| Transcriber's note: The etext attempts to replicate the printed book asclosely as possible. Obvious errors in spelling and punctuation havebeen corrected. The spellings of names, places and Spanishwords used by the author have not been corrected or modernized by theetext transcriber. The footnotes have been moved to the end of the text body.The images have been moved from the middle of a paragraph to theclosest paragraph break for ease of reading. |
THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN
PERU
GEOGRAPHICAL RECONNAISSANCE ALONG THE
SEVENTY-THIRD MERIDIAN
BY
ISAIAH BOWMAN
Director of the American Geographical Society
PUBLISHED FOR
THE AMERICAN GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY
OF NEW YORK
BY
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
1916
Copyright, 1918
BY
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
THE QUINN & BODEN CO. PRESS
RAHWAY, N.J.
TO
C. G. B.
PREFACE
THE geographic work of the Yale Peruvian Expedition of 1911 wasessentially a reconnaissance of the Peruvian Andes along the 73rdmeridian. The route led from the tropical plains of the lower Urubambasouthward over lofty snow-covered passes to the desert coast at Camaná.The strong climatic and topographic contrasts and the varied human lifewhich the region contains are of geographic interest chiefly becausethey present so many and such clear cases of environmental controlwithin short distances. Though we speak of “isolated” mountaincommunities in the Andes, it is only in a relative sense. The extremeisolation felt in some of the world’s great deserts is here unknown. Itis therefore all the more remarkable when we come upon differences ofcustoms and character in Peru to find them strongly developed in spiteof the small distances that separate unlike groups of people.
My division of the Expedition undertook to make a contour map of thetwo-hundred-mile stretch of mountain country between Abancay and thePacific coast, and a great deal of detailed geographic and physiographicwork had to be sacrificed to insure the completion of the survey. Campsites, forage, water, and, above all, strong beasts for thetopographer’s difficult and excessively lofty stations brought dailyproblems that were always serious and sometimes critical. I was sodeeply interested in the progress of the topographic map that wheneverit came to a choice of plans the map and not the geography was firstconsidered. The effect upon my work was to distribute it with littleregard to the demands of the problems, but I cannot regret this in viewof the great value of the maps. Mr. Kai Hendriksen did splendid work inputting through two hundred miles of plane-tabling in two months underconditions of extreme difficulty. Many of his triangulation stationsranged in elevation from 14,000 to nearly 18,000 feet, and the cold andstorms—especially the hailstorms of mid-afternoon—were at times mostsevere.
It is also a