MODES OF BURIAL. 29 



The excavation laid bare a square chamber built of stone, the roof of Avhich was 

 sustained by cypress beams. In it were found idols of basalt, a number of painted 

 vases, and the remains of two bodies. No cure was taken of the relics by the 

 discoverers, and they are lost forever. 



Prescott, in his essay on the Civilization of the Incas, introductory to the 

 " History of the Conquest of Peru," says that it was the belief in the resurrection 

 of the body which led the Peruvians to preserve the body with so much solicitude, 

 by a simple process, that, however, unlike the elaborate embalming of the Egyp- 

 tians, consisted in exposing it to the action of the cold, exceedingly dry, and 

 hi'ghly rarefied atmosphere of the mountains. Such, indeed, seems to be the 

 opinion of Garcilasso, though some writers speak of resinous and other applications 

 for embalming the body. The appearance of the royal mummies found at Cuzco, 

 as reported both by Ondegardo and Garcilasso, makes it probable that no foreign 

 substance was employed for their preservation. As the Peruvians believed that the 

 occupations in the future world would have a great resemblance to those of the 

 present, they buried with the deceased noble some of his apparel, his utensils, and 

 frequently his treasures ; and completed the gloomy ceremony by sacrificing his 

 wives and favorite domestics to bear him company and do him service in the 

 happy regions beyond the clouds. Vast mounds of an irregular, or, more fre- 

 quently, oblong shape, penetrated by galleries running at right angles to each 

 other, were raised over the dead, whose dried bodies or mummies have been found 

 in considerable numbers, sometimes erect, but more frequently in the sitting pos- 

 ture common to the Indian tribes of both Continents. Treasures of great value 

 have also been occasionally drawn from those monumental deposits, and have 

 stunulated speculators to repeated excavations with tlie hope of similar good 

 fortune. It was a lottery like that of searching after mines, but where the chances 

 have proved against the adventurers. Yet these sepulchral mines have sometimes 

 proved worth the digging. Sarmiento speaks of gold to the value of 100,000 

 Castillanos, as occasionally buried with the Indian lords -^ and Las Casas, not 

 the best authority in numerical estimates, says tliat treasures worth more than half 

 a million of ducats had been found within twenty years after tlie conquest in the 

 tombs near Truxillo.^ Humboldt visited the sepulchre of a Peruvian prince in 

 the same quarter of this country whence a Spaniard, in 1576, drew forth a mass of 

 gold worth a million of dollars !'' 



Garcilasso has left on record the following description of the corpses of the 

 Incas: — 



"In the year 1560, in the house of the licentiate, Paul Ondegardo. I saw five bodies of the Incas, 

 three men and two women. They had till now been concealed from the Spaniards. The first was 

 that of the king Viraeocha, who, by his snow-white hair, appeared to have been very aged. The next 

 was his nephew, the great Tupac Yupanqui ; and the third was Huayna Capac. The fourth was 

 Mama Runtu, Queen of Viraeocha ; and the other was the body of Coya Mama Oello, mother of 



' Relacions, M. S. cap. Ivii. 



' (Euvrcs, ed. par Llorente. Paris, 1822, torn, ii, p. 193. 



' Vues des Cordilleres, p. 29. (History of the Conquest of Peru, vol. i, pp. 54, 55.) 



