358 NORTHERN CHILE. [chap, xvi 



been greater. As the peculiarly arid character of the climate is 

 evidently a consequence of the height of the Cordillera, we may 

 feel almost sure that before the later elevations, the atmosphere 

 could not have been so completely drained of its moisture as it 

 now is ; and as the rise has been gradual, so would have been 

 the change in climate. On this notion of a change of climate 

 since the buildings were inhabited, the ruins must be of extreme 

 antiquity, but I do not think their preservation under the Chilian 

 climate any great difficulty. We must also admit on this notion, 

 (and this perhaps is a greater difficulty) that man has inhabited 

 South America for an immensely long period, inasmuch as any 

 change of climate effected by the elevation of the land must 

 have been extremely gradual. At Valparaiso, within the last 

 220 years, the rise has been somewhat le^s than 19 feet: at 

 Lima a sea-beach h^s certainly been upheaved from 80 to 90 feet, 

 within the Indio-human period : but such small elevations could 

 have had little power in deflecting the moisture-bringing atmos- 

 pheric currents. Dr. Lund, however, found human skeletons 

 in the caves of Brazil, the appearance of which induced him to 

 believe that the Indian race has existed during a vast lapse of 

 time in South America. 



When at Lima, I conversed on these subjects* with Mr. Gill, 

 a civil engineer, who had seen much of the interior country. lie 

 told me that a conjecture of a change of climate had some- 

 times crossed his mind ; but that he thought that the greater 

 portion of land, now incapable of cultivation, but covered with 

 Indian ruins, had been reduced to this state by the water-con- 

 duits, which the Indians formerly constructed on so wonderful 

 a scale, having been injured by neglect and by subterranean 

 movements. I may here mention, that the Peruvians actually 

 carried tlieir irrigating streams in tunnels through hills of solid 

 rock. Mr. Gill told me, he had been employed professionally to 

 examine one ; he found the passage low, narrow, crooked, and 

 not of uniform breadth, but of very considerable length. Is it 



* Temple, in his travels through Upper Peru, or Bolivia, in going froiu 

 Potosi to Oruro, says, " I saw many Indian villages or dwellings in ruins, 

 up even to the very tops of the mountains, attesting a former population 

 where now all is desolate." He makes similar remarks in another place ; 

 but I cannot tell whether this desolation has been caused by a want of popu- 

 lation, or by an altered condition of the land. 



