“And where is your father, my dear?” asked Uncle Francis, still with a wary eye on his luggage.
“He did not expect to see you until to-morrow. They are going to give you such a reception! The whole Geographical Society is turning out in your honor.”
When his luggage had been taken to the station, and he had personally supervised its registration for Lima, Uncle Francis at last consented to take a seat in the motor, and Maria-Teresa put on full speed, for she wished to reach home before the early tropical nightfall.
After passing a line of adobe houses and a few comfortable villas, they came to a long stretch of marshy ground, overgrown with reeds and willows, and spotted with clumps of banana trees and tamarisks, with here and there an eucalyptus or an araucaria pine. The whole countryside was burnt yellow by the sun, by a drought hardly ever relieved by a drop of rain, and which makes the campo round Lima and Callao anything but enchanting. A little further along they passed some scattered bamboo and adobe huts.
This parched landscape would have been infinitely desolate had it not been relieved at intervals by the luxuriant growth surrounding some hacienda--sugar-cane, maize and rice plantations, making a brilliant green oasis round the white farm buildings. The badly-built clay roads which crossed the highway were peopled by droves of cattle, heavy carts, and flocks of sheep which mounted shepherds were bringing back to the farms. And all this animation formed a strange contrast to the arid aspect of the surrounding country. In spite of the jolting shaking of the car over a poorly kept road, Uncle Francis kept taking notes, and even more notes. Soon, with the lower spurs of the Cordilleras, they saw on the horizon the spires and domes which make Lima look almost like a Mussulman city.
They were now running alongside the Rimac, a stream infested by crayfish. Negro fishermen were to be seen every few yards dragging behind them in the water sacks attached to their belts, and in which they threw their catch to keep it alive. Turning to comment on them, Dick noticed Maria-Teresa’s preoccupied air, and asked her the cause.
“It is very strange,” she said, “we have not met a single Indian.”