PASCO, a province of Peru, in the department of Junin, and celebrated for its mines of silver and gold, particularly the former. This district is situated at a prodigious elevation, some parts of it being more than 14,000 feet above the level of the sea, and is consequently much colder than its latitude would indicate, which is only about eleven degrees south of the equator. The following notice of Pasco is from an article in the Journal of the Geographical Society, giving an account of the recent travels of Dr Poeppig in this country: “He then entered the plain of Bonbon, in which the rich silver mines of Pasco are situated, and which extends upwards of six leagues in width from east to west. The greatest part of the waters collected on this plain run to the lake Lauricoha, the source of the Amazon. The Cerro de Pasco, in whose neighbourhood the richer mines are situated, is an irregularly built place, with about 7000 inhabitants (Lieutenant Smyth, in 1834, says from 12,000 to 16,000 inhabitants), and stated at 14,280 feet above the sea. From the Cerro de Pasco the author gradually descended in a northerly direction, by the eastern declivity of the Andes, to a valley traversed by the upper branch of the Huallaga, called Huanuco. At Coxamarquilla, a village more than three leagues from the Cerro, the ground had already so much lowered, that he found there plantations of vegetables. Trees made their appearance lower down; and at San Rafael he saw the first fields of wheat, which ascends in the valleys of the Andes to an elevation of 9000 feet. Before reaching the town of Huanuco, the level part of the valley was covered with sugar-cane plantations, and even the less steep declivities of the mountains on both sides were cultivated. Dr Poeppig followed the course of the Huanuco or Huallaga, from its source to its mouth. This river, which traverses more than five degrees of latitude, rises in the plain of Bonbon, in the Laguna de Chiquiacoba, not far from the Cerro, at an elevation of 13,200 feet above the sea. This alpine lake is only separated by a low ridge of hills from the Laguna de Quilua-cocha, from which the Rio Mantaro, one of the principal branches of the Apurimac, issues under the name of Rio de San Juan. The Rio Huanuco runs first north as far as the town of Huanuco, then east about fifty miles with great violence through a rather narrow vale, and then it turns suddenly to the north-north-west and north, which course it pursues to its junction with the Amazon.” Before the revolution the mines of Pasco yielded annually 131,000 lbs. troy of silver. During that convulsion the costly machinery was destroyed, and the water was allowed to take full possession of the mines. Both loyalists and patriots repeatedly plundered the stores, and for a long time operations were nearly suspended. This province is noted only for its mines. It is divided into three districts, each of which has its church and priest; but, in spite of the efforts of the latter, the miners belonging to the different districts live in a state of almost perpetual hostility with each other. When Lieutenant Smyth visited the mines of Pasco in 1834, the working of them had been resumed with some spirit; but the steam-engines which had been erected by an English company some years before were found either destroyed, or so much injured as to be unfit for use. These mines were discovered in the year 1630, by Huari Capac, an Indian.