mencement of the market. Pickford and Chaplin, Macnamara and Younghusband, are struggling to squeeze their vans into a space too small to contain them; much time is wasted, and many whipsters' oaths are uttered, in the almost hopeless struggle. The question is asked, therefore, and is at the present time waiting for solution-might not fish-markets be established at the railway depôts, thereby saving valuable time and horse-labour, and lessening the blockade of the London streets? Again, country-killed meat. This arrives in London early every morning, in enormous quantities, at the several railway depôts, whence it is mostly conveyed to Newgate market. Newgate-street is sadly narrow, even for ordinary traffic; but it is nearly impassable at the hours when the meat-vans arrive; for the market itself is too small to admit the vans; and thus those vehicles, as well as the hundreds of carts belonging to the butchers who come to purchase, must of necessity find a temporary location in an already crowded street. If railway companies, and salesmen, and butchers, could agree concerning meat markets at the railway depôts, the wayfarers of London would be benefited by the change, and assuredly time, that precious element in trade, would be economised.

Should these anticipations be realised, then will the railway depôts occupy a remarkable position among the wholesale marts for food in London.

In regard to works like Mr. Dodd's, the materials for correct data are extremely few. The consumption of a great city like London is as problematical as its production. The English, as a nation, are so jealous of government interference in commercial transactions, that we have much fewer materials for correct tabulations than our continental neighbours. There are at Paris certains tolls, or civic imposts, which enable the authorities to ascertain exactly the quantity of food brought into the city from the country districts. Nothing of this kind exists in London; one consequence of which is, that all attempts to determine the amount of food brought into our metropolis are subject to great liability to error. Until lately, when Sir Benjamin Hall's new measure for the government of the great metropolis came into force, there were said to be 213 acts of parliament, administered by 276 bodies, relating especially to the metropolis, besides royal charters having special application; and yet all these statutes and charters, boards and corporations, were wanting in official power to ascertain the quantity of food which two millions and a half of human beings yearly consume.

What is equally singular and anomalous is, that till the same bill was brought into operation, no one really knew what was London and what was not. The City of London did not acknowledge the Strand or Oxford-street. The "Bills of Mortality" included Westminster and about forty out-parishes. Parliamentary London chose to ignore the existence of the populous districts of Brompton, Chelsea, Pimlico, Kensington, and Hammersmith. The "Poor Law" London omits several marginal parishes included by the "Registrar-General." Sir Benjamin Hall's Act embodies a new arrangement into parishes and districts, which, for the sake of system and combined and uniform working, will, it is to be hoped, ultimately be generally adopted, at the same time that it will, by the great improvements that lie before it in regard to the supply and adulteration of food, improvements in street arrangements and nomenclature, the adoption of a uniform system of drainage and sewerage, and other ameliorations which affect at once the health, the comfort, and the convenience of so large a congregation of human beings, be the commencement of a new era in the history of the metropolis.

One word upon a subject in which not only the common honesty of the dealer, but public morality, is deeply concerned. Are the commodities such as they seem? Do we really know how much is eaten of the several kinds? Is a pound of nominal coffee a pound of authentic coffee? The tea or the chocolate, the wine or the beer, the milk or the vinegar, the bread or the flour-do these, as purchased and consumed, correspond with their names? or if not, to what extent do they depart from genuineness?

Much light has been thrown of late upon these important questions. Mr. Accum was one of the earliest to arouse the attention of the public to the abominable practices of adulteration in vogue in this vast metropolis. "There is Death in the Pot," as a title given to a scientific inquiry, did not carry with it impressions of a very agreeable nature. Mr. Mitchell followed up the investigation by his "Treatise on the Falsification of Food," which contained further exposures of the same nefarious practices, and a still greater number were collected in Dr. Normandy's "Commercial Handbook of Chemical Analysis." A far more remarkable and extensive scrutiny has, however, lately been made into the honesty of manufacturers and shopkeepers through the instrumentality of the Lancet. A series of searching examinations was made by an analytical sanitary commission, with Dr. Hassall at its head, into the quality of the food sold in the London shops, and the extent to which fraudulent practices were proved to be carried, had at length the good effect of awakening the attention of government to so crying an evil. Who would have thought that so important an article as our daily bread" can with difficulty be obtained pure! Yet such is the case; flour is adulterated in London with potato-flour, gypsum, crushed bones, beanflour, pea-flour, rye-flour, powdered chalk, and rice-flour. Bread is pretty uniformly adulterated with potatoes and alum, but the latter is considered by some to be rather wholesome than otherwise! Thirty-two 4lb. loaves were purchased of thirteen London bakers, and a deficiency of weight was found amounting to 24 oz. on each average 4lb. loaf. Milk is adulterated with water to an extent varying from 10 to 50 per cent., that is, one half. The increased conveyance of milk by railways will, it is to be hoped, tend to ensure the consumption in this instance of a better article. Butter is also very generally adulterated with salt and water; the water is stirred up with the butter, rendered semi-fluid by heat. Cheeses are coloured, to suit the taste of Londoners, with anatto and turmeric.

66

Most of our drinks are, it is now well known, adulterated even to a greater extent than our food. "Port wine," Mr. Dodd remarks, "it is pretty generally known at the present day, is not port wine, but a mixture of many things with a wine which may (or may not) have come from Portugal." At Oporto, the wine manufacturers are said to mix elderjuice, apple-juice, sloe-juice, logwood decoction, and many other liquids, with port wine, to accommodate it to the purses of their respective customers. The real wine of the Douro scarcely reaches England at all; and foreigners are astonished that we still continue to purchase an adulterated substitute. Nor do the Spaniards tamper less with our sherry than the Portuguese with our port; both nations consider that the

English taste is vitiated, and moreover, that we are easily victimised on this subject. Nor are they altogether in the wrong. Some persons will not admit port into their cellar that is not well brandied and catechued to render it dry, just as some old ladies will not give up their green tea, notwithstanding the great publicity that has been given to the fact that it is a mere manufactured article.

Alas for the fine old "crusted port!" It appears, from the revelations occasionally made, that glass-makers as well as wine-makers are clever in producing this so-called "crust." Mr. Warrington stated, at one of the meetings of the Chemical Society, that some green glass bottles had been sent to Apothecaries' Hall for examination, on account of a certain unpleasant flavour they were supposed to impart to wine contained in them. He found, on close scrutiny, that the inner surface was very rough and opaque, and that the glass contained an unusually large proportion of lime and other bases readily acted upon by tartaric acid. He ascertained that a considerable quantity of wine had been put into bottles made of this glass, and that one merchant alone had bottled three hundred dozens: the motive being-that in these "improved" bottles the crust of port wine will form earlier, and adhere more firmly to the glass, than in the ordinary bottles.

The extent to which adulteration of wine is carried in England was never distinctly set forth until the Wine Duties Committee made their investigation. Foreign wines, it is now known, are "doctor'd" by dishonest dealers to an astonishing extent; oak bark, turnsole, elder, privet, beet, Brazil root-all are used; cudbear and red saunders wood are employed to aid the colour; catechu is added to give a "fine old crust;" and for certain objects, the ends of the bungs and corks are dipped in a solution of Brazil wood and alum.

It is truly to be regretted that the Londoners, in common with the rest of the nation, should be debarred by fiscal arrangements from the power of obtaining good and cheap wine. Our gin is fiery, our beer is heavy; and instead of obtaining light wine to alternate with these, we submit to adulterated port. Four-fifths of all the wine we drink are port and sherry. It is impossible to touch upon this subject without regretting that matters should have been brought into so artificial a state; for sobriety, honesty, good sense, economy, cannot have fair play, when liberty of selection is supplanted by arbitrary official interference.

As early as in 1855, or the year immediately after the publication of Dr. Hassall's investigations, a committee of the House of Commons was appointed to investigate the subject of Adulteration of Food, and another committee is carrying out in the present session the same investigation with increased zeal and efficiency. While it is to be hoped that our close alliance with France, and the interchange of more liberal commercial tariffs, may procure for us the luxury of light French wines at a moderate price, it is also to be hoped the legislature will be induced, by the mass of evidence that has been brought before it, to interfere usefully in such malpractices as adulteration. It has been justly observed, that the urchin who filches a bun, a penny piece, or the value of one, breaks the law, and is liable to punishment, and even imprisonment; is it to be supposed, therefore, that the cunning and systematic adulterator of our food and drink, who robs us not only of our money, but sometimes even of our health and strength, is less guilty?

CUZCO, THE ANCIENT CAPITAL OF THE INCAS.*

THE city of the Incas, whose history is rendered classic in the simple narrative of Garcilasso de la Vega, the historian of his fallen family, in the elegant pages of Robertson, and heart-stirring epic of Prescott, is thus apostrophised by Mr. Markham. He had been travelling over fertile plains, separated by low ranges of hills, producing wheat and every kind of vegetable, and had reached the foot of a range of rocky heights as the sun set. The sky was deeply blue, without a single cloud, with a bright and silvery moon, and as he arrived at the summit of the pass, it threw its pale, mournful rays over the city spread out in the plain below:

Cuzco city of the Incas! city, where, in by-gone times, a patriarchal form of government was combined with a high state of civilisation; where works were conceived and executed, which, to this day, are the wonder and admiration of the wanderer; where a virtuous race of monarchs ruled an empire, equal in size to that of Adrian, exceeding that of Charlemagne.

Cuzco! the hallowed spot where Manco's golden wand sank to its head into the ground; the favoured city, whose beautiful temple surpassed in splendour the fabled palaces of the Arabian Nights; where the trophies of victories, won on battle-fields from the equator to the temperate plains of Chilé, were collected; where songs of triumph resounded in praise of Ynti, the sacred deity of Peru,of Quilla, his silvery spouse, of the beneficent deeds of the Incas.

Cuzco! once the scene of so much glory and magnificence, how art thou fallen! What suffering, misery, and degradation have thy unhappy children passed through since those days of prosperity! Where now is all thy power, thy glory, and thy riches? The barbarous conqueror proved too strong. Thy vast and untold treasures are once more buried in the earth, hidden from the avaricious search of thy destroyers: but thy sons, once the happy subjects of the Incas, are sunk into slavery. Mournfully do they tread, with bowed necks and downcast looks, those streets which once resounded with the proud steps of their unconquered, generous ancestors.

If Lima be now considered the maritime metropolis, Cuzco still deserves the honour of being accounted the inland capital of Peru. To it will always remain attached that peculiar lustre which history and romance have alike contributed to shed around its far-famed Incas; with it also will always be associated a large share of interest, as the seat of an antiEuropean population, among whomthe patriarchal and theocratic form of government was brought to a high state of perfection; and to it also will always belong reminiscences of a past grandeur, attesting great progress in industry and civilisation-a progress so much the more remarkable from being, as it were, isolated and spontaneous, and more particularly manifested in the remains of public roads, aqueducts, and buildings, and other monuments of olden time:

Manco Ccapac, who founded Cuzco, about the year A.D. 1050, was the progenitor of an illustrious line of potentates, unconquered warriors, the patrons of architecture and of poetry. Among them, we have Inca Rocca, the founder

* Cuzco: A Journey to the Ancient Capital of Peru. And Lima: A Visit to the Capital and Provinces of Modern Peru. By Clements R. Markham, F.R.G.S. London: Chapman and Hall. 1856.

April-VOL. CVI. NO. CCCCXXIV.

2 G

of schools, whose cyclopean palace still remains, a monument of by-gone greatness; Viracocha, the Inca with florid complexion and flaxen locks, whose massive citadel still frowns from the Sacsahuaman hill; Pachacutec, the Solomon of the New World, whose sayings are recorded by the pious care of Garcilasso; Yupanqui, who performed a march across the Chilian Andes, which throws the achievements of Hannibal, Napoleon, and Macdonald, into the shade; Huayna Ccapac, the most chivalrous and powerful of the Incas, whose dominion extended from the equator to the southern confines of Chilé, from the Pacific to the banks of the Paraguay; and lastly, the brave young Manco, worthy namesake of his great ancestor, who held out in a long and unequal struggle against the Spanish invaders, and whose talent and valour astonished even the soldiers of Gonsalvo de Cordova. But he was defeated; the sun of Peruvian fortune, which for a few years had lingered on the horizon, sank in a sea of blood, and the ill-fated Indians fell under the grinding yoke of the pitiless Goths.

Cuzco, although only 800 miles from the equator, being situated at an elevation of 11,380 feet above the level of the sea, equal to some 2000 feet above the Great St. Bernard, enjoys a temperate climate, and in the depth of winter, snow often falls over the city, and covers its plazas with a white mantle. The city stands at the head of a valley in the Andes, nine miles in length, and varying from two miles to a league in breadth, and bounded on either side by ranges of mountains at a considerable elevation above the plain. This valley is covered with fields of barley and lucerne, and, besides many very picturesque farms and country-houses, contains the two small towns of San Sebastian and San Geronimo.

The city is at the north-west end of the valley, a little more than a mile and a half in length from the foot of the mountain range on the east to that on the west, and about a mile in breadth. On the north side the famous hill of Sacsahuaman rises abruptly over the city, divided from the hills on either side by two deep ravines, through which flow the little rivers of Huatanay and Rodadero. The former stream flows noisily past the moss-grown walls of the old convent of Santa Teresa, under the houses forming the west side of the great square of Cuzco, down the centre of a broad street where it is crossed by numerous stone bridges, and eventually unites with the Rodadero, which separates the city from the little eastern suburb of San Blas, to the south of the Gardens of the Sun.

The principal part of the ancient city was built between the two rivers, with the great square in the centre; and to the westward of the Huatanay are two more fine squares, of the Cabildo and of San Francisco, east and west of each other.

The houses of Cuzco are built of stone, the lower story being usually constructed of the massive and imposing masonry of the time of the Incas, while the upper, roofed with red tiles, is a modern superstructure. The streets run at right angles, and present long vistas of massive buildings, rendered interesting from their air of antiquity, with handsome church-towers rising here and there, and the view down those running north and south terminating in the steep streets rising up to the hill of the Sacsahuaman, with the hoary old fortress of the Incas crowning its

summit.

All that remains of the palace of the Incas in the present day is a wall eighty-four paces long and eight high, with eight recesses built on a terrace of stones of every conceivable size and shape, fitting exactly to