410 VIEWS OF NATURE. 



de tapia, have little arched niches or recesses. Of their 

 antiquity I was for a long time doubtful, though I am now 

 convinced that my doubts were not well-grounded. 



In the principal building, the room is still shown in which 

 the unfortunate Atahuallpa was confined for the space of nine 

 months, from the date of November, 1532 (14). The notice 

 of the traveller is still directed to the wall, on which he made 

 a mark to denote to what height he would fill the room with 

 gold, on condition of his being set free. This height is 

 variously described. Xerez in the Conquista del Pent (which 

 Barcia has preserved to us), Hernando Pizarro in his letters, 

 and other writers, all give different accounts of it. The 

 captive monarch said, " that gold in bars, plates, and vessels 

 should be piled up as high as he could reach with his hand." 

 The dimensions of the room, as given by Xerez, are equiva- 

 lent to 23 feet in length and 18 in breadth. Garcilaso de 

 la Vega, who quitted Peru in 1560, in his twentieth year, 

 estimates that the treasures brought from the temples of the 

 Sun in Cuzco, Huaylas, Huamachuco, and Pachacamac, up 

 to the fatal 29th of August, 1533, the day of the Inca's 

 death, amounted to 3,838,000 ducados de oro (15). 



In the chapel of the town jail, which, as I have mentioned 

 above, is erected on the ruins of the Inca Palace, a stone, 

 stained, as it is alleged, with "indelible spots of blood," is 

 viewed with horror by the credulous. It is placed in front 

 of the altar, and consists of an extremely thin slab, about 

 13 feet in length, probably a portion of the porphyry or 

 trachyte of the vicinity. To make an accurate examination 

 of this stone, by chipping a piece off, would not be permitted. 

 The three or four spots, said to be blood stains, appear in 

 reality to be nothing but hornblende and pyroxide run together 

 in the fundamental mass of the rock. The Licentiate Fer- 

 nando Montesinos, though he visited Peru scarcely a hundred 

 years after the taking of Caxamarca, gave currency to the 

 fabulous story that Atahuallpa was beheaded in prison, and that 



