The Great Plaza, a principal public square in Lima, is extremely handsome. It has a large brazen fountain in the middle, said to be about forty feet high, surmounted with a figure which represents, I believe, the Goddess of Fame bearing aloft her trumpet.

The old palace of Pizarro once stood in this square–on the north side, I am told; but now its place is filled up with a handsome colonnade, which has a great number of shops and stalls under it. This colonnade forms one side of the Plaza. The first stone of the famous old cathedral, on the other side, was laid by Pizarro, and his bones are said to repose in a vault beneath the sacred edifice.

Some people think the cathedral a huge and clumsy mass of tasteless architecture; but allowing that it has an abundance of defects, architecturally speaking, still there is something about it that is both pleasing and imposing. If you can fancy a gorgeous and fantastic temple in the clouds, when sunset casts its fleeting pomp over the skies, adorned with a thousand strange splendours, you may a little paint it to your imagination. There is a profusion of diversified rich colouring, and a mass of lavish tracery, and curious and quaint decorations on the front of the edifice. I intend to visit the interior before I go from Lima.