The extraordinary number of churches gives it, even at the present day, a peculiar and striking character, especially when viewed from a short distance.
One day I went out with some merchants to hunt in the immediate vicinity of the city.

Our sport was very poor; but I had an opportunity of seeing the ruins of one of the ancient Indian villages, with its mound like a natural hill in the centre.

The remains of houses, enclosures, irrigating streams, and burial mounds, scattered over this plain, cannot fail to give one a high idea of the condition and number of the ancient population.

When their earthenware, woollen clothes, utensils of elegant forms cut out of the hardest rocks, tools of copper, ornaments of precious stones, palaces, and hydraulic works, are considered, it is impossible not to respect the considerable advance made by them in the arts of civilisation.

The burial mounds, called Huacas, are really stupendous; although in some places they appear to be natural hills encased and modelled.
There is also another and very different class of ruins which possesses some interest, namely, those of old Callao, overwhelmed by the great earthquake of 1746, and its accompanying wave.