PLATEAU OF CAXAMARCA. 415 



three or four thousand English, and to levy from " the Em- 

 peror of Guiana, a descendant of Huayna Capac, and who 

 holds his Court with the same magnificence, an annual tribute 

 of £300,000 sterling, as the price of the promised restoration 

 to the throne in Cnzco and Caxamarca." Wherever the 

 Peruvian Quichua language prevails, traces of the expected 

 restoration of the Inca rule (17) exist in the minds of many 

 of the natives possessing any knowledge of their national 



history. 



We remained five days in the capital of the Inca Atahuallpa, 

 which, at that time, numbered only 7000 or 8000 inhabit- 

 ants. Our departure was delayed by the necessity of obtain- 

 ing a great number of mules to convey our collections, and of 

 selecting careful guides to conduct us across the chain of the 

 Ancles to the entrance of the long but narrow Peruvian sandy 

 desert called the Desierto de Sechwra. Our route across the 

 Cordilleras lay from north-east to south-west. Having 

 passed over the old bed of the lake, on the pleasant level 

 height of Caxamarca, we ascended an eminence at an ele- 

 vation of scarcely 10,230 feet: and we were then surprised 

 by the sight of two strangely-shaped porphyritic mounds 

 called the . Aroma and the Cunturcaga. The latter is a 

 favourite haunt of the gigantic vulture, which we call the 

 Condor; kacca, in the Quichua language, signifying the rocks. 

 The porphyritic heights just mentioned are in the form of 

 columns having five, six, or seven sides, from 37 to 42 

 feet in height, and some of them are crooked and bent 

 as if in joints. Those which crown the Cerro Aroma are 

 remarkably picturesque. The peculiar distribution of the 

 columns, which are ranged in rows one above another, 

 and frequently converging, presents the appearance of a two- 

 storied building, roofed by a dome of massive rock, which 

 not columnar. These erupted masses of porphyry and 

 trachyte are, as I have on a former occasion remarked, cha- 

 racteristic of the ridges of the Andes, to which they impart a 



