not occupied, yet near by are populous valleys.

As soon as we left our camp the next morning, we came abruptly to the
edge of the Lampa Valley. This was another of the mile-deep canyons
so characteristic of this region. Our pack mules grunted and groaned
as they picked their way down the corkscrew trail. It overhangs the
mud-colored Indian town of Colta, a rather scattered collection of
a hundred or more huts. Here again, as in the Cotahuasi Valley, are
hundreds of ancient terraces, extending for thousands of feet up the
sides of the canyon. Many of them were badly out of repair, but those
near Colta were still being used for raising crops of corn, potatoes,
and barley. The uncultivated spots were covered with cacti, thorn
bushes, and the gnarled, stunted trees of a semi-arid region. In the
town itself were half a dozen specimens of the Australian eucalyptus,
that agreeable and extraordinarily successful colonist which one
encounters not only in the heart of Peru, but in the Andes of Colombia
and the new forest preserves of California and the Hawaiian Islands.


------
FIGURE

Inca Storehouses at Chinchipampa, near Colta
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Colta has a few two-storied houses, with tiled roofs. Some of them
have open verandas on the second floor--a sure indication that the
climate is at times comfortable. Their walls are built of sun-dried
adobe, and so are the walls of the little grass-thatched huts of the