Wheat is sown, but no reliance can be placed on a produce adequate to repay the farmer, although the quality in favourable seasons is very good. It often happens, that the vertical sun has great power before the grain is formed, at which time the small dew drops having arranged themselves on different parts of the ear into minute globules, these are forcibly acted on by the sun's rays before evaporation takes place, and operating as so many convex lenses, the grain is burnt, and the disappointed farmer finds nothing but a deep brown powder in its place. I have sometimes seen a field of wheat or other grain most luxuriantly green in the evening, and the day following it has been parched and dry; this transition the farmer says is the effect of frost; which will perhaps be admitted to be a correct explanation, if we consider that during the night the wind has come from the eastward, and has passed over a range of the Andes at a short distance. It sometimes also happens that the moist season continues for a long period, or that after clear weather the mists return; now should the farmer irrigate his fields during this intermission, or should the mists continue, the plants shoot up to such a great height that straw alone is harvested; but in this case, aware of the result, he often cuts the green corn for fodder, or turns his cattle on it to feed.
The growth of maize is much attended to, and very large quantities are annually consumed in Lima by the lower classes, and as food for hogs, some of which animals become extremely fat with this grain, and in less time than if fed on any other kind. Three sorts of maize are cultivated here, each of which has its peculiar properties and uses. It appears to have been in very extensive use among the indians before the arrival of the Spaniards; for, on digging the _huacas_, or burying grounds, at the distance of forty leagues from Lima, I have often found great quantities of it. A large deposit was discovered in square pits or cisterns, made of sun-dried bricks, on a farm called Vinto, where no doubt there had either been a public granary, or, as some people imagine, a depôt formed by Huaina Capac, on leading his troops against the Chimu, a king of the coasts, about the year 1420. The grain was quite entire when it was taken up, although, according to the above hypothesis, it had been under ground about four hundred years; owing its preservation perhaps to the dry sand in which it was buried. Its depth beneath the surface was about four feet, on the ridge of a range of sand hills, where no moisture could reach it by absorption from below, its elevation being about 700 feet above the level of the sea, and 600 above that of the nearest river. I planted some of it, but it did not grow: however its fattening qualities were not destroyed, and the neighbouring farmers and inhabitants of the adjacent villages profited by the discovery.