Appendix. i^j 



but a few painted earthen pots ; though they may have equalled 

 in civilization those who have left much more magnificent proofs 

 of their existence. 



While at Chachapoyas, I made a trip with Mr. Arthur Wur- 

 therman, (then in the service of the Peruvian government as 

 provincial engineer,) to visit the ancient ruins of Quillip. We 

 crossed the little river Utcubamba, and rode up the valley on 

 the opposite side. For some distance the water had been carried 

 out over the narrow valley, which was cultivated in corn and 

 sugar-cane; but as we ascended, the valley became narrower and 

 cultivation ceased, while the mountains on each side rose higher 

 and wilder. We now began to see for the first time signs of 

 ancient inhabitants. On the almost inaccessible cliffs, hundreds 

 of feet above us, were tiers of circular and half circular stone 

 walls, apparently from ten to twenty feet in diameter, and four 

 or five feet in height ; probably the foundation walls of houses, 

 the roofs and superstructures of which had been made of grass 

 and wood. The first impression one gets, is of the warlike 

 nature of the people who inhabited the country in those days, 

 and the continual state of fear in wliich they lived. Their fields 

 were in the little valley below, and they must have spent hours 

 every day in climbing to these aeries in the rocks. Peru is now 

 one of the most unsettled and revolutionary states of the earth, 

 but its towns and villages are now built in the plains, without 

 walls to defend them. 



The immense population that must have existed here was 

 shown by the frequent tombs. These were built in the shelter 

 of the cliffs, or in little depressions in their sides, where stones 

 and mud had been carried to build up little niches, into which 

 the bodies of the dead had been crowded. Nearly all -of these 

 had been broken open in the search after valuables, and scattered 

 bones and bits of the cotton wrappings of the dead were all that 

 remained. The caves, that were frequent in the limestone rocks, 

 were also filled with human bones. 



In a perpendicular cliff on the other side of the river in one 

 place we could see a number of holes like the mouths of mines, 



