This department has a population, by the government estimate, of 76,111 people. Two of the aboriginal race to one Creole will not be far from the average proportion. As the old Alcalde honestly confesses, he don't know how many people live in his small town, it will be understood how difficult it is to get anything like a correct list. The people are scattered over a great space of country. We travel a day over the wild heights without meeting with a man, or find a valley too thickly peopled for the productions raised therein.
The department is divided into four provinces, each governed by a sub-prefect. These are again divided into districts, under governors, all of whom are responsible to the prefect at the capital—Huancavelica—who is allowed a secretary, three assistants, and a porter. The civil list amounts annually to six thousand four hundred and ninety-five dollars. The prefect is appointed by the government at Lima, and holds his office during the pleasure of the President of the republic. The sub-prefects and governors are also appointed by the supreme government, though generally through the recommendation of the prefect of the department.
Early in the morning we left Pancara; our good old friend, the Alcalde, still eating roasted maize, while he cheerfully expressed a desire to see us when we returned again. The Indians show great surprise when they are told that we will not return _that way_, and seem to be buried in deep thought, as though it troubled them to make out the white man's motions.
Near this small town the road leads through a number of standing rocks, which have been washed by the rains into sugar-loaf forms; and so uniform are they, that it seemed like passing through tents in an encampment. The rock is a soft sandstone, which wears away very fast at the sides, and not on the top, where seems to be the end of the grain. Their heights are from 12 to 18 feet, and so well shaped, that one might be erroneously led to believe they were the work of a pyramidal-minded race of men; but, upon closer examination, we found the work going on in the side of a bank, which was being regularly divided off into sugar-loaves. Had we entered this apparent encampment at midnight, I should have called out, for those rocks which stand off on the plateau a little distance look like sentry boxes around the main body of an army.