Appendix. 141 



narrow for cultivation. As we reached the foot of the pass of 

 Calle Calle, we found ruins of large buildings, built roughly of 

 boulders. They were probably intended to guard the pass. 



Cajamarca was one of the principal cities of the Incas, and 

 the place where Atahuallpa, the last of the line, was put to death 

 by Pizarro ; but there are but few remains of its ancient inhabit- 

 ants. I was shown an ancient building which was said to be the 

 identical room in which Atahuallpa was confined, and which he 

 offered to fill with gold vessels as his ransom. 



The building is perhaps twenty-five feet long by sixteen 

 wide, and the old wall is about ten feet high ; but it has been 

 built up with adobes and covered with tiles, and serves for a 

 modern residence. The walls were not p:iade perpendicular, l^ut 

 were drawn in a little on every side, giving it the appearance of 

 a truncated pyramid. The stones of which it is constructed are 

 not squared, but have an irregular number of sides, giving the 

 walls a curious appearance. They were laid up without mortar, 

 but the joints are very close, and it has been supposed that they 

 were rubbed together until they were fitted. There are many 

 articles of pottery and human remains dug up about Cajamarca, 

 but the valley is so moist that such things are not so well preserved 

 as in the coast country. 



The greatest amount of ancient ruins found in Peru is in the 

 rainless district between the last range of the Andes and the 

 coast. This is made up of the ancient bed of the sea, as about 

 Trujillo, and of the valleys of streams that come down from the 

 mountains behind, and varies in width from one or two to thirty 

 miles. It is now most of it desert, the sand blowing over much 

 of it in whirling heaps. But there is every reason for believing 

 that it was anciently all under cultivation, and most thickly 

 inhabited. Excavations in the sand at almost any point uncover 

 great numbers of human bodies, preserved by the dryness of the 

 climate, like Egyptian mummies, with pots full of beans and 

 corn and peanuts, and other articles of food. Besides these 

 buried remains there are immense numbers of ruins of adobe or 

 sun-dried bricks, these in some cases extending for miles. They 

 have stood here for centuries, with no rain to wash them down, 



