Peru as It Is, Volume II

Cerro Pasco is thus situated at nearly equal distances, or about twenty leagues, from Tarma on the south and Huanaco on the north, both after their kind fertile and productive. It has the fine lake of Chinchaycocha, near old Pasco on its south; and, on the north, the outskirts of the town almost reach to a funnel-mouthed gullet which leads with a rapid descent to the village of Quinoa, three leagues distant. Its eastern and western aspects are bounded in the view by the respective ridges of the eastern and western Cordillera; and the intervening spaces between this bed of Peruvian treasure, and the stupendous barriers presented by these commanding summits, forming a grand amphitheatre, are enlivened throughout much of their extent by the innumerable herds of sheep and folds of cattle that roam and flourish upon them. Here and there are seen groups of the tame llama and shy vicuña; whilst the whole landscape is variegated with lakes, rivulets, and marshes, whose surfaces are ever rippled by the fluttering flocks of geese, ducks, snipes, plovers, water-hens, herons, yanavicas, flamingos, &c. which at their proper and appropriate seasons animate and adorn this wide expanse. Nor should we omit to mention that far towards the west, and skirting the limits of the great plains, are seen from the surrounding heights strange fragments of rock, as in the neighbourhood of Huallay, that assume to the distant eye the appearance of dark pine-trees rising under the shade of the adjacent mountains.