Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, Into the Primeval Forests

Sailing from Le Havre in 1838, the Swiss naturalist Johann Jakob von Tschudi reached South America by way of Chiloé and Valparaíso, and spent the years to 1842 in Peru. He had been sent to collect specimens for a museum in Neuchâtel, and zoology runs through nearly every chapter. What he set down goes far beyond it: a close portrait of Lima and its people, the silver mines of Cerro de Pasco, the puna with its llamas, alpacas and vicuñas, and the montaña, the forest country on the eastern flank of the Andes. Whole chapters go to life in the sierra, to the Quichua language and its poetry, to the growing and chewing of coca and the beliefs around it, and to ancient Peruvian ruins and graves. Published in German in 1846 and translated by Thomasina Ross in 1847.