A country in the W. of South America, twice the size of Austro-Hungary, lies between Brazil and Bolivia and the Pacific, with Ecuador on the N. and Chile on the S.; it consists of a seaboard plain, hot and rainless, but intersected by rich river courses, in which sugar, cotton, and coffee are grown; the Andes chains, snow-tipped and presenting every kind of climate and variety of vegetation on their slopes and in their valleys, rich in minerals and yielding chiefly great quantities of silver; and the Montana, the eastward slopes of the Andes, clad with valuable forests where the cinchona is cultivated, and the upland basins of the Ucayalé River and the Upper Amazon, very fertile, with great coffee and cacao plantations and abundant rain; the chief articles of export are silver, nitre, guano, sugar, and wool. Lima, the capital, is 8 m. inland from its port Callao; has an old cathedral, and is the chief centre of commerce; its principal merchants are Germans. The government is republican; the ruling classes are of Spanish descent, but half of the population are Inca Indians and a quarter are half-castes. From the 12th to the 16th centuries the Incas enjoyed a high state of civilisation and an extensive empire administered on socialistic principles; they attained great skill in the industries and arts. The Spanish conqueror Pizarro, landing in 1532, overthrew the empire and established the colony; after three centuries of oppression Peru threw off the Spanish yoke in 1824. The history of the republic has been one of continual restlessness, and a war with Chile 1879-84 ended in complete disaster; recovery is slowly progressing.
The Nuttall Encyclopædia: Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge[1] is a late 19th-century encyclopedia, edited by Rev. James Wood, first published in London in 1900 by Frederick Warne & Co Ltd.
WikipediaEditions were recorded for 1920, 1930, 1938 and 1956 and was still being sold in 1966. Editors included G. Elgie Christ and A. L. Hayden for 1930, Lawrence Hawkins Dawson for 1938 and C. M. Prior for 1956.[2]
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