Memoirs of General Miller - 1829 Author:John Miller Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER XIX. Description of the desert coast of Peru.—Shipwreck and sufferings of the Granaderos a Caballo.—Local traditions.—The Junta Gubernativa deposed.—R... more »iva-Aguero named president of the republic.—Position of the royalists.—Another expedition sails to the Puertos Intermedios.—Royalists advance upon Lima.—Patriots retire to Callao.—Canterac enters Lima.— General Sucre invested with supreme command.—Riva-Aguero displaced. As the operations which have been so minutely described were performed in a country little known, and very different from any part of Europe, it may not be out of place to give a sketch of its features, and of some of its peculiarities. The coast of Peru consists ofa line of sandy desert, five hundred leagues in length, the breadth varying from seven to above fifty miles, as the several branches of the Andes approach to, or recede from, the shores of the Pacific Ocean. Nothing can exceed its dreary, arid aspect, or equal the comfortless effect produced on the mind of the mariner when he first catches sight of this apparently dismal country. The desert's breadth presents great inequalities of surface, and has the appearance of having once formed a part of the bed of the adjoining ocean. Were it not for the stupendous back ground, which gives to every other object a comparatively diminutive outline, the sand hills might sometimes be called mountains. The long line of desert is intersected by rivers and streams,which are seldom less than twenty, or more than eighty or ninety miles apart. The narrow strips on each bank of every stream are peopled in proportion to the supply of water. During the rainy season in the interior, or from the melting of the snows upon the Andes, the great rivers upon the coast swell prodigiously, and can be crossed only by means...« less