremblements de Terre arrivés à Lima. Hales of the Royal Society of London has added to this French edition of 1752 accounts of Lima in his day, trustworthy as his observations on the geology and meteorology of the coast.

Such facts as I have stated in regard to the natural history of the coast are vouched for by Ferdinand von Hochstetter, Die Erdbebenfluth im Pazifischen Ocean, Friedrich Goll, Die Erdbeben Chiles, a remote work on El Desierto de Atacama, Humboldt's Vues des Cordillera, Darwin's Journal of Researches, and the Voyage of the Beagle, the three latter describing the natural history of the mountains as well. One or two of Sir Martin Conway's books, Alfons Stübel, Die Vulkanberge von Ecuador, and Neveu-Lemaire, Les Lacs des Hauts Plateaux de l'Amérique du Sud, may also be added. In describing the animals of Peru I have as authority Brehm's Thierleben.

Ricardo Palma's Revista de Lima and Carlos Romero's Revista Histórica de Lima, Manuel A. Fuentes' Estadística General de Lima, published in Paris in English as Lima in 1866, give interesting information in regard to that city.

When it comes to the Amazonian wonderland no exaggeration could compete with fact. But I have not withstood the temptation wholly on that account! There is Louis Agassiz' A Journey in Brasil, H. W. Bates' A Naturalist on the River Amason, two books by Alfred Russel Wallace, Tropical Nature and Life on the Amazon, Raimondi's El Departemento de Loreto as well as his El Peru, Robert Southey's History of Brasil, and the publications of the Sociedad Geográfica de Lima.

I am happy to acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr. Wilberforce Eames of the New York Public Library for access to its Americana; to Dr. Martin and to Dr. Stevenson of the Hispanic Society of America; to Mr. C. L. Chester for many of my pictures; to Dr. F. S. Archenhold, Director of the Treptow Sternwarte at Berlin for the freedom of his library, where I found most of the German works consulted, and to Don Ricardo Palma, former Librarian of the Biblioteca Nacional de Lima, for permission to inspect many of his rare books and manuscripts.