Hoiv Andent America Wrote. 215 



taclied at the commencement of the base cord, or, when coming from 

 a distant j)rovince, a verbal commentary had to be sent with the mes- 

 senger explanatory of the subject matter of which they treated. The 

 office of knotting, deciphering and preserving these public documents 

 was entrusted to the Quippocamayocs, of which each village of any 

 note had at least one. In order to avoid any confounding or mixing, 

 all quippos belonging to the same class were placed in separate re- 

 positories. To guard against interpolation or forgery, a special board 

 of supervisors was appointed to watch the keepers. Another class of 

 officials, the Amautas, were charged to give instruction in reading and 

 knotting the cords, and to relate annually at the festivals the historical 

 events of the empire to the assembled people. 



Judge how much such an intricate system, intelligible only to the 

 most skillful and learned, served the policy of the Incas, whose favor- 

 ite maxim was, that science was not intended for the masses ! As 

 long as the quippos were the sole treasuries of learning, these rulers 

 had nothing to fear from progress and enlightenment, those dangerous 

 foes of despotic authority. With the overthrow of the Inca rule, the 

 more high-wrought system of knotted cords gradually perished. Only 

 in their simpler form, for the purpose of numeration, they remained 

 in force. The converted Indians employed them as a mnemonic aid 

 in their confessions. At the haciendas and cattle stations of the Puna 

 they serve the herdsmen, even nowadays, in making lists of their va- 

 rious flocks. Tschudi thinks, however, that in the southern provinces 

 there are still Indians who know well how to decipher them, but 

 guard their knowledge as a sacred secret. Yet some of the earlier 

 Peruvian historians have succeeded in collecting the materials for their 

 works from these mysterious records. 



All attempts made in our day to read them have proved futile. 

 ISTeither do we know which notion is attached to each knot, nor have 

 we the verbal commentary to explain the subject matter of the docu- 

 ment. For curiosity's sake it may be mentioned, that the Prince of 

 San Severino, a member of the Academy of La Crusca, ia a pamphlet 

 published in Naples, called forth by the " Peruvian Letters" of Madame 

 Gravigny, seeks to prove that the knots had an alphabetical value, and 

 even describes the grammar and dictionary of the cords. But not a 

 single reason sustains such a bold theory. 



Prior to the official sanction of the quippos by the Incas, pictorial 

 writing, though of the rudest kind, seems to have been the current 

 method of notation amongst the Peruvians. This opinion rests on 

 more reliable authority than Montesino's, who states that during the 

 reign of the third sovereign (according to his list of lOl) the use of 



